An Early Outbreak of Influenza?

Aspects of Influence, Medieval and Modern

Michelle P. Brown

As the theme of this publication begs a philological

question, it seems logical to begin with a consideration
of the meaning, derivation, and usage of the term influence. It is subject to a number of definitions within most major dictionaries (such as the Oxford English
Dictionary), which can include the following:
1. An emanation from the stars or an inflow of water, fluid, or immaterial things. These phenomena have often been credited with exerting an
effect on the destiny of humanity and its metaphysical and biological humours. Similar principles of attraction and repulsion and of magnetic
influence can also be extended to principles of
electrical induction.
2. (vb) To cause to flow in, to infuse or instil.
3. The exercising of power or of the ability to
manipulate those in positions of authority or
power.
4. The inflowing into a person or thing of any conceptual power or principle.
5. The exertion of action by person or thing, of
which the operation is unseen or perceptible only
in its effects.
6. The ability to affect or produce effect.
7. The capacity to produce effects by insensible
means, without employing material force or formal authority. This might take the form of an
ascendancy of person or social group; the exertion of moral power; ascendancy, sway, control,
or authority not formally or overtly expressed.
What then are the origins of the term and what
do we know of its early use? Did the concept of influence in fact enjoy any currency during the Middle
Ages? The derivation of the word is from the Latin
influere, to flow in. In classical sources its meaning is
applied literally to the flowing in of rivers and the sea,
but also to the streaming in of persons, wealth, and
gifts. It could also apply in a more abstract sense to
the sinking in or infiltration of words and ideas.

nees.indd 1

edieval Latin has it as influentia, Spanish and PorM

tuguese as influencia and Italian as influenza.1 It also
corresponds to influxus and was used throughout the
Middle Ages in the context of influxus stellarum, or
astral influence, occurring as early as the fourth century, in Firmicus, and in sources such as Pico di Mirandolas Astrologos, iii.5. Chaucer embraces The concept in the early 1380s in Troilus iii, l. 618: O
influences of thuise hevenes hye! ... and Lydgate,
around 1430, in his Compleint of the Black Knight,
630, writes O Goddesse immortall let the streames
of thine influence Descend down. Likewise Caxton,
in 1483, writes in Cato, E.v.b., The synne whyche I
have doon ageynst myn owne wylle and by the influence of the planette on which I am borne.
The origins of this concept of an external agency
directing human action and will is probably as old as
humankind. It is found in the Bible in Job 38.31,
which in the Geneva version of 1560 is translated as
Canst thou restraine the sweete influences of the
Pleiades?, a motif echoed by Milton in 1667 in his
Paradise Lost, vii.375, when he writes: The Pleiades
before him dancd, Shedding sweet influence. The
transmission of this mode of visualization to the
modern world was assured by Shakespeares starcrossed lovers. This concept goes some way towards
accounting for the complex interrelationship between
astronomy and astrology that pervades medieval life
and art, and which is to be found prefacing many a
devotional and scientific book in the form of the perpetual link between time, the land, the lives of those
who inhabit and labour upon it, and the influences
of the stars, symbolised by the Kalendar, with its accompanying zodiac symbols and labours of the
months. The figures depicting these iconographies in
the Sherborne Missal (British Library, Add. MS
74236), for example, have donned fifteenth-century
English dress, but they are Roman to the core.2
Perhaps the most striking representation of the
concept of influxus stellarum is the zodiac man, such
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as the figure who graces the guild book of the barbersurgeons of York (British Library, Egerton MS 2572).
Having to wait for your trepanning operation until
the influences of the stars were propitious could have
left you in little doubt of the presence of forces greater than yourself, no less than the sense that the mysterious conjunction of influences of the Treasury, the
National Health Service, and the Hospital Trusts
can shape our destinies today.
Something of the same etymological nature as
astral influence could be applied to the exercise of
personal power by human beings, as attested in
Lydgates Lyfe of St Alban of 1439 (1534) A.ii, in which
he writes, I stande in hope his influence shall shyne
My tremblying penne by grace to enlumyne, and in
Shakespeares Two Gentlemen of Verona, III.i.183, If
I be not by her faire influence Fosterd, illumind,
cherishd, kept alive.
As thinking in the realms of both physics and
metaphysics grew more widespread, so the principle
of influxus physicus, physical influence, developed,
denoting the exertion of action of which the operation is unseen, or perceptible only in its effects, by one
person or thing upon another: Shakespeares gibing
spirit, Whose influence is begot of that loose grace,
Which shallow laughing hearers give to fooles (Loves
Labours Lost, V.ii.869). In 1603 Francis Bacon summarised its rationalisation within the modern world
as: The wisdom of conversation hath an influence also into business and government (The Advancement of Learning, II.xxiii, para. 3).3 The concept
of how to make friends and influence people, still so
beloved of sociologists, psychologists, and lobbyists
today, had emerged, blinking at its own dazzling
power, into the light of linguistic day.
Overarching all of this, during the Middle Ages,
was the concept of the inflowing or infusion, into a
person or thing, of divine, spiritual, moral, or immaterial power or principle influentia divina, a concept encountered in the Bible, Wisdom 7.25, She is
the breath of the power of God, and a pure influence
flowing from the glory of the Almighty. This concept is encountered increasingly from the thirteenth
century and was expounded by Aquinas, around
1260, as influentia causae, a scholastic enshrinement
of the principle of cause and effect, introduced to
northern Europe by its implicit pervasion of the writings of Bede (and perpetuated in many modern


