The problem is compounded by the fact that uncertainty concerning the undoubtedly different appearance of the models that lie behind the two books makes it highly problematic to assess the nuances of their stylistic rapport .sx However , having said this , it will be observed that although they share the same attitudes to composition and to the rendering of bricks and drapery folds , the miniatures of the two books are clearly distinguished from each other in terms of facial types and the use of colour .sx The tones favoured in the Lectionary , whilst bright , are nevertheless more harmonious and less abrasive than those which were generally preferred in the Troper .sx The lectionary is closer to the mainstream of Anglo-Saxon art than is the Troper .sx As no more than one artist seems to have worked in either manuscript , at the very least we can safely conclude that the two books are not contemporary works of the same artist .sx The main texts of the two volumes were written by different hands of quite different aspects ( neither of which have been recognized elsewhere) .sx Nor are the monumental display scripts of the two books particularly close .sx On the other hand , a modest scribal relationship between them is provided by their inscriptions .sx The small inscription b.ciliccus ( basiliscus ) written up the side of the page , beside the Q to Luke's gospel in the Lectionary , is comparable in arrangement and script ( rustic capitals ) to the inscriptions written around all eleven surviving pictures in the Troper .sx Whether these similarities amount to sufficient evidence for assigning both books to the same centre of production is open to doubt :sx even if they be regarded as earlier and later works of the same artist this need not necessarily imply that they were executed at the same centre .sx The safest and most reasonable course for the present is surely to group them more loosely , as the products of related artistic milieux .sx Now , far from being an anticlimax , the suggestion of a looser association between them is itself of some import , implying as it does that this divergent , progressive style - practised either by two artists or by one developing his idiom over a number of years , in either case possibly at different centres - was potentially a more widespread phenomenon .sx Returning to the issue that is of primary concern here , namely that of clarifying and defining more precisely the nature of the innovative qualities of these two decorated books , there are three basic points which should be made .sx In the first place , since art historical discussion has tended to focus on the miniatures alone , emphasizing their atypical qualities , it is worth stressing that the organization , mise-en-page and writing of the two manuscripts as a whole are not comparably unusual .sx Notwithstanding certain constructional anomalies ( particularly in the Troper ) , both books are generally well produced , written in well sustained , fairly elegant late English Caroline minuscule , with capitals in gold , red , blue and lilac .sx The text hand of Caligula , notable for the flowing , curling tail of g and for the use of two forms of q - a regular minuscule , and a diminutive majuscule - is difficult to parallel closely , but the general aspect of the neat , rectilinear , mainly upright script with triangular serifs on the ascenders finds analogies in several manuscripts of mid- to late eleventh-century date , including volumes from Exeter and Bury St Edmunds .sx The script of the Lectionary is strongly reminiscent of Worcester bookhands of the third quarter of the eleventh century .sx In size and proportions the Lectionary compares closely with the Gospel Lectionary of St Margaret .sx The Troper is a little smaller than the Troper in the Bodleian and somewhat larger than that in Corpus Christi College , Cambridge .sx Like the Cambridge Troper ( and other music manuscripts ) , the minuscule text in Caligula is very small in relation to the space between the ruled lines , allowing plenty of room for the neums above ; and , as is the case in both unillustrated Tropers , coloured majuscules and rustic capitals play a crucial role in subdividing and organizing the text .sx The use of projecting ascenders and descenders to characterize and accentuate display script is another important feature in the design of the Troper which is paralleled in numerous other contemporary manuscripts .sx Secondly , consideration of such analogies as may be found for the distinctive style of the artwork in these two books reveals it as a native tradition reformulated apparently through familiarity with certain continental works .sx Although rooted in the vocabulary of Anglo-Saxon manuscript decoration of the 1020c , the style attests to a new relationship with contemporary illumination in Flanders and Lotharingia .sx Modest reflections of the same manner are to be seen in several other English books dating from the last three decades of the eleventh century .sx The ornamental initial in the Troper and many of the decorative features of the Lectionary , particularly in its canon tables , are appreciable as a development of the art of the Eadui Gospels and the Arundel 155 Psalter , Christ Church manuscripts of the previous generation .sx The treatment of the figures is reminiscent of that in the Old English Hexateuch .sx The choice and use of colours - heavy tones scumbled with white - invites comparison with the Hexateuch , the mid-eleventh-century Canterbury Rule of St Benedict , the Illustrated Miscellany and the later Exeter Gospels .sx On the other hand , the best analogies for the general style of most of the figural compositions are undoubtedly found in eleventh- and twelfth-century manuscripts from Flanders and Lotharingia .sx The influence of styles or indeed the participation of artists from these areas is quite possible in view of England's continuing contacts with Flanders and Lotharingia in the mid-eleventh century .sx There were , it will be recalled , four Lotharingian bishops in England during the reign of Edward the Confessor .sx Given that the Gospel Lectionary is known to have been at Hereford in the late eleventh century , while it has been suggested that the Troper may have been made for Edward the Confessor , it is interesting to recall that the bishop of Hereford during the period 1061-79 was Walter of Lotharingia , who had come to England with Edward and had formerly been a royal chaplain .sx Echoes of