Out of Bounds: Exploring the Limits of Medieval Art (Signa: Papers of the Index of Medieval Art at Princeton University) [1 ed.] 0271094974, 9780271094977

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Out of Bounds Exploring the Limits of Medieval Art

Edited by Pamela A. Patton and Maria Alessia Rossi

Out of Bounds

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Papers of the Index of Medieval Art at Princeton University

signa

Signa: Papers of the Index of Medieval Art at Princeton University explores questions of image and meaning in the context of current scholarship on medieval visual culture. It aims to provide a forum for fresh scholarly perspectives on the ways in which visual images addressed the concerns of both makers and viewers within a diverse and mutable medieval world. series editor: Pamela A. Patton Director, The Index of Medieval Art

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Out of Bounds Exploring the Limits of Medieval Art

Edited by Pamela A. Patton and Maria Alessia Rossi

The Pennsylvania State University Press University Park, Pennsylvania

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Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data Names: Patton, Pamela A., 1964– editor. | Rossi, Maria Alessia, editor. | Princeton University. Department of Art and Archaeology. Index of Medieval Art. Title: Out of bounds : exploring the limits of medieval art / edited by Pamela A. Patton and Maria Alessia Rossi. Other titles: Out of bounds (Pennsylvania State University Press) | Signa (Princeton University. Department of Art and Archaeology. Index of Medieval Art) Description: University Park, Pennsylvania : The Pennsylvania State University Press, [2023] | Series: Signa : papers of the Index of Medieval Art at Princeton University | “The essays in this volume were first presented on 17 November 2018 at the one-​ day conference ‘Out of Bounds: Exploring the Limits of Medieval Art,’ hosted at the Index of Medieval Art at Princeton University”—Preface. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Summary: “A collection of essays offering critical perspectives on the study of medieval art, challenging chronological, geographical, and cultural boundaries”—Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2023005045 | ISBN 9780271094977 (cloth) Subjects: LCSH: Art, Medieval—Congresses. | LCGFT: Conference papers and proceedings. | Essays. Classification: LCC N5961 .O98 2023 | DDC 709.02—dc23/ eng/20230223 LC record available at https://​lccn​.loc​.gov​/2023005045

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Copyright © 2023 The Index of Medieval Art at Princeton University All rights reserved Printed in Korea Published by The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, PA 16802–1003 The Pennsylvania State University Press is a member of the Association of University Presses. It is the policy of The Pennsylvania State University Press to use acid-​free paper. Publications on uncoated stock satisfy the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Material, ansi z39.48–1992.

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Contents List of  Illustrations  |  vii Preface  |  ix

1

Shifting Boundaries: Medieval Art History for Now  | 1 Thelma K. Thomas and Alicia Walker

2 On Account of the Rotundity of the Earth: Steps Toward an Inclusive Medieval Art  | 21 Jill Caskey 3 Medieval Masks? Meditations on Method Out of Bounds  | 53 Sarah M. Guérin 4 Along the Art-​Historical Margins of the Medieval Mediterranean  | 79 Michele Bacci 5 Looking at the “Center” from the “Border”: An Exchange of Franco-​Ottoman Gifts and the Perception of Art Around 1400  | 113 Michele Tomasi 6 Alexander the Great’s Encounters with the Sacred in Medieval History Writing: From the Shahnameh to the Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César  |  133 Suzanne Conklin Akbari 7 Fashioning the Gendered, Classed, and White Self: A Sephardi Cultural Project  | 157 Eva Frojmovic 8 Beyond Traditional Boundaries: Medieval Art and Architecture in Eastern Europe  | 185 Alice Isabella Sullivan 9 “The Summit of the Earth”: What Armenian Texts Can Do for the History of Medieval Art and Beyond  | 211 Christina Maranci Contributors | 235 Index | 239

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Illustrations 2.1. Painted chamber, Afrāsiāb, ca. 660 ce  | 26 2.2. West wall, painted chamber, Afrāsiāb, ca. 660 ce  | 27 2.3. Varkhuman and envoys, detail of west wall, painted chamber, Afrāsiāb, ca. 660 ce  | 28 2.4. South wall, painted chamber, Afrāsiāb, ca. 660 ce  | 29 2.5. North wall, painted chamber, Afrāsiāb, ca. 660 ce  | 30 2.6. Wand, Dorset, ca. 1200–1300  | 34 2.7. Mask, late Dorset, ca. 500–1200 ce  | 35 2.8. “Insula hyspana.” From Christopher Columbus’s Epistola de insulis nuper inventis (Basel, 1494)  | 37 2.9. Shaman deploying the Alex Heiberg carving, animation still by Brad Goodspeed from The Nature of Things (2015)  | 40 2.10. Palermo in mourning. From Peter of Eboli, Liber ad honorem Augustalis, 1194–96  | 42

3.5. Turdus merula mauritanicus, photographed 27 March 2016, at the Souss Massa near Agadir | 62 3.6. Kònò power association mask, Kayes region, Mali, before 1910  | 63 3.7. Kònò tunic and mask, held in a kònò power association sanctuary in Kéméni, Mali, until 1931  | 64 3.8. Photograph of Marcel Griaule and Michel Leiris in Kéméni (Sikasso region), Mali, 6 September 1931  | 65 4.1. Mural painting of Saint Francis of Assisi, Kotor, church of Santa Maria Collegiata, ca. 1300–20  | 89 4.2. Mural painting of Saint Augustine, Kotor, cathedral of Saint Tryphon, ca. 1331  | 90 4.3. Mihailo, mural painting of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, Stoliv, church of Sveti Bazilije, 1451  | 91

2.11. Throne, San Nicola, Bari, ca. 1170  | 43

4.4. Mihailo, mural painting of Saint Sebastian, Stoliv, church of Sveti Bazilije, 1451  | 91

2.12. The fool and his accomplice. From the prayer book of Bonne of Luxembourg, before 1349  | 44

4.5. Mihailo mural painting of Saints Nicholas and Francis of Assisi, Stoliv, church of Sveti Bazilije, 1451  | 92

3.1. Ciwara kun, an antelope mask from the ciwara power association, Mali, nineteenth century (?)  | 55

4.6. Mihailo, mural painting of Saint Tryphon, Stoliv, church of Sveti Bazilije, 1451  | 93

3.2. Mask possibly representing Ife ruler Obalufon II, Ife, thirteenth or fourteenth century (thermoluminescence dating of clay core: 1221–1369)  | 56 3.3. Androgynous Statue from the Pre-​Dogon (Tellem), Mali, central plateau region (Bandiagara escarpment), tenth–eleventh century (carbon dating: 1050–95)  | 57 3.4. Map of West Africa  | 59

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4.7. Virgin Galaktotrophousa icon, Venice or Crete, ca. 1350  | 97 4.8. Virgin Galaktotrophousa tripartite icon, with scenes of the Annunciation, Crucifixion, and saints, Crete (?), ca. 1360–70  | 98 4.9. Virgin and Child Galaktotrophousa icon, Crete (?), ca. 1360–70  | 99 4.10. Virgin and Child Galaktotrophousa icon, Crete (?), ca. 1360–70  | 100

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4.11. Saint George on Horseback icon, Crete (?), ca. 1360–70.  | 101 4.12. Fragmentary triptych icon with scenes of the Annunciation, Crucifixion, Akra Tapeinosis, and saints, ca. 1360–70  | 102 5.1. Payment of the ransom to Bayezid I. From Jean Colombe and collaborators, Passages oultre mer de Sébastien Mamerot, Bourges, ca. 1474–75  | 115 5.2. Story of Alexander the Great, Tournai (?), ca. 1460  | 120 5.3. Entry of Isabella of Bavaria in Paris. From Jean Froissart, Chroniques, book IV, Bruges, ca. 1470–72  | 122 5.4. The Burghley Nef, Paris, 1527–28  | 124 6.1. Iskandar (Alexander) at the Ka’aba. From Abul-​Qâsem Ferdowsi, Shahnameh, Shiraz, 1441  | 136 6.2. Iskandar (Alexander) at the Ka’aba. From Abul-​Qâsem Ferdowsi, Shahnameh, Shiraz, 1330  | 138 6.3. Iskandar (Alexander) at the Ka’aba. From Abul-​Qâsem Ferdowsi, Shahnameh, Shiraz, 1435  | 139 6.4. Iskandar (Alexander) at the Ka’aba. From Abul-​Qâsem Ferdowsi, Shahnameh, Shiraz, 1450  | 140 6.5. The Mi’raj of Muhammad. From Sa’di, Bustan, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan, probably Bukhara or Herat, ca. 1525–35  | 141 6.6. The Mi’raj of Muhammad. From Jami, Yusuf wa Zulaikha, Shiraz, ca. 1585–90  | 142 6.7. Alexander at the gates of Jerusalem. From Wauchier de Denain, Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César, Acre, 1260s  | 145 6.8. Alexander at the gates of Jerusalem. From Wauchier de Denain, Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César, Acre, 1280s  | 146 6.9. Temple of Janus. From Wauchier de Denain, Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César, Acre, 1260s  | 149 6.10. Temple of Janus. From Wauchier de Denain, Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César, Acre, 1280s  | 150 6.11. Jerusalem city map, Voormezeele, second half of the twelfth century  | 151

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6.12. Map of the Maghrib. From Abū Isḥāq al-Iṣṭaḵ hrī, abridgment of Kitāb al-Masālik wa l-mamālik, eastern Mediterranean, ah 589 / 1193 ce  | 152 7.1. The Seder table. From the Sarajevo Haggadah, ca. 1350  | 159 7.2. Jews stabbing a eucharistic wafer; Jews impaling a eucharistic wafer. From Master of Vallbona de les Monges (Guillem Seguer [?]), Altarpiece of the Corpus Christi (detail), ca. 1335–45  | 169 7.3. A Jewish man boiling a eucharistic wafer; a Christian woman salvaging the eucharistic wafer from the cauldron. From Master of Vallbona de les Monges (Guillem Seguer [?]), Altarpiece of the Corpus Christi (detail), ca. 1335–45  | 170 7.4. Last Supper and Host desecration scenes. From Jaume Serra, Altarpiece of the Virgin (detail), ca. 1367–81  | 172 7.5. Christian woman taking the Eucharist; Christian woman swapping the eucharistic wafer against a robe in a Jew’s household; Jewish man stabbing the eucharistic wafer in the presence of four women. From Retable of the Eucharist (detail), ca. 1380–90  | 174 7.6. Jewish man attacking the eucharistic wafer with a hammer, a sword, and by boiling in a cauldron, in the presence of other Jewish men and women. From Retable of the Eucharist (detail), ca. 1380–90  | 175 8.1. Map of Europe showing the Iron Curtain  | 186 8.2. Map of the Romanian Principalities and Eastern Hungary between 1457 and 1504  | 188 8.3. Church of the Holy Cross, view from the southwest, Pătrăuţi Monastery, Moldavia, modern-​day Romania, 1487  | 189 8.4. Elevation and layout, Church of the Holy Cross, Pătrăuţi Monastery, Moldavia, modern-​ day Romania, 1487  | 190 8.5. Interior of naos with murals, view toward the west, Church of the Holy Cross, Pătrăuți Monastery, Moldavia, modern-​day Romania, 1487  | 191 8.6. Burial cover of Maria Asanina Palaiologina of Mangup, ca. 1477  | 193

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8.7. Opening pages of the Gospel of Saint Mark. From Tetraevangelion, Humor Monastery, 1473  | 195 8.8. Censer, 1470  | 196 8.9. Church of the Annunciation, view from the southeast, Moldoviţa Monastery, Moldavia, modern-​day Romania, 1532–37  | 198 8.10. Church of the Annunciation, view from the southwest, Moldoviţa Monastery, Moldavia, modern-​day Romania, 1532–37.  | 198 8.11. Church of Saint Nicetas in Banjane, view from the northwest, ca. 1300, renovated 1484  | 200 8.12. Cathedral of the Dormition, Kremlin, Moscow, view from the southeast, 1474–79  | 203 9.1. Zvart‘nots‘ Cathedral, Vagharshapat, Armenia, view of ruins.  | 214 9.2. Plan of Zvart‘nots‘ Cathedral, ca. 1913  | 215

9.4. Headpiece, detail. From Lectionary of King Het‘um II, 1286  | 219 9.5. Surb Step’anos, Darashamb, East Azarbaijan Province, modern-​day Iran, later seventeenth century  | 221 9.6. Carvings on drum of Surb Step‘anos, Darashamb, East Azarbaijan Province, modern-​day Iran, later seventeenth century  | 222 9.7. The Resurrection, Kütahya tile, eighteenth century  | 225 9.8. Mock-​up of four Kütahya tiles from the Armenian cathedral of Saint James, Jerusalem, eighteenth century  | 226 9.9. Map of places visited by Bishop Martiros of Eznka (Erznka, mod. Erzincan), ca. 1489–96  | 228

9.3. Headpiece. From Lectionary of King Het‘um II, 1286  | 217

Illustrations

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Preface The essays in this volume were first presented on 17 November 2018 at the one-​day conference “Out of Bounds: Exploring the Limits of Medieval Art,” hosted at the Index of Medieval Art at Princeton University. There, eight speakers and two respondents addressed the following questions: What are the boundaries of medieval culture? What geographical, cultural, or chronological parameters now direct our study of the Middle Ages? How do these limits reshape scholarly assumptions about medieval communities, identities, traditions, and interrelationships? The theme of the conference was inspired by the wide-​ranging fields of research pursued by students in the Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton, and it reflected the desire of Index staff to encourage and support their ambitions. In collaboration with Art and Archaeology faculty Charles Barber and Beatrice Kitzinger, we canvassed the students for speaker nominations in their respective research areas and developed a roster of visiting scholars whom we invited to join the department a day in advance so that they could meet with the students as a group to discuss their projects, goals, obstacles, and successes. This event, which included student presentations and a thought-​provoking exchange with the scholars (itself a kind of boundary crossing), laid an excellent foundation for the public conference on the next day, drawing out themes and questions that re-​emerged in many of the speakers’ papers and shaped their discussion in very fruitful ways. On behalf of the Index, we wish to thank graduate students John Lansdowne, Erene Morcos, Meseret Oldjira, Erin Piñón, Francesca Pistone, Nomi Schneck, and Justin Willson, as well as Professors Barber and Kitzinger, for their willing and thoughtful participation in both of these events. We owe thanks also to the department of Art and Archaeology and the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies for their support of the conference. We are gratified that all of the speakers who participated in the original conference were willing to develop their conference papers into the essays collected in the present volume. All have drawn profitably on the ideas exchanged at the Princeton conference to articulate the myriad ways in which going “out of bounds” can change both the questions scholars ask about medieval art and the answers that these may reveal, many of which are highlighted in the co-​authored introduction to the volume by conference respondents Thelma K. Thomas and Alicia Walker. Their essay offers

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not just a meaningful frame for the contributions but a bracing commentary on the methodological, disciplinary, and professional challenges that still face our field when we attempt, as they might put it, to move the goalposts of our work. —Pamela A. Patton and Maria Alessia Rossi Index of Medieval Art, October 2021

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Preface

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1 Shifting Boundaries Medieval Art History for Now

Thelma K. Thomas and Alicia Walker

The phrase “out of bounds” evokes not only the existence of parameters but also the rules that govern how we operate in relation to them. In soccer, basketball, and tennis, for instance, a player stops after the ball crosses the sideline—or if she continues to play, it does not “count.” Boundaries become a focus of attention for referees, coaches, and spectators. One can accidentally cross out-​of-​bounds, one can be forced over the line, or one might exit the field strategically in order to reset the game and create new possibilities for play. In the arena of medieval art history, it sometimes feels that similar rules and structures of surveillance apply. When an investigation moves beyond the extent of one’s formal training (in languages, history, cultural contexts, or artistic techniques) or presses at the limits of conventional definitions of the “medieval” (chronologically, geographically, or thematically), will someone call “foul”? It can feel risky to keep playing after exceeding the designated parameters, and many scholars are uneasy about venturing outside their turf. Yet, in art history—unlike soccer, basketball, or tennis—it is only by exceeding boundaries that we might redraw the parameters of the field and rewrite the rules of the game. Risks pay off when others are persuaded that the new way is an improvement on the old and when they, too, move into an expanded field and start playing differently. In this introduction, we focus on questions surrounding the production of knowledge and how scholarly investigation beyond the conventional geographic, cultural, chronological, and thematic boundaries of medieval art history are changing the game.

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We also probe how medieval art history might address the ethics of scholarship today by posing the global turn as a response to growing demands for the field to actively pursue socially responsible and impactful work. We explore the essays gathered here as a “medieval art history for now,” in the sense of both an urgent reply to the particular needs of the present moment—“for NOW”—and a provisional effort to address concerns that are “only for now,” that, over time, will inevitably shift, evolve, and be replaced by new calls and responses. Without doubt, as the organizers of “Out of Bounds: Exploring the Limits of Medieval Art” at Princeton University noted in their description of the 2018 symposium, “scholarly awareness of the global dimensions of the medieval world has provoked new ways of considering traditional questions,” reshaping not only the geographic and cultural range of our inquiry but also our mindfulness of the multiple timelines in which medieval cultures and societies operated.1 In recent years, the growing number of individual scholars issuing challenges to traditional Eurocentric and Eurasian views of the cultural geography of medieval art—as well as the prevalence of exhibitions, conference sessions, symposia, and volumes documenting their efforts—clearly signals that a global approach is now mainstream.2 Institutions, too, are redrawing the geocultural boundaries of medieval art as found, for example, in the redrafting of the mission statement of the International Center of Medieval Art (ICMA), notably during the presidency of Byzantinist and Armenologist Helen C. Evans, to include the “visual and material cultures . . . in every corner of the medieval world.”3 The deliberately fuzzy localization of that world’s “every corner” anticipates exploration of continually expanding cultural geographies.4 In these and other ways, medieval art history has made a definitive “global turn,” necessitating a transformation of our disciplinary practices—that is, of the ways we go about our work, of how we play the game.5 Misgivings remain, however, even as a global approach to medieval art history pervades the field. In particular, a globally networked world has long been associated with the modern and contemporary eras, commencing with the Age of Exploration/ Exploitation in the late fifteenth century and sometimes claimed to be without precedent in earlier centuries.6 The fact that the Middle Ages did not experience the same extent of global interconnectedness as the modern world has led some to cast it as an interloper in histories of the global or, at most, as protoglobal.7 Furthermore, modern theoretical conceptions and applications of globalism often emerged from, and privileged, capitalist models for economic and communication systems, which have been judged less relevant to the primary bodies of evidence and scholarly questions of medieval art history.8 Medievalists have responded to these concerns in varied ways, arguing, for instance, that the emphases on movement, fluidity, and connectedness inherent in global approaches are productive even when systems of interconnectedness are less extensive than those of the modern era.9 Some scholars have foregrounded the intensity and diversity of far-​reaching, interregional connectedness in the Middle Ages as an alternative measure of global conditions.10 Indeed the density of trade 2

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across Afro-​Eurasia in the medieval—and even ancient—world is astounding, and those commercial pathways served the flow of not only goods but also ideas, people, and material culture.11 Much of the scholarship that mounts a global approach to medieval art history is aligned implicitly with a postcolonial view of cosmopolitanism, which invests positive value in questioning Eurocentric assumptions about the centers of cultural authority and strives to restructure the disciplinary narrative from other, often marginalized, cultural and geographic points of view.12 Indeed it is a commonplace to acknowledge that Eurocentrism in medieval studies has long privileged not only the geography of Europe and its pathways but also chronologies based on European events and interests.13 In the wake of the global turn, a Eurocentric “center-​periphery” structure of analysis has increasingly given way to a “more flexible, decentered understanding of the medieval world and its visual culture.”14 Adding new dimensions to this line of argument, Julia McClure has recently drawn attention to how scholars of modernity have critiqued global frameworks that fail to provincialize European historical authority. They call for the definition of “multiple modernities,” generated from distinct local geographic, cultural, and temporal experiences.15 McClure warns that, similarly, the globalization of medieval history must decenter Western European hegemony over the interpretation of the past so as to avoid reinscribing asymmetrical structures of power and authority.16 She emphasizes the need for alternative conceptions of premodernity that work in concert and in contrast with alternative global modernities. We might call these “multiple medievalities”— and we would add that they must be viewed in relation to the “multiple antiquities” preceding them. McClure sees a pressing need for such efforts in order to respond effectively to the proliferation of “multiple medievalisms,” especially those mounted by contemporary fundamentalist groups whose efforts to create alternative modernities are inspired and authorized by their ideologically driven formulations of the medieval past.17 Multiple medievalities are an essential part of an effective response to the current proliferation of dangerous, alternative medievalisms.18 Indeed, studies of the past decade demonstrating the role of the medieval in imagining possibilities for racial and ethnic liberation and equality in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries provide important counterweights to contemporary nationalist and fundamentalist projections of a medieval world mobilized to bolster ideologies promoting racial, ethnic, and religious oppression.19 Still, the modern historiographic origins of global theories and methods raise legitimate questions about their appropriateness to the study of medieval art. Is the global approach a form of presentism that distorts the medieval world in order to mirror our own historical moment, our experiences and values? Medievalists are surely united in resisting “presentism” in the sense of “the shift of general historical interest toward the contemporary period and away from the more distant past.”20 But we no doubt differ in our inclination to reject or endorse presentism in its wider semantic range. Shifting Boundaries

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Basic definitions assert that it is “an attitude toward the past dominated by present-​ day attitudes and experiences” or “a bias towards the present or present-​day attitudes, esp. in the interpretation of history.”21 Surely most medievalists would denounce a heedless imposition of anachronistic values and motivations on the interpretation of history, and yet, following a line of thought that reaches back to late antiquity and before, we cannot but view the past from our present situations.22 Accepting that historians do not disinterestedly reveal past truths but instead sustain a heightened engagement with the persistence of the past in the present, David Armitage offers a compelling defense of presentism as an ontological premise and epistemological tool to be embraced.23 In a critical overview across the disciplines of history, psychology, the history of science, and philosophy, Armitage outlines more than a dozen species of presentism, anatomizing the shortcomings of some, while proposing that others can be rehabilitated as legitimate, even crucial tools for the historian.24 He advocates for two specific forms of presentism: (1) “critical” or “strategic” presentism and (2) “motivational” presentism. Critical (or strategic) presentism “deploys the historian’s apprehension of the complexity and contingency of the past to dethrone the pretensions of the present.”25 In this way, “history serves its purpose when it engages the public in discussion about why particular claims rest on misplaced certainty or misunderstood history, and counters that history with more nuanced and complicated alternatives.”26 Armitage argues that motivational presentism self-​consciously engages our current positionality to take responsibility for how our subjecthood affords particular vantage points onto the past: “Motivational presentism encourages the healthy tendency to scrutinize one’s own choices and to be frank, with oneself and with one’s readers, about the various internal and external pressures that shape our historical work.”27 It can be harnessed to propel investigations into the past that yield new perspective on current questions and quandaries (that is, it can prompt critical/strategic presentism). The value of a globalist, presentist approach is especially high for the study of medieval art given how deeply our discipline was imbricated in nationalist movements and interests of the eighteenth to twentieth centuries. Conventional medieval art history (with its geographic focus on Western Europe and cultural typologies based loosely on modern nation states) was itself the product of then-​presentist perspectives.28 From the foundation of art history as a discipline, the proofs of essentialized cultural and national character were discerned in formal features and charted in stylistic developments and “schools,” which cut great divides between the arts of Europe, Asia, and Africa.29 As Jill Caskey observes in this volume, such formalist paradigms still linger in textbooks, creating an intellectual disconnect between scholarly and pedagogic standards within medieval art history. In her essay, Alice Sullivan notes that both communist-​era and postindependence scholarship on Eastern European medieval architecture often adheres to nationalist principles, which promote claims of exceptionalism and independence for local traditions in defiance of a perceived reliance 4

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on external traditions, whether Western European, Byzantine, Slavic, or Ottoman. While combatting one presentism (nationalism) with another (globalism) is not a total solution, a global approach does highlight previously overlooked evidence that points to new possibilities for organizing and understanding the medieval past in ways that elaborate rather than reduce its complexity. A global vantage levels the playing field among medieval actors by encompassing the roles and perspectives of all who were present on the earth in that slice of time conventionally designated as “medieval.” In particular it accords attention to geographic locales, cultural groups, and temporalities that have been judged marginal to the Eurocentric geographic imagination undergirding the early formation of medieval art history. Articles in this volume that center on regions long perceived as peripheral—by Christina Maranci on Armenia, Alice Sullivan on the principality of Moldavia, and Sarah Guérin on the empire of Mali in West Africa—work to establish a pluritopic geography for the medieval world. For example, Maranci posits that close scrutiny of medieval Armenian written sources counters expectation by broadening— rather than narrowing—our view onto Armenian society in the Middle Ages. She shows how Armenian texts and inscriptions reveal investment in many of the characteristics foregrounded in a global approach to medieval art, including the mobility of people and things, far-​reaching commercial connectedness, curiosity about and a desire to understand other cultures and their art, receptivity to incorporating non-​Armenian artistic forms in the expression of Armenian social values and cultural ideas, and an effort to recount Armenia’s prominent place in a dynamic, densely networked medieval world. Together these essays show how attention to previously overlooked communities recasts the privileged centers of medieval art history and the master narratives generated around them. As the medieval globe is remapped, power and authority are redistributed, both in the Middle Ages and in the academic fields that study it today.30 This volume contributes to the ongoing and essential project of expanding the geocultural scope of medieval art, pushing in new directions the primary bodies of evidence and methods of analysis that have transformed radically since the founding of our field. The authors offer strategies not only for remapping space but also for recalibrating time in the Middle Ages. Sullivan narrates the transcendence of conventional notions of medieval territory and periodization in the history of Moldavia, which does not observe the usual boundaries marking the end of the Western European Middle Ages and the onset of the Italian Renaissance. She notes, as well, the modern political alignment of medieval Moldavian history with the Iron Curtain, which came belatedly to be seen to divide (medieval) Eastern Europe from “real Europe.” Taking cues from medieval texts, Maranci, Guérin, and Caskey imagine medieval temporality outside the period boundaries of classical antiquity and the Renaissance. In discussing an object affiliated with Indigenous people of the North American eastern Arctic, the Tuniit, Caskey observes that our conception of some medieval cultures and their temporality has been Shifting Boundaries

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shaped by the collecting of colonizers, and she questions the possibility of recovering an accurate, ethical understanding of such objects given the limits of the “evidence” that “settler research” privileges and the violent destruction that the interpretive acts of “Western” scholars are perceived to inflict on the cultural autonomy and authority of Indigenous communities. Her point resonates with other essays. Guérin, for example, notes that masks were not only popular items for colonial collectors and seen as quintessentially African, but they also, because of their “primitiveness,” qualified African culture for the derogatory characterization of “medieval.” Yet given the absence of archaeological evidence for medieval African masks, art historians have turned to modern ethnography as a source, risking the further collapse of the historical past into the present but with the potential gain of opening up possibilities for amplifying and refining the limited disclosures found in the medieval African textual record.31 In order to gain perspective on current museological approaches to the characterization and organization of medieval Armenian art, culture, and history, Maranci imagines a seventh-​century Armenian polymath, Anania Shirakats‘i, as a time traveler in a modern-​day exhibition and speculates on his reactions to the presentation of ​his world. We might also imagine medieval objects as time travelers offering commentary on the present they now inhabit. Many of these strategies cut through the Eurocentric knot at the core of the predominant gradations of “medieval time,” addressing the pertinent question: if not the “Middle Ages,” between classical and modern eras of (Western European) civilization, then what is medieval? McClure would insist that the only way to decolonize medieval temporality is to allow for the emergence of multiple timelines, coeval but not strictly coinciding, each attuned to the particular needs of geographically and culturally localized “medievalities,” with none allowed to dominate the field as a whole.32 A global perspective brings into focus real and perceived frontiers of language, geography, religion, and culture, while challenging us to seek around these boundaries the spaces of encounter in which similarities and differences were negotiated.33 In this volume, Michele Tomasi traces objects and spaces of encounter between French and Ottoman political players, from the battlefield to the state reception room. He posits that diplomatic gifts manifested the navigation of cultural similarities and differences, alongside cross-​cultural ignorance and knowledge, in order to communicate carefully calculated messages: refined textiles evoked a shared identity for French and Ottoman courtiers as sophisticated connoisseurs of luxury exotica. State-​of-​the-​art northern European tapestries depicting scenes from the life of Alexander the Great ingratiated the French with the Ottoman sultan by recognizing his claim to descendance from the Greek military conqueror, but they did so in a uniquely French artistic medium that was rare and much coveted in the Ottoman sphere.34 Tomasi strongly advocates for exploring the interplay between cultural centers and margins, demonstrating how the objects and social groups moving across these spaces are more clearly understood through their interactions with the Other. 6

