Mary holds an open book in the Annunciation miniature of the Benedictional of
Aethelwold (London, BL MS Add. 49598, fol.5v), of c. 971-984, well-illustrated
in the monograph by Robert Deshman, THE BENEDICTIONAL OF AETHELWOLD. STUDIES IN
MANUSCRIPT ILLUMINATION 9 (Princeton, 1995): Pl.8.
The Anglo-Saxons were precocious in their Marian iconography. Mary Clayton
indexes instances of Mary with a book as an attribute in her: THE CULT OF THE
VIRGIN MARY IN ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND (Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England 2,
1990): 295.
Quite often, people refer to the Annunciation scene of the c. 1135 St.
Albans Psalter now in the treasury of St. Godehard's, Hildesheim (paginated,
p.19) as the first Mary-with-book Annunciation, probably because until recently
the Anglo-Saxon antecedants had not been published (monograph: THE ST. ALBANS
PSALTER (ALBANI PSALTER), by Otto pacht, C.R. Dodwell, and Francis Wormald
(London, 1960): Pl.15.
Michael Clanchy [FROM MEMORY TO WRITTEN RECORD, Ed. II (Oxford, 1993):
191,192] refines this definition. For him, the Albani/Christina scene shows
Mary "unequivocally as a reader meditating on a text." His larger point is that
the iconography of Mary as reader apparently develops in tandem with the demand
for/provision of devotional books to (often made by) a growing female
constituency.
In that regard, an important early essay by Susan Groag Bell includes a
range of scenes in which Mary is represented with a book, including the Nativity
itself: "Medieval Women Book Owners: Arbiters of Lay Piety and Ambassadors of
Culture," in WOMEN AND POWER IN THE MIDDLE AGES, edited by Mary Erler and
Maryanne Kowaleski (University of Georgia Press, 1988): 83-101, and
anthologized several times since. One of the finest more recent essays I've
found is by Bella Millett: "Women in No Man's Land: English recluses and the
development of vernacular literature in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,"
in WOMEN AND LITERATURE IN BRITAIN, 1150-1500, edited by Carol M. Meale
(Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 17, 1993): 86-103. But then we are
launched into a different and vast subject--literacy and gender--about which I'm
sure other members of the list know much more than I do!
Nell Gifford Martin
http://www.cyberpsalter.org
Bill East wrote:
> Likewise the number of Annunciation scenes showing Mary reading.
> >
> >tom izbicki
> >
> >A silly question, perhaps, but how and when does this iconography develop?
> When on pilgrimage to Walsingham last week (with ful devout corage) I bought
> myself a plaque showing Mary reading a book - no doubt the prophecy of
> Isaiah. We are given no indication in the Bible that Mary could read, so,
> to repeat myself, how and when did the iconography develop (be brief).
>
> Bill.
> >
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