Early Medieval Art

The Gelasian Sacramentary (Vatican, Bibliotheca Apostolica, reg. lat. 316), dating to the mid-8th century, preserves three pairs of facing folios.  Each presents a cross under an arch on the left verso and an incipit for one of the three books of the sacramentary on the right verso.  The threefold repetition of this general pattern divides the book into three parts and thus served the celebrant as he read the prayers during the mass.  But no folio repeats the details of another.  The question of the significance of this sort of variation on a theme prompts an interesting discussion. 

By way of transition, I also noted that the Gelasian Sacramentary is nearly contemporaneous with the Gundohinus Gospels and that viewed together they demonstrate yet one more time, the diversity of style as a characteristic of the art of the early Middle Ages.

The website of the Vatican Library currently offers little by way of digital resources, but such as these things are, that could change overnight, so we should keep checking.  Online, I could only find an image of Folios 131v-132r.  But I also have nice color images in my own digital collection of Folios 3v-4r and Folios 172v-173r, of which I can only offer you thumbnails.

The Gundohinus Gospels (Autun, Bibliotheque municipale ms 3) date from about 30 years later than the Trier Gospels and carry us over into the Carolingian period with their precise dating of 754.  Rather than looking westward to England and the Northumbrian manuscript tradition, the Gundohinus Gospels look southward to Italy.

The French website, Enluminure, provides color photos of each element of decoration in the Gundohinus Gospels(click on Autun in the left sidebar, then ms. 003), and a monograph by Larry Nees, Gundohinus Gospels (Medieval Academy Books), make this obscure manuscript highly accessible. 

Folio 12v shows a Christ in Majesty, an iconography that always merits review and new analysis.  The Christ in Majesty in the Codex Amiatinus from the class on Anglo-Saxon art offers a particularly apt comparison.  The standing Evangelists on folios 186v-187r and 187v-188r  point more directly southward to the standing prophets and apostles of the middle register of the long walls at Sant’Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna.  Their grouping together at the end of the codex, rather than each prefacing his own Gospel also warrants comment. 

Finally, Nees translates the Colophon, which names the patron, Fausta- an abbess (one must here wonder why they are not called the Fausta Gospels?); the illuminator- Gundohinus; his monastery- Vosevio; and the intended reader- the nuns of Fausta’s monastery.  As Gundohinus dates the completion of the manuscript according to the reign of Pepin, he secures the Gundohinus Gospels as one of the earliest surviving Carolingian manuscripts. 

www.cavestocathedrals.com

Please permit me to announce a new website that I have just today inaugurated.  It also aims to provide teaching resources, but for all the ancient and medieval civilizations covered by the first part of the traditional two-part art history survey.  Although it will not penetrate any one period as deeply as this website does the early Middle Ages, it will serve much the same purpose.  On this new site, I will, however, show ads.  Please forgive me this necessity.  I will, however, keep this one pure, at least for the time being.

The Trier Gospels (Trier Domschatz Codex 61) bring us into rather rarefied air, but one particular folio makes it worth the effort, and an English-language monograph by Nancy Netzer, Cultural Interplay in the Eighth Century: The Trier Gospels and the Makings of a Scriptorium at Echternach (Cambridge Studies in Palaeography and Codicology), makes this manuscript rather accessible. 

The manuscript was written at the monastery of Echternach, which was founded by Willibrord, of Northumbrian origin, by way of Ireland, and in this manuscript one may discern original insular elements alongside derivative Merovingian ones.