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theories such as Marxist dialectics). This was essentially a Christianisation of the Platonic idea of a
prime mover, described by Thomas Aylesbury in a
sermon of 1624 as the unknowne God, whose influence to all his Creatures was made known by the
Poet.4 The role of literature and art in conveying the
mystery of the invisible force that binds all things
together across time and space has always been a fundamental one. Influence has long been one of its
cognomens.
A final, colloquial gloss might be added here. By
at least 1504 in Italian usage influenza was being used
to denote an outbreak or epidemic affecting many
people in the same time and place. Subsequently applied in a less sinister context than that of the plagues
that then beset Europe, the concept of fashion
emerged. As Mrs A. M. Bennett (Juvenile Indiscretions, 1786, I.153) wrote in 1785, Mr Downes was certainly smitten with Lavinia Orthodox, but not with
the matrimonial influenza.5
There is, therefore, a considerable degree of historical validity to the retention of the term influence as denoting a wide variety of aspects of medieval
thought and, potentially, of their manifestation in
art. What then of its use in the study of the period?
The papers in this volume alone would signal a level
of unease in its modes of application. There is a sense
in which the somewhat nebulous imprecision implicit in the very intangibility of the concept occasions suspicion in those intent both upon theorising
and real art history (if there may be deemed to be
such a counterpart to what has become known as real
literature). This has, in turn, provoked an apologia
from some critics.
To summarise the two extremes and consider
some of the issues raised, let us look briefly at the
contrasting stances of Michael Baxandall in his Excursus against influence, a passage in his Patterns of
Intention. On the Historical Explanation of Pictures
(published by Yale University Press in 1985) and Harold Blooms The Anxiety of Influence. A Theory of
Poetry, first published in 1973 but reissued as a second
edition by Oxford University Press in 1997 with an
important new authorial preface.6
Baxandall lays his cards on the table by opening his
attack on the use of the term with the phrase: Mention just now of Czanne brings me to a stumbling-

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block or scandal the notion of artistic influence,

of one painter influencing another which I must
spend a couple of pages trying to kick just enough out
of my road to pass on. 7 For Baxandall influence is
a curse of art criticism primarily because it implies
that the active element is the precursor, which influences the passive follower. For him, it is the second
party who, if anything, influences the former by engaging with, or appropriating from, his work. He
describes the use of the word as shifty. To say that X
influenced Y in some matter is to beg the question of
cause without quite appearing to do so. Here we have
it: the crux of any debate concerning the nature and
use of influence takes us immediately into the realm
of philosophy and personal creed. Is there any such
thing as a prime mover, a momentum to history and
Creation/creativity an influxus stellarum or influxus physicus or is there only ultimately the individual, an island or continent imbued with the
power of drift, which selects its own course and destiny? No wonder the term is controversial!
In their own ways both Baxandall, the denigrator
of influence, and Bloom, its champion (in terms of
both its positive and negative impact) come down in
favour of self-determinism. Baxandall is preoccupied
with the picture and the artist, both of which are
imbued with a distinct persona; Bloom concerns
himself with Shakespeare as poet-supreme, the inventor of modern man, flirting with Borgess contention
that Shakespeare is at once everyone and no one.8 I
shall not dwell on Blooms theory of the anxiety of
influence. Suffice it to say that his essential premise
is that there is a fundamental human fear of lack of
originality, especially within the context of modern
culture and criticism. In his view, resenters of canonical literature are nothing more or less than deniers of Shakespeare. They are not social revolutionaries or even cultural rebels. They are sufferers of the
anxieties of Shakespeares influence.9 Thus it was
that Wallace Stevens refuted all suggestion that he
owed anything to his reading of poetic precursors,
and Jackson Pollock denied any influence upon his
work of former art, or that of all bar a few of his contemporaries. Baxandall summarises his own form of
inferential criticism as how we describe the painters aims, how we consider for critical purposes his
relation to his culture, how we deal with his relation
to other painters, and whether we can accommodate

