The Art of the Church in ninth-Century Anglo-Saxon England: the Case of Masham Column

2002 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 337-348 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Hawkes
Keyword(s):  
Ninth Century ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
The Church

The Ninth-Century Polychrome Decoration at St Mary's Church, Deerhurst

2008 ◽  
Vol 88 ◽  
pp. 109-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Gem ◽  
Emily Howe ◽  
Richard Bryant
Keyword(s):  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Technical Analysis ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
The West ◽  
Special Regard ◽  
Original Scheme ◽  
The Church ◽  
Contemporary Context

This paper presents the results of a detailed analysis of surviving paintwork on the chancel arch, the carved animal heads and the figurative panel in the west porch at the Anglo-Saxon church of St Mary, Deerhurst, Gloucestershire, UK. The context of the polychromy in relation to the ninth-century fabric of the church is assessed. The detailed results of the technical analysis are presented. The original scheme of painted decoration is described, including the newly discovered plant scroll painted on the arch. The results of the examination are evaluated, setting the polychrome decoration of the ninth-century church into its contemporary context in England and on the Continent, with special regard to both the technical and the artistic aspects.

The Discovery of an Anglo-Saxon Painted Figure at St Mary's Church, Deerhurst, Gloucestershire

2006 ◽  
Vol 86 ◽  
pp. 66-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve Bagshaw ◽  
Richard Bryant ◽  
Michael Hare
Keyword(s):  
Ninth Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Wall Paintings ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Structural Context ◽  
The Subject ◽  
East End ◽  
Significant Addition ◽  
High Level ◽  
The Church

The church of St Mary at Deerhurst in Gloucestershire is well known for its Anglo-Saxon fabric and sculpture. In 1993 a painting of an Anglo-Saxon figure was discovered, and in 2002 it became possible for the authors to study the painting in detail.The painting is on one of a pair of triangular-headed stone panels set high in the internal east wall of the church. The discovery provides a significant addition to the tiny corpus of known Anglo-Saxon wall paintings. The identity of the standing, nimbed figure remains elusive, but the figure can be tentatively dated on art historical grounds to the middle to late tenth century.The authors also explore the structural context of the painting. It is suggested that in the first half of the ninth century the church had an upper floor over the central space (the present east end), and that this floor possibly extended over the whole church. At the east end, there were internal openings from this upper floor into a high-level space in the polygonal apse. At a later date two of these openings were blocked and covered by stone panels, one of which is the subject of this paper. It is possible that the panels flanked a high-level altar or an opening through which a shrine, set on a high-level floor in the apse, could be viewed.

A Lost Reliquary Casket from Gwytherin, North Wales

1990 ◽  
Vol 70 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence Butler ◽  
James Graham-Campbell
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
North Wales ◽  
First Time ◽  
The Church

SummaryA reliquary casket known from seventeenth- and eighteenth-century records as that of St Winifrid had been lost by the mid-nineteenth century from the church at Gwytherin in Clwyd. A drawing attributed to Edward Lluyd, published here for the first time, suggests that it was most probably of eighth- or early ninth-century date and was influenced by Anglo-Saxon (JG-C) or Irish (LB) models, if not an actual import into North Wales.

The Position of the Altar in Early Anglo-Saxon Churches

1973 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. M. Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Ninth Century ◽  
Central Position ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
North African ◽  
Similar Treatment ◽  
African Churches ◽  
East End ◽  
The Church

SummaryA survey of the structural and contemporary literary evidence for the position of the altar in Anglo-Saxon churches before the Viking invasions of the ninth century indicates that it was not at the east end of the church but in a more central position. This was sometimes near the east end of the nave and sometimes in the eastern compartment. As an indication of how this practice may have arisen in England, references are given to evidence for similar treatment of the altar in Continental and North African churches at somewhat earlier dates.

An Anglo-Saxon mass for St Willibrord and its later liturgical uses

1995 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Nicholas Orchard
Keyword(s):  
Ninth Century ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
The Commons

Of all the services held in a saint's honour in the course of his or her feast-day, mass was the most important: and central to the mass were the prayers invoking the saint's intercession said by the celebrant. Together with the canon, these ‘proper’ prayers – by the ninth century normally a collect (collecta), secret (super oblata or secreta), preface (prefatio) and postcommunion (ad complendum or postcommunio) – formed the backbone around which chant and readings were arranged, and they were gathered together in the sacramentary, the book used by the celebrant alone. Further forms might be provided as ‘alternatives’ (aliae orationes); for the conclusion of mass (super populum); and occasionally, for vespers of the day before the feast and of the feast itself (ad vesperas), but generally speaking, these are rare. As ‘informal’ cults became formal, or prize relics came to hand, so the need for new suites of prayers arose. These could be composed afresh, ‘borrowed’ from existing saints' masses (an easy option, necessitating little more than the insertion of the new saint's name in the relevant prayers); or if the precentor's creative powers failed him completely, they could be taken from the ‘commons’, that is, from the series of ready-made masses contained in almost every medieval sacramentary or missal for a ‘confessor’, a ‘martyr’ or a ‘virgin’, and so on. Some houses attracted the services of gifted writers; other seem not to have been so fortunate. It is my intention to analyse here the genesis and dissemination of a mass from a house of the former class which throws interesting light on the liturgical links between England and the Continent in the eighth century.

