Karkov

This Element covers the art produced in early medieval England

from the departure of the Romans to the early twelfth century,
an art that shows the input of multi-ethnic artists, patrons,
and influences as it develops over the centuries. Art in early
medieval England is an art of migrants and colonisers, and
the Element considers the ways in which it was defined and England in the Early
developed by the different groups that travelled to or settled
on the island. It also explores some of the key forms and Medieval World
images that define the art of the period and the role of both
material and artist/patron in their creation. Art is an expression
of identity, whether individual, regional, national, religious,
or institutional, and this Element sheds light on the way art
Art and the

Art and the Formation of Early Medieval England

in early medieval England was and continues to be used to
define particular identities, including that of the island on which

Formation of Early
it was produced.

Medieval England
About the Series Series Editors
Elements in England in the Early Medieval Megan Cavell
World takes an innovative, interdisciplinary University of

Catherine E. Karkov
view of the culture, history, literature, Birmingham
archaeology and legacy of England Rory Naismith
between the fifth and eleventh centuries. University of

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Individual contributions question and Cambridge
situate key themes, and thereby bring new Winfried Rudolf
perspectives to the heritage of Anglo- University of
Saxon England. Göttingen
Emily V. Thornbury
Yale University

Cover image: Getty Images / Photo 12 ISSN 2632-203X (online)

ISSN 2632-2021 (print)
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108942935 Published online by Cambridge University Press
 Elements in England in the Early Medieval World
edited by
Megan Cavell
University of Birmingham
Rory Naismith
University of Cambridge
Winfried Rudolf
University of Göttingen
Emily V. Thornbury
Yale University

ART AND THE FORMATION

OF EARLY MEDIEVAL
ENGLAND
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Catherine E. Karkov
University of Leeds
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DOI: 10.1017/9781108942935
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 Art and the Formation of Early Medieval England

Elements in England in the Early Medieval World

DOI: 10.1017/9781108942935
First published online: February 2022

Catherine E. Karkov
University of Leeds
Author for correspondence: Catherine E. Karkov, [email protected]

Abstract: This Element covers the art produced in early medieval England
from the departure of the Romans to the early twelfth century, an art
that shows the input of multi-ethnic artists, patrons, and influences as it
develops over the centuries. Art in early medieval England is an art of
migrants and colonisers, and the Element considers the ways in which it
was defined and developed by the different groups that travelled to or
settled on the island. It also explores some of the key forms and images
that define the art of the period and the role of both material and artist/
patron in their creation. Art is an expression of identity, whether
individual, regional, national, religious, or institutional, and this Element
sheds light on the way art in early medieval England was and continues
to be used to define particular identities, including that of the island on
which it was produced.

Keywords: materiality, migration, postcolonial, early medieval England, early

medieval art

© Catherine E. Karkov 2022

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108942935 Published online by Cambridge University Press

ISBNs: 9781108931977 (PB), 9781108942935 (OC)

ISSNs: 2632-203X (online), 2632-2021 (print)
 Contents

1 Migrants and Colonisers 1

2 Materials and Materiality 18

3 Identity and Performance 34

4 The Hand of the Artist 49

5 Looking Back at Early Medieval England 65

List of Abbreviations 81

Bibliography 82
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 Art and the Formation of Early Medieval England 1

1 Migrants and Colonisers

This Element is about the art of the period roughly 500–1100 CE, but there was
no entity recognised as ‘England’ until the tenth century, hence this Element’s
title Art and the Formation of Early Medieval England. Before England there
was Britannia (the Roman name for the island), inhabited by the multiple
Brittonic peoples who would eventually become the Scots, the Welsh, and the
Cornish. All of them had arrived on the island long before the Romans, and
others continued to arrive during and after the Roman occupation. This brief
summary highlights the fact that, culturally and ethnically, the island was
a diverse place, and so all art on the island is ultimately the work of migrants
and colonisers. The art of pre-Roman Britannia is abstract, curvilinear, and
largely non-representational, and it displays a love of pattern, movement, and
colour. The Romans defined it as ‘barbaric’, meaning simply that it was non-
Roman, but it was distinctly different from the Roman interest in naturalistic
and figural forms, pictorial narrative, and monumentality. With the arrival of the
Romans a hybrid art developed, especially in areas of close cultural contact such
as the Hadrian’s Wall corridor. The hybridity of form and image this produced
continued to be a rich source of inspiration for artists into the eighth century and,
in some places, beyond. The early-eighth-century Lindisfarne Gospels
(London, BL, Cotton MS Nero D.iv) is a work in which we see Roman influence
in, for example, the portraits of the evangelists seated at their desks, with
Brittonic influence in the dynamic abstract patterns of the incipit pages to the
individual gospels.1
The Brittonic peoples were migrants, settling discrete areas of the island and
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living alongside each other sometimes in peace and sometimes in conflict. The
Romans, however, were colonisers intent on claiming the island, or at least as
much of it as they could manage to hold on to, by military strength. They met
with considerable resistance, but, in becoming part of the Roman Empire, the
island became part of a much larger political and cultural order that stretched
across Europe and into areas of the Middle East and Africa. It is here that we can
locate the beginnings of what would become England in the early medieval
world. Not only was the island now linked to vast trading networks, but the
Roman presence included individuals from other Roman provinces, at least
some of whom stayed on after the departure of Roman troops in the early fifth
century.2 For example, 11 per cent of the bodies at the Trentholme Drive, York,
cemetery are of likely African ancestry.3 Many sites were abandoned when the

1
See www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?index=14&ref=Cotton_MS_Nero_D_IV.
2
See further Gowland, ‘Embodied Identities’.
3
Montgomery Ramírez, ‘Colonial Representations’, 5.
 2 England in the Early Medieval World

Romans withdrew, others were gradually deserted, and still others remained
inhabited but by different population groups who converted them to different
functions. An elaborate floor mosaic in the Roman villa at Chedworth
(Cotswolds) dated 424–544 CE shows a decline in artistic standards from
fourth-century mosaics but also the continuation of an elite and very Roman
style of life.4 The Roman city of Wroxeter (Shropshire) doesn’t preserve such
lavish artworks but is thought to have remained inhabited and functioned as
a town into at least the late fifth century, while the Roman fort at Birdoswald
(Cumbria) was partially demolished and its walls used to enclose a new settle-
ment with new wooden buildings in the fifth century.5 There was also significant
continuity in the use of farmland.6
Interpretation of archaeological evidence for the decades after the Roman
departure is fraught with disagreement and uncertainty, but it is indisputable
that, whether as raiders, settlers, or colonisers, groups of people from the coastal
areas across the North Sea arrived on the island during the fifth and sixth
centuries. Gildas (c.500–c.570) described them as barbarians, wolves, and
dogs.7 Bede, whose Ecclesiastical History of the English People created an
enduring image of the early English as a people,8 names them as the Angles,
Saxons, and Jutes, although he was writing centuries after their arrival.
Whatever the reality on the ground, by the eighth century the narrative had
come to be one of violent conquest, and the Britons were eventually confined to
Wales, and the Scots and Picts to areas north of Hadrian’s Wall. Archaeological
evidence indicates that there was also much interaction, cooperation, and
assimilation between all these peoples. The evolution of pottery designs in the
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Nene Valley, for instance, suggests both a gradual adoption and production of
new designs by British artists.9 Colonisation is a long process, not a single event
or even a series of events, and it is a process that is not limited to violence
against the colonised.10 Ultimately, it was the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, all of
whom spoke Germanic rather than Brittonic languages, who would form the
early English kingdoms which during the tenth century were brought together
under a single king to become England. Traditionally known as the ‘Anglo-
Saxons’, a term now being abandoned due to its racist implications, their art was
4
Morris, ‘Stunning Dark Age Mosaic’.
5
For Wroxeter: Barker et al., Baths-Basilica Wroxeter. For Birdoswald: Wilmott, Birdoswald. See
more generally: Gerrard, Ruin of Britain.
6 7
Oosthuizen, Emergence of the English, 106–19. Winterbottom, Ruin of Britain, 26, 97.
8
See, for example, Story, Ormrod, and Tyler, ‘Framing Migration’, 1–3.
9
Oosthuizen, Emergence of the English, 33–4.
10
Wolfe, ‘Settler Colonialism’. For example, the British kingdom of Rheged became part of
Anglian Northumbria through intermarriage, conversion, baptism, and possibly the erection of
stone monuments carved in an Anglian style (Orton and Wood with Lees, Fragments of History,
121–5).
 Art and the Formation of Early Medieval England 3

Figure 1 Chessell Down brooch, British

Museum. © The Trustees of the British Museum.

influenced by contact with the Roman world but characterised by animal and
abstract ornament and portability, a combination exemplified by a fifth-century
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buckle from Mucking, Essex.11 This is the point at which the art of early
medieval England can truly be said to begin.
Surviving art of the sixth and seventh centuries consists mostly of portable
metalwork objects such as jewellery, coins, weapons, and items of personal
dress. The focus on portable rather than more monumental forms of art likely
reflects the unsettled nature of kingdoms in formation, with their shifting
borders and political and religious centres. Most of this metalwork comes
from graves, such as the early-sixth-century square-headed brooch from
a woman’s grave at Chessell Down, Isle of Wight (Figure 1) and the early-
sixth-century drinking horn mounts from a ‘princely burial’ at Taplow,
Buckinghamshire.12 Both are silver-gilt, and both are decorated with Style
I animal ornament. The motifs of Style I had their origins in fifth-century
Scandinavia, but the chip-carving technique used on these pieces comes from

11
See www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/H_1970–0406-26-b.
12
See www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/H_1883–1214-20.
 4 England in the Early Medieval World

Roman art. The term chip-carving (kerbschnitt) refers to the faceted surfaces
of the pieces that look as if they had been chipped away, with a chisel. Style
I reached south-eastern England in the late fifth century and flourished during
the first half of the sixth. The brooch’s fragmented and highly stylised
animals and masks are typical of the style. Animals and humans are reduced
to just one or two body parts, as can be seen in the three faces that stare out
from the brooch’s foot-plate. At the centre of the foot-plate is a double bird-
headed creature (or two bird heads flanking a helmeted head). Two dots form
its eyes and the curving C-shapes suggest its heads, from which tiny curving
beaks project. There are four abstract creatures facing away from each other
and towards the circular lobes of the foot-plate in the lower borders outside
the central lozenge. Above the foot-plate are two downturned animal heads
with open mouths, each side of which ends in a tiny head. Above them, the
bow of the brooch ends in a relief mask like an arching human-headed
serpent. It is nose-to-nose with another stylised animal. Two more stylised
animals crawl away from each other in the upper border of the head-plate;
their leg-like limbs are visible to either side of its centre and their heads and
curving beaks near its edges. They appear to crawl towards the scrolling
patterns that fill the side borders. Each of the two halves of the head-plate’s
central panel is filled with pairs of human–animal hybrids separated by
S-shaped scrolls. Their limbs are visible in the outer corners of the panel’s
upper edge and to either side of the relief mask that divides it. Small dots form
their eyes.
The ornament’s meaning is uncertain though it is assumed to be apotro-
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paic, meaning that it was designed to protect the wearer from danger or evil.
The human–animal hybrids and the confrontations between creatures might
represent supernatural beings and a battle (or perhaps harmony) between
different or opposing forces. The frontal face that looks out from beneath the
bird heads in the foot-plate could represent Woden with his two ravens.13
The brooch comes from a woman’s grave, as do most Style I objects,
though not the most luxurious objects. It is an item of jewellery, with its
ornament considered protective for the wearer, as noted. Early medieval
English women are often interpreted as passive displays of a husband or
family’s wealth and power rather than powerful or aggressive in their own
right, but, as with the status of migrants, this is being rethought. Queens and
elite women did pursue political roles and fight for favoured causes or
beliefs. Ælfflæd, Abbess of Whitby (654–714), maintained an active interest
in Northumbrian court life. Æthelthryth of Ely (c.636–79) defied her royal

13
Webster, Anglo-Saxon Art, 17.
 Art and the Formation of Early Medieval England 5

husband to become a nun and donated the land for Hexham Abbey to Bishop
Wilfrid, while her successor as queen, Iurminburh, maintained a highly
political feud with Wilfrid.
Style I on male-associated objects, on the other hand, is considered symbolic
of ‘male warrior status’.14 The Taplow drinking horn with the Style I mounts
around its rim is a prime example. Drinking horns were elite items, and the
mounts, older than the early-seventh-century grave in which they were found,
were probably heirlooms, possibly representing lineage or heritage. The frag-
mented tangled forms in the triangular fields and flanking the relief masks in the
panels surrounding the rim are examples of the ‘helmet and hand’ motif. The
figures’ hands are raised in front of their faces, and their heads are covered by
a curving ‘helmet’. It is possible that this latter detail is not a helmet at all but
some other form of headdress or simply an extension of the linear design
crowning the heads of the human forms on the Chessell Down brooch. The
same type of head is found on a variety of objects, including brooches, for which
a military context is not evident. That does not mean to say that the occupant of
the Taplow princely burial was not a warrior. The issue is the language we use
and the way it has served to create an image of a period defined by only two
clearly distinguished gender possibilities – male and female – with normalised
male violence and female passivity or servility as its distinguishing features.
This, in addition to its casting as the origin of a people (rather than just
a political geography),15 has made it easy for white supremacists and nationalist
groups to appropriate it to their causes. What is rarely mentioned about the
Taplow burial is that it also contained a two-handled Coptic bowl with
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a scalloped rim and open-work decoration above the foot that came from the
eastern Mediterranean.16 It is one of a number of objects produced in the eastern
Mediterranean, Africa, or India demonstrating that, early on, the people of
England had a sense of themselves as part of a much larger and more diverse
world. The grave-goods from the contemporary Mound 1 Sutton Hoo burial
display similarly wide connections with jewellery decorated with garnets ori-
ginating in India or Sri Lanka, Merovingian coins, silver spoons and bowls from
Byzantium or the eastern Mediterranean, textile fragments woven using
a Syrian technique, Scandinavian-influenced weaponry, and shoulder clasps
(or fasteners for a chest protector) possibly made by a Byzantine-trained

14
Webster, Anglo-Saxon Art, 60; Mittman and MacCormack, ‘Rebuilding’.
15
For example, the introductory essay of the catalogue for The Making of England begins, ‘The
Anglo-Saxons, whose artistic, technological and cultural achievements in the seventh, eighth,
and ninth centuries are displayed in this exhibition, were the true ancestors of the English today’;
Brooks, ‘Historical Introduction’, 9.
16
See www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/H_1883-1214-8.
 6 England in the Early Medieval World

goldsmith.17 However, it is generally the regalia and military gear that garner
the most scholarly and popular attention.18
The great gold belt buckle from Mound 1 displays Style II decoration, which
became popular in England in the late sixth century.19 Style II is characterised
by elongated ribbon-bodied animal ornament with the knotted or interlaced
animals remaining whole, coherent bodies and by the disappearance of human
mask motifs. The front-plate of the buckle is decorated with twelve symmetric-
ally paired interlaced creatures and a single thirteenth animal between the jaws
of two beasts at one end.
The Christian church was another early incomer to the island. Christianity
was practised during the Roman occupation but only on a limited scale. The
Romans left no major Christian centres that survived the century or so after
their withdrawal. Individual monastic centres were established during the
fifth and sixth centuries, especially in the north and west. Gildas is thought
to have received his monastic education in South Wales, possibly at Cor
Tewdws, under Illtud, who came to Britain from northern France. Columba
came from Ireland to found Iona in 563, and Augustine arrived in Kent from
Rome in 597, possibly with the Italian-made St Augustine’s Gospels (C.C.
C.C., MS 286). The remains of a fifth- or sixth-century church and fragments
of a fifth-century lead chalice – decorated with images that include crosses,
angels, ships, fish, and a whale and inscribed with letters in Greek, Latin, and
possibly Ogham – from the Roman fort of Vindolanda on Hadrian’s Wall
have provided evidence of a significant ecclesiastical site in northern England
in the immediate post-Roman period.20 Monks, teachers, and craftspeople
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from across Europe and Ireland were members of these early monastic
communities, which must have been diverse and multilingual places.
Writing towards the end of the ninth century, King Alfred lamented the fact
that both learning and the knowledge of multiple languages that had flour-
ished during the age of Bede had disappeared by his own day – although
some knowledge of Latin, the universal language of the western church,
remained.21
The c.600 grave of a teenage girl whose DNA showed her to be of sub-
Saharan West African descent in Kent indicates that migrants from that area had
arrived in Britain at an early date; however, very little else can be said about how
the girl’s ancestor came to be here, and a full report on the grave has yet to be
published.22 The remains of Black men and women living in England in the late

17
Adams, ‘Sutton Hoo Shoulder Clasps’. 18 Allfrey, ‘Sutton Hoo in Public’.
19
See www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/H_1939-1010-1.
20
Alberge, ‘Hadrian’s Wall Dig’.
21
Schreiber, King Alfred’s Old English Translation, 191–9. 22
Hines, ‘Future of the Past’.
 Art and the Formation of Early Medieval England 7

Saxon period have also been recovered from St Benet’s (York), North Elmham
(Norfolk), and Fairford (Gloucestershire).23 It is possible that the number of
migrants from Africa or of African descent present on the island in the early
medieval period was significant.24 Research tends to focus on the well-known
individuals, sites, and stories, while other less clearly documented stories are
lost. At the end of the seventh century, one such well-known individual,
Theodore, a Byzantine Greek from Tarsus in the eastern Mediterranean, became
archbishop of Canterbury. He was accompanied by Hadrian from Cyrenia in
Libya, a refugee from the Arab invasion of North Africa, who became abbot of
the monastery of St Peter’s (later St Augustine’s) in Canterbury.25 The two
certainly also brought books and other objects with them, although none now
survives. It is likely that some Byzantine manuscripts came north and west with
them, given the focus on Greek language and learning in their educational
reforms – perhaps icons too, as they are credited with introducing some eastern
saints to the island. They established an important school of Greek and Latin
learning at Canterbury, introducing knowledge of the saints and the eastern
church, the study of poetry and music, and perhaps also knowledge of Coptic
art. Details of the history and education of both Theodore and Hadrian are few,
but Theodore was familiar with the art and architecture of Constantinople and
also of Rome, where he was a monk for a number of years.26 Hadrian, from
Greek-speaking North Africa, was also familiar with Byzantine art and learning
along with Egyptian culture, bringing this knowledge to the monastery near
Naples that was his home before England. He had also been a confidant of both
the pope and the Byzantine emperor,27 and thus he was familiar with the luxury
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art of both worlds.

The art and/or artists that accompanied Theodore and Hadrian to England
remain unknown, but a sustained interest in the Greek-speaking world from
which the two men came is evident in the eighth century, the period in which we
would expect their influence on education and monastic culture to become
broadly apparent. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 140 contains a mid-
eighth-century copy of Primasius’s Commentarius in Apocalypsin. Primasius
wrote his Latin commentary in what is now Sousse, Tunisia, in the middle of the
sixth century, at which time the city was part of the Byzantine Empire. It is a rare
text, although Bede consulted a version of it for his own Commentary on the

23
Montgomery Ramírez, ‘Colonial Representations’, 4–6.
24
Green, ‘Evidence for African Migrants in Britain’.
25
See further Rambaran-Olm and Wade, Race in Early Medieval England; Rambaran-Olm,
‘Wrinkle in Medieval Time’.
26
Bischoff and Lapidge, Biblical Commentaries, 42, 60.
27
Bischoff and Lapidge, Biblical Commentaries, 13.
 8 England in the Early Medieval World

Apocalypse, and the Oxford manuscript is written in an unusual script that

seems to copy a continental or African exemplar.28 The influence of Theodore
and Hadrian on art takes a backseat to their influence on learning and liturgy, but
it can be seen in the art produced by the generation that would have studied
under them. Early-eighth-century manuscripts from southern England display
a lavishness, classicising style, and use of gold and silver that is broadly Roman
or Mediterranean but has similarities with the seventh-century Byzantine art
with which Theodore and Hadrian were familiar. Both the 725–50 Vespasian
Psalter (London, BL, Cotton MS Vespasian A.i) and the mid-eighth-century
Codex Aureus (Stockholm, Kungliga Biblioteket, MS A.135) have been attrib-
uted to Canterbury – the former to St Augustine’s – but it is not necessary for
them to have been made in Canterbury for them to show its influence.
The Vespasian Psalter, the earliest surviving illuminated Southumbrian
manuscript, boasts two of the earliest historiated initials, initials that contain
figures or abbreviated narrative scenes that relate directly to the text they
introduce. The initial introducing Psalm 26 (fol. 31r) depicts David and
Jonathan holding spears and clasping hands, while the initial to Psalm 52
(fol. 53r) depicts David rescuing the lamb from the lion.29 The scribe-artist
has been described as ‘a master who drew upon Italo-Byzantine, “oriental”,
Frankish and Hiberno-Saxon’ sources.30 Its model may have been a sixth-
century Byzantine psalter brought north by Theodore, as it makes lavish use
of gold and silver, materials particularly, though not exclusively, associated
with Byzantine manuscripts.31 The foliate designs flanking the arch above
David’s head in the miniature of David composing the psalms (fol. 30v) and
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the columns that support the arch have similarities with the carved capitals,
impost blocks, and inlaid columns of churches like St Polyeuktos,
Constantinople (c.520), while the painterly modelling of elements of the bodies
and draperies of the figures combined with their thick dark contour lines can be
compared with those of sixth-century Coptic icons. The figure style and natur-
alistic movements of the figures – David is playing the strings of his lyre with
realistic hand positions – are unprecedented in northern manuscript illumin-
ation. David’s ankles show through the folds of his robe in a suggestion of
transparent cloth rare in early medieval England. Both these details and the
energetic poses of the dancers before him have sources in manuscripts such as
the sixth-century Vienna Genesis probably produced in Syria (Vienna,
Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, cod. Theol. Gr. 31). The trumpet-scrolls

28
Breay and Story, Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms, 132.
29
A complete facsimile of the manuscript is available: www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?
ref=Cotton_MS_Vespasian_A_I.
30 31
Webster and Backhouse, Making of England, 197. Wright, Vespasian Psalter.
 Art and the Formation of Early Medieval England 9

filling the arch, as well as the animal ornament and dot stippling seen on other
pages of the manuscript, are typical of earlier Insular art. The script is primarily
uncials, a luxury script associated with Roman manuscripts. It is a truly cosmo-
politan style suited to the linguistic and cultural diversity of Theodore and
Hadrian’s Canterbury.
The Codex Aureus is close in style to the Vespasian Psalter but more lavish in
its appearance and materials.32 It consists of alternating plain vellum and purple
stained pages, the latter reminiscent of the imperial manuscripts of Rome and
Constantinople. In Byzantium the colour purple was reserved for the imperial
court. The text is written in gold, silver, white, and coloured inks. Different inks
have been used to pick out letters and words creating visual interest and, in some
instances, working cruciform patterns into the text. Crosses and other geometric
shapes have also been used to frame areas of text, a textual patterning and
display associated with the carmina figurata of Constantine’s court poet
Porphyrius. A mid-eighth-century letter from the bishop of Mainz complains
that a copy of Porphyrius’s work had been borrowed but not returned by
Cuthbert, archbishop of Canterbury, so this could have been the model for the
Codex Aureus. Only two evangelist portraits, Matthew and John, survive, both
painted on plain vellum versos facing purple incipit pages. The opening of
John’s gospel is especially grand, befitting its special status in early England.
John (Figure 2) is shown frontally displaying his open book. It’s possible that
the first words of his gospel were to have been written on its open pages, as they
are on the scroll held by Matthew on folio 9v. His chair is decorated with vine-
scroll, and the columns supporting the arch are painted purple with spiral
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patterning, a possible reference to the twisted columns surrounding the shrine

of St Peter in Rome. His halo and the decorative circles on the curtains are filled
with gold. The figure style is like that of the Vespasian Psalter but even more
classicising, with a greater suggestion of the bulk of the body beneath the
drapery. The ankles again show through the transparent cloth covering them.
The shading and highlighting on John’s face and arms create a more subtly
modelled figure, and even his fingernails have been delicately outlined. On the
facing page, the opening words of his gospel are written in display capitals using
coloured inks that originally stood out against a gold leaf background panel.
These classicising elements are balanced by the canon tables, which are filled
with interlace patterns and trumpet spirals derived from Insular art. Several of
their arcades are treated as decorative patterns rather than architectural struc-
tures, their bases replaced by roundels which in three cases (folios 6r–7r) are
linked together by ornamental bands hanging like chains from the roundels.