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Michele Bacci and Alice Sullivan address spaces of encounter that emerged intraregionally, within “mixed” or “eclectic” artistic traditions of the late medieval world. Sullivan frames the principality of Moldavia in the fourteenth to eighteenth centuries as a crossroads of Latin (Gothic), Greek (Byzantine), Eastern European (Slavic), and Islamic (Ottoman) traditions. These diverse artistic languages were preserved and reinvigorated to generate “eclectic” works of art and architecture that articulated a distinctly local idiom and identity—but one that was simultaneously networked across the spaces and temporalities (past, present, and future) of the great polities of late medieval Eurasia. Reflecting on the heterogeneous stylistic character of devotional panel and monumental painting in the fourteenth- to fifteenth-​century Venetian sphere, Bacci draws attention to our problematic descriptive terminologies (including the synonyms for “mixed,” “bastard,” “mélange,” “hybrid”) and challenges us to disconnect terms that are descriptive of culture from their historiographic baggage. He proposes accomplishing this, in part, by warning against the default assignation of cultural identity to styles (and schools). He demonstrates examples of stylistic combinations as expressive choice as well as those that are best understood as fortuitous. He emphasizes the need to consider individual works contextually and with a full awareness of the diverse circumstances and motivations—as well as simple coincidences—behind stylistically heterogenous works, which were marginalized in earlier nationalist traditions of art history but are now the focus of more globally oriented scholarship. In contrast, Suzanne Conklin Akbari stages an analytical space of encounter by juxtaposing different cultural perspectives on a single place and event: the visit to the Ka’ba by the wide-​ranging Alexander the Great, who was, since antiquity, claimed by cultures throughout North Africa, Europe, what we now call the Middle East, and Asia. Akbari considers “what is at stake in representations of the sacred” and questions the regional limits of comparative work, while shining a light on the enduring and dynamic legacy of premedieval globalism in the later medieval world and its adaptive translation. Caskey explores how both Sogdian and Tuniit artists recorded experiences of encounter with cultural others, whether these were defining aspects of a collective experience of constant, dense cultural connectivity (in the case of seventh-​century Sogdian wall paintings) or exceptional moments of “first contact” (in the case of an early thirteenth- to early fifteenth-​century, possibly shamanistic stick that is thought to portray the meeting of a Tuniit and a Norseman). These essays speak to how we might treat moments of encounter not as peripheral tales of exceptional eruptions into a normative, culturally stable medieval world but instead as alternative accounts of a thicker, more complex story, localized in interconnected plotlines and adapted across constantly modified cultural formations. Contributions to this volume implicitly warn of the potential for the expanding field of medieval art history to become conceptually unwieldy, and several authors have outlined strategies to rein in investigations and interpretations that strain Shifting Boundaries

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against their moorings. There is a need to develop new categories and critical terms, which can structure a common conversation. Bacci’s typology of intercultural artistic phenomena demonstrates how studies on diverse bodies of material might be tethered together and placed into dialogue by means of a shared (albeit provisional) lexicon for analyzing artistic interconnections. His focus on late medieval Mediterranean painting implicitly highlights how terms and concepts attuned to circumstances of intercultural movement and interaction might be transposed effectively across not only medieval geographical and cultural contexts but also beyond the Middle Ages, in the scholarly analysis of works dating to other art-​historical periods. Conversely, in a move that can be productively positioned in relation to methodological concerns voiced by Caskey and Guérin regarding the use of modern anthropological approaches, Eva Frojmovic employs the concepts of ethnography and autoethnography to deconstruct the ideological framing of illustrations in medieval Haggadot. She argues that, rather than objective records of medieval Jewish domestic life and ritual practices, these manuscript illuminations should instead be read as self-​ conscious contestations of derogatory images—including libelous accusations of Host desecration—promulgated against Jews and circulating in contemporary Christian doctrine and art. Seeing Haggadot illustrations as an effort to recuperate social status for their owners/viewers, she posits that the dark-​skinned servant situated across the Seder table in the famous Sarajevo Haggadah functions to buttress an aspirational image of fourteenth-​century Aragonese and Provençal “Jewishness” as affluent, dignified, and white.35 Although the art-​historical habit is to seek connections, they sometimes remain elusive or even nonexistent. As medieval art history strives to encompass the globe, how do we write a coherent narrative about cultural subjects that are often only loosely linked or perhaps not connected at all? Reflecting on her contributions to a collaboratively written textbook of global medieval art, Caskey effectively negotiates the thin documentation of medieval connections through a comparative framework structured around a set of key themes including, for example, “access to the sacred.” While opening up the temporal scope to encompass the second through the fifteenth centuries (so as to include the early beginnings of the medieval eras of some cultures and the later endings of others), she resisted the pull of limitless expansion by grounding discussion in the close examination of select objects that illustrate through case studies the diverse worlds existing simultaneously across the medieval globe.36 Caskey’s comparison of Central Asian (Sogdian) and North American (Tuniit) works of art acknowledges medieval awareness of the larger world in the familiar transcontinental trade of the Silk Routes but also in connections between Europe and North America that now surprise us. The current influx of this kind of information helps to deconstruct medieval stereotypes and prompts new ways to discern global interconnections and comparisons. For instance, “the sacred” might be construed as newspeak for the religiosity expected to pervade the medieval world. The expanding horizons of a global field license us to draw 8

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bolder comparisons and explore other axes of human experience made manifest in medieval artistic expressions—for example, as Caskey suggests, reactions to global climate shifts in the Middle Ages. As the “big tent” of medieval art history continues to grow and fill, we need to direct our core conversation to the methodological (that is, to how we “do” medieval art history). Within subfields, of course, the interpretation of content will remain essential, but as we break down the synonymity between “Western European medieval art history” and “medieval art history,” the term “medieval” is increasingly exposed as a catch-​all in need of qualifiers (European, Mediterranean, Islamic, Arctic, and so on). A persuasive case can be made for jettisoning expectations that the same core stylistic or aesthetic criteria might be applied to all medieval art. More than ever, there exists an urgent need to explore art-​historical traditions beyond the exclusive and exclusionary narratives of earlier generations that defined medieval and modern, for example, such that only certain cultures and nations belong fully, and the rest are relegated to precursors, influences, or intermediaries.37 We might forge common ground and shared interest in models and strategies for problem-​solving, in methods that all medievalists can debate and test against the challenges that a global approach raises. Several authors foreground how our own scholarly boundaries are tested when we seek to treat with equal thoroughness two or more players in complex historical contexts. Caskey, Guérin, and Akbari all speak of the uncertainty that a global approach raises for them and discuss explicitly how they overcome—or endure—this discomfort, both psychologically and methodologically. Certainly, a global approach requires greater scope to deal responsibly with multiple linguistic, geographic, and cultural groups and their histories, literatures, and cultures. These demands necessitate new ways to pool academic resources and knowledge, as well as a shift in attitude away from a goal of expertise and total control to one of intellectual humility and collaboration. No one scholar—or volume—can accomplish it all. Much more remains to be done, individually and collectively. For instance, in a volume aligned with the global endeavor, this collection focuses predominantly on studies of European art and architecture or on studies of non-​European material written by medievalists with primary expertise in Western Europe. This is essential work that contributes in fundamental ways to the goal of a more global medieval studies. At the same time, the volume inherently—although no doubt unintentionally—risks perpetuating a hegemonic position for Western Europe in defining what global medieval methods, themes, and content will be, even as it acknowledges the inadequacy of simply examining the rest of the medieval globe from the vantage point of medieval Europe and the scholars who study it. Increasing representation of the scholars whose primary expertise lies in Africa, the Near and Middle East, and Asia, if not also the Americas and Australia, is equally essential. It is both an intellectual and an ethical imperative that more be done to include scholars who not only study these regions but live in and produce Shifting Boundaries

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scholarship from these locales today and who hold perspectives shaped by different academic traditions and presentist perspectives than those that dominate the North American and Western European spheres represented in this and many other volumes. To expand further on the ethical imperatives of medieval art history today, a global approach not only prompts the inclusion of more diverse, representative art-​historical voices and not only responds to the early formation of our field in nationalist discourses of the past, but it also speaks directly to misuses of medieval visual culture today.38 The abuse of medieval traditions by a plethora of fundamentalist religious, social, and political groups across the globe is often motivated by current nationalist ambitions that share many features with their eighteenth- to twentieth-​century forerunners.39 There has been an explosion of mainstream media, para-​academic, and academic publications addressing the prevalence of medieval history and visual culture in the ideologies and self-​presentation of far-right groups across Europe as well as alt-​right and other extremist groups in the United States. In the latter case, many discussions emerged in response to the Unite the Right rally held in Charlottesville, Virginia, on 11 and 12 August 2017. Such commentaries tend to focus on Western European medieval traditions co-​opted to support racist, nationalist, white-​supremacist, and misogynist platforms.40 Less often noted is that, among the groups marching in the Unite the Right rally, several align themselves with medieval Orthodox Christian traditions of Eastern Europe and the Middle East and cultivate ally groups internationally, with, for instance, Christian nationalist movements in Serbia, Albania, and Russia that promote white-​supremacist agendas and anti-​immigrant platforms.41 Some fundamentalist Islamic groups, like ISIS/ISIL/Daesh, engage in similar strategies of misrepresenting the medieval past as a time of cultural and religious purity to which contemporary society must return.42 At issue with these fundamentalist movements and their medievalities/medievalisms is not only the content of their messages but also the methods they employ to make meaning of the past. Their modes of historical interpretation align with what Armitage defines as “ideological” presentism used by an adherent “to suit not just present needs but to justify, even to glorify, those she or her party finds most immediately admirable.”43 Such efforts sometimes merge into “analytical” presentism, which employs “current categories or imperatives not only to determine historical topics but then to interpret them in terms distant from, or unrecognizable to, the past itself.”44 A key feature of these types of presentism is a lack of rigor in the identification and assessment of data; these arguments are typically teleological, looking for shortcuts to the past that support and affirm current positions with “historical” validity but ignoring evidence that undermines their interpretations or points to alternative (usually more complex) narratives and paradigms.45 Scholars of medieval studies have assumed a variety of positions in response to the current politicization of the medieval and the question of medievalists’ ethical obligations to respond. In one widely publicized commentary in the wake of Charlottesville, 10

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Dorothy Kim, a scholar of medieval European literature, asked, “How are you signaling in your classroom that you are not upholding white supremacy when you are teaching the subject loved by white supremacists?”46 Kim is not alone in exhorting medievalists to recognize how we are implicated in the production of racist, misogynist, and nationalist ideologies and to be proactive in responding—to pick a side. Certainly it is not enough to inscribe “I am not a racist” at the top of one’s syllabi.47 Nor is it every scholar’s calling to engage hate groups and terrorists on their own turf, confronting head on the distorted products of corrupt presentism. Indeed, doing so can quickly devolve into a reductive battle between different presentist ideologies; in other words, it risks becoming an argument too much about the present and not about the interpretation of the past.48 An alternative response is to strengthen our commitment to the very investments that spurred most of us to follow the academic vocation in the first place: our “belief in inquiry, revision, and tenacity to come closer to enduring solutions.”49 That is to say, to fight the slapdash logic and selective engagement with historical evidence that characterizes fundamentalist exploitations of the medieval era with the careful, difficult, measured, and firmly grounded arguments derived from as full an assessment of the available data as possible. In this way, we might practice critical (or strategic) presentism to deploy “the historian’s apprehension of the complexity and contingency of the past to dethrone the pretensions of the present.”50 A global approach to the Middle Ages can be one route toward this goal. Much of the yield from a global method responds powerfully to those who seek to mobilize the medieval world in support of nationalist, racist, and xenophobic platforms. The myopic and contorted perspectives promoted by these groups are effectively countered by a global vantage point and can project in our classrooms, symposia, journals, and books a very different image of the medieval world, one that promotes a greater sense of cultural interaction—in some instances, coexistence; in other instances, conflict—without glossing over the complexities of the Middle Ages and our uncertainties about how to interpret them. This is a message that we can and should broadcast to a wider public, but it is also one that is equally valuable as an internal discussion to be shared among our medievalist students and colleagues, to define our field of study for ourselves in ways that combat gross misuse and abuse of the past; that is to say, that combat bad art history. Good art history can—some might argue, must—be critically, strategically, motivationally presentist. Advocating for a more inclusive, complex vision of the medieval past inevitably raises analogous questions for our field today, specifically, the thorny question of diversity among medievalists ourselves. There is no denying that medieval studies remains largely white and privileged in its sociocultural makeup. This is a demographic fact that the field must continue to query. The organization Medievalists of Color—a group with which we both affiliate—has mounted a range of initiatives in support of greater professional and intellectual inclusivity, but this is a task that cannot be our burden Shifting Boundaries

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alone.51 Creation of an Inclusivity and Diversity Committee for the Medieval Academy of America (with a purview that includes mentorship, professional development, and input on the organization and content of annual meetings) and funding opportunities, like the newly established Belle Da Costa Greene Award (which benefits medievalists of color) represent much-needed institutional responses to these challenges.52 Still, these moves are only a start. How do we engineer a pipeline of diverse undergraduates to enter our programs in medieval studies, and how do we better support all emerging scholars through the precipitous learning curve that mastery of the medievalist toolbox imposes? How might we better allow for “multiple medievalities” to coexist and interact in our classrooms, conferences, and publications? How can we ensure that medieval studies nurtures not only scholars speaking to and about a more diverse and global perspective on the Middle Ages but also scholars speaking from a diversity of presentist positions? How can we, as a field, support inclusivity-​driven intellectual and ethical risk-​taking in our scholarship and professional practices? And how can we affirm these good-faith efforts both when they hit and when they fall short of the mark? One of the ways in which medievalists have been testing the boundaries of our field in recent years is by bringing presentist discussions—like the post-​Charlottesville debate or questions of racial, ethnic, and gender equity in the profession of medieval studies—to the fore of academic discourse. The mechanisms that endorse or reject, reward or dismiss such efforts were evident in the dispute surrounding the initial refusal of five out of the six panels proposed by the Medievalists of Color at the 2019 International Congress of Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo, which spurred a controversy so intense that it made the pages of the New York Times.53 The commitment to broach these topics has not waned, however, as indicated by the numerous sessions and panels relating to professional diversity/inclusion and multiple medievalities in the program for the 2020 annual meeting of the Medieval Academy of America.54 Similarly, the International Center of Medieval Art’s sponsored event at the 2020 College Art Association annual meeting featured the roundtable “ICMA and Expanding the Medieval World,” which sought to explore “the multiplicities found within and outside the traditional boundaries of medieval art and culture, and their connections to the greater world.”55 Such scholarship and activism, mounted by individuals, organizations, and institutions, are some of the ways that the field of medieval art history might move toward a more ethically engaged practice. The global approach joins a larger movement for critical, motivational presentism that mobilizes current values and modes of inquiry to illuminate, as Armitage demands, “why particular claims rest on misplaced certainty or misunderstood history, and counter that history with more nuanced and complicated alternatives.”56 It is crucial to add voices to the call raised by Paul B. Sturtevant, who rallied medievalists—both professional and lay—to combat white-​nationalist distortions of the medieval past by expanding our own comprehension of the rich diversity of the Middle Ages: 12

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Find ways of expanding your, and your group’s, repertoire and purview. Look beyond medieval England, and beyond medieval Europe. Do not accept it if your compatriots push back; their sources and interpretations are undoubtedly incomplete, ridiculously out-​of-​date, or just bunk. They may call our Middle Ages “presentist,” or “revisionist history.” It is only “presentist” in that it is up-​to-​date. It is only “revisionist” because it is cutting-​edge. Accept the smears with a smile. . . . Take this more-​inclusive, more-​accurate vision of the Middle Ages into your heart as well. Read the stories of people who you might not before have read—read A Thousand and One Nights, read the story of Ser Morien, pick up a biography of Maimonides or Mansa Musa. Imagine yourself, empathetically, in their story. Realize that their history is your history too, that you do not need to have the same skin color as them to see their past as yours.57 It is this goal—the creation of an expanded, inclusive medieval art history—toward which “Out of Bounds” pushes. The papers gathered here show how pressing at our own scholarly boundaries might shift the ground of scholarship and teaching. Moving to unfamiliar and unsteady territory, beyond the edges of our own comfort zones, produces uncertainty. Yet this discomfort has the potential to generate exciting, innovative perspectives and interpretations. From these new vantage points, we are able to see more clearly the conventional centers from once-​peripheral regions, to teleport across temporalities in ways that expand our interpretive scope, and to reshape master narratives of medieval art history—at least for now.

Postscript We completed this essay in February 2020. In the present moment of August 2021, it appears to us as a time capsule. We have resisted the urge to revise and update it, to tamper with its timing. That moment was fleeting. Within a month, COVID-19 had developed from a distant threat to a virulent pandemic, locking everything down. Through the following months, we watched a particularly American-​style racism erupt in mounting numbers of videos recording the murders of Black people, to be followed by a flurry of often hollow institutional statements of support. We saw civil strife grow, along with insidious variants of the coronavirus and seemingly endless variations of racial violence. We have witnessed the once-obscure field of Critical Race Theory enter the headlines to be feared as a threat to the status quo—even in elementary schools. We anticipated and endured elections, resistance, and uprisings of unprecedented dimensions. We have experienced the threat of ecological catastrophe—referenced only passingly in the footnotes of this essay—catapult alarmingly to the foreground of global reality. Shifting Boundaries

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As we write this brief coda, we are still in the thick of this new now. We do not yet enjoy the clarifying benefits of hindsight. In choosing not to shift the perspectives of this essay from February 2020 to August 2021, we do not mean to suggest our outlooks have not changed or that the shutdown of 2020 placed us in a state of paralysis. Rather we see value in preserving the vantage point of the past—even a past so recent—in remembering where we were to better situate where we are. Alongside many others, we continue to strengthen our commitment to shaping more ethical visions and practices for our fields and our worlds. Now is the time.

Notes 1. “Out of Bounds: Exploring the Limits of Medieval Art,” Princeton University, 2018, https://​ humanities​.princeton​.edu​/event​/out​-of​-bounds​ -exploring​-the​-limits​-of​-medieval​-art. 2. On the global turn in historical studies, see Moore, “Global Middle Ages?,” and Holmes and Standen, “Global Middle Ages”; in literary studies, see Heng and Ramey, “Global Middle Ages”; in art history, see Walker, “Globalism,” and Normore, “Re-​Assessing the Global Turn”; in archaeology, see Jervis, “Assembling the Archaeology.” On the global approach for non-​Western medieval art history, see Cheng, “Camel’s Pace.” For precursors to the global turn in medieval art history that focus on issues of exchange, encounter, and cross/intercultural interaction in the medieval world, see Ousterhout and Ruggles, “Encounters with Islam”; Hourihane, Interactions; Canepa, “Theorizing Cross-​Cultural Interaction”; Grossman and Walker, “Mechanisms of Exchange.” 3. International Center of Medieval Art, “Mission Statement.” 4. Specifically, it revises the tight geographic framing of the previous iteration of the mission statement, which specified “visual arts of the Middle Ages produced in Europe, the Mediterranean region, and the Slavic world.” International Center of Medieval Art, “Mission Statement,” https://​web​.archive​.org​ /web​/20080209111200​/http://​www​.medievalart​.org​ /htm​/about​.html, Wayback Machine for 9 February 2008 (accessed 26 January 2020). 5. Evidence of the institutionalization of the global turn is also found in periodicals, degree-​ granting programs, courses, academic positions, and museum exhibitions. For instance, the journal The Medieval Globe was first published in 2014. Symes, “Introducing The Medieval Globe.” The University of Edinburgh now offers an MSc in “Art in the Global Middle Ages,” and several universities offer degrees and certificates in global medieval studies, including

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Georgetown University and the University of Pennsylvania. On teaching from a global perspective, see Heng, “Global Middle Ages.” For recent exhibitions mounting an explicitly global approach, see Keene, Toward a Global Middle Ages. The acceptance of a global model for the Middle Ages is further evident in the recently launched publication project edited by Messer and Sullivan, Encyclopedia of the Global Middle Ages. 6. Holmes and Standen, “Introduction,” 6–8, and McClure, “Emperor’s New Clothes?,” 1–3. For a nuanced exploration of the potential for dialogue between premodern and modern/contemporary explorations of the global, see Flood et al., “Roundtable.” 7. Pennock and Power, “Globalizing Cosmologies.” 8. For an exploration of the possibilities and pitfalls of a global approach to premodern commercial networks, see Purcell, “Unnecessary Dependences.” Regarding economic factors relevant to the study of medieval art and its circulation, see Georgopoulou, “Fine Commodities,” and Thomas, “ ‘Ornaments of Excellence.” 9. Walker, “Globalism,” 183–85, and Holmes and Standen, “Introduction,” 8–11. 10. Moore, “Global Middle Ages?,” esp. 87–91, and Holmes and Standen, “Introduction,” 36–41. Regarding the intensity of multilateral trade, see Berzock, Caravans of Gold; Lagamma, Sahel; “Incredibly Detailed Map”; “Mapping Past Societies”; “The Silk Road.” 11. Frankopan, Silk Roads; Hansen, Silk Road; Hildebrandt, Silk; Harris, Incipient Globalization?; Pitts and Versluys, Globalisation and the Roman World; Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University, “Measuring and Mapping Space.” 12. On the postcolonial formulation of cosmopolitanism, see Breckenridge et al., Cosmopolitanism;

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Walker, “Globalism,” 185–86; Holmes and Standon, “Introduction,” 18–19; and notes 15 and 16 below. 13. Dagenais and Greer, “Decolonizing the Middle Ages”; Reuters, “Medieval”; Kaldellis, Byzantium Unbound, ch. 4. 14. “Out of Bounds,” https://​humanities​ .princeton​.edu​/event​/out​-of​-bounds​-exploring​-the​ -limits​-of​-medieval​-art. Regarding an increasingly decentered approach to the study of the medieval world, see Hoffman, “Pathways of Portability,” and Eastmond, “Art and the Periphery.” In a radical break from the assumption that cultures inherently perceive themselves as the earthly omphalos, Kathryn J. Franklin notes the primacy placed on borders in medieval Armenian notions of place and worldview (“Making Worlds”). 15. McClure, “New Politics”; see also Dirlik, “Global Modernity?”; Chakrabarty, “Provincializing Europe”; Eisenstadt, “Multiple Modernities.” 16. McClure, “New Politics,” 610–13; see also Davis and Altschul, Medievalisms in the Postcolonial World. 17. McClure speaks specifically to ISIS/ISIL/ Daesh (“New Politics,” 613–15). 18. Ibid., 616. 19. Hsy, “Antiracist Medievalisms”; Vernon, Black Middle Ages; Whitaker, “Middle Ages in the Harlem Renaissance.” 20. Hunt, “Against Presentism”; see also Smail, “History and the Telescoping of Time.” 21. Merriam-​Webster Dictionary Online, s.v. “presentism,” accessed 7 January 2020, https://​www​ .merriam​-webster​.com​/dictionary​/presentism, and Oxford English Dictionary Online, s.v. “presentism,” accessed 7 January 2020, https://​www​.oed​.com​/view​ /Entry​/266885. 22. David Armitage notes Augustine, in book 11 of his Confessions, argues that in our considerations of the past, we look “on its image in present time,” and our only access to the past—or, for that matter, the future—is through the present: “There are three times, but that they are past present, present present, and future present” (“In Defense of Presentism,” 19). Augustine offers a welcome reminder that the medieval era can provide useful models for historical temporality. 23. Ibid., 4–5. 24. Explorations of the role of presentism in the history of art and cognate disciplines of archaeology and art conservation include: Nagel, Medieval Modern; Nagel and Wood, Anachronic Renaissance; the symposium collaboration by the Getty Research Institute and the Clark Art Institute, “Art History and the Present,” 1–2 February 2008, https://​www​ .getty​.edu​/research​/exhibitions​_events​/events​ /clark2008​_schedule​.html; Shalem, “Histories of Belonging”; Babaie, “Voices of Authority”; the symposium at the Institute of Fine Arts, a Mellon Research

Initiative, convened by conservator Jim Coddington, “Presentism,” 5 November 2011, https://​ifa​.nyu​.edu​ /research​/mellon​/mellon​-presentism​.htm; Olivier, “Future of Archaeology.” 25. Armitage, “In Defense of Presentism,” 17, commenting on Loison, “Forms of Presentism,” 34–36. 26. Armitage, “In Defense of Presentism,” 17, citing the definition of “new presentism” articulated by Dale, “Spelunking,” 318–19. 27. Armitage, “In Defense of Presentism,” 18, drawing from Oreskes, “Why I Am a Presentist,” 603. 28. Alexander, “Medieval Art and Modern Nationalism”; Symes, “Middle Ages Between Nationalism and Colonialism”; Geary and Klaniczay, Manufacturing Middle Ages; Cheng, “Camel’s Pace”; Eastmond, “Limits of Byzantine Art”; Maranci, Medieval Armenian Architecture. 29. Morey, “Sources of Medieval Style”; Strzygowski, Die Baukunst der Armenien und Europa; Strzygowski, Orient oder Rom?; Elsner, “Birth of Late Antiquity”; Marchand, German Orientalism. 30. Antecedents in this effort include: Nelson, “Living on the Byzantine Borders”; Nelson, “Map of Art History”; Hoffman, “Remapping the Art of the Mediterranean.” 31. On the question of how to interpret archival and textual silences surrounding medieval African art, see Achi and Chaganti, “ ‘Semper Novi Quid Ex Africa.’ ” 32. McClure, “New Politics.” 33. Mathisen and Sivan, Shifting Frontiers in Late Antiquity; Berend, “Medievalists”; Berend and Abulafia, Medieval Frontiers; Curta, Borders, Barriers and Ethnogenesis. On the importance of “sites of cultural encounter” in the fundamental flux of cultural formation, see the foundational study by Clifford, “Traveling Cultures,” esp. 100; Flood, Objects of Translation; Carr, “Correlative Spaces,” esp. 68; Eastmond, Tamta’s World. 34. Grabar, “Shared Culture of Objects,” and Hilsdale, “Gift.” 35. On the challenges of interpreting race in medieval art, see Patton, “Blackness, Whiteness.” On the formation of race—especially Blackness— in Western European medieval literature and society, see Whitaker, Black Metaphors; for earlier centuries, see Lopez-​Jantzen, “Between Empires.” 36. The strategy of avoiding cultural periodization altogether is promoted by the multidisciplinary field of millennium studies, which includes in its purview all cultures and geographies of the first millennium ce without reference to defining or shared features. See the journal Millennium-​Studien / Millennium Studies based in Germany and the First Millennium Network based in the United States, which has just begun publication ventures.

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37. On the imbrications of medieval and African art in conceptions of the “primitive” and the “modern,” see Majeed, “Against Primitivism.” 38. To the acute urgency of addressing the growing adoption of motifs of crusading holy wars and the promotion of essentializing, transhistorical ethnic and racial traits should be added the mounting threat of the erosion of cultural heritage and the dread of ecological destruction. 39. On this point, see Diebold, “Nazi Middle Ages.” 40. Albin et al., Whose Middle Ages?, and Sturtevant, “Race, Racism, and the Middle Ages.” 41. Kelaidis, “White Supremacy and Orthodox Christianity”; Hawk, “Why Far-​Right Nationalists Like Steve Bannon Have Embraced a Russian Ideologue”; Goldwyn, “Byzantine Workings of the Manosphere.” 42. McClure, “New Politics,” 610–19. Note, too, that the abuse of history reverberates across religious and ethnic groups. Although on a dramatically smaller scale, fringe extremist sects of the Black Hebrew Israelites in the United States draw from biblical, ancient, and medieval history to support Black supremacist and anti-​Semitic dogmas. Anti-​ Defamation League, “Black Hebrew Israelites.” 43. Armitage, “In Defense of Presentism,” 6. 44. Ibid., 7–8. 45. The recycling of half-​truths and distortions of “facts” about the Middle Ages among blogs and internet chat groups—what Andrew B. R. Elliot terms “banal medievalisms”—has been especially powerful in disseminating and authorizing these ideas. See Elliott, “Internet Medievalism.” 46. Kim, “Teaching Medieval Studies.” 47. Although such gestures are also an important part of the process, as seen in the public denouncement of events at Charlottesville by the Medieval

Academy of America and more than two dozen professional organizations for medieval studies: Medieval Academy of America, “Medievalists Respond to Charlottesville.” 48. Many scholars have, however, accomplished this in ways that gracefully avoid a reductive clashing of swords; see, for example, Paul, “Modern Intolerance and the Medieval Crusades.” 49. We quote here from Marcia Chatelain’s perceptive assessment of the necessity for “moral accounting” in the classroom post-​Charlottesville (“How Universities Embolden White Nationalists”). 50. Armitage, “In Defense of Presentism,” 17. 51. For information about the mission of this organization and its activities, see Medievalists of Color, https://​medievalistsofcolor​.com. 52. Medieval Academy of America, “Inclusivity and Diversity Committee,” and “The Belle Da Costa Greene Award.” 53. Schuessler, “Medieval Scholars Joust with White Nationalists.” 54. Medieval Academy of America, “95th Annual Meetings of the Medieval Academy of America, University of California, Berkeley, March 26–28, 2020: Program,” accessed 31 January 2020, https://​ cdn​.ymaws​.com​/www​.medievalacademy​.org​ /resource​/resmgr​/pdfs​/maa2020program​.pdf. 55. International Center of Medieval Art, “ICMA and Expanding the Medieval World, 13 February 2020,” accessed 4 February 2020, https://​www​ .medievalart​.org​/icma​-news​/2020​/1​/21​/icma​-and​ -expanding​-the​-medieval​-world​-13​-february​-2020​ -at​-the​-arts​-club​-of​-chicago. 56. Armitage, “In Defense of Presentism,” 17, citing Dale, “Spelunking,” 318–19. 57. Sturtevant, “Leaving ‘Medieval’ Charlottesville.”

