Kathryn A. Smith (NYU): Found in Translation: The “Makers” of the Welles-Ros Bible
My talk introduces the grand yet understudied multilingual manuscript that I call the Welles-Ros Bible (Paris, BnF, MS fr. 1)—the most complete surviving witness and sole extant illustrated copy of the Anglo-Norman Bible, the “first full prose vernacular Bible produced in England” (Delbert Russell). Building on the work of biblical and literary scholars, and through analysis of key elements of the manuscript’s visual and textual programs, I argue that both the Bible and its revised, modernized translation were produced c.1365–c.1370 on the order of a lay woman: Maud de Ros (d. 1388), widow of John, 4th Baron Welles (d. 1361) of Welle, Lincolnshire and other estates; and that the book was intended to serve as a primer, mirror, family archive, and source of spiritual consolation for Maud’s adolescent son, John, 5th Baron Welles (d. 1421). I discuss the circumstances of the commission, presenting evidence for Carmelite sponsorship and composition of the translation. I further show that the manuscript’s main artist read the biblical text assiduously, carefully adapting his wide-ranging, trans-regional models in order to synchronize the illustrations with the particularities of the translation, as well as to personalize the biblical text for its intended reader-viewer.
My talk sheds new light on lay literate and religious aspiration; the history of Bible translation and reception; women’s cultural patronage; artists’ literacy and working methods; medieval ideas about gender, sexuality, health, and memory; and English art, society, and culture after the Black Death. In addition, in illuminating some of the possible contours of the collaboration that fueled the “making” of the Welles-Ros Bible, my talk demonstrates what the methods and concerns of art history can contribute to literary and religious studies.