32
See https://archive.org/details/urn-nbn-se-kb-digark-4890092.
 10 England in the Early Medieval World
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Figure 2 John the Evangelist, Stockholm Codex Aureus, Stockholm, Kungliga

Biblioteket, MS A.135, fol. 150v. Wikimedia Commons/CC-SA-1.0.

The Codex Aureus is famous for its chi-rho page (Figure 3), which celebrates
the incarnation of Christ and receives special attention in English and Irish
manuscripts. In this manuscript the text, aside from the first line, is written in
alternating registers of gold capitals against a plain vellum background and
capitals in coloured ink against a gold background. In the first line, the X of
Christ’s monogram is a dynamic curving shape with two terminals ending in
golden beast heads that set the monogram off from the rest of the line. The arms
of the X extend beyond the frame, suggesting the uncontainable nature of
Christ. The body of the X and the background of the panel to the right are filled
 Art and the Formation of Early Medieval England 11
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Figure 3 Chi-rho page, Stockholm Codex Aureus, Stockholm, Kungliga

Biblioteket, MS A.135, fol. 11r. Wikimedia Commons/public domain.

with interlace containing animals and tiny humans in a Mercian style and
indicative of the life residing in Christ and his church. To the left and beneath
the X are trumpet spiral and trefoil patterns much like those that fill the columns
of the canon tables. Together the designs of this single line represent the
movement of Christ from the cosmos into his incarnation. However, the page
is probably best known for the marginal note added by a ninth-century
 12 England in the Early Medieval World

Canterbury scribe recording the book’s theft and recovery. It states that
Ealdorman Ælfred, his wife Werberg, and their daughter Alhthryth ransomed
the book from the Viking army and gave it to Canterbury in exchange for
prayers for their souls.
The Norse raids on early England began in earnest at the end of the eighth
century, bringing widespread looting of treasures like the Codex Aureus. The
raiders came primarily from the areas of Denmark and Norway, and they began
settling in England around the mid-ninth century. Although they never con-
quered the island, their presence had a profound impact on art, culture, and
language, especially in the north, the political centre of the Danelaw. Recent
archaeological work has shown that they also brought craftspeople with them
from their homelands.33
In their new home the Scandinavians became associated with two particular
art forms: metalwork and stone sculpture. Manuscripts like the Codex Aureus
were taken for their valuable treasure-bindings of gold, silver, enamelwork, and
precious stones, which could be removed and melted down, traded, or used as
portable wealth and the manuscript pages ransomed back. Hoards from the
period provide evidence of the range of material collected. The Vale of York
hoard found near Harrogate consisted of 617 coins, sixty-seven pieces of silver
including six silver arm-rings, one gold arm-ring, and a mid-ninth-century
Carolingian silver-gilt cup.34 The coins date the hoard to 927–8, meaning it
was most probably buried to protect it during the tumultuous events of King
Athelstan’s reign. All the objects had been packed in a lead box before burial.
The gold arm-ring is decorated with two rows of V-shaped punch marks,
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a technique common in Scandinavian jewellery. One of the silver arm-rings is

also decorated with punch marks, and a second is made of thick silver wires
twisted around each other, another common type of Scandinavian ornament.
The rest of the silver consisted of plain arm-rings, ingots, and hack silver,
including a fragment of a penannular brooch decorated with bosses and animal
ornament. The cup is a pair with a bowl from the Halton Moor hoard (buried
c.1027), and the two may have been heirlooms or part of a set of altar vessels
that arrived in England during the ninth century, perhaps as loot, or tribute, or
simply as gifts.35 The ninth-century date of the cup and bowl coincides with
a period in which increasing influence from the Carolingian court became
apparent in both art and intellectual culture. The coins, however, come from
Samarkand, North Africa, northern Russia, and Afghanistan, providing evi-
dence of the extensive trading networks in which the Scandinavians

33
Hadley, ‘Archaeology of Migrants’, 186–93. 34
Williams and Ager, Vale of York Hoard.
35
Webster, Anglo-Saxon Art, 156.
 Art and the Formation of Early Medieval England 13

participated. The hoard’s jewellery included broken and intact items from
Ireland, Scandinavia, and Russia.
Stone sculpture was not a prominent art form in early Scandinavian cul-
tures, although it was not entirely unknown. It was, however, an important
Anglian art form, and the Scandinavians quickly adapted it to their own
requirements, developing new forms such as the hogback (a memorial shaped
like a longhouse with a curving ridged roof), introducing new motifs and
styles, and increasing sculptural production in some areas by a factor of five
during the tenth century.36 The period also saw sculpture produced for secular
patrons coming to dominate that produced for ecclesiastical patrons. ‘Secular’
subject matter may also have increased, although it is often impossible to
make a clear distinction between the secular and the sacred. On the tenth-
century Leeds Cross, for example, the figure holding a sword and accompan-
ied by a bird in the lowest panel of one of the broad sides (Figure 4) may
represent the patron, his image perhaps helping to express personal or dynastic
claims to land, status, or local power.37 Alternatively, he could be someone
commemorated by the cross, his position at the base of the shaft echoing that
of individuals commemorated on earlier Anglian sculpture, such as the eighth-
century Bewcastle Cross.38 Swords and birds of prey are attributes of elite
male status, and the knotwork design beneath his sword may be a sign that he
has passed out of this world. Alternatively, he could represent a legendary
figure such as Sigurd the dragon slayer or Weland the Smith. Weland escaping
imprisonment with his flying machine appears level with this panel on the
opposite face of the cross. Although the original cross-head is missing, this
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was definitely a Christian monument, one of a group of crosses worked with

similar motifs. The reasons for the inclusion of polytheistic or legendary
figures on this and other monuments of the period are not always clear. They
are commonly interpreted as signs of synchronicity – or attempted harmony –
between the differing religions and cultures. In such a scenario, the dragon-
slayer and ascending smith could represent types of Christ defeating evil and
ascending into heaven. On the other hand, such images could as easily be
general statements of Scandinavian identity and power within a culture that
had come to value ecclesiastical patronage by members of the aristocracy.
Difficulties in interpreting the iconographic programme of the Leeds Cross are

36
Bailey, C.A.S.S.S. 9, Cheshire and Lancashire, 19.
37
For a full discussion of the cross, see Coatsworth, C.A.S.S.S. 8, Western Yorkshire, catalogue
Leeds 1; https://chacklepie.com/ascorpus/catvol8.php?pageNum_urls=150.
38
See Bailey and Cramp, C.A.S.S.S. 2, Cumberland, Westmorland and Lancashire North-of-the-
Sands, ch. 7 and catalogue Bewcastle 1; https://chacklepie.com/ascorpus/catvol2.php?
pageNum_urls=30.
 14 England in the Early Medieval World
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Figure 4 Leeds Cross, portrait of patron. © Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone

Sculpture, photographers K. P. Jukes and D. J. Craig.

made much worse by the fact that it was broken up and used as building
material.
Cnut, king of England (1016–35), Denmark (1018–35), and Norway and
parts of Sweden (1028–35), made England again part of an empire, albeit
a short-lived one. Ælfgyfu/Emma, his queen, was of Norman birth and had
been married previously to the English king Æthelred II. Her mother was
Danish and Normandy was a Scandinavian settlement, although it certainly
 Art and the Formation of Early Medieval England 15

remained outside of the areas over which Cnut reigned. At his death the crown
eventually went to Edward the Confessor (son of Ælfgyfu/Emma and Æthelred
II), who died childless. The ensuing battle for the crown ended in the Norman
Conquest of 1066. The turmoil of the eleventh century with its two conquests of
1016 and 1066 has been much studied.39 Both had a profound impact on the art
of England with the introduction of new types of art, such as monumental
architectural sculpture and new forms of architecture; new subject matter,
such as scenes of the harrowing of hell during the reign of Cnut; and new styles,
such as the early Romanesque style of architecture seen in buildings like
Durham Cathedral (Figure 5). The art that developed during the eleventh
century also presents new problems of interpretation. There is an ambivalence
to much eleventh-century art that is no doubt a result of the political turmoil
with its financial and sometimes military attacks on religious houses and the
difficulty of safely documenting or reacting to the events and often rapid
changes that took place.40 One of the places this can be seen most clearly is
Durham, home to the community of St Cuthbert which had finally settled there
in 875.
Durham housed the shrine of St Cuthbert, the bones of Bede, and the head of St
Oswald, and it was a potential centre of English national resistance. It also
enjoyed the patronage of King Malcolm III (Canmore) and Queen Margaret of
Scotland. Margaret was the granddaughter of Æthelred II and his first wife, as
well as being the daughter of Edward the Exile. She and her brother, Edgar
Ætheling (1051–1126), were thus the last surviving direct descendants of the
West Saxon royal line. Edgar had in fact been named king in 1066 but had never
been crowned. He fled to Scotland in 1068 and – with Scottish, Danish, and
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English support – led a briefly successful rebellion in the North in 1069. William
quashed the rebellion, destroying many pre-Conquest monuments, during what
became known as the Harrying of the North. Edgar fled back to Scotland, but the
North remained an unstable area for decades. As an assertion of Norman power,
Durham Cathedral was placed under the control of ecclesiastics loyal to William,
and the cathedral was rebuilt in the new Anglo-Norman (or early Romanesque)
style. It is considered amongst the finest examples of the new style to survive.
William of Saint-Calais became prince-bishop of Durham in 1080 and began
a building campaign in 1083. The integrated cathedral-castle complex that
resulted was representative of the combined religious, political, and military
authority exercised by the prince bishops and a statement of Norman dominance
that towered over the surrounding landscape. The new cathedral was intended
39
See Ashe and Ward, Conquests.
40
Karkov, ‘Conquest and Material Culture’; Karkov ‘Reading the Trinity’; Treharne, Living
Through Conquest.
 16 England in the Early Medieval World
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Figure 5 Durham Cathedral, photo by author.

from the start to be reminiscent of St Peter’s, Rome. Its dimensions were based on
those of St Peter’s, and the chevrons and other designs carved into the piers of the
nave recalled the spiral columns surrounding the shrine of St Peter, though on
 Art and the Formation of Early Medieval England 17

a more massive scale. Both the dimensions and the spiral columns of St Peter’s
had been referenced in English churches for centuries – the crypts at Hexham and
Ripon are scaled-down versions of the crypt that housed the relics of St Peter, and
the spiral columns of the shrine were imitated at Ripon – but these earlier
buildings pale in comparison to the size of Durham and the massiveness of its
piers. Unique to architecture built in the new style are the deep galleries that span
the entire width of the side aisles, as well as the clerestory fronted by an interior
wall passage. The nave rises to an impressive 73 feet (22 metres), and the twinned
towers of the eastern and western facades, along with the central crossing tower,
added to the building’s impressive scale. The cathedral’s unusually wide gallery
and central staircases may have been designed to accommodate troops should the
complex come under attack.41 Durham’s architecture was copied on a smaller
scale in the early twelfth-century Lindisfarne Priory, linking the original home of
the Cuthbert community to the cathedral, and at Dunfermline Abbey, built by
Malcolm III and Margaret in the late eleventh century. Dunfermline can be read,
on the one hand, as a statement of Scottish allegiance to William after his defeat of
Edgar Ætheling and, on the other, as a sign of Malcolm and Margaret’s long-
standing devotion to St Cuthbert and support of the pre-Norman community in
Durham.42
In many ways Durham exemplifies the complex world of early medieval
England. The Cuthbert community had its origins in the Christianity of the Irish
church that was embraced in the North before the 663/4 Synod of Whitby decided
in favour of Rome. In details of its plan and structure, the new cathedral com-
memorated Rome and the foundation of the Roman church. It housed the shrine of
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Cuthbert, arguably the greatest national saint, and the bones of Bede, England’s
first historian. It had been founded by the monks who fled Lindisfarne after the first
wave of Viking invasions, yet it maintained a complex political and economic
relationship with York and Scandinavian leaders in the north.43 It was a monument
to both pre-Conquest history and to the new Norman rulers who began the
construction of the cathedral-castle complex that survives today. Its fortified
appearance is a testament both to Norman control and to the united northern
resistance of the English, Scots, and Danes. That appearance is due not only to
Norman architectural innovation and ambition but also to the way in which the
cathedral and castle seem to rise up out of the rock of the peninsula on which they
are built so that the rock of the land and the architectural structure become one. The

41
Klukas, ‘Architectural Implications’, 151–65; Thurlby, ‘Roles of the Patron’, 173–4.
42
On Dunfermline, see Cameron, ‘Romanesque Sculpture’; Fernie, ‘Romanesque Churches’;
Fawcett, ‘Dunfermline Abbey Church’.
43
See Johnson-South, Historia de Sancto Cuthberto.
 18 England in the Early Medieval World

integration of material into the materiality of works of art is the subject of the next
section.

2 Materials and Materiality

The materials that works of art and architecture were made from in early
medieval England mattered a great deal and can have much to say about the
idea of England as it was coming into formation. Different materials, like
different animals, were believed to have differing qualities and agencies,
a belief based in classical learning. Texts such as Pliny the Elder’s Latin
Natural History and the (originally) Greek Physiologus attributed symbolic
and/or moral and medicinal qualities to animals, plants, stones, and other
elements of the natural world. The lion, for example, was believed to sleep
with its eyes open and hence became a symbol of the ever-watchful Christ. In
the early seventh century Isidore of Seville collected and summarised many of
these ideas in his Etymologiae, a work that was extremely popular across early
medieval Europe. He wrote, for example, that the astrion, which is ‘quite close
to crystal, is from India, and in its centre a star shines with the gleam of the full
moon. It takes its name because when held facing the stars it catches their gleam
and casts it back.’44 Riddles also conveyed the agency of things. The quill pen
moving across the page was a white bird leaving black tracks in a field of
snow,45 and the skin of the parchment page describes the experience of its
transformation from a living being into a living book in Exeter Book Riddle
26.46 Of course, not every work of art foregrounds the symbolism of its
materials or the agency of the object, but the number that do indicates that
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this was an important area of early medieval English art.

Equally important is the question of the sound and voice of artworks.47
Monuments like the eighth-century Ruthwell Cross or the ninth-century
Alfred Jewel speak in the first person, but it is their human makers who cause
them to speak by inscribing them with voice. The voice of the Ruthwell
inscription unites the speaking cross with the speaking/reading human so that
both speak as one.

+ondgeredæ hinæ god almeittig

þa he walde on galgu gistiga
modig fore allæ men
buga [ic ne dorstæ]

44
Barney et al., ed. and trans., Etymologies, 326.
45
Aldhelm, Enigma 59, in Bitterli, Say What I am Called, 143.
46
Muir, Exeter Anthology, 306–7. Riddle numbers vary across editions, as there is disagreement as
to where some riddles begin and end.
47
See Kay, ‘Siren Enchantments’.
 Art and the Formation of Early Medieval England 19

ahof ic riicnæ kyniŋc

heafunæs hlafard
hælda ic ni dorstæ
bismærædu uŋket men ba ætgadre
ic wæs miþ blodi bistemid
bi[goten of þæs gumu sida]

+krist wæs on rodi

hweþræ þer fusæ fearran kwomu
æþþilæ til anum ic þæt al biheald
saræ ic wæs miþ sorgum gidrœfid
hnag [ic þam secgum til handa]
miþ strelum giwundad
alegdun hiæ hinæ limwœrignæ gistoddun
him æt his licæs heafdum
bihealdun hiæ þer [heafunes dryctin]

[+Almighty God stripped himself when he wished to mount the gallows,

brave in the sight of all men. I dared not bow. I raised aloft a powerful king.
The Lord of heaven. I dared not tilt. Men insulted the pair of us together. I was
drenched with blood begotten from that man’s side. +Christ was on the cross.
But eager ones came hither from afar. Noble ones came together. I beheld all
that. I was terribly afflicted with sorrows. I bowed to the hands of men,
wounded with arrows. They laid him down, limb-weary; they stood at the
shoulders of the corpse. They looked upon the Lord of heaven.]

The sound of the voice in this case becomes the medium through which the
eternal and the ephemeral, place and time, rub up against each other. What
would it mean to listen for the sound of the material itself, or the sound of the
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object as it resonates with its embodied human users? The making of sculp-
ture – indeed the making of all works – involved sound, though how that
would have been experienced by the artists or their patrons is largely undocu-
mented. One exception is the making of manuscripts in which riddles such as
Exeter Book Riddles 26 and 51 encourage readers to imagine the sounds of the
living creatures whose skins and feathers became the parchment and quills
that were essential parts of manuscript production. Riddle 26 also describes
the ripping of flesh from an animal and the scraping of the flayed skin as it was
turned into the pages of a book. Michelle M. Sauer’s study of sound and
parchment has documented the different tones of ‘singing’ parchment that
result from the scraping of different types, ages, and thicknesses of animal
skin,48 but the play of sound and silence in the texts and images that cover
those skins merits more attention. We read the tearing, dismembering, and

48
See https://soundstudiesblog.com/2016/10/17/audiotactility-the-medieval-soundscape-of-
parchment/.
 20 England in the Early Medieval World

silencing of the bodies of the Vices in the late-tenth- or early-eleventh-century

C.C.C.C. MS 23 copy of Prudentius’s Psychomachia very differently if we
read them through the torn, dirtied, and silenced animal of the parchment
compared to if we read them as just words or drawings on a page. The threat of
the partially sub-human, dark, and revolting Grendel and his mother in
Beowulf becomes much more visceral if we read them as silently lurking
within the silenced animal skin of the folios than if we think of them as just
words on a page or figures evoked solely through those words.49 Grendel and
his mother are figures of the colonised, their land taken from them by the
Danes, and the colonised cannot speak. Adam Miyashiro has demonstrated the
way in which the runic character eþel, the word eþel (ancestral homeland),
the acts of writing and speaking, and the act of dismembering with a sword
come together in the poem to erase the already silenced Grendelkin.