Bibliography Achi, Andrea Myers, and Seeta Chaganti. “ ‘Semper Novi Quid Ex Africa’: Redrawing the Borders of Medieval African Art and Considering Its Implications for Medieval Studies.” In Disturbing Times: Medieval Pasts, Reimagined Futures, edited by Catherine E. Karkov, Anna Kłosowska, and Vincent W. J. Van Gerven Oei, 73–106. New York: Punctum, 2020. Albin, Andrew, Mary C. Erler, Thomas O’Donnell, Nicholas L. Paul, and Nina Rowe, eds. Whose Middle Ages? Teachable Moments for an Ill-​Used Past. New York: Fordham University Press, 2019.

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Alexander, Jonathan J. G. “Medieval Art and Modern Nationalism.” In Medieval Art, Recent Perspective: A Memorial Tribute to C. R. Dodwell, edited by G. O. Crocker and T. Graham, 206–23. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998. Anti-​Defamation League. “Black Hebrew Israelites.” Accessed 23 January 2020. https://​www​.adl​ .org​/resources​/backgrounders​/black​-hebrew​ -israelites. Armitage, David. “In Defense of Presentism.” In History and Human Flourishing, edited by Darrin M. McMahon, 59–84. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022.

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Babaie, Sussan. “Voices of Authority: Locating the ‘Modern’ in ‘Islamic’ Arts.” Getty Research Journal 3 (2011): 133–49. Berend, Nora. “Medievalists and the Notion of the Frontier.” Medieval History Journal 2 (1999): 55–72. Berend, Nora, and David Abulafia, eds. Medieval Frontiers: Concepts and Practices. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002. Berzock, Kathleen Bickford, ed. Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture, and Exchange Across Medieval Saharan Africa. Princeton: Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, in association with Princeton University Press, 2019. Breckenridge, Carol A., Sheldon Pollock, Homi K. Bhabha, and Dipesh Chakrabarty, eds. Cosmopolitanism. Durham: Duke University Press, 2002. Canepa, Matthew, ed. “Theorizing Cross-​Cultural Interaction Among the Ancient and Early Medieval Mediterranean, Near East, and Asia.” Special issue, Ars Orientalis 38 (2010). Carr, Annemarie Weyl. “Correlative Spaces: Art, Identity, and Appropriation in Lusignan Cyprus.” Modern Greek Studies Yearbook 14/15 (1998/99): 59–80. Chakrabarty, Dipesh. “Provincializing Europe: Post-​ Coloniality and the Critique of History.” Cultural Studies 6, no. 3 (2006): 337–57. Chatelain, Marcia. “How Universities Embolden White Nationalists.” Chronicle of Higher Education, 17 August 2017. https://​www​.chronicle​ .com​/article​/how​-universities​-embolden​-white​ -nationalists. Cheng, Bonnie. “A Camel’s Pace: A Cautionary Global.” In “Re-​assessing the Global Turn in Medieval Art History,” edited by Christina Normore, special issue, Medieval Globe 3 (2018): 11–34. Clifford, James. “Traveling Cultures.” In Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century, 17–46. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997. Curta, Florin, ed. Borders, Barriers and Ethnogenesis: Frontiers in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Turnhout: Brepols, 2005. Dagenais, John, and Margaret Greer. “Decolonizing the Middle Ages: Introduction.” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 30, no. 3 (2000): 431–48. Dale, Elizabeth. “Spelunking, or, Some Meditations on the New Presentism.” In The Oxford Handbook of Legal History, edited by Markus D. Dubber and Chris Tomlins, 312–21. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Davis, Kathleen, and Nadia Altschul, eds. Medievalisms in the Postcolonial World: The Idea of “the

Middle Ages” Outside Europe. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009. Diebold, William J. “The Nazi Middle Ages.” In Albin et al., Whose Middle Ages?, 104–15. “Mapping Past Societies”; formerly, the “Digital Atlas of Roman and Medieval Civilizations.” Harvard University. Accessed 26 January 2020. https://​ darmc​.harvard​.edu. Dirlik, Arif. “Global Modernity? Modernity in an Age of Global Capitalism.” European Journal of Social Theory 6, no. 3 (2003): 275–92. Eastmond, Antony. “Art and the Periphery.” In The Oxford Companion to Byzantine Studies, edited by E. Jeffreys, R. Cormack, and J. Haldon, 770–76. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. ———. “The Limits of Byzantine Art.” In A Companion to Byzantium, edited by Liz James, 313–22. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2010. ———. Tamta’s World: The Life and Encounters of a Medieval Noblewoman from the Middle East to Mongolia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Eisenstadt, S. N. “Multiple Modernities.” Daedalus 129, no. 1 (2000): 1–29. Elliott, Andrew B. R. “Internet Medievalism and the White Middle Ages.” History Compass 16, no. 3 (2018): 1–10. Elsner, Jaś. “The Birth of Late Antiquity: Riegl and Strzygowski in 1901.” Art History 25, no. 3 (2002): 358–79. Flood, Finbarr B. Objects of Translation: Material Culture and Medieval “Hindu-​Muslim” Encounter. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009. Flood, Finbarr B., David Joselit, Alexander Nagel, Alessandra Russo, Eugene Wang, Christopher Wood, and Mimi Yiengpruksawan. “Roundtable: The Global Before Globalization.” October 133 (2010): 3–19. Franklin, Kathryn J. “Making Worlds at the Edge of Everywhere: Politics of Place in Medieval Armenia.” In The Archaeology of Medieval Islamic Frontiers: From the Mediterranean to the Caspian Sea, edited by A. Asa Eger, 195–224. Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2019. Frankopan, Peter. The Silk Roads: A New History of the World. New York: Knopf, 2016. Geary, Patrick J., and Gábor Klaniczay, eds. Manufacturing Middle Ages: The Entangled History of Medievalism in Nineteenth-​Century Europe. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Georgopoulou, Maria. “Fine Commodities in the Thirteenth-​Century Mediterranean: The Genesis of a Common Aesthetic.” In Lateinisch-​griechisch-​arabische Begegnungen: Kulturelle Diversität in Mittelmeerraum des Spätmittelalters, edited by Margit Mersch and Ulrike Ritzerfeld, 63–90. Berlin: Akademie, 2009.

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Goldwyn, Adam. “The Byzantine Workings of the Manosphere.” Eidolon. 11 June 2018. https://​ eidolon​.pub​/the​-byzantine​-workings​-of​-the​ -manosphere​-37db3be9e661. Grabar, Oleg. “The Shared Culture of Objects.” In Byzantine Court Culture from 829–1204, edited by Henry Maguire, 115–30. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1997. Grossman, Heather E., and Alicia Walker, eds. “Mechanisms of Exchange: Transmission in Medieval Art and Architecture of the Mediterranean, ca. 1000–1500.” Special issue, Medieval Encounters 18 (2013). Hansen, Valerie. The Silk Road: A New History with Documents. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. Harris, Anthea. Incipient Globalization? Long-​Distance Contacts in the Sixth Century. Oxford: Archaeopress, 2007. Hawk, Brandon W. “Why Far-​Right Nationalists Like Steve Bannon Have Embraced a Russian Ideologue and How His Medieval Fantasies Distort History for His Cause.” Washington Post, 16 April 2019. https://​www​.washingtonpost​.com​ /outlook​/2019​/04​/16​/why​-far​-right​-nationalists​ -like​-steve​-bannon​-have​-embraced​-russian​ -ideologue. Heng, Geraldine. “The Global Middle Ages: An Experiment in Collaborative Humanities, or Imagining the World, 500–1500 C.E.” English Language Notes 47 (2009): 205–16. Heng, Geraldine, and Lynn Ramey, eds. “The Global Middle Ages.” Special issue, Literature Compass 11, no. 7 (2014). Hildebrandt, Berit, ed. Silk: Trade and Exchange Along the Silk Roads Between Rome and China in Late Antiquity. Oxford: Oxbow, 2017. Hilsdale, Cecily. “Gift.” In “Medieval Art History Today—Critical Terms,” edited by Nina Rowe, special issue, Studies in Iconography 33 (2012): 171–82. Hoffman, Eva R. “Pathways of Portability: Islamic and Christian Interchange from the Tenth to the Twelfth Century.” Art History 24, no. 1 (2001): 17–50. ———. “Remapping the Art of the Mediterranean.” In Late Antique and Medieval Art of the Mediterranean, edited by Eva R. Hoffman, 1–8. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Holmes, Catherine, and Naomi Standen, eds. “The Global Middle Ages.” Special issue, Past and Present 238, supp. 13 (2018). ———. “Introduction: Towards a Global Middle Ages.” In “The Global Middle Ages,” edited by Catherine Holmes and Naomi Standen, special issue, Past and Present 238, supp. 13 (2018): 1–44.

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Hourihane, Colum, ed. Interactions: Artistic Interchange Between the Eastern and Western Worlds in the Medieval Period. University Park: Penn State University Press, 2007. Hsy, Jonathan. “Antiracist Medievalisms: Lessons from Chinese Exclusion.” In the Middle. 16 February 2018. http://​www​ .inthemedievalmiddle​.com​/2018​/02​/antiracist​ -medievalisms​-lessons​-from​.html. Hunt, Lynn. “Against Presentism.” Perspectives on History: The Newsmagazine of the American Historical Association. 1 May 2002. https://​www​ .historians​.org​/publications​-and​-directories​ /perspectives​-on​-history​/may​-2002​/against​ -presentism. “An Incredibly Detailed Map of Medieval Trade Routes.” Merchant Machine. Accessed 12 October 2021. https://​merchantmachine​.co​.uk​ /medieval​-trade​-routes. Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University. “Measuring and Mapping Space: Geographic Knowledge in Graeco-​ Roman Antiquity.” Accessed 26 January 2020. https://​isaw​.nyu​.edu​/exhibitions​/space​/index​ .html. International Center of Medieval Art. “Mission Statement.” Accessed 26 January 2020. https://​www​ .medievalart​.org​/about​-us. Jervis, Ben. “Assembling the Archaeology of the Global Middle Ages.” World Archaeology 49, no. 5 (2017): 666–80. Kaldellis, Anthony. Byzantium Unbound. Leeds: Arc Humanities, 2019. Keene, Bryan C., ed. Toward a Global Middle Ages: Encountering the World Through Illuminated Manuscripts. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2019. Kelaidis, Katherine. “White Supremacy and Orthodox Christianity: A Dangerous Connection Rears Its Head in Charlottesville.” Religion Dispatches, 18 August 2017. https://​ religiondispatches​.org​/white​-supremacy​ -and​-orthodox​-christianity​-a​-dangerous​ -connection​-rears​-its​-head​-in​-charlottesville. Kim, Dorothy. “Teaching Medieval Studies in a Time of White Supremacy.” In the Middle, 28 August 2017. http://​www​.inthemedievalmiddle​.com​ /2017​/08​/teaching​-medieval​-studies​-in​-time​ -of​.html. Lagamma, Alissa, ed. Sahel: Art and Empires on the Shores of the Sahara. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2020. Loison, Laurent. “Forms of Presentism in the History of Science: Rethinking the Project of Historical Epistemology.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 60 (2016): 29–37.

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Lopez-​Jantzen, Nicole. “Between Empires: Race and Ethnicity in the Early Middle Ages.” Literature Compass 16, nos. 9–10 (2019): 1–12. Majeed, Risham. “Against Primitivism: Meyer Schapiro’s Early Writings on African and Romanesque Art.” RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 71/72 (2019): 295–311. Maranci, Christina. Medieval Armenian Architecture: Constructions of Race and Nation. Leuven: Peeters, 2001. Marchand, Suzanne. German Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Religion, Race, and Scholarship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Mathisen, Ralph W., and Hagith S. Sivan, eds. Shifting Frontiers in Late Antiquity. Aldershot: Variorum, 1996. McClure, Julia. “Emperor’s New Clothes? Using Medieval History to Reflect on the Globalization Paradigm.” EUI Working Paper MWP 2017/01, 1–11. Badia Fiesolana: European University Institute, 2017. ———. “A New Politics of the Middle Ages: A Global Middle Ages for a Global Modernity.” History Compass 13, no. 11 (2015): 610–19. Medieval Academy of America. “The Belle Da Costa Greene Award.” Accessed 23 January 2020. https://​www​.medievalacademy​.org​/page​ /GreeneAward. ———. “Inclusivity and Diversity Committee.” Accessed 23 January 2020. https://​ www​.medievalacademy​.org​/page​ /InclusivityDiversity. ———. “Medievalists Respond to Charlottesville.” Medieval Academy Blog, 18 August 2017. http://​www​.themedievalacademyblog​.org​ /medievalists​-respond​-to​-charlottesville. Messer, Danna R., and Alice Isabella Sullivan, eds. Encyclopedia of the Global Middle Ages. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019. Moore, Robert I. “The Global Middle Ages?” In The Prospect of Global History, edited by James Belich, John Darwin, Margret Frenz, and Chris Wickham, 80–92. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Morey, Charles Rufus. “The Sources of Medieval Style.” Art Bulletin 7, no. 2 (1924): 35–50. Nagel, Alexander. Medieval Modern: Art out of Time. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2012. Nagel, Alexander, and Christopher S. Wood. The Anachronic Renaissance. New York: Zone, 2010. Nelson, Robert S. “Living on the Byzantine Borders of Western Art.” Gesta 35, no. 1 (1996): 3–11. ———. “The Map of Art History.” Art Bulletin 79, no. 1 (1997): 28–40. Normore, Christina, ed. “Re-​assessing the Global Turn in Medieval Art History.” Special issue, Medieval Globe 3 (2018).

Olivier, Laurent. “The Future of Archaeology in the Age of Presentism.” Journal of Contemporary Archaeology 6, no. 1 (2019): 16–31. Oreskes, Naomi. “Why I Am a Presentist.” Science in Context 26 (2013): 595–609. Ousterhout, Robert, and Dede Fairchild Ruggles, eds. “Encounters with Islam: The Medieval Mediterranean Experience Art, Material Culture, and Cultural Interchange.” Special issue, Gesta 43, no. 2 (2004). Patton, Pamela. “Blackness, Whiteness, and the Idea of Race in Medieval European Art.” In Albin et al., Whose Middle Ages?, 154–65. Paul, Nicholas L. “Modern Intolerance and the Medieval Crusades.” In Albin et al., Whose Middle Ages?, 34–43. Pennock, Caroline Dodds, and Amanda Power. “Globalizing Cosmologies.” Past and Present 238, no. 13 (2018): 88–115. Pitts, Martin, and Miguel John Versluys, eds. Globalisation and the Roman World: World History, Connectivity and Material Culture. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Purcell, Nicholas. “Unnecessary Dependences: Illustrating Circulation in Pre-​modern Large-​scale History.” In The Prospect of Global History, edited by James Belich, John Darwin, Margret Frenz, and Chris Wickham, 65–79. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Reuters, Timothy. “Medieval: Another Tyrannous Construct?” Medieval History Journal 1, no. 1 (1998): 25–45. Schuessler, Jennifer. “Medieval Scholars Joust with White Nationalists. And One Another.” New York Times. 5 May 2019. https://​www​.nytimes​ .com​/2019​/05​/05​/arts​/the​-battle​-for​-medieval​ -studies​-white​-supremacy​.html. Shalem, Avinoam. “Histories of Belonging and George Kubler’s Prime Object.” Getty Research Journal 3 (2011): 1–14. “The Silk Road.” https://​worldmap​.harvard​.edu​/maps​ /5079 (accessed 26 January 2020). Smail, Daniel Lord, ed. “History and the Telescoping of Time: A Disciplinary Forum.” Special issue, French Historical Studies 34, no. 1 (2011). Strzygowski, Josef. Die Baukunst der Armenien und Europa: Ergebnisse einer vom Kunsthistorischen Institute der Universität Wien 1913 durchgeführten Forschungsreise. Vienna: A. Schroll, 1918. ———. Orient oder Rom? Beiträge zur geschichte der Späantiken und frühchristlichen Kunst. Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1900. Sturtevant, Paul B. “Leaving ‘Medieval’ Charlottesville.” Public Medievalist, 17 August 2017. https://​ www​.publicmedievalist​.com​/leaving​-medieval​ -charlottesville.

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———. “Race, Racism, and the Middle Ages.” Public Medievalist, February 2017. https://​www​ .publicmedievalist​.com​/category​/past​-present​ /race​-class​-religion​/race​-racism​-and​-the​ -middle​-ages. Symes, Carol. “Introducing The Medieval Globe.” Medieval Globe 1 (2015): 1–8. ———. “The Middle Ages Between Nationalism and Colonialism.” French Historical Studies 34, no. 1 (2011): 37–46. Thomas, Thelma K. “ ‘Ornaments of Excellence’ from ‘the Miserable Gains of Commerce’: Luxury Art and Byzantine Culture.” In Byzantium and Islam, 7th to 9th Century: Age of Transition, edited by H. C. Evans with Brandie Ratliff, 124–33, 284–87. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012. Vernon, Matthew X. The Black Middle Ages: Race and the Construction of the Middle Ages. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. Walker, Alicia. “Globalism.” In “Medieval Art History Today—Critical Terms,” edited by Nina Rowe, special issue, Studies in Iconography 33 (2012): 183–96. Whitaker, Cord. Black Metaphors: How Modern Racism Emerged from Medieval Race-​Making. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019. ———. “The Middle Ages in the Harlem Renaissance.” In Albin et al., Whose Middle Ages?, 80–88.

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2 On Account of the Rotundity of the Earth Steps Toward an Inclusive Medieval Art

Jill Caskey

After he [Harald Hardradi, king of Norway] had explored the expanse of the Northern Ocean in his ships, there lay before his eyes at length the darksome bounds of a failing world, and by retracing his steps he barely escaped in safety the vast pit of the abyss. —Adam of Bremen, Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum (ca. 1070)

Adam of Bremen’s Gesta focuses on the archiepiscopal see of Hamburg and the church leaders, missionaries, and diverse peoples who worked and lived within its territories.1 Because Pope Leo IX had recently granted Iceland, Greenland, and much of Scandinavia to the see, Adam’s gaze extended well beyond German shores to encompass the wonders, dangers, and challenges of the surrounding “barbarian” lands.2 Accounts of the region’s outer reaches feature the lively interplay of the legendary and the empirical typical of medieval geographical writings and representations. Reports about how the Amazons living on an island in the Baltic Sea conceive (sipping water is one method) and how their male cynocephali (dog-​headed) offspring communicate (they bark rather than speak) contrast with discourses on why the hours of daylight vary through the seasons.3 The days of uninterrupted sunlight around the summer solstice and those of darkness in winter, Adam wrote, are “on account of the rotundity of the earth” (Nam propter rotunditatem orbis terrarum necesse est).4 The Gesta also provides the earliest textual references to Vínland, Harald Hardradi’s putative destination: the area

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of North America visited and named by Norse explorers around the year 1000.5 The passage about Harald’s failed expedition suggests that what Adam had seen, heard from narrators (including the king), and read in books by ancient and medieval authors was vexing; he was unable or unwilling to assimilate the rotundity of the Earth with the king’s stirring tale. Thus, Adam’s orb has a frightening edge beyond which the world collapses into an abyss. This passage in the Gesta suggests the appeal of going out of bounds: the excitement, determination, and hard work of both Harald Hardradi and Adam of Bremen. It also reveals the risks. Whereas Harald and his crew barely made it out alive, Adam, comfortably ensconced at his canon’s desk in Hamburg, betrayed his ambivalent stance toward the empirical. The passage also serves as a reminder of the connectivity of the medieval world and scholarly efforts—then and now—to apprehend the scope of its diversity and the significance of cross-​cultural encounters. The degrees and types of interconnectivity referenced by Adam capture the attention of scholars today in part because they generate what the archaeologist of the Bronze Age Carl Knappett describes as “cultural entanglements created by constant mobility and connectivity”—ideas that readily resonate with twenty-​first-​century experience and help fuel scholarship’s global turn.6 Informed by theories relating to contemporary globalization yet modifying them to suit premodern contexts, new global perspectives build upon developments in Mediterranean studies and other interdisciplinary fields. They tend to prioritize cultural interactions that transcend or flatten traditional boundaries and taxonomies; they begin with the premise that all cultural expressions derive from exchange and negotiation and thus constitute nodes of connectivity. Globalism, although not defined tidily or claiming to be a theoretical cure-​all, serves as an umbrella under which multiple methodologies have clustered, from such “traditional” ones as Marxism and feminism to newer formulations including network theory, materiality, and mobility.7 Despite the productive synergies of the recent global turn and the robustness of Mediterranean studies before it, textbooks of medieval art still remain structured around older, largely stylistic paradigms, creating an unfortunate divide between how medieval art is represented in textbooks and what historians of medieval art actually do in their research. Adam S. Cohen, Linda Safran, and I seek to bridge that divide in our collaborative project, Art and Architecture of the Middle Ages: Exploring a Connected World, a more inclusive chronological survey book that addresses Western, Byzantine, and Islamic settings and also moves beyond the arts of the three monotheistic faiths of the Mediterranean basin. This commitment to messy inclusivity creates obvious challenges. If all boundaries are artificial, constructed upon layers of political, social, economic, and academic debates, prerogatives, and suppositions, where should we draw the line? Our project is not literally global or worldwide, rather, it highlights the interplay of smaller “worlds.” As such it aligns better with the concept of mondialisation, the ways in which local contexts grapple with and respond to large networks, than with globalization, which is more insistent upon systemic reach and integration of peoples, 22

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economies, and infrastructures.8 As Bryan Keene notes in a recent overview of this emergent area of medieval studies, “ ‘global’ can mean looking at larger, rounded world networks or contact zones hemispherically as opposed to encompassing the entire globe.”9 Such networks and contact zones are key to this emerging global discourse and are prominent in our book. The geographical and chronological parameters of the worlds we treat are wide, stretching from the northern and western edges of Europe to North Africa and Central Asia, from circa 200 ce to circa 1500. These parameters create many methodological challenges, beginning with the fact that they complicate conventions of periodization. Because notions of the Middle Ages derive from European, more specifically Italian and Tuscan, ideas of a distinct middle period between classical antiquity and its rinascita (rebirth), the use of “Middle Ages” or “medieval” outside Europe raises thorny questions.10 Must the “middle” be followed by an antique revival or reform, and if so, does that revival/reform necessarily signal modernity? What are the implications of exporting this teleological model? Islam emerged during Europe’s “middle” era, and the Islamicate world was never completely removed from medieval Europe or its inhabitants. Yet applying “medieval” to Islamicate contexts—particularly those of its foundational first centuries—could be seen as colonizing or, given the elision between medieval and primitive in popular culture, negative essentializing.11 Similarly, while Ethiopia maintained a vibrant scribal manuscript culture that extended from the seventh century to the present, is that living tradition “medieval,” affording a view into the past that has disappeared elsewhere?12 We historians relish such definitional debates, as the spate of recent publications dealing with these matters makes clear. Yet despite the urgency of the discussions—after all, they help shape and justify what scholars do and how their work is received within and outside the academy—rarely do the debates generate clear answers or consensus.13 Historians in the twenty-​first century struggle against the darksome bounds of failing words. My contribution to this volume takes its cue from the process of writing the textbook and focuses on two works that are far apart and far removed from the traditional territories of medieval art in Europe and the Mediterranean basin. The first is a seventh-​ century ce painted chamber in a Sogdian house at Afrāsiāb, in present-​day Uzbekistan. The second is a small sculpture dated roughly between 1200 and 1300 that was found on Axel Heiberg Island, in the territory of Nunavut, Canada. Both works derive from episodes of cross-​cultural interaction: the Sogdian house from networks of exchange between Byzantium, Iran, and China; the sculpture from encounters between Indigenous people and Norse explorers—what Harald Hardradi missed when he quickly reversed course and sailed away from Vínland. Sketching out how the works would fit within an inclusive history of medieval art and what problems they might create within such a paradigm demonstrates the complexity of an approach to medieval cultures that attempts to step out of bounds. It also suggests that this complexity invites—or even requires—collaboration. On Account of the Rotundity of the Earth

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On account of the rotundity of the Earth and the challenges it poses, my principal guide is Richard Krautheimer. In a prescient defense of the liberal arts delivered in the spring of 1945, Krautheimer described how “the world of knowledge, past and present, can be likened to a sphere which is continuously and rapidly expanding, so rapidly indeed, that we simply cannot catch up with it.” Whereas Adam of Bremen’s collapsing world prompted Harald Hardradi to flee, Krautheimer’s expanding one calls us in: “We must enter into the interior of the sphere and work down until the radii are closer together, to an inner sphere, as it were, where the connection between the various aspects becomes more clearly evident and where it becomes possible to transfer from one field to the other, knowledge, principles, experiences, and conclusions.”14 Krautheimer’s model presents knowledge as sedimentation and research as a kind of dirt-​free archaeological project—a fitting simile for a man who spent much of his long life excavating in Rome. What the Afrāsiāb wall paintings and Axel Heiberg sculpture bring to an inclusive history of medieval art and illuminate about each other cannot be gleaned with a superficial glance or, as Krautheimer put it, by jumping between their points on the surface of the sphere/Earth “like a raving grasshopper.”15 This study works down the radius of each monument until inner spheres provide glimpses of familiarity: familiarity born of, say, contexts that link to well-​known people, places, or ideas; strata of materials, iconography, or typologies that suggest points of contact, appropriation, or shared practices; and deeper layers of sedimentation composed of interpretive strategies, theories, or historiographies that create links across disparate times and places and to each other. This process does not always proceed smoothly. As Krautheimer warned, “We cannot jump into the middle of the sphere, nor can we just wish ourselves into it. We have to work our way down and it is hard and strenuous work.”16 This essay endeavors to reveal the process of working down from those points on the outer surface of the sphere/Earth until inner layers can anchor interpretations of interconnected, multicultural medieval “worlds.” Thus, it probes what the works can add to global discourses that are operating on a much deeper level than a textbook can. Before proceeding, however, a few caveats are required. I am deliberately focusing on works that are far from my areas of expertise in order to magnify the “hard and strenuous work” associated with global approaches to medieval art. I seek to make that work apparent for two reasons: to reflect upon my perspective as a scholar trained in European art within a Mediterranean framework and to note the differences between writing a textbook and conducting “normal” research. As an art historian and teacher who has plied my trade for a few decades, I can admit that my professional practices constitute a spectrum, from the “thick” research undertaken in my specialized projects to the less thick work—I hate to say thin—that enlivens my classrooms. Research for the textbook occupied many points in between. While this study is more detailed and scholarly than the textbook, my engagement with the primary and secondary literature is necessarily less comprehensive than in my typical research. 24

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Sogdian Spheres of Influence The Sogdian painted chamber known as the Hall of the Ambassadors at Afrāsiāb (Uzbekistan) dates to ca. 660 ce (fig. 2.1). During the construction of a road in 1963, a large residential building was discovered within Afrāsiāb, the ancient fortification located to the northeast of Samarkand; two years later the house was excavated.17 One room, measuring about eleven square meters and featuring a continuous bench made of clay, contained paintings on all of its walls; its name derives from the imagery on one of them. Dated largely on the basis of inscriptions, the paintings were removed from the site and are now displayed in the nearby Afrāsiāb Museum of Samarkand. Working down from Afrāsiāb’s point on the surface of the Earth into an inner sphere of contextual history uncovers the ancient origins of the Sogdians, as well as their connections to characters, sites, and materials familiar to many art historians, young and old. Tablets recording tributes made to Darius I (d. 486 bce) for the Achaemenid Palace at Susa note their offerings of lapis lazuli and carnelian—an early episode of the Sogdians’ material interactions with neighboring polities.18 Their heyday, however, was a thousand years later, from circa 500 ce to the mid-​eighth century, after which their fortunes sharply declined (in other words, the seventh century was neither their “middle age” nor followed by revival or reform). In the wake of the Turkic invasions and the concomitant weakening of Bactrian and Sasanian power, the association of city-​states known as Sogdiana emerged as the primary drivers of development in Central Asia, precipitating unprecedented agricultural, urban, and commercial expansion in this dynamic contact zone between the settlements to the south and the nomadic peoples of the steppes.19 This era saw not only a population boom but also the construction of planned cities, canals, and fortifications in Sogdiana, activities that involved marshaling scientific expertise, manual labor, and raw materials—activities typically understood as the purview of centralized powers and empires. How was this accomplished by a loosely knit consortium of cities ruled by local princes? The Sogdians were long-​distance traders who were key intermediaries between Byzantium, India, and China on the Silk Road—or, better put, the Silk Routes, to convey their multiplicity and the importance of maritime trade.20 Their role in long-​distance trade prompted their inclusion in the textbook, as they help illustrate that the Byzantine and Sasanian empires were not self-​contained entities; boundaries along and beyond the Silk Routes were porous and facilitated cross-​cultural encounters and exchange. Although few of their own texts survive, Chinese sources frequently mention the Sogdians.21 Tax registers dated between 610 and 620 ce from the oasis of Turfan (in today’s autonomous region of Xinjiang in China) show that the Sogdians exchanged an array of raw and worked materials—gold, silver, brass, slaves, horses, materia medica, and cane sugar, among other items—for silk, which they sold in western Asia to Byzantine markets and, after Muhammad, to Islamicate ones.22 They also likely produced their own patterned silks, some emulating Sasanian designs, On Account of the Rotundity of the Earth

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Figure 2.1 Painted chamber, Afrāsiāb, ca. 660 ce. Afrāsiāb Museum of Samarkand. Photo: Linda Safran.