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within our account the element of process of progressive self-revision involved in painting a picture.10 He
is concerned with the cause-inferring strain inherent
in our thinking about pictures as about other things,
but he has no time for influence. To illustrate his
process he uses a case study of the Forth Bridge to
sketch a basic pattern of explanation and then questions what, in the interest of a picture, this explanation most fails to accommodate.11 His caveat in respect of what differentiates a major work of
engineering from a painting might, I would suggest,
be as usefully applied to the distinction between a
painting and illumination in a book.
Baxandalls way of viewing art may not be capable of direct transfer to the complex medium of the
medieval book. I must confess that for me the picture, or rather the artefact in our case the illuminated manuscript is a bridge, which offers an interface between past and present, the interaction of
which can inform the future. We are not just questioning what the artist was shaped by or what he or
she shaped; we are questioning what motivates us.
What are the constraints, the enduring shared experiences, the cumulative wisdom, the distinct and individual elements? How do the shared and the individual aspects inform and rely upon one another? Art
and literature are good indicators for assessing such
questions isolating artist and viewer, writer and
reader (especially in illuminated manuscripts where
the inter-relationship between text and image is paramount), whilst setting both within their context in
a temporal continuum.
Whilst I myself would subscribe to the view that
history is not only about the past it is as much
about the present and why we do what we do, saying
as much about our perceptions, needs, and aspirations
as it can ever hope to tell us about those of other peoples and periods I do suspect that what Baxandall
is in danger of doing is sacrificing the continuum to
the present moment, rather than respecting their
complex counterpoise. Even so, he is unable to distance himself completely from a discussion of authorial intention, of which he is suspicious as a species of
literary hermeneutics, labelling his own position as
one of nave but sceptical intentionalism.12
Baxandall compares the action of one artist upon
another to a game of pool in which the cue-ball that
hits another is not X but Y, impelled by the cue of
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intention. Ys purposeful movement repositions X

and each end up in a new relation to the other balls.
What he omits to note is that the moment at which
Y moves is but a stage in the on-going game and that
he has, himself, formerly been positioned he is not
automatically the cue-ball. Art history is, if you like,
a pool game without a cue-ball, unless that ball
should, after all, prove to be influence. In pursuit of
his analogy, Baxandall posits that Picasso was not
influenced by Czanne, but that his decision to refer
to Czanne, as well as to other art such as African
sculpture, in fact shaped our perception of Czanne.
This relies upon the assumption of the existence of
seminal artists who create, free from constraint but
empowered by choice. This assumes, rather disingenuously, that the modern artist is free of the constraints of patronage and commercial imperative.
This is certainly seldom the case in respect of medieval book production, in which we are rarely dealing
with the artist, but with teams of jobbing craftsmen and women (whether motivated by faith or
finance, or both) whose choices were informed by the
delicate counterpoint between traditio and innovatio, between instigator, maker, and user. Even when
the artist is also the primary conceptualiser of a
project, as in the case of those medieval desk-top
publishers Giraldus Cambrensis, Matthew Paris, and
Christine de Pizan, their role as artist is subordinate
to that of author. Baxandall anticipates this somewhat when he writes: there are cultures most obviously various medieval cultures in which adherence to existing types and styles is very well thought
of. But then in both cases there are questions to be
asked about the institutional and ideological frameworks in which these things were so: there are causes
of Y referring to X, part of his Charge or Brief one
of these causes might, of course, be influence, especially as understood during the Middle Ages.13 Ironically, Baxandall is forced back upon the etymological root of influence when he discusses intentional
flux and when he asserts that for an incident to be
serendipitous there must be serendipity criteria, and
these constitute an intention.14 This is coming dangerously close to the medieval concept of astral flux.
Perhaps, after all, Baxandalls biggest problem
with influence is that it limits vocabulary. He prefers the diversification and specification of phrases
such as: draw on, appropriate from, adapt, misunder

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stand, assimilate, copy, absorb, master, and transform.

But these other terms are not without their problems
and baggage. No self-respecting art historian would,
for example, refer to the Harley (see pl. 4), Eadwine
or Paris Psalters as copies of the Utrecht Psalter.15
These are not reprographic responses. For Baxandall
to think in terms of influence blunts thought by impoverishing the means of differentiation.16 This can
be so, but influence also has its own specific applications, as we have seen. When used in a nebulous fashion its very lack of specificity can be valuable, especially when considering a period such as the Middle
Ages from which so little of the artistic voice and
evidence of individual context survives, save that extracted from the work itself; and even then, rates of
survival mean that the lacunae surrounding any one
work have to be as resonant as the survivor itself. In
such a situation to specify intent and relationship
may be to overconfine and to distort.
I should like now briefly to explore some of the perspectives of influence and its application, medieval
and modern, with specific reference to four works of
Insular and Anglo-Saxon art: the Lindisfarne Gospels (British Library, Cotton MS Nero D.iv; see
pl.1),17 the Vespasian Psalter (British Library, Cotton
MS Vespasian A.i; see pl. 2),18 the Harley Aratea
(British Library, Harley MS 2506; see pl. 3) and the
Harley Psalter (British Library, Harley MS 603; see
pl. 4). 19
Let us start by testing Baxandalls Czanne/Picasso model with reference to the Harley Psalter,
made at Christ Church, Canterbury, in the early eleventh century. If that volume equals Picasso does its
model, the Utrecht Psalter, made in the Carolingian
diocese of Hautvilliers around 830, equal Czanne?
Do later responses to Utrecht, namely the Eadwine
and Paris Psalters, only understand it by means of the
Harley Psalters reaction to it? The answer is categorically negative. The debate concerning the respective
places in the family tree occupied by the Utrecht Psalter and its Romanesque relatives, the Eadwine and
Paris Psalters, largely disregards the role of its AngloSaxon cousin, the Harley Psalter. If the three later
manuscripts did not, had not, existed, the Utrecht
Psalter would still stand as a great landmark of book
production. However, its significance has undoubtedly been enhanced by its subsequent influence,

