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The probable derivation of most of the illustrations in Junius II from an illustrated Old Saxon Genesis
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 September 2008
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Junius II in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, is the only one of the four principal manuscripts of Old English poetry to be illustrated. The pictures are important not only because they form one of the most extensive sets of Genesis illustrations of the early Middle Ages but also because the text which they illustrate is a composite one, 600 lines of which were translated into Old English from an Old Saxon poem probably of the second quarter of the ninth century. By tracing the sources of these illustrations one can throw light on the history and transmission of the text as well as on the history of manuscript art in the late Anglo-Saxon period.
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Page 133 note 1 There are illustrations in the Beowulf manuscript, London, British Library, Cotton Vitellius A. xv, but they belong to the prose Wonders of the East. For a complete facsimile of Junius 11 see The Cædmon Manuscript of Anglo–Saxon Biblical Poetry, Junius XI in tie Bodleian Library, ed. Gollancz, Israel (Oxford, 1927)Google Scholar. For a description see Ker, N. R., Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo–Saxon (Oxford, 1957), pp. 406–8Google Scholar. All references to the text are to The Junius Manuscript, ed. G. P. Krapp, Anglo–Saxon Poetic Records 1 (London and New York, 1931).
Page 133 note 2 The portion known as Genesis B. The only remains of the Old Saxon Genesis itself are three extracts in a ninth-century manuscript which (on the evidence of its calendar and other entries) was written at Mainz, Vatican Palatinus Latinus 1447. They are printed in Heliand und Genesis, ed. O. Behaghel, 6th ed. (Halle, 1948). Extract 1 (lines 1–26) corresponds to Genesis (B) 790–817; extract 2 (lines 27–150) comprises the judgement of Cain and the story of Enoch; extract 3 (lines 151–337) is an account of the destruction of Sodom ending at Genesis xix.26.
Page 133 note 3 For a full collation see Ker, , Catalogue, pp. 407–8.Google Scholar
Page 134 note 1 James, M. R., The Ancient Libraries of Canterbury and Dover (Cambridge, 1903), p. xxv.Google Scholar
Page 134 note 2 Ohlgren, T. H., ‘Five New Drawings in the MS Junius 11: their Iconography and Thematic Significance’, Speculum 47 (1972), 227–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Page 135 note 1 The Old English Illustrated Hexateuch (British Museum Cotton Claudius B. iv), ed. C. R. Dodwell and Peter Clemoes, EEMF 18 (Copenhagen, 1974), 58.
Page 135 note 2 The Cædmon Manuscript, ed. Gollancz, p. xxxv. The drawing in Titus D. xxvi is on 19V and is reproduced in Wormald, F., English Drawings of the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries (London, 1952)Google Scholar, pl. 16(b).
Page 136 note 1 The Hexateuch, ed. Dodwell and Clemoes, pp. 65–73. For a discussion of the picture of Moses and its relationship to the San Callisto Bible see Swarzenski, Hanns, Monuments of Romanesque Art (London, 1954), pls. 58 and 59.Google Scholar
Page 136 note 2 For a discussion of the arrangement of text and illustrations see Henderson, G., ‘The Programme of Illustrations in Bodleian MS Junius XI’, Studies in Memory of David Talbot Rice, ed. Robertson, G. and Henderson, G. (Edinburgh, 1975), pp. 113–45.Google Scholar
Page 136 note 3 The lower drawing on p. 34 belongs to the text on p. 39. It is probable that this dislocation of text and illustrations is connected with the interpolation of Genesis B into the Genesis A text.
Page 136 note 4 The Dialogue of Salomon and Saturnus, ed. J. M. Kemble, Ælfric Society (London, 1848), p. 186.
Page 137 note 1 Rome, Vatican Library, Regin. lat. 12, 81r; for a full discussion see Raw, Barbara, ‘The Drawing of an Angel in MS 28, St John's College, Oxford’, Jnl of the Warburg and Courtauld Lists. 18 (1955), 318–19, pl. 63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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Page 137 note 3 Another example of the second artist's fidelity is provided by his drawing of the ark (p. 73), which must derive from an early Christian model showing the ark as a box; cf. the Tours Pentateuch, Grabar, A., Byzantium (London, 1966), pl. 243Google Scholar. The first artist invariably shows an eleventh-century dragon ship. The point is discussed in Henderson, George, ‘Late-Antique Influences in some English Mediaeval Illustrations of Genesis’, Jnl of the Warburg and Courtauld Insts. 25 (1962), 172–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 186–7.
Page 138 note 1 Grabar, , Byzantium, pls.147 and 150.Google Scholar
Page 138 note 2 Paris, BN fonds lat. 6401, 158V and 159r; discussed by Wormald, F., ‘The “Winchester School” before St Æthelwold’, England before the Conquest. Studies in Primary Sources presented to Dorothy Wbitelock, ed. Peter, Clemoes and Kathleen, Hughes (Cambridge, 1971), pp. 305–15Google Scholar, esp. pp. 311–12 and pls. Vc and VI.