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after that empire collapsed in 651 ce.23 Their trade at times featured ambitious long-​ distance endeavors; a document dated 553 ce notes caravans with 240 merchants and six hundred camels carrying ten thousand bales of silk.24 In other sources, Sogdian activities appear to be short-​haul, with handfuls of merchants and pack animals traveling for a few days and delivering goods to associates at the next oasis, who would continue along the road and hand over the load at the next oasis, and so on. Thus, the Sogdians operated across different scales, from the local links in a supply chain to the transcontinental routes extending over the treacherous Taklamakan Desert and high-​altitude passes in the Indus Valley. The Sogdians are increasingly fashionable in scholarship because of their active role in generating “cultural entanglements” of the type theorized by Carl Knappett and others. While the Sogdian elite practiced a porous version of Zoroastrianism that was open to ideas and imagery from Hinduism and Buddhism, their city-​states were cosmopolitan melting pots, as were the emporia where they resided far from home, including Turfan, Dunhuang, and Chengdu.25 It is not surprising that their global experiences had an impact on their art. What is surprising is how encounters with diverse peoples and communities were represented or deployed. In the painted chamber at Afrāsiāb, the upper portions of the walls are lost, and many parts of the lower sections are ruined or illegible. Their poor condition has prevented agreement about the details of their iconography.26 Interpretations of them rely on line drawings

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published by the archaeologist Lazar’ I. Al’baum in 1975.27 Despite these challenges, most scholars agree that the paintings have a program: activities associated with the summer solstice. The program’s details, however, remain debated or elusive. The scenes unfold against a lapis lazuli background—an indication that the Sogdians had access to the prized metamorphic rock more than ten centuries after they presented it to Darius I. The main west wall, across from the only entrance to the chamber, depicts figures bringing gifts for Nowrūz, the Zoroastrian new year’s festival (fig. 2.2). In the mid-​seventh century, before the Islamic conquest of the region, Nowrūz coincided with the summer solstice; it also initiated the season of taxation.28 The figures here include people of diverse cultural groups—Turks, Iranians, Tibetans, Koreans, Chinese, and others—identifiable because of the painters’ attention to details in clothing, phenotypes, and hairstyles. Long-​haired Turks serve as guards, for instance, sitting in groups and ensuring the proper procession of offerings on the west wall. The paintings show a striking emphasis on sartorial display (fig. 2.3).29 Varkhuman, the Sogdian ruler of Samarkand, who is identified by an inscription painted on his neck, wears patterned silks featuring pearl roundels with mythical winged simurghs, an appropriation of Sasanian royal iconography and textile design.30 The artists’ attention to the details of clothing suggests the importance of textiles for the house’s communities of viewers. Varkhuman’s robe features trimmings cut from

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Figure 2.2 West wall, painted chamber, Afrāsiāb, ca. 660 ce. Afrāsiāb Museum of Samarkand. Photo: Linda Safran.

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Figure 2.3 Varkhuman and envoys, detail of west wall, painted chamber, Afrāsiāb, ca. 660 ce. Afrāsiāb Museum of Samarkand. Photo: Linda Safran.

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different cloths, with designs upside down, interrupted, or folded; this detail underscores that the depicted patterned textiles are woven and sewn together. In other words, this mimetic representation reveals the process of fabrication not only of the clothing but also of the cloth. The painting thus indicates an appreciation of silk and weaving while underscoring their place in Sogdian history, culture, and identity.31 Varkhuman stands with two representatives of other Sogdian cities, men who wear cloaks with similar sewn hems and facings; their clothes feature pearled medallions with stylized boars and birds, Sasanian motifs that are the most frequently depicted patterns in the chamber and that lack explicit imperial associations. They relate to textile fragments found in tombs dating from the mid-​seventh century ce in Turfan, fragments that have been identified as Sogdian.32 Significantly, the figure behind Varkhuman holds as his offering a conspicuous bale of simurgh-​covered cloth. In the upper register, an envoy from the nearby city of Chaganian “speaks” to Varkhuman in a formal speech inscribed on his clothes.33 Viewers of the paintings, who sat on the clay benches set into the room’s four walls, must have been expected to notice these Out of Bounds

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mimetic sartorial displays and consider their economic and cultural meanings. The representation of Chinese delegates reinforces the primacy of silk in shaping local identity, for they hold cocoons and raw silk, thus providing the materials for the Sogdians to produce their own weaves. This image also points to the global networks on which local sericulture depended.34 The south wall continues the Nowrūz theme, apparently depicting the ancestral worship that Zoroastrian leaders performed toward the end of the week-​long festivities (fig. 2.4). Processing toward a dynastic mausoleum, women and men ride horses, a key source of prestige at this time; the Sogdians supplied the animals to the Tang army and managed the army’s equine pastures. The cloth saddles of the horses are painted in the same detailed manner as Varkhuman’s clothing on the west wall, with sewn facings of patterned silk. The ruler of Samarkand also appears here, riding a yellow horse alongside camels and an elephant and donning a cloak with the same Sasanian royal motifs.35 This time he is larger in scale than the figures around him, signaling his status as the main protagonist in this display of Zoroastrian piety. Hieratic scale also highlights his newly expanded political authority: he was recognized as governor of Samarkand and Sogdiana by the Tang emperor Gaozong between 650 ce and 655 ce, when Sogdiana came under the Tang protectorate.36 The east wall is the most damaged and resistant to interpretation. Some figures may represent Krishna and his foster-mother, Yasoda; other imagery perhaps relates to Pliny the Elder’s accounts of pygmies, who were later understood as living in India.37 Frantz Grenet notes that a “conflation of several legends attached to India On Account of the Rotundity of the Earth

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Figure 2.4 South wall, painted chamber, Afrāsiāb, ca. 660 ce. Afrāsiāb Museum of Samarkand. Photo: Linda Safran.

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Figure 2.5 North wall, painted chamber, Afrāsiāb, ca. 660 ce. Afrāsiāb Museum of Samarkand. Photo: Linda Safran.

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is not impossible,” including those linked to the summer solstice.38 More survives of the north wall, which likely emphasizes activities associated with Duanwujie, the Chinese dragon-​boat festival. A painted boat with a lively dragon-​head prow is filled with men and women wearing up-​to-​date Chinese fashions (fig. 2.5).39 A man running a stick in the water helps support the interpretation of the scene as the ritualized search for the poet and statesman Qu Yuan, who drowned himself in the Miluo River in 278 bce. Similarly, the woman in the boat, identified as the Tang empress because of her large scale, seems to drop food into the water, hoping to attract fish away from the poet’s body—one of the ritual reenactments here underscored by the array of aquatic creatures swimming around the boat. Like Nowrūz, Duanwujie coincided with the summer solstice during the particular years when the paintings were made.40 An image of an oversized Tang emperor, perhaps Gaozong himself, rides a horse and hunts panthers. All four walls of the painted chamber, then, seem to pivot around the summer solstice and the varied religious and ideological associations of that time of year. The room portrays the solstice as a global festival that is dependent on a particular shared practice: the calculation of the timing of the event in the lunar calendar, Out of Bounds

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an intellectual endeavor perhaps signaled by the inclusion of astronomers on the east wall referencing India.41 The “global” subjects at Afrāsiāb are not unique to this painted chamber; they are a characteristic of Sogdian art at the time. The walled city of Panjikant, which lies fifty kilometers east of Samarkand and was founded around 450 ce, has been excavated systematically; more than 130 houses testify to the townspeople’s desire to decorate the public areas of their residences with figural paintings. Appearing in houses both modest and grand, the murals show a remarkable range of subjects—“a compendium of Greco-​Roman, Iranian and Indian legends and parables,” as Christoph Baumer put it, along with images of deities, hunting, and feasting.42 The paintings in Panjikant and Afrāsiāb reveal critical features of Sogdian networks and show that the content of the networks was not limited to the materials that the traders helped circulate across Eurasia; it included knowledge of many cultural and religious practices along with the formal and iconographic visualizations associated with them. Portable works of art facilitated the diffusion and appropriation of such visualizations; the dragon-​boat imagery at Afrāsiāb likely derived from Chinese scroll paintings to which the artists had access. The role of books in artistic transmission is also confirmed by houses at Panjikant. There, the lower registers of some walls include small narrative panels of fables, likely copied from illustrated books; perhaps they helped prompt a storyteller.43 In this way they resemble the Bayeux Embroidery (1070–90), a narrative of the competing claims to the English throne and their violent resolution at the Battle of Hastings, where Harold Godwinson’s death secured William of Normandy’s right to rule. (Godwinson died soon after he had defeated his other rival, Harald Hardradi, at Stamford Bridge; the king of Norway died there, far from Vínland and the abyss of the Northern Ocean.) Richard Brilliant has interpreted the embroidery’s diverse textual and visual modes as prompts for oral performance.44 The narrative panels at Panjikant are outlined in pearl roundels and illustrate versions of such Greek and Roman fables as the Roman She-​Wolf and the Goose and the Golden Egg. Here, then, is the legacy of connectivity over the centuries, hearkening back to Alexander.45 But the paintings also signal the literacy of the Sogdians, who spoke many languages and could serve as translators in the varied locales in which they traveled, worked, and lived.46 Overall, the Afrāsiāb chamber’s use of hieratic scale to emphasize the Tang emperor and Sogdian king suggest Varkhuman’s embrace of China. With the challenges to imperial formations in western Asia posed by the expansion of Islam, the Sogdians saw (correctly) that their future prestige and prosperity lay with the Tang.47 Contemporary coinage issued in Samarkand and Panjikant articulates this idea explicitly. The bronze coins utilize Chinese numismatic conventions, their round shape and square holes symbolizing the sky and earth, respectively. Critically, they bear the Chinese characters Kai Yuan Tong Bao (new beginning, circulating treasure).48 The Sogdians also imitated coinage from Byzantium; in contrast to the Chinese coins, the imitation gold solidi were not for commerce. Found within houses, temples, and, critically, graves On Account of the Rotundity of the Earth

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in Sogdiana and China, they appear to have been considered imbued with amuletic properties. Many were placed in the mouths of the dead, thus signaling the longevity of the obolus burial practices of ancient Greece.49 Such evidence indicates that the Sogdians deployed a range of visual and textual languages to express, bolster, and preserve their place in a networked world. The Sogdians signal the porousness of borders in medieval Eurasia, to be sure, and also reveal the limitations of the traditional ways in which that world is understood or taught today. They remind us that the categories we rely upon to circumscribe our research and teaching endeavors are constructed; their edges do not hold. The long history of the Sogdians is one of negotiating their place and ensuring their survival between the great empires of the ancient and early medieval worlds: Achaemenid, Macedonian, Sasanian, Byzantine, and Tang, as well as of the smaller polities in their commercial orbit.50 Within Krautheimer’s sphere, Afrāsiāb’s radius pierces the chronological strata of emperors and imperial projects, highlighting, among other things, the longevity of Sasanian political iconography and its impact on Byzantine and Islamicate art production. Digging deeper, Afrāsiāb’s radius intersects with strata of theories associated with globalization. The Sogdians seemingly enacted what theorists of globalization have called “complex connectivity”; they formed “dense” networks “between different regions and have the capacity to trigger social change.”51 While the Sogdians may well fit this definition of globalization, concepts that are less dependent on panhemispheric interaction and integration seem more apt; mondialisation, with its emphasis on how multidirectional movements of people, goods, and ideas register on a local level, describes more accurately the experiences of seventh-​century Sogdiana.52 One of the striking features of the painted chamber at Afrāsiāb is how it conceptualizes the Sogdians’ awareness of their place in the world—and here I mean “place” as in their geographical location, its relationship to what lies around it, and its characterization as a hub where global trade routes converged. I also mean the Sogdians’ “place” as in their role, their place as esteemed mediators between diverse peoples inhabiting a very wide world. Bonnie Cheng has highlighted the relational character of sixth-​century Sogdian tomb furniture in north China, noting the creative ways in which the works express the identity of the entombed as “affiliating with multiple cultural spheres”; they occupy “a space between.”53 Yet at the same time, at Afrāsiāb, Varkhuman is portrayed as the “pivot of the world,” as Grenet wrote, around whom dignitaries gather and through whom they communicate.54 The archaeologist Tamar Hodos has developed a concept for premodern globalism that is particularly apt for this work of art: “one-​placeness.”55 This perspective can emerge from an outward-​looking view and from “increasing connectivities that unfold and manifest as social awareness of those connectivities” (emphasis original).56 Within premodern settings, she argues, one-​placeness is more readily generated by shared practices than by connectivities alone. Afrāsiāb visualizes multiple shared practices, including participation in long-​distance networks of trade, tax, and diplomacy (between which distinctions were habitually blurred); obligations 32

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to sovereign authorities; and, most critically, calendrical calculations and synergies relating to commemorations of the summer solstice. Furthermore, in Hodos’s view, premodern connectivity also generated “increasing awareness of and sensitivity to differences, especially cultural ones. . . . It manifests itself often as a resurgence of local identities in explicit contrast to the increasingly shared practices of the globally connected level.”57 The painted chamber at Afrāsiāb demonstrates how the Sogdians understood and conceptualized shared practices; it also demonstrates that they understood and could represent markers of cultural diversity while highlighting their own religious rituals and preoccupations with silk. The paintings represent commonalities within keenly observed differentiation. Thus, Afrāsiāb is a visualization of a seventh-​ century discourse of globalism and its paradoxes.

Shamanic Spheres and Binaries, circa 1000–1400 While the paintings at Afrāsiāb emerged from sustained and long-​distance networks of exchange in Eurasia and the relational ethos of the Sogdians, the far north also fostered connectivity and an awareness of cultural diversity, as Adam of Bremen signaled one thousand years ago. In addition to describing the Danes, Amazons, and cynocephali, his Gesta refers to the Indigenous Sàmi people, whom he called Skritefingi; they live “on the confines of the Swedes and Norwegians toward the north.”58 Christian missionaries had managed to convert some of them, he wrote. Although Adam’s account of Harald’s aborted voyage to Vínland does not feature encounters with Indigenous peoples, Norse sagas include numerous episodes in which the inhabitants of two continents come face-​to-​face.59 As with the Sogdians, such encounters register in works of art. A sculpture now in the collection of the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau (Québec) is one of several medieval objects that were made in the Arctic by Indigenous North Americans and appear to depict Europeans (fig. 2.6).60 Found in 1983 on Axel Heiberg Island in Nunavut, the work utilizes the dense, hard bone of a caribou-​antler tine and measures 10.44 centimeters long.61 It belongs to a group of objects with carved figural imagery that archaeologists have identified as shaman wands or sticks, although such a function remains conjectural.62 Its find spot and style link it to the Dorset people; they inhabited the eastern part of the North American Arctic before the arrival of the Thule, the ancestors of the Inuit and Inupiat, whose migration from Alaska began after the year 1000.63 The term “Dorset” emerged in the 1920s when Diamond Jenness’s excavations on Cape Dorset indicated the existence of a cultural group distinct from other prehistoric peoples in the Arctic.64 Because the term is contested due to its absence in any Indigenous language, I use “Tuniit,” an Inuktitut word meaning “first peoples,” the “people who lived here before the Inuit.”65 Indigenous oral traditions relay that the Tuniit were a gentle people, a view corroborated by the archaeological record.66 Their On Account of the Rotundity of the Earth

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Figure 2.6 Wand, Dorset, ca. 1200–1300. Caribou antler, 10.44 cm. Québec, Canadian Museum of History, TaJa-1:2, IMG2015-0066-0174-Dm.

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artistic activity flourished from the eighth through the fourteenth century. This span does not correspond to their middle/medieval period but to their “late” one; the Tuniit first emerged as a distinct culture as early as 2500 bce and disappeared soon after 1400 ce, likely due to a combination of a warming climate, disease introduced by the Thule and Norse, and assimilation with the Thule.67 Out of Bounds

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The antler piece is one of roughly one thousand works of sculpture that have been located within Tuniit assemblages.68 Overall, such works from the late Tuniit period display consistent styles across their chronological and geographical range; they feature both stylized forms and elements of realism, the latter seen as sparked by the keen observation of nature required for this hunting society to survive in the harsh climate.69 Prevalent art forms include small figurines with large faces, objects with multiple faces or “face clusters,” maskettes, and masks.70 Most works have been interpreted as carrying asso­ ciations with shamanic rituals or shamanistic beliefs.71 These trends are manifest in the Axel Heiberg sculpture. While two sides of the faceted carving show three faces clustered together, each depicted “right side up,” another side features two larger faces carved in low relief and placed chin-​to-​chin. One shows the broad cheeks and wide nose typical of Tuniit sculpture, including petroglyphs and carved masks (fig. 2.7); the other is a narrower face with a long nose and pointed beard, without clear antecedents in the Tuniit corpus. Patricia Sutherland, the archaeologist who discovered this figural work, has posited that it depicts a Tuniit and a Norseman and dates from circa 1200 to 1400.72 Even though a precise date cannot be determined, the work may well be the first known representation of an encounter between Indigenous and European peoples. No textbook of medieval art has included Indigenous objects from circumpolar regions (or from sub-​Saharan Africa, for that matter), although new global approaches to the Middle Ages are challenging the status quo.73 There are compelling reasons beyond coevality to consider the Tuniit piece within an inclusive history of medieval art. Below the icy surface of Krautheimer’s outermost sphere, the object touches upon strata of significant contexts, themes, and theorizations that relate to well-​known medieval monuments. First among them is the bedrock of migration, the recurrent phenomenon that reshaped the peoples, polities, and cultures of medieval Eurasia and North Africa. Objects associated with great movements of people have been prominent in histories of Western and Islamic art for decades (such as the sixth-​century Visigothic eagle fibulae at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore and the Ilkhanid Compendium of Chronicles of circa 1314 by Rashid al-​Din at the University of Edinburgh and Khalili Collection in London). Migrations of the type embodied by such works were not limited to Eurasia, however; the great spread of the Thule across the continent to eastern Canada and Greenland has been characterized as one of the most successful migrations in world history.74 It stemmed in part from the conditions of the Medieval Climate Anomaly, which caused temperatures in the Arctic and North Atlantic to rise and allowed European settlements in Greenland to thrive. That same anomaly saw temperatures fall in parts of Central Asia during the centuries of the On Account of the Rotundity of the Earth

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Figure 2.7 Mask, late Dorset, ca. 500–1200 ce. Carved driftwood, 18 × 14.3 × 32 cm. Québec, Canadian Museum of History, PfFm1:1777, IMG 20080215-0018-Dm.

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westward migrations of the Turks and Mongols.75 Such upheavals suggest a fertile approach to global history, one that analyzes different responses to climatic, astronomical, or pandemic events with hemispheric or even planetwide impacts.76 At the same time, archaeologists have argued that the medieval Arctic was not hermetically sealed or removed from the rest of the northern hemisphere;77 the concurrent westward migrations of the Turkic and Norse peoples, and the Thule spreading east, led to an era of complete circumglobal reach, perhaps for the first time. The Tuniit work testifies to these momentous migrations. However, unlike the Visigothic and Mongol objects mentioned above, this one comes from a group whose encounters with moving populations led to losses of territory and viability. Although Tuniit art is complex and compelling—“one of the great artistic traditions of the World,” according to the archaeologist James Helmer—the antler carving is not the type of excavated object that tends to make its way into the hallowed halls of art history.78 Medieval art historians have had a pronounced preference for unearthed objects of precious materials and intricate craftsmanship (like the Sion Treasure and Tara Brooch), spectacular quantities in many media that support a larger interpretive context (like the Sutton Hoo and Oseberg ship burials), or architectural complexes (like Dura-​Europos and Krautheimer’s early Christian basilicas in Rome). In the past, such works became canonical in part because they supported teleological narratives in which the merits of a single piece derived from its relationship to many others—to its influential antecedents, for instance, or its emulative progeny. It is fortunate that the material turn of the last few decades has accelerated the demise of these traditional paradigms, so that more quotidian objects, including those previously residing in the domain of material culture studies, have found a hospitable place in the field. This expanding and accommodating framework could provide space for the Tuniit work. Even though it was created in North America by an Indigenous person for use in Indigenous settings, it can readily engage significant themes in the history of medieval art as it moves beyond global migrations to probe inner spheres relating to iconography, materiality, and function. With its apparent depiction of a Norseman and Tuniit, the sculpture adds an important counterweight to the overwhelmingly European visual evidence of first contact. European representations of the Indigenous peoples of North America have circulated widely in print media, from the first woodcut accompanying Christopher Columbus’s Epistola de insulis nuper inventis (Basel, 1494) to the photographs of Edward Curtis (1868–1952) (fig. 2.8). These images have long piqued popular interest and, in recent decades, in-​depth art-​historical critique.79 By contrast, early representations of Europeans by Indigenous artists have remained little known. Gerald McMaster has opened this vital area of research, thereby helping to recalibrate and reconfigure the dynamics of Indigenous-​settler relations in the visual arts.80 He also breaks down the Indigenous-​settler binary by emphasizing the complexities of such encounters and the creativities they engender, highlighting their imbrication in an “entangled 36

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Figure 2.8 “Insula hyspana.” From Christopher Columbus’s Epistola de insulis nuper inventis (Basel, 1494). Washington, DC, Library of Congress, Incun. 1494.V47, Vollbehr Collection. Photo: Library of Congress.

gaze.”81 The Tuniit sculpture seemingly gives that entanglement literal form, given its juxtaposition of the two faces, arranged chin-​to-​chin. Not only is the work born of a relationship between these two peoples, but it also may (re)shape that relationship rather than simply visualizing the Norseman as Other, as discussed further below. The antler sculpture also serves as a counterweight to the European textual sources most closely related to it, the sagas that celebrate the Norse settlers of Greenland and their expeditions to North America: Eiríks saga rauða and the Grœnlendinga saga.82 Of the two, the latter is more relevant here. Surviving in a single manuscript dating from the 1380s, it likely was composed in the early thirteenth century and based on existing oral traditions.83 It tells that Leifr Eiríksson named the lands he encountered in what is now Canada: Vínland, a place where wild grapes grew (and Harald Hardradi sought to visit, according to Adam of Bremen; it is generally identified as Newfoundland); Helluland, or Flat Rock Land (likely Baffin Island); and Markland, or Forestland (likely Labrador). On their voyages, they encountered Indigenous peoples, referred to as Skrælings, a word related to Skritefingi, the term used by Adam of Bremen and others On Account of the Rotundity of the Earth

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for the Sàmi people of Scandinavia.84 The sagas do not differentiate among the many peoples the Norse would have encountered, from the Beothuk of Newfoundland to the Thule and Tuniit; they are all Skrælings. The texts characterize them as benign, naive, ready to barter, and then confrontational. As Geraldine Heng observes of the Vínland sagas, “The European literature of encounter and colonization shows race relations to be fraught, exploitative, and volatile, ending—seemingly inevitably—in violence and war.”85 Because the Tuniit piece emerges from transcontinental connectivity and the famous mobility of the Norsemen, it evokes the descendants of the Norsemen/ Northmen who settled in France and became known as the Normans. The object thus intersects with Norman conquests and commissions, including such well-​known works of art as the Bayeux Embroidery and the Cappella Palatina in Palermo (begun ca. 1132). Its radius also intersects with the inner spheres of globalization theory, the same rich veins into which the Sogdian painted chamber taps. However, the character of the connectivities that gave rise to both works are very different, as are the ways in which those connections are visualized. Scholars disagree about the extent of interaction between the Norse, Tuniit, and Thule peoples; skepticism reigns in part because the long-​standing fascination with the Norse in North America has inspired notorious forgeries (such as the Vínland Map and Kensington Runestone), as well as a large corpus of popular imagery and literature.86 Interpretations of cross-​ cultural encounters also vary according to perspective and positionality.87 Scholars focused on Europe have noted that, in contrast to, say, the Anglo-​Saxons, Aghlabids, or Byzantines—other groups with whom the Normans came into contact—Indigenous peoples had little influence upon the Norse; interaction was too limited, and conquest or colonization incomplete.88 By contrast, archaeologists working in the Arctic have sought greater precision in their interpretations, thereby offsetting the generalized musings of popular culture. Birgitta Wallace Ferguson’s conviction that the excavated settlement of L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland (ca. 1000) is the Straumsfjörðr mentioned in Eiríks saga rauða helps concretize Norse presence and implies the veracity of aspects of the medieval sagas.89 Other scholars focusing on North America have found evidence of more sustained interaction than previously imagined. Works other than the Tuniit sculpture have been identified as premodern representations of Europeans, including a wood figurine found on Baffin Island of a Norseman carved by a thirteenth-​century Thule artist.90 Sutherland’s excavations on Baffin Island have uncovered a range of evidence, including archaeological remnants of cordage, the remains of European mammals, and building techniques that are suggestive of sustained Norse habitation and contact with the Tuniit.91 For instance, some of the cordage features European forms and includes Arctic furs not present in samples from Greenland, Iceland, or Scandinavia. Sutherland thus envisions the presence of Norse women in the Canadian Arctic, spinning alongside their Indigenous neighbors.92 The groups apparently engaged in trade, with the Tuniit offering walrus ivory and fur and the 38

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Norse offering iron, in a mutually beneficial system of “sacrifices” of the type that Sarah Guérin explores in her work on sub-​Saharan gold.93 These interactions and the material traces they left are not surprising, as Norse expeditions to eastern Canada were probably not uncommon. It would have taken only two days for a ship to sail from the west coast of Greenland to Baffin Island, for instance, a far shorter voyage than those from Iceland that helped establish and serve the settlements in Greenland.94 That said, the point of the Norse missions was exploration and resource gathering rather than the conquest, permanent settlement, and colonization that the Normans undertook in England, Ireland, southern Italy, and Sicily. To the extent that Norse-​Tuniit connectivities can be reconstructed, then, they were not as strong, frequent, or multidirectional as those of the Sogdians on the Silk Routes; they do not constitute a veritable network dependent on, say, infrastructure, large numbers of people, vast quantities of exchanged goods, and long-​term nodal activity. Yet the impact of those connectivities was not negligible and merits consideration. Cross-​cultural interactions in the Arctic prompted changes in Tuniit visuality, changes to their world view and self-​perception that register in the antler piece. Understanding this shift requires probing Tuniit notions of likeness and representation and thus entering terrain that is familiar to historians of medieval art but not generally traversed by Arctic archaeologists.95 While seven of the carved faces on the antler sculpture resemble in form and style other representations made by the Tuniit, this formal resemblance may not mean that the masklike faces were understood as portrait likenesses of Tuniit individuals; they may have functioned more as markers of local identity or even generic humanity, a proxy for a whole human.96 But their juxtaposition with a single “European” face indicates that the Arctic people had the ability to recognize, conceptualize, and re-​create artistically particular phenotypes and that they elected to incorporate a new one into their visual repertoire. Indicative of a capacity for innovation, the work seemingly expresses group definition and differentiation—what Heng would call race-​making, in this case based on physiognomic traits.97 The work also seemingly supports the theory that Tuniit art derived from crisis, the coincidence of immense environmental and demographic pressures in the Arctic.98 The work visualizes an awareness of connectivities, to return to the language of Hodos and my interpretation of the Sogdian painted chamber. The purposes served by that awareness and race-​making in the Axel Heiberg carving were fundamentally different, however, from those at Afrāsiāb. Not only was Tuniit visual culture able to shift to represent the foreigner, but it may have done so in order to incorporate the foreigner into ritual practices and settings. Here, then, a consideration of the interplay between iconography, materiality, and function can illuminate the object. These carvings are thought to have helped shamans perform their mediation between living people and animals, the environment, and otherworldly forces and beings.99 Thus, they are significant ritual objects that are full of communicative agency and activated by the words and movements of a gifted and authoritative practitioner (fig. 2.9). In this On Account of the Rotundity of the Earth