The runic characters appear during important speech acts (such as battle speeches,
commemorations, and boasts), linking the idea of ‘ancestral homeland’ with the
symbol of sovereign violence through the image of the sword, and suggesting that
the dismemberment of language in Beowulf can be extended to writing as well as
speech, as Susan M. Kim argues . . . . Notably, the verb writan, apart from being
the antecedent of the modern ‘to write’, also means ‘to cut’, ‘engrave’, or ‘incise.’
The latter is associated with the Latin scribere and the Greek glyphos – this aspect
of cutting into/away from wood, stone, metal reflects the dismemberment of
language in Beowulf in writing, literalized in the bodily dismemberments of
Grendel and his mother.50

There is a long history of equating the colonised with the bestial and the
subhuman, which in England can be traced back to Gildas, who described the
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Scots and Picts as worms who wriggled out of fissures in the rocks.51 In the case
of Beowulf, the materiality of the skin on which the poem is written helps to
figure the Grendelkin neatly into that tradition.
Some books were made into talking objects. The verse Preface to King
Alfred’s translation of Gregory the Great’s Regula Pastoralis speaks in the first-
person voice of the book, saying,

Đis ærendgewrit Agustinus

ofer sealtne sæ suðan brohte

iegbuendum, swa hit ær fore

49
I use the term ‘revolting’ in the dual sense of the word elaborated by Rambaran-Olm, Leake, and
Goodrich, ‘Medieval Studies’. Grendel and his mother are at once revolting to the Danes and
revolting against them.
50
Miyashiro, ‘Homeland Insecurity’, 388. See also Kim, ‘“As I Once Did with Grendel”’;
Fleming, ‘Eþel-Weard’.
51
Winterbottom, Gildas, 23.
 Art and the Formation of Early Medieval England 21

adihtode Dryhtnes cempa,

Rome papa. Ryhtspel monig

Gregorius gleawmod geondwod

durh sefan snyttro, searoðonca hord . . .
Siððan min on Englisc Æl[f]fred cyning
awende worda gehwelc, ⁊ me his writerum
sende suð ⁊ norð . . .
(lines 1–7, 11–13a)

Augustine brought this letter over the salt sea from the south to the island
dwellers, just as the Lord’s champion, the pope in Rome, had written it earlier.
The wise Gregory had studied many noble writings through his wise mind,
his hoard of wisdom. Afterwards, King Alfred translated every word of me
into English and sent me south and north to his scribes.]52

The words also do the job of mapping the transmission of the text from Gregory’s
Rome to Alfred’s England via Augustine. In the verse Epilogue that ends the
translation, the book again speaks but as a body of life-giving water containing
divine wisdom:

Đis is nu se wæterscipe ðe us weroda God

to frofre gehet foldbuendum.

He cwæð ðæt he wolde ðæt on weorulde forð
of ðæm innoðum a libbendu
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wætru fliowen, ðe wel on hiene

geliefden under lyfte. Is hit lytel tweo
ðæt ðæs wætersciepes welsprynge is

on heofonrice; þæt is Halig Gast.

(lines 1–8)

[This is now the body of water which the God of hosts promised for the
comfort of us earth-dwellers. He said that he wished ever-living waters to
flow continually in the world from the hearts of those under the sky who fully
believed in him. There is little doubt that the source of the body of water is in
the kingdom of heaven, that is, the holy ghost.]53

52
Schreiber, King Alfred’s Old English Translation, 197–8; translation my own. See also Discenza,
‘Alfred’s Verse Preface’.
53
Schreiber, King Alfred’s Old English Translation, 451; trans. Irvine and Godden in Irvine, ‘The
Alfredian Prefaces’, 159 n52.
 22 England in the Early Medieval World

Sacred books contained the living words of scripture passed directly from God
through the evangelists to the scribes who produced the manuscripts. This process is
documented in the colophon to the early-eighth-century Lindisfarne Gospels
(London, BL, Cotton MS Nero D.iv).54 The colophon was added in the tenth
century, along with a gloss on the main text, by the scribe Aldred while the
manuscript and the Cuthbert community were at Chester-le-Street, but it contains
a section of much earlier verse perhaps copied from the now-missing cover of the
manuscript.55 It opens with a Latin inscription written to the right of the explicit to
John’s gospel: ‘+ Lit[er]a me pandat sermonis fida ministra. Omnes alme meos
fratres voce salvta [+ May the letter, faithful servant of the word, speak for me. Greet
all my brothers with a kindly voice]’.56 This is followed by the ‘Five sentences’ in
alternating lines of Old English and Latin which state that Matthew wrote from the
word of Christ, Mark from the word of Peter, Luke from the word of Paul, and John
from the word of God and the Holy Spirit. Then follows Aldred’s account of this
gospel book, which includes what is believed to be the earlier inscription.

+ eadfrið bisco[p/b] lindisfearnensis æcclesiæ

he ðis boc avrát æt frvma gode ⁊ s[an]c[t]e
cvðberhte ⁊ allvm ðæm halgvm. ða ‘gimænelice’ ðe
in eolonde sint. ⁊ eðilvald lindisfearneolondinga ‘bisc[op]’
hit vta giðryde ⁊ gibélde sva hé vel cuðę.
⁊ billfrið se oncrę he gismioðade ða
gihríno ða ðe vtan ón sint ⁊ hit gi <->
hrínade mið golde ⁊ mið gimmvm ęc
mið svlfre’ of[er]gylded faconleas feh:
⁊ [ic] Aldred p[res]‘s’b[yte]r indignus ⁊ misserim[us]
mið godes fvltv[m]mę ⁊ s[an]c[t]i cvðberhtes
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hit of[er]glóesade ón englisc ⁊ hine gihamadi

mið ðæm ðríim dælv[m]. Mathevs dǽl
gode ⁊ s[an]c[t]e cvðberhti. Marc[vs] dǽl.
ðæm bisc[ope]. ⁊ lvcas dæl ðæm hiorode
⁊ æht ‘v’ ora s[eo \‘v’]lfres mið tó inláde.:-
⁊ sci ioh[annes] dæl f[ore] hine seolfne ‘i[d est] f[or]e his savle’ ⁊ feover óra
s[eo]‘v’lfres mið gode ⁊ s[an]c[t]i cvðberti. Þ[æt]te he
hæbbe ondfong ðerh godes miltsæ on heofnv[m].
séel ⁊ sibb on eorðo forðgeong ⁊ giðyngo
visdóm ⁊ snyttro ðerh s[an]c[t]i cvðberhtes earnvnga: ⁊
+eadfrið. oeðilvald. billfrið. Aldred.
hoc evange[lium] d[e]o ⁊ cuðberhto constrvxer[vn]t 0 [ve]l ornavervnt.

54
See www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?index=14&ref=Cotton_MS_Nero_D_IV.
55
Roberts, ‘Aldred Signs Off’.
56
The transcription is based on that in Roberts, ‘Aldred Signs Off’.
 Art and the Formation of Early Medieval England 23

[‘+ Eadfrith, bishop of the Lindisfarne church, first wrote this book for God and St
Cuthbert, and all the saints whose relics are in the island. And Eðilwald, bishop of
the Lindisfarne islanders, pressed it and covered it on the outside as well he knew
how to do. And Billfrið the anchorite made the metal ornaments that are on the
outside and decorated it with gold and with gems and also with gilded over silver –
pure treasure. And [I] Aldred, unworthy and most miserable priest, glossed it in
English with the help of God and St Cuthbert and made a home for himself with
these three sections: the section of Matthew was for God and St Cuthbert, the
section of Mark for the bishop, the section of Luke for the members of the
community together with eight ores of silver for his induction, and the section
of John for himself, i.e. for his soul, together with four ores of silver for God and St
Cuthbert so that, through the mercy of God, he may gain acceptance into heaven,
happiness and peace on earth, success and progress, wisdom and knowledge
through the reward of St Cuthbert.
+Eadfrið, Oeðilwald, Billfrið and Aldred made this gospel book for God
and St Cuthbert.]

The sacredness of the words of the gospels are captured not only in the scribal
genealogy of the colophon but also in the ‘pure metal’ and gems of its original
cover. The exterior cover was also reflected in the rich mineral pigments and
gilded details of the illuminated pages within.
The Lindisfarne Gospels is renowned for its evangelist portraits, the earliest
surviving writing evangelists in Western manuscript illumination, but it is its
great carpet and incipit pages that visually express its animality (Figure 6). The
cross-carpet pages, the designs of which may have been influenced by Coptic
art, are filled with backgrounds of entangled and spiralling birds and beasts
against which geometric shapes and cross patterns stand out. The tight, almost
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symmetrical, order of the carpet pages reflects the order of God’s creation, but
on the incipit pages the letters and designs in some instances appear ready to
crawl off the page. The ascenders of the first three letters of the Liber of
Matthew’s gospel on folio 27r end in stylised serpent heads formed from
patterns derived from contemporary metalwork. Each head has two roundels
for eyes, and the tops of the letters ‘L’ and ‘b’ sprout ears or horns on either side
of the eyes, while their mouths end in curling tusks. The sinuous shapes of these
letters make them appear as if they are uncoiling and about to slither away;
however, all three letters are joined together by birds or geometric ornament at
the points that their bodies cross, effectively anchoring them to the page and
preventing their escape. A little animal rises from the left-hand side of the lower
border, arching its head back in awe of the spectacle taking place before it.
Most discussions of the materiality of manuscripts focus on the living skin of the
book and the traces of its readers but, as the Lindisfarne Gospels makes clear, other
materials – gold, silver, gems – were also a part of that materiality. In the dedication
 24 England in the Early Medieval World
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Figure 6 Lindisfarne Gospels, Incipit to Matthew, London, British Library,

Cotton MS Nero D.iv, fol. 27r. Wikimedia Commons/public domain.

to the Benedictional of St Æthelwold (London, BL, Additional MS 49598) produced

in Winchester 971–84, the scribe Godeman records that Æthelwold specified that he
wanted his book to include ‘many arches well adorned and filled with various figures
decorated with numerous beautiful colors and with gold’.57 A benedictional contains

57
Deshman, Benedictional of Æthelwold, 148.
 Art and the Formation of Early Medieval England 25

blessings used by a bishop during the mass, and this one is a highly personal and
lavish manuscript with twenty-eight full-page figures of saints and biblical scenes
for feast days all set within gilded frames, most filled with acanthus ornament, as
well as ornate gilded initials and incipits to the texts.58 The saints depicted were
important to Æthelwold: Æthelthryth of Ely (fol. 90v), Swithun of Winchester
(fol. 97v), and St Benedict (fol. 99v), whose Rule was used in Æthelwold’s
reformation of English monasteries. The final blessing is for the dedication of
a church, and the accompanying miniature shows a bishop, believed to be
Æthelwold himself, conducting a service before a congregation of laypeople
and monks (fol. 118v). The bishop stands behind a purple-draped altar and reads
from a golden book as he blesses the group before him. Gold and coloured inks are
used to set the sacred space of the altar and the chancel arch apart from the space of
the congregation. The altar area is sacred space, and the bishop reads blessings that
have their ultimate authority in God, so colour is used to distinguish this from the
everyday world of the congregation represented in monochrome outline drawing
against a plain vellum background. Like the animals from which the pages of the
book come, these people are of lesser status and distinct from the animals only
through their belief in the teachings of the Christian religion. The golden book held
in the bishop’s left hand extends into their space as a demonstration of this truth.
A similar but more complex use of style and materials to indicate the
interpenetration of different spaces is seen in the miniature of St Benedict
with the monks of Canterbury in the 1012–23 Eadui Psalter (London, BL,
Arundel MS 155; Figure 7).59 Here the enthroned saint and arched space in
which he sits are fully painted with ink washes of reds, blues, and greens with
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gold leaf details. Benedict is unmoving and looks directly out at the reader. At
right, outline drawing has been used to depict the monks of Canterbury, who are
very much of this world. Their active profile poses and the dynamic lines of their
drapery contrast with Benedict’s rigid frontality. The leading monk offers the
saint a copy of the Benedictine Rule held open to the first words of its text. It is
unclear whether Benedict has just presented the Rule to the monks or whether
they are presenting a copy to him, and it may be that the book is intended to
represent the idea that the group is united in the text of the Rule. Other objects
intended to honour the saint (a book and a pyx) are picked out in gold leaf. At the
bottom of the miniature, a prostrate monk kisses Benedict’s slippers and
presents him with a book inscribed ‘lib ps’ (liber psalmorum), representing
this manuscript. This monk is thought by many to be the Canterbury scribe
Eadui Basan, who wrote the text of this manuscript and may also have been its

58
See www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Add_MS_49598.
59
See www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?index=83&ref=Arundel_MS_155.
 26 England in the Early Medieval World
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Figure 7 Portrait of the monks of Canterbury with St Benedict, London, British

Library, Arundel MS 155, fol. 133r. Wikimedia Commons/public domain.

artist.60 His belt is inscribed in Latin with the words ‘zone of humility’. The fact
that Eadui is depicted, or has depicted himself, in full colour and in the same
space as Benedict may indicate that he was anything but humble, but it is more
likely intended to invoke a scribal genealogy similar to that documented in the
colophon of the Lindisfarne Gospels. Eadui has written the words of the psalter
in thanks for the words of the Rule written by the saint and, through this process,
enters briefly into the spiritual realm of the saint himself. At top, the hand of
God descends with a scroll that, like the books held by Eadui and the unidentified

60
Karkov, Art of Anglo-Saxon England, 205–7.
 Art and the Formation of Early Medieval England 27

Canterbury monk, bridges heavenly and earthly space. The side above Benedict
reads ‘Qui vos audit, me audit’ (Luke 10.16: ‘He who hears you hears me’), and the
side towards the monks ‘Obedientes estote preposti u[est]ro’ (‘be obedient to your
superior’), words that echo those of the Rule and are embodied in the actions of
Eadui and his brothers. The exchange of texts and learning depicted were clearly
important to the community as arches above the tables giving the date of Easter and
other liturgical information contain drawings of Pachomius receiving a scroll from
an angel (fol. 9v) and a group of tonsured book-holding monks engaged in conver-
sation, presumably about their texts (fol. 10r).
Bone and ivory are also taken from living creatures and retain something of the
nature of the creatures from which they came. Elephants, for example, were believed
to be chaste and the enemies of serpents,61 and for both reasons they became
associated with purity and the Virgin Mary. Along with its rarity and preciousness,
this made elephant ivory an appropriate material for reliquaries and the covers of
sacred books. Elephant ivory wasn’t available in early medieval England after the
Arab expansions of the seventh century curtailed trade, so walrus ivory and, less
frequently, whalebone were used instead. Both walruses and whales were dangerous
and violent creatures, very different from the pure and protective elephant. The
whale was particularly fearsome. The fisherman in Ælfric’s tenth-century Colloquy
states that he does not hunt whales because a whale could kill him and his compan-
ions with a single blow.62 The whale’s jaws were also equated with the gates of hell,
as recorded in the poem The Whale.63 Jonah likened the belly of the whale that
swallowed him to hell, but the whale was also the vehicle of his salvation, and both
the story of Jonah and images of whales appear on sacred objects during the Early
Christian period. There is a whale on the fifth-century chalice from Northumbria
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discussed in Section 1, and Jonah is depicted being swallowed by and emerging from
the mouth of the whale on the fourth-century Brescia Casket made in northern Italy
and now in the Museo di Santa Giulia at San Salvatore, Brescia, Italy. The Brescia
Casket is made of elephant ivory, however, and not whalebone, and it is decorated
with relief carvings of scenes from the Old and New Testaments. It is indisputably
a Christian object. The Brescia Casket is often cited as a possible model for the
Franks Casket (Figure 8) made in eighth-century Northumbria, but the Franks
Casket is made from whalebone, probably from the jawbones of a whale, as those
would have been the only bones of the right size and shape for its panels. Only one
Christian scene appears on its five carved panels, the Adoration of the Magi, on one
half of the front panel. It is thus a much more problematic sort of object. The
iconographic programme consists of Weland the Smith at his forge and the

61 62
Barney et al., Etymologies, 252. Ælfric, Colloquy, 29–30.
63
Muir, The Exeter Anthology, vol. 1, 272–3.
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Figure 8 Franks Casket, front panel, British Museum. © Getty Images.

 Art and the Formation of Early Medieval England 29

Adoration of the Magi (front), an archer defending an enclosure from an attacking

army (lid), the sack of the temple in Jerusalem and flight of the Jews (back), Romulus
and Remus suckled by the she-wolf (left side), and a cryptic scene involving
humans, animals, and hybrid creatures (right side).64 Aside from the lid, much of
which is missing, each panel is surrounded by an inscription. Most are in the Old
English language and runic alphabet, although the back panel includes a phrase in
Latin and the Roman alphabet, and the final word of the inscription on the back is in
Latin and runes. The inscription on the front reads,

fisc flodu ahof on fergenberig

warþ ga:sric grorn þær he ongreut giswom.

hronæs ban.

[The fish beat up the seas [or rose by means of the sea] onto the high hill [or cliff,
or burial mound]. The king of terror [or one strong in life or power] became sad
when he swam aground onto the shingle. Whale’s bone[s].]
The words inscribed in the lower border of this panel are carved retrograde.65
Scholarship on the Franks Casket is extensive, and there is no agreement on
what its original function or meaning(s) were. Recent studies have understood it
as having multiple possible interpretations rather than a single overall theme or
message,66 although some still believe that it may have been a reliquary carry-
ing a message of religious synchronism or harmony. It was clearly important to
its makers, however, that it was made of whalebone and that viewers knew that,
as the inscription describing the stranding of the whale and the statement that
this is whalebone are carved on the front panel, the panel on which we would
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expect to find the most important image and inscription. Looking more closely
at this panel, its division into two may be its most important feature, reflecting
the two opposing natures of the whale, the jaws of hell and a vehicle of
salvation. The two figural scenes pull away from each other, the movement in
the Weland panel being from right to left and that in the Adoration of the Magi
from left to right. The whale is also divided in two, at one moment a powerful
living creature beating up the sea and in the next a dead mass of bones on the
shore. The double meaning of ferginberig locates the dead whale as simultan-
eously visible on a high cliff and on (or in) a burial mound. Even the term used
for the whale is divided in two. Just beneath the bird leading the Magi are two

64
For high resolution images of all panels, see www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/H_1867-
0120-1. The right-side panel here is a replica. The original is in the Bargello Museum in
Florence.
65
For the other inscriptions, see Karkov, Imagining Anglo-Saxon England, 85–8.
66
Karkov, Imagining Anglo-Saxon England, 77–124; Paz, Nonhuman Voices, 98–138; Webster,
Franks Casket.
 30 England in the Early Medieval World

dots dividing the word gasric in two: ‘ga:sric’. More generally, the casket
displays three scenes from the Mediterranean world of Rome and three from
northern Europe. It may be that some sort of harmony or resolution is possible,
but these are all scenes, or excerpts from stories, centred on terror, sadness, and
violence. Ultimately, like the whale, the Casket offers no resolution and no
definitive narrative. The late eighth-century whalebone Gandersheim Casket in
the Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig, Germany, doesn’t exploit its
material in anything like the same way, but it too has no indisputably Christian
meaning, although its panels filled with creatures are neatly divided into
patterns of three, six, and twelve and are thought to symbolise God’s creation.
These two boxes aside, whalebone was rarely used for luxury objects,67 but
walrus ivory was. It was the material used by the English for a range of sacred
objects from reliquaries such as the mid-eleventh-century openwork reliquary in
the V&A to the bodies of Christ, Mary, and John in scenes of the Crucifixion.68
Walrus ivory was imported from Scandinavia, as recounted by the Norse trader
Ohthere in the Alfredian version of Orosius’s Universal History Against the
Pagans. Ohthere tells Alfred that he went north to the territory of the Finnas
and Beormas (Saami and Biarmians) both to explore and because the walruses in
the area have very fine tusks, some of which he presented to the king.69
Walrus ivory was used for a mid-eleventh-century box believed to be a pen
case now in the British Museum,70 and something of the nature of the walrus
(horshwæl) may be manifest in its design and decoration. Walruses were
valuable but also dangerous creatures and are amongst the sea monsters on
medieval maps. The ends of the box are carved with open beast-mouths with
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pronounced teeth or tongue-like appendages. Little creatures about to be eaten

squirm in the beasts’ mouths. Along the sides of the box dragons, men, birds,
and quadrupeds hunt each other and search for food. The spine of the lid is
a tree-of-life motif filled with more gobbling creatures that may represent the
abundance of the world. The motifs can be related to the function of the box as
a container with the gobbling creatures all in the process of consuming and
containing. If it was a pen case, the box would have held quill pens, and the two
archers shooting at birds on one of its sides might have been reflective of its
function. Its function and imagery can also be read in the context of Exeter Book

67
Riddler, ‘Archaeology of the Anglo-Saxon Whale’.
68
For the V&A reliquary (A.6-1966) see http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O96379/reliquary-
cross-unknown/. See also the c.1000 ivory corpus of Christ set on an Ottonian reliquary cross
in the V&A (7943-1862), https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O111551/reliquary-cross-crucifix-
unknown/.
69
Godden, Old English History of the World, 36–9. Ohthere also describes whale hunting in the area.
70
See www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/H_1870-0811-1.
 Art and the Formation of Early Medieval England 31

Riddle 51 in which a pen held in a scribe’s fingers leaves tracks across the page,
a metaphor for the production and understanding of knowledge, the ruminatio,
of early medieval texts.
The late-ninth-century Alfred Jewel is also associated with manuscript
culture.71 The Jewel is generally identified as an æstel, probably a book pointer
of the type that Alfred distributed to his bishops with copies of his translation of
the Regula Pastoralis, although that identification is not certain and other uses
for the Jewel have been suggested. Nevertheless, the circumstantial evidence for
the Jewel’s association with Alfred’s court – its date, quality, find spot near
Athelney, and inscription – is considerable. The Jewel consists of an enamelled
figure set on a base-plate of gold and covered with a reused Roman rock crystal,
the whole secured by an inscribed open-work gold band terminating in a golden
animal head socket. The inscription reads ‘Ælfred mec heht gewyrcan’ (‘Alfred
ordered me to be made’). The reused Roman crystal had imperial as well as
Christological connections, both it and gold were materials associated with light
and learning as well as with kings, and for these reasons such an object would
have appealed to Alfred and his vision of expanding his kingdom. The enamel
figure with its wide, staring eyes may be a personification of Sight or Wisdom,
an image of Christian learning, and/or a portrait of the king. It could allude to all
these things at once. In addition to its associations with Rome, the crystal
covering the figure was symbolic of Christ both because of the Old English
word for the stone, cristesmæl/cristelmæl, and because of the writings of figures
like Isidore and Gregory the Great.72 Gold was precious but also symbolic of
purity and the divine light of heaven. Despite the fact that neither the Jewel’s
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association with the king nor its function as a book pointer is certain, the material
and imagery of the Jewel are undeniably centred on light, clarity, sight, and
authority and would thus be appropriate to an object that brought together mind,
eye, and hand in the pursuit of wisdom. The inscription’s first-person voice
draws attention to the meaning and agency of the Jewel, and its wording is
similar to the lines from the verse Preface to the Regula Pastoralis cited earlier,
even if it omits the title ‘king’. The Jewel is one of a number of objects identified
as book pointers, all of which are designed with a central ‘eye’, although they are
not as ornate or complex in their iconography as the Alfred Jewel. The Bowleaze
Cove Jewel has a circular gold head with a central blue bead, and the Warminster
Jewel’s head consists of a central blue bead set in a circular rock crystal, while
the top of the Yorkshire æstel is an animal head with staring eyes.

