Click on this image to enlarge.

I came across this today in the process of working on my L501 project. It's the first page of the Old English poem Genesis from a manuscript in the Oxford University library (Bodleian, to be precise, Junius 11). It's illustrated, not just with fantastic stylized images like the one on this page but with full-scale images to accompany the Biblical stories.

These images are incredible--think cartoon-like sequences of finely-drawn figures narrating events such as the episode with Abraham and Isaac on Mount Moriah. The pictures have a quality all their own, quite unlike the typical stylized bird-and-beast interlace in other Anglo-Saxon art. We looked at the image for the Abraham and Isaac story in my Bible in English Literature course at Queen's, where we picked apart the symbolism (for instance, Abraham carries a sword, which is right at the centre of the picture, foreshadowing the cross).

I just find this so incredible. It's easy to stereotype the Anglo-Saxons as superstitions medievals, ignorant about basic Christianity. Certainly their attitude toward Scripture was pre-Reformation (by several centuries!), but their love of the Bible is evident, I think, in works of art like these, even if I don't necessarily agree with the use to which these images were put or the theology behind them.