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Figure 2.9 Shaman deploying the Alex Heiberg carving, animation still by Brad Goodspeed from The Nature of Things (2015). Photo: Brad Goodspeed.

culture, walrus ivory was the favored material for such devices; skeletal technologies were remarkably stable in this context, with particular object types consistently made of a particular material, such as antler for boxes and bones for needles.100 What do these correlations signify, and what does it mean that the Axel Heiberg work does not follow them? The trade of raw materials, including walrus ivory, formed one basis of Tuniit-​Norse interaction; perhaps this association with the newcomer prompted a shift in Tuniit materiality. The imagery on comparable carvings tends to highlight the instability of the real. Many feature skeletons, episodes of flight, and transformations between human and animal, often in combination with one another, the characteristics that have led them to be identified as shamans’ wands or sticks.101 From the eighth through the fourteenth century, sculptors privileged imagery of humans, seals, and bears in such shamanic objects, in contrast to the much more expansive animal repertoire of the previous centuries.102 A human morphs into a polar bear on a walrus ivory from Little Corwallis Island, for instance; otter and human faces merge on another.103 The Axel Heiberg sculpture features only human faces. Although breakage on both ends makes it difficult to determine its primary orientation (which users could easily change anyhow), it is noteworthy that of the eight faces, only the Norse one is reversed and upside down. These observations prompt a series of art-​historical questions that tend to fall outside archaeological discourse. What does the bicultural representation add to the functionality, efficacy, and holiness of the shaman stick? Does it enhance the shaman’s prestige by referencing the expanded geographical and cultural sphere of the Tuniit people? Does it help extend their power into the New World embodied in the newcomer—that is, into Greenland, Iceland, and Europe? Or do the rituals and object seek to neutralize 40

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or weaken the stranger depicted on the sculpture, making him less of a threat? Given the preponderance of transformational imagery on late Tuniit objects, does the carved antler enable the foreigner to morph into a member of the Tuniit community or the Tuniit to join the Norse? Does it suggest the fluidity of distinctions between Tuniit and Norse or insist upon maintaining differences and distance? Representations of figures with contrasting identities occupy a spectrum of relationship types in contemporary European art. In Peter of Eboli’s Liber ad honorem Augustalis (1194–96), the diversity of the denizens of Palermo in the Norman period is established through close attention to skin colors, facial features, and dress; differentiation underscores the unity of the populace in mourning, thereby signaling the dead king’s good governance (fig. 2.10). Other works of art deploy phenotypes to articulate domination literally, as with the grimacing figures representing the peoples conquered by the Normans in southern Italy and Sicily, who struggle to uphold the twelfth-​century marble throne in the church of San Nicola in Bari (fig. 2.11).104 Still other representations veer into ugly caricature, as with the emergence of what Sara Lipton calls the “Jewish Face” in northern Europe in the mid-​thirteenth century, seen in the image of the fool in the prayer book of Bonne of Luxembourg, painted in Paris before 1349 (fig. 2.12).105 In the latter two cases, differentiation clearly asserts “hierarchies of people for different treatment,” a key factor in Heng’s definitions of medieval race-​making.106 Where does the antler carving fall on this spectrum? With the Tuniit work, answers to this question and to the related ones posed above remain elusive, in large part because of the lack of textual sources that art historians lean on to support iconographical and contextual interpretations, such as those just proffered for the European images. Arctic archaeologists, too, struggle with the inability of the excavated materials to help them reconstruct ritual practices and their precise meanings.107 Whereas earlier generations of archaeologists grounded their interpretations of Tuniit and ancestral Inuit imagery within ethnographic analyses of early twentieth-​century Arctic peoples, such an approach is not tenable today, given its core assumptions of homogeneity and stasis (namely, all Arctic peoples are the same and do not change).108 The antler piece, sculpted by Indigenous artists in the medieval Arctic, carries more significant ethical and methodological challenges than simply the vexing absence of the types of evidence favored by historians of medieval art. Locating, collecting, and writing about Indigenous art have been the purview of settlers, and, as the Inuit art historian Heather Igloliorte emphasizes, these practices often coincide with the most pronounced episodes of suppression or dislocation of Indigenous peoples.109 In critiques similar to debates over terminology, periodization, and methodology in Islamic art, settler research has been seen as an imposition of scholarly methods that derive from colonial structures, making scholars complicit in imperialism and its cultural erasures. The influential Maori theorist Linda Tuhiwai Smith expresses this problem with forcefulness: “It appals us that the West can desire, extract, and claim On Account of the Rotundity of the Earth

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Figure 2.10 Palermo in mourning. From Peter of Eboli, Liber ad honorem Augustalis, 1194–96. Bern, Burgerbibliothek, MS 120 11, fol. 98r. www​.e​-codices​.ch​/en​/bbb​ /0120​-2​/98r​/0.

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Figure 2.11 Throne, San Nicola, Bari, ca. 1170. Marble. Photo: author.

ownership of our ways of knowing, our imagery, the things we create and produce, and then simultaneously reject the people who created and developed those ideas, and seek to deny them further opportunities to be creators of their own culture and own nations.”110 She continues, “Whose research is it? Who owns it? Whose interests does it serve? Who will benefit from it? . . . Who will write it up?”111 Indigenous scholars and artists around the world have responded to these profound questions and are creating and implementing methodologies, theories, and protocols that are rooted in Indigenous knowledge and serve to preserve it. This is no easy task, given the entrenched structures and conservatism of academic research and the multiplicity of Indigenous voices and communities. Yet today’s anticolonizing projects, which span the arts and academic disciplines, constitute a transformational and pivotal moment in intellectual and cultural history, even if the ultimate goal of decolonization—the return of the land to Indigenous sovereignty112—remains difficult to realize.

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Figure 2.12 The fool and his accomplice. From the prayer book of Bonne of Luxembourg, before 1349. New York, Cloisters Collection, 69.86, fol. 83v. Photo: Metropolitan Museum of Art.

This brief examination of the Tuniit sculpture and Sogdian painted chamber at Afrāsiāb has moved through different registers of research, beginning with the contextual and synthetic work that helps introduce monuments to nonspecialists and students. It has moved from the surface of the Earth/sphere down Krautheimer’s radii to layers where my own “knowledge, principles and experiences” could transfer from one area of study to illuminate another. Thus, substrata of migration, Norse mobility, race-​making, and ritual practices could seemingly link the Tuniit work to an inclusive corpus of medieval art and its scholarly literature. The piece also has much in common with the Sogdian wall paintings; both highlight the transformational nature of cross-​ cultural encounters and the creativity of visualizations of identity in contact zones. As such, both works correlate with art-​historical themes and problems that are salient in my own research and in the textbook. Yet at the same time, the Tuniit sculpture’s intersection with theories of decolonization has prompted me to confront the limits of my intellectual formation and identity as an art historian. To be sure, there is nothing new about such a predicament, since moving across disciplinary, geographical, chronological, or contextual boundaries has 44

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enlivened medieval art history for decades. However, within global settings, going out of bounds not only multiplies the amount of research and type of skills required; it can reveal teleologies that simply do not mesh. In the case of the Tuniit sculpture, the types of questions I tend to ask—the ones that enrich the thick research of my scholarship and inform my pedagogical practice—do not yield satisfactory answers. Ideas about the interplay of iconography, materiality, and function are ultimately unhelpful if not misleading, rooted as they are in settler knowledge systems, methods, and comparanda. Like Harald Hardradi, then, I am turning around, not because of a dangerous abyss but because the methodologies best suited to bringing the work to life are not mine. As a result, while the Sogdian paintings are in the textbook, the Tuniit antler sculpture occupies a different place in the project. It has inspired a series of podcasts that accompany the book, including one on Indigenizing the museum.113 This lively audio format, which signals to listeners that art history is a living and interdisciplinary endeavor, is particularly well suited to probing the range of issues embodied in the Tuniit sculpture. I produce the podcast with the understanding that interlocutors may well ask questions that I have not asked and use methods that I have not considered.114 Our conversations may not foster a convergence of ideas or agreement; within the “ethic of incommensurability” delineated by Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang, diverse perspectives may not be reconciled due to their imbrication in different knowledge systems.115 Yet collaboration is necessary on account of the rotundity of the Earth, as Adam of Bremen might have said; the curvature of the surface obscures what lies beyond our intellectual horizon. Research on expansive global networks requires collaboration in order to bring sufficient contextualization and nuance to each work of art.116 After all, the complexity of the medieval world, and of ours today, merits more perspectives and sensitivity to the subtle yet dynamic processes of negotiation that lie behind all cultural formations and works of art—and, critically, behind our efforts to interpret them.

Notes I would like to express my gratitude to the graduate students at Princeton and to Beatrice Kitzinger, Charles Barber, and Pamela Patton for their invitation to participate in the “Out of Bounds: Exploring the Limits of Medieval Art” conference and seminar. Productive conversations with them and with other conference-​goers continue to inform my work. I am indebted to Gerald McMaster, Julia Lum, Esther Kim, Amrita Daniere, Erika Loic, Bryan Keene, Patricia Sutherland, and Karen Ryan for their assistance with aspects of this article and the conference paper on which it is based. Many thanks to Brad Goodspeed for permission to use the still from his fantastic animation. This work stems from years of fruitful conversation and collaboration with my

textbook coauthors Linda Safran and Adam Cohen. While I endeavor to attribute accurately the ideas that are not mine, this article highlights my own interests, attitudes, and challenges. Errors and omissions are my own. Research for this study was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Office of the Dean and Vice-​Principal of University of Toronto Mississauga. 1. Adam of Bremen, Hamburgische Kirchengeschichte, 276, ed. and trans. Tschan, History of the Archbishops, 220. 2. Leo IX to Adalbert of Bremen (Adam’s primary subject in the Gesta), quoted in Halldórsson, “Vínland Sagas,” 44.

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3. Adam of Bremen, History of the Archbishops, 200, 219. 4. Adam of Bremen, Hamburgische Kirchengeschichte, 275, ed. and trans. Tschan, History of the Archbishops, 219. 5. Ibid., 275. This text predates the sagas; see discussion below. 6. Knappett, “Globalization, Connectivities, and Networks,” 29. See, for example, Alicia Walker’s range of concepts related to globalism (“Globalism,” 185). 7. Knappett, Archaeology of Interaction, chapter 3, and Flood et al., “Roundtable.” 8. Conrad, What Is Global History?, 92. On mondialisation in the sixteenth century, see Gruzinski, Quatre parties du monde. 9. Keene, Toward a Global Middle Ages, 8. 10. Normore, “Editor’s Introduction,” 3. 11. On the need to generate emic periodizations and theorizations, see Conrad, What Is Global History?, 195–204; Shalem, “What Do We Mean”; Flood and Necipoğlu, “Frameworks of Islamic Art,” 2–59. On the “medieval” problem, see Varisco, “Making ‘Medieval’ Islam Meaningful.” 12. Akbari, “Where Is Medieval Ethiopia,” 90–91. 13. Note the prevalence of “medieval” in the game-​changing Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture edited by Flood and Necipoğlu. 14. Krautheimer, “On Liberal Education,” 9. 15. “This expanding sphere of human knowledge cannot be understood by jumping from one fact, from one field, to the other like a raving grasshopper or by attempting to survey its entire surface.” Ibid. 16. Ibid. 17. Silvi Antonini, “Paintings in the Palace.” 18. De la Vaissière, Sogdian Traders, 18–22. 19. Ibid., 106. 20. The term Seidenstrasse was coined by the nineteenth-​century geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen; see Hansen, Silk Road, 6–8, with Richthofen’s map reproduced on plates 2–3. See also Flood et al., “Roundtable,” 5–8. 21. Hansen, Silk Road, 116. 22. De la Vaissière, Sogdian Traders, 134; 133–35 (for a translation of the text and discussion); see also 174–78. 23. Bier, “Sasanian Textiles,” 943–44. 24. Baumer, History of Central Asia, 2:225; Baumer’s understanding counters that of Hansen, who sees Sogdian activities as smaller in scale and local (Silk Road, 139). 25. Baumer, History of Central Asia, 2:222–35, and Grenet, “What Was the Afrasiab Painting About?” 26. As Grenet archly put it, “A positive side to the so-​called ‘Ambassador’s painting’ at Samarkand is that we shall never fully understand it” (“What Was the Afrasiab Painting About?,” 43).

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27. Al’baum, Zhivopis’ Afrasiaba. The drawings are reprinted in most subsequent studies, including those cited here. 28. On the calendrical shift between traditional Zoroastrian celebrations of Nowrūz and late Sasanian and early Islamic ones, see Azarpay, “Afrasiab Murals,” 50, and Panaino, “Pre-​Islamic Iranian Calendrical Systems.” 29. Raspopova, “Textiles Represented in Sogdian Murals,” and Kageyama, “Use and Production of Silk,” 320. 30. Bier, “Sasanian Textiles,” 943–44. 31. Ibid., 944. This attention to mimetic representation also appears in paintings from block XVI, room 10, in Panjikant, where a figure in a feast scene wears Chinese damask, signaled by the painter’s ability to represent subtle monochrome patterns without black outlines. Kageyama, “Use and Production of Silk,” 320. 32. Kageyama, “Use and Production of Silk,” 322. 33. The inscription reads: “When King Varkhuman Unash came to him [the ambassador] opened his mouth [and said thus]: ‘I am Pukarzate, the chancellor of Chaganian. I arrived here from Turantash, the lord of Chaganian, to Samarkand, to the king, and with respect [to] the king [now] I am [here]. And with regard to me do not have any misgivings: about the gods of Samarkand, as well as about the writing of Samarkand I am keenly aware, and I also have not done any harm to the king. Let you be quite fortunate! And King Varkhuman Unash took leave [of him]. And [then] the chancellor of Chach opened his mouth.’ ” Translation in Hansen, Silk Road, 127. 34. Kageyama, “Use and Production of Silk,” 321–23. 35. Antonini, “Paintings in the Palace,” 114. 36. Azarpay, “Afrasiab Murals,” 53, and Baumer, History of Central Asia, 2:242. 37. See the discussion of earlier literature in Compareti, “Classical Elements,” 308. 38. Grenet, “What Was the Afrasiab Painting About?,” 47. 39. The following synopsis of iconography relies on Compareti and Cristoforetti, “Proposal for a New Interpretation,” 215. 40. Grenet, “What Was the Afrasiab Painting About?,” 52. 41. This image has been interpreted as Urania showing Aratus how to use an armillary sphere, thereby representing the transmission of Greek science to India. However, the round object is too damaged to identify its particular form. Grenet, “What Was the Afrasiab Painting About?,” 43, and Compareti, “Classical Elements,” 310. 42. Baumer, History of Central Asia, 2:234. See also Marshak, Legends, Tales, and Fables, 22; Encyclopaedia

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Iranica, s.v. “Panjikant,” by Boris I. Marsha; Hansen, Silk Road, 121–25. 43. Marshak, Legends, Tales, and Fables, 30–34, and Hansen, Silk Road, 125. See also Keene, Toward a Global Middle Ages. 44. Brilliant, “Bayeux Tapestry.” 45. Compareti, “Classical Elements,” 313. 46. Cheng, “Space Between,” 110. 47. Azarpay, “Afrasiab Murals,” 54. 48. Baumer, History of Central Asia, 2:242–43. 49. Ying, “Sogdians.” 50. See theorizations in Doyle, “Inter-​Imperiality.” 51. Knappett, “Globalization, Connectivities, and Networks,” 29, citing Jennings, Globalizations and the Ancient World, 29. 52. Gruzinski, Quatre parties du monde; Flood et al., “Roundtable,” 4–5 (Russo); Keene, Toward a Global Middle Ages, 7. 53. Cheng, “Space Between,” 114. 54. Grenet, “What Was the Afrasiab Painting About?,” 56. 55. Hodos, “Globalization.” 56. Ibid., 4. 57. Ibid., 5. 58. Adam of Bremen, History, 205–6. 59. See definitions of Indigenous discussed in Wobst, “Indigenous Archaeologies,” 19–21. 60. Canadian Museum of History, TaJa-1:2, see additional images at https://​www​.historymuseum​.ca​ /collections​/artifact​/625316. I first encountered this work at the Royal Ontario Museum’s Vikings: The Exhibition in Toronto, 4 November 2017–2 April 2018. See http://​artofthemiddleages​.com, the website accompanying Caskey et al., Art and Architecture, for other examples. 61. Many thanks to Patricia Sutherland, for discussing the object with me, and to Karen Ryan, Curator of Northern Canada at the Canadian Museum of History, for help securing photographs. 62. Sutherland and McGhee, Lost Visions, Forgotten Dreams. 63. Archaeologists have recently compressed the timing of Thule migration, hypothesizing that it could have been as late as the 1300s; climate models have also shown that that, as with contemporary climate change, the Arctic did not see consistent shifts in temperature. Friesen and Arnold, “Timing of the Thule Migration.” For an overview, see Appelt, Damkjar, and Friesen, “Late Dorset.” 64. Sutherland, introduction to Contributions to the Study of the Dorset Palaeo-​Eskimos, 1–7, and LeMoine, Helmer, and Hanna, “Altered States,” 40. 65. For an Indigenous account of Tuniit-​Inuit-​ Norse encounter, see Qitsualik, “Skraeling.” See also Appelt and Gulløv, “Tunit, Norsemen, and Inuit.” 66. Sutherland, “Question of Contact,” and Wright, Our Ice Is Vanishing, 25.

67. Hayes, Coltrain, and O’Rourke, “Molecular Archaeology,” and Ossenberg, “Ethnogenesis.” 68. Sutherland, “Shamanism and the Iconography,” 137. 69. MacRae, “How Are We to Imagine Them?” 70. Fitzhugh and Engelstad, “Inuguat”; for face clusters, see Blodgett, “Multiple Human Images,” 161. 71. Definitions of shamanism rest upon the “ideological premise of the supernatural world and the contacts with it; the shaman as the actor on behalf of a human group; the inspiration granted him by his helping spirits; and the extraordinary, ecstatic experiences of the shaman.” LeMoine, Helmer, and Hanna, “Altered States,” 41. For analysis and critique of the literature on Dorset shamanism, see MacRae, “How Are We to Imagine Them?” 72. The Canadian Museum of History narrows the date to the thirteenth century. Sutherland, “Helluland Archaeological Project,” Canadian History Museum; Sutherland, “Helluland Archaeological Project: Investigating Evidence”; Pringle, “Hints of Frequent Pre-​Columbian Contact”; Gregg, Nature of Things. 73. See, for example, Andrews and Beechy, “Indigenous Futures and Medieval Pasts”; see also “Questions on ‘World Art History,’ ” 216–17 (comments by Joyce). Note, too, that Keene uses the rubric “Worlds Together, Worlds Apart: The Americas in a Medieval Framework” to describe connectivity and artistic production among the Indigenous peoples in the centuries before Columbus (Toward a Global Middle Ages, 27–29). 74. Maschner and McGhee, prologue and introduction to The Northern World, 1. 75. Mann et al., “Global Signatures and Dynamic Origins,” 1257. 76. For example, Green, “Pandemic Disease in the Medieval World.” 77. Maschner and McGhee, prologue and introduction to The Northern World, 2. 78. Helmer, “Face from the Past,” 179. 79. On the Epistola, see Keating and Markey, “Response,” 207–10; on Curtis, see Arrivé, “Beyond True and False.” 80. McMaster, Lum, and McCormick, “Entangled Gaze.” See also McMaster’s project at Wapatah Centre for Indigenous Visual Knowledge, http://​www​ .wapatah​.com. 81. McMaster, Lum, and McCormick, “Entangled Gaze,” 132. Entanglement theory developed, in part, from Thomas, Entangled Objects. 82. Like the Groenlendinga saga, Eiríks saga rauða appears in a fourteenth-​century manuscript but was composed earlier, following oral traditions. Jakobsson, “ ‘Black Men and Malignant-​Looking,’ ” and Larrington, “Undruðusk pa.’ ”

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83. The sagas mention Skrælings in conjunction with the settlers’ excursions into eastern Canada, although the settlers must have encountered Indigenous people in Greenland as well. Larrington, “Undruðusk pa,” 93–94. 84. Heng, Invention of Race, 281n12. Heng characterizes episodes of encounter as “partly imagined, partly historical, or an inextricable mélange of reportage and cultural desire” (268). 85. Ibid., 266. 86. Sutherland, “Question of Contact,” 280. See the humorous Dregni, Vikings in the Attic; see also Nielsen and Wolter, Kensington Rune Stone (many thanks to my father-​in-​law, Richard A. Pfohl, for bringing this volume to my attention), and Pohl, Viking Settlements, a dogged effort to map the sagas onto the East Coast of the United States. 87. Scholarly works beyond the archaeological ones I highlight here include Barnes, Viking America; Ward and Fitzhugh, Vikings; Arnott, “Putting the Vikings on the Canadian Map.” 88. Kleingartner and Williams, “Contacts and Exchange,” 43. 89. Ferguson, “Anse aux Meadows and Vínland,” and Sutherland, Thompson, and Hunt, “Evidence of Early Metalworking.” 90. This object was excavated in 1977 at Okivilialuk within a Thule assemblage dating to the twelfth or thirteenth century; it is now in the Canadian Museum of History, Ottawa. See McMaster, Lum, and McCormick, “Entangled Gaze,” 131; D. Sabo and G. Sabo III, “Possible Thule Carving”; Fitzhugh and Engelstad, “Inuguat,” 4. 91. The excavations were at the Nanook site, Baffin Island, Nunavut, undertaken by Sutherland. See Sutherland, “Question of Contact,” and Sutherland, “Norse and Natives.” 92. Sutherland, “Helluland Archaeological Project: Investigating Evidence.” 93. Sutherland, “Question of Contact,” 282, and Guérin, “Exchange of Sacrifices.” 94. Sutherland, “Norse and Natives,” 613–17. 95. In his challenge to the prevailing interpretation of Dorset art as shamanistic, MacRae notes the field “suffers from a lack of viewpoints, a dearth of discourse” (“How Are We to Imagine Them?,” 179).

96. Fitzhugh and Engelstad, “Inuguat,” 3. 97. This method countered epidural, religious, and other foundations of race-​making. Heng, Invention of Race. 98. LeMoine, Helmer, and Hanna, “Altered States,” 40. 99. Anawalt, Shamanic Regalia, 16. 100. LeMoine, “Understanding Dorset.” 101. Sutherland, “Shamanism and the Iconography,” 138. 102. Ibid., 137. 103. LeMoine, Helmer, and Hanna, “Altered States.” 104. See Belli d’Elia, “Basilica,” 293–97, and Dorin, “Mystery of the Marble Man.” See also Caskey et al., Art and Architecture, chapter 7. 105. Lipton, Dark Mirror, 171–75. 106. Heng, Invention of Race, 3. 107. Sutherland, “Shamanism and the Iconography,” 136. 108. Heuristic problems involved in that gap are discussed in MacRae, “How Are We to Imagine Them?” 109. Igloliorte, “Arctic Culture / Global Indigeneity.” 110. Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies, 30. I am indebted to Maria Hupfield for introducing me to this theorist. 111. Ibid., 43–44. 112. Tuck and Yang, “Decolonizing Is Not a Metaphor,” 26. 113. Episodes of the podcast Medieval Art Matters, with Jill Caskey, Adam S. Cohen, Erika Loic, and Linda Safran, appear on http://​artofthemiddleages​ .com. The podcast is funded by the Department of Art History at the University of Toronto and produced by Cited Media Productions, Inc. 114. Canadian efforts at reconciliation have called not only for greater Indigenous narrative sovereignty but also for settler-​Indigenous collaboration in the art and museum world. Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, 334–35. 115. Tuck and Yang, “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor,” 28–31. 116. Caskey, “Transplants and Transformations,” 222.

Bibliography Adam of Bremen. Hamburgische Kirchengeschichte. Edited by Bernard Schmeidler. 3rd ed. Hanover: Hahn, 191. ———. History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-​Bremen. Edited and translated by Francis Joseph

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Tschan. New York: Columbia University Press, 1959. Akbari, Suzanne. “Where Is Medieval Ethiopia? Mapping Ethiopic Studies within Medieval Studies.” In Toward a Global Middle Ages, edited

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by Bryan C. Keene, 82–93. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2019. Al’baum, Lazar’ I. Zhivopis’ Afrasiaba. Tashkent: FAN, 1975. Anawalt, Patricia Rieff. Shamanic Regalia in the Far North. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2014. Andrews, Tarren, and Tiffany Beechy, eds. “Indigenous Futures and Medieval Pasts.” Special issue, English Language Notes 58, no. 2 (2020). Appelt, Martin, Eric Damkjar, and Max Friesen. “Late Dorset.” In The Oxford Handbook of the Prehistoric Arctic, edited by Max Friesen and Owen Mason. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. https://​ doi​.org​/10​.1093​/oxfordhb​/9780199766956​.013​ .36. Appelt, Martin, and Hans Christian Gulløv. “Tunit, Norsemen, and Inuit in Thirteenth-​Century Northwest Greenland—Dorset Between the Devil and the Deep Sea.” In The Northern World, AD 900–1400, edited by Herbert Maschner, Owen Mason, and Robert McGhee, 300–320. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2009. Arnott, Megan. “Putting the Vikings on the Canadian Map.” In Mapping Medievalism at the Canadian Frontier, edited by Kathryn Brush, 108–23. London: Museum London, 2010. Arrivé, Mathilde. “Beyond True and False? The Artificial Authenticities of Edward S. Curtis: Responses and Reactions.” Translated by John Tittensor. Études photographiques 29 (2012): 1–12. http://​journals​.openedition​.org​ /etudesphotographiques​/3474. Azarpay, Guitty. “The Afrasiab Murals: A Pictorial Narrative Reconsidered.” Silk Road 12 (2014): 49–56. Barnes, Geraldine. Viking America: The First Millennium. Rochester: D. S. Brewer, 2001. Baumer, Christoph. The History of Central Asia, vol. 2, The Age of the Silk Roads. London: I. B. Tauris, 2014. Belli d’Elia, Pina. “La basilica tra Puglia e Occidente: Variazioni su un tema obbligato.” In San Nicola di Bari e la sua basilica: Culto, arte, tradizione, edited by Giorgio Otranto, 259–311. Milan: Electa, 1987. Bier, Carol. “Sasanian Textiles.” In The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Iran, edited by D. T. Potts, 943–52. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Blodgett, Jean. “Multiple Human Images in Eskimo Sculpture, Part II: Examples from the Dorset Culture.” Arts and Culture of the North 3, no. 3 (1979): 159–64. Brilliant, Richard. “The Bayeux Tapestry: A Stripped Narrative for Their Eyes and Ears.” Word and Image 7, no. 2 (1991): 98–126. Caskey, Jill. “Transplants and Transformations in a Global Middle Ages.” In Toward a Global Middle

Ages: Encountering the World Through Illuminated Manuscripts, edited by Bryan C. Keene, 216–21. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2019. Caskey, Jill, Adam S. Cohen, and Linda Safran, with Genevra Kornbluth. Art and Architecture of the Middle Ages: Exploring a Connected World. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2022. Cheng, Bonnie. “The Space Between: Locating ‘Culture’ in Artistic Exchange.” Ars orientalis 38 (2010): 81–120. Compareti, Matteo. “Classical Elements in Sogdian Art: Aesop’s Fables Represented in the Mural Paintings at Penjikent.” Iranica Antiqua 47 (2012): 303–16. https://​doi​.org​/10​.2143​/IA​.47​.0​.2141966. Compareti, Matteo, and Simone Cristoforetti. “Proposal for a New Interpretation of the Northern Wall of the ‘Hall of the Ambassadors’ at Afrasyab.” In Central Asia from the Achaemenids to the Timurids: Archaeology, History, Ethnology, Culture; Materials of an International Scientific Conference Dedicated to the Centenary of Aleksandr Markovich Belenitsky, St. Petersburg, 2004, edited by Valery P. Nikonorov, 215–19. St. Petersburg: Institute of the History of Material Culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences / State Hermitage / Oriental Department of the St. Petersburg State University, 2005. Conrad, Sebastian. What Is Global History? Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016. Dorin, Rowan W. “The Mystery of the Marble Man and His Hat: A Reconsideration of the Bari Episcopal Throne.” Florilegium 25, no. 1 (2008): 29–52. Doyle, Laura. “Inter-​Imperiality.” Interventions 16, no. 2 (2014): 159–96. Dregni, Eric. Vikings in the Attic: In Search of Nordic America. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011. Encyclopaedia Iranica. Edited by Ehsan Yarshater. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982–. Ferguson, Birgitta Wallace. “L’Anse aux Meadows and Vínland.” In Wawn and Sigurðardóttir, Approaches to Vínland, 134–46. Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. Vol. 1, Summary: Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future. Toronto: James Lorimer, 2015. Fitzhugh, William W., and Bernadette Driscoll Engelstad. “Inuguat: Prehistoric Human Figurines in the North American Arctic.” In The Oxford Handbook of Prehistoric Figurines, edited by Timothy Insoll. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. https://​doi​.org​/10​.1093​ /oxfordhb​/9780199675616​.013​.018. Flood, Barry, David Joselit, Alexander Nagel, Alessandra Russo, Eugene Wang, Christopher Wood, and Mimi Yiengpruksawan. “Roundtable: The

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Global Before Globalisation.” October 133 (2010): 3–19. Flood, Finbarr Barry, and Gülru Necipoğlu. “Frameworks of Islamic Art and Architectural History: Concepts, Approaches, and Historiographies.” In A Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture, edited by Finbarr Barry Flood and Gülru Necipoğlu, 2–59. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2017. Friesen, T. Max, and Charles D. Arnold. “The Timing of the Thule Migration: New Dates from the Western Canadian Arctic.” American Antiquity 73 (2008): 527–38. Green, Monica H., ed. “Pandemic Disease in the Medieval World: Rethinking the Black Death.” Special issue, Medieval Globe 1 (2015). Gregg, Andrew, dir. The Nature of Things with David Suzuki. Season 52, episode 8, “The Norse: An Arctic Mystery.” Aired 28 February 2015, on Canadian Broadcasting Company. https://​ www​.dailymotion​.com​/video​/x5ih8vh. Grenet, Frantz. “What Was the Afrasiab Painting About?” Rivista degli studi orientali, n.s., 78, supp. 1 (2006): 43–58. Gruzinski, Serge. Les quatre parties du monde: Histoire d’une mondialisation. Paris: Éditions La Martinière, 2004. Guérin, Sarah M. “Exchange of Sacrifices: West Africa in the Medieval World of Goods.” In “Re-assessing the Global Turn in Medieval Art History,” edited by Christina Normore, special issue, Medieval Globe 3 (2018): 97–115. Halldórsson, Ólafur. “The Vínland Sagas.” In Wawn and Sigurðardóttir, Approaches to Vínland, 39–51. Hansen, Valerie. The Silk Road: A New History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Hayes, M. Geoffrey, Joan Brenner Coltrain, and Dennis H. O’Rourke. “Molecular Archaeology of the Dorset, Thule, and Sadlermiut: Ancestor-​ Descendant Relationships in Eastern North American Arctic Prehistory.” In Contributions to the Study of the Dorset, edited by Patricia D. Sutherland, 11–32. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2005. Helmer, James W. “A Face from the Past: An Early Pre-​Dorset Ivory Maskette from the North Devon Lowlands, High Arctic Canada.” Études/ Inuit/Studies 10 (1986): 179–202. Heng, Geraldine. The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Hodos, Tamar. “Globalization: Some Basics.” In The Routledge Handbook of Archaeology and Globalization, edited by Tamar Hodos, Alexander Geurds, Paul Lane, Ian Lilley, Martin Pitts, Gideon Shelach, Miriam Stark, and Miguel John Versluys, 3–11. London: Routledge, 2016.

