The cosmological conception of the Old Testament and its representation in the Anglo-Saxon art

The rendering thesis analyses the topic of the Creator of the world with compasses in his hands generally known in the art historian literature. The common known example of this iconography is presented in the frontispice of older of two bible moralisées in Vienna, on which the Logos-Creator is shaping the four elements within the earthcircle by the compasses. The illustration is to be interpreted according to the old French inscription in the top strip of the square frame of the scene: ICI CRIE DEX CIEL ET TERRE SOLEIL ET LVNE ET TOZ ELEMENZ. In line with this scene all the illuminations presenting God with a pair of compasses are commonly held for a depiction of Creator mundi as Architectus or deus geometra. That is why the aim of this work is to show the incorrectness of such identification above all in case of the Anglo-Saxon manuscripts. In these the analysed motif is simultaneously performed in both its meanings - the protological one as Creator mundi and also the eschatological one as the fair Judge. On the grounds by this bipolarity it is necessary to emphasize need of the distinction of the first group of authentic Anglo-Saxon view of the motif and its later appearance on the continent reduced by the essential weakening of the eschatological aspect in the favour of the protological one. The..