ABSTRACT
Theearliest surviving Latin Bible, the Codex Amiatinus, is a monumental copy of Jerome’s Vulgate, written in Roman uncial script and prefaced by images which evoke the art of the Mediterranean world of Late Antiquity. A small tenth-century ivory provides a final example of the pictorial adaptation of exegetical and liturgical traditions and the use of cryptic tituli which character-ise much of the art of the Anglo-Saxon Benedictine reform period. The text bound the houses of the reform together in greater unity by a common code of monastic usage which blended native and continental liturgical and other practices. The biblical architectural metaphor of the living ecclesia, which had been magisterially expounded by Bede and often used by Carolingian monastic writers, is a recurring image in the Benedictional. For Origen, Jerome and other Fathers the armarium of the Scriptures was a metaphor of the faithful reader who has interiorised the divine word and become a library of Christ.
