Winchester Bible

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Winchester Bible. The Winchester Bible (1160–70), probably commissioned by Henry of Blois, is the finest of several large bibles produced through 12th-cent. contact with Byzantine art in Norman Sicily. Others are at Cambridge (for Bury St Edmund's) and at Canterbury. Designed for ceremonial use rather than individual study, the volume was, like altar-missals, ornately decorated. Each book in the Bible was designed to begin with a fully decorated capital letter, usually of figures rather than foliage. It has been described as ‘the giant of 12th century English Romanesque century manuscripts’—in a great period of art and culture.

Revd Dr William M. Marshall

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