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Igloliorte, Heather. “Arctic Culture / Global Indigeneity.” In Negotiations in a Vacant Lot: Studying the Visual in Canada, edited by Lynda Jessop, 150–70. Montreal: McGill–Queen’s University Press, 2014. Jakobsson, Sverrir. “ ‘Black Men and Malignant-​ Looking’: The Place of the Indigenous Peoples of North America in the Icelandic World View.” In Wawn and Sigurðardóttir, Approaches to Vínland, 88–104. Jennings, Justin. Globalizations and the Ancient World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Kageyama, Etsuko. “Use and Production of Silk in Sogdiana.” In Ērān ud Anērān: Studies Presented to Boris Il’ič Maršak on the Occasion of His 70th Birthday, edited by Matteo Compareti, Paola Raffetta, and Gianroberto Scarcia, 317–24. Venice: Libreria Editrice Cafoscarina, 2006. Keating, Jessica, and Lia Markey. “Response: Medievalists and Early Modernists—A World Divided?” In “Re-​assessing the Global Turn in Medieval Art History,” edited by Christina Normore, special issue, Medieval Globe 3 (2018): 203–18. Keene, Bryan C., ed. Toward a Global Middle Ages: Encountering the World Through Illuminated Manuscripts. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2019. Kleingartner, Sunhild, and Gareth Williams. “Contacts and Exchange.” In Vikings: Life and Legend, edited by Gareth Williams, Peter Pentz, and Matthias Wemhoff, 28–75. London: British Museum, 2014. Knappett, Carl. An Archaeology of Interaction: Network Perspectives on Material Culture and Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. ———. “Globalization, Connectivities, and Networks: An Archaeological Perspective.” In Geurds et al., Routledge Handbook of Archaeology and Globalization, 29–41. Krautheimer, Richard. “On Liberal Education: Commencement Address.” Bulletin of Vassar College (April 1945): 1–11. Larrington, Carolyne. “Undruðusk pa, sem fyrir var’: Wonder, Vínland, and Medieval Travel Narratives.” Medieval Scandinavia 14 (2004): 91–114. LeMoine, Genevieve. “Understanding Dorset from a Different Perspective: Worked Antler, Bone, and Ivory.” In Contributions to the Study of the Dorset Palaeo-​Eskimos, edited by Patricia D. Sutherland, 133–46. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2005. LeMoine, Genevieve, James Helmer, and Don Hanna. “Altered States: Human-​Animal Transformational Images in Dorset Art.” In The Symbolic Role of Animals in Archaeology, edited by Kathleen A. Ryan and Pam J. Crabtree, 39–50. MASCA Research Papers in Science and

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Archaeology 12. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, 1995. Lipton, Sara. Dark Mirror: The Medieval Origins of Anti-​ Jewish Iconography. New York: Metropolitan Books / Henry Holt, 2014. MacRae, Ian J. “How Are We to Imagine Them? Shamanism, Structuralism, and the Zoomorphic Series in Dorset Carving.” Anthropologica 55, no. 1 (2013): 177–96. Mann, Michael E., Zhihua Zhang, Scott Rutherford, Raymond S. Bradley, Malcolm K. Hughes, Drew Shindell, Caspar Ammann, Greg Faluvegiand, and Fenbiao Ni. “Global Signatures and Dynamic Origins of the Little Ice Age and Medieval Climate Anomaly.” Science 326, no. 5957 (November 2009): 1256–60. https://​doi​.org​/10​ .1126​/science​.1177303. Marshak, Boris I. Legends, Tales, and Fables in the Art of Sogdiana. New York: Persica, 2002. Maschner, Herbert, and Robert McGhee. Prologue and introduction to The Northern World, AD 900–1400, edited by Herbert Maschner, Owen Mason, and Robert McGhee. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2009. McMaster, Gerald, Julia Lum, and Kaitlin McCormick. “The Entangled Gaze: Indigenous and European Views of Each Other.” In “The Entangled Gaze,” special issue, Ab-​Original: Journal of Indigenous Studies and First Nations and First Peoples’ Cultures 2, no. 2 (2018): 125–40. Nielsen, Richard, and Scott F. Wolter, The Kensington Rune Stone: Compelling New Evidence. N.p.: Lake Superior Agate, 2006. Normore, Christina. “Editor’s Introduction: A World Within Worlds? Re-​assessing the Global Turn in Medieval Art History.” In “Re-​assessing the Global Turn in Medieval Art History,” edited by Christina Normore, special issue, Medieval Globe 3 (2018): 1–10. Ossenberg, Nancy Suzanne. “Ethnogenesis in the Central and Eastern Arctic: A Reconstruction Based on Cranial Nonmetric Traits.” In Contributions to the Study of the Dorset, edited by Patricia D. Sutherland, 33–56. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2005. Panaino, Antonio C. D. “Pre-​Islamic Iranian Calendrical Systems in the Context of Iranian Religious and Scientific History.” In Potts, Oxford Handbook of Ancient Iran, 953–74. Pohl, Frederick J. The Viking Settlements of North America. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1972. Pringle, Heather. “Hints of Frequent Pre-​Columbian Contact.” Science 288, no. 5467 (2000): 783–85. https://​doi​.org​/10​.1126​/science​.288​.5467​.783b. Qitsualik, Rachel A. “Skraeling.” In Our Story: Aboriginal Voices on Canada’s Past, by Tantoo Cardinal,

Tomson Highway, Basil Johnston, Thomas King, Brian Maracle, Lee Maracle, Jovette Marchessault, Rachel A. Qitsualik, and Drew Hayden Taylor, 37–66. Toronto: Anchor Canada, 2004. “Questions on ‘World Art History’: A Discussion Between Zainab Bahrani, Jaś Elsner and Rosemary Joyce, Moderated by Jeremy Tanner, with a Comment by Wu Hung.” Perspective 2 (2014): 211–24. Raspopova, Valentina I. “Textiles Represented in Sogdian Murals.” In Central Asian Textiles and Their Contexts in the Early Middle Ages, edited by Regula Schorta, 61–73. Riggisberger Berichte 9. Riggisberg: Abegg-​Stiftung, 2006. Sabo, Deborah, and George Sabo III. “A Possible Thule Carving of a Viking from Baffin Island, N.W.T.” Canadian Journal of Archaeology 2 (1978): 33–42. Shalem, Avinoam. “What Do We Mean When We Say ‘Islamic Art’? A Plea for the Critical Rewriting of the History of the Arts of Islam.” Journal of Art Historiography 6 (2012): 1–18. Silvi Antonini, Chiara. “The Paintings in the Palace of Afrasiab (Samarkand).” Rivista degli studi orientali 63, nos. 1/3 (1989): 109–44. Sutherland, Patricia D. “Helluland Archaeological Project.” Canadian History Museum, Ottawa. Accessed 15 July 2018. https://​www​ .historymuseum​.ca​/cmc​/exhibitions​/archeo​ /helluland​/str0101e​.html. ———. “Helluland Archaeological Project: Investigating Evidence of an Early European Presence in Arctic Canada.” Accessed 15 July 2018. http://​ home​.istar​.ca​/​~psutherl​/Resources​/HAP​.pdf. ———. Introduction to Contributions to the Study of the Dorset Palaeo-​Eskimos, edited by Patricia D. Sutherland, 1–11. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2005. ———. “Norse and Natives in the Eastern Arctic.” In The Viking World, edited by Stefan Brink and Neil Price, 613–17. New York: Routledge, 2008. ———. “The Question of Contact Between Dorset Paleo-​Eskimos and Early Europeans in the Eastern Arctic.” In The Northern World, AD 900–1400, edited by Herbert Maschner, Owen Mason, and Robert McGhee, 279–99. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2009. ———. “Shamanism and the Iconography of Palaeo-​ Eskimo Art.” In The Archaeology of Shamanism, edited by Neil Price, 136–45. London: Routledge, 2001. Sutherland, Patricia D., and Robert McGhee. Lost Visions, Forgotten Dreams. Exhibition at the Canadian Museum of History. https://​www​ .historymuseum​.ca​/cmc​/exhibitions​/archeo​ /paleoesq​/pes01eng​.html.

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3 Medieval Masks? Meditations on Method Out of Bounds

Sarah M. Guérin

There are methodological discrepancies and disjunctures inherent in the project of globalizing medieval art, and, in particular, there is a distinction between investigating cultures with established textual traditions and those without.1 This essay presents a series of interrelated methodological problems that I have been wrestling with as an art historian trained in the European Middle Ages coming to grips with the arts of Africa from the same period. In a reflection on methodological problems, a note on subjectivity is important. I was trained as a Western medieval art historian and as a specialist in Gothic ivories. My early interest in trade routes and the provisioning of elephant ivory to northern France led me into Africa, as the extraordinary large-​scale tusks that were prized by medieval craftsmen only came from the savannah elephant, which lives and thrives in the grassy planes and bushlands south of the Sahara.2 In 2012, Kathleen Bickford Berzock invited me to join the planning committee of the ambitious international exhibition Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time, examining trade across the Sahara between the eighth and the sixteenth centuries.3 Throughout my work for the show and catalogue, as well as for a third article on the ivory trade from the African perspective that appeared in Medieval Globe,4 I have been struck by the methodological problems posed by working on the history and art history of medieval West Africa, questions that Berzock encouraged the curatorial team to tackle. The home venue of Caravans of Gold This article discusses and illustrates West African power association objects and masks.

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at Northwestern University’s art museum, the Block Museum, allowed the exhibition to address such challenging curatorial issues head on. For me, as an art historian of medieval Europe, one of the most important hurdles in expanding my research into West Africa has been an epistemological one. In other words, the methods of generating knowledge about the past normally deployed by medieval art historians—namely, localizing and dating a work based on style, then analyzing the object within its social context with the aid of contemporaneous texts—are simply not tools available to the scholar interested in West Africa in a period contemporaneous with the European Middle Ages.5 While my comments here address the two geographic spheres in which I have conducted research, the broader disciplinary questions that my specific experience raises, I hope, will inspire the field to ask questions about methodological concerns in “globalizing” medieval studies, more generally, and medieval art history, in particular. What happens when we are “out of bounds” not only with regard to our geographic area but also with regard to the disciplinary tools in which we were trained? What happens when our research interests, more and more frequently compelled by a strong ethical bent engendered by current political events, insist that we move into areas where the historical tools to which we have become accustomed are no longer sufficient?6 I wish to investigate some of these problems through a case study that draws upon several intersecting methodological approaches: the problem of the “medieval mask.”7 In the eyes of the scholarly establishment, and perhaps the public too, wooden masks are perhaps the paradigmatic work of the “historical” or “classical” African canon;8 yet, paradoxically, such objects are completely absent from the material record from 400 to 1400.9 Might we use the question of the medieval mask as a heuristic device for probing methodological issues inherent in writing a history of West African art before the so-​called Age of Discovery? Investigating medieval masks places at the fore the real challenges that accompany the writing of global art histories for the premodern era. It also reminds us of the necessity for continuous methodological self-​reflection and of the need to question the biases that our particular disciplinary training might impose—ofttimes inappropriately. It was the “discovery” of West African masks that initially opened Europe to a consideration of the material culture of sub-​Saharan Africa as an artistic phenomenon, simultaneously inspiring a generation of radical European artists to reconfigure Western art.10 As is well known, the first objects were largely collected as a result of colonial “scientific” exploration throughout West Africa: for example, an antelope mask seized during the expeditions of General Louis Archinard, who wrested control of large parts of Mali for the French in the latter portion of the nineteenth century (fig. 3.1).11 Collecting and colonizing were incontestably part of the same violent undertaking. An important corollary to these colonial interventions is that the majority of objects in European and American collections are thereby dated based on their entry into those collections; their termini ante quem are taken to be absolute dates.12 Only rarely are scientific tests undertaken to ascertain whether works significantly predate 54

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the moment of separation from their communities.13 Beginning in 1878, West African masks were permanently on view at the Parisian Musée d’éthnographie du Trocadéro, and simultaneously markets, both high and low, were flooded with similar works.14 Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Tristan Tzara, and Amedeo Modigliani voraciously incorporated these unfamiliar forms into their art. The variety of West African masks available to artists trained in the Western tradition inspired a new stylistic vocabulary and substantially contributed to the forging of modern art. This early artistic interest in West African masks rendered them familiar to the museum-​going viewer, transforming them into archetypes of the whole category of African art. The corpus of African art from 1000 to 1400, the period contemporaneous with the European Middle Ages, however, is largely constituted by finds that have come out of the earth: from both legal and endorsed excavations and from illegal operations, the latter ranging from early irresponsible colonial endeavors to various forms of digging undertaken by local communities.15 Some of the best-​known works of art from “medieval” Africa are the golden revetment of a rhinoceros from Mapungubwe, South Africa, from the thirteenth century and the Jenné terracottas from the Inland Niger Delta, ranging from the seventh to the seventeenth centuries.16 Masks, typically made of wood, textiles, and other organic materials, stand little chance of withstanding the archaeological conditions of West Africa, and no trace of any wooden mask has been found in excavations across the region.17 Thus, while in the eyes of Western art history masks made of wood and other organic materials are perhaps the paradigmatic works of the “traditional” African canon, paradoxically, such objects are absent from the archaeological record of West Africa. Therefore, while archaeology as a discipline is by far the best-​equipped to answer questions regarding the deep past in West Africa and, year after year, this discipline publishes exciting new discoveries,18 the areas of particular interest to art history, namely masks and wooden sculptures, are inaccessible to archaeology’s tool kit. There is, however, one notable exception in the material of copper alloy: perhaps one of the most famous of the naturalistic Ife copper-​alloy sculptures depicting, as Suzanne Blier suggests, Obalufon II, the Ooni (ruler) of Ife in the fourteenth century (fig. 3.2).19 The narrow slits below the sculpted eyes as well as an open mouth facilitated the wearing of this object, and smaller perforations along the beard and hairline may have been for attaching hair, beards, or other accoutrements. Blier proposes that this extraordinary mask was assumed for royal rituals of succession and commemoration, although Rowland Abiodun critiques the use of the mimetic mode in the sacred arts of Ife rulership.20 In any case, the copper-​alloy Obalufon mask is a unicum, even within the Ife corpus, and no other masks are known from ancient Ife nor from other West African cultures. Medieval Masks?

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Figure 3.1 Ciwara kun, an antelope mask from the ciwara power association, Mali, nineteenth century (?). Wood, vegetal fibers, 36.5 × 10.5 × 11.5 cm, 327 g. Mask collected by General Louis Archinard; accessioned by the Musée d’Éthographie du Trocadéro in 1883. Paris, Musée Quai Branly, 71.1883.45.12. Photo © Musée du quai Branly—Jacques Chirac (http://​www​.quaibranly​.fr). Reproduction rights reserved.

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Figure 3.2 Mask possibly representing Ife ruler Obalufon II, Ife, thirteenth or fourteenth century (thermoluminescence dating of clay core: 1221–1369). Copper alloy, height: 29.5 cm. Ife, Museum of Ife Antiquities, No. 12. Photo: Scala / Art Resource, New York.

A compelling exception of West African wood sculpture surviving from the medieval period to today is the remarkable set of remains from the Bandiagara escarpment (Mali), preserved not in the ground but in the dry caves typical of that arid plateau. For example, the standing sculpture with upraised arms now at the Musée du Quai Branly, which radiocarbon dating has placed in the tenth or eleventh century, offers a rare example of truly monumental wood carving from the deep past in West Africa (fig. 3.3).21 For all of the real interest the Bandiagara sculptures offer specialists of West African art, they pose almost as many problems. The tool that anthropologists and art historians alike have traditionally used to make sense of works produced by cultures with no written records is ethnography—a thick description of a local culture, built up by on-​site observation, interviews, and reflection in order to construct a picture of the cultural system and, for art historians, to decipher the place of an object within that system or structure.22 Note the present tense. Ethnography is a tool developed to study living communities, and when it is used to investigate history, 56

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Figure 3.3 Androgynous Statue from the Pre-​Dogon (Tellem), Mali, central plateau region (Bandiagara escarpment), tenth–eleventh century (carbon dating: 1050–95). Wood, height: 210 cm. Paris, Musée du Quai Branly, 70.2004.12.1. Photo: Patrick Gries / Valéria Torre. © Museée du quai Branly—Jacques Chirac, Dist. RMN-​Grand Palais / Art Resource, New York.

there is a necessary, and uncomfortable, blurring between the people of the present and those of the past, an approach sometimes labeled ethnohistory.23 At best there is an assumption of cultural continuity that makes the past legible; at worst there is a presumption of the static eternal of “primitive” cultures. Research on Africa has been especially susceptible to the latter, as the continent has frequently been figured as a “living fossil,” where development, change, and thereby history itself had little impact before the “decisive” arrival of Europeans—a mode that Susan Gagliardi, together with many others, has shown to be rampant in the historiography.24 The ethnographic approach is especially thwarted in the case of the sculptures from the Bandiagara escarpment: in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, peoples who now identify as Dogon moved into this region with a new cultural system, visible in the archaeological record.25 The communities that produced the impressive standing sculptures, called by Dogon communities Tellem or “those who came before,” have no known living descendants.26 Simply put, there is no one to whom ethnographers Medieval Masks?

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might pose their probing questions. It is an exacerbated situation of a general principle—that twenty-​first-century communities never correspond identically with those who lived in the past. Communities have undergone historical and cultural change here, in West Africa, as they have elsewhere around the globe over the last millennia. Nevertheless, ethnography is a dominant and indispensable methodological tool in the art-​historical writing on West African arts of the deep past. Thus, if we—here the “we” is the Western trained art historian, so dependent on textual traditions, who feels righteous distain at the assumption of a persistence of traditional cultures—completely disregard the usefulness of ethnography to modern scholarship, the field is left with very little to say at all. It is to shy away from the history of whole swaths of the world for methodological discomfort. A middle path must be sought. With these caveats in mind, let us now turn to the central question of the mask. There is one well-​known piece of evidence that attests to the use of a full-​body bird mask in the mid-​fourteenth century. It is textual, not material, in nature. The hundreds of cultural and linguistic groups of sub-​Saharan West Africa pursued their political, religious, and social lives without relying on written textual traditions.27 The polities and economies of West Africa functioned without written records.28 Thus, foreigners wrote the meager texts upon which we might rely for understanding the history and art history of West Africa. They were either Arab travelers who made the journey across the Sahara or armchair geographers who spoke to someone who had, reporting on the commodities, customs, and political intrigues across the region. The most famous of these texts from across the Arabophone world were anthologized, translated, and commented upon by Nehemia Levtzion and John F. P. Hopkins, creating a volume indispensable for research on West Africa.29 The Arabic accounts are incredibly valuable to the historian, yet deeply biased and inherently flawed: myth rubs shoulders with fact, and sensitive observations are clouded by chauvinistic judgments.30 And yet to ignore or dismiss these texts is similarly to disregard one of the major sources of information regarding West Africa in the Middle Ages. In their foundational 1992 text, Ethnography and the Historical Imagination, John and Jean Comaroff explored methodological models whereby text and ethnography are used together, each source providing a check and balance for the other. The Comaroffs argue that historical knowledge arises from the productive tension between problematic written sources and modern ethnography: “If texts are to be more than literary topoi, scattered shards from which we presume worlds, they have to be anchored in the processes of their production, in the orbits of connection and influence that give them life and force.”31 Indeed, I wish to suspend just such a compelling textual fragment not only within the context of its own production but, moreover, within a suggestive web of ethnographic connections and correlations, not to give us a definitive picture of “the” medieval mask but to circumscribe an arena in which such an object might have acted. The passage I would thus like to examine more closely is by the inveterate traveler from Tangiers, Ibn Battuta (1304–1377), who, after having journeyed through the 58

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Map of West Africa with modern national borders

Sijilmasa *

Southbound Journey of Ibn Battuta AH 753/1352 CE Northbound Journey of Ibn Battuta AH 754/1353 CE Road travelled by Dakar-Dijbouti mission, September 6th or 7th, 1931

* Tabalbala

ALG ERIA * Bouda

* Taghaza

Tamanresset *

* Bir el Ksaib

MA U RITA N IA

MALI * Azelik (Takedda)

Oulata *

NIG ER

Timbuktu * * Gao

*Kayes Segou

Zaghari (?) *

Djenne *

* * * San Bla * * Kangaba * Bamako Diabougou Kéméni * * Kéla

* Banakourou * Niani

GU IN E A

NIGERIA

* Ife

Middle East, East Africa, and Central and East Asia, took a final trip toward the end of his life to the Empire of Mali (fig. 3.4).32 His itineraries, observations, and experiences were compiled and narrativized when he was an elderly man by a scribe, Ibn Juzayy, in a text entitled Tuḥfat al-​nuẓẓār fī gharā ib al-​amṣār wa ajā ib al-​asfār (A precious gift to those who contemplate the wonders of cities and the marvels of traveling), generally called the Riḥla or “journey.”33 Given a number of textual interpolations worked into Ibn Battuta’s account, some modern scholars have questioned whether Ibn Battuta verily took this last trip south of the Sahara.34 Growing scholarly consensus, however, holds that even if Ibn Battuta did not himself travel south of the Sahara—and I myself do not find the arguments against the trip convincing—the narrative was nevertheless based on a reliable witness who did.35 The Riḥla relates that in ah 753 / 1352 ce, Ibn Battuta left Sijilmasa, beginning his last journey, southbound across the Sahara together with a large caravan. Two months later the caravan arrived in Oulata, an Amazigh trade entrepôt that rose to prominence in the late thirteenth century. After Oulata, Ibn Battuta continued on to the court of Mansa Sulayman, the Muslim ruler of the vast Empire of Mali, which stretched, in this period, across the Sahel (the “shores” of the Sahara) from modern Senegal to Gao on the eastern bend of the Niger River. In the thirteenth century, the Medieval Masks?

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Figure 3.4 Map of West Africa. Diagram: author.

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royal house of Mali gradually spread control over West Africa through both political alliances and conquests, and it converted to Islam in either the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century—a history reconstructed based on archaeological, oral, and Arabic sources.36 The language of the mansa of Mali’s court is thought to be an archaic form of Mande. Bamana is one of the most prominent of the modern Mande languages and is the main spoken language of the Republic of Mali, named after the historical empire when it achieved independence in 1960. In twenty-​first-​century West Africa, Mande is also a broad umbrella that encompasses dozens of cultural and linguistic subsets, some Muslim, others practicing “traditional” religions. Scholars are still at a loss as to where exactly the capital of Mali that Ibn Battuta visited in the mid-​fourteenth century might have been, though the probability that the medieval capital was either itinerant or subsumed under the modern one at Bamako is substantial.37 Wherever the capital city might have been, the text of Ibn Battuta’s Riḥla describes a number of court ceremonies witnessed during his stay. As already mentioned, some of Ibn Battuta’s descriptions were interpolated from earlier accounts, notably those of al-‘Umari (1300–1349), a Mamluk bureaucrat in Cairo. Al-‘Umari recorded numerous accounts surrounding the visit of the previous mansa, the famously rich Mansa Musa, who passed through the city victorious on his hajj in 1324 or 1325.38 Many of the court ceremonies of Mali appear in both Ibn Battuta’s and al-‘Umari’s texts. Yet the anecdote in which we are interested does not appear in al-‘Umari’s account, and it importantly uses a couple of correct loan words related to modern Mande vocabulary to describe the ceremony, spelled out phonetically in Arabic letters (indicated by italics). Ibn Battuta described a masked performance, part of the court festivities on Eid al-​fitr, the feast marking the end of the Ramadan fasts:39 A comical story about the poets’ reciting to the sultan On the feast day, when Dugha [Ibn Battuta’s interpreter] has finished his performance, the poets come in. They are called julā, each one being a jālī. Each of them is inside a costume made of feathers resembling a shaqshaq, on which is a wooden head with a red beak like the head of a shaqshaq. They stand before the sultan in this laughable shape and recite their poems. I have been told that their poetry is a sort of admonition. They say to the Sultan: “This banbī [throne], formerly such-​and-​such a king sat on it and performed noble actions, and so-​and-​so did such-​and-​such; so you do noble acts which will be recounted after you.” The chief poet climbs the steps of the banbī and puts his head in the Sultan’s lap; then he climbs to the top of the banbī and puts his head on the Sultan’s right shoulder, then on his left shoulder, talking all the time in their language. Then he comes down. I have been told that this custom has continued among them since ancient times before Islam, and that they have persisted in it.40 60

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Ibn Battuta thus offers a detailed description of a masked recounting of oral history at the court of the emperor of Mali. Regarding the question of the use of masks in West Africa in the longue durée, this description of bird masks, comprising both red-​beaked wooden heads and feathered costumes, is frequently cited in the literature.41 At the very least, the text offers proof of the longevity of similar practices described in the colonial literature beginning in the eighteenth century.42 For example, René Caillié (1799–1838) describes a musical entertainment at Kankan (modern Guinea) with many similarities to that witnessed by Ibn Battuta: “The leaders of the band of musicians wore cloaks adorned with Guinea fowl’s feathers, and they had ostrich plumes on their heads.”43 Yet, for scholars interested in the culture of the fourteenth century itself, through what means might one deepen our understanding of Ibn Battuta’s anecdote? Here is where my training as a specialist in the European Middle Ages truly becomes problematic—namely linguistically. I read neither Arabic nor any of the Mande languages. Nevertheless, my training has instilled within me the fundamental imperative to come to grips with an original text. I thus deployed a tactic that I think essential in the project of globalizing art history or medieval studies: collaboration. I asked Dr. Kelly Tuttle, head cataloguer for the Manuscripts of the Muslim World project at the University of Pennsylvania Libraries, to work through the edited version of the Arabic text with me and to answer specific questions.44 I had two in particular. First, I was interested in the transliterated words Jula-​Jali45 and bembe, both of which she assured me are spelled out phonetically with great meticulousness. We will return to these terms. Second, I was curious as to the judgmental and patronizing adjectives that appear in the title and text: amusing and comical in the H. A. R. Gibb translation we have been using, laughable and ridiculous in another English translation,46 and plaisante and ridicule in the standard French translation by Charles Defrémery and Beniamino Sanguinetti.47 While the translations each use a different word in title and text, Tuttle pointed out that in Arabic the same term—ḍaḥakah—is used in both instances. Ḍaḥakah refers to the expanding of the face or the showing of teeth when laughing or smiling, thereby literally “ridiculous” or “risible” but not necessarily with the mocking connotations these words carry in English or in French; ḍaḥakah can even be used more for a sense of wonder or cheerful joy.48 Several pages later, however, Ibn Battuta comments upon “what I found good and what I found bad in the conduct of the Blacks,” and key among his complaints is “the clowning [uḍḥūkah] we have described when poets recite their works.”49 Uḍḥūkah (clowning or bouffonerie in French) is a derivative of ḍaḥakah and carries more markedly pejorative connotations, suggesting an object of ridicule or a laughingstock.50 Thus, although the patronizing and condescending tone conveyed by the nineteenth- and twentieth-​century translations might be modulated with overtones of wonder and interested engagement, Ibn Battuta is nevertheless a critical, if interested, onlooker. For the sake of this argument, let us take Ibn Battuta as an accurate, if not unbiased, reporter of this ceremony, as it was performed some six hundred years ago. How Medieval Masks?

