Date/Time
Date(s) - 25 Feb 2015
5:30 PM - 7:00 PM
Location
Columbia University Faculty House
Category(ies) No Categories
The Anglo-Saxon Studies Colloquium and the Columbia University Seminar on Medieval Studies present:
Wednesday, February 25, from 5:30-7:00pm in Faculty House (Columbia University).
Herbert Broderick, of Lehman College, will speak on
“Moses the Egyptian in the Illustrated Old English Hexateuch (London, British Library Cotton MS Claudius B.iv”
Cotton MS Claudius B.iv, a paraphrase in Old English of the first six books of the Bible with over four hundred illustrations, thought to have been created at St. Augustine’s, Canterbury, in the second quarter of the 11th century, presents the figure of Moses with eight distinctive visual attributes, among them the first extant example of Moses displaying horns on his head. These visual attributes will be shown to have been derived from a Hellenistic Alexandrian Jewish apologetic, repeated by early Christian writers such as Clement of Alexandria and Eusebius, that characterized Moses as a military general, prophet, priest, and scribe. Many of these visual attributes, the greatest number in the entire repertoire of medieval and Renaissance art given to Moses, exhibit distinctive “Egyptianizing” elements, the ultimate origin of which may not have been clearly understood by the Anglo-Saxon artists of this 11th-century Christian manuscript.
PLEASE NOTE:
The talk will be followed by dinner at Faculty House. All those who wish to dine with the speaker after the talk must make reservations by contacting the rapporteur of the seminar, Jeffrey Wayno ([email protected]) as soon as possible. Dinner is a fixed buffet menu, which costs $25 per person. Payment can be made by checks made out to “Columbia University.”