Acknowledgments
My research for this book has extended over more than fifteen years. Whenever other projects drew my attention, WearmouthâJarrow, Bede, Ceolfrith, and his full Bibles, especially the Codex Amiatinus, remained at the back of my scholarly thoughts, and in the last six years they have been a near-constant focus. In such a long period, I have gained inspiration, ideas, and assistance from more people than I can name here, but I want to express my appreciation to as many as possible.
The early stages of research were mainly concerned with Amiatinusâ painted pages, and the questions I posed were largely art historical. My chronologically first scholarly debt for this project is to Lawrence Nees, who shared insights about Amiatinus that prompted my interest in the manuscript and helped me refine ideas by asking tough questions at lectures I gave, and providing critical feedback on my written work. Around the same time, Jeffrey Hamburger and Anne-Marie Bouché invited me to speak about Amiatinusâ three biblical diagrams at their conference, The Mindâs Eye: Art and Theological Argument in the Medieval West, held at Princeton University in 2001, and they shepherded the article that grew out of my lecture to publication. Further invitations to give papers on Amiatinusâ art over the next few years came from the University of Nagoya in Japan, Ohio University, and the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence in Princeton. I am grateful to the organizers of these events and audience members who offered comments that pushed my thinking in new directions.
As my research shifted beyond Amiatinus to its âsisterâ Bibles and the wider religious and cultural contexts in which all these manuscripts were made, I have been grateful for opportunities to share ideas at the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University and meetings of the Delaware Valley Medieval Association. Additional opportunities to speak about aspects of my research came from William Jordan at Princeton University; Martha Newman at the University of Texas-Austin; the Centre for Catholic Studies at Chinese University Hong Kong; the Anglo-Saxon Studies Colloquium of New York; Susan Boynton at Columbia University; Rebecca Müller at Goethe University, Frankfurt; Robert Ousterhout and Ann Matter at the University of Pennsylvania; the coordinators of Medieval Studies at Yale and Harvard Universities; Johannes Heil of the Hochschule für Jüdische Studien, Heidelberg; Anne-Orange Poilpré at the Institut national dâhistoire de lâart, Paris; Elizabeth Pastan at Emory University; and Charles Barber, Beatrice Kitzinger, and Pamela Patton at Princeton and the Index of Medieval Art. More recently, in July 2016, Meg Boulton and Jane Hawkes at the University of York invited me to give one of the keynote lectures in their conference, The Codex Amiatinus in Context. That trip enabled me to discuss the hypotheses and arguments of this book with leading experts in Anglo-Saxon studies and to visit the sites of Wearmouth and Jarrow in the company of Rosemary Cramp.
I also wish to express appreciation to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton for a Membership in Spring 2002 and Visitorship in 2005â06, occasions that allowed me to lay early research groundwork for the book; the National Endowment for the Humanities, for a Fellowship in 2005â06 that funded a sabbatical; Paul Rorem of Princeton Theological Seminary, for inviting me to teach a graduate seminar on related topics in Spring 2009; The College of New Jersey for two sabbatical leaves, SOSA grants providing released time from teaching, and two mini-grants that helped cover the expenses of a research trip to Florence and some fees for images; and my department chair, Cynthia Paces, for teaching schedules that allowed me blocks of research time while I was immersed in writing. I am very grateful, as well, to the editors of the Commentaria series, especially Ann Matter, and to Marcella Mulder and Peter Buschman of Brill Publishers for their oversight of the publishing process and help with many questions along the way; and to the anonymous reviewers who read the typescript sent to Brill in 2017 and offered perceptive criticisms and suggestions for improvement.
In addition, thanks are owed to the libraries, archives, and their staffs that provided photographs and copyright permission: the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence; the British Library, London; the National Trust; the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris; the Universiteits-Bibliotheek, Utrecht; the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana; the Bibliothèque Municipale, Laon; and the Bibliothèque Municipale, Autun. Dr. Sabina Magrini helped me examine the Codex Amiatinus first hand at the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in 2004; the British Library allowed me to study the Greenwell, Middleton, and Bankes Leaves (Add. 37777, Add. 45025, Loan 81) in 2006. The librarians of Princeton Universityâs Firestone and Marquand Libraries spent much time helping me locate books and access other materials in their regular and rare books collections.
Many individual colleagues and friends have also aided me to bring this project to completion. I am enormously grateful to James Marrow and Emily Rose, who provided substantial funding toward fees for images and copyright. David Ganz took a day to examine the Greenwell, Middleton, and Bankes Leaves with me, and since then he has given me wise counsel about their and Amiatinusâ scripts and codicology. Richard Gameson shared his deep knowledge of Amiatinus at the Codex Amiatinus in Context conference and sent me a draft and the final text of his Jarrow Lecture before it was published. Barbara Beall, Meg Boulton, Michelle Brown, Peter Darby, Carol Farr, Jane Hawkes, Georgia Michael, Conor OâBrien, Thomas OâLoughlin, Steven Wander, and Lila Yawn emailed me articles of theirs on Amiatinus, WearmouthâJarrow, and related subjects. Hugh Houghton and David Parker answered email queries about aspects of Amiatinusâ scripture; Cynthia Hahn advised me on issues pertaining to the reproduction of manuscript leaves. Four students, Kyle Hallmark, Andrew Holland, Mehdi Lemdani, and Andrew Vitale, have worked hard as research assistants for me over the last several years. Beatrice Kitzinger and Pamela Patton read and critiqued drafts of an article from which I incorporate material in Chapters 5 and 6. The late Jennifer OâReilly offered many insights about Amiatinus and Bede through conversations and email exchanges. My daughter Anna solved numerous computer woes and made me an easily searchable pdf version of the Codex Amiatinus digitized facsimile that greatly improved the efficiency of my studies. David Holleran of The College of New Jersey, an expert in map-making for modern criminology, generously took time away from his own research to prepare maps for the typescript sent to Brill in 2017. I am most grateful to Leslie French, an expert in mapping medieval Europe, who kindly devoted many hours to preparing the maps included here.
Above all, I owe a huge debt to Mildred Budny, Executive Director of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence. Over the past six and more years, she has drawn on her vast expertise in Anglo-Saxon paleography and codicology to advise me on multiple aspects of Amiatinus and other manuscripts discussed in this book. The questions I ask about those sources, the clues I seek to answer them, and the scholarly strategies I utilize in the following chapters are fundamentally indebted to her guidance and instruction. Furthermore, she has patiently read and given detailed, valuable criticism on drafts of every chapter, and sometimes multiple drafts. For numerous passages, she proposed better wording than my first awkward attempts to set out ideas and arguments. The errors remain my own, but it is by no means an exaggeration to say that this monograph might never have been finished without her assistance.
This book is dedicated to my daughter Anna and son Damien for sharing the excitement and frequently welcome distraction of their very different professional careers. However fascinating I may find WearmouthâJarrow and its manuscripts, my children and other relatives and in-laws in Canada, the US, and Europe make sure that I remember there are other things in life to care about. Finally, I wish to express my profound gratitude to Bernard, my husband. He, too, has responded to computer emergencies and encouraged me to keep one foot, metaphorically speaking, in the modern world. He has provided steady emotional support and shown incredible patience as I have agonized over every step of the writing process. Perhaps most importantly, amidst all the stress, he has given me a good reason to laugh every day.