ABSTRACT
The relationship between early medieval texts and pictorial images in terms of their shared exegetical techniques, function and liturgical background, provides a large and important body of material for the historian of early monastic culture. This article examines some aspects of the process by which the inheritance from the patristic period of exegetical chains of key scriptural texts prompted continuing exposition and the formulation of images as pictorial exegesis. Focusing on the particular example of an inscribed Anglo-Saxon ivory and related Insular works, it studies the exegetical origins and the early iconography of the image of the wounded Christ enthroned in glory. The theme illustrates both the use made by exegetes and artists of the scriptural practice of rendering physical sight as an image of spiritual insight and, by extension, ways in which the actual reading of texts and images in order to discern their spiritual meaning, hidden from the uninitiated, was itself regarded as a model of the Christian and, especially, the monastic vocation.
