| This dissertation deals with an image that is found in three eleventh-century Anglo-Saxon manuscripts: The Royal Bible (London, British Library, Royal I.E.VII, fol. 1), the Tiberius Psalter (London, British Library, Cotton, Tiberius C.VI, fol. 7v), and the Bury Psalter (Rome, Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica, MS Reg. Lat. 12, fol. 68v). The image depicts a cross-nimbed head, two trumpets or torches issuing from its mouth, atop two or three concentric circles. The hands, which also emerge from the circles, hold scales and dividers. Previous scholars have identified this image as the "Wisdom-type" of creation scene because it seemed to illustrate Wisdom 11:21: "Thou hast ordered all things in measure, and number, and weight," with the dividers referring to measure and the scales to weight. Due to the presence of the measuring dividers, which have often been misidentified as compasses for making circles, the iconography has also been understood as a precursor to the well-known scenes of God forming the world with the aid of a compass that preface thirteenth-century French moralized bibles. There is, however, an alternative way to understand the Anglo-Saxon iconography. What I propose and investigate is that the image does not depict God in the act of doing anything at all. Rather, it portrays God's immaterial and eternal nature, as he exists outside of time.;Because what is eternal and unlimited cannot be circumscribed, and therefore cannot be portrayed, the artists of the three Anglo-Saxon examples depicted the idea of eternity by referencing the quadrivium, the four liberal arts that deal with number (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music), which was an essential foundation for philosophical and theological studies. Because, as Augustine and other theologians asserted, numbers are eternal and their ratios served as the exemplars for the created world, it was through the logic of number that one could approach an understanding of God. By creating such a visual metaphor, the artists created visualities that are not re-presentations or even images, as such, but independent signs leading toward the contemplation of immaterial truth. Their anagogical aspect makes them forerunners of the quest that in the twelfth century led Abbot Suger of Saint-Denis and Hugh of Saint-Victor and others to create and understand images as anagogical and speculative.;This project looks at how the iconography conveys the idea of the quadrivium through its schematic form and its specific iconographical features. However, I also deal with the three examples of the image separately. While they are similar formally and may ultimately derive from a single model or represent a visual recension, each example of the image accompanies a different text and is part of a unique visual program. Furthermore, because the artists of each example tailored the image to its particular context, they depict subtle but significant variations. They thus demand an approach in terms of "new philological" methodology concentrating on individual witnesses rather than seeking hypothetical forerunners. Despite the importance of context for reading the image, up to this point, the three examples have been treated as disiecta membra, apart from their larger visual and textual programs. I, instead, investigate how the three examples operate within networks of illustrations and texts and how, through these associations and through the creative reinvention of the iconography, they each acquire distinctive meanings. |
