Light and Divine Wisdom: An Alternative Interpretation of the Iconography of the Fuller Brooch

Abstract The Fuller Brooch is considered the earliest English representation of the five senses. The central character, representing sight, is thought to also hold one or more figurative meanings, linked to ideas and concepts that were current in King Alfred’s cultural context. These figurative meanings were presumably meant to be emphasised and clarified by the two objects this figure is holding. So far, however, these have not been satisfactorily interpreted, with most scholars tentatively identifying them as plants or cornucopias. This study makes a case for these objects to be torches, embodying the concept of light, so central in the theme of the oculi mentis ‘eyes of the mind’ and in Alfred’s ideas of wisdom and learning. The relevance of divine light in the Alfredian cultural framework emerges clearly from the translations into English of the Soliloquia, of the Consolatio Philosophiae and of the Regula pastoralis. Evidence also emerges from the iconography of the inluminatio ‘illumination’ of the oculi mentis for the acquisition of divine wisdom featuring in the Utrecht Psalter (and its later copies), and from the iconographical connection between torches, light and God that can be seen in the historiated initial of one of the hymns of the Durham Hymnal.