Benedictional of St Æthelwold

The manuscript is decorated on an extremely lavish scale, and is generally accepted as the masterpiece of late Anglo-Saxon illumination, and of the Winchester style.

[2] Influences from Carolingian illumination can be seen in the book's elegant Caroline script and its paintings which draw upon the schools of Ada and Reims; Ada in the "statuesque poses, the crumpled veils, and the diagonal folds of draperies", Reims in the eddying clouds.

A strong sense of Englishness shines through, however, in the "exhilarating dance of colour and line" and the agile brushwork which frees the figures to "glide effortlessly over the frames".

A bishop, the great Æthelwold, whom the Lord had made patron of Winchester, ordered a certain monk subject to him to write the present book .

He commanded also to be made in this book many frames well adorned and filled with various figures decorated with many beautiful colours and with gold.

Let all who look upon this book pray always that after the term of the flesh I may abide in heaven Û Godeman the scribe, as a suppliant, earnestly asks thisÆthelwold I was Bishop of Winchester from 29 November 963 until his death on 1 August 984, so the manuscript was produced between those dates.

R. Deshman has argued that the drawings added to the Leofric Missal (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 579) in about 979 were influenced by the illuminations of the Benedictional of St. Æthelwold, meaning that it was probably produced before 979.

David Dumville has argued that the hybrid text actually predates both the Ramsey and Æthelwold benedictionals.

The miniature on f. 102v for the Feast of the Assumption, shows the death and Coronation of the Virgin, possibly the first Western depiction of the latter.