{"title":"Art, Relics, and the Senses in the Cult of Saint Demetrios of Thessaloniki","authors":"Katherine Taronas","doi":"10.1086/725871","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"An examination of the art and the textual evidence surrounding the cult of Saint Demetrios in Thessaloniki reveals that early Byzantine veneration of Demetrios prioritized the sense of vision as a means of engaging with the saint and emphasized the human ability to perceive the divine with the spiritual senses. Thessalonian clerical and administrative elites, needing to articulate alternative ways to attain closeness with their saint when his bodily relics could not be accessed, promoted views of matter and the senses exemplified in the mosaics of Hagios Demetrios. With the appearance of myron (a combination of perfumed oil and blood) at Demetrios’s shrine in the middle Byzantine era, possibly prompted by competition from rival saints, the cult rapidly refocused veneration toward this bodily relic and desire for physical contact with it. The dramatic change of emphasis from the visual and immaterial to the tactile and material as the basis for communicating with the saint is expressed in the design of reliquaries made to house this myron, which assert that vision is no longer sufficient to gain communion with the saint. The two groups of artworks—the early mosaics and the later reliquaries—provide differing sensory paradigms that guide their beholders and users toward the correct way to experience the divine. Through an analysis of the cult of Demetrios, this article seeks to nuance our understanding of the role of art, relics, and the senses in medieval saints’ cults.","PeriodicalId":43922,"journal":{"name":"GESTA-INTERNATIONAL CENTER OF MEDIEVAL ART","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8000,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"GESTA-INTERNATIONAL CENTER OF MEDIEVAL ART","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1086/725871","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"ART","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
An examination of the art and the textual evidence surrounding the cult of Saint Demetrios in Thessaloniki reveals that early Byzantine veneration of Demetrios prioritized the sense of vision as a means of engaging with the saint and emphasized the human ability to perceive the divine with the spiritual senses. Thessalonian clerical and administrative elites, needing to articulate alternative ways to attain closeness with their saint when his bodily relics could not be accessed, promoted views of matter and the senses exemplified in the mosaics of Hagios Demetrios. With the appearance of myron (a combination of perfumed oil and blood) at Demetrios’s shrine in the middle Byzantine era, possibly prompted by competition from rival saints, the cult rapidly refocused veneration toward this bodily relic and desire for physical contact with it. The dramatic change of emphasis from the visual and immaterial to the tactile and material as the basis for communicating with the saint is expressed in the design of reliquaries made to house this myron, which assert that vision is no longer sufficient to gain communion with the saint. The two groups of artworks—the early mosaics and the later reliquaries—provide differing sensory paradigms that guide their beholders and users toward the correct way to experience the divine. Through an analysis of the cult of Demetrios, this article seeks to nuance our understanding of the role of art, relics, and the senses in medieval saints’ cults.
期刊介绍:
The Newsletter, published three times a year, includes notices of ICMA elections and other important votes of the membership, notices of ICMA meetings, conference and exhibition announcements, some employment and fellowship listings, and topical news items related to the discovery, conservation, research, teaching, publication, and exhibition of medieval art and architecture. The movement of some material traditionally included in the newsletter to the ICMA website, such as the Census of Dissertations in Medieval Art, has provided the opportunity for new features in the Newsletter, such as reports on issues of broad concern to our membership.