Different Visions: A Journal of New Perspectives on Medieval Art (ISSN 1935-5009) Issue 3, September 2011 Barren Mother, Dutiful Wife, Church Triumphant: Representations of Hannah in I Kings Illuminations Fran Altvater The Hannah story (I Kings 1:1-17/I Samuel 1:1-17) is written within the social context of marriage around 1100 B.C.E.: the complications of the contractual marital obligations, the expectations of procreation, and the politics of remarriage and co- marriage, particularly around the production of heirs. * In this essay, I am focusing on the nature of Hannah‟s prayer in the text and in medieval illumination. Prayer is critical as the human communication with the divine and Hannah‟s prayer draws attention as a singular example of a woman at prayer, subsequently upheld in Jewish traditions even as the paragon of prayer. 1 Because she is both submissive and transgressive, Hannah is both role model and anti-role-model; the Biblical type-scene of the barren woman granted a miraculous child was a common narrative technique used to reinforce cultural stereotypes and accentuate the positive while clarifying the negative. Over the course of the Middle Ages, the image of Hannah becomes a type-scene for medieval illuminators and readers. These compositions use model forms which gloss the characters as Christ, Church and Synagogue to create monastic models, radical abstractions of prayer, and constructions of marriage. The image of Hannah becomes the image of the Church and a paragon of a good wife.