71
Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford AN1836 p.135.37.
72
Gregory the Great, Homiliae in Hiezechihelem, 95; Kempshall, ‘No Bishop, No King’, 127.
 32 England in the Early Medieval World

While the materiality of metalwork was exploited for expressions of per-

sonal identity, stone spoke about the identity of time and place, as the material
comes from the land and could be used and reused to establish specific
relationships to the past. Wilfrid’s reuse of Roman stone in the building of
Hexham was as much a part of his statement of Northumbrian romanitas as
was his modelling of the crypt at Ripon on that of Old St Peter’s.73 Scholarship
on the materiality of stone and its ability to express political or religious
identity and affiliation is enormous, particularly for sculpture and structures
of the seventh and eighth centuries, like Hexham, or the eighth-century
crosses at Ruthwell and Bewcastle. The latter have been discussed in terms
of their proclamation of allegiance to the Roman world and the origins of the
Roman church; the stone of Bewcastle is linked to that of Bewcastle’s Roman
fort, still partially standing when the cross was erected; and Ruthwell uses
stone to unite eighth-century Northumbria and first-century Jerusalem across
the centuries.74 Less well studied is the agency of stone in Anglo-
Scandinavian sculpture, with the notable exception of Howard Williams’s
work on hogbacks and the ‘mnemonics of their materiality’. The hogback’s
form, he demonstrates, holds together a set of allusions to other types of
structures such as halls and shrines, while their combination of form and
material creates a unique lithic solidity. They are solid, closed, fixed in
place, a secure home for the dead; yet an architecture that is simultaneously
open in its multiple allusions to other forms of monument and other times and
places.75
A related combination of lithic solidity that opens itself out in a rather
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different way can be seen in the tenth-century Dearham Cross, Cumbria

(Figure 9). The cross appears to be a solid block of stone covered with variations
on ring-chain ornament of a distinctively Anglo-Scandinavian type.76 A similar
pattern covers the lowest section of the shaft of the Gosforth Cross, from the first
half of the tenth century, and the pattern may represent the strapwork of leather
armour, with the cross becoming both a protected object and a type of armed
warrior ready for battle.77 The most remarked-upon aspect of the Dearham
Cross is the bulb-like form near the base of the shaft that is carved as if it is
emerging out from the stone of the cross to bury itself in the ground. This root
anchors the cross in place and reinforces the idea that the cross is a living object.

73
Bidwell, ‘Survey of the Anglo-Saxon Crypt’; Karkov, ‘Alternative Histories’.
74
Ó Carragáin, Ritual and the Rood; Orton and Wood, with Lees, Fragments of History; Karkov,
‘Alternative Histories’; Karkov, Art of Anglo-Saxon England, 136–45.
75
Williams, ‘Hogbacks and the Materiality of Solid Spaces’.
76
See https://chacklepie.com/ascorpus/catvol2.php?pageNum_urls=80.
77
Karkov, Art of Anglo-Saxon England, 258.
 Art and the Formation of Early Medieval England 33
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Figure 9 Dearham Cross, Cumbria. © Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone

Sculpture, photographer Tom Middlemass.

Far from being an inanimate piece of stone, blood or sap courses through its
interior.78 The Dearham Cross is not covered with blood like the Ruthwell
Cross, as described in the Ruthwell runic poem, nor with blood and gold like the
visionary cross in the poem The Dream of the Rood, preserved in the c.1000
Vercelli Book, although like those crosses it becomes two things at once, in this
78
The idea of the cross as a tree with its roots reaching into the ground may refer to either or both
Christ as the cosmic tree or the Scandinavian Yggdrasill; see https://chacklepie.com/ascorpus/
catvol2.php?pageNum_urls=80.
 34 England in the Early Medieval World

case stone and wood. But, unlike those crosses, it does not speak in the first
person: its materiality is conveyed solely through its materials and its setting in
the earth.
Stone and the multiple possible statements it could make about place and
identity had thus been a feature of early medieval English sculpture, architec-
ture, and landscape for centuries. It is no surprise, then, that the Cuthbert
community finally settled in Durham after travelling around England for over
100 years. The prominence of the Durham peninsula provided a ready-made
statement about the power of the saint who had become so closely identified
with the North, with the English church, and with England. Like the island of
Lindisfarne from which they had fled at the end of the ninth century, it was
a rock on which a church – a new church that expressed continuity with the
origins of the community – could be built. The setting, like the architecture of
the later Norman cathedral and castle discussed previously, proclaimed both
a link to the past and a new power and order built upon the previous one. In
the ninth through eleventh centuries, it was a statement that could appeal
differently to the old English and Anglo-Scandinavian inhabitants, while with
the building of the new cathedral in the 1080s, the site expressed both
continuity with the past and the power of the new Norman settlers and
overlords in equal measure. It spoke of a very complex layering of time,
land, identity, and a formation of England that was both profoundly local and
national, yet also international as it became part of the new Norman Empire.
The final section of this Element will explore England’s place in that larger
empire, but first I will turn to the question of how art was used to express
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more personal ideas of identity and allegiance, as well as what we know of

the men and women who produced these artworks.

3 Identity and Performance

The materials and types of jewellery and other adornment that were used to
convey ethnic and regional identities, and/or political or cultural affiliations,
varied over time.79 Some items, like beads, have been found in the graves of
men, women, and children – although they were worn mostly by women and
girls from the fifth century on. Beads are important in archaeology but are rarely
considered worth discussing by art historians, even though some beads were
amongst the most exotic yet widely circulating types of ornament in the early
medieval world.80 The most common materials for beads in early medieval
England were glass, amber, stones such as amethyst or jet, rock crystal, gold,

79
On dress and adornment, see Owen-Crocker, Dress in Anglo-Saxon England.
80
Green, ‘Indo-Pacific Beads’ and sources cited therein.
 Art and the Formation of Early Medieval England 35

and silver. The popularity and availability of these materials varied over time.
Amber, for example, was common in the fifth and sixth centuries but began to
disappear in the seventh. Some beads, or the materials to make them, were
imported, with others made from local materials; in some instances, as with
amber, there is evidence of both imports and exploitation of local sources.
Roman materials were reused, especially for the rarer or more exotic beads
such as some of those of rock crystal or glass, and some beads were clearly
heirlooms and/or valued for their age or associations. The woman in Grave 43 at
Street House, Loftus, North Yorkshire, for example, wore a pendant with
a reworked Iron Age bead.81 Some materials were also believed to have had
medicinal or protective powers. Amber was a cure for a wide range of
ailments,82 while, according to Pliny, amethyst prevented drunkenness and
protected against evil spells.83 In the fifth–sixth centuries, women commonly
wore beads strung between brooches, but they could also be worn as necklaces.
During the seventh–ninth centuries, they were worn most often as necklaces
with or without pendants, a fashion ultimately copied from Roman and
Byzantine fashions. Other items of women’s jewellery included pins, rings,
arm-rings, clasps, and buckles, while men wore buckles and clasps, rings, and
pins, as well as beads and other decorative items attached to sword belts.
Amethyst beads are amongst the most interesting and are indicative of the
extent of the trade routes connecting England to Europe and beyond. The most
likely sources of amethysts during the fifth and sixth centuries were India and
Sri Lanka, also the source of the garnets that feature so prominently in more
lavish items, although other sources might have included Egypt, the Near
East,84 Asia Minor, and Greece.85 Amethyst deposits are also found across
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Europe and in Ireland, and it is possible that the lighter colour of the amethyst
beads that began to appear in the late seventh century is evidence of the
exploitation of local sources as the spread of Islam closed trade routes from
India and Africa. The origins and distribution patterns of amethyst beads open
the question of whether the ultimate source of their popularity was in Romano-
Byzantine fashions or whether they are evidence of a more international fashion
trend with origins in the eastern Mediterranean.86
Amongst the items found in women’s burials throughout the fifth through
seventh centuries are ivory rings believed to be bag-rings, supports from which
a cloth bag would have been suspended, although some might have been worn

81
Manion, ‘Symbolism, Performance and Colour’, 152.
82
Owen-Crocker, Dress in Anglo-Saxon England, 150. 83
Drauschke, ‘Byzantine Jewellery?’
84
A cowrie shell of Near Eastern origin was found in grave 238 at Sarre, Kent: Huggett, ‘Imported
Grave Goods’, 72.
85
Drauschke, ‘Byzantine Jewellery?’, 51–2. 86 Drauschke, ‘Byzantine Jewellery?’, 58.
 36 England in the Early Medieval World

as bracelets or have been used for the suspension of things other than bags.87
Originally thought to have been made from the tusks of either or both walruses
and elephants, along with fossil mammoth ivory, scientific analysis of frag-
ments from cremation burials and the size (some greater than 15 cm in diameter)
and colour of surviving examples from inhumations show them to be predom-
inantly, if not exclusively, made from elephant ivory. Catherine Hills notes that
while we cannot be certain whether the ivory was from Indian or African
elephants the most likely source would have been the Christian kingdom of
Aksum in Ethiopia; however, the established trade in gemstones from southern
India suggests that an Indian source cannot be ruled out altogether. The ivory
would, like amethysts and garnets, have travelled via the trade routes that ran
from the Indian Ocean through the Red Sea and across the Mediterranean to
Europe until the route was closed by Arab expansion.88 The rings were probably
imported ready-carved rather than as unworked tusks, and one ring from a burial
at West Heslerton (Yorkshire) was found with fragments of an ‘unusual textile’
that suggests that it was imported as a finished item.89 The rings do not come
from the wealthiest graves but from the next stratum down and so have received
little attention compared to the more flashy and famous items. This also makes
them something of a puzzle, as elephant ivory was an exotic material and by the
tenth century generally reserved for aristocratic and liturgical items. As Arthur
MacGregor notes, the rings do tend to delaminate over time, and many show
signs of sometimes repeated repairs,90 suggesting that they were highly valued
by their owners.
There was a certain amount of individual taste in the commissioning and
wearing of personal items – especially amongst the elite. We know that people
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such as Edith of Wilton had a fondness for rich materials and others such as
Edith Godwinson for covering her husband in magnificently jewelled apparel
because their activities were documented. Both were renowned needlewomen
and therefore likely to have worked with personally selected materials and to
personal designs. Generally, metalwork and clothing varied regionally, and this
has led to the conclusion that they can be used, albeit with caution, to identify
ethnic or political identities and affiliations. Regional variation also reveals
information about artists’ workshops. The gold and garnet jewellery from the
early-seventh-century Sutton Hoo Mound 1 burial and some of the sixth- and
seventh-century metalwork from the Staffordshire Hoard, for example, are
thought to be from the same East Anglian workshop because of the similarities
in their materials, style, technique, and quality. A c.600–50 pendant from
87
Owen-Crocker, Dress in Anglo-Saxon England, 69. 88
Hills, ‘Isidore to Isotopes’.
89
Owen-Crocker, Dress in Anglo-Saxon England, 69.
90
MacGregor, Bone, Antler, Ivory. The bag-rings are discussed on 40, 110–12.
 Art and the Formation of Early Medieval England 37

a woman’s burial at Winfarthing, Norfolk, has also been compared with items
from Sutton Hoo and the Staffordshire Hoard because of its quality and intricate
design. It was part of a rich assemblage of grave-goods, and, taken as a whole,
the burial raises some interesting questions about what sort of identities these
three very different assemblages of personal items project.
Sutton Hoo and the Staffordshire Hoard are both much studied, and both have
their own websites.91 They have caught the public imagination in a way that few
other finds from early medieval England have, in part because of their scale but
also because of the appeal of all that bling. The discovery of each is also
connected to significant points in English history. Sutton Hoo, discovered in
1939 on the eve of World War II, received widespread coverage in the press.
Francesca Allfrey elucidates how the war, with first its threat of invasion and
then the presence of German war planes in English airspace, marked the first
time the shores of the island had been invaded since the Middle Ages, and the
idea of an English nation, a strong army, and even the beginnings of Empire
were projected back onto the burial, especially the helmet.92 The Staffordshire
Hoard was discovered in 2009. A few pieces went on display soon afterwards,
and a national tour of highlights from the Hoard followed in 2016. It also
received wide press coverage once the find was made public. It too was seen
by many as a hoard of treasure won during a battle between kingdoms,93
although other interpretations have been proposed. This was exactly the period
in which pressure for a referendum on UK membership in the European Union
was growing, culminating in the Brexit vote of June 2016. The Hoard seemed to
speak both to the “origins” of England and to the strength of a kingdom, and it
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was considered a national treasure. National treasures tend to have particular

appeal at times of national crises or crises in national identity, and – with their
spectacular war-gear – both Sutton Hoo and the Staffordshire Hoard spoke of
strength, defence of the realm, and Englishness, at least in the imagination of
many. Ironically, neither the garnets imported from southern Asia nor the
Roman, Byzantine, or even Brittonic origins of some of the imagery and
technology used in the design and manufacture of many of the objects included
in the burial or the hoard received as much attention as what the finds had to say
about insular history – although the imported material in Mound 1 eventually
came to be seen as evidence of the power and position of early medieval East
Anglia. Against this backdrop one might wonder at the timing of the movie of
The Dig, based on a fictional retelling of the original excavation of Mound 1.94

91
See www.nationaltrust.org.uk/sutton-hoo; www.staffordshirehoard.org.uk.
92
Allfrey, ‘Sutton Hoo in Public’, chap. 2.
93
See, for example, Addley, ‘One of the Greatest Finds’.
94
D’Arcens, ‘The Dig’s Romanticisation’.
 38 England in the Early Medieval World

The film was released on Netflix in January 2021, just after Brexit had taken
effect, and the United Kingdom was suffering some food shortages and delays
in import and exports. With its atmospheric rural landscapes, melancholic
contemplation of discovery, sacrifice, and loss, buzzing warplanes, and refrain
that the discovery was ‘Anglo-Saxon’ and not ‘Viking’, the movie evokes
a World War II–era spirit. To be clear, I’m not saying that the movie was
deliberately released to coincide with Brexit, any more than one could say
that Sutton Hoo was deliberately dug up in order to coincide with the start of
World War II; rather, I am saying that it is a product of and appeals to the same
nostalgic English nationalism that is so much a part of Brexit. At the same time
that the movie was in production, the Sutton Hoo Ship’s Company was created
to finance and build a replica of the burial ship. The company’s website
evocatively connects the seventh century with the twenty-first and suggests
that the ship itself is coming back from the grave to patrol England’s waters:

In the corner of England now called Suffolk, an Anglo-Saxon king’s burial

ship and treasure lay hidden underground. Dormant for over thirteen centur-
ies in the mysterious Sutton Hoo royal burial ground, all that remained of the
ship was a shadow of its former awe-inspiring glory.
Developing the Sutton Hoo story, the King’s ship will be resurrected to its
full ninety-foot length in The Longshed, Woodbridge. From there it will slip
once more into the King’s River to grace the waters and tides again, recon-
necting our Anglo-Saxon maritime heritage with a modern-day sense of
discovery.95

There is knowledge to be gained through reconstructing the ship as a way of

understanding its engineering, construction, and seaworthiness, but to claim
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that the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ past is something that is alive but dormant and needing
to be resurrected – or that ‘Anglo-Saxon’ heritage is ‘our’ heritage – perpetuates
the racist discourse that has come to surround the period. This is not the heritage
of everyone living in the United Kingdom.
In addition to wealth, Mound 1 and the Staffordshire Hoard spoke of strength
and leadership in the period in which their assemblages were made – although
some, if not most, of that may have been aspirational rather than real. Noël
Adams has reinterpreted the Sutton Hoo shoulder clasps as fittings based on
Lombardic or Byzantine models and used to secure the chest protector of an
elite warrior rather than the trappings of an imperial figure.96 The image is,
therefore, that of a top military commander but not that of an emperor or a great
king. Moreover, burials are filled by the living rather than the dead and say as
much, if not more, about their ideas of self-identity than they do about the

95
See https://saxonship.org. 96
Adams, ‘Sutton Hoo Shoulder Clasps,’ 102.
 Art and the Formation of Early Medieval England 39

person buried. Mound 1 held a wide array of objects from across Britain,
Scandinavia, the Continent, and Byzantium, including the ship in which this
Scandinavian-style burial was contained, so clearly this was the burial of
someone who, or someone whose people, at least aspired to a cosmopolitan
stature. The chamber that held the body contained items that the dead man
would need to continue his elite lifestyle in the afterlife, including vessels for
eating and drinking and the famous lyre for entertainment. The most personal
items were placed on or near the body, including the great gold belt buckle, the
purse with its elaborately decorated lid, the sword with its fittings, the shoulder
clasps, and the helmet. The relatively intact condition of most of the metalwork
decorating these objects suggests that they were worn to impress at court rather
than in actual battle, but that has little impact on the message that they were
intended to convey.
I do not wish to link Sutton Hoo directly to the poem Beowulf, as they are two
very different entities, but the poem does use the term gryre-geatwe, literally
terror-ornaments, to describe the arms and armour of Beowulf and his men,
a term that allows insights into the way that these things were perceived in the
culture that produced, albeit centuries apart, both the Sutton Hoo helmet and the
poem. The Sutton Hoo helmet and the weapons from the Staffordshire Hoard
are material manifestations of exactly what gryre-geatwe means. The helmet
was a beautiful adornment. Its replica in the British Museum shows it as it
would originally have appeared, with shining garnets, polished silver, and
gilded surfaces.97 At the same time, it is a type of object that would have been
worn in battle and intended to create awe and terror in an enemy. Even in a court
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setting it would have exuded power and demanded awe. Asa Mittman and
Patricia MacCormack identify the warriors who dressed in this type of gear as
‘fabulated’ men who, when they donned their war-gear, became one with it,
transforming into part-human, part-animal, part-superhuman battle machines.98
The dragons or bird and dragon that cover the wearer’s face and the crown of the
head are protective symbols, but they also suggest that the wearer takes on some
of the power and ferocity of the creatures that cover him. The wings of the
dragon/bird that form the helmet’s eyebrow guards end in boars’ heads with tiny
but prominent teeth. The plates that covered the helmet’s cap and cheek-pieces
are decorated with scenes of armed gods and mounted soldiers trampling
defeated enemies beneath their horses’ hooves. Tiny gods sit behind the
mounted warriors. The surfaces of the face-plate are decorated with beaded
patterns and interlaced serpents. The decoration is apotropaic but would also
97
See www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/H_SHR-2; original helmet: www
.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/H_1939-1010-93.
98
Mittman and MacCormack, ‘Rebuilding’.
 40 England in the Early Medieval World

have suggested that the helmet-wearer and the helmet’s creatures and materials
were one in battle.
The less famous Sutton Hoo shield was decorated with mounts that created
a similar supernatural animal, human, and metalwork battler.99 Animal heads
with inlaid garnet eyes were spaced around the rim, holding the shield’s layers
together, while the mounts near its centre include a gilt copper-alloy dragon and
bird of prey – both examples of Style II animal ornament. The dragon has an
open mouth with large fangs like those of the boars’ heads on the helmet, and the
panels that make up the centre of its body contain interlaced animals – as if,
perhaps, it had swallowed these creatures. The bird (Figure 10) has a prominent
curving beak and claws. The crest of its head is a dragon with inset garnet eye
and open toothy mouth, while its hip joint is a human face worked in garnets set
over stamped gold foils (a typically English technique). With its beak and claws
facing one way, the open-mouthed crest the other, and the human face looking
out at us, this is a creature that is ready to attack in all directions. The helmet and
shield were the property of a wealthy leader who wanted to project an image of
teratological authority in this life and whose people wanted their leader to
embody the same image in the next. The helmet continues to threaten as it has
come to stand for all things ‘Anglo-Saxon’100 and has been taken up as both
a nationalist and a white supremacist symbol.101
The Staffordshire Hoard consists entirely of fragments that decorated arms,
armour, and other objects that were carried by or adorned the people and horses
that went into battle.102 It includes over 3,500 pieces of sixth- and seventh-
century metalwork and is the largest hoard of gold and silver from the period
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found in England to date. The date-range of the metalwork indicates either that
some pieces were heirlooms that had been handed down for generations or that
the objects were collected over time. If the former, the hoard could represent
loot taken from defeated troops after battle; if the latter, it was more likely the
contents of a court treasury and could have included items given in tribute along
with objects taken in war. The blades from the swords and knives were all
missing and many objects had been folded or damaged. These things were likely
on their way to being taken apart and melted down to become other things – just
as the gold and perhaps gold and glass inlays from which many of them are
made were almost certainly produced by taking apart and melting down earlier
objects.

99
See www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/H_1939-1010-94.
100
Williams, ‘Fight for Anglo-Saxon’.
101
It is, for example, one of the symbols of nationalism available on merchandise sold by the group
‘We Are the English’.
102
Fern, et al. Staffordshire Hoard.
 Art and the Formation of Early Medieval England 41

Figure 10 Shield mount from Sutton Hoo, British Museum. © Johnbod/

Wikimedia Commons/CC-BY-SA-3.0/GFDL.

