Aesthetics and the Incarnation in Early Medieval Britain

Tiffany Beechy

Description

This rich study takes Insular art on its own terms, revealing a distinctive and unorthodox theology that will inevitably change how scholars view the long arc of English piety and the English literary tradition.

Drawing on a wide range of critical methodologies, Aesthetics and the Incarnation in Early Medieval Britain treats this era as a “contact zone” of cultural clash and exchange, where Christianity encountered a rich amalgam of practices and attitudes, particularly regarding the sensible realm. Tiffany Beechy illustrates how local cultures, including the Irish learned tradition, received the “Word that was made flesh,” the central figure of Christian doctrine, in distinctive ways: the Word, for example, was verbal, related to words and signs, and was not at all ineffable. Likewise, the Word was often poetic—an enigma—and its powerful presence was not only hinted at (as St. Augustine would have it) but manifest in the mouth or on the page. Beechy examines how these Insular traditions received and expressed a distinctly iterable Incarnation. Often disavowed and condemned by orthodox authorities, this was in large part an implicit theology, expressed or embodied in form (such as art, compilation, or metaphor) rather than in treatises. Beechy demonstrates how these forms drew on various authorities especially important to Britain—Bede, Gregory the Great, and Isidore most prominent among them.

Beechy’s study provides a prehistory in the English literary tradition for the better-known experimental poetics of Middle English devotion. The book is unusual in the diversity of its primary material, which includes visual art, including the Book of Kells; obscure and often cursorily treated texts such as Adamnán’s De locis sanctis (“On the holy lands”); and the difficult esoterica of the wisdom tradition.

This book is, at heart, about form in Insular art and literature, but it is also, inevitably, about theology. This is of course due in part to the absence of a distinctly secular realm of common life in the Middle Ages, meaning that most serious endeavors involved religion in some degree. It is also due to the demographics governing the means of production: much of what survives of early medieval art is in manuscripts and, to a lesser degree, stone sculpture, and both were the domains of the church. And yet the inescapable presence of the church can lead to misunderstanding regarding its influence over individual artifacts and their meaning. For certain features of Insular art are difficult to account for if we assume that all art was controlled by patristic (orthodox) doctrine. While the objects and texts I treat are about the central themes of Christianity, these are often construed in surprising ways, ways that were sometimes explicitly condemned by contemporary authorities. Such waywardness, I contend, deserves to be approached with great interest rather than with discomfort or scorn.

Medieval Christianity inherited several pre-Christian intellectual and aesthetic traditions with diverse premises about the status of the felt world, or the sensible, and its relationship to a transcendent plane of abstractions—if the latter were imagined at all. A central question amid the metaphysical inquiry, both explicit and not, that attempted to sort out these differences was how and whether God could be perceived. It is a conundrum that informed in some way all religious representation (which was, in some way, all representation) and fueled centuries of controversy. Yet one thing was clear: on at least one occasion the divine had come into the world of sense perception, at the Incarnation, when God had deigned to become a man. This was in many ways a hot potato, as the authorities recognized—where do you draw a line, contain divinity, once it has been brought into the world, lest it start popping up under every stock and stone (as it did among the pagans)? The problem would eventually be solved by circumscribing the Incarnation within Christ’s human form, officially restricting it to the physical body plus its trace in the increasingly controlled, prescribed rite of the Eucharist. Later medieval commentators would therefore emphasize the Incarnation as an act of humility, God lowering himself into a body for the purpose of suffering, and the need for all Christians to emulate that humility, if not that suffering. In early medieval Britain, however, amid diverse attitudes informed by distinct intellectual, cultural, linguistic, and religious traditions, an expansive rather than a restrictive interpretation of the “Word that was made flesh” prevailed, according to which the Word might in fact be sensed in the world in surprising ways. Understanding how form, as a manifestation of the sensible (not “form” in the Aristotelian or Platonic senses), embodies and construes theological precept is crucial to understanding the products of this tradition.

The particular character of Insular Incarnationalism has been obscured by several factors, notably the tendency of the study of Insular Christianity to bifurcate into Celtic studies, on the one hand, and “Anglo-Saxon” studies on the other (more on this term in the next chapter). The scholarship on the latter then tends to be overwhelmed by the copious evidence from Carolingian Francia, which provides tantalizing but also potentially misleading material. For the Carolingians had empire on their minds, and continuity with Rome foremost in their rhetoric. The trends toward circumscription of the body of Christ, toward regulated and uniform observance of the mass, were Carolingian projects, ones that had English contributors (notably Alcuin of York) and acolytes (Ælfric of Eynsham), but whose influence only trickled into England, widening with the Benedictine reform in the tenth century and again with the Conquest, with its influx of Continental power both sacred and secular. Insular artworks, however, often make it clear that they did not get the imperial memo. They embody the flesh of the Word in ways that show unconcern with their evident materialism, ways that emphasize Christ’s divinity and its effect on his and our humanity as well as the ontological mystery of the hypostatic union. As Johanna Kramer has recently demonstrated the early English church to have had a characteristic way of conceiving of the Ascension (as limen and transit), this book will attempt to show that it had a similarly characteristic reception of the Incarnation.

