Though the figures and especially the delicately modelled faces have a character of their own, peculiarly English in feeling, yet in the general style of the miniatures, and in their elaborate borders there are very distinct signs of a strong Carolingian influence, owing, no doubt, to the introduction of Frankish illuminators and the purchase of Carolingian manuscripts during the reign of Alfred the Great, more than half a century before the date of this manuscript. [Illustration: Fig. 21. Miniature from the _Benedictional_ of Aethelwold; written and illuminated by a monastic scribe at Winchester.] There is, for example, much similarity of style in the miniatures of this _Benedictional_ and those in a Carolingian manuscript of _the Gospels_ written for King Lothaire in the monastery of St Martin at Metz soon after 843[87]; see above fig. 14, p. 71. _Winchester Charter._ Another very fine example of the Winchester school of illumination is the manuscript _Charter_ which King Edgar granted to the new minster at Winchester in 966. The first page consists of a large miniature, painted in gold and brilliant colours on a purple-stained leaf of vellum[88], with Christ in Majesty supported by four angels in the upper part of the picture, and, below, standing figures of the B. V. Mary and Saint Peter, with King Edgar in the middle offering his charter to Christ. The whole picture is very skilfully designed so as to fill the whole page in the most decorative way, and it is framed in a border with richly devised conventional leaf-forms. In artistic power this tenth century Winchester school of illuminators appears, for a while at least, to have been foremost in the world. Both in delicacy of touch and in richness of decorative effect the productions of this school are superior to those of any contemporary Continental country. _St Dunstan as an artist._ Saint Dunstan, the great ecclesiastical statesman of the ninth century, created another school of illumination in the Benedictine Abbey of Glastonbury. Dunstan himself was no mean artist, as may be seen from a fine drawing of Christ, which he executed[89]; the Saint has represented himself as a small monkish figure prostrate at the feet of Christ. At the top of the page is inscribed in a twelfth century hand, "Pictura et scriptura hujus pagine subtus visa est de propria manu sancti Dunstani." _Coloured ink drawings._