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which is partly dictated by its own nature and partly

by its availability as an exemplar.
The Carolingian Utrecht Psalter has lent its
name, for modern art historians, to a whole phase of
later Anglo-Saxon art the Utrecht style. And yet
it is supremely representative of a style of outline
drawing, characterised by its animated, agitated, and
almost sketchy style, that was in vogue more than 150
years earlier in an alien polity. Why this harking back
to an earlier imperialism, as opposed to looking across
to nascent contemporary Ottonian styles? Was the
aesthetic attraction of this refined and rather minimalist style a key factor in its success within a culture
that for centuries had valued calligraphic penwork
and that had picked up on outline drawing first time
around in works associated with the earlier Church
reformer Dunstan, as expressed, admittedly in a more
stable, less mannered form, in his Classbook?20 Was
the reputation of an earlier scriptorium (Reims), or
of a particular book (the Utrecht Psalter), paramount,
or was the generality of association with the Carolingian renovatio enough to ensure the success of the
Utrecht Psalter as a covetable model? Was the choice
of this regional style in any sense a reaction against
the espousal of a luxurious, colourful, fully painted
and gilded form of book painting, known as the
Winchester style, with its debt to works from Charlemagnes court school? Was the personal reputation
and auctoritas of Archbishop Ebbo a factor in the
selection by his later counterpart at Canterbury of a
work associated with the dignity and independence
of the archiepiscopate? We can postulate, but we cannot know. We do know, however, that the non-copies, the reactions, to the Utrecht Psalter have in one
sense made it more than itself, as has the chance factor of its survival, along with its later derivatives.
Nonetheless, Utrecht was already an artistic milestone in its own right and it is that which, ultimately,
guaranteed its desirability as a model. Its own successful response to the influences of late antique and
early Christian art and to the intellectual soil of
Carolingia in which those ideas took root and blossomed in distinctive local fashion rendered it, in turn,
a successful agent of influence. I would not wish to
be less nebulous than that, in this respect.
The Harley Psalter represents the response of a
patron, the archbishop of Canterbury (probably depicted in its opening initial), and the Christ Church

nees.indd 5

scriptorium to a particular style/ethos and a particular book. The furore that erupted in the scriptorium
as artists and scribes, some of them no doubt one and
the same, grappled with the challenges posed by one
of the most demanding and sustained examples of the
integration of text and image to have been made to
date, can be imagined. The problems of converting a
complex mise-en-page to accommodate a different
textual rescension (the Romanum, as used in Canterbury, as opposed to the Gallicanum, as used in Carolingia), a different font size (English Caroline minuscule rather than Carolingian antiquarian rustic
capitals) and different theological points of emphasis
within the picture poems that are its illustrations,
taught the scriptorium all there was to know about
book production at that time. You can almost hear
the outcry and dilemma of the artist-scribe Eadui
Basan, as he veered between the allegiances of his
dual art, as first artists and then scribes seized the
initiative in the layout process in order to accommodate the needs of their own craft. Herein, perchance,
may lie a large part of the secret of the Utrecht Psalters success it had a tremendous amount to teach
people.
The Utrecht Psalter and the Utrecht style had
already provoked a more individual response from
another Anglo-Saxon artist who was responsible for
illuminating several extant books, notably the Harley
Aratea, the Ramsey Psalter, and the Boulogne Gospels, in the late tenth century.21 This was an artist,
and perhaps also a scribe, if the evidence of the close
relationship between script and decoration in the
Ramsey Psalter is to be heeded, who travelled and
who absorbed influences as he went. The Ramsey
Psalter is thought, from liturgical evidence, to have
been made at Winchester (or, less likely, Ramsey).
The Boulogne Gospels were made at St Bertin, and
the Aratea was written by scribes at Fleury, but both
were illustrated by our English artist, the former in a
curiously flat mixed technique of fully painted and
outline drawing, and the latter in a refined, elegant
tinted drawing technique that is highly redolent of
the ninth-century Carolingian Reims style with its
fine broken-line penwork. This artist was well aware
of influxus stellarum and may well have felt himself
to be within the pull of the moist star (the moon) in
reflecting both indigenous traditions and those of
the golden age of an earlier empire. It has been sugan early outbreak of influenza?