Preface

Introduction

1. “Supereffability” and the Sacraments of Christ’s Humanity

2. Seeing Double: Representing the Hypostatic Union

3. No Ideas but in Things: Aesthetics and the Flesh of the Word

4. Concealing is Revealing I: Opacity and Enigma in the Wisdom Tradition

5. Concealing is Revealing II: The Shadow Manuscript in the Margins of CCCC 41

Conclusion

Works Cited

List of Figures

Sujets

• Religion
• Christianisme
• Medieval
• HISTORY
• Histoire
• Edad Media
• Adomnán
• Christian Church
• Culture of the United Kingdom
• Solomon and Saturn
• Aldhelm
• Middle Ages
• History of England
• Christianity
• Great Britain
• Aldhelm de Sherborne
• Kells
• ART
• Europe

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 15 juin 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268205140
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Aesthetics and the Incarnation in Early Medieval Britain
Aesthetics
and the
Incarnation
in
Early Medieval Britain
Materiality and the Flesh of the Word
TIFFANY BEECHY
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
undpress.nd.edu
Copyright © 2023 by the University of Notre Dame Press
All Rights Reserved
Published in the United States of America
Library of Congress Control Number: 2023930256
ISBN: 978-0-268-20515-7 (Hardback)
ISBN: 978-0-268-20517-1 (WebPDF)
ISBN: 978-0-268-20514-0 (Epub)
This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at [e-mail]
for
RIVER
aglæcwif , ælfscinu
CONTENTS List of Figures Note on Special Characters Preface Acknowledgments Introduction ONE “Supereffability” and the Sacraments of Christ’s Humanity TWO Seeing Double: Representing the Hypostatic Union THREE No Ideas but in Things: Aesthetics and the Flesh of the Word FOUR Concealing Is Revealing, Part 1: Opacity and Enigma in the Wisdom Tradition FIVE Concealing Is Revealing, Part 2: The Shadow Manuscript in the Margins of CCCC 41 Conclusion Notes Works Cited Index
FIGURES
Figure 1.1. BL MS Cotton Tiberius C.VI, fol. 15r
Figure 1.2. Bernward Gospels, fol. 175v
Figure 2.1. Durham Ritual, Durham Cathedral Library MS A.IV.19, fol. 59r
Figure 2.2. Durham Ritual, Durham Cathedral Library MS A.IV.19, fol. 59v
Figure 2.3. Book of Kells, fol. 201r
Figure 2.4. Book of Kells, detail of fol. 95r
Figure 2.5. Book of Kells, detail of fol. 96r
Figure 2.6. Book of Kells, fol. 202v
Figure 2.7. Book of Kells, fol. 28v
Figure 2.8. Book of Kells, fol. 183r
Figure 2.9. Book of Kells, fol. 29r
Figure 2.10. Book of Kells, fol. 130r
Figure 2.11. Book of Kells, fol. 188r
Figure 2.12. Book of Kells, fol. 291v
Figure 2.13. Book of Kells, fol. 292r
Figure 2.14. Detail of Book of Kells, fol. 292r ( figure 2.13 )
Figure 2.15. Detail of Book of Kells, fol. 32v ( figure 2.27 )
Figure 2.16. Book of Kells, fol. 7v
Figure 2.17. Book of Kells, fol. 8r
Figure 2.18. Book of Kells, detail of fol. 68v
Figure 2.19. Book of Kells, detail of fol. 182r
Figure 2.20. St. Gall Gospels, detail of p. 16
Figure 2.21. Book of Kells, detail of fol. 45r 90
Figure 2.22. Book of Kells, fol. 34r
Figure 2.23. Book of Kells, detail of fol. 34r ( figure 2.22 )
Figure 2.24. Book of Kells, detail of fol. 292r ( figure 2.13 )
Figure 2.25. Lindisfarne Gospels, detail of fol. 211r
Figure 2.26. St. Gall Gospels, detail of p. 134
Figure 2.27. Book of Kells, fol. 32v
Figure 2.28. Book of Kells, fol. 33r
Figure 2.29. Book of Kells, fol. 123v
Figure 2.30. Book of Kells, fol. 124r
Figure 2.31. Book of Kells, fol. 285r
Figure 2.32. Book of Kells, fol. 187v
Figure 2.33. Book of Kells, detail of fol. 202v ( figure 2.6 )
Figure 2.34. Book of Kells, detail of fol. 202v ( figure 2.6 )
Figure 2.35. Book of Kells, detail of fol. 34r ( figure 2.22 )
Figure 2.36. Book of Kells, detail of fol. 48r
Figure 2.37. Ruthwell Cross
Figure 2.38. Bewcastle Cross
Figure 3.1. BL Harley MS 603, fol. 13r
Figure 3.2. BL Harley MS 603, fol. 30r
Figure 3.3. Fuller Brooch
Figure 4.1. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 422, p. 4
Figure 5.1. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 41 192 (CCCC 41), p.
Figure 5.2. CCCC 41, p. 198
Figure 5.3. CCCC 41, detail of p. 207
Figure 5.4. CCCC 41, p. 272
Figure 5.5. CCCC 41, p. 329
Figure 5.6. Leofric Missal, MS Bodley 579, fol. 49r
Figure 5.7. CCCC 41, p. 484
Figure 5.8. CCCC 41, p. 485
Figure 5.9. CCCC 41, p. 487
Figure 5.10. CCCC 41, p. 488
Figure C.1. CCCC 41, p. 483
NOTE ON SPECIAL CHARACTERS æ in Old English words, the vowel in Modern English cat þ/ð in Old English words, used interchangeably for the sound of Modern English “th” as in think and thy ⁊ “and” in both Latin ( et ) and Old English ( and / ond )
PREFACE
The mystery of the Incarnation has sparked the interest of writers since the time of Christ. Some of them . . . have elected to think through their puzzlement over the “how” of the Incarnation in poetical or rhetorical forms rather than, for example, theological or philosophical treatises.
—Cristina Maria Cervone, Poetics of the Incarnation
And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us
—John 1:14
This book is, at heart, about form in Insular art and literature, but it is also, inevitably, about theology. This is of course due in part to the absence of a distinctly secular realm of common life in the Middle Ages, meaning that most serious endeavors involved religion in some degree. It is also due to the demographics governing the means of production: much of what survives of early medieval art is in manuscripts and, to a lesser degree, stone sculpture, and both were the domains of the church. 1 And yet the inescapable presence of the church can lead to misunderstanding of its influence over individual artifacts and their meaning, for certain features of Insular art are difficult to account for if we assume that all art was controlled by patristic (orthodox) doctrine. While the objects and texts I treat are about the central themes of Christianity, these are often construed in surprising ways, ways that were sometimes explicitly condemned by contemporary authorities. Such waywardness, I contend, deserves to be approached with great interest rather than with discomfort or scorn.

