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Richly-illustrated consideration of the meaning of the carvings of non-human beings, from centaurs to eagles, found in ecclesiastical settings. Representations of monsters and the monstrous are common in medieval art and architecture, from the grotesques in the borders of illuminated manuscripts to the symbol of the "green man", widespread in churches and cathedrals. These mysterious depictions are frequently interpreted as embodying or mitigating the fears symptomatic of a "dark age". This book, however, considers an alternative scenario: in what ways did monsters in twelfth-century sculpture help audiences envision, perhaps even achieve, various ambitions? Using examples of Romanesque scul...
Under the guidance of the leading experts on baptismal fonts and the co-directors of the Baptisteria Sacra Index, the world?s only iconographical inventory of baptismal fonts, a research project at the University of Toronto, this collection of essays by a group of European and North American scholars extends the traditional boundaries associated with the study of baptismal fonts. The ?visual? is privileged, whether it is in the metaphysical, literary or empirical realms of scholarship, offering a rich understanding of the powerful role of baptism played in medieval and renaissance society. In the quest for a holistic understanding of the vessels, the settings and contexts, the rituals and th...
A volume of eleven innovative essays on cultural production in medieval Castile, blending original archival work with a rigorous consideration of comparative methodology for the study of religions and languages in contact.
In This Modern Age: Medieval Studies in Honor of Paul Edward Dutton is a collection of fourteen essays by scholars of the Carolingian era specializing in history, art history, and literature. The volume is divided into five sections, which treat early medieval Latin literary and historiographical culture, images and objects, interpretations of natural phenomena, and the subject of nostalgia. Reflecting Dutton's pathbreaking work, the contributions all evince the great impact of his teaching and erudition over the past thirty years since the publication of his seminal books Carolingian Civilization: A Reader (1993), The Politics of Dreaming in the Carolingian Empire (1994), The Poetry and Pai...
"An interdisciplinary reassessment of the creation and reception of religious imagery, and of its place in the devotional practices of Castilian Christians, situated against the broader panorama of Spanish culture in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries"--Provided by publisher.
How did people living in the Middle Ages respond to spectacular buildings, such as the Gothic cathedrals? While contemporary scholarship places a large emphasis on the emotional content of Western medieval figurative art, the emotion of architecture has largely gone undiscussed. In a radical new approach, Architecture and Affect in the Middle Ages explores the relationship between medieval buildings and the complexity of experience they engendered. Paul Binski examines long-standing misconceptions about the way viewers responded to medieval architecture across Western Europe and in Byzantine and Arabic culture between late antiquity and the end of the medieval period. He emphasizes the importance of the experience itself within these built environments, essentially places of action, space, and structure but also, crucially, of sound and emotion.
In Culture and Society in Medieval Galicia, twenty-three international authors examine Galicia’s changing place in Iberia, Europe, and the Mediterranean and Atlantic worlds from late antiquity through the thirteenth century. With articles on art and architecture; religion and the church; law and society; politics and historiography; language and literature; and learning and textual culture, the authors introduce medieval Galicia and current research on the region to medievalists, Hispanists, and students of regional culture and society. The cult of St. James, Santiago Cathedral, and the pilgrimage to Compostela are highlighted and contextualized to show how Galicia’s remoteness became th...
The decades following the year 1000 marked a watershed in the history of the Iberian Peninsula when the balance of power shifted from Muslims to Christians. During this crucial period of religious and political change, Romanesque churches were constructed for the first time in Spain. Romanesque Architecture and Its Sculptural Decoration in Christian Spain, 1000-1120 examines how the financial patronage of newly empowered local rulers allowed Romanesque architecture and sculptural decoration to significantly redefine the cultural identities of those who lived in the frontier kingdoms of Christian Spain. Proceeding chronologically, Janice Mann studies the earliest Romanesque monuments construc...
Acclaimed historians Bernard F. Reilly and Simon R. Doubleday tell the story of the reign of Queen Sancha and King Fernando I, who together ruled the territories of León and Galicia between 1038 and 1065—often regarded as a period in which Christian kings and their vassals asserted themselves more successfully in the face of external rivals, both Viking and Muslim. The reality was more complex. The Iberian Peninsula remained a space of multiple, intertwined forms of power and surprisingly nuanced relationships between—and among—the diverse configurations of Christian and Muslim authority. Some of these complexities would be obscured by later generations of medieval chroniclers, whose ...
Queen as King traces the origins of San Isidoro in León as a royal monastic complex, following its progress as the site changed from a small eleventh-century palatine chapel housed in a double monastery to a great twelfth-century pilgrimage church served by Augustinian canons. Its most groundbreaking contribution to the history of art is the recovery of the lost patronage of Queen Urraca (reigned 1109-1126). Urraca maintained yet subverted her family’s tradition of patronage on the site: to understand her history is to hold the key to the art and architecture of San Isidoro. This new approach to San Isidoro and its patronage allows a major Romanesque monument to be understood more fully than before.