Early Medieval Text and Image Volume 2

The Codex Amiatinus, the Book of Kells and Anglo-Saxon Art

Jennifer O'Reilly, Carol A Farr, Elizabeth Mullins, Carol A Farr, Elizabeth Mullins

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781032091808
• eBook ISBN: 9781000008722
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

When she died in 2016, Dr Jennifer O'Reilly left behind a body of published and unpublished work in three areas of medieval studies: the iconography of the Gospel Books produced in early medieval Ireland and Anglo-Saxon England; the writings of Bede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)

The Anglo-Saxon and later English traditions

12
An Anglo-Saxon Portable Altar

Inscription and iconography

Elisabeth Okasha and Jennifer O’Reilly

The portable altar which is the subject of this paper is preserved in the Musée de Cluny, Paris, catalogued as no. cl. 11.459.¹ It was bought by the Museum on 10 May 1886 at the sale of the Stein Collection. On 25 November 1882, while in the Stein Collection, the altar was drawn by C. Rohault de Fleury who took it to be Italian work of the thirteenth century.² He supplied the information that the altar had previously been in the possession of M. Maillet de Boullay and that it was said to have been purchased in Italy. The altar has been cited on a number of occasions and some commentators on the inscription have stated that the text describes the engraved figures; none, however, has attempted a translation or an explanation of which part of the text refers to which part of the engraving, nor has the iconography of the altar been discussed in any detail.³

1 The authors are grateful to the Director and staff of the Musée de Cluny for their help, and for permission to examine the altar. They also thank Professor É. Ó Carragáin and Dr J.D. C. Frendo of University College, Cork, Mrs L.E. Webster of the British Museum, and Dr Michael Lapidge of Cambridge University for their help.

2 C. Rohault de Fleury, op. cit., n. 3 below.

3 List of references to the Cluny altar: J. Adhemar and D. Sutton, eds., Huit siècles de vie britannique à Paris. Exhibition catalogue. Musée Galliera, Paris 1948, p. 63. J. Braun, Der Christliche Altar in seiner geschichtlichen Entwicklung, I, Munich 1924, p. 451. L.L. Brownrigg, ‘MSS containing English decoration 871–1066, catalogued and illustrated: a review’, Anglo-Saxon England, VII, Cambridge 1978, p. 253, n. 1. James Campbell, ed., The Anglo-Saxons, Oxford 1982, pl. 181. A.G.I. Christie, English Medieval Embroidery, Oxford 1938, p. 45. C.R. Dodwell, Anglo-Saxon Art. A New Perspective, Manchester 1982, pp. 80, 210 and figure. C. Rohault de Fleury, La Messe. Études archéologiques sur ses monuments, v, Paris 1887, p. 38 and figures. P. Lasko, ‘An English Romanesque Portable Altar’, Apollo, LXXIX 1964, p. 494. H.P. Mitchell, ‘Flotsam of later Anglo-Saxon Art–I’, Burlington Magazine, XLII, 1923, pp. 63–72 and figures. E. Okasha, ‘A supplement to Hand-List of Anglo-Saxon Non-Runic Inscriptions’, Anglo-Saxon England, XI, Cambridge 1982, pp. 95–96 and figure. B.C. Raw, ‘The Dream of the Rood and its Connections with Early Christian Art’, Medium Aevum, XXXIX, 1970, p. 254, n. 11. D. Talbot Rice, English Art 871–1100, Oxford 1952, pp. 251–53. D.M. Wilson, The Anglo-Saxons. Ancient Peoples and Places xvi, London 1960, pp. 64, 163, 215 and figure. Burlington Fine Arts Club Catalogue of an Exhibition of British Medieval Art, London 1939, no. 146, pp. 64–66.

Plate 12.1 Portable altar. Paris, Musée de Cluny–Musée national du Moyen Âge.

Photo: © RMN-Grand Palais.