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Figure 3.5 Turdus merula mauritanicus, photographed 27 March 2016, at the Souss Massa near Agadir. Photo: Roger Wasley.

might we make sense of it? What other information might be brought to bear to flesh out our understanding of the use of masks in medieval West Africa? The Empire of Mali, together with its court rituals, fell in the sixteenth century, and the subsequent overlord of the region was the Songhai Empire, a different cultural-​linguistic group, thus marking a definitive break in courtly traditions.51 Taking the details of Ibn Battuta’s description more seriously may allow us to imagine more fully the fourteenth-​century masks he saw before him. First, Ibn Battuta witnessed a group of poets wearing bird masks, and they as a group recited poetry before the sultan, that is, before Mansa Sulayman. The communal nature of this performance has generally been overlooked by the scholarship; there was more than one masked poet. Both the head (kun) and the feathered costume (duloki [shirt]) the poets wore resemble a bird Ibn Battuta identifies as a shaqshaq.52 In choosing this term, Ibn Battuta (or perhaps Ibn Juzayy) drew upon his own visual repertoire to convey to the Arabophone audience the form of the masks—taking the text seriously and identifying the Moroccan bird furnishes formal details otherwise occluded. Although previous commentators have put forward other suggestions,53 according to the philologist Reinart Dozy, shuqshuq is onomatopoeic, emulating the twittering of songbirds, and it may correspond to a common blackbird (merle).54 We may indicate more specifically the North and West African subspecies of blackbird, Turdus merula mauritanicus (fig. 3.5). This blackbird is noticeable for its bright reddish-​orange beak, set off against jet-​black plumage. Dozy drew his interpretation from a 1505 printed lexicon of Arabic spoken colloquially in Granada, a text that Pedro de Alcalá 62

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(fl. ca. 1500) compiled with missionary ambitions; Alcalá offers the definition “Mierla av. Mollora, malguir (choqchoq).”55 This translation, published fewer than 150 years after Ibn Juzayy penned Ibn Battuta’s Riḥla, compiled in a region culturally, geographically, and linguistically close to the authors’ native territory, must be taken as strong evidence.56 In describing the masked poets as resembling shaqshaqs, Ibn Battuta meant that they resembled blackbirds. For this reason, perhaps, he did not independently note the color of the feathers on the poets’ costumes. Five hundred years later, a member of the Society of the Missionaries of Africa, Joseph Henry (in French West Africa from 1901 to 1908), was assigned to the village Banakourou (Kayes Region, Mali) and conducted field research in this region.57 Henry took particular interest in the power associations, or initiation associations, that flourished across the region—hermetic, gender-​ based institutions that wield secret knowledge to handle energy and power.58 Although it is not clear under what circumstances, Henry observed a mask composed of both a wooden helmet and a feathered costume similar to that described by Ibn Battuta: “Le Kono a lui aussi son masque! Il n’est pas articulé et son manteau de plumes n’est plus comme le premier bigarré; toutes ses plumes sont des plumes de djougo, des plumes noires.” (Kono also has a mask! It is not articulated and its costume of feathers is not variegated like the previous one; all of its feathers are the feathers of the djougo, black feathers).59 The kònò power association mask is composed of a wooden helmet mask coupled with a uniformly black-​feathered costume, in contrast to the variegated or even motley plumage of the articulated kòmò masks described previously.60 The black feathers, he notes, come from the djougo, the Abyssinian ground hornbill.61 Note, however, that Henry did not assert that the mask resembled a djougo, simply that that creature’s feathers ornament the costume. Although Henry does not give further detail of the kònò masks in his text, two photographs were published alongside (fig. 3.6).62 Typical of kònò masks collected from other contexts, these are an ambiguous zoomorphic form, combining characteristics of hyenas, lions, elephants, antelopes, and also perhaps birds.63 Several early twentieth-​century observers described the elongated kònò masks as birds.64 In Bamana, in fact, kònò means bird.65 In considering Henry’s text alongside Ibn Battuta’s testimony, we have definitively moved from the historic to the ethnographic, from the fourteenth to the twentieth century. Masks that correspond more or less to those described by Ibn Battuta at the court of Mali were collected in the first decades of the twentieth century from power association sanctuaries, notably places dedicated to kònò.66 An example at the Musée du Quai Branly is composed of a large wooden mask (89 × 30 × 24 cm) with the distinct, long, beak-​like muzzle covered with coagulated sacrificial patina and a tuft of feathers Medieval Masks?

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Figure 3.6 Kònò power association mask, Kayes region, Mali, before 1910. From Jos.[eph] Henry, L’âme d’un peuple africain: Les Bambara, leur vie psychique, éthique, sociale, religieuse (Münster: Aschendorff, 1910), 148.

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Figure 3.7 Kònò tunic and mask, held in a kònò power association sanctuary in Kéméni, Mali, until its forceful removal in 1931. Cotton tunic, covered with vulture and chicken feathers, etc. 194 × 125 × 90 cm, 13220 g. Wood mask, textile, feathers, congealed blood, leather, 89 × 30 × 24 cm. Dakar-​ Djibouti Mission (collected by Marcel Griaule, September 1931); Paris, Musée du Quai Branly, 71.1931.74.1066.1&2. Photo © Musée du quai Branly—Jacques Chirac (http://​www​.quaibranly​.fr). Reproduction rights reserved.

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Figure 3.8 Photograph of Marcel Griaule and Michel Leiris in Kéméni (Sikasso region), Mali, 6 September 1931. Caption reads: “Griaule et Leiris s’apprétant à sacrifier au Kono.” Note that soon after the photograph was taken, unable to make their sacrifice, the anthropologists forcefully enter the shrine and remove the mask (figure 3.7). Paris, Musée du Quai Branly, PV0077175. Photo © Musée du quai Branly—Jacques Chirac (http://​www​.quaibranly​.fr). Reproduction rights reserved.

between the ears, paired with a vulture- and chicken-​feather-​covered cotton tunic (194 × 125 × 90 cm) (fig. 3.7). The mask’s provenance is shocking. It was rapaciously seized by Marcel Griaule and the Dakar-​Dijbouti mission on either 6 or 7 September 1931, while in the region of Ségou (fig. 3.8).67 On those days, the mission stopped at the villages of Kéméni, Dyabougou, and an unnamed third town—all stops along the road between Bla and San. In Afrique fantôme, Michel Lieris, another member of the notorious mission, recounted the blatant thefts, underscoring the horrified reactions of the three communities at the team’s defilements and explicitly describing their acts as rape, “le rapt.”68 Felwine Sarr and Bénédicte Savoy, building upon the indignant voices of many others, have pointed out that the very presence of these sacred masks in Western collections is problematic and unethical.69 Lieris twice described the costume and mask violently seized in Kéméni. First, describing it inside the kònò sacred compound, he writes: “À gauche, pendu au plafond au milieu d’une foule de calebasses, un paquet innommable, couvert de plumes de différents oiseaux et dans lequel Griaule, qui palpe, sent qu’il y a un masque” (At the Medieval Masks?

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left, hanging from the ceiling, in the middle of bunch of calabashes, is an unnamable package, covered in feathers of different birds and in which Griaule, when he handles it, feels that there is a mask).70 Note the emphasis on the multiple types of feathers, different from the uniformly black feathers that Henry had associated with the kònò nearly eight hundred kilometers away from Kéméni in Banakourou (in the Kayes region). Such discrepancies underscore the diversity of even contemporary practices. Later, after Lieris and Griaule pugnaciously wrapped the sacred bundle in a tarp, whisking it away to the waiting truck, and the “ethnographers” had made their escape to the next town (Dyabougou), their booty (butin) was unwrapped to discover the wooden helmet mask. Lieris writes: “C’est un énorme masque à forme vaguement animale, malheureusement détérioré, mais entièrement recouvert d’une croute de sang coagulé qui lui confère la majesté que le sang confère à toutes choses” (It is an enormous mask in a vaguely animal form, unfortunately deteriorated, but entirely covered in a crust of coagulated blood which confers upon it the majesty that blood gives to all things).71 The ambiguous animal form typical of kònò had suffered deterioration, perhaps indicative of age, and it was (as it still is) covered with a thick patina generated by numerous sacrifices. This sacred kònò mask had a unique role to play within the early twentieth-​century community of Kéméni, and its abduction caused great distress; it was the lone example in the power association compound. The mask itself was the recipient of blood sacrifices, and it manifested extraordinary spiritual power within the community. Its singularity makes it profoundly unlike the numerous bird masks seen in dances by Ibn Battuta, although it shares formal similarities with them. The courtly ritual accompanied by music and dance that Ibn Battuta witnessed seems, by comparison, less spiritually encumbered. Several pieces of evidence, therefore, point the modern scholar in the direction of kònò power associations. Mande power associations, important social organizations in the broader Mande world, have been studied by several scholars, including Germaine Dieterlen, Dominique Zahan, Patrick McNaughton, Jean-​Paul Colleyn, and, more recently, Susan Gagliardi.72 Power associations, like the ntomo, korè, ci-​wara, and kòmò, among others, are gender and age specific, and the different associations regulate various aspects of social life, drawing upon a plurality of spiritual and philosophical principles that have circulated in West Africa for the last thousand years.73 As important as power associations are in current ethnography and historiography, the mistake must not be made, especially while considering the fourteenth-​century passage from Ibn Battuta, of assuming these institutions to be age-​old or as existing outside time and history. Jonathan E. Aden has recently shown how the power associations, at the very least, gained prominence and were possibly formalized in the profound societal disruptions caused by the French incursions of the nineteenth century.74 Colonial conflicts exacerbated the dichotomy in Mande societies between those practicing “traditional religions” (fetichists in the colonial sources) and Islamic communities. Thus the increased ethnographic observations of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries participate in, and are not outside of, the complex history taking place in West Africa 66

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at that time. Power associations are modern and contemporary institutions; the object described in the passage from Ibn Battuta, with its formal similarities to nineteenthand twentieth-​century ritual objects, cannot offer proof of the long-​standing existence of power associations, just as the kònò mask at the Musée du Quai Branly does not simply illustrate the dance at the court of Mansa Sulayman.75 One must be wary of the overinterpretation of evidence in both chronological directions. Thus far we have considered formal parallels for the masks Ibn Battuta described in 1352, but the context and content may be considered as well: the recounting of an oral history. Ibn Battuta detailed: “I have been told that their poetry is a sort of admonition. They say to the Sultan: ‘This banbī [throne], formerly such-​and-​such a king sat on it and performed noble actions, and so-​and-​so did such-​and-​such; so you do noble acts which will be recounted after you.’ ” The highlight of the feast of Eid at the court of Mali was a live performance of poetic renderings of royal lineages, naming good deeds and presenting positive models for the mansa to emulate. As much as masks similar to those described by Ibn Battuta are prominent in Bamana visual culture today, such oral histories are vital aspects of a whole range of contemporary Mande cultures.76 The inclusion of the transliterated loan word julā (sing. jālī), spelled out phonetically in Arabic and employed explicitly to name the masked poets, is close enough to modern Mande words for bard or griot to solicit pause: for example, in Bamana jèli (pl. jèliw) or in Maninka jali (pl. jaliw).77 In modern contexts, the jèliw, together with the blacksmiths and leather workers, form a cohort of endogamous specialist groups whose tasks are called nyamakala; they are those who are able to “handle” nyama, the powerful life forces associated with large wild animals, potent botanicals (like poisons), and animating energy.78 The harnessing and/or counteracting of nyama constitutes an important concept in Mande material cultures and visual production—thus the jèli’s handling of history can be seen as energetically akin to the forging of ritual iron staffs or the construction of powerful helmet masks.79 One might think of the forging of history. Interestingly, several scholars have stressed the specific links between the jèliw and kònò power associations. According to McNaughton, kònò power associations are distinguished from kòmò by being reserved for bards.80 Even more tantalizing, McNaughton reports that “one branch [of kònò] is said to have been led by the same bard family since the time of the Mali Empire.”81 In writing about a youth-​association masquerade performed by Sidi Ballo in Dogodouman, outside of Bamako, in 1978, McNaughton not only made passing reference to Ibn Battuta but, more important, dove into the significance of a whole range of birds, including the local blackbird (more properly a thrush) called locally a siba or sigwè.82 While a Mande hunting epic presents the siba, the “very small blackbird,” as an omen of misfortune, felling the master hunter in the deep bush, other songbirds are associated directly with the role of bards, truth telling, and education.83 Seydou Camara, a bard who shared his repertoire and understanding of it with Charles Bird, referred to himself as a preaching bird: “I am a bird Medieval Masks?

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who preaches. I make the stupid intelligent, and give circumspection to those who are not circumspective.”84 The significance of the songbird underscores links between birds and the transmission of knowledge in the form of oral histories. In addition to the robust griot tradition among most West African communities—with its specific ties to birds in Mande cultures and perhaps to kònò—there is, moreover, a particular oral historical tradition that seems to cover the exact content Ibn Battuta referenced: the list of rulers of Mali, their good deeds, and even their adventures. The Sunjata has been understood as the foundational epic of the Empire of Mali.85 It tells of the trials and tribulations of Sunjata Keita, likely the first mansa of Mali, and his cohort of companions. It is a story that tells of a prophesied but imperfect and rejected royal son who, after having escaped persecution in his father’s kingdom, eventually saves his people from a sorcerer overlord.86 Key, however, to understanding the success and longevity of this epic far beyond the demise of the Empire of Mali is the list of Sunjata’s companions: Tabon Wana, Kamadia Camara, Faony Condé, Siara Kuman Konaté, and Tiramakhan Traore. The names of the companions are the surnames of many of the prominent kin groups in Mali today. Unlike the oral epics with which Western European scholars might be more familiar—like the Homeric texts or Beowulf—the episodes and nuances of the Sunjata are more flexible in nature. Every bard tells a different version, and the good jèli or griot shapes his account to emphasize his audience, their ancestors, and the specific political context.87 The point of the recounting of the narrative is to focus in on heroic ancestors and genealogy, models for good deeds and behavior—indeed, a compelling analog to what Ibn Battuta reported. The performance of the Sunjata, as with other sung texts of the griots, is a carefully orchestrated ceremony, including musical interludes, dancing, and guild-​specific dress.88 More and more frequently, it must be noted, griot performances have moved from village squares to urban performance halls, and the jèliw are an intrinsic part of Malian culture in the twenty-​first century. Even in “traditional” contexts, today’s jèliw do not perform with a mask and costume as Ibn Battuta described in the fourteenth century, but the tradition of oral history performances, and their role in mediating power, is, and likely has been for a very long time, a vital part of Mande cultures. A picture, however faint, of the lost “medieval” Mande mask can emerge from this overlaying of historical texts with ethnographic observations. The anecdote from Ibn Battuta, taken seriously as a mediated historical event, can be brought close to two “ethnographic analogs”: first, the sacred masks of the kònò power associations and, second, the dynamic role of the jèliw and oral histories within Mande communities, rural and urban alike, preserving and disseminating stories that reinforce concepts of lineage, mores, and models of rulership.89 The anecdote recounted by Ibn Battuta, itself a mediated event, does not map neatly onto a single practice evident in the vast diversity of Mande communities today; however, careful attention to the details of the text—vocabulary, loan words, descriptions, and contents of the poet’s 68

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compositions—allow certain strands to be analogized with current practices today. In other words, ethnography for the West African art historian is not employed merely simplistically. No one implies that Mande cultures today are identical to those of some seven hundred years ago; rather, current practices reflect the past obliquely. Court rituals of the fourteenth-​century Empire of Mali are ultimately inaccessible to the art historian, but the placement of Ibn Battuta’s text within the orbits of connection and influence give it life and force (to paraphrase John and Jean Comaroff); it reanimates an art form, the mask, that is otherwise nearly lost to the study African art history of the deep past. Coming to grips with such ethnohistoric approaches, moreover, is necessary to fill in the gaps of archaeology. The aspiring global medievalist must thus expand her toolkit and think “out of bounds” not only in terms of the geographic limits of medieval Europe but in terms of the methodological instruments characteristic of the discipline.

Notes 1. Taylor’s essay “Oral Performance” spurred me to think differently about postcolonial methods, specifically as a Canadian historian. This paper was first presented at the “Out of Bounds: Exploring the Limits of Medieval Art” conference in November 2018 organized by Pamela Patton, and I thank her for her encouragement and feedback. I subsequently presented versions at the 2019 sessions of the Medieval Academy of America and the African Studies Association. I would like to thank especially Susan Gagliardi, Constantine Petridis, Beate Fricke, Jack Hartnell, Nicholas Herman, Andrea Myers Achi, Abdallah Fili, and Kathleen Bickford Berzock for their dialogue and feedback. Academic publishing is a lengthy process. In the five years between my writing this paper and the correction of its proofs in 2023, the ethics surrounding museum practice and display, notably attention to provenance for African art, have changed radically. While notes and some bibliography have been added, I have decided to not adjust substantially the nature of the evidence I here present. 2. Guérin, “ ‘Avorio d’ogni ragione,’ ” and Guérin, “Forgotten Routes?” 3. Berzock, Caravans of Gold. 4. Guérin, “Exchange of Sacrifices.” 5. For methodologies in African history, see Brizuela-​Garcia and Getz, African Histories. In the specialist literature, see Stahl, “Africa in the World,” and de Luna, Fleisher, and Keech McIntosh, “Thinking Across the African Past.”

6. See, for example, Schuessler, “Symbols of Past Used”; Albin et al., Whose Middle Ages?; Hsy, Antiracist Medievalisms. 7. As Eurocentric terms, “medieval” or “Middle Ages” are strongly contested in African contexts. See, for example, Roland and Atmore, Medieval Africa. Although problematic, “medieval” has advantages over such terms as “Iron Age” or “late Holocene.” While technically correct, this is the vocabulary of prehistory, and for nonspecialists, the terms do not connote the civilizations that shaped West Africa throughout this period. See also Reid, “Past and Presentism.” Heng outlines the problems with the occidentalizing term but emphasizes the benefits of a shared vocabulary for communication (“Early Globalities,” esp. 236–38). 8. This generalization is supported by textbook covers; see, for example, Willett, African Art, and Selected Works from the Collection. 9. Fauvelle-​Aymar, Rhinocéros d’or, and Garlake, Early Art and Architecture of Africa. For masks in twelfth- or thirteenth-​century Christian Nubia, see Martens-​Czarnecka, “Two Unique Paintings.” Andrea Myers Achi is preparing a study of this fascinating witness to rituals in Nubian Christianity. 10. Rubin, Primitivism in 20th Century Art, and Poggi, “Picasso’s First Constructed Sculpture.” For the continued phenomenon in contemporary art, see McClusky and Massaquoi, Disguise. 11. The nature of early collecting has been forcefully articulated in the study commissioned by French president Emmanuel Macron: Sarr and Savoy, Restituer le patrimoine Africain. See also Clarke,

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Collecting African Art, and Berzock and Clarke, Representing Africa. For the contemporary trade in traditional African arts, see Stoller, Money Has No Smell. On the antelope mask, see Ezra, “Early Sources,” 158n1. On General Archinard, see Jorio, “Remembering the Colonial Past”; Le Fur, D’un regard l’autre, 246; Cuttier, Portrait du colonialisme triomphant. For other details on this work, see the online catalogue of the Musée du Quai Branly (71.1883.45.12): http://​www​ .quaibranly​.fr​/en​/explore​-collections​/base​/Work​ /action​/show​/notice​/192988. 12. For example, Bassani and McLeod, African Art and Artefacts. 13. The variety of styles in the group of nine cast copper-​alloy sculptures “found” in proximity to Jebba Island on the Niger (the so-​called Tsoede bronzes), however, compelled scientific testing. See Willett and Fleming, “Catalogue of Important Copper-​Alloy Castings.” 14. Dias, Musée d’ethnographie du Trocadéro. 15. See Garlake, Early Art and Architecture, 26–27; Insoll, “Looting the Antiquities of Mali”; Dembélé et al., “Fragments at Risk”; see also note 16. 16. Fouché, Mapungubwe; Steyn, “Mapungubwe Gold Graves Revisited”; McIntosh and Keech McIntosh, “Terracotta Statuettes from Mali”; McIntosh, “Middle Niger Terracottas”; Devisse, Vallées du Niger, esp. 534 (cat. no. 34); see also LaGamma, Sahel. For stern criticism, see McIntosh and Keech McIntosh, “Dilettantism and Plunder”; and more recent assessments in McNaughton, “Protecting Mali’s Cultural Heritage,” esp. articles by Samuel Sidibé, Patrick McNaughton, Roderick J. McIntosh, Téréba Togola, and Susan Keech McIntosh. 17. For wood in archaeological (shrine) contexts, see Insoll, Material Explorations, 290–92. 18. For example, see Nixon, Essouk-​Tadmekka; Dueppen and Gokee, “Hunting on the Margins”; MacDonald et al., “Sorotomo.” 19. Drewal and Schildkrout, Dynasty and Divinity; Martin, Féau, and Joubert, Arts du Nigéria; Blier, “Kings, Crowns and Rights of Succession”; Blier, “Art in Ancient Ife”; Blier, Art and Risk in Ancient Yoruba. For evidence of masking in the Senegambian region as early as the late seventeenth century, see Mark, The Wild Bull and the Sacred Forest; and Mark, “Finding Provenance.” 20. Abiodun, Yoruba Art and Language, esp. 207–44. See also Blier, “Mimesis.” 21. Paris, Musée du Quai Branly, 70.2004.12.1. For the positives of radiocarbon dating in the Dogon corpus, see Leloup, Dogon Statuary, 101–3, 580 (for results). For a critique, see Bedaux and van der Waals, Regards sur les Dogon du Mali, 128–33, esp. 130–31. Bedaux underscores that the majority of Dogon or Tellem sculptures were removed from the

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Bandiagara caves without official supervision; his analysis shows little evidence for differentiation between Tellem or Dogon sculptures based on style (“Tellem and Dogon Material Culture”). 22. Clifford, Fortun, and Marcus, Writing Culture, and LeCompte and Schensul, Designing and Conducting Ethnographic Research. 23. The approach is sometimes called ethnohistory. See Wolf, Europe and the People Without History; Knapp, Archaeology, Annales, and Ethnohistory; Kepecs, “Introduction to New Approaches.” 24. Gagliardi, Senufo Unbound, 105 (criticizing Goldwater, Senufo). For a critique of the “one tribe, one style” paradigm and the mendacious vision of African cultures as static and rigid, see also Colleyn, Bamana, 10–12. 25. Dating is based on the nine Sigi masks ritually deposited in a cave of the village of Ibi every sixty years. The masks corroborate oral traditions of the Dogon’s arrival in the region in the fifteenth century, as well as archaeological investigations. Griaule, Masques dogons, 28n2. The masks examined in the 1930s have all disappeared, likely entering the art market with their exceptional provenance forgotten. See Panella, “Quelque notes,” 214–16. For a critique of Griaule’s ethnographic work and a condemnation of its use in iconographic studies, see Van Beek, “Dogon Restudied.” 26. Bedaux underscores continuity between the two cultures, proposing that the Tellem and Dogon coexisted and shared technology for a period before the Tellem disappeared (“Tellem and Dogon Material Culture,” 41–45). For Tellem architectural monuments and their dating, see Bedaux, “Tellem, reconnaissance archéologique.” 27. There are a few exceptions. Tifinagh is the ancient alphabet of the Libyco-​Berbers. Its western variants were largely used for short inscriptions, while Numidian, its eastern cousin, was deployed for longer texts. See Casajus, Alphabet touareg, and Pichler, Origin and Development. The nsibidi system is a form of pictographic protowriting from the Cross River region of southern Nigeria that has been found on ceramics excavated from near Calabar, dating to the eleventh to fourteenth centuries (thanks to Timothy Hampshire). See Slogar, “Early Ceramics from Calabar, Nigeria.” For the Vai syllabary of Liberia and Sierra Leone composed circa 1830, see Hau, “Pre-​ Islamic Writing in West Africa,” and Tuchscherer and Hair, “Cherokee and West Africa.” 28. Hau, “Pre-​Islamic Writing in West Africa.” For the long history of urban settlements on the Inland Niger Delta, which flourished without written records, see McIntosh, Peoples of the Middle Niger. 29. Levtzion and Hopkins, Corpus of Early Arabic Sources. The French-​language equivalent is Cuoq, Recueil des sources arabes.

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30. Levtzion and Hopkins addressed cultural bias in their introductions, outlining the subjectivity, where possible, of each author (Corpus of Early Arabic Sources). 31. John Comaroff and Jean Comaroff, Ethnography and the Historical Imagination, 34. The Comaroffs refer to texts written from within the colonial administration; we might see this as analogous to the Arab sources. The responsible historian must attend to the contexts that produced texts rather than simply as a source of data. See also John Comaroff, “Dialectical Systems.” 32. For an overview of Ibn Battuta’s text and his biography, see Dunn, Adventures of Ibn Battuta. 33. The new version of the standard Arabic edition, with French translation on the facing pages, is edited and translated by Defrémery and Sanguinetti, Voyages d’Ibn Batoutah. The canonical English translation is Gibb and Beckingham, Travels of Ibn Baṭṭūṭa. There is also a new Arabic edition by Abd al-​Hādī al-Tāzī. 34. See discussions in Fauvelle-​Aymar and Hirsch, “Voyage aux Frontières du Monde,”; Beckingham, “Rihla”; Dunn, Adventures of Ibn Battuta, 313–414. For the importance of framing travel narratives within the established historiography, see Touati, Islam and Travel, 257–66. 35. Fauvelle-​Aymar and Hirsch, “Voyage aux frontières du monde,” 100–103. 36. The nearest contemporary source is the Tunisian historian Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406); see Hopkins and Levtzion, Corpus of Early Arabic Sources, 333. The classic study of the ancient empires of West Africa is Levtzion, Ancient Ghana and Mali. Much new archaeological evidence has come to the fore regarding Mali—for example, MacDonald et al., “Sorotomo.” See also Connah, African Civilizations, and Gomez, African Dominion. 37. Although Levtzion (Ancient Ghana and Mali, 62) states that Niani was the capital, excavations were inconclusive; see Filipowiak, “Expedition archéologique,” and Filipowiak, “Complexe du palais royal du Mali.” In light of the excavations, Hunwick criticized the identification of Niani as the capital and examined textual sources to propose a location between modern Segou and Bamako along the Niger River (“Mid-​Fourteenth Century Capital of Mali”). Conrad further countered the Niani hypothesis via oral traditions (“Town Called Dakajalan”). For the Mandinka linguistic homelands, see Bird, “Development of Mandekan (Manding),” 153. 38. Levtzion and Hopkins, Corpus of Early Arabic Sources, 252–53. Fauvelle-​Aymar and Hirsch note the similarities and also suggest that there might have been a lost third text upon which both al-’Umari and Ibn Battuta’s redactor, Ibn Juzayy, relied (“Voyage aux Frontières du Monde,” 100–103).