One of the defining features of early medieval English art is that it was almost
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always in process and rarely, if ever, understood as ‘finished’. Metalwork was

melted down to be turned into something new, while sculptures, manuscripts,
and architecture were reused, re-carved, rebuilt, or added to – as Aldred’s gloss
was added to the Lindisfarne Gospels, or the Nunburnholme Cross (once
a Roman lintel) was carved and re-carved by Anglian, Anglo-Scandinavian,
and Anglo-Norman sculptors over the centuries.103 In whatever way the metal-
work of the Staffordshire Hoard was assembled, it makes clear that the taking or
collection of gryre-geatwe was an expression of victory or power over someone.
Sue Brunning has documented the close relationship and entwined identities of
warriors and their swords; she suggests that the broken or disfigured state of so
many of the hoard weapons may ‘reflect an attempt to obliterate a defeated foe –
disfiguring, dishonouring and tearing apart sword and owner alike, . . . and in so
doing, conferring a final and permanent defeat’.104 These things that were meant

103
Karkov, ‘Postcolonial’. 104
Brunning, Sword in Early Medieval Northern Europe, 87.
 42 England in the Early Medieval World

to project male strength and create a sense of awe could, then, become signs of
loss and defeat rather than victory or power.
The Winfarthing pendant (Figure 11) seems part of a very different world,
but this is not necessarily the case. The pendant is of exceptional quality and,
while the burial in which it was found has not generated anywhere near the
excitement of Sutton Hoo or the Staffordshire Hoard, the UK public voted
the pendant their favourite Art Fund–supported museum acquisition of 2018.
The central design of a cross formed by five bosses is more commonly found
on brooches, and, as on brooches, there are in fact multiple crosses: one on
the central boss, one formed by the rectangular garnets that radiate out from
the central boss; one formed by the bosses; and one formed by the serpent-
filled sections between the bosses. The pendant’s surface is covered with
cloisonné garnets set onto a sheet of gold. The lidded cloisonné technique, in
which cells that would normally hold stones are covered with a lid of gold,
was used in the two bands of interlacing serpents that link the bosses
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Figure 11 Winfarthing pendant. © Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery.

 Art and the Formation of Early Medieval England 43

together. Both this technique and the mushroom-shaped garnets of the ring
surrounding the serpents appear on some of the metalwork from Sutton Hoo.
The Sutton Hoo garnets and similar ones on pieces from the Staffordshire
Hoard are more neatly cut and set in their stepped cells, but the overall
quality of the pendant is equal to that of the metalwork in those assemblages.
The two snakes at right and left in the outer ring of interlaced serpents have
tiny garnet eyes, details also found on the Sutton Hoo shoulder clasps and
purse lid. On the back of the pendant the ends of the rivets that hold the
bosses in place are covered with garnets.
The similarities in technique and imagery raise questions of similarities in
meaning. It is possible to understand the brooch, like the Sutton Hoo helmet, as
both apotropaic – designed to protect the wearer – and a weapon: the brooch
a weapon in the battle between good and evil. It also raises the question of
workshops. The pendant has been considered to date from too late in the first
half of the seventh century to be the product of the Sutton Hoo workshop, but
that implies a scenario in which workshops ended with the death of individual
patrons or the decline of individual courts. But artists must have continued to
work, and this burial of a young woman is part of a series of East Anglian
aristocratic burials that reveal a systematic method of establishing personal
status, regional identity, and cultural or historical connections.
The Winfarthing woman was also buried with a crushed Frankish pot,
a copper-alloy bowl of foreign manufacture, an iron knife, a set of copper-
alloy chatelaine rings that would have hung from her girdle, and a necklace
with a gold pendant with a central Maltese cross flanked by two coins of the
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Frankish king Sigibert III (633–56). Sigibert was also the name of an East
Anglian king who took shelter at the Frankish court, but the connection
between the two kings remains uncertain. The burial makes a statement
about alliances with the Frankish court and is again in this respect connected
to Sutton Hoo, where the purse that was part of the burial contained thirty-
seven late-sixth-century Frankish coins. It is also connected to the later-
seventh- or early-eighth-century burial of an aristocratic woman in grave 93
at Boss Hall, Ipswich, which contained a composite brooch, the front of which
was almost completely covered with garnets set in silver with two central
crosses, one formed by raised garnets and the other by four triangular sheets of
gold decorated with filigree scrollwork set between them. This burial also
contained four gold pendants set with garnet and glass, a cabochon pendant set
with a single garnet and another set with red glass, a pendant made from a coin
of Sigibert III, fragments of biconical spacer beads, a sceat dated 690, glass
beads, a set of slip-knot rings, and a silver cosmetic set. The artistry of the
pendants is not as fine as that of the Winfarthing set, and they may be the
 44 England in the Early Medieval World

Figure 12 Strickland disc brooch, British Museum. © Jononmac46/Wikimedia

Commons/CC-BY-SA-3.0.

product of a workshop in decline.105 The similarities between the two burials

has raised speculation that the women may have been related, or at least part
of, the same elite circle,106 perhaps members or descendants of members of
the court of the man buried at Sutton Hoo. Interestingly, while the Sutton Hoo
cemetery developed over time, the Boss Hall burial is an intrusion in an earlier
sixth–seventh-century cemetery. Perhaps a specific connection with the past
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was being made, but that too is speculation. The Winfarthing burial is also
anomalous as no major settlement or activity is known to have existed in the
area, unlike Ipswich which was a political centre.
The use of silver rather than gold for the settings on the Boss Hall brooch is
a sign of dwindling gold supplies. As gold became scarcer, the polychrome style
of sixth- and seventh-century metalwork was replaced by a more monochrome
style, with silver replacing gold and garnets, coloured glass, and enamelwork as
the primary aesthetic. The ninth-century Strickland disc brooch (Figure 12) is
made of silver inlaid with gold and niello and worked in the Trewhiddle Style,
named after a hoard of ninth-century silver coins and other objects discovered at
Trewhiddle, Cornwall, in 1774. The use of gold inlay and the intricacy of the
design of this brooch distinguishes it as a particularly rich and high-quality item.
The lively animals and animal-masks of the ornament may strike viewers first,

105
Webster and Backhouse, Making of England, 53. 106
Pestell, ‘These Burial Treasures’.
 Art and the Formation of Early Medieval England 45

but the most important design-element for the wearer was likely its many
embedded crosses. One cross is formed by the central lozenge, another by the
quatrefoil design surrounding it, another by the raised silver bosses, and perhaps
another by the lentoid fields ending in inward-facing animal heads that contain
them. While the basic design of multiple crosses combined with animal orna-
ment is retained from the earlier period, the animals have now become individ-
ual creatures staring at each other from within discrete niello compartments
rather than interlacing together.107 They may have been apotropaic, as was
earlier animal ornament.
On the late-ninth-century Fuller Brooch, the little animals contained within
roundels in the brooch’s outer ring represent aspects of divine creation in
a harmonic whole paralleled and made human by the personifications of the
five senses at the brooch’s centre.108 The central figure of Sight can also be
interpreted as an allusion to wisdom, and the divine wisdom of which it is
a shadow, as the figure is contained within a cruciform field, and there is a tiny
niello-filled cross inscribed just beneath the central boss. The wide-staring eyes
and foliate branches held by Sight suggest a connection to the enamel figure on
the Alfred Jewel, and the two are roughly contemporary. The brooch can be
compared with the Strickland Brooch in both quality and certain details of its
design; however, where the Strickland Brooch stands apart because of its
unusual use of gold inlay, the Fuller Brooch is set apart by its unusual iconog-
raphy. The Fuller Brooch is silver with niello inlay and an open-work outer ring,
creating an aesthetic of light against dark that is characteristic of ninth-century
metalwork.
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Amongst the most personal of all items were rings, especially seal-rings.
A double-sided seal-ring made in northern France but discovered in Postwick,
Norfolk, is believed to have been made for the East Anglian Bathilde who
married Clovis II, king of the Franks, in 648 (Figure 13) The ring is almost solid
gold with a stylised head of the queen beneath a cross and surrounded by the
inscription ‘BALDEhILDIS’ on the obverse. On the reverse is what has been
described as an erotic scene of a naked man and woman standing beneath
a cross, but the presence of the cross indicates that it should be read within
a Christian context. It’s possible that this was a wedding ring and the scene on
the reverse designed as a particularly intimate image of marriage. Together the
ring’s two sides could therefore express the two sides of the queen’s life, with
the public representation of majesty on the display side and an image of her
personal life hidden beneath it.

107
See www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/H_1949-0702-1.
108
See www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/H_1952-0404-1.
 46 England in the Early Medieval World

Figure 13 Bathilde seal matrix, reverse. © Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery.

The images on Bathilde’s ring are not portraits in the modern sense of the
word; that is, they are not physical likenesses of Bathilde but rather images
representative of two aspects of her life. It is the inscription alone that suggests
the ring was hers. The same is true of the two ninth-century royal rings that
survive: those of Æthelwulf, king of Wessex (839–58),109 and his daughter
Æthelswith, queen of Mercia (853–74).110 Both are made of gold and niello and
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inscribed with their owners’ names: ‘+ETHELWULF REX’ and

‘EAĐELSWIĐ REG[I]na’. The king’s name and title appear prominently on
the front of his ring, but the queen’s are inscribed on the underside of the bezel,
possibly because the inscription was secondary, or because the design of the
ring left no room for the inscription on its top. Both are decorated with Christian
imagery in the Trewhiddle style. On the king’s ring two peacocks flank a tree of
life, while on the queen’s ring a quatrefoil design surrounds the lamb of God
nimbed and flanked by his monogram. The motifs are undoubtedly meant to
convey both the devotion of the two individuals and, more importantly, the
sacred nature of their rulership. They may have carried particular royal associ-
ations, as they appear elsewhere in art associated with both the courts of the
English kingdoms and that of Carolingian France.111

109
See www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/H_1829-1114-1.
110
See www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/H_AF-458.
111
Karkov, Art of Anglo-Saxon England, 124–8; Webster, ‘Aedificia Nova’, 91–4.
 Art and the Formation of Early Medieval England 47

Towards the end of the tenth and into the eleventh centuries, there is
increasing evidence from both the art-historical and documentary records
that the judgment and virtue of kings and queens was questioned.112 One
place in which this is most clearly evident is in the texts of the Nowell Codex
of the Beowulf manuscript.113 The manuscript includes a copy of The Wonders
of the East, a fantastical account of different peoples, creatures, and plants that
were believed to exist in a geography including Babylon, India, Egypt, and
Ethiopia. The areas covered include those from which the garnets, amethyst,
ivory, and, perhaps, some of the beads with which I began this section were
imported (India, Ethiopia, and the Red Sea area), so it is fitting to turn to the
ways in which these areas were imagined several centuries later at its end. The
Wonders of the East is derived from the travel narratives and wonder tales of
the classical world and was popular in early medieval England, with three
different versions of the text surviving: Cotton Vitellius A.xv, fols. 98v–106v
(c.1000); London, BL, Cotton MS Tiberius B.xv, 78v–87v (c.1025–50);114
and Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 614, 34v–52r (mid-twelfth-century).115
The two pre-Conquest copies of the text are illustrated with very different images,
and thus the way in which they envisage the people who inhabit ‘the East’ is very
different. In the Tiberius B.v cycle, humans are dressed as humans, and the
non-human, or only partially human, wonders are without clothing or other
accoutrements. In Vitellius A.xv, however, some creatures sport human clothing
or jewellery. The Homodubii (doubtful- or maybe-men, fol. 102v) who live near
the Red Sea, like the Ethiopians (fol. 106v) or the English, wear bracelets or arm-
rings. These details suggest that they were perceived as not entirely different from
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the population of early England but also that the animal and the human are
intertwined with each other. Other wonders appear to be naked but, on closer
examination, can be seen to be wearing what can only be described as wonder-
suits or monster-suits.116 The body of the famous Blemmye (a headless creature
with its face on its chest) is naked on folio 82r of Tiberius B.v but appears to be
wearing a transparent tunic with a hem at its knees and a neckline visible above its
face on folio 102v of Vitellius A.xv. The Vitellius Blemmye also wears shoes and
stockings. Similar details of the edges of sleeves, necklines, or folds of drapery
appear on other of the seemingly naked wonders, such as the giant boar-tusked

112
Karkov, ‘Conquest and Material Culture’; Treharne, Living through the Conquest.
113
See www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Cotton_MS_Vitellius_A_XV.
114
See www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Cotton_MS_Tiberius_B_V/1.
115
Folios 34v–48r of the Oxford manuscript are a copy of the Tiberius B.v miniatures; the rest of
the text and miniatures are from the bestiary tradition. See https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk
/objects/a43be554-c5b0-42f0-94e0-70222bb2a964/.
116
Mittman and Kim, Inconceivable Beasts, 85–101.
 48 England in the Early Medieval World

woman at the bottom of folio 105v.117 Strikingly, the Conopenas, a type of

Cynocephalus (dog-headed creature), on folio 80r of Tiberius B.v is naked,
while his counterpart on folio 100r of Vitellius A.xv wears the crimson and
blue robes of a king – the same colours worn by King Edgar in the frontispiece
of the 966 New Minster Charter (London, BL, Cotton MS Vespasian A.xviii,
fol. 2v). Moreover, the Vitellius Conopenas holds an orb in his left hand and
a sceptre in his right. His cloak is secured at the shoulder by a rectangular
clasp, much like the Sutton Hoo shoulder-clasp in shape and painted yellow, as
is the orb, to represent gold.118 Both his dress and the objects he carries mark
him as a king or a creature who performs as a king. The text, however, makes it
quite clear that he is a beast, not a human.

Eac swylce þær beoð cende healfhundingas þa syndon hatene conopenas hy

habbað horses mana ⁊ eafores tuxas ⁊ hunda heafdu ⁊ heora oroð bið swylce
fyres leg. Þas land beoð neah þæm burgum þe beoð eallum worldwelum
gefylled þa is on þa suð healfe egyptana landes.

[And likewise half-hounds are born there who are called conopenas. They
have horses’ manes and boars’ tusks and dogs’ heads and their breath is like
a fire’s flame. This land is near the cities that are filled with all worldly wealth,
that is on the south half of the land of Egypt.]

The style of the Vitellius Wonders has been labelled crude, but Asa Simon
Mittman and Susan Kim have argued that this is not the case and detailed the
ways in which the images work to bring out specific elements of the text and/or
nature of the wonders.119 Moreover, in the context of this manuscript the human
ornaments given to the wonders and the elaborate dress of the Conopenas can be
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understood as examples of the instability of being that permeate the other four texts
of the Nowell Codex. In the Passio of St Christopher a dog-headed Cynocephalus
becomes a saint, while in the Letter of Alexander the Great to Aristotle Alexander
blunders through India like a monster, killing or looting everything in his path. In
Beowulf the courts of Heorot and the Grendelkin mirror each other, with Heorot
a centre of colonisation doomed to destruction, and in Judith the prince Holofernes
is a heathen-hound whose attributes of greed and violence Judith may begin to
assume as she takes possession of his armour and treasure. What is important to note
here, however, is that, in the art of this period, dress and adornment became more
than just a sign of status and identity in the everyday lives of men and women: they
could also be used to manipulate a reading of a narrative in a certain way. It is
unclear whether the depiction of the Conopenas in the Vitellius Wonders was meant

117
For a discussion of this image, see Karkov, Imagining Anglo-Saxon England, 153–4.
118
Mittman and Kim, Inconceivable Beasts, 17–18; Karkov, Imagining Anglo-Saxon England, 106.
119
Mittman and Kim, Inconceivable Beasts.
 Art and the Formation of Early Medieval England 49

to suggest that even beasts could be kings, or whether it was meant to suggest that all
kings are beasts, or whether all the images of the wonders question identity as
something that one can put on or take off like the armour of the fabulated warriors
discussed. Whatever the case, by the end of the first millennium English artists were
perfectly capable of using visual details and discrepancies or gaps between images
and the words they accompanied to create ambiguities, alternative readings, or
counter-narratives or even to subvert established traditions or ideas. This ability is
a well-known attribute of the designer(s) of the far more famous Bayeux Tapestry
(more correctly referred to as the Bayeux Embroidery),120 unlike the Vitellius
Wonders, considered an artistic masterpiece, that I will discuss in the next section.

4 The Hand of the Artist

The names of only a small number of artists are known from pre-Norman England,
usually from the inscriptions that they left on the works they created. A section of
gold foil on the late-seventh-century Harford Farm disc brooch (Norwich Castle
Museum) was repaired by a craftsman who added a runic inscription on the back
stating that ‘Luda repaired this brooch’. The eleventh-century Brussels Reliquary
Cross bears the inscription ‘Drahmal me worhte’ (‘Drahmal made me’), and the
tenth- or eleventh-century Pershore censer cover is inscribed ‘Godric me worhte’
(‘Godric made me’). Such inscriptions may be advertisements for a metalsmith’s
work and/or a record of an act of piety.121 Documentary sources record the names
of other artists. Boniface wrote Abbess Eadburg requesting that the nuns of Thanet
provide him with a copy of the Epistles of Peter written in gold. He did not mention
images, but miniatures and letters were produced with the same tools and often by
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the same people. Eadfrith was scribe/artist of the Lindisfarne Gospels, in which the
illuminated initials and incipits reveal that, from the beginning of English manu-
script production, word and image were often inseparable. The terms used for
creating words and images could also be the same. The portrait of St Matthew with
symbols of the other evangelists on folio 5v of the eighth-century Trier Gospels
(Trier, Domschatz cod. 61) is signed ‘Thomas scribsit’. Thomas signs on both
folios 11r and 125v as one of the scribes who produced the manuscript’s text, so it is
likely that his signature on folio 5v indicates his production of the image.
Conversely, in the early-ninth-century De Abbatibus, Æthelwulf wrote of a scribe
‘pingere . . . uerba’.122 Godeman, the scribe of the tenth-century Benedictional of St
Æthelwold, could also have been an illuminator or at least have had a hand in the
manuscript’s illumination. Eadui Basan (Eadui the Fat) is thought to have been the

120
On the use of ‘tapestry’ versus ‘embroidery’, see Caviness, ‘Anglo-Saxon Women’.
121
See Coatsworth and Pinder, Anglo-Saxon Goldsmith, 80.
122
Dodwell, Anglo-Saxon Art, 55–6, notes 82, 83.
 50 England in the Early Medieval World

artist of some of the miniatures in the manuscripts in which he appears as scribe –

the miniature of Benedict with the monks of Canterbury may be his work, as the
image’s inscriptions are in his hand, and the monk at Benedict’s feet is so different
from the rest of the monks depicted that it is believed to be a self-portrait.123 He may
also have been the artist of the Hannover/Eadui Gospels in which the four evangel-
ist portraits document the scribal (or artistic) process, from preparing the pen to
displaying the finished book.124
Evidence of itinerant illuminators may appear in the tenth century.125 This
remains debatable, but it is indisputable that the hands of some scribes and artists
are visible in manuscripts attributed to different houses, although this could mean
that monks moved or were lent to other monasteries for specific projects rather than
that they were itinerant illuminators. The period also saw an increase in diverse and
individual styles in all media – like the different styles of the Vitellius and Tiberius
versions of the Wonders of the East. The precise geometry and lines of the
Lindisfarne Gospels reveal nothing of the eccentricities of an individual hand like
those of the artists who produced the drawings in either of the two copies of the
Wonders, because this copy of the Gospels, as the colophon states, was made for
God and St Cuthbert, and individual expression was considered an act of vanity.126
The Beowulf manuscript, however, contains poems and wonder tales and could well
have been made for a secular patron, while Tiberius B.v is a pseudo-scientific
miscellany. The meticulously carved designs and classicising figures of the eighth-
century Bewcastle Cross do not reveal the individual hand of the artist in the way
that the more imperfectly laid out and executed designs and images, or the puzzling
compositions of the tenth-century Leeds or Dearham Crosses (Figures 4 and 9),
do.127 However, for much of the Middle Ages the patrons of art or architecture were
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considered to be as much responsible for the creation as the artist was, if not more
so. The Alfred Jewel states that Alfred ordered it to be made, and the Bewcastle
Cross inscription states that Hwætred and another man erected it in memory of one
or more people because they were the ones considered central to the meaning and
function of the works, not the artists who physically made them. The sculptor Lyl’s
name appears on a ninth-century cross at Urswick (Lancashire); however, the
names of sculptors and masons are largely unrecorded, possibly because sculpture
and architecture in particular were credited to patrons rather than artists. The life of
Wilfrid details the marvellous architecture and fittings of Ripon and Hexham but

123
Pfaff, ‘Eadui Basan’. 124 Karkov, ‘Writing and Having Written’.
125
Gameson, ‘An Itinerant English Master’.
126
Chapter 57 of the Rule of St Benedict states that demonstrations of pride in artistic skill required
artists be removed from their work until they humbled themselves and received permission to
return to it: see www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/50040.
127
Karkov and Treharne, ‘Presence of the Hands’.
 Art and the Formation of Early Medieval England 51

attributes them to Bishop Wilfrid rather than to his masons. Moreover, most works
of early medieval art were produced by workshops – like the Brompton (North
Yorkshire) workshop of sculptors responsible for a series of hogbacks and other
monuments in the early tenth century, or by teams like the four men who created the
Lindisfarne Gospels.