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gested that his mobility may imply that he was a layman, but there is little evidence for such at this period
(although it is certainly not impossible) and it is more
likely that he travelled as part of the retinue of a
prince of the Church or that, like his fellow countryman, Eadui Basan, his skill as an artist and/or scribe
led to his being pulled out of the cloister and the
scriptorium to ply his art at the behest of high-ranking clerical or secular powers (in Eaduis case King
Cnut and his queen, Emma). 22 A contemporary of
Eaduis in early eleventh-century Canterbury, Aelfric
Bata, complains in a verse about scribes who, instead
of observing the discipline of the cloister and teaching, are out on the road earning fame, and no doubt
money. Are we witnessing the origins of the artist,
or is there a recollection here of the earlier Insular
tradition of the hero-scribe, such as St Columba and
Eadfrith?23 If the Aratea artist developed his appreciation of what must by this time have been a rather
antiquarian Reimsian style whilst working in scriptoria within Frankia, as well as consulting other
Carolingian works such as the great ninth-century
Aratea, British Library, Harley MS 647, which was
in England by this time, might he have played a part
in spreading word of its covetable masterwork, the
Utrecht Psalter, which was then secured as an exemplar by the English primate? It is difficult to say
which influences may be at work here, but hard to
avoid the use of the concept of influence in some
form.
Retreating into the comparative safety of the twilight of the Insular world the Dark Ages, in which
the only darkness is the cloud of our own unknowing
I should like to turn attention for a few moments
to the Vespasian Psalter. This is generally accepted as
a Kentish work of the early eighth century, made
around the 720s30s, at about the time that I would
suggest its Northumbrian counterpart, the Lindisfarne Gospels, was completed. It is usually ascribed,
following the work of David Wright in his commentary to the Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile
volume, to Canterbury, its provenance pointing to its
probable presence upon the high altar at St Augustines in the fourteenth century (as indicated by Thomas of Elmham).24 But provenance evidence can be
deceptive. St Augustines absorbed Minster-in-Thanets property and books in much the same way as the
community of St Cuthbert acquired those of Monk

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wearmouth-Jarrow when they were gifted with Chester-le-Street as their new caput (by way of thanks for
engineering the deposition of a hostile Viking leader
in favour of a more amenable Dane, Guthred but
that is another story).25 Magnet theory is always dangerous, especially when studying a period for which
the evidence is so fragmentary. At the time that the
Vespasian Psalter was made the nuns of Minster-inThanet in Kent, situated near to the place where St
Augustines mission had made landfall upon English
soil, are known to have been making books. 26 The
remarkable correspondence that survives from the
730s between their abbess, Eadburh, and her friend
Boniface, engaged in the perilous work of conversion
in the Germanic mission fields, indicates that a nuns
scriptorium was considered his book supply route of
choice. That this included the highest grades of production of sacred text is indicated by his behest that
Eadburh produce for him books written in a large,
formal bookhand (as his eyesight was not what it
used to be) and a copy of the Epistles written in gold,
to impress the natives.27 Books were powerful symbols, and their prestigious appearance could do much
to ensure the welcome accorded to their bearers and
the Word they carried. I do think that it has still to
be seriously considered that the Vespasian Psalter,
with its imposing uncial script, modelled on that
practised in the Rome of Gregory the Great, its monumental imagery with King David depicted as a
contemporary Anglo-Saxon warlord, playing the
equivalent of the lyre found in the Sutton Hoo ship
burial and its lavish use of gold leaf, might have
been made by women at Thanet.28 Rosamond McKitterick has done much to demonstrate that books for
use in the principal churches of Merovingian Gaul
were often supplied by nuns, and I have explored the
context of early Anglo-Saxon womens books further,
from Cuthswith of Inkberrow to the women of early
ninth-century Mercia who made and owned prayerbooks such as the Book of Nunnaminster (probably
passed on the distaff side to Alfred the Greats wife,
Ealhswith). 29 Former scholarly resistance to such
possibilities calls to mind the influence of male-dominated nineteenth- to twentieth-century philology,
exposed and explored adeptly by Christine Fell, by
which the term locbore, encountered in the early
seventh-century Anglo-Saxon law code of King
Ethelberht of Kent (Ethelberht 73), had perforce to

