The cult of Mary Magdalene came relatively late to northwestern Iberia, after having been dispersed through the rest of continental Europe in the early Middle Ages. The earliest evidence for the cult comes from the kingdoms of León, Castile, and Galicia in the second half of the eleventh century, during the reign of Alfonso VI (r. 1065/72–1109). His promotion of the Gregorian reform opened up Iberia to the rest of the Continent. The arrival of a more complex liturgical sensibility led to the restructuring of pre-Romanesque architectural spaces through the use of iconography and powerful visual dialectics unprecedented in local culture. This article considers the staging of the figure of Mary Magdalene in León-Castile-Galicia in some of the most important architectural landmarks that have survived to this day, from Santiago de Compostela to Silos.
{"title":"Touching the Magdalene: The Cult of Mary Magdalene in Iberia in the Central Middle Ages","authors":"José Luis Senra","doi":"10.1086/726039","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/726039","url":null,"abstract":"The cult of Mary Magdalene came relatively late to northwestern Iberia, after having been dispersed through the rest of continental Europe in the early Middle Ages. The earliest evidence for the cult comes from the kingdoms of León, Castile, and Galicia in the second half of the eleventh century, during the reign of Alfonso VI (r. 1065/72–1109). His promotion of the Gregorian reform opened up Iberia to the rest of the Continent. The arrival of a more complex liturgical sensibility led to the restructuring of pre-Romanesque architectural spaces through the use of iconography and powerful visual dialectics unprecedented in local culture. This article considers the staging of the figure of Mary Magdalene in León-Castile-Galicia in some of the most important architectural landmarks that have survived to this day, from Santiago de Compostela to Silos.","PeriodicalId":43922,"journal":{"name":"GESTA-INTERNATIONAL CENTER OF MEDIEVAL ART","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135735944","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Sometime around the mid-twelfth century, two antique structures in Tǝgray, Ethiopia’s northernmost province, appear to have been converted into churches or otherwise reconsecrated. One was a temple dedicated to the south Arabian sun god Almaqah in Yǝḥa from 800 BCE, while the other was an anonymous palace plinth from the sixth century near the contemporary village of ‘Addi Awona. The churches that took over these structures went on to serve important functions in this burgeoning kingdom. The palace plinth became the seat of the Ethiopian metropolitan installed from Egypt, while the Yǝḥa temple later became a church associated with the legendary sixth-century Byzantine missionary Afṣe.The decision to appropriate these monumental structures for use as churches in the twelfth century is anomalous but, as I argue here, constitutes material evidence of a general political centralization, re-Christianization, and reintegration into world trade that characterized the period we now call Zagwe (eleventh to thirteenth centuries). Because all these phenomena had been in flux, the change in the Zagwe period was seen by ecclesiastics in Ethiopia as well as Coptic Christians in Egypt as a restoration of past glories akin to those of Constantine in Rome, especially the apocryphal Constantine found in Coptic martyr literature. The construction of five-aisled basilicas specifically in sites understood as ancient therefore yielded platforms with which to parallel this Christian transformation.
