Early Medieval Text and Image Volume 2: The Codex Amiatinus, the Book of Kells and Anglo-Saxon Art

by Jennifer O'Reilly, Carol A Farr (Editor), Elizabeth Mullins (Editor)

Overview

When she died in 2016, Dr Jennifer O’Reilly left behind a body of published and unpublished work in three areas of medieval studies: the iconography of the Gospel Books produced in early medieval Ireland and Anglo-Saxon England; the writings of Bede and his older Irish contemporary, Adomnán of Iona; and the early lives of Thomas Becket. In these three areas she explored the connections between historical texts, artistic images and biblical exegesis.

This volume brings together seventeen essays, published between 1984 and 2013, on the interplay of texts and images in medieval art. Most focus on the manuscript art of early medieval Ireland and England. The first section includes four studies of the Codex Amiatinus, produced in Northumbria in the monastic community of Bede. The second section contains seven essays on the iconography and text of the Book of Kells. In the third section there are five studies of Anglo-Saxon Art, examined in the context of the Benedictine Reform. A concluding essay, on the medieval iconography of the two trees in Eden, traces the development of a motif from Late Antiquity to the end of the Middle Ages.(CS1080)

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781032091808
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	06/30/2021
Series:	Variorum Collected Studies , #1080
Pages:	412
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Jennifer O’Reilly received her B.A. Honours degree in History in 1964, and her Ph.D. in Art History in 1972, both in the University of Nottingham. Her monograph, Studies in the Iconography of the Virtues and Vices in the Middle Ages was published in 1988. A book of essays in her honour was published in 2011: Listen, o isles, unto me: studies in medieval word and image.

Dr Carol A. Farr is an art historian specialising in the early medieval art of Ireland and Britain. She teaches courses on early medieval manuscripts for the Institute of English Studies, University of London.

Dr Elizabeth Mullins lectures in the School of History, University College Dublin. Her research interests include the exegesis of early medieval gospel books and the record-keeping traditions of Irish religious congregations.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

Preface

Introduction

The Codex Amiatinus

1. The library of Scripture: views from Vivarium and Wearmouth-Jarrow

(New offerings, ancient treasures. Studies in medieval art for George Henderson, ed. P. Binski and W. Noel (Alan Sutton, Stroud 2001) 3–39)

2. Celtic art and the Gospel

(Search 24 (2001) 34–42)

3. The art of authority

(After Rome, ed. T. Charles-Edwards (Oxford University Press, 2003) 141–189)

4. "All that Peter stands for": the romanitas of the Codex Amiatinus reconsidered

(Anglo-Saxon/Irish relations before the Vikings, ed. J. Graham-Campbell and M. Ryan, Proceedings of the British Academy, vol. 157 (Oxford, 2009) 367–95. © British Academy 2009)

5. The Book of Kells, folio 114: a mystery revealed yet concealed

(The age of migrating ideas: early medieval art in Britain and Ireland, ed. J. Higgitt and R.M. Spearman (Alan Sutton and National Museums of Scotland, Stroud 1993) 106–114)

The Book of Kells

6. The Book of Kells and two Breton gospel books

(Irlande et Bretagne. Actes du colloque de Rennes 1993, ed. C. Laurent and H. Davis (Terre de Brume Editions, Rennes 1994)

7. Exegesis and the Book of Kells: the Lucan genealogy

(The Book of Kells, ed. F. O’Mahony (Scolar Press; Aldershot 1994) 344–97. Reprinted in Scriptural interpretation in the Fathers, ed. T. Finn and V. Twomey (Four Courts Press, Dublin 1995) 315–55)

8. Entry on the Book of Kells, folios 29 and 34

(Histoire de l’écriture, ed. A.M. Christin (Flammarion, Paris 1997; English version 2002. © Flammarion, S.A., Paris, 2001, 2002 and 2012)

9. Two pages from the Book of Kells

(Visual practices across the University, ed. J. Elkins, (Munich 2007) 164–69)

10. The Book of Kells, folio 114

(Treasures of Irish Christianity: people and places, images and texts, ed. S. Ryan and B. Leahy (Dublin: Veritas, 2012) 49–52)

11. The body of Christ in the Book of Kells

(Proceedings of the International Symposium of Theology: The Ecclesiology of Communion (Dublin: Veritas, 2013), 52–62)

The Anglo-Saxon and Later English Traditions

12. An Anglo-Saxon portable altar: inscription and iconography

((with Elisabeth Okasha), Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 47 (1984) 32–51)

13. St John as a figure of the contemplative life: text and image in the art of the Anglo-Saxon Benedictine reform

(St Dunstan: his life, times and cult, ed. N.L. Ramsay, M.J. Sparks and T. Tatton-Brown (Boydell and Brewer, Woodbridge 1992) 165–85)

14. The rough-hewn cross in Anglo-Saxon art

(Ireland and insular art A.D. 500–1200, Conference Proceedings, ed. M. Ryan (Royal Irish Academy, Dublin 1987; reprinted 2002) 153–58)

15. Text and Image in the Anglo-Saxon Benedictine Reform

(Benedetto l’Eredità Artistica, ed. R. Casanelli and E. López-Tello García (Jaca Books, Milan 2007) 95–110)

16. Signs of the Cross

(The History of British Art 600–1600, ed. T. Ayers, (Tate Britain and the Yale Center for British Art 2008) 176–99. © Tate 2008, reproduced by permission of the Tate Trustees)

17. The medieval iconography of the two trees in Eden

(A walk in the garden: biblical, iconographical and literary images of Eden, ed. P. Morris and D. Sawyer, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, supplement series 136, (Sheffield Academic Press 1992) 167–204, used by permission of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.)

Index

Editorial Reviews

‘Most users of these books will have read several of these essays before, but having them in one place is more than a convenience: it allows us to note continuities both within Jennifer O’Reilly’s work (thus making for a more fruitful engagement with her researches) and also to recognize continuities in the artefacts themselves. Moreover, we have not simply been given reproductions of the earlier papers ... but the works have been reset and all the appropriate illustrations have been reproduced in colour — more than 150 in total — close to where they are discussed allowing us to see exactly what is meant in the various iconographical analyses. These sharp, clear colour images, along with two indices, make these books works of scholarship in their own right. We are indebted to the editors for their work for us, as well as for having given us such an appropriate monument to a great scholar’ - Thomas O’Loughlin, Irish Theological Quarterly 2020, Vol 85 (3).

‘Everyone looked at the Book of Kells differently when they heard Jennifer O’Reilly talk about it. Her scholarship changed the landscape of the subject’ - Bernard Meehan, Peritia, 31 (2022).

From the Publisher