3-042-434 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Border with Moses and the Brazen Serpent; Prayer Book of Cardinal Albrecht of Brandenburg, about 1525-1530. Additional Info: After speaking out against God, the Israelites were plagued with serpents, seen here in the lower border as vicious reptiles crawling over the bodies of three men. When Moses asked God what he could do to remedy the situation, he was told to make a bronze image of a serpent and set it on a pole; this image then had a miraculous power to cure those suffering from snakebites. Christ linked the story of Moses and the serpent to his own eventual crucifixion, saying, "As Moses raised the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be raised." (John 3:14) Following this understanding of the Old Testament story as a prefiguration of the Crucifixion, Simon Bening paired this border with an image of the Crucifixion on the facing page.