{"title":"An African “Constantine” in the Twelfth Century: The Architecture of the Early Zagwe Dynasty and Egyptian Episcopal Authority","authors":"Mikael Muehlbauer","doi":"10.1086/725791","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/725791","url":null,"abstract":"Sometime around the mid-twelfth century, two antique structures in Tǝgray, Ethiopia’s northernmost province, appear to have been converted into churches or otherwise reconsecrated. One was a temple dedicated to the south Arabian sun god Almaqah in Yǝḥa from 800 BCE, while the other was an anonymous palace plinth from the sixth century near the contemporary village of ‘Addi Awona. The churches that took over these structures went on to serve important functions in this burgeoning kingdom. The palace plinth became the seat of the Ethiopian metropolitan installed from Egypt, while the Yǝḥa temple later became a church associated with the legendary sixth-century Byzantine missionary Afṣe.The decision to appropriate these monumental structures for use as churches in the twelfth century is anomalous but, as I argue here, constitutes material evidence of a general political centralization, re-Christianization, and reintegration into world trade that characterized the period we now call Zagwe (eleventh to thirteenth centuries). Because all these phenomena had been in flux, the change in the Zagwe period was seen by ecclesiastics in Ethiopia as well as Coptic Christians in Egypt as a restoration of past glories akin to those of Constantine in Rome, especially the apocryphal Constantine found in Coptic martyr literature. The construction of five-aisled basilicas specifically in sites understood as ancient therefore yielded platforms with which to parallel this Christian transformation.","PeriodicalId":43922,"journal":{"name":"GESTA-INTERNATIONAL CENTER OF MEDIEVAL ART","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135735942","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The capital known as La Dispute in the Musée Sainte-Croix, Poitiers, is one of the earliest and most celebrated single works of Romanesque sculpture. It depicts a pair of men with women restraining them on either side, wielding billhooks, butting heads, and pulling each other’s beards. Efforts to clarify its meaning frequently cite the inscription beneath a second image of beard-pulling in the famed Beatus of Saint-Sever: Frontibus attritis barbas conscindere fas est, a text long regarded as mocking nonsense intended to gloss a ludicrous, profane subject. I argue that modern readers have simply failed to recognize the metaphoric significance of the expression “frontibus attritis,” identical in meaning to the modern English expression “bald-faced,” signifying “shameless.” The text and its visualizations preserve a proverb on false witness that held legal-sacramental significance in relation to aspects of legal feud and dispute: “The bald-faced may pluck beards,” meaning that the shameless might act in ways that honor forbids. This proverb clarifies depictions of bald-faced beard-pullers associated with other eleventh-century monuments of canonical importance, including in the basilica of Saint-Sernin in Toulouse and the pictorial vita of Saint Albinus from Saint-Aubin d’Angers. Together, these are archetypes of what I call “witness images,” a species of pictorial oath-helper that has yet to be described. In short, the images are ornaments of legal-sacramental speech and ritual as well as attributes of monuments that were conceived as sites of testimony and oath-taking and useful to the credibility of such oaths and witness.
{"title":"Witness Images and Oath-Stones: On Law and Pictorial Culture in the Eleventh Century","authors":"Peter Scott Brown","doi":"10.1086/725872","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/725872","url":null,"abstract":"The capital known as La Dispute in the Musée Sainte-Croix, Poitiers, is one of the earliest and most celebrated single works of Romanesque sculpture. It depicts a pair of men with women restraining them on either side, wielding billhooks, butting heads, and pulling each other’s beards. Efforts to clarify its meaning frequently cite the inscription beneath a second image of beard-pulling in the famed Beatus of Saint-Sever: Frontibus attritis barbas conscindere fas est, a text long regarded as mocking nonsense intended to gloss a ludicrous, profane subject. I argue that modern readers have simply failed to recognize the metaphoric significance of the expression “frontibus attritis,” identical in meaning to the modern English expression “bald-faced,” signifying “shameless.” The text and its visualizations preserve a proverb on false witness that held legal-sacramental significance in relation to aspects of legal feud and dispute: “The bald-faced may pluck beards,” meaning that the shameless might act in ways that honor forbids. This proverb clarifies depictions of bald-faced beard-pullers associated with other eleventh-century monuments of canonical importance, including in the basilica of Saint-Sernin in Toulouse and the pictorial vita of Saint Albinus from Saint-Aubin d’Angers. Together, these are archetypes of what I call “witness images,” a species of pictorial oath-helper that has yet to be described. In short, the images are ornaments of legal-sacramental speech and ritual as well as attributes of monuments that were conceived as sites of testimony and oath-taking and useful to the credibility of such oaths and witness.","PeriodicalId":43922,"journal":{"name":"GESTA-INTERNATIONAL CENTER OF MEDIEVAL ART","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135736159","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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.