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carry connotations of sexuality: a woman who incurred greater penalties at law for a misdemeanour
because she was lock-bearing was thought to be a
virgin because of her long hair. Fell demonstrated
that lock-bearing actually referred to the fact that
women ran many of the early English estates and that
their role as chatelaines, keepers of the store-keys,
made a breach of trust more reprehensible.30
The David image in the Vespasian Psalter (see pl.
2) displays the influence of a number of cultural
strands, in visual form. The rounded figure style recalls Italo-Byzantine frescoes; the architectural arcade likewise evokes buildings constructed more romanum (in Roman fashion), but the arch is filled
with a frozen, static version of Celtic Ultimate La
Tne spriralwork ornament, and its vestigial bases
and capitals with independent heraldic Germanic
beasts of Southumbrian style; and the blank corners
of the page are filled with exotic sprigs of Byzantine
blossom. The signals of a perceived multiculturalism
are present, but the rhetoric is not sustained. The
script that faces the image is inscribed in a monumental version of uncial, modelled consciously upon that
favoured by the missionary pope, Gregory, and his
injunction to Serenus of Marseilles, In images the
illiterate read, gives licence to the Insular imagination to experiment with the ultimate expression of
mutual validation of word and image the historiated initial, in which an image elucidating or expanding upon the text is actually contained within the
body of the letter, part of the words it illustrates.31
This is the earliest extant occurrence of its use in
Western art.
A different, but complementary, response to Gregorys premise can be seen in the Lindisfarne Gospels.
His influence in relation to the didactic role of images is balanced with that of the ongoing debate
amongst peoples of the Word concerning the dangers
of idolatry, a topic that still greatly exercised Charlemagne and his churchmen. The maker of the Lindisfarne Gospels approaches his figural images, the
evangelist portraits, as symbolic figurae schematic
representations embedded within the intertextuality
of exegesis.32 When St John fixes the viewer with his
penetrating gaze he symbolises not only the Evangelist in his human form, but the non-synoptic revelatory nature of this particular Gospel, evoked by the
identifying symbol of the eagle who flies directly to

nees.indd 7

the throne of God for inspiration and who represents

the Christ of the Second Coming. The composition
of the enthroned, frontal figure who, unlike his counterparts is not depicted as a scribe but who gestures
towards heaven and the book of life that he holds, is
designed to recall the Maiestas this is simultaneously the Evangelist, his embodiment of an aspect of
Christs persona, and Christ himself, enthroned at
the Last Judgement.
This oblique, symbolic approach to the depiction
of the divine pervades the volume. In the Canon Tables the sacred numbers themselves embody the
Word, the ministry of Christ, and are approached
through arcades recalling the chancel and the entrance to the Holy of Holies, here formed not of cold
porphyry, as in their Mediterranean precursors, but
of a living mass of Creation.33 The cross-carpet pages
may be intended to allude to the prayer-mats which
were a feature not only of worship in the Christian
Orient and Islam, but that were used in northern Europe at this time, preparing the entry onto the holy
ground of Scripture, but they are also intentional representations of the crux gemmata, the jewelled cross
which symbolised the Christ of the Second Coming
a metalwork cross depicted as a textile on the vellum page.34 Finally, when the words introducing each
Gospel explode across the page in a riot of decoration
(see pl. 1) they become themselves iconic representations of the divine the Word made flesh, or rather,
the Word made word, in a burgeoning of sacred calligraphy of a sort made more familiar within the arts
of Islam.35
I have suggested that the masterly synthesising of
these various cultural influences I know not what
to call them more conveniently occurred as part of
a conceptualised agenda of reconciliation and ecumenism in which clerics such as Eadfrith, the probable
artist-scribe and planner of the Lindisfarne Gospels,
Bede and Adomnn of Iona collaborated during the
first quarter of the eighth century. There is, it would
appear, a measure of conscious cultural appropriation
in the use of sign and symbol at play here. As the preliminary drawings and their authorial alterations indicate, it was significant that in Lindisfarnes display
scripts (see pl. 1) Roman capitals, Greek letter-forms
and runic stylistic features should be combined the
Insular world was proclaiming itself heir to the cultures of the past and signalling its own distinctive
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contribution, rather as in their genealogy the kings of

Northumbria traced their descent through historical
figures to the pagan deity Woden, himself made human and his descent traced from Adam. Likewise on
the eighth-century Northumbrian whalebone casket
known as the Franks Casket a visual essay in good
governance that may even have contained a royal genealogy Romulus and Remus appear, suckled by
the she-wolf, Titus sacks Jerusalem, and Weyland the
Smith is juxtaposed with the Adoration of the Magi.36
Thus the Insular tradition is set within a cultural continuum. The role of influence in all this is difficult to
assess, but it is perhaps reasonable to say that the influence of, for example, Coptic art can be detected in
Insular art and liturgy. It is less apparent, to resurrect
Baxandalls model, how Insular culture has in turn
influenced that of Coptic Egypt.
The maker of the Lindisfarne Gospels copied his
main text from a sixth-century gospelbook from Naples, which was also copied at Monkwearmouth-Jarrow and may have come to Lindisfarne, as it were, on
inter-library loan (or, more likely, in the form of a
Monkwearmouth-Jarrow copy), perhaps via the agency of Bede, who was commissioned by Bishop Eadfrith of Lindisfarne to rewrite the Life of St Cuthbert
to reflect current agendas.37 Other copies of the Neapolitan exemplar have survived, notably British Library, Royal MS 1.B.vii, and the St Petersburg Gospels (St Petersburg, National Library of Russia, MS
F. v. 1. 8), and these demonstrate that the model was
not illuminated and that it lacked Canon Tables,
which in Lindisfarne are supplied with reference to
another Italian, probably Capuan, exemplar. The remarkable programme of decoration in the Lindisfarne Gospels was its makers own, although the
groundwork for some of its developments had been
laid in earlier Insular works such as the Book of Durrow and in other media. In order to achieve the flexibility of layout necessary to achieve this intricate,
synthetic programme, the artist-scribe seems to have
pioneered a number of technical innovations, to
judge from the surviving record, including the use of
lead-point (some 300 years before it entered into more
general use) and the forerunner of the light-box, the
back-drawings indicating that he employed backlighting in a fashion later described by the fifteenthcentury Florentine craftsman Cennino Cennini.38
Here we have come dangerously close to innovation.


