Quinity

His subject is a "strange image" among the llth century drawings of the Winchester school, which he calls a quinity. But what is a quinity? Let me explain it in his own words: "It is a Quaternity of God the Father, the Son, St. Mary, and the Holy Ghost; or, if we add the Infant on the lap of the Virgin, we face the seemingly unique representation of what logically must be called a Quinity".

In 1947, for example, in a wonderful study of the "quinity" of Winchester, Kantorowicz interprets an astonishing sketch in a book of offices (officia) copied in Winchester at the beginning of the eleventh century. He invents the term quinity to describe a curious composition showing the Holy Family, in which there appear two identical representations of the divinity side by side.

It is thus of particular interest to find the Trinity and the Incarnation combined in one medallion in the so- called Quinity of Winchester, of 1023-1035 (fol.75v- fig. 119)195. The Virgin and Child, who holds a book, is next to the two similar figures of God the Father and God the Son, who are sitting on a bow and also holding books. The Holy Ghost alights on Mary's crowned head, and all but she have crossed haloes.

Plate 3 shows Mary as part of what has been called a heavenly Quinity; not the traditional trinity of father, son and holy spirit, but a fivesome where the usual three are joined by Mary and her infant