{"title":"Art, Relics, and the Senses in the Cult of Saint Demetrios of Thessaloniki","authors":"Katherine Taronas","doi":"10.1086/725871","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/725871","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":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135736150","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The fourteenth-century English Psalter known as the Macclesfield Psalter (Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, MS 1–2005) features numerous love scenes in the bas-de-page. Most appear at standard psalm openings below elaborate historiated initials, which usually frame scenes from the life of King David. This essay argues that these amatory motifs work in tandem with the adjacent biblical iconography to make pointed statements about the dangers of unsanctioned sex and lustful behavior. They achieve this through the choice of biblical event, new iconographic interpretations—of both the biblical and secular material—and various pictorial strategies. A comparison between the manuscript’s innovative love designs and stock motifs, such as on Gothic ivories and in manuscript illumination, reveals not only the inventiveness of the book’s designer but also an intention to manipulate this visual tradition for a specific purpose. Neither the book’s commissioner nor intended audience is known. This essay argues that an as-yet-unidentified woman in the orbit of the earls of Arundel and Surrey might have requested the book for a young man and that she worked with a Dominican advisor to create the book’s lavish visual cycle.
{"title":"Making and Unmaking Love in the Macclesfield Psalter","authors":"P. Carns","doi":"10.1086/723204","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/723204","url":null,"abstract":"The fourteenth-century English Psalter known as the Macclesfield Psalter (Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, MS 1–2005) features numerous love scenes in the bas-de-page. Most appear at standard psalm openings below elaborate historiated initials, which usually frame scenes from the life of King David. This essay argues that these amatory motifs work in tandem with the adjacent biblical iconography to make pointed statements about the dangers of unsanctioned sex and lustful behavior. They achieve this through the choice of biblical event, new iconographic interpretations—of both the biblical and secular material—and various pictorial strategies. A comparison between the manuscript’s innovative love designs and stock motifs, such as on Gothic ivories and in manuscript illumination, reveals not only the inventiveness of the book’s designer but also an intention to manipulate this visual tradition for a specific purpose. Neither the book’s commissioner nor intended audience is known. This essay argues that an as-yet-unidentified woman in the orbit of the earls of Arundel and Surrey might have requested the book for a young man and that she worked with a Dominican advisor to create the book’s lavish visual cycle.","PeriodicalId":43922,"journal":{"name":"GESTA-INTERNATIONAL CENTER OF MEDIEVAL ART","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46052962","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This study investigates the development of the Rule-giving image of the Augustinian friars through its most sophisticated surviving example, the initial of a finely illuminated late-duecento gradual (Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, MS Charles Fairfax Murray 5). In addition to revealing the Augustinian patronage behind the creation of the manuscript, I analyze the iconographical, liturgical, and political context of the Rule-giving scene. The unique features of the illumination shed new light on the early cult of saints of the Augustinian friars, their special devotion to Saint Augustine, and the unconventional use of apocalyptic imagery. I argue that the manuscript was created in an Augustinian convent in the 1280s–90s, when the order was threatened with suppression due to its lack of antiquity. To refute this accusation, the order claimed Saint Augustine as its founding father. This study suggests this assertion was first made significantly earlier than has been assumed and that the Rule-giving image promoted a direct connection between Saint Augustine and the Augustinian friars. The illumination in the Fitzwilliam gradual bears witness to the development of the order’s self-confidence and shows how commissioning artworks could serve as a powerful tool for dealing with political tribulations. Ultimately, my study contributes to a better understanding of the collaboration of text, liturgy, and image in the Augustinian gradual and illuminates the role of artistic patronage in promoting origin stories for new religious institutions.
