Scripture Transformed in Later Fourteenth-Century England: The Religious, Artistic, and Social Worlds of the Welles-Ros Bible

FAIN: FEL-272620-21

Kathryn A. Smith
New York University (New York, NY 10012-1019)

Research and preparation of a book on the Welles-Ros Bible, an Anglo-Norman illuminated manuscript from the 1360s in England.

My project will be the first long-form study of the Welles-Ros Bible, the most complete surviving version and sole illustrated copy of the Anglo-Norman Bible, the earliest entire vernacular Bible from England. I show that this unique manuscript, its reader-friendly translation, and its rich program of imagery were produced in the 1360s on the order of a widowed baroness to serve as a primer, guide, family archive, and source of consolation for her fatherless son. Through analysis of its carefully crafted illustrations and their allied texts, I show how the Bible could have shaped not only the young baron's faith but also his political and social aspirations and worldview, as well as his memory, emotions, and masculinity. My project sheds new light on the history of Bible translation and reception; the roles of images in mediating Scripture; women's cultural patronage; medieval ideas about gender, health, and sexuality; and English art, society, and culture after the Black Death.