Metalwork
Metalwork was amongst the most valued forms of art due to the precious materials
used. In early England, evidence of metalworking exists from a variety of settings
and settlement types, including monasteries and estates or courts, and metalsmiths
were noteworthy enough to be referred to in the poems The Fortunes of Men (line
73a) and The Gifts of Men (lines 58–9), while the legendary smith Weland appears
in several texts and placenames. In their study of early English goldsmiths,
Coatsworth and Pinder note that, in the fifth to early eighth centuries, most evidence
for fine metalworking comes from the graves of the metalworkers, but that a sixth-
century square-headed brooch mould found at Mucking, Essex, and a fifth-century
gold coin with a jeweller’s rouge stuck to it from Canterbury indicate that work-
shops existed in both villages and high-status settlements like Canterbury.128 There
is also evidence for metalworking of all types within monasteries. Fragments of
seventh- or early-eighth-century moulds were uncovered at Hartlepool, a double
monastery. The archaeological evidence came from the women’s section of the
monastery,129 indicating that women were involved in the art, though it’s not clear in
what capacity. Metalworking evidence has also come from many other monastic
sites including Whitby, Wearmouth-Jarrow, and Lindisfarne.
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During the eighth and ninth centuries, metalworking remains are found in
increasing numbers in towns, especially important trading towns such as York
and Hamwic (Southampton), and at rural settlements and estates including
Brandon, Suffolk, and Flixborough, Lincolnshire. In the tenth and eleventh
centuries, most evidence for workshops comes from towns; however, metal-
working did continue on aristocratic and royal estates. A tenth-century crucible
for melting gold comes from the estate of Wynflæd at Faccombe (Netherton),
Northamptonshire. Wynflæd’s will documents that she left a wooden cup
decorated with gold to Eadwold so that he could use the gold to enlarge his arm-
ring (‘þæt he ice his beah mid þæm golde’).130
Some goldsmiths had elite status. Dunstan, abbot of Glastonbury (later
archbishop of Canterbury and saint), Manning, abbot of Evesham, and

128
Coatsworth and Pinder, Anglo-Saxon Goldsmith, 21, 38.
129
Daniels, ‘Anglo-Saxon Monastery at Church Close’.
130
Coatsworth and Pinder, Anglo-Saxon Goldsmith, 22 n.5, 65 n.3, 211.
 52 England in the Early Medieval World

Spearhafoc, abbot of Abingdon, were all metalworkers as well as artists in other

media.131 Dunstan was goldsmith, scribe, painter, and, possibly, textile worker –
though the portrait of him kneeling before Christ in his Classbook (Oxford,
Bodleian Library, Auct. F.4.32 fol. 1r) is not by his hand. The Chronicle of the
abbots of Evesham describes Manning as a scribe, painter, and goldsmith and
records a workshop of secular artists (artificiosi) at Evesham under the direction
of the master Goderic.132 Spearhafoc, described as a painter and goldsmith,
created large statues of Letard and Queen Bertha for Letard’s tomb at
Canterbury and was commissioned to make a crown for Edward the
Confessor (although he fled the country with the gold and jewels for it).133
The link between manuscript art and metalworking is not surprising, as tools
such as compasses and rulers were used in designing both pages and precious
objects; both shared motifs; and both involved small-scale work and attention to
fine detail, as the intricacy of surviving fine metalwork indicates. Gold and
silver were also used in the writing and illumination of luxury manuscripts.
Some goldsmiths – especially those attached to estates, perhaps also to
monastic workshops – were not free. In the tenth-century will of Æthelgifu,
the goldsmith Mann was freed with his family and perhaps also his assistant.134
Others, while free, were hardly amongst the elite. Documentation of changes to
smiths’ status and references to their travel or work for different patrons
indicates that many may have been itinerant. Alternatively, they may simply
have changed workshops or patrons as their circumstances changed. English
goldsmiths are also known to have worked on the Continent. The eighth-century
Tassilo chalice was likely made by an English goldsmith working in Bavaria.
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Whatever their status, smiths were considered professional artists by the tenth
century. Even an elite smith like Spearhafoc worked for both monastic and lay
patrons on commission, and the fact that he fled the country with the king’s gold
and jewels suggests that he didn’t consider the church his primary profession.
Indeed, Spearhafoc may have used his artistic talents to seek the king’s favour
along with the wealth and prestige associated with high ecclesiastical office.135

Textiles
The production of luxury textiles is aligned with that of metalwork, as gold and
precious stones were used in weaving, embroidering, and embellishing textiles for
elite patrons. It is impossible to speak of the visibility of artists’ hands when it

131
Coatsworth and Pinder, Anglo-Saxon Goldsmith, 208–19.
132
Dodwell, Anglo-Saxon Art, 258 n.37, 66.
133
Coatsworth and Pinder, Anglo-Saxon Goldsmith, 209 n.14, n.15.
134
Coatsworth and Pinder, Anglo-Saxon Goldsmith, 213 n.40.
135
Dodwell, Anglo-Saxon Art, 46–7.
 Art and the Formation of Early Medieval England 53

comes to textiles as so few survive, and those that do were most likely workshop
productions, but early medieval England was especially renowned for particular
types of textiles, and these can be considered characteristic of English hands.
Luxury silks were imported from Rome, Byzantium, and beyond from an
early date. In addition to the vestments made in tenth-century Winchester
especially for the shrine of St Cuthbert, Cuthbert’s coffin contained a seventh-
century silk from Byzantium decorated with a nature goddess motif, an eighth-
or ninth-century Byzantine silk known as the ‘Earth and Ocean’ silk, and the
tenth- or eleventh-century ‘Rider’ silk which may have been imported from
Persia.136 Some imported silks were reworked or repurposed, and many were no
doubt passed on as gifts, so the networks through which both finished textiles
and raw materials entered England are difficult to pinpoint.
The production of luxury textiles was largely women’s work, though it was never
exclusively so. St Dunstan, for example, supplied figural designs for a stole,137
indicating a role and interest in textile production even if the stole was not actually
made with his own hands. However, England was most renowned for its needle-
women and especially for their embroidery. The Liber Eliensis records that
Æthelthryth of Ely embroidered a stole and maniple with gold and precious jewels
for St Cuthbert with her own hands.138 Goscelin wrote that Edith of Wilton was
skilled at painting, writing, and music but especially at needlework:

She embroidered with flowers the pontifical vestments of Christ with all her
skill and capacity to make splendid. Here purple, dyed with Punic red, with
murex and Sidonian shellfish, and twice dipped scarlet . . . were interwoven
with gold; chrysolite, topaz, onyx and beryl and precious stones were inter-
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twined with gold; union pearls, the shells’ treasure, which only India pro-
duces in the east and Britain, the land of the English in the west, were set like
the stars in gold; the golden insignia of the cross, the golden images of the
saints were outlined with a surround of pearls.139

The description is exaggerated and laced with biblical allusions, but on

a general level it accords with surviving examples of luxury ecclesiastical
textiles. Goscelin praised English women generally for the high quality of
their embroidery and especially for the fabrics that they decorated with gold-
work and precious stones.140 Edith also had a fondness for dressing in rich
apparel, wearing purple over her hair shirt, for which she was criticised by the
bishop, and keeping a chest full of fine clothes.141

136
Owen-Crocker, Dress in Anglo-Saxon England, 299 n.35
137
Dodwell, Anglo-Saxon Art, 39. 138 Fairweather, Liber Eliensis, 30.
139
Wright and Loncar, ‘Vita of Edith’, 38. 140
Dodwell, Anglo-Saxon Art, 45, 57.
141
Wright and Loncar, ‘Vita of Edith’, 40, 42–3.
 54 England in the Early Medieval World

Queen Edith, wife of Edward the Confessor, was also a renowned embroi-
derer, clothing Edward in silks, gold, and jewels, including gold ornaments
made by smiths working to her requirements.

In the ornamentation of these no count was made of the cost of the precious
stones, rare gems and shining pearls that were used. As regards mantles,
tunics, boots and shoes, the amount of gold which flowed in the various
complicated floral designs was not weighed. The throne, adorned with cover-
ings embroidered with gold, gleamed in every part . . . His saddle and horse-
trappings were hung with little beasts and birds made from gold by smiths
under her direction.142

Professional embroiderers are identified in various documentary sources.

A woman named Leofgyth worked for the court both before and after 1066,
and shortly after the Conquest a woman named Ælfgyth was employed by
the sheriff of Buckinghamshire to teach his daughter to embroider with
gold.143
Two sets of ecclesiastical textiles embroidered with gold and other sub-
stances survive. The earliest are the late-eighth- or early-ninth-century
Maaseik embroideries known as the casula of saints Harlindis and Relindis.
The casula consists of a number of pieces of embroidery worked in coloured
silk on a linen background in a southern English style. They are decorated with
embroidered arcading filled with zoomorphic, foliate, and geometric ornament
worked in multicoloured silk and gold threads. They include painted cloth and
metalwork appliqués, and there is evidence of pearls having been sewn onto the
arcades and roundels that enclose the decoration, although these may not have
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been part of the original fabric.144 The incorporation of metalwork and painting
into textiles was likely more common than is thought given the number of artists
working in multiple media recorded in the documentary sources.
The stole, maniple, and “girdle” from St Cuthbert’s coffin were made in
southern England between 909 and 916. Inscriptions embroidered on the stole
and maniple state that they were made for Frithestan, bishop of Winchester, on
the order of Queen Ælfflæd, wife of Edward the Elder. They were probably
presented to Cuthbert’s shrine in 934 by Edward’s son Æthelstan. The embroi-
deries are worked in gold and coloured silks on a woven silk background and are
important as surviving examples of a major art form now largely lost to us – and
because their figural and foliate ornament are early examples of the so-called
‘Winchester Style’ that would become popular throughout England in
the second half of the tenth century. The style, which will be discussed in

142 143
Barlow, Life of King Edward, 24–5. Dodwell, Anglo-Saxon Art, 70, 72, 78.
144
See further Budny and Tweddle, ‘Maaseik Embroideries’.
 Art and the Formation of Early Medieval England 55

more detail, is characterised by lush acanthus ornament, rich colours, and, in

manuscript illumination, lavish gold borders filled with acanthus ornament that
expands across and through the bars of the borders as if they were a trellis.
Documentary sources reveal that elaborate vestments and altar cloths like the
Cuthbert embroideries were popular gifts and bequests throughout early medi-
eval England. In the eighth century the altars at Ripon and Hexham were
covered with silk decorated with gold,145 while Æthelwulf’s De Abbatibus
(written 803–21) describes wall-hangings at Lindisfarne that depicted the
miracles of Christ and were worked in glowing red metal – presumably
gold.146 In the tenth and eleventh centuries, King Edgar gave gold-
embroidered cloaks to Ely and Glastonbury, a woman named Wulfwaru willed
a set of mass-vestments to Bath Abbey, and Alfwaru left an alb and chasuble,
wall-hangings, and a richly decorated cushion seat to Ramsey Abbey.147
The c.1080 Bayeux Embroidery is the only surviving early medieval English
wall-hanging, but sources indicate that this type of artwork was a common form
of religious and secular decoration. The hangings left by Alfwaru to Ramsey
Abbey, along with those given to the Cuthbert community by King Æthelstan
and the hanging worked with scenes from the life of Byrhtnoth (hero of the
Battle of Maldon) given to Ely by his widow Ælfflæd, may all have been in
secular use before they were bequeathed to the church. Like these, the
Embroidery is undoubtedly and primarily the work of English needlewomen,
even if men might have been involved in some capacity.148 The Bayeux
Embroidery is less elaborate than the casula of Harlindis and Relindis or the
Cuthbert embroideries. It is worked in wool thread on a linen background, but
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its length (68.4 m) and narrative detail make up for the humbler materials used.
While there is no proof, the Embroidery is thought to have been made for
Bishop Odo of Bayeux, probably for a secular hall. The Embroidery details the
events leading up to the Norman conquest of England, with the missing final
portion believed to have depicted William enthroned, balancing the image of
Edward the Confessor enthroned with which it begins. It is not clear, however,
that the Embroidery was meant as a celebration of the Norman victory. The
artists have not guided the viewer to either a pro- or anti-Norman stance;
instead, they created a work that allows viewers to put together the different
parts of the composition – the main visual narrative, the border images, and the
textual labels that accompany but do not explain most scenes – to create
different interpretations of or commentaries on the events depicted. How the

145 146
Colgrave, Life of Bishop Wilfrid, 37, 47, 121. Campbell, De Abbatibus, lines 633–5.
147
Dodwell, Anglo-Saxon Art, 23.
148
See Caviness, ‘Anglo-Saxon Women’, for a discussion of the Embroidery and the gendering of
the terms ‘tapestry’ and ‘embroidery’ in scholarship.
 56 England in the Early Medieval World

scene of a woman standing in a doorway with a man reaching for her cheek in
the main panel, the images of two naked men in the border beneath them, and
the inscription ‘Ubi unus clericus et Ælfgyva’ (‘Here a cleric and Ælfgyva’) are
meant to be interpreted remains a matter of debate. Who is the cleric? Is the
reference to the English queen Ælfgyfu/Emma? But she was of Norman birth. In
other words, one could read the Embroidery as either pro-Norman or pro-
English, depending on how one put the different elements together. This is
typical of much English art of the late tenth and eleventh centuries and may
reflect the problematic and divisive reigns of rulers from Æthelred II through to
William the Conqueror.149

Manuscript Illumination
As indicated, some goldsmiths were also scribes and/or illuminators of manu-
scripts, and images like that of the monk – possibly Eadui Basan – at the feet of St
Benedict in the Eadui Psalter (Figure 7) may be self-portraits. While there is no
way to be certain that the image is a self-portrait, the details of the stubbly chin
and girth of the monk suggest an individuality that is in keeping with the idea of
a portrait. The other images of reading or writing monks that fill the pages of
early medieval English manuscripts may also be portraits or self-portraits. While
we do not know their names, individual illuminators’ hands are often recognis-
able in the same way that scribes’ are. The hand of the artist of the Ramsey
Psalter (London, BL, Harley MS 2904), produced c.975–1000, possibly in
Winchester but more likely in Ramsey, has also been identified in the c.1000
Boulogne Gospels (Boulogne, Bibliothèque Municipale MS 11) attributed to
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Saint-Bertin. The attribution of the manuscripts to different houses on both

sides of the English Channel might indicate that this artist was itinerant,150
although his mastery of drawing may simply have meant that he was a monk
who either changed houses or whose talents were in great demand. The
Crucifixion on folio 3v of the Ramsey Psalter (Figure 14) both is iconographic-
ally complex and demonstrates an impressive ability to manipulate line and form
in order to convey motion and emotion, making it one of the period’s great
surviving works of art.151 While not as admired as the Ramsey Psalter
Crucifixion, the images of the Boulogne Gospel exhibit the same expressive
forms and facial expressions as well as some of the same delicacy and variety of
lines. For the most part, however, illuminators tended to work in the styles that
were popular in a given region or period, making individual hands difficult to
149
Karkov, ‘Conquest and Material Culture’.
150
He also worked on Orléans, Bibliothèque Municipale MS 175, attributed to Fleury.
151
Karkov, Art of Anglo-Saxon England, 196–9; Heslop, ‘The Implication of the Utrecht Psalter’,
273; online at www.bl.uk/collection-items/ramsey-psalter.
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Figure 14 Ramsey Psalter Crucifixion, London, British Library, Harley MS

2904, fol. 3v. Wikimedia Commons/public domain.

distinguish unless specific forms of line or details of images are repeated from
manuscript to manuscript.
The styles of early medieval English art are defined geographically. Art
historians write about the Insular or Hiberno-Saxon style of the seventh–eighth
centuries, popular in northern Britain and Ireland and exemplified by the
Lindisfarne Gospels (Figure 6), or the Mercian Style of the eighth–ninth
centuries. However, these classifications include art in all media, not just
 58 England in the Early Medieval World

manuscripts. There are also sub-styles. The ‘Tiberius’ group of manuscripts is

formed by a number of books produced south of the Humber in Mercia, Kent,
and Wessex during the eighth and ninth centuries. It includes manuscripts
attributed to Canterbury and/or nearby monasteries such as Minster-in-
Thanet, as well as Mercian houses.152 The group is united by its classicising
figure style and a distinctive naturalistic style of animal ornament, with ener-
getically posed beasts contained in discrete compartments and long-necked
biting beasts, the latter often forming initials or parts of initials.153 Michelle
Brown proposed that three of the group’s manuscripts (Harley 7653, Harley
2965, and Royal 2.A.xx) were made or owned by women and suggested further
that either of or both the Vespasian Psalter and the Stockholm Codex Aureus
(Figures 2 and 3) had been produced at the double monastery of Minster-in-
Thanet.154 While there is no proof of the production of luxury manuscripts at
Minster-in-Thanet, there is also no reason to believe that such manuscripts
could not have been produced there. Brown’s point is that we shouldn’t assume
that all manuscripts were the product of big-name male communities like
Canterbury unless otherwise proven. As is the case with the majority of the
period’s manuscripts, the hands of individual scribes have been identified, but
not those of individual illuminators, so that for the latter we can generally speak
only of schools of illumination. Adding to the difficulty of identifying individ-
ual illuminators is the fact that illuminations can rarely be dissected into
individual repeated pen strokes in the same way that letters can, as well as the
possibility that an image could be the work of more than one artist. Even
manuscripts as close stylistically as the Codex Aureus and the Vespasian
Psalter show subtle differences in style – the use of line or shading and
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highlighting – when examined closely.

The two named, or rather misnamed, styles of tenth- and eleventh-century
illumination – the ‘Winchester Style’ and the style of outline drawing once
known as the ‘Canterbury Style’ – include manuscripts that actually exhibit

152
London, BL, Cotton MS Vespasian A.i (Vespasian Psalter), eighth century; Stockholm,
Kungliga Biblioteket, MS A.135 (Stockholm Codex Aureus), mid-eighth century; London,
BL, Cotton MS Tiberius C.ii (Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica), eighth–ninth century; C.C.C.C.,
MS 69 (Gregory the Great, Homilae), eighth–ninth century; C.C.C.C. MS 144 (Corpus
Glossary), early ninth century; London, BL, Royal MS 1.E.vi (Royal Bible), 800–50;
Vatican, Bibl. Apost., Barb. lat. 570 (Barbarini Gospels), late eighth century; London, BL,
Harley MS 7653 (prayerbook), late eight–early ninth century; Oxford, Bodleian Library Hatton
93 (Commentary on the Mass), eighth–ninth century; St Petersburg, State Library, Cod. F.v.1.8
(St Petersburg Gospels), c.800; London, BL, Royal MS 2.A.xx (Royal prayerbook), 800–25;
London, BL, Harley MS 2965 (Book of Nunnaminster), 800–25; Cambridge, University
Library, MS Ll.1.10 (Book of Cerne), c.820–40.
153
On the Tiberius Group, see Brown, ‘Mercian Manuscripts?’.
154
Brown, ‘Female Book-Ownership’.
 Art and the Formation of Early Medieval England 59

a wide range of and combinations of styles. In both cases, the names conform
to Brown’s criticism of assigning manuscripts to groups identified solely with
the most prominent male monastic and ecclesiastical centres; and manuscripts
illuminated using the techniques and motifs used to distinguish these styles
were produced across the country and not just in the areas around Winchester
and Canterbury. That said, the Winchester Style gets its name from the fact
that some of the most famous of its manuscripts are identified with figures or
events clearly connected to Winchester, like the New Minster Charter or the
Benedictional of St Æthelwold. However, the style also appears in luxury
manuscripts not associated with either the court or church at Winchester, like
the Ramsey Psalter. The great initial B of Psalm 1 (Figure 15) displays the
golden barred borders and acanthus ornament characteristic of the
‘Winchester’ style, but the Crucifixion miniature that faces it is in the outline
drawing technique associated with the style of Canterbury manuscripts such
as the Harley 603 Psalter (London, BL, Harley MS 603), and, as noted already,
its artist also worked in Saint Bertin and Fleury. Admittedly, it has been
suggested that the Ramsey Psalter is indeed a Winchester manuscript, but
the Crucifixion is not in the Winchester style. The main features identified
with Winchester manuscripts are the fleshy acanthus ornament that often
wraps itself around the gilded trellis-like frames, the extensive use of gold,
and the richly coloured figures whose faces and forms are modelled from
layers of coloured-ink wash, but, in the image of the monks of Canterbury and
St Benedict in the Eadui Psalter, this figure style is combined with the outline
drawing style more commonly associated with the ‘Canterbury’ school of
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illumination.
Drawing, wherever it was produced, was a major art form in tenth- and
eleventh-century England. It was far more popular in England than anywhere
else in Europe at the time, and this is especially true of coloured outline
drawing. In 1952, Francis Wormald was struck by the ‘extremely calligraphic’
nature of the English drawing style,155 while more recently Melanie Holcomb
has discussed both the sophisticated use of drawing in England from as early as
the late ninth century and the profound influence drawings from early medieval
England were to have on post-Conquest art on both sides of the Channel.156
A wide range of individual hands and drawing techniques is evident within the
corpus of tenth- and eleventh-century English drawings. The firm lines of the
drawing of St Dunstan at the feet of Christ, for example, contrast markedly with
the flickering energy and variety of pen strokes seen in the Ramsey Psalter
Crucifixion.

155
Wormald, English Drawings, 31, 55–6. 156
Holcomb, ‘Strokes of Genius’.
 60 England in the Early Medieval World
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Figure 15 Ramsey Psalter initial to Psalm 1, London, British Library, Harley

MS 2904, fol. 4r. Wikimedia Commons/public domain.

