When Jennifer O’Reilly (1943–2016) died many of us lost a dear friend, but scholarship in these islands lost a very great medievalist. Medievalists are a poorly understood breed of academic. While most humanities scholars identify most readily with a language such as ‘English’ or a subject such as ‘history’ or ‘theology’—and they find that university structures support these demarcations, medievalists are wont to stray over boundaries, enter others’ fields, and sense that they do not fit into regular-shaped pigeon holes. What unites medievalists is an inchoate set of convictions. First, that the scant remains of the societies and cultures of western Europe, between roughly 400 and 1400, cannot be studied adequately using any one frame of reference precisely because the evidence base is so partial. Medievalists deal with what is extant and this is but a tiny fraction, of whose representative nature we cannot be certain, of what was once there: time is a blind sieve. Second, that those artefacts that have survived are likely to be more complex than they first appear, and that by combining perspectives—for example reading a local language (e.g., Old Irish or Old English, which are not strictu sensu ‘vernaculars’) in the light of Latin and vice versa—will yield greater results. Third, that despite all the variations between objects and cultures, comparison is both possible and beneficial. There can be links between societies we find difficult to imagine; likewise Latin—as a written language—and Christianity form a common cultural framework that was seen then as unifying, and which still represents a common intellectual stock within the remains. Thus we are not surprised to find a fifth-century Gallic law book being used in a seventh-century 929902 ITQ0010.1177/0021140020929902Irish Theological QuarterlyBook Review book-review2020

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书评：中世纪早期文本和图像 1：岛屿福音 中世纪早期文本和图像 2：The Codex Amiatinus、The Book of Kells 和盎格鲁撒克逊艺术史、Hagiography 和 Biblical Exegesis：Essays on Bede、Adomnán 和 Thomas Becket

当詹妮弗·奥莱利 (Jennifer O'Reilly)（1943-2016 年）去世时，我们中的许多人失去了一位亲爱的朋友，但这些岛屿的奖学金失去了一位非常伟大的中世纪主义者。中世纪主义者是一种知之甚少的学者。虽然大多数人文学者最容易认同诸如“英语”之类的语言或诸如“历史”或“神学”之类的学科——并且他们发现大学结构支持这些界限，但中世纪主义者却习惯于越界，进入他人的领域, 并感觉它们不适合规则形状的鸽子洞。使中世纪主义者团结起来的是一套早期的信念。首先，西欧大约 400 至 1400 年间的社会和文化遗迹很少，无法使用任何一种参考框架进行充分研究，正是因为证据基础如此片面。中世纪主义者处理现存的东西，这只是一小部分，我们无法确定其代表性质，曾经存在过的东西：时间是一个盲目的筛子。其次，那些幸存下来的文物可能比它们最初出现的更复杂，并且通过结合不同的观点——例如阅读当地语言（例如，古爱尔兰语或古英语，它们不是严格意义上的“方言”）拉丁语之光，反之亦然——将产生更大的结果。第三，尽管对象和文化之间存在所有差异，但比较既可行又有益。社会之间可能存在我们难以想象的联系；同样，拉丁语——作为一种书面语言——和基督教形成了一个共同的文化框架，当时被视为统一的，并且仍然代表着遗骸中的共同知识储备。