nees.indd 8

This may have been acceptable in the technical and

artistic fields, but innovatio certainly had to be handled extremely carefully where text was concerned.
The retention in the Lindisfarne Gospels of the prefaces concerning lections for certain feast days, the
saints celebrated indicating the Neapolitan origins of
the textual exemplar, suggest that the pedigree of the
model was important that its origins imbued it
with auctoritas, in the same way that the Echternach
Gospels preserved an earlier colophon linking its text
ultimately back to St Jerome himself.
One feature that was thus appreciated within this
fluidity was authority, in terms of a respect to be accorded to key figures within the Christian tradition
(be they the early Church Fathers, or fathers of Christianity within the Insular milieu, such as Columba
and Augustine of Canterbury). Jerome himself was
well aware of the emerging medieval creative tension
between traditio and innovatio and was at pains to
justify and document his own editorial processes, as
outlined in the Novum opus open letter to Pope
Damasus. Bede was equally sensitive to such needs,
especially as, like Jerome, he attracted significant
controversy and criticism for presuming to make an
active contribution to textual transmission and criticism. His letter, or apologia, to Bishop Acca of Hexham concerning his commentary on Luke, is a moving plea for understanding on the part of a scholar
who is evidently hurt, and somewhat bemused, by the
misunderstanding by others of his purpose and of his
own heightened perception and comprehension of
the tradition within which he is actively working.39
In his Institutiones Cassiodorus, an influential figure
in Insular monasticism, wrote that in those who
translate, expand, or humbly copy Scripture the Spirit continues to work, as in the biblical authors who
were first inspired to write them.40 Perhaps only
those who had devoted their lives to becoming, simultaneously, a living ark of Scripture and a vessel
capable of emptying itself completely in order to be
filled with the Spirit, could fully sympathise with his
vision and working methods,41 then as now. Bede was
part of a living tradition, in which the inspiration
accorded others needed to be valued and duly acknowledged, while also forming a symbiotic relationship with the inspiration of the contemporary writer.
The popular epithet of the father of English history
accorded to Bede pays tribute to aspects of his meth-

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odology that have informed the discipline of history

writing. One of these is the recognition of the need
to verify, assess and record sources, whether primary
or secondary a significant contribution to the development of footnoting and bibliography. This is a
reflex of what Bloom would call troping the cumulative elaboration upon and contribution to a
theme or genre. Whether or not Bede would concur
in the suggestion that he suffered from the anxiety
of influence is another matter.

Influence, in its guise as the process of affecting

thought and action by means of an indirect authority, could certainly be said to be an element in the
medieval balancing act between traditio and innovatio. Its often invisible tendrils permeated the medieval
world-view and, on balance, it may continue, if used
wisely, to serve a useful role in the terminological
quiver of the art historian.

NOTES
See, for example, A Latin Dictionary Founded on Andrews Edition of
Freunds Latin Dictionary, ed. and rev. C. T. Lewis and C. Short, Oxford
1879, and R. E. Latham, Revised Medieval Latin Word-List from British
and Irish Sources, London 1965.
2
J. M. Backhouse, The Sherborne Missal, London 1999; K. Scott, Later
Gothic Manuscripts 13901490, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in
the British Isles VI, London 1996, no. 9; British Library/M. P. Brown,
The Sherborne Missal on Turning the Pages, CD-Rom, London, 2001.
3
The Advancement of Learning. [Francis Bacon], ed. M. Kiernan, Oxford
2000.
4
Thomas Aylesbury, Paganisme and Papisme: parallel d and set forth in
a sermon at the Temple Church, London, 1624.
5
A. M. Bennet, Juvenile Indiscretions, Dublin 1786.
6
M. Baxandall, Patterns of Intention: On the Historical Explanation of
Pictures, London and New Haven 1985, esp. Excursus against influence,
at pp. 5861; H. Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry,
Oxford and New York 1973; 2nd edn, Oxford 1997.
7
Baxandall (as in n. 6), p. 58.
8
Bloom (as in n. 6), p. xlvi.
9
Ibid., p. xix.
10
Baxandall (as in n. 6), pp. v and vi.
11
Ibid., p. v.
12
Ibid., p. vii.
13
Ibid., pp. 5960.
14
Ibid., p. 67.
15
The Utrecht Psalter in Medieval Art: Picturing the Psalms of David, ed.
K. Van der Horst, W. Noel and W. C. M. Wtefeld, MS t Goy and London 1996.
16
Baxandall (as in n. 6), p. 59.
17
See M. P. Brown, The Lindisfarne Gospels: Society, Spirituality and the
Scribe, London and Toronto 2003, a monograph to accompany the facsimile The Lindisfarne Gospels, Lucerne 2003; see also J. J. G. Alexander,
Insular Manuscripts, 6th to the 9th Century, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles I, London 1978, no. 9.
18
D. H. Wright, The Vespasian Psalter, Early English Manuscripts in
Facsimile 14, Copenhagen 1967; see also Alexander (as in n. 17), no. 29.
19
W. G. Noel, The Harley Psalter, Cambridge 1996; see also E. Temple,
Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, 9001066, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles II, London and Oxford 1976, nos 42 and 64.
1