On folio 5v, we see the culmination of the development of Tetramorph imagery, as it derives from the vision of Ezekiel by way of the Book of Revelation.  By this class, we had encountered many depictions of the four evangelist symbols.  In each quadrant, a titulus identifies one component of the figure - to the left: MATTEUS EVANG and MARCUS EVANG; and to the right: LUCAS EVANG and IOHANNIS EVANG.  The trick is to identify the feature of each.  The man of Matthew predominates, but the talons and wings of John, the hindquarters of Mark and the legs of Luke hang from the lower half of the figure.  The students also like noticing the knots at the waist and at the knee-height of the figure.  Below the frame, we find a signature: THOMAS SCRIBSIT.  Interestingly, folio 1v shows the four symbols arranged neatly in the four quadrants surrounding a cross, seemingly a duplication of meaning of the Tetramorph on folio 5v.

Folio 10r shows the archangels Michael and Gabriel flanking a tablet upon a pedestal.  The tablet displays the incipit to the Gospel of Matthew.  Here a reminder of the iconography of the archangels could be of use - the Coffin of Saint Cuthbert from the class on Irish and Hiberno-Saxon art and one plaque from the Hypogeum of the Dunes from this class. 

The manuscript also has author portraits and canon tables, although finding them in color poses a challenge.  I have only found the canon table on folio 12r in color. 

Franz Alto Bauer and Christian Witschel, Statuen in Der Spatantike

Jerilynn Dodds et al., The Arts of Intimacy: Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the Making of Castilian Culture (A Council on Foreign Relations Book Seri)

Enzo Pezzi, Sant’Apollinare in Classe di Ravenna e il suo bosco perduto (Longo, 2008).

My research centers around the Monastery of Saint John in Muestair (CH), and my dissertation was the third completed on the church.  Marese Sennhauser-Girard wrote the first at the University of Basel in 1959.  In mine I wrote, “although Sennhauser-Girard has continued to develop her interpretation for the last five decades, she has published few of her ideas and has no such plans for the immediate future.”

Most happily I have been proven wrong, for Dr. Sennhauser has started a blog - Al-Fresko - on which she finally publishes her work.  She began in October 2006 and her most recent post dates to November 2007.  We must hope that she will return to posting.  Dr. Sennhauser has studied the frescoes for more than half-a-century, and it would be a shame for her not to share all of her insights! 

The Hypogeum of the Dunes outside of Poitiers especially captivated my students’ interest this spring, for the potency of its images and inscriptions.  Often neglected by English-language surveys (except of course, the English translation of the Arts of Mankind survey of Early Medieval Art, Europe of the Invasions, one must look farther afield for good material on this monument.  The Museums of Poitiers offer a useful website, and a website maintained by an archaeology student in France presents plans, photos, and inscriptions.

When presenting this monument, I followed the sequence determined by the monument.  We began with the steps leading down into the crypt.  You may find the plan from the Taschen Early Medieval Art Survey by Xavier Barral i Altet on Flickr.  The actual steps may have originally functioned as risers.  Ernst Kitzinger’s article on “Interlace and Icons” fits well as a follow-up reading, for it discusses these steps in terms of their apotropaic potential, which almost every aspect of the crypt reinforces.

We then examined the door frame and its extended inscription (scroll down).   

The inscription reads, in English:

In the name of God, I,

here, Mellebaude,

debtor/sinner and servant of Jesus Christ,

have created for myself thIS

little cave here where

my sepulcher

lies, unworthy,

which I did in the name

of the Lord Jesus Christ whom

I loved, in whom

I believed.  It is a

true dignity to confess that God

lived, whose

glory is GREAT,

 where peace, faith, and charity IS.

HE is God and man,

and God is in him. 

[added, in same hand]

If someone does not worship here the Lord JESUS

CHRIST and destroys this WORK,

may he be anathema – Maranatha –

Until Eternity.

Although only one of several intriguing inscriptions in the crypt, to go into each one would go well beyond the modest aims of this website.  I should mention, however, that one inscription, in particular, permits insight into the circumstances of the crypt’s dedication, destruction, and restoration.

In the second chamber, two plaques depict archangels and Evangelists.  They compare well with the Coffin of Saint Cuthbert.  The crypt also preserves an intriguing fragmentary relief of the two thieves from the Crucifixion. 