{"title":"Forging the Augustinian Past: The Rule-Giving of Saint Augustine in a Duecento Gradual","authors":"Krisztina Ilko","doi":"10.1086/723217","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/723217","url":null,"abstract":"This study investigates the development of the Rule-giving image of the Augustinian friars through its most sophisticated surviving example, the initial of a finely illuminated late-duecento gradual (Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, MS Charles Fairfax Murray 5). In addition to revealing the Augustinian patronage behind the creation of the manuscript, I analyze the iconographical, liturgical, and political context of the Rule-giving scene. The unique features of the illumination shed new light on the early cult of saints of the Augustinian friars, their special devotion to Saint Augustine, and the unconventional use of apocalyptic imagery. I argue that the manuscript was created in an Augustinian convent in the 1280s–90s, when the order was threatened with suppression due to its lack of antiquity. To refute this accusation, the order claimed Saint Augustine as its founding father. This study suggests this assertion was first made significantly earlier than has been assumed and that the Rule-giving image promoted a direct connection between Saint Augustine and the Augustinian friars. The illumination in the Fitzwilliam gradual bears witness to the development of the order’s self-confidence and shows how commissioning artworks could serve as a powerful tool for dealing with political tribulations. Ultimately, my study contributes to a better understanding of the collaboration of text, liturgy, and image in the Augustinian gradual and illuminates the role of artistic patronage in promoting origin stories for new religious institutions.","PeriodicalId":43922,"journal":{"name":"GESTA-INTERNATIONAL CENTER OF MEDIEVAL ART","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45315290","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The region of Palencia in northern Spain straddled an unstable border between medieval kingdoms. Within this territory of shifting allegiances, a group of churches features a curious variant of a common motif, traditionally identified as Samson fighting the lion. Carved capitals inside each church depict the familiar scene of a man wrestling a lion. However, in this Palencian group, additional assailants aggressively besiege the beast from both sides. The demise of the lion—its fearsome jaws wrenched open and rendered useless, claws immobilized, and tail severed by a sharp blade—overshadows the triumph of the hero. The iconographic variant, which proliferated across northern Palencia around the year 1200, seems to communicate a partisan message promulgated in the local community. The lion, representing the kingdom of León, is one of the earliest examples of heraldry, with the beast’s body serving as a proxy for the king’s body in visual culture. In this border zone between the warring kingdoms of León and Castile, the iconographical departure offers a political commentary, denouncing León as an enemy of the Church.
{"title":"Between Biblical and Political: The Subversion of Samson in Twelfth-Century León-Castile","authors":"Elizabeth Lastra","doi":"10.1086/723228","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/723228","url":null,"abstract":"The region of Palencia in northern Spain straddled an unstable border between medieval kingdoms. Within this territory of shifting allegiances, a group of churches features a curious variant of a common motif, traditionally identified as Samson fighting the lion. Carved capitals inside each church depict the familiar scene of a man wrestling a lion. However, in this Palencian group, additional assailants aggressively besiege the beast from both sides. The demise of the lion—its fearsome jaws wrenched open and rendered useless, claws immobilized, and tail severed by a sharp blade—overshadows the triumph of the hero. The iconographic variant, which proliferated across northern Palencia around the year 1200, seems to communicate a partisan message promulgated in the local community. The lion, representing the kingdom of León, is one of the earliest examples of heraldry, with the beast’s body serving as a proxy for the king’s body in visual culture. In this border zone between the warring kingdoms of León and Castile, the iconographical departure offers a political commentary, denouncing León as an enemy of the Church.","PeriodicalId":43922,"journal":{"name":"GESTA-INTERNATIONAL CENTER OF MEDIEVAL ART","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43338844","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In the year 944, two wonders arrived in Constantinople from the eastern borders of the empire: First, the Mandylion, a textile that Christ had miraculously imprinted with an image of his face, was brought to the city from Edessa. Second, to the awe of the city’s inhabitants, male conjoined twins arrived from Armenia. In this article, I focus on the depiction of both events in the Madrid Skylitzes historical chronicle (Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional de España, MS vitr. 26–2). My goal is to show how the multifaceted meanings of the conjoined twins and the Mandylion operated in the context of imperial rule, political intrigue, and religious authority, from the text’s origin in Constantinople to the manuscript’s illumination in Norman Sicily.
{"title":"Between Wonder and Omen: Conjoined Twins and the Mandylion from Constantinople to Norman Sicily","authors":"Roland Betancourt","doi":"10.1086/723218","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/723218","url":null,"abstract":"In the year 944, two wonders arrived in Constantinople from the eastern borders of the empire: First, the Mandylion, a textile that Christ had miraculously imprinted with an image of his face, was brought to the city from Edessa. Second, to the awe of the city’s inhabitants, male conjoined twins arrived from Armenia. In this article, I focus on the depiction of both events in the Madrid Skylitzes historical chronicle (Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional de España, MS vitr. 26–2). My goal is to show how the multifaceted meanings of the conjoined twins and the Mandylion operated in the context of imperial rule, political intrigue, and religious authority, from the text’s origin in Constantinople to the manuscript’s illumination in Norman Sicily.","PeriodicalId":43922,"journal":{"name":"GESTA-INTERNATIONAL CENTER OF MEDIEVAL ART","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48954571","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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