the style of the two books are found in two English Romanesque manuscripts :sx the Shaftesbury Psalter and a closely related copy of Boethius , De consolatione philosophiae , which is now in the Bodleian Library ; both are dated to the second quarter of the twelfth century and are associated with the West Country .sx However it is open to question whether these formal similarities represent an actual connection between the two Anglo-Saxon and the two Romanesque books , as opposed to being the coincidental result of independent influence from related Continental sources .sx Of more immediate relevance are certain parallels to be seen in the decoration of a few English manuscripts of late eleventh-century to early twelfth-century date .sx For instance , to begin with the most limited case , the distinctive manner of rendering bricks , but not any other feature , is matched in one of the drawings in the Cotton Caligula A.XV computistica , a Christ Church book dating from c. 1073 .sx More impressive are the analogies provided by Durham Cathedral Library , MS B. II .sx 16 , a copy of Augustine , In evangelium Iohannis , made at St Augustine's , Canterbury , towards the end of the eleventh century and sent to Durham shortly afterwards .sx As the decoration of the book consists purely of initials , not miniatures , this naturally limits the extent of the parallels ; nevertheless the same foliate forms reappear and a number of the figural initials are painted in a manner akin to that used in the Troper - rich colours , thickly applied , their tones modified by the application of white ( fig. 25) .sx Another book , Cambridge University Library , MS Ii .sx 3 .sx 33 , a copy of Gregory's Registrum epistolarum ascribed to Christ Church and dating from between 1079 and 1101 , has three decorated initials painted in a related style ( all on fol .sx 5 r ) , although with less use of white .sx The fact that these analogies as indeed the earlier eleventh-century English ones occur in manuscripts of Canterbury , particularly Christ Church , origin is worth noting ; on the other hand this in itself is insufficient grounds for ascribing the Troper and the Lectionary to that centre .sx The principal importance of the three later Canterbury books is that they reveal that the stylistic innovations of the Troper and particularly the Lectionary were not wholly isolated in the context of English art in the second half of the eleventh century :sx affiliated modes of decoration were evidently being explored , albeit in a discreet way , at Canterbury in the decades after the Norman Conquest .sx figure&caption .sx The third point , which relates specifically to the Troper , is the essential originality of its decorative programme .sx Fine illustrated early medieval tropers are very rare , and the sum total of decoration in the other two surviving Anglo-Saxon tropers is a single ornamental initial .sx Furthermore , irrespective of the irresolvable issue of whether or not there may once have existed other Anglo-Saxon tropers with more extensive decoration , the idiosyncratic arrangement of the miniatures within the surviving portion of the Caligula Troper , the discrepancies in their size and finish , their unusual subject matter and their divergent iconographies and decorative features argue strongly in favour of this being the first manuscript in which these pictures were added to this text .sx Moreover , the way in which they were actually applied to the book , far from reflecting an inherited layout , suggests rather that their inclusion represented an afterthought or a change in plan .sx Some of the pictures , only four of which occupy a full page ( the remainder vary in size ) , were clearly squeezed into spaces that were hardly sufficient to receive them ; and on one occasion the addition of a miniature obliterated at least one line of text and probably more .sx A thorough review of the iconography of the miniatures and their various analogues remains a desideratum ; nevertheless , the basic point that there is a range of unusual subjects and an eclecticism of iconography and design here for which a single model could not account is not in doubt .sx Five of the miniatures - the Naming of John , the Release of St Peter , the Temptation of St Martin , the Annunciation to Joachim , and Joachima and Anna with Mary - are the only known representations of the subject in question in an Anglo-Saxon manuscript , while the treatment of the subjects that do occur elsewhere remains distinctive , even when a familiar iconographic type provides the basis of the work .sx Thus in the case of the two-part miniature of the Passion of St Lawrence ( fig. 24 ) , although the illustration to Psalm XXXIII in the Utrecht Psalter and its early eleventh-century Anglo-Saxon copy , Harley 603 , provide precedents for the iconography of the lower scene ( his martyrdom itself ) , the upper scene is unique in the insular milieu .sx The inclusion of the diminutive , green , bestial demon at Decius' shoulder , inciting him to evil , is particularly to be noted since this seems to have been a favourite motif of the artist and its 'brother' appears in his representation of the Temptation of St Martin .sx In tracing the pictorial ancestry of these demons to the illustration to Psalm XXV in the Utrecht Psalter , and the figural initial to Pusillus eram in the Corbie Psalter , we should not overlook the possible influence of dramatic literary portrayals of devils as very physical agents provocateurs such as are found in the Old English poems Juliana and Andreas .sx Similarly , in the case of the image of Stephen ( fig. 23 ) , whereas in the contemporary Bury Psalter and the earlier Benedictional of St AE-ligature thelwold we see the saint depicted at the moment of his martyrdom according to a well established iconographic tradition , here we are presented instead with an iconic , frontal figure , holding palm , stole , open book and censer , who fills his frame , and who invites comparison with other monumental hieratic figures , ranging from the evangelists in certain Insular gospel books to those in a late eleventh-century copy of the New Testament from the area of Agen-Moissac .sx The fact that this image and that of St Andrew are iconic , while the miniatures for St Martin , St Lawrence and St Peter are narrative ( consisting of one , two and three scenes respectively ) is symptomatic of the eclectic qualities of this remarkable decorative programme as a whole .sx