Although this monument requires a bit of effort, it rewards well that effort.

The cenotaph for the tomb of Abbesses Theodechilde, the first abbess of Jouarre, and that of the later abbess Agilberte (visible in the distance here) both date from sometime in the eighth century.  One could omit them from an upper-level survey, but they may merit passing reference.  The cenotaph of Agilberte bears an overall pattern reminiscent of a textile, and that of Theodechilde bears two rows of shells between an inscription presented in three rows.  This inscription refers to the parable of the wise and foolish Virgins in Matthew 25, which, in turn, relates this funerary monument to the Last Judgment.

Here are the inscription and a translation, for which I am only partially responsible (I began with a rough translation prepared by the boyfriend of one of my students, whose name I do not know):

HOC MEMBRA POST ULTIMA TEGUNTUR FATA SEPULCHRO BEATAE
THEODLECHELDIS INTEMERATAE VI[R]GINIS GENERE NOBILIS MERETIS
FULGENS STRINUA MORIBUS FLAGRAVIT IN DOGMATE [VERO?]
CENUBII HUIUS MATER SACRATAS DEO VIR[GINES]…
…[ACCIPIEN]TES OLEUM CUM LA[MP]ADIBUS PRUDENTE[S]…
…FILIAS OCCUR[RE]RE XPM HAEC DEMUM EX[S]ULTAT PARAD[ISUM]…

These limbs, after the last utterances, are covered in the tomb of blessed
Theodlechelde, a chaste maid, noble by birth, Illustrious
On account of her merits, vigorous in her habits, she was zealous in [true] doctrine
The mother of this monastery … the virgins sacred to God…
Wisely taking oil with their lamps…
… daughters to run to meet Christ.  At last she exults in paradise.

The mausoleum, and now crypt, of the Abbey of Saint Paul in Jouarre permits a plotting of three points along the transition from Merovingian to Carolingian art. 

The construction of the chamber itself offers compelling material for a discussion of reuse and imitation.  It has spoliated and original capitals and displays a sort of opus reticulatum on one wall.  But I focused in this class on the tombs.

We began with the sarcophagus of Agilbert.  Agilbert, bishop of Wessex and then of Paris, offers a point of communication between the Anglo-Saxons and the Merovingians, like the Merovingian coins in the Mound 1 at Sutton Hoo, and thereby demonstrates the interconnectedness of various regions and the potential for cross-cultural exchange.  

The death of Agilbert in the 680s establishes his sarcophagus as a product of the late seventh century.  The main, long side displays a Last Judgment.  Simply discerning the detail, such as the scroll in Christ’s left hand or the angels on either end, requires some time. 

We also read together the New Testament sources for the imagining of the Last Judgment, especially Matthew 25.

The short side displays a Christ in Majesty. We re-read here the visions of Ezekiel (1.10) and John (Revelation 4.7); reviewed the Evangelist symbols that we had already encountered in class- in the Chapel of San Venanzio, the Codex Amiatinus, and the Book of Durrow; and then examined the Ascension in the Rabbula Gospels.  With this tour, I wanted to make the point that context and function determine the meaning of these four beasts.  In a Gospel book, they signify the harmony of the four Gospels.  In a depiction of the Ascension, they refer to the Second Coming of Christ, through the words of the two men in white in the Book of Acts:  ”Ye men of Galilee, why stand you looking up to heaven? This Jesus who is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come as you have seen him going into heaven” (1.11).  On the sarcophagus of Agilbert, adjacent to the Last Judgment and in a funerary context, the four beasts actually show Christ in Majesty at his Second Coming. 

The site of the Jouarre Office of Tourism has a promotional video with some nice footage of the crypt.  The website of the Abbey presents an account of its history.  For good images, however, one must turn to publications, and Europe of the Invasions offers the most complete set.

E Baldwin Smith, Early Christian Iconography and a School of Ivory Carvers in Provence (1918).