Listen, O Isles, unto Me: Studies in Medieval Word and Image
Edited by Elizabeth Mullins and Diarmuid Scully
Jennifer O’Reilly (1943–2016) devoted her scholarly career to exploring the ways in which the medieval Irish and Anglo-Saxon understanding of scripture was expressed in word and image. Her contribution to Insular studies is characterised by both erudition and subtlety. Her ability to illumine the spiritual implications of images, both textual and visual, is evident in the wide range of her publications which deal variously with the twelfth-century life of Thomas Becket, the iconography of the virtues and vices, the full-page illustrations in the Book of Kells and Durham Gospels, Adomnán’s Life of Columba and the works of the Venerable Bede.
The contributions in this volume, published in 2011, revisit many of the works which Jennifer has commented on. They also reflect the influence of her approach applied to a range of new works. This interdisciplinary collection sets the cultural transformation of early medieval Ireland and Anglo-Saxon England in the context of its inheritance from Late Antiquity and engagement with the wider Medieval world. The volume brings together new research on a range of patristic and medieval texts and visual materials. It testifies to the imaginative ways in which scholars and artists in these islands assimilated and creatively re-interpreted the Christian and Mediterranean culture they encountered through the coming of Christianity.
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INHERITANCE AND TRANSMISSION
Dr. Diarmuid Scully (University College Cork) ‘“Proud Ocean has become a servant”: a Classical topos in the literature of Britain’s conquest and conversion’.
Dr Catherine Ware (National University of Ireland, Maynooth) ‘Proserpina and the Martyrs: Pagan and Christian in Claudian’s De Raptu Proserpinae’.
Dr. Sinéad O’ Sullivan (Queen’s University Belfast) ‘Martianus Capella and the Carolingians: Some observations based on the glosses on Books I-II from the oldest gloss tradition on De nuptiis’.
Professor David Ganz (University College London) ‘In the nets or on the line’: a datable Merovingian manuscript and its importance’.
Dr. Malgorzata Krasnodebska D’Aughton (University College Cork) ‘A gemmarium for the recognition of precious stones in the Cracow Chapter Library, MS 140: a study of the unity of exegetical themes.’
Dr. Dagmar Ó Riain – Raedel (University College Cork) ‘Wide-reaching connections’? The list of abbots from Iona in the Liber confraternitatum ecclesiae S. Petri in Salzburg’.
Dr. Damian Bracken (University College Cork) ‘Whence the splendour of such light came to us’: the account of Ireland in Ermenrich’s Life of St Gall’.
Dr. Colmán Ó Clabaigh OSB (Glenstal Abbey, Murroe, County Limerick) and Dr. Michael Staunton (University College Dublin) ‘Thomas Becket and Ireland’.
MONASTICISM IN THE AGE OF BEDE
Professor Arthur Holder (John Dillenberger Professor of Christian Spirituality, Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, California) ‘Hunting Snakes in the Grass: Bede as Heresiologist’.
Dr. Scott de Gregorio (University of Michigan, Dearborn) ‘The Figure of Ezra in the Writings of Bede and the Codex Amiatinus’.
Dr. Alan Thacker (Institute of Historical Research, London) ‘Bede and His Martyrology’.
Dr. Máirín MacCarron (University College Cork) ‘The adornment of Virgins: Æthelthryth and her necklaces’.
Dr. Elisabeth Okasha (University College Cork) ‘From Conception to Birth in Anglo-Saxon England’.
Dr. Brian Butler (University College Cork) ‘Doctor of souls, Doctor of the body: Whitby Vita Gregorii 23 and its exegetical context.’
Professor Máire Herbert (University College Cork) ‘The representation of Gregory the Great in Irish sources of the pre-Viking era’.
Aidan MacDonald (University College Cork) ‘Seeking the Desert in Adomnán’s Vita Columbae’.
Éamonn Ó Carragáin and Tomás Ó Carragáin (University College Cork) ‘Singing in the Rain on Hinba? Archaeology and Liturgical Fictions, Ancient and Modern (Adomnán, Vita Columbae3.17)’.
EXEGESIS AND THE LANGUAGE OF PICTURES
Dr. Carol Neuman de Vegvar (Ohio Wesleyan University, Delaware) ‘Markers of prestige, emblems of amicitia: attributes of secular ‘portrait’ figures in Insular sculpture’.
Dr. Jane Hawkes (University of York) ‘The Road to Hell: The Art of Damnation in Anglo-Saxon Sculpture’.
Professor Richard N. Bailey (Emeritus Professor, University of Newcastle) ‘In medio duorum animalium: Habakkuk, the Ruthwell cross and Bede’s Life of St Cuthbert’.
Dr. Heather Pulliam (Edinburgh University) ‘The eyes of the handmaid’: the Corbie Psalter and the Ruthwell cross’.
Professor George Henderson (Cambridge University) ‘Cherubim and Seraphim in Insular Literature and Art’.
Professor Michelle P. Brown (University of London) ‘Bearded Sages and Beautiful Boys: Insular and Anglo-Saxon Attitudes to the Iconography of the Beard’.
Dr. Carol Farr (Independent Scholar, London) ‘Cosmological and eschatological images in the Book of Kells: folios 32v and 114r’.
Dr. Elizabeth Mullins (University College Dublin) ‘The canon tables in Boulogne, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 10’.