{"title":"证物与誓石:论十一世纪的法律与图像文化","authors":"Peter Scott Brown","doi":"10.1086/725872","DOIUrl":null,"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":"95 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8000,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":"{\"title\":\"Witness Images and Oath-Stones: On Law and Pictorial Culture in the Eleventh Century\",\"authors\":\"Peter Scott Brown\",\"doi\":\"10.1086/725872\",\"DOIUrl\":null,\"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\":\"95 1\",\"pages\":\"0\"},\"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/10.1086/725872\",\"RegionNum\":1,\"RegionCategory\":\"艺术学\",\"ArticlePicture\":[],\"TitleCN\":null,\"AbstractTextCN\":null,\"PMCID\":null,\"EPubDate\":\"\",\"PubModel\":\"\",\"JCR\":\"0\",\"JCRName\":\"ART\",\"Score\":null,\"Total\":0}","platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"GESTA-INTERNATIONAL CENTER OF MEDIEVAL ART","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1086/725872","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"ART","Score":null,"Total":0}
Witness Images and Oath-Stones: On Law and Pictorial Culture in the Eleventh Century
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.
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.