The Harley 603 Psalter (London, BL, Harley MS 603)157 is an appropriate

work with which to end this section for a number of reasons: the creative way in
which its artists made use of specific sources or models disproving the common
notion that medieval artists were mere copyists; its individual artists’ hands are
157
See www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?index=235&ref=Harley_MS_603.
 Art and the Formation of Early Medieval England 61

identifiable; it was illuminated over a 100-year period, providing evidence of

the ways in which illuminators (and scribes) responded to or accommodated the
work of their predecessors; it demonstrates how art could be used to provide
subtle commentary on historical or political events.
Harley 603 was begun in the early eleventh century at either St
Augustine’s or Christ Church, Canterbury. It is a loose copy of, and shows
the influence of, the ninth-century Carolingian Utrecht Psalter (Utrecht,
Universiteitsbibliotheek, MS 32), which was brought to England shortly
before the year 1000. Like Utrecht, each psalm is accompanied by
a dynamic pen and ink drawing that provides a ‘literal’ rendering of the
individual words or verses of the psalm. It is not, however, a literal copy of
Utrecht. The drawings in Harley 603 are created from a variety of coloured
inks rather than the monochrome brown ink of Utrecht, there is great vari-
ation in the details copied, others are omitted, some images were signifi-
cantly altered to incorporate multiple references, a prefatory drawing was
added, and inhabited and historiated initials were included throughout
Harley. The initials in Utrecht are quite plain. The opening sequence to
Psalm 1 is a good example of the way in which the artists remained close
to the images in Utrecht but added details that both change the image and are
picked up in drawings later in the manuscript. A prefatory miniature depict-
ing the Trinity has been added to Harley 603 (folio 1r), showing God and
Christ embracing, their faces pressed close against each other, while the dove
of the Holy Spirit whispers into God’s ear. A blank scroll unrolls across their
bodies and is grasped by the feet of the Holy Spirit, indicating the inseparable
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nature of the three-in-one and the primacy of the Word. The blessed man on
the left-hand side of the drawing in Harley 603 (folio 1v) reads the tiny
opening words to Psalm 1 that are written on the pages of the book in front of
him, while the same figure in Utrecht is writing in his book, which displays
tiny dots and squiggles rather than actual words. In the historiated initial with
which the text of the Psalm on the facing page (Figure 16) begins, Christ
stands holding an open book and a scroll that unrolls into the hands of an
archbishop, most likely Alphege of Canterbury, lying prostrate at his feet.
Together the three drawings demonstrate a focus on reading, writing, and
understanding the word/Word, as well as the incorporation of figures or
events from Canterbury history into the Psalm narratives that are unique.
Despite the focus on reading and the Word, however, the eccentric text of the
manuscript could actually never have been used; it was intended from the
beginning as a display manuscript.
The hands of ten different artists have been identified in the Psalter’s draw-
ings, with two of the artists also amongst the manuscript’s four scribes. William
 62 England in the Early Medieval World
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Figure 16 Initial to Psalm 1, London, British Library, Harley MS 603, fol. 2r.
Wikimedia Commons/public domain.

Noel has identified the artists by the letters A through J, with scribes D and
E being the artist-scribes.158 Artists A, B, C, D, and F all worked c.1010–30,
Artist E c.1020–30, Artist G in the 1070s, and Artist H c.1100–1150. Artist
A made the illustrations in the first quire (aside from the Trinity) and those on
folios 9r, 10v, 11r, 11v, 16r, and 16v (all in quire two). Artist B illustrated quires
three and four and added the drawings to folios 12r, 15r, and 17r of quire two.
Artist C made the drawings on folios 13 and 14. Artist D illustrated quire nine.

158
The following description of the artists’ work is based on Noel’s identifications, Harley Psalter,
42–120, 207–13.
 Art and the Formation of Early Medieval England 63

Artist F did the drawings in quires ten and eleven and the drawing at the
bottom of folio 59r. Artist E completed folio 15v, did the drawings on folios
53r, 58v, 61r, 62v, 67r, 70r, 70v, and 72v, and added most of the rubrics. Artist
I provided the miniature of the Trinity that prefaces the Psalter, the Beatus vir
initial with the prostrate archbishop for Psalm 1, and the initial for Psalm 101
on folio 50r.159 Artist J did the initials on folios 2r–27v, aside from the Beatus
vir initial, and folio 54r. Artist G completed the drawings on folio 28 and
added a drawing on folio 17v, the initial to Psalm 48, and also added to the
work of the earlier artists. Artist H made the drawings on folios 29r–35r, the
initials to Psalm 51 on folio 29r, and the initial to Psalms 53 and 57 on folios
29v and 31v.
The manuscript was produced in two phases: an early-eleventh-century
phase, during which work proceeded quickly; and a later-eleventh–twelfth
century phase, during which work was sporadic.160 The artists of the second
phase imitated, referred back to, and added to the work of the earlier artists in
the process of creating their own work. For example, Artist-scribe E copied
motifs and stylistic details from the work of earlier Artists A–D and F. His
drawing in the text of Psalm 118 on folio 61r is based on that of Artist F’s
drawing at the beginning of the Psalm.161 Both Artist-scribe E and Artist
G added details to the earlier drawings in order to clarify or update them.162
Artist I’s work on the Trinity miniature and Beatus vir initial is unprecedented
but expands on the focus on word/Word already established in the earlier phase
of production. The Trinity miniature is also an example of the increasing interest
in the representation of internal emotion and drama in art that appeared in the
late tenth and eleventh centuries.163
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Perhaps most notable for its content is the work of the twelfth-century
Artist H, who borrowed details of the style and content of some of his
drawings from Artists G and I, while at the same time creating images
completely his own. His initial to Psalm 51 and drawing to Psalm 52
(Figure 17) on folio 29r refer back to the image of the archbishop at the
feet of Christ in the initial to Psalm 1 by Artist I and the detail of the wicked
man in the drawing that introduces Psalm 1 by Artist A, respectively. The
archbishop in the Psalm 1 initial is believed to be Archbishop Alphege
(1005–12). The man being stoned to death in the illustration to Psalm 52 is
believed to be a thinly veiled reference to Alphege’s martyrdom by the
Danes – he was pelted with bones and then killed with an axe. The image
of the evil king above him is based on that of the wicked man at the right of
159
On Artist I’s work, see Karkov, ‘Reading the Trinity’. 160 Noel, Harley Psalter, 186.
161
Noel, Harley Psalter, 89. 162
Gameson, ‘The Anglo-Saxon Artists’.
163
Karkov, ‘Reading the Trinity’; Raw, Trinity and Incarnation, 15–18.
 64 England in the Early Medieval World
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Figure 17 Illustration of Psalm 52. © The British Library Board, London, British
Library, Harley MS 603, fol. 29r.

the drawing for Psalm 1 and has been interpreted as an anti-military message
against Cnut or his father Svein, who was responsible for Alphege’s
martyrdom.164 The drawing served as model for the twelfth-century St
Alphege (Ælfheah) window in Canterbury Cathedral165 and may have served
as a veiled warning against any contemporary interference with the independ-
ence or wealth of the monastery by the Normans.166

164
Chazelle, ‘Violence and the Virtuous Ruler’, 341; Karkov, ‘Conquest and Material Culture’,
191–2.
165
Noel, Harley Psalter, 101. 166
Karkov, ‘Conquest and Material Culture’, 191–2.
 Art and the Formation of Early Medieval England 65

The Harley Psalter is all about Canterbury history, devotional life, and
manuscript culture. Its artists were in many ways faithful to their original
Utrecht model, but they also departed from it so as to both centre their
Canterbury community of readers and express their individuality as artists.
Harley 603 was ultimately left unfinished, perhaps when the c.1155–60
Eadwine Psalter (Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R.17.1), which is even
more explicitly about Canterbury, was begun.167 The great portrait of the scribe
Eadwine (who may also have been an artist) in conversation with the letters of
the book he has just created on folio 283v of that manuscript is a demonstration
of how the English interest in speaking objects and visual documentation of the
processes of manuscript production continued to develop into the Romanesque
period, as well as the more prominent position both artists and scribes would
enjoy in the art of the later Middle Ages.

5 Looking Back at Early Medieval England

The formation of England did not end with the unification of the various
kingdoms that had been established on the island prior to the Norman
Conquest; indeed, England is still in formation. This final section looks back
at how England saw itself immediately pre- and post-Conquest and how that
image has been perceived from places outside of and times beyond early
medieval England.
In addition to the Wonders of the East, the Tiberius B.v manuscript contains
the famous Cotton world map (Figure 18), which depicts a world in which the
island of Britain is simultaneously set apart from the rest of the world yet
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expands out to create a world in its own image. Britain/England is the angular
shape in the lower left corner, with only Ireland and Thule beyond it. Set apart
though it might be, its shape is repeated in increasingly larger form in the land
mass of Europe just above it and in the much larger shape consisting of Africa,
India, the Middle East, Asia Minor, and Asia beyond that. It is a fantasy of
England as a ‘repeating island’, in Elizabeth DeLoughrey’s development of the
term, an island that eerily foreshadows its own colonial reproduction.
DeLoughrey refers specifically to modern England’s repeating itself in the
island colonies of the British Empire. The geography of the Cotton map uncan-
nily foreshadows that process, and DeLoughrey traces the roots of the island’s
imperial repetition back to its colonisation by the Angles and Saxons.168 The
Cotton map also presents the island as hovering between past and present. It is
167
See https://mss-cat.trin.cam.ac.uk/viewpage.php?index=1229.
168
DeLoughrey, Routes and Roots, 7. Antonio Benítez-Rojo coined the term ‘repeating island’ to
describe a more positive image of the expansion of island culture outward from the Caribbean as
migrants carried their home cultures across the globe: Benítez-Rojo, The Repeating Island.
 66 England in the Early Medieval World
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Figure 18 Cotton world map, London, British Library, Cotton MS Tiberius B.v.,
fol. 56v. Wikimedia Commons/public domain.

labelled Britannia, its Roman name, which had a fluid meaning, sometimes
referring to the whole island and sometimes to just a part of it, although it came
to be equated specifically with England.169 The name Britannia enjoyed par-
ticular popularity during Elizabethan times, coinciding with the expansion of
England overseas and the beginnings of an Empire,170 in which England forced
its image onto much of the world, perhaps even more effectively than had the

169
Davies, First English Empire, 31–53; McColl, ‘Meaning of “Britain”’, 248–69.
170
Hewitt, ‘Britannia (fl. 1st–21st cent.)’.
 Art and the Formation of Early Medieval England 67

Romans. Both that earlier Roman empire and the history, language, and art of early
medieval England would have profound roles to play in the images and practices of
the British Empire and the nationalism and racism that went along with it.
The English had imagined themselves as exceptional since the age of Bede,
both isolated at the edge of the world and central to it, welcoming and assimilating
some cultures, expelling or isolating others. Bede documents the assimilation of
and violence towards the Britons, a scenario backed up by the archaeological
evidence.171 Seemingly more welcoming, the prologue to the laws of King Alfred
stipulated that ‘[u]tan cumene and elðeodige ne geswenc, ðu no, forðon ðe ge
wæron giu elðeodige on Egipta londe’ (‘you shall not oppress foreigners and
strangers because you were once strangers in the land of Egypt’),172 but its
phrasing sets the English above other peoples by repeating the Exodus myth of
a chosen people. Given these attitudes towards internal and external strangers and
the focus on English and Englishness expressed by Alfred and his successors, it is
ironic that the name Britannia by which the island is known on the Cotton map
and through later history originates from the Welsh/Brittonic name for the island
Prytanī, the Welsh having been amongst the first to be segregated during the early
medieval period. On the map Wales is labelled Morenwergas, which could be
translated as Morgannwg (Glamorgan)173 or as a place of criminals or monsters
(mor-wearg/werg meaning criminal, monster, evil spirit),174 moor-dwellers,175 or
‘wild men of the moors’.176 On the other hand, across the Channel, Brittany and
Normandy are labelled Suðbrytta (South Britain), so, if the map dates from late in
the second quarter of the eleventh century, the choice of Britannia rather than
England may reflect growing Norman interest in the island and a claim to it that
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circumvents Englishness and presages the coming of a new empire.

In Norman England, the pre-Conquest past became a problematic area,
a period with which the new rulers desired to establish continuity, hence
bolstering their legitimacy, but one needing to be kept distant enough that the
past did not become a rallying point for English nationalists. This is seen in the
material record surrounding Durham Cathedral, where the new structure and its
smaller copies at Lindisfarne and Dunfermline employed a new style of archi-
tecture but one that retained some features from the earlier period. The copies of
the cathedral also established links between the reformed Cuthbert community
at Durham, their original home at Lindisfarne, and the seat of their most
powerful patrons, Malcolm and Margaret of Scotland. Margaret was a direct
descendent of King Alfred, and when her daughter, Edith/Matilda, married

171
See Section 1. 172 Gates, ‘Prologue’, translation my own.
173
Foys, Wacha, et al., ‘Morgenwergas’, 174 Karkov, Imagining Anglo-Saxon England, 70.
175
Naismith, https://twitter.com/rory_naismith/status/973146027736825856?lang=en.
176
McGuigan, ‘Neither Scotland nor England’, 110.
 68 England in the Early Medieval World

Henry I in 1100 the bond between the old West Saxon royal line and the new
Norman one was cemented.
I have described a certain ambivalence in the art of the period, especially at
places like Dunfermline, where Malcolm and Margaret alternated in their support
for either the English or the Normans depending on political expediency. The
past, no matter how heavily reworked or rewritten, could not be buried and
continued to haunt. This is documented by the chroniclers Symeon of Durham,
William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon, and Geoffrey of Monmouth, all of
whom rewrote the past and its continuity with the present in very different ways.
The past also persists in poems such as Durham and The Grave. In Durham, the
city with its cathedral becomes a kind of island paradise surrounded by a river full
of fish and woods abounding in game but inhabited only by the dead.

Is in ðere byri eac bearnum gecyðed

ðe arfesta eadig Cudberch

and ðes clene cyninges heafud,
Osuualdes, Engle leo, and Aidan bsicop,
Eadberch and Eadfirð æðele geferes.

Is ðer inne midd heom Æðelwold biscop

and breoma bocera Beda, and Boisil abbot,
ðe clene Cudberte on gecheðe

lerde lustum, and he his lara well genom.

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Eardiæð æt ðem eadige in in ðem minstre

unarimede reliquia,

ðær monia wundrum gewurðað ðæs ðe writ seggeð,

midd ðene drihnes wer domes bideð.
(lines 9–21)

[There is also in the city, as it is known to men, the righteous blessed Cuthbert
and the head of the pure king – Oswald, lion of the English – and Bishop
Aidan, Eadbert and Eadfrith, the noble companions. Inside with them is
Bishop Æthelwold and the famous scholar Bede, and Abbot Boisil, who
vigorously taught the pure Cuthbert in his youth, and he (i.e., Cuthbert)
learned his lessons well. Along with the blessed one, there remain in the
minster countless relics where many miracles occur, as it is said in writing,
awaiting the Judgement with the man of God.]177

177
Text and translation Blurton, ‘Reliquia’, 40–1.
 Art and the Formation of Early Medieval England 69

The poem is preserved only in the late twelfth-century Cambridge, University

Library, Ff.1.27, a compilation of historical texts with a focus on Durham and
the North.
Marjorie Housley describes The Grave as memorialising England as an ever-
present lost soul, an eternally decomposing corpse.178 The Grave is preserved
on folio 170r of the twelfth-century Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 343,
which also contains Old English and Middle English homilies, thus looking to
the past while instructing the reader in the present. It is addressed to a living
person but one already inhabiting the grave.

Swa ðu scealt on molde wunien ful calde,

dimme and deorcæ. Þet den fulæt on honde.

Dureleas is þet hus and dearc hit is wiðinnen.

Đær þu bist feste bidytt and dæð hefð þa cæge.
Ladlic is þet eorð-hus and grim inne to wunien.

Đer þu scealt wunien and wurmes þe todeleð.

Đus ðu bist ilegd and ladæst þine fronden . . .179
(lines 11–17)

[So you must live, stone cold in the earth. In dimness and darkness that den
decays at your hands. Doorless is that house and dark it is within. There you
are imprisoned and death has the key. Terrible is that earth house and it is grim
to live there. There you must live and worms will share you. Thus you are
laid, and you leave your friends . . .]180
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The corpse, like the earlier English past, is dead and beyond reach, but at the
same time it is physically present, not yet dismembered by worms, and emo-
tionally or psychically present in the memories of the speaker/reader. Rather
than maintaining an attachment to the past while discrediting the present,181 the
poem keeps the past encrypted within land and mind, a ghostly presence that
could reappear any time. Death in The Grave is a traumatic event, in Durham
a spiritual one, but both present the reader with spectres of the living dead,
different but equally haunting images of an early English past that will not die.
Conquest has two sides, one violent and destructive and the other concerned
with the preservation of symbols or stories, and this is evident in art no less than
in documentary or literary records. The Harley 603 Psalter is one example, the
twelfth-century Artist H having incorporated elements of pre-Conquest style
and iconography into his own work. Artist H’s additions to the Psalter may have

178
Housley, ‘Uneasy Presences’. 179 Text Jones, Old English Shorter Poems, 230.
180
Translation Jones, ‘Relining The Grave’, 76–7. 181
Housley, ‘Uneasy Presences’, 437.
 70 England in the Early Medieval World

been subtle warnings against royal attempts to interfere with the Canterbury monas-
tery in which it was produced. Similar warnings appear in the lavishly illustrated Life
and Miracles of St Edmund King and Martyr (New York, Pierpont Morgan Library,
M.736) made at Bury St Edmunds c.1125–30.182 Barbara Abou-el-Haj and Cynthia
Hahn have shown how images of an earlier past are deployed in the twelfth-century
present with the manuscript’s depictions of Edmund as a Christ-like figure, the
violent acts committed by the Danes and King Svein, and Svein’s equally violent
death designed as warnings against episcopal and royal attempts to tax and/or
interfere with the running of the monastery.183
The manuscript is one of an interconnected group of artworks promoting the cult
of Edmund and the prominence of Bury St Edmunds c.1070–1130. Edmund was
a ninth-century king of East Anglia martyred by the Danes in 869. The monastery
was founded in 1020 and enjoyed substantial political and economic privileges,
making it amongst the wealthiest of England’s monasteries at the Conquest. The
manuscript’s central texts, a copy of the passio of Edmund written by Abbo of Fleury
and a copy of the miracula of Edmund commissioned by the monastery, promoted
Edmund as a king and saint of national importance and the monastery as an
international pilgrimage centre whose saint was more powerful than those of
Rome or Jerusalem.184 Edmund has a miraculous ability to protect his community.
Originally martyred for refusing to submit to Ingvar and the Danes, his relics go on to
work miracles, prominent among them the paralysing of thieves who attack his
church (folio 18v) and his appearance before the dying Svein, who had refused the
monastery’s request for exemption from tribute. Svein’s death is illustrated twice in
the manuscript, once on folio 21v of the prefatory cycle of full-page miniatures, and
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again in the historiated initial to the prologue of the miracula on folio 23r. In the
former, a crowned Edmund materialises to stab Svein in the chest with a spear and
retrieve the abbey’s payment. Svein dies horribly, his eyes rolled back in his head,
tongue sticking out, splayed hands reaching out to either side of his body, and face
tinged a deathly grey. In the initial to the prologue Edmund is dressed as a haloed
warrior with helmet, spear, and shield, and Svein dies an equally dramatic death. The
repetition of the scene across successive manuscript openings indicates its key place
in the manuscript’s overall message.
Equally important is the manuscript’s depiction of England and the relationship it
establishes between England past and present. It goes back to the origins of England
with the first of the prefatory miniatures, the arrival of the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes
on folio 7r (Figure 19). The tribes wear the helmets and tunics and bear the shields of
twelfth-century warriors, as do the invading Danes on folio 9v, and indeed Edmund
182
See www.themorgan.org/collection/Life-and-Miracles-of-St-Edmund.
183
Abou-el-Haj, ‘Bury St Edmunds’; Hahn, ‘Peregrinatio et Natio’.
184
Hahn, ‘Peregrinatio et Natio’, 119, 125.
 Art and the Formation of Early Medieval England 71
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Figure 19 Angles, Saxons, and Jutes sail to England, New York, Pierpont
Morgan Library, MS M.736, fol. 7r. © Getty Images.

in the initial described previously. We should not expect historical accuracy from
a twelfth-century artist, but the effect is to suggest that all invaders and all invasions
are the same, and that the events of the past are continually capable of being replayed
in the present. England itself is a blessed isle. In this first miniature it is a circle
floating in a sea full of fish and enclosing verdant trees and fields and a walled city.
The island’s air and sky are a bright orangish colour articulated with cloud patterns
 72 England in the Early Medieval World

that suggest the heavens and divine light. The image is actually close to that of the
verbal description of Durham in the poem Durham, save only for the absence of
woodland animals. The composition also captures the idea of the island as a special
place, set apart from the world yet accessible. The Angles, Saxons, and Jutes
approach and surround the island, yet its shores remain intact. The invading troops
do eventually land and kill the Britons, who flee or lie dead beneath the feet of the
colonisers’ horses (folio 7v), and the conquerors divide the island up amongst
themselves (folio 8r). Edmund is crowned king on folio 8v. These opening mini-
atures create an abbreviated narrative of consecutive events that in reality took place
centuries apart and in the text of the passio are spread across three chapters. As Hahn
notes, Edmund was king only of East Anglia, but the opening images conflate the
sub-kingdom with the island as a whole, so that Edmund is effectively shown as both
king of the whole island and as one of its original colonisers. The sacred nature of
Edmund’s kingship and/or the inextricable union of his kingly and saintly identities
in the promotion of the monastery are underscored visually by the similarity of his
pose and dress in the scene of his coronation and in the miniature of his saintly
apotheosis on folio 22v, the final image in the prefatory cycle.
Edmund’s martyrdom connects him to the land over which he is king. Dressed in
a green robe and bound to a leafy fruit-bearing tree, he is mocked and beaten before
being shot full of arrows, being beheaded, and having his head hidden in a bush
(folios 13r–14v). The lush landscape in which he dies recalls the fertile landscape of
the island towards which the Germanic invaders sail in the opening miniature.
Admittedly, green is used heavily throughout the cycle, but there can be no doubt
that the artist wanted to depict the island as a blessed place and its colonisers as
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a special people, as part of the miniature of the Danes slaughtering the English on
folio 10r is modelled on the massacre of the innocents,185 recalling the biblical origin
legends that Bede and other authors had established for the Angles/English.
The final image of the cycle, the apotheosis of Edmund (Figure 20), refers
back to his crowning as king of East Anglia/England. Aside from colour, the
shape and details of the garments he wears in the two miniatures are the same. In
the first, he receives a sceptre from one of the two bishops who flank him, while
in the second he receives a grander gold and jewelled sceptre from one of the
two angels who stand in the same position as the bishops. The heavenly crown
placed on his head by two angels who sweep down from heaven is the same
shape as that in the earlier miniature but grander, with a larger cross and
jewelled fillets very like those of a Byzantine-style imperial crown. In both
miniatures the king looks directly out at the viewer, commanding attention and
placing the viewer amongst his subjects as a witness to events, whether with