nees.indd 9

20

The Dunstan Classbook is Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Auct. F.4.32,

see Temple (as in n. 19), no. 11.
21
British Library, Harley MS 2506, Harley MS 2904 and Boulogne, Bibliothque municipale, MS 11; see Temple (as in n. 19), nos 42, 41 and
44.
22
On the patronage of Cnut and Emma, see T. A. Heslop, The Production of De Luxe Manuscripts and the Patronage of King Cnut and Queen
Emma, Anglo-Saxon England, XIX, 1990, pp. 15195.
23
On this aspect of the role of the scribe in the early Middle Ages, see
Brown (as in n. 17), pp. 397400.
24
Wright (as in n. 18).
25
Brown, Lindisfarne Gospels (as in n. 17), pp. 8687.
26
M. P. Brown, Female Book-Ownership and Production in AngloSaxon England: The Evidence of the Ninth-Century Prayerbooks, in
Lexis and Texts in Early English: Papers in Honour of Jane Roberts, ed. C.
Kay and L. Sylvester, Amsterdam 2001, pp. 4567.
27
D. Whitelock, English Historical Documents, I, London 1979, no.
172.
28
Brown, Female Book-Ownership and Production (as in n. 26).
29
R. McKitterick, Nuns Scriptoria in England and Francia in the Eighth
Century, Francia, XIX.1, 1989, pp. 1934; Brown, Female Book-Ownership and Production (as in n. 26), pp. 4567.
30
C. Fell, Women in Anglo-Saxon England and the Impact of 1066, London 1984, pp. 6061.
31
Brown, Lindisfarne Gospels (as in n. 17), p. 77; see D. Ayerst and A. S.
T. Fisher, Records of Christianity, II, Oxford 1977, pp. 10102, and
C.Chazelle, Pictures, Books and the Illiterate: Pope Gregory Is Letters
to Serenus of Marseilles, Word and Image , VI.2, 1990, pp. 13853.
32
On this and the following discussion of the Lindisfarne Gospels and
its artistic imagery, see Brown, Lindisfarne Gospels (as in n. 17), pp. 272
394.
33
Ibid., pp. 30005.
34
Ibid., pp. 31231.
35
Ibid., pp. 274 and 33145.
36
British Museum, M&LA 1867, 120, 1, see The Making of England:
Anglo-Saxon Art and Culture AD 600900, ed. L. Webster and J. M.
Backhouse, London 1991, no. 70.
37
Bedes Life of St Cuthbert (prose version), ed. and tr. D. H. Farmer, in
The Age of Bede, Harmondsworth 1983; for a discussion of Eadfriths com-

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mission and its implications for the making of the Lindisfarne Gospels,
see Brown, Lindisfarne Gospels (as in n. 17), pp. 10, 3941, 5355 and 65.
38
Brown, Lindisfarne Gospels (as in n. 17), pp. 21326 and 29099.
39
For Bedes letter to Acca, see Bede, Lives of the Abbots of Wearmouth
and Jarrow,
ed. D. H. Farmer, in The Age of Bede, rev. edn, Harmondsworth 1983.
40
Brown (as in n. 17), pp. 39799. Bede, Expositio in Lucam, Corpus
Christianorum Series Latina 120, ed. D. Hurst, Turnhout 1960, prol.
93115; M. Stansbury, Early Medieval Biblical Commentaries, Their
Writers and Readers, in Frmittelalterliche Studien, Jahrbuch des Instituts fr Frhmittelalterforschung der Universitt Mnster 33, ed. K.
Hauck, Berlin and New York 1999, pp. 5082 (72). Cassiodorus, De Institutione Divinarum Litterarum, ch. 30; see Magni Aurelii Cassiodori
Variarum Libri XII, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina, 96, ed. A.
Fridh, Turnhout 1973.
41
Brown, Lindisfarne Gospels (as in n. 17), pp. 39799.

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