Page 138 note 3 London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius C. vi, 126v, and Rome, Vatican Library, Regin. lat. 12, i68v and 169r; see Wormald, F., ‘Late Anglo-Saxon Art: some Questions and Suggestions’, Studies in Western Art, Acts of the Twentieth International Congress of the History of Art (Princeton, 1963) 1, 19–22.Google Scholar
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Page 139 note 1 Hubert, J., Potcher, J. and Volbach, W. F., Carolingian Art (London, 1970), p. 127.Google Scholar
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Page 139 note 3 The Cotton Genesis was badly damaged in the fire in the Cotton Library in 1731 and only fragments now remain. The mosaics are reproduced in Toesca, P. and Forlati, Ferdinando, The Mosaics in the Church of St Mark in Venice (London, 1958), fig. 12, p. 29.Google Scholar
Page 140 note 1 Uspensky, Theodor, L'octateuqm du Sérail à Constantinople. Album du Xlle Volume du Bulletin de l'lnstitut d' Arcbiologie Russe à Constantinople (1907)Google Scholar; Hesseling, D. C., Miniatures de l'octateuque Grec de Smyrne (Leyden, 1909).Google Scholar
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Page 141 note 2 Hubert, Porcher and Volbach, Carolingian Art, pl. 219, probably from Tours.
Page 141 note 3 Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale, 10066–77, 141v see Camille Gaspar and FrédériLyna, c, Les Principaux Manuscrits à Peinlures de la Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique (Paris, 1937) 1, 21–6.Google Scholar
Page 142 note 1 Ambrose, Deparadiso xv.73, Migne, Patrologia Latina 14, col. 311; cf. II Corinthians xi.14–15.
Page 142 note 2 Paris, BN nouv. acq. lat. 2334, 6r, reproduced in Grabar, , Byzantium, pl. 242.Google Scholar
Page 143 note 1 Above, p. 138.
Page 143 note 2 Utrecht, University Library, Aev. Med. Script, ecclesiast. 484, 59v, reproduced in Wald, E. T. de, The Illustrations of the Utrecht Psalter (Princeton, 1953).Google Scholar
Page 143 note 3 Salomon and Saturnus, ed. Kemble, p. 178.
Page 143 note 4 See the discussion of Titus D. xxvii, 75v, below, p. 144 and n. 1.
Page 144 note 1 64v, 89v and 90r; see Kantorowicz, E. H., ‘The Quinity of Winchester’, Selected Studies (New York, 1965), pp. 100–20.Google Scholar
Page 144 note 2 Wormald, E.g., English Drawings, pls. 4Google Scholar(a), 23, 28(a) and 39, and Talbot Rice, English Art, pls. 46, 47 and 62. The crowns with a single arch are that of Cnut, London, British Library, Stowe 944, 6r (Wormald, pl. 15), and the one on 102v of London, British Library, Add. 49598, reproduced in The Benedictional of Saint Ætbelwold, Bishop of Winchester 963–984, ed. G. F. Warner and H. A. Wilson, Roxburghe Club (Oxford, 1910).
Page 144 note 3 Schramm, P. E., Kaiser, Könige und Päpste (Stuttgart, 1968) 11Google Scholar, pls. 16, 17 and 18.
Page 145 note 1 Ibid. pls. 2(a) and 3(a), and Schramm, P. E., Die deutschen Kaiser und Könige in Bildern ihrer Zeit (Leipzig, 1928) 1Google Scholar, pls. 7(a-d) and 9.
Page 145 note 2 Ibid. pl. 15.
Page 145 note 3 Ibid. pl. 36(a) and Schramm, P. E., Herrschafiszeichen und Staatssymbolik, Schriften der Monumenta Germaniae Historica 13 (Stuttgart, 1955), 11, 411–12.Google Scholar
Page 145 note 4 For late antique examples see Grabar, A., L'empereur dans l'art Byzantin (Paris, 1936), pp. 54–7 and 230–4Google Scholar, pls. iv, xii, xiv and xv; Notitia Dignitatum, ed. O. Seeck (Frankfurt, 1962, repr. of 1876 ed.), pp. 9, 45 and 108. For the Reichenau manuscripts see Schramm, , Die deutschen Kaiser, pls. 73, 74, 78 and 81.Google Scholar
Page 145 note 5 Hubert, Porcher and Volbach, , Carolingian Art, pl. 137.Google Scholar
Page 146 note 1 See above, p. 138, and n. 4.
Page 146 note 2 See above, p. 141.
Page 147 note 1 Lines 32–4 (Genesis A) and 273, 274 and 281 (Genesis B).
Page 147 note 2 Bliss, A. J. (‘Some Unnoticed Lines of Old English Verse’, N&Q 216 (1971), 404)Google Scholar points out that the inscriptions on pp. 3, 6 and 7 are in verse, but does not relate them to the text of the manuscript.
Page 147 note 3 See above, p. 133, n. 2.
Page 148 note 1 The drawing of the ascension of Enoch is based on a specifically English iconography for the ascension, known as the type of the disappearing Christ; see Schapiro, M., ‘The Image of the Disappearing Christ’, Gazette des Beaux Arts 6th ser. 23 (1943), 135–52Google Scholar. If the picture was derived from a continental model it must therefore have been modified to conform to the English type, but this need not affect the argument, for the first artist – the one concerned – added English motifs elsewhere: the jaws on pp. 3 and 16 and the dragon prow on the ark, pp. 65, 66 and 68.
Page 148 note 2 The Later Genesis, ed. Timmer, B. J. (Oxford, 1948), pp. 19–27 and 43.Google Scholar
Page 148 note 3 Priebsch, R., The Heliand Manuscript, Cotton Caligula A. vii in the British Museum (Oxford, 1925).Google Scholar
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