The altar measures 26.2 × 13.7 × 1.5 cm. It is a precious object made of red porphyry backed with wood, framed and held together by engraved silver-gilt mounts (Plate 12.1). The upper and lower mounts project some 3.5 cm on to the face of the altar and show respectively the Crucifixion between an ox and an eagle, and the Agnus Dei flanked by an angel and lion. The left- and right-hand mounts extend some 2.5 cm on to the altar face.⁴ Each shows two figures, one above the other, identifiable as the Virgin and Gabriel on the left-hand mount and St John and Raphael on the right. Except for faces, hands and feet, and for the torso of Christ, all the figures are gilded. There is no trace on the reverse of the iconographic programme detailed by D. Talbot Rice.⁵ [32]

4 Throughout, ‘left-hand (side)’ and ‘right-hand (side)’ are taken to be the left- and right-hand (sides) of an observer examining the front of the altar.

5 Talbot Rice, op. cit., n. 3, pp. 231–32. There is possibly a confusion here with another slender portable altar, also in the Musée de Cluny (cl. 13.072) and exhibited as eleventh-century German work, which is decorated on both sides, and shows a scene of the sacrifice of Abraham mentioned by Prof. Talbot Rice.

The inscription is contained in the edges of the altar, the letters being around 8 mm in height with framing lines above and below (Figure 12.1). The letters are incised and then inlaid with niello. The parts of the text on the two long edges are clearly legible. The text on the top edge is rather deteriorated with, in addition, pieces of the silver broken off. Much of the silver is lost from the bottom edge and what remains contains only illegible traces of lettering. The letters on the top and right-hand edges face the front of the altar while those on the left-hand edge face the back of the altar; it is not clear which way the traces of letters on the bottom edge faced. The text reads:⁶

Right-hand edge: +DISCIPVLVS PLORAT:RAPHAELQVEM:SEMP¯:ADORAT:+ | Bottom: illegible

Left-hand edge: -NITRIX : MERET:GĀBRIEL:CVISC¯SADHERET:[±] | Top: [I]NG[E··]T:HICLV[…·]RORE[·]-

When the text is put together and divided into words it reads:

+DISCIPVLVS PLORAT : RAPHAEL QVEM : SEMP¯ : ADORAT : + […] NITRIX : MERET : GABRIEL : CVI SC¯ S ADHERET : [+ I]NG[E..]T : HIC LV [....]RORE[.]−

The text contains several dots amongst the letters, some of which were probably word division symbols and some of which were perhaps accidental: it is not always certain, however, which is which. The horizontal mark above the G of GABRIEL was presumably accidental or in error, while the horizontal marks in

Figure 12.1 Portable altar. The porphyry slab and silver marginal mounts. Paris, Musée de Cluny–Musée national du Moyen Âge. Photo: © RMN-Grand Palais

the middle of the letter P of SEMP and of the letter C of SCS are abbreviation signs. The initial cross on the right-hand edge is of a conventional form but the other two crosses are unusual in shape.

6 The text is transliterated according to the following system:

• A indicates a clearly legible letter A
• A̠ indicates a letter damaged but legible as A
• [A] indicates a damaged letter where the restoration to A is fairly certain
• [^…] indicates three letters lost, the number corresponding to the number of dots
• […] indicates an indefinite number of letters lost in the text
• — indicates a complete loss of text at beginning or end
• | indicates the end of a line of text
• : indicates a punctuation mark of any sort
• — indicates an abbreviation mark of any sort

Deliberate spaces in the text are retained.

