The benedictional of Æthelwold

by Robert Deshman

In this significant contribution to the study of illuminated manuscripts, Robert Deshman explores in detail one of the great works of medieval art, the sumptuously illustrated Benedictional commissioned by the powerful Anglo-Saxon bishop, AEthelwold of Winchester (963-84). A seminal work in the formation of the "Winchester style," the manuscript embodies a highly intricate and often novel presentation of images. Deshman considers the iconography, style, ornament, and text against the backdrop of their pictorial, literary, and liturgical sources. This enables him then to anchor the work within the patron's historical and cultural context: his monastic reforms, his culting of saints, his political ideals, the ideological connotations of earlier artistic styles - and, most important, his unusual hermeneutic modes of thought and visualization, wherein extremely abstruse theological concepts are reified in clouds, architecture, drapery, and even ornament. Employing traditional art historica