185
Hahn, ‘Peregrinatio et Natio’, 129–30.
 Art and the Formation of Early Medieval England 73
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Figure 20 Apotheosis of Edmund, New York, Pierpont Morgan Library,

MS M.736, fol. 22v. © The Morgan Library and Museum, New York.

a historical or a spiritual eye. In the apotheosis image, however, Edmund seems

to emerge from the space of the miniature and into the viewer’s space, an effect
achieved in part by the kneeling monks who break the space of the miniature,
reaching across its border to kiss Edmund’s feet, and in part by Edmund’s own
wide-eyed frontal stare. The coronation and apotheosis are the only two
 74 England in the Early Medieval World

miniatures in the manuscript in which the viewer is confronted by a figure’s

frontal gaze. In both cases that gaze is meant to convey majesty and authority,
but in this final image the commanding nature of the king’s expression has
grown exponentially, and the image is modelled on traditional representations
of Christ in Majesty. This final image presents a judgemental saint, both the
focus of veneration, as one would expect in a work designed to promote a saint’s
cult, and one to be feared, one who could return to defend the monastery and
England at any time.
The miniatures are the work of the Alexis Master who is credited with
founding the ‘St Alban’s’ style, an important twelfth-century style of English
illumination. The style contains elements of earlier English art, such as the
expressive gestures and energetic poses of some of the figures and some of the
linear detailing of the drapery, but it is most notable for its departure from
the outline drawing style and from the colour washes and elaborate borders of
pre-Conquest manuscripts. The colour blocks and patterns of the backgrounds
and borders, elongated figures, oval faces with their wide eyes, and rich satur-
ated colours show the influence of Ottonian and Byzantine art. The patterns of
highlighting and shadow along with details such as the crown of the apotheosis
miniature are taken from Byzantine art. This reminds us that England was now
part of the much larger Norman Empire, and the new style was a clear expres-
sion of its international connections. It combined aspects of the northern
European styles of art familiar to William the Conqueror with the styles of the
Mediterranean world and his counterparts to the south, including Roger I and
his successors in Sicily. The island was again part of an empire that united it
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with the Mediterranean world, Africa, and the Middle East, even if that empire
was not as large, unified, or powerful as that of the Romans.
Kathy Lavezzo documents the English use of maps and geographical descrip-
tion to project an image of their self-authored exceptionalism onto the globe.186
She begins with the Cotton world map and ends with Tudor mapmaking and
ceremonial and the dawning of the age of Empire, a period in which England
once again claimed the power of Rome for itself through both geographic
expansion and separation from the Roman Church. This roughly half
a millennium saw a continued reworking of the idea of the otherworldly island
at the edge of the known world that endured well into the modern era.187 This
was not how the rest of the world viewed England, even if they did locate it on
the edge. One telling image of the view of, rather than from, England is provided
by the world map compiled 1140–54 by the Islamicate scholar Abu Abdallāh

186
Lavezzo, Angels on the Edge of the World.
187
See also Brackmann, Elizabethan Invention.
 Art and the Formation of Early Medieval England 75

Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Abdallāh ibn Idris al-sharif al-Idrīsī (known as
al-Idrīsī). The map was part of a book of the known world, the Pleasure of him
who longs to travel the world (Kitāb nuzhat al-mushtāq fī khtirāq al-āfāq),
illustrated with seventy regional maps and the world map. It is preserved in
multiple copies made during the fourteenth century or later, with the Oxford,
Bodleian Library, Pococke MS 375 copy of 1553 considered to be one of the
best.188 Reconstructions of the map are also widely available online but are
sometimes mistakenly reoriented to provide a northern European perspective.
Al-Idrīsī’s map places south at the top and north at the bottom, projecting a view
from the south out at the rest of the world. It is also concerned with the world as
it was perceived and experienced by multiple peoples and from multiple
perspectives, rather than one that was a projection of any one place. That does
not make it any less political.
Al-Idrīsī was born in North Africa, possibly Ceuta, and studied in Cordoba,
one of the greatest educational centres of the time. He had travelled widely
before he arrived at Roger II’s court in Palermo,189 and England was amongst
the places he visited. His book and its maps rely on earlier maps and geograph-
ies, including those of Ptolemy, Paulus Orosius, the long Islamicate tradition of
geographical scholarship and mapmaking exemplified by maps produced in
tenth-century Baghdad by Abū al-Qāim Muhammad ibn Hawqal, and the
anonymous author of the eleventh-century manuscript known as The Book of
Curiosities of the Sciences and Marvels for the Eyes, as well as on information
from contemporary travellers and informants. It is seen as ‘the first serious
attempt to integrate the three classical Mediterranean traditions of Greek, Latin
and Arabic scholarship in one compendium of the known world’.190 The book is
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a testament to the cultural diversity and learning of Roger II’s Palermo, but it is
also a statement and critique of Norman imperial expansion.191 The text praises
Roger and Sicily, but it also traces the limits of Norman rule and knowledge and
exalts the beauty of Rome and the authority of the pope, with whom Roger was
in conflict.192 Perhaps, like the Bayeux Embroidery or the Harley Psalter, it too
allows the reader to read into the map and descriptions what they hope to find
there.
Al-Idrīsī divides the world into seven longitudinal climates, following the
Ptolemaic tradition, and each climate into ten sections. South is at the top of
the world, in accordance with the geographies of the Balkhi school based in

188
See https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/ced0d8bd-1019-4af2-9086-e411115f1507/.
189
Maqbul Ahmad, ‘Cartography’, 156; Brotton, History of the World, 66–7.
190
Brotton, History of the World, 73.
191
Brotton, History of the World, 55; Chism, ‘Britain and the Sea’.
192
Maqbul Ahmad, ‘Cartography’, 158; Brotton, History of the World, 76–7.
 76 England in the Early Medieval World

Baghdad.193 The extreme south and north remain unknown and uncharted,
due to their excessive heat and cold respectively. The Fortunate Isles (often
identified as the Canary Islands) sit at the world’s western limit and Korea at
its eastern limit. England occupies sections 1 and 2 of zone 7 in the map’s
lower right corner. Ireland is uninhabited, so England floats quite literally on
the edge of the known world. It is fragmented, with southern Scotland
uninhabited and northern Scotland depicted as a separate uninhabited island,
details that mark the limits of Norman rule in the north and Norman know-
ledge at Roger’s court in the south. The most northerly of the Anglo-Norman
cities to be mapped is Durham. Wales, not yet subject to Norman rule and so
not yet ‘known’, is absent. As Christine Chism notes, the longing and desire
expressed in the title of the geography combine carnal and intellectual desire,
violence and pleasure, with a world that remains ultimately beyond the grasp
of any single culture, religion, or ruler.194 It encapsulates the limits of both
imperial expansion and colonial desire. Chism, following Paul Lunde, notes
that England is surrounded by the bahr muzlim (sea of darkness or shadows),
rather than the bahr al-muhit (encircling sea), or the bahr al-Atlas (sea of the
Atlas mountains), all of which are names for the Atlantic Ocean. The Latin
name for the Atlantic, mare tenebrosum, also translates as the sea of darkness;
however, in the Muslim world darkness had a specific resonance with the
ignorance of those outside the religion, as described in Quar’anic Surah 24,
al-Nur, ‘The light’.195 Al-Idrīsī’s explicit mix of knowledge and desire with
the unknowable ensures that the island remains shrouded in darkness and
ignorance for the Arabic reader. As Chism points out:
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If English writers describing England from within have capitalized upon

geographical remoteness and parlayed it into an aura of sacralized
exceptionalism . . . al-Idrīsī, writing Britain from afar, uses remoteness and
the darkness which it engenders to implicate the exhaustive completism of
Roger II’s terrestrial survey. He also suggests the futility of trans-regional
Norman world-building. The view from abroad weaves the edginess of
England into something far more complicated – a view of the earth itself as
island whose littorals are patched together with cognition defying
obfuscation.196

Empires, and empire-building, the map warns, will never contain that which
they set out to possess.
Politically, Britannia/England was a part of a larger European world, a union
of ethnicities, races, religions, and cultures, both under the Romans and under

193
Maqbul Ahmad, ‘Cartography’, 158. 194
Chism, ‘Britain and the Sea’, 503.
195
Lunde, ‘Pillars of Hercules’; Chism, ‘Britain and the Sea’, 507.
196
Chism, ‘Britain and the Sea’, 507–9
 Art and the Formation of Early Medieval England 77

the Normans. Between the two empires, and indeed from the civil war of the
twelfth century through to the end of the Middle Ages, England struggled with
maintaining a view of itself as simultaneously the exceptional island on the edge
of the world and part of an international and interconnected medieval world. In
the Elizabethan period, England revitalised and projected a strong sense of
national identity rooted in the centuries before the coming of the Normans, one
that rested on a national vision of law, language, and religion that was traced
back to King Alfred and the West Saxon court.197 Alfred and Alfredian England
also occupy well-rehearsed places in modern English nationalism from the
Renaissance through to Brexit.198 But, as one recent commentator wrote,
England under Boris Johnson operates on the assumption that a country can
‘go global by going insular’ and an empty blustering about leading the world in
one thing or another,199 an attitude that can be traced back to early medieval
England and has a much broader source than Alfred and his court.
Unfortunately, there is as yet no study of the role of early medieval English
art in the expansion or trappings of Empire, nationalism, and racism in the
modern world. There is no scope to do such a project justice here, so I’ll end
with another look back at England and its relationship to the Mediterranean
world, one that triangulates the southern Mediterranean worlds of Abbot
Hadrian and al-Idrīsī with the England to which both had successfully
travelled. This image of a ghostly English past is conveyed through the
situated and complexly layered storytelling of two contemporary artists
whose works and voices counter the perceived objectivity and distance of
so many of the male voices of early medieval history. In Section 1 I discussed
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Theodore and Hadrian, two prominent immigrants from the Mediterranean

world, and the enduring cultural contributions they made to seventh-century
England. Hadrian was a refugee from Cerenia in what is now Libya, who fled
to southern Italy during the Arab invasion of North Africa. But Hadrian’s
position in the church also made him an elite and exceptional figure, and there
were other stories of less privileged travellers to the island that have been
lost – like those of the unnamed Black skeletons identified by archaeologists.
Libya, more precisely Gargash, near Tripoli, was also the launching point for
a small rubber boat crammed with seventy-two refugees that set off without
food or water for the Italian island of Lampedusa in March 2011. It ran out of

197
See, for example, Wright, ‘Dispersal of the Monastic Libraries’; Brackmann, Elizabethan
Invention.
198
Frantzen and Niles, Anglo-Saxonism; Niles, Idea of Anglo-Saxon England; Yorke, ‘Alfredism’;
Yorke, ‘“Old North” from the Saxon South’; Hannan, How We Invented Freedom, 73, 84;
Ellard, Anglo-Saxon(ist) Pasts; Karkov, Imagining Anglo-Saxon England, chap. 4.
199
McDonagh, ‘Dominic Cummings Affair’.
 78 England in the Early Medieval World

fuel and eventually drifted back to the coast of Libya, reaching land at Zlitan.
Only nine of the refugees survived. Their horrible fate was observed by
NATO ships, European fishing vessels, an Italian search and rescue plane,
a rescue helicopter, and other aircraft, but no one actually attempted to rescue
them – a situation that continues. The tragedy was widely reported and widely
censured.200 The story of the migrant boat forms part of the poet and
multimedia artist Caroline Bergvall’s project Drift. Bergvall is an immigrant,
although one from the north, an Anglo-Norwegian living in England. Drift
exists in different but interlocking forms as a book, a series of drawings,
poems, and performances. It is a compilation of texts, artworks, and archived
performances that is different in medium yet also recalls other fragmentary
compilations, or works that were assembled over time, like Sutton Hoo or the
Beowulf manuscript. Bergvall uses the Old English poem The Seafarer (from
the c.1000 compilation the Exeter Book), language, voice, music, the phe-
nomenon of ink on paper, and a mix of narrative forms and technologies,
including the story of the African migrants, to weave together a work that
resists an isolated existence in either the past or the present, the there or the
here. Old English morphs and mixes with modern English, and the words of
travellers on the sea thread through each other, over paths that converge and
diverge. Bergvall explores multiple journeys in and through English to reveal
the ways in which ‘the ancient cohabits with the present’, with the early
medieval poem about exile on the sea tracing contemporary stories of exile,
migration, and loss – and vice versa. Language, sea-travel, and exile draw the
voyage of the seafarer in the Old English poem into dialogue with Bergvall’s
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own voyages and those of the African refugees in a space of timelessness and
placelessness that is all about the longing for and connection to place. Drift
allows us to see the past and the present as spaces in which each can question,
comment on, and critique the other. It sets a story of privilege alongside one
of hardship, a story of whose voices count and whose don’t, who is able to
travel safely and who is not.
In Section 3, I discussed the Sutton Hoo Mound 1 burial and its twenty-first-
century reappearance in the film The Dig, as well as the Sutton Hoo Ship’s
Company project to reconstruct, or ‘resurrect’, the burial ship. Here, at the end,
I put the Sutton Hoo ship and its resurrected ghost into dialogue with Zineb
Sedira’s Floating Coffins (Figure 21) across a time and space similar to that of
The Seafarer and Drift. Sedira is also an immigrant, a Franco-Algerian artist
whose personal history of migration continues Drift’s movement from Africa
north to England. Her parents were migrants who crossed the Mediterranean in

200
See, for example, BBC News, ‘Nato “failed to aid”’.
 Art and the Formation of Early Medieval England 79

Figure 21 Zenib Sedira, Floating Coffins. © Zineb Sedira. All Rights Reserved,
DACS/Artimage 2021. Image courtesy of kamel mennour, Paris. Photo: Bartosz Kali.

a boat from Algeria to France, where Sedira was born. She subsequently
migrated to London, where her own daughter was born. Her work is intensely
autoethnographic and situated in the migrant/refugee experience. Her 2002
installation Mother Tongue, for example, deals with memory, storytelling,
language, the relationship between language and identity, and the void created
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by incomprehensibility across the mother tongues of three generations: her

mother (Arabic), herself (French), and her daughter (English).201
Floating Coffins (2009) is the last in a trilogy of works exploring migration
and dislocation in the context of the colonial histories of France and England,
with racism providing the common ground.202 It consists of a series of films and
photographs of the graveyard of over 200 rotting ships located off the
Mauritanian coast, and it is accompanied by a sound-piece by the London-
based, Greek-born artist Mikhail Karikis.203 The Mauritanian harbour of
Nouadhibour is an exit point for migrants from the Canary Islands attempting
to reach Europe. The rotting ships are remnants of the corruption at the heart of

201
See www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/sedira-mother-tongue-t12315; https://vimeo.com
/154326390. Sedira’s daughter does not speak Arabic, and her mother does not speak English.
202
The other two parts of the trilogy are Saphir (2006) and MiddleSea (2008).
203
See www.zinebsedira.com/floating-coffins-2009/; www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/sedira-
floating-coffins-t13331.
 80 England in the Early Medieval World

the exchange of both goods and people between the African south and the
European north, as well as the racism and hypocrisy of a Europe in which fish
from African waters is coveted while migrants in search of a sustainable life are
turned away.204 Carmen Juliá has written of the work: ‘This unique phenom-
enon on the Saharan shores represents both a hazard to shipping and an
ecological threat. Also, the sea becomes a place of decline and an active
wasteland where lifeless ships and human bodies can be found when rejected
by the sea. Like a fishnet, the sand catches discarded goods displaced from their
original home. Noxious waters and dying boats are vomiting intoxicated fishes
and shattered objects.’205
The body in Sutton Hoo Mound 1 was carefully laid to rest in the sandy soil of
East Anglia surrounded by treasure and safely enclosed in a wooden ship before
the acidic soil dissolved the remains of both. They are ghosts of a medieval past
that, as both the World War II years and the resurrection of the Sutton Hoo ship
today show, keep coming back to haunt the present, reminding us of the fantasy
of the impermeable island. Sedira’s Floating Coffins, on the other hand, presents
the very real rotting and toxic remains of ships that carried living people, many
of whom died at sea and have been lost forever, their lives and journeys
memorialised only by shattered objects and placeless dislocation. It confronts
us with the fact that Sutton Hoo, both then and now, and the maritime history
and experience it represents are not our heritage and represent a history and
a story with which not everyone in England feels a connection, other than to
their exclusion from it. Not everyone in England today has a heritage that
involves coming safely to shore or treasure-filled royal burial grounds, but
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everyone in England today has a transoceanic heritage somewhere in the past.

The medieval and the modern cannot and should not be separated from each
other into discrete periods, one safely tucked away in an objectified and distant
past, the other an equally objectified and distant academic space from which we
look back. Such a view prevents us from confronting the problems created by
the periodisation and disciplinary definitions that separate the histories and
experiences of the many different cultural, ethnic, and racial identities of the
people who made the journey to Britain/England from the early medieval period
to the present day. To put Floating Coffins side by side with the Sutton Hoo ship
creates a potent art-historical reminder of the wreckage of imperial expansion
and colonial desire charted by al-Idrīsī and lying dormant within the Cotton
world map.

204
Gogarty, ‘Zineb Sedira’. 205
Juliá, ‘Floating Coffins’.
 Abbreviations
B.L. British Library
C.A.S.S.S. Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture
C.C.C.C. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College
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 Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the editors Megan Cavell, Rory Naismith, Emily Thornbury,
and Winfried Rudolph for inviting me to write this Element, Megan and Emily for
their comments and editorial assistance, and Megan in particular for her help in
cutting the manuscript down to size. I would also like to thank Mary Rambaran-
Olm and Erik Wade for their invaluable advice, comments, and wonderful
conversations about its contents. My colleague Eva Frojmovic and the students
in our Racist Pasts/Radical Futures module (their names too many to list here)
were helpful critics of some of my ideas early on. The students in my Origins of
Postcolonial England helped me to clarify ideas at the end. Thanks to George
Beckett, Harriet Broadbent, Jack Emptage, Gaiane Jauvet, Ashleigh Jerman,
Emma Kolibas, Anthony McMullin, Sofia Moore, Samuel Read, Zhuo Yang,
and Jenny Williams. The anonymous peer reviewers saved me from numerous
errors, and any that remain are, of course, my own. And, as always, I could not
have written anything without the assistance of Boris and Natasha.
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https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108942935 Published online by Cambridge University Press
 England in the Early Medieval World

Megan Cavell
University of Birmingham
Megan Cavell is a Birmingham Fellow in medieval English literature at the University of
Birmingham. She works on a wide range of topics in medieval literary studies, from Old and
early Middle English and Latin languages and literature to gender, material culture and
animal studies. Her previous publications include Weaving Words and Binding Bodies: The
Poetics of Human Experience in Old English Literature (2016), and she is co-editor of Riddles
at Work in the Anglo-Saxon Tradition: Words, Ideas, Interactions with Jennifer Neville (2020).

Rory Naismith
University of Cambridge
Rory Naismith is Lecturer in the History of England Before the Norman Conquest in the
Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow
of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Also a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, he is the
author of Citadel of the Saxons: The Rise of Early London (2018), Medieval European Coinage,
with a Catalogue of the Coins in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, 8: Britain and Ireland
c. 400–1066 (2017) and Money and Power in Anglo-Saxon England: The Southern English
Kingdoms 757–865 (2012, which won the 2013 International Society of
Anglo-Saxonists First Book Prize).

Winfried Rudolf
University of Göttingen
Winfried Rudolf is Chair of Medieval English Language and Literature in the University
of Göttingen (Germany). Recent publications include Childhood and Adolescence in Anglo-
Saxon Literary Culture with Susan E. Irvine (2018). He has published widely on Anglo-Saxon
homiletic literature and is currently principal investigator of the ERC-Project
ECHOE–Electronic Corpus of Anonymous Homilies in Old English.
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Emily V. Thornbury
Yale University
Emily V. Thornbury is Associate Professor of English at Yale University. She studies the
literature and art of early England, with a particular emphasis on English and Latin poetry.
Her publications include Becoming a Poet in Anglo-Saxon England (2014) and, co-edited
with Rebecca Stephenson, Latinity and Identity in Anglo-Saxon Literature (2016). She is
currently working on a monograph called The Virtue of Ornament, about Anglo-Saxon
theories of aesthetic value.

About the Series

Elements in England in the Early Medieval World takes an innovative, interdisciplinary view of
the culture, history, literature, archaeology and legacy of England between the fifth and
eleventh centuries. Individual contributions question and situate key themes, and thereby
bring new perspectives to the heritage of Anglo-Saxon England. They draw on texts in Latin
and Old English as well as material culture to paint a vivid picture of the period. Relevant not
only to students and scholars working in medieval studies, these volumes explore the rich
intellectual, methodological and comparative value that the dynamic researchers interested
in the Anglo-Saxon World have to offer in a modern, global context. The series is driven by
a commitment to inclusive and critical scholarship, and to the view that Anglo-Saxon studies
have a part to play in many fields of academic research, as well as constituting a vibrant and
self-contained area of research in its own right.
 England in the Early Medieval World

Elements in the Series

Crime and Punishment in Anglo-Saxon England
Andrew Rabin
Europe and the Anglo-Saxons
Francesca Tinti
Art and the Formation of Early Medieval England
Catherine E. Karkov

A full series listing is available at www.cambridge.org/EASW

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108942935 Published online by Cambridge University Press