Since it is common for Anglo-Saxon inscriptions to commence with a cross, the text probably begins with the right-hand edge, the only edge to start with a cross. The first sentence of the text is, therefore, +discipulus plorat raphael quem semp adorat, probably ‘+ the disciple mourns him whom Raphael always worships’. In this interpretation semp is taken to be an abbreviation for semper and the word order is presumably inverted to fit the metrical structure of the line. The first two words of this sentence are located adjacent to the figure taken as St John and must refer to his grief at the Crucifixion. The second part of the sentence is placed alongside the engraved figure of an angel, who is thus presumably to be identified as Raphael. The odd-shaped cross following adorat may be decorative or perhaps a space filler, to avoid starting a new part of the text, and a new metrical line, close to the end of one edge of the altar. [33]

The second sentence begins on the upper part of the left-hand side where a small portion of silver is broken off. It reads,–nitrix meret gabriel cui scs adheret, probably ‘the Mother mourns, to whom the holy Gabriel cleaves’. In this interpretation–nitrix meret is taken to be a form of (ge)netrix maeret and scs to be sanctus. The inverted word order is presumably again to fit the metrical structure of the line. The first two words are set alongside the engraved figure of the Virgin Mary and refer to her mourning during the Crucifixion. The second part of the sentence is located adjacent to the engraved figure of the second angel, thus presumably identifying him as Gabriel. The final cross is rather deteriorated but may have been of the same unusual shape as the final cross on the right-hand side; again, it may have been inserted as decoration or as a space filler. The text on the bottom edge is now completely illegible, but some letters can be made out on the top edge. It is not now clear which of these two parts of the text would have followed the second sentence. The text on the top edge begins, (i)ng(e…)t hic lu–. The first word could be (i)ng(emi)t ‘he/she mourns’, though it is not certain to whom this would refer. Hic lu - is set alongside the engraved ox, the symbol of St Luke, and might refer to the saint or his symbol. H. Mitchell read further text here, pro rege and et ora.⁷ A reading (p)ro re(g) - would indeed fit the remaining traces, although several other readings are possible; there is, however, no sign now of et ora.

7 Mitchell, op. cit. n. 3, p. 64.

If the interpretation of the text put forward here is substantially correct, the following question arises: why did the engraver set that portion of the text on the left-hand edge with its letters facing the back of the altar, while setting the top and right-hand edge with their letters facing the front of the altar? A possible explanation is that the engraver, or perhaps his literate overseer, was aware that the words were describing the pictures. Working in a logical manner, he engraved the figures before starting to engrave the explanatory text. Whether the mounts were engraved before or after having been nailed into position on the altar is irrelevant to the present argument. When he engraved the first sentence no problem arose, since the words corresponded to the adjacent figures. When he came to engrave the left-hand edge, however, he noticed that the portion of the text referring to the Virgin would be beside Gabriel and that referring to Gabriel would be beside the Virgin. He therefore inverted the altar and engraved the second sentence so that the two portions were beside the figures they referred to, with the result that the letters faced the back of the altar.

It seems likely that such a long text would have been copied by the engraver from a written exemplar. Such an exemplar, however, could not have had the location of the figures and the corresponding parts of the text worked out in detail; had it had, the problem would surely have been rectified at that stage. It seems more likely that the somewhat confused situation presented by the altar is the result of problems which were recognised only during the engraving process.

Since the inscription is in Latin, no linguistic dating of the text is possible. The epigraphic dating evidence of the text supports the probable artistic dating of the altar to the eleventh century; it does not, however, suggest any more exact a date. The inscription from the left- and right-hand edges feature a bisyllabic leonine rhyme in each line (plorat-orat, meret-adheret), a metrical structure developed during the eleventh century,⁸ though [34] no example from an English author before the second quarter of the twelfth century has yet been found.⁹

8 F.J.E. Raby, A History of Christian Latin Poetry from the beginning to the close of the Middle Ages, Oxford 1953, pp. 27, 209; we are indebted to Dr B. F. Hamilton for this reference.

9 M. Lapidge, ‘Some Latin poems as evidence for the reign of Athelstan’, Anglo-Saxon England, IX, 1981, pp. 66–69.

The iconography

Jennifer O’Reilly

Lacking external clues to provenance and date, the Cluny altar was assigned to ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• List of illustrations
• Preface
• Introduction
• The Codex Amiatinus
• The Book of Kells
• The Anglo-Saxon and later English traditions
• Index of Manuscripts
• Index