This had a local influence, mostly in the Iberian Peninsula, up to about the 13th century, but is today remembered mainly for the 27 surviving manuscript copies that are heavily illustrated in an often spectacular series of miniatures that are outstanding monuments of Mozarabic art.

He was a monk and probably an abbot at the monastery of Santo Toribio de Liébana, Cantabria, in the Kingdom of Asturias, the only region of Spain remaining outside of Muslim control.

It is thought that he was probably one the large number of monastic refugees who moved north, to lands remaining under Christian rule after the Muslim conquest of southern and central Spain.

[8] He also led the opposition against a Spanish variant of Adoptionism, the heretical belief that Christ was the son of God by adoption, an idea first propounded in Spain by Elipandus, the bishop of Toledo.

[10] The Commentary is a work of erudition but without great originality, made up principally of extracts from the texts of Church authorities including Augustine of Hippo, Tyconius, Ambrose, Irenaeus, and Isidore of Seville.

The original purpose of the map was evangelical, displaying the apostles preaching in every part of the world, including the fourth continent.

Beatus and other opponents of adoptionism, such as Alcuin and Paulinus II of Aquileia, feared that this view would so divide the person of the Savior that the reality of the incarnation would be lost.