Old English Hexateuch

Tower of Babel

The Old English Hexateuch is a translation of the five books of Moses and the book of Joshua into the Old English language . It is preserved in seven manuscripts from England from the 11th century.

Manuscripts

Hexateuch (British Library)

Pharaoh with counselors

The most impressive manuscript is a compilation (abridged summary) of the biblical text. It contains 394 partially unfinished miniatures in which 550 scenes are depicted. It is preceded by an introduction by Ælfric Grammaticus . The manuscript was probably around 1025/1050 in the St. Augustine Abbey in Canterbury and is now in the British Library in London , Signature Cotton MS Claudius b.iv .

Biblical scenes were depicted in a contemporary setting in the miniatures. For example, a meeting of the Pharaoh with his advisors is shown as an old English Witenagemot . The figures illustrate the text, e.g. B. by representation of the paradise tree in the manner of a cloud in the sky. They also give an insight into the nature of time. The precise depiction of the bird world shows the painters' keen interest in observing nature. The representation of a rainbow in six colors, which are even further subdivided, breaks away from traditional ideas of an Aristotelian worldview that only knew three colors.

The representation of Moses with horns is one of the oldest representations of this type.

Heptateuch (Oxford)

A manuscript also contains the Book of Judges ( Heptateuch ). It is not illuminated and is in the Bodleian Library in Oxford , call number Laud Misc. 509 .

expenditure

• Dodwell, CR, Clemoes, Peter (eds.). The Old English Illustrated Hexateuch . Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile, Vol. 18. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde & Bagger, 1974. (Facsimile)

literature

• Barnhouse, Rebecca, Benjamin C. Withers (eds.). The Old English Hexateuch: aspects and approaches . Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute, 2000.
• Withers, Benjamin C. The Illustrated Old English Hexateuch, Cotton Claudius B.iv .: the frontier of seeing and reading in Anglo-Saxon England . Studies in Book and Print Culture. London: British Library, 2007. ISBN 978-0-7123-0940-0 .

Web links

• Cotton MS Claudius B IV . Explanations, digitized copies of the manuscript and bibliography at the British Library .

Remarks

1. ↑ H. Schade SJ: The dream of Adam . In: A. Zimmermann: The Powers of Good and Evil , Berlin 1977, p. 466
2. ^ WB Yapp: The birds of English medieval manuscripts . In: Journal of Medieval History , 5, 4 (1979), pp. 315-348
3. ↑ J. Gage: Color and culture: practice and meaning from antiquity to abstraction . Los Angeles, London 1999
4. ^ K. Langedijk: The Horned Moses in Medieval Art and Thought by Ruth Mellinkoff . In: The Art Bulletin , Vol. 54, No. 4 (1972), p 544 (book review)