Trinity and Incarnation in Anglo-Saxon Art and Thought by Barbara C. Raw

Abstract

Trinity and Incarnation in Anglo-Saxon Art and Thought. By Barbara C. Raw. [Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England, Volume 21.1 (NewYork: Cambridge University Press. 1997. Pp. x, 221. $59.95.) In this book, as in her previous volume in same series, Anglo-Saxon Crucifixion Iconography and Art of Monastic Revival (1990), Barbara Raw explicates meaning and function of a group of late Anglo-Saxon works of by relating them to literature of period, something she claims one [so farl has attempted- (p. 2). Certainly no one has brought such a wide range and abundance of contemporary writings to bear on pre-Conquest English as this able scholar of Anglo-Saxon literature. In present volume everything from theological treatises, liturgical texts, and homilies to private devotional works, Old English poetry, and above all writings of Aelfric are called upon to elucidate Anglo-Saxon beliefs concerning Trinity and Incarnation and pictorial means artists found to express them, A short introduction briefly notes remarkable character of AngloSaxon images of Trinity, all manuscript illustrations, which in number and ingenuity are unparalleled in early medieval art. It also includes a discussion of the different, but complementary ways in which art and literature express religious truths (p. 6). Analysis of individual images is postponed, however, to last four chapters of book, preceding four being devoted to theologry and theon? of images. The first two chapters review early development of doctrines of Trinity and Incarnation, evidence for increased devotion to Trinity in Anglo-Saxon England, anti nature of that devotion. The next two consider early medieval arguments regarding validity and function of religious images and problems of representing a God who is not only invisible and immaterial, but also three persons in a single nature. All of sources cited on religious are continental, except for Bede, since late Anglo-Saxon authors, including Aelfric, ignored subject. Raw is thus left to speculate as to what homilist's views might have been. The analysis of some thirty images of deity in remaining chapters is organized by pictorial type, each of which Raw associates with a different mode of divine revelation: portrait-image which implies a presence, narrative illustration which recalls God's intervention in history, and symbolic representation whichcorresponds to indirect forms of revelation (p. …