The Repton Stone

1985 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 233-292 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Biddle ◽  
Birthe Kjølbye-Biddle
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
The Church

In August 1979 a large sculptured stone was discovered, broken and upside down in a pit immediately outside the eastern window of the Anglo-Saxon crypt of the church of St Wystan at Repton in Derbyshire (pl. V). The scenes depicted on the two surviving faces of the stone are without direct parallel in Anglo-Saxon sculpture and have so far eluded definitive interpretation. The purpose of the present article is to place on record a detailed description of the stone, and some preliminary thoughts on its date and possible significance, in the hope that wider discussion may lead to a more satisfactory understanding of what must be, on any judgement, one of the more important surviving examples of pre-Conquest sculpture.

scholarly journals Illustrations of damnation in late Anglo-Saxon manuscripts

2003 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. 231-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Semple
Keyword(s):  
Ninth Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Late Ninth Century ◽  
Religious Devotion ◽  
Divine Punishment

‘Many tribulations and hardships shall arise in this world before its end, and they are heralds of the eternal perdition to evil men, who shall afterwards suffer eternally in the black hell for their sins.’ These words, composed by Ælfric in the last decade of the tenth century, reflect a preoccupation in the late Anglo-Saxon Church with perdition and the infernal punishments that awaited sinners and heathens. Perhaps stimulated in part by anxiety at the approach of the millennium, both Ælfric and Wulfstan (archbishop of York, 1002–23) show an overt concern with the continuation of paganism and the evil deeds of mankind in their sermons and homilies. Their works stress the terrible judgement that awaited sinners and heathens and the infernal torment to follow. The Viking raids and incursions, during the late eighth to ninth and late tenth centuries, partially inspired the great anxiety apparent in the late Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastical leadership. Not only were these events perceived as divine punishment for a lack of religious devotion and fervour in the English people, but the arrival of Scandinavian settlers in the late ninth century may have reintroduced pagan practice and belief into England.

The Old English Benedictine Rule: writing for women and men

2003 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. 147-187 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rohini Jayatilaka
Keyword(s):  
Ninth Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Reform Movement ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Monastic Reform ◽  
Monastic Life ◽  
Benedictine Reform ◽  
The Status ◽  
Linguistic Level

The Regula S. Benedicti was known and used in early Anglo-Saxon England, but it was not until the mid-tenth-century Benedictine reform that the RSB became established as the supreme and exclusive rule governing the monasteries of England. The tenth-century monastic reform movement, undertaken by Dunstan, Æthelwold and Oswald during the reign of Edgar (959–75), sought to revitalize monasticism in England which, according to the standards of these reformers, had ceased to exist during the ninth century. They took as a basis for restoring monastic life the RSB, which was regarded by them as the main embodiment of the essential principles of western monasticism, and in this capacity it was established as the primary document governing English monastic life. By elevating the status of the RSB as the central text of monastic practice in England and the basis of a uniform way of life the reformers raised for themselves the problem of ensuring that the RSB would be understood in detail by all monks, nuns and novices, whatever their background. Evidence of various attempts to make the text accessible, both at the linguistic level and at the level of substance, survives in manuscripts dating from the mid-tenth and eleventh centuries; the most important of these attempts is a vernacular translation of the RSB.

The Maaseik embroideries

1984 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 65-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mildred Budny ◽  
Dominic Tweddle
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Form Part ◽  
The Church ◽  
Made In ◽  
The Middle Ages

Among the relics in the treasury of the church of St Catherine at Maaseik in Limburg, Belgium, there are some luxurious embroideries which form part of the so-called casula (probably ‘chasuble’) of Sts Harlindis and Relindis (pls. I–VI). It was preserved throughout the Middle Ages at the abbey church of Aldeneik (which these sister-saints founded in the early eighth century) and was moved to nearby Maaseik in 1571. Although traditionally regarded as the handiwork of Harlindis and Relindis themselves, the embroideries cannot date from as early as their time, and they must have been made in Anglo-Saxon England. Indeed, they represent the earliest surviving examples of the highly prized English art of embroidery which became famous later in the Middle Ages as opus anglicanum.

John Blair, The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society, 2005

2005 ◽  
Vol 49 ◽  
pp. 241-245
Author(s):  
Julia Barrow
Keyword(s):  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
The Church
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