This book reveals the interrelationship of text and picture in the only surviving illustrated Anglo-Saxon poetic manuscript. It locates the manuscript within the broader cultural contexts in which it was produced and read, and documents the way in which it was transformed by poets, artists, and modern scholars and editors from a collection of biblical poetry to a national historical narrative.

The literature of Anglo-Saxon England is unique among contemporary European literatures in that it features a vast amount of saints' lives in the vernacular. This study analyzes the most important author Aelfric's lives of five important saints in the light of their cults in Anglo-Saxon England, providing the reader fascinating glimpses of 'Aelfric at work'. He adapts the cults and rewrites the received Latin hagiography so that each of their lives conveys a distinct message to the contemporary political elite as well as to a lay audience at large.

This book provides a major study of the drawings, paintings and carvings of the crucifixion from tenth- and eleventh-century England, placing these works of art within the context of the tenth-century monastic revival. The drawings and paintings of the crucifixion are discussed in relation to the literature, theology, liturgy and devotional practices of the late Anglo-Saxon period in order to reveal the richness and subtlety of religious belief at this time. Late Anglo-Saxon religious art is shown to have played a central role in the monastic life; it called to mind the gospel events and set...