Medieval Christianity inherited several pre-Christian intellectual and aesthetic traditions with diverse premises about the status of the felt world, or the sensible, and its relationship to a transcendent plane of abstractions—if the latter were imagined at all. A central question of metaphysical inquiry, both explicit and not, that attempted to sort out these differences was how and whether God could be perceived. It is a conundrum that informed in some way all religious representation (which was, in some way, all representation) and fueled centuries of controversy. Yet one thing was clear: the divine had come into the world of sense perception on at least one occasion, the Incarnation, when God had deigned to become a man. This was in many ways a hot potato, as the authorities recognized—where do you draw a line, contain divinity, once it has been brought into the world, lest it start popping up under every stock and stone (as it did among the pagans)? The problem would eventually be solved by circumscribing the Incarnation within Christ’s human form, officially restricting it to the physical body plus its trace in the increasingly prescribed rite of the Eucharist. 2 Later medieval commentators would therefore emphasize the Incarnation as an act of humility—God lowering himself into a body for the purpose of suffering—and the need for all Christians to emulate that humility, if not that suffering. In early medieval Britain, however, amid diverse attitudes informed by distinct intellectual, cultural, linguistic, and religious traditions, an expansive rather than a restrictive interpretation of the “Word that was made flesh” prevailed, according to which the Word might in fact be sensed in the world in surprising ways. Understanding how form, as a manifestation of the sensible (not “form” in the Aristotelian or Platonic senses), embodies and construes theological precept is crucial to understanding the products of this tradition.
The particular character of Insular Incarnationalism has been obscured by several factors, notably the tendency of the study of Insular Christianity to bifurcate into Celtic studies, on the one hand, and “Anglo-Saxon” studies on the other (more on this term in the next chapter). The scholarship on the latter then tends to be overwhelmed by the copious evidence from Carolingian Francia, which provides tantalizing but also potentially misleading material, for the Carolingians had empire on their minds and continuity with Rome foremost in their rhetoric. The trends toward circumscription of the body of Christ and a regulated and uniform observance of the mass were Carolingian projects, ones that had English contributors (notably Alcuin of York) and acolytes (Ælfric of Eynsham), but whose influence only trickled into England, widening with the Benedictine reform in the tenth century and again with the Conquest, with its influx of Continental power both sacred and secular. Insular artworks, however, often make it clear that they did not get the imperial memo. They embody the flesh of the Word in ways that show unconcern with their evident materialism and that emphasize Christ’s divinity and its effect on his and our humanity as well as the ontological mystery of the hypostatic union. As Johanna Kramer has recently demonstrated the early English church to have had a characteristic way of conceiving of the Ascension (as limen and transit), this book will attempt to show that it had a similarly characteristic reception of the Incarnation.
Importantly, these tendencies did not simply choke off and die out after the Conquest. Like the literary technique of alliterative verse, either through going underground in the textual record or through a more absolute resurrection, the tendencies I highlight in the early period have late-medieval manifestations, as a string of recent books has documented. 3 The present book, therefore, ultimately suggests a longue durée for what Cristina Maria Cervone has named the “poetics of the Incarnation” and Curtis Gruenler has more recently termed the “poetics of enigma” in the English tradition. I will begin by laying some historical groundwork, documenting the particular circumstances in early Britain that conditioned its reception of the Word.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The University of Colorado has provided consistent research support, including but not limited to a sabbatical semester and a fellowship from the Center for