39. “I was in Māllī for the Feasts of Sacrifice and of Breaking the Fast.” Ibn Battuta, Riḥla, trans. Gibb and Beckingham, 4:961. 40. Ibid., 4:962. 41. McNaughton, Secret Sculptures of Komo, 33; Ezra, “Early Sources,” 150–51; Arnoldi, Playing with Time, 60–61; Diawara, “Time-​Tested Traditionist.” I thank Susan Gagliardi for her guidance with this bibliography. Jansen also draws on this passage to explore historiographic concerns but moves in a very different direction from my own in “Masking Sujanta.” See also note 86. 42. Ezra, “Early Sources,” 150–51. 43. Caillié, Travels Through Central Africa, 1:291–92, and Caillié, Journal d’un voyage à Temboctou, 1:428–29. Note that no face or head mask is described; the musical performance is not linked to a religious feast; and the community is not Muslim. 44. We worked on the Defrémery and Sanguinetti edition, Voyages d’Ibn Batoutah, 413–14. 45. A Mandinka people specializing in trade known as Dyula (or Jula) developed a distinct dialect of Mande incorporating a large number of loan words and a strongly accomodationist strand of Islamic theology. I will not pursue this alternate connotation here. See Wilks, “Juula.” 46. Ibn Battuta, Riḥla, ed. and trans. Hamdun and King, Ibn Battuta in Black Africa, 53. 47. Ibn Battuta, Riḥla, ed. and trans. Defrémery and Sanguinetti, 413. 48. Lane and Lane-​Poole, Arabic-​English Lexicon, 1:1771. 49. Ibn Battuta, Riḥla, trans. Gibb and Beckingham, 4:966; ed. and trans. Defrémery and Sanguinetti, 424. 50. Lane and Lane-​Poole, Arabic-​English Lexicon, 1:1772. 51. Some believe the small territory of Kangaba, one hundred kilometers southwest of Bamako, dominated by the Keita clan (who claim descendance from Sunjata), is a continuation of Mali. The “best” version of the Sunjata is argued to be that preserved by the griots of Kéla, the neighboring village; for more on the Sunjata, see below. Every seven years, the griots of Kéla perform their version of the text at the sacred shrine of Kangaba, the Kama blon. Solange de Ganay underscored that masked performances are not part of this septennial feast, though both kòmò and nama masks were known when she studied the community: Ganay, Sanctuaire Kama blon de Kangaba, 112; see also Jansen, Secrets du Manding. 52. For the mask terms, see McNaughton, Secret Sculptures of Komo, 14. 53. In Travels of Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, Gibb and Beckingham suggest a green woodpecker, with no further references (4:962n57). The European green woodpecker (Picus viridis) is not indigenous to North Africa;

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it does not have a red beak; and I have not found any instance of the term shaqshaq referring to this bird. Stephen Bulman proposes a hooded vulture, based on birds frequently depicted in Bamana visual culture, without taking into consideration the North African, Arabic context (Bulman and Vydrine, Epic of Sumanguru Kante, narrated by Abdulaye Sako, 46). 54. Dozy, Supplément aux dictionnaires arabes, vol. 1, s.v. “shuqshuq.” Dozy also offers the white-​ throated dipper (“cincle ou merle plongeur”), but, since the dipper does not have a red beak, I focus on the blackbird. Prof. Abdallah Fili of the university of El-​Jadida, Morocco, notes that the term is not in use today and that it does not indicate a specific species beyond songbird. I thank him warmly for his collaborations. 55. Alcalá, Arte, s.v. “mierla.” 56. Dozy also translated a tenth-​century Iberian falconry text known as the Calendar of Cordova, where the shoqshoq is a prey that peregrine falcons hunt in July (Calendrier de Cordoue, 75). Peregrine falcons do typically hunt blackbirds. For hunting patterns, see Viré, “Volerie,” 306, and for peregrine falcons’ prey, see the Peregrine Fund Foundation, accessed 10 January 2020, https://​peregrinefund​.org​ /explore​-raptors​-species​/falcons​/peregrine​-falcon. 57. For Henry, see Brasseur, “Pères blancs et Bambara,” 879n11. See also P. Imperato and G. Imperato, Historical Dictionary of Mali, s.v. “Joseph M. Henry (1875–1947).” 58. Gagliardi, “Crossing Borders, Pushing Boundaries”; Ezra, “Early Sources”; Diarra, Mara, and Brett-​Smith, Artfulness of M’Fa Jigi; for the relationship of power associations with Islam, see Conrad, “Pilgrim Fajigi and Basiw.” 59. Henry, Âme d’un peuple africain, 149; see also Ezra, “ Early Sources,” 151. 60. On this type of “puppet” mask, see Arnoldi, Playing with Time. 61. Henry claims he does not know the translation (Âme d’un peuple africain, 149n1). For a discussion of the ground hornbill, see Brett-​Smith, Making of Bamana Sculpture, chapter 5 (“Carving and Aesthetics”), n. 48. 62. Henry, Âme d’un peuple africain, 148 and facing 152. In both, the wooden helmet mask has been unceremoniously propped up outside a banco building for sufficient lighting. 63. Zahan, Bambara, 19; Colleyn, “Power Associations,” 188; McNaughton, Mande Blacksmiths, 105. 64. Brevié, Islamisme contre “naturisme,” 99. Brevié was the “administrateur en chef des colonies, directeur des affaires politiques et administratives du Gouvernement Générale de l’Afrique occidentale française”; quoted in Ezra, “Early Sources,” 151. 65. Bazin, Dictionnaire Bambara-​Français, 312–13. 66. McNaughton makes a distinction between the kònò power association and kote kònò masks, the

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latter a bird-​type mask he would study at length in Bird Dance (Secret Sculptures, 16). 67. The Musée du Quai Branly offers the Sikoso region for the mask’s origin, but that region is farther south than the mission traveled. An analytical description is given in Griaule, “Mission Dakar-​Djibouti.” Many more scandalous details are recounted in Leiris, Afrique fantôme, 81–84. See also Clifford, Predicament of Culture. 68. Leiris, Afrique fantôme, 81–84. Three kònò masks were blatantly stolen within twenty-​four hours. Leiris notes, “Je constate avec une stupeur qui, un certain temps après seulement, se transforme en dégoût, qu’on se sent tout de même joliment sûr de soi lorsqu’on est un blanc et qu’on tient un couteau dans sa main” (I note with numbness that, only a little time afterward transforms into disgust, that one feels rather haughtily self-assured when one is white and holds a knife in his hand.) (83). In the second and third incidents, Leiris notes that the mission members cut the masks from their feathered costumes, suggesting that the head (kun) and costume (duloki) in the Musée du Quai Branly are those stolen from Kéméni. 69. Sarr and Savoy, Restituer le patrimoine Africain, esp. 29–30. We may even critique their status here in this article as “objects” of study. Lieris himself noted that the community at Kéméni believed that neither women nor the uncircumcised could view the kònò mask, or else they would die (“ni les femmes, ni les incirconcis ne doivent voir [le Kono], sous peine de mourir” Lieris, Afrique fantôme, 82). Gagliardi explores this dynamic explicitly in her monograph, Seeing the Unseen, chapter 4 “Unseeing Audiences.” 70. Leiris, Afrique fantôme, 82. Translation by author. 71. Ibid., 83. 72. Dieterlen, Essai sur la religion bambara; Zahan, Sociétés d’initiation bambara; Zahan, Bambara; McNaughton, Secret Sculptures of Komo; McNaughton, Mande Blacksmiths; Colleyn, Bamana; Gagliardi, “Crossing Borders, Pushing Boundaries”; Gagliardi, “Seeing the Unseeing Audience”; Gagliardi, Seeing the Unseen. 73. McNaughton, Secret Sculptures of Komo, 3. Colleyn emphasizes the shared inheritance of many concepts current among Mande power associations with Islam (Bamana, 11). 74. Aden, “Anvils of Blood.” 75. A further connection might be made between kònò masquerades and the admonishing content recounted in Ibn Battuta: Zahan notes that kònò masquerades teach initiates about self-​knowledge, judgment, and how to attend to one’s “interior voice,” noting that a reed pipe is deployed in such ceremonies to emulate “the way the voice of conscience is heard softly and obliquely” (Bambara, 19). Perhaps a

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trajectory might be traced between the main masked dancer whispering to the mansa and the obfuscation of admonitory content via the reed pipe. I note that a wooden mirliton (a kazoo-​like instrument) was also stolen from the sanctuary at Kéméni (Musée du Quai Branly, 71.1931.74.1068). Lieris, Afrique fantôme, 82. 76. Frank, “Power, Structure, and Mande jeliw”; Hoffman, Griots at War; Marchand, “ ‘It’s in Our Blood’ ”; Hale, “From the Griot of Roots,” 250 (with the passage from Ibn Battuta). 77. Pronunciation differences are given in Hoffman, Griots at War, 266n1. For bards, see also Tamari, “Linguistic Evidence,” esp. 68–71. 78. For nyama as specifically related to hunting rituals, see Gagliardi, “Crossing Borders, Pushing Boundaries,” 95–96. For its role in art, see McNaughton, Secret Sculptures of Komo. 79. Hoffman, “Power, Structure, and Mande Jeliw.” 80. McNaughton, Secret Sculptures of Komo, 9. McNaughton’s sources are his associate Kalilou Tera, who was apparently told this by a number of informants, and Charles Bird, who had been given similar information. This is repeated in Ezra, “Early Sources,” 150–51. However, Colleyn states that “this assertion is often refuted in the field” (Bamana, 40). 81. McNaughton, Secret Sculptures of Komo, 16 (where his source is again a personal communication from Kaliou Tera in 1978). Compare with note 51, although current research has not observed a kònò association among the griots of Kéla. 82. On Ibn Battuta, see McNaughton, Bird Dance, 236–37. On bird symbolism, see ibid., 235–36. The siba is morphologically close to the North African blackbird, the shaqshaq named by Ibn Battuta. 83. Cashion, “Hunters of the Mande,” 139–43, 166n119 (a funeral song, lines 1288–1302, of Manden Mori, sung by Seydou Camara in 1976); cited in McNaughton, Bird Dance, 236.

84. McNaughton, Bird Dance, 236, citing Seydou Camara, Bankisi Sediba, an unpublished hunter’s epic performed for McNaughton in 1978. 85. The literature is vast. Begin with Camara, “Tradition orale en question,” and Austen, In Search of Sunjata. For orality in West African historiography, see Alagoa, “Oral Tradition”; Moraes Farias, “Oral Traditionist”; Barber, Anthropology; Vansina, Oral Tradition as History; Vansina, “Some Perceptions.” 86. For the history of Sunjata’s enemy, Sumanguru Kante, see Bulman and Vydrine, Epic of Sumanguru Kante. Bulman advances parallels between the Sumanguru epic, kòmò associations, and the Ibn Battuta passage (41–47). These build upon observations by Jansen, “Masking Sunjata,” and are expanded in light of the new translation in Jansen, “Beyond the Mali Empire.” I thank Professor Jansen for sharing with me his work preprint. The connections drawn between a variety of masks in Bamana and other Mande cultures with the episodes of Sunjata and related epics is fascinating but goes in a different methodological direction than the art-​ historical one I have persued here. 87. Bird, “Production and Reproduction of Sunjata.” This is part of the reason for the many editions of Sunjata, as every jèliw tells his own version of the story, responding to a particular context. Compare, for example, Innes, Sunjata; Duintijer et al., Makan Sunjata; Jansen, “Épopée de Soundjata,” 225–87; Condé, Sunjata. See also Bulman, “Checklist,” and Camara, “Tradition orale,” 777–87; contra Jansen, “Beyond the Mali Empire,” which deconstructs ties between oral text and historical individuals. 88. For the admonishing role played by modern jéliw, see Frank, “Power, Structure, and Mande jeliw,” 37. 89. See McIntosh, “Middle Niger Terracottas,” for a discussion and criticism of the idea of analog.

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4 Along the Art-​Historical Margins of the Medieval Mediterranean Michele Bacci

Dynamics of Artistic Interaction in the Medieval Mediterranean: The State of the Field Interest in the Mediterranean, viewed as a space of cross-​cultural artistic interactions, has enormously increased in our day: it is at present perceived as the most obvious focus for any research on medieval arts aiming to be “out of bounds”—that is, freed from the conceptual restrictions imposed on scholarship by the traditional academic boundaries between Western medieval, Jewish, Islamic, Byzantine, and Eastern Christian cultures. Even if art historians have produced no monumental synthesis on this topic that may be compared to those provided by such historians as Fernand Braudel, David Abulafia, and Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell,1 a great number of new studies are devoted to the investigation of artworks that art history, in its foundational moment in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, tended to regard with suspicion, if not with disgust, inasmuch as they did not fit in the general interpretive frame that described styles as characterized by homogeneous features, associated with sharply defined geographic entities (“nations”) and specific ethnic identities.2 The same objects that, in the past, were regarded as bastard deviations from the evolutionary course of national arts are now described as material indicators of

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humankind’s irresistible tendency to share and mix, eschewing lives of splendid, self-​ satisfied isolation. Accordingly, emphasis is being laid on such artworks as Ayyubid and Mamluk metal basins with Christian motifs, byzantinizing icons in Italy, and Italianate images in the eastern Mediterranean, as well as Islamicate and Byzantine-​like décor coexisting in the churches of Sicily or the Holy Land, between the twelfth and the fifteenth centuries.3 Whole areas, such as Cyprus in the Lusignan period, and specific cultural traditions, like those of non-​Chalcedonian communities in the Near East, came to be investigated as obvious sites of cross-​cultural, or transcultural, encounters.4 This increased interest raised mutually excluding reactions. As a matter of fact, the focus on Mediterranean interchange has been fostered more outside than inside the Mediterranean: it has become a leitmotif of Anglo-​Saxon as well as of German historiography, whereas, paradoxically, it is still mostly ignored or regarded with suspicion in Mediterranean academic circles.5 In turn, the latter feared and occasionally warned against the risk of denying the existence of any form of specificity in favor of an indiscriminate, all-​encompassing melting pot. Indeed, scholars have gradually become more and more aware of the difficulties raised by the analysis of artworks that, at least to our modern eyes, look composite, mélangé, or hybrid. More specifically, it is now becoming evident that most European languages lack a sufficiently precise terminology to define and evaluate such phenomena in all their complexity. The most obvious case concerns the ill-​fated term influence, originally associated with either astrology or medicine and used in literary and art-​historical studies at least since the late eighteenth century: many scholars have dismissed it as a lamentable misnomer, given that it describes a process of passive transmission from one agent to another.6 In several recent studies, this term was often substituted with hybridity or hybridization, which are no less problematic since they convey the idea that, as with biological bastardizations, mixtures stem out of the encounter of two traditions being basically pure and self-​sufficient.7 Words like translation and transculturation, borrowed from anthropological research, have the merit of enabling a nonlinear and nonhomogeneous understanding of cultures as the outcomes of circulatory practices, but they imply a parallelism with linguistic processes that should not be overemphasized when dealing with artistic phenomena.8 Between 2012 and 2016, a German research project involving nine scholars from different disciplines in the wider field of medieval studies was committed to both exploring the conceptual biases conveyed by common notions of cultural interchange and working out new interpretive frames. The outcomes of this research have been published in the collective book Transkulturelle Verflechtungen: Mediävistische Perspektiven (Transcultural entanglement: Medievalist perspectives), which has the merit of signposting the limits and advantages of the different possible approaches to cross-​cultural interchange. On the one hand, the text rightly observes that all processes of entanglement seem to go together with some kind of disentanglement: objects, as well as forms, need to be decontextualized and deconstructed in order to be included into and made fit for new settings, new viewing conditions, and consequently also new meanings. On the 80

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other hand, the authors remark that encounters can be intentional or fortuitous; are conditioned by the geographic, historical, and social contexts where they take place; and give birth to cultural phenomena standing out for the quality and organization of their internal elements, their mode of emergence, and the ways in which they develop. In this respect, they list three basic types of entanglement: whereas “networks” are described as webs of basically long-​distance relations, both intended and unplanned, between human agents—such as merchants or monastic orders—the term “texture” is used to hint at the intentional production of “mixtures,” as in the case of those Mamluk metalworks with Christian themes that were deliberately meant for non-​Islamic courts.9 Furthermore, widespread visual and architectural motifs, which happen to be shared by different communities and cultures in an uncontrolled way, are labeled as “rhizomes.” Rhizomatic is, for example, the diffusion of the same ornamental motifs in distant geographic and historical contexts. The rhizomatic hypothesis postulates that, far from being the outcome of intentional appropriations of other people’s forms, such phenomena can rather be understood as stemming from parallel developments, which, with different degrees of intensity, rely on a shared ancient, unceasingly adapted, and reworked set of forms. In the words of the architectural historian Margit Mersch: “One could speak of a subterranean, not immediately visible web of visual models, which went throughout Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean and took specific, updated shapes in different places and historical phases, when local agents adopted or put together models that, on account of their long-​dating diffusion, were perceived as belonging to a community’s own, not foreign, sphere or whose association to a specific cultural tradition was deemed to be irrelevant.”10 Thus, the basic and more general question implied by Mersch’s words seems to concern art historians’ awareness of stylistic difference as opposed to the somewhat elusive approaches of medieval cultures to the possibility that specific sets of forms may be regarded as indicators of cultural Otherness. In this respect, we can wonder to what extent, under which specific circumstances, and in what sense artworks could look “foreign” to medieval viewers. Were they aware of the association of some forms with specific cultures? And what did this imply? Can we assume that the acknowledgment of the foreign origins of a form or an object type was enough to encourage or discourage their appropriation, reuse, or rejection? Was the perception of stylistic Otherness constant, or did it change according to the different historical and geographic contexts? Finally, is it legitimate to speak of entanglements or mélanges if the mixed nature of an artwork was not acknowledged by its original beholders?

Types of Interactional Dynamics In order to further investigate such issues, it is worth expanding the typological approach by considering some further factors that, in my view, can enable us to better Along the Art-​Historical Margins

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evaluate both the extent to which forms do or do not come to be associated with cultural, ethnic, and finally “identity-​bound” meanings and whether, in each context, mixed forms were intentional creations or just the outcome of fortuitous, unaware reuse. In my own research, focusing on the analysis of data from the later Middle Ages, I have singled out the following seven types of interactional dynamics that best describe the most common forms of cross-​cultural interchange in the Mediterranean context; they may also be relevant to the investigation of analogous processes on a wider global scale. Mobility/Portability/Transportability of Artworks As part of their “social life” and their function as wares and commodities that can be more or less easily carried and transported, objects relatively often travel from one context to another. Art historians, who have traditionally been committed to reconstructing the foundational moments of artistic creation, are now increasingly making efforts to describe the centuries-​long biographies of artworks by laying emphasis on their phases of decontextualization and recontextualization in space and time.11 These phases may occur in the form of displacement, implying the transcultural appropriation and transformation of single objects, as was the case, for example, of Islamic textiles reemployed in Western Europe to envelop Christian relics or manufacture liturgical garments.12 Material transfers can be fortuitous, resulting from the connectivity of sailing routes or other international networks (including the pathways of the Mendicant orders, royal courts and their dynastic connections, wide-​ranging pilgrimage routes, and so on), or they could be the outcome of intentional appropriation. In a new context, the presence of artworks produced in other regions sets the ground for an increased availability of and accessibility to a wider spectrum of objects and forms, even if the combination cannot be regarded as automatically creating a new, blended, or “hybrid” art. The phenomenon of trans-​Mediterranean, international circulation cannot, therefore, be separated from the analysis of the response that imports stimulate in local users and beholders. The success or misfortune of some objects, their setting in and adaptation to new contexts, and their use as sources of inspiration for new artworks distinctively depend on the extent to which they were acknowledged in both their specificity and suitability to different tastes, habits, and expectations.13 Their widespread perception as commodities associated with everyday life, for example, could positively contribute to their integration into new contexts. The questions to be raised thus concern the extent to which some artworks were regarded as rare, obsolete, exotic, and unparalleled, rather than familiar or commonplace, and on which grounds dynamics of appropriation could be engendered by either a fascination for distinctiveness or a perhaps more reassuring, unproblematic appreciation of ordinariness.

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Mobility of Artists This category has been traditionally one of the main foci of art-​historical research on cultural exchange and has been frequently associated with the notion of “artistic transfer,” privileged especially in French scholarship.14 Emphasis was laid on traveling and émigré artists, who were active in at least one region beyond the one in which they were trained. Undoubtedly, their presence enhanced the exchange possibilities with other artists, donors, and the audiences for which their artworks were intended, but it cannot be taken for granted that, in every case, the newcomers were regarded as agents of artistic innovation or were willing to export “alien” forms into a new context if the latter lacked any interest in adopting them. Indeed, itinerant masters are usually supposed to act as vehicles of foreign styles, so that, even when transplanted into far-​off contexts, they remained staunchly loyal to their skills, knowledge, technical know-​how, and visual culture. The extent to which such an assumption proves legitimate is, however, disputable, given that it implicitly denies that artists may be able to harmonize their works to the needs and visual habits of the beholders for whom their objects were meant. In the late medieval and early modern periods, émigré painters often stood out for their flexibility and adaptability. For example, between 1411 and 1435, a Portuguese immigré artist named Álvaro Pirez was active in different Tuscan towns: his panels were so strongly inspired by Florentine late Gothic painting—in particular, by Lorenzo Monaco and Gherardo Starnina—that it is hard to determine whether any stylistic details of his work may be associated with his country of origin.15 In the late fifteenth-​ century, Nicolò Brancaleon, possibly a Venetian resident on Crete, tried his luck in the Kingdom of Ethiopia and started painting panels and illuminating books in a style that privileged strongly marked contours and vivid colors rather than elaborate drawing and a perspective view of space.16 The result was certainly closer to traditional Ethiopian miniatures than to contemporary Venetian arts, whose solutions would probably have been perceived as diverting too radically from local visual conventions. Reuse of Spolia and Other Material / Mechanical Combinations of Objects Apart from the remains of classical buildings, whose prestige was transculturally shared in many regions of the ancient Roman Empire, many objects belonging to other people’s traditions were appropriated through commerce, received as diplomatic gifts, or stolen as war booty.17 Such “imports” could be treasured, reemployed, and integrated into new architectural and artistic contexts with different conditions of visibility and accessibility, and they could lead to different forms of what can be described as material or mechanical combinations, either engendered by practical reasons (the availability of some objects rather than others) or serving some representational, cultural, or ideological purpose (such as a town’s claim to be heir to Rome, an emulator of Constantinople, or a possessor of riches rivaling the Islamic world).

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This is best exemplified by the monuments of eleventh- to twelfth-​century Pisa: precious objects of different provenances—such as late antique marble reliefs, Byzantine-​looking sculptures, Roman-​like intarsia, North African bacini, and a majestic bronze griffon from either al-​Andalus or Ifriqiya—were freely used and combined to embellish the cathedral and other town churches. They were appreciated for their preciousness and beauty, irrespective of their association with people Pisans regarded as pagans or infidels, and it is likely that many objects, on account of their being made out of materials associated with the memory of the ancient empire and the notion of Romanitas, were perceived as indistinctly antique, irrespective of their appearance and stylistic features.18 The reuse of older artworks is distinctively transcultural and even tends to transcend religious and political boundaries. The structures originally meant for the representational strategies of a prominent center of power were almost regularly reemployed by conquerors, if they could be easily made suitable for different ideological purposes. In the same way, the removal of other people’s symbols, furnishings, and liturgical implements and the introduction of those needed for the performance of one community’s specific rites were often the only actions required to convert a church into a mosque or a mosque into a church. Nevertheless, on some occasions the appreciation of the material price of an object prevented its destruction: bells, for example, were held in high esteem in Islamic al-​Andalus on account of their being made of bronze and could therefore be adapted to use as lamps, like those in the twelfth-​century Mosque al-​Qarawiyyin in Fez.19 Undoubtedly, such a display—in Morocco as in Pisa—was most likely also meant to lay visual emphasis on the political, cultural, and religious prominence the owners of such wonderful trophies attributed to themselves.20 Emergence, “Rhizomatic” Diffusion, Appropriation, and Transformation of Forms This category includes object and image types, iconographic motifs, decorative patterns, architectural structures, and so on that came to be regarded as authoritative and worth imitating on aesthetic grounds, regardless of their specific meanings and political/religious implications. In part, this was the outcome of the association of some patterns with specific media and object types, but a significant role could be played by a transculturally shared acknowledgment of the extent to which some distinctive forms contributed to enhance the preciousness, attractiveness, and beauty of an object or a spatial context. The term “rhizomatic” can be applied, for example, to the diffusion of the same ornamental motifs in faraway, not immediately interrelated geographic and historical contexts. Such phenomena are among the interpretive conundrums that have engaged scholars for decades: if it cannot be satisfactorily determined whether gadrooned or pillow voussoirs, so distinctively exploited in the crusader churches of Palestine and Lebanon, originated in either Armenian, Syrian, or Egyptian Fatimid architecture or if the horseshoe arch is an invention of either Roman, Germanic, Caucasian, 84

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or Islamic cultures, then this may perhaps mean that such questions are misplaced.21 The rhizomatic hypothesis postulates that, far from being the outcome of intentional appropriations of other people’s arts, such phenomena can rather be understood as stemming from parallel developments, which, with different degrees of intensity, rely on commonly inherited, continuously adapted, and reworked sets of forms. Imitation of Techniques, Media, and Object Types Associated with Some Specific Traditions Even within the same culture, different styles can be associated with specific object types, made in distinctive techniques and artistic media. It has long since been acknowledged that a repertory of forms stemming from the classical past and distinct from the much more abstract style exploited in religious painting was associated, in tenth-​century Byzantium, with the decoration of luxury metalworks, ivories, and illuminated manuscripts.22 This indirectly points to an enduring association of ancient or ancient-​like forms with objects used and perceived as indicators of social status and political power. In the same period, the Byzantines were increasingly fascinated by the precious silks produced in Baghdad and Damascus, and the workshops of Constantinople started producing analogous textiles where the reproduction of technical features seems to have also implied an intentional imitation of some specific recurrent motifs, such as tiraz bands with Arabic or pseudo-​Arabic scripts.23 Medieval peoples tended to associate specific media with distinctive cultural traditions. Metalworks, made in the inlaid and damascened techniques, were often described as a source of pride for Arabic culture, and the most appreciated basins from Mamluk Egypt and Syria widely circulated within and beyond the Mediterranean world.24 In much the same way, mosaic and the arts of color in general were transculturally perceived as specifically “Greek” arts.25 What a modern viewer may understand as a form of cultural transfer could therefore have been regarded in the Middle Ages as a challenging confrontation with, and emulation of, the skills developed in other cultures to produce artworks of excellent workmanship. Intentional Imitations/Appropriations/Integrations Some forms regarded as distinctively associated with other people’s traditions and invested with specific meanings could be intentionally appropriated, assimilated, adapted, “translated,” and transformed by other groups. In general, such processes were engendered when non-​indigenous images, forms, media, and object types were regarded as authoritative, standard, and, in some cases, even normative on political, religious, social, or economic grounds. Such a perception was not unfrequently also connected with the ethnic-​bound appreciation of technical excellence discussed above. Byzantine painting was praised for its aesthetic efficacy and, starting from Leo Marsicanus’s eleventh-​century Chronicle of Montecassino and until Giorgio Vasari’s Vite, Greek painters were described as those who had reintroduced the art of painting in the Along the Art-​Historical Margins

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Italian peninsula.26 Nevertheless, their high reputation did not exclusively originate in their celebrated capacity to simulate both terrestrial and paradisiacal life by combining colors. Rather, it stemmed from their perception as keepers of a centuries-​old and worship-​worthy Christian tradition of holy images, inaugurated in the apostolic era with the making of the first true-​to-​life portraits of Christ and the Virgin Mary by the Evangelist Luke, which were later reproduced in an allegedly uninterrupted sequence of faithful replicas. This religious aura and the gradual encounter of Westerners with Eastern Christian religious practices involving icons, especially in the aftermath of the crusades, favored the introduction, use, and local creation of icon-​like panels in Latin Europe and especially in Italy. Such paintings were originally meant as supports for individual devotion; later they were adapted to display in church spaces and played a role in liturgical or paraliturgical rites. In this context, Western interest in imitating Byzantine religious painting was not limited to the reproduction of iconographic and compositional features, but it also implied the painters’ active engagement in efficaciously evoking the technique, morphological features, and style of icons, even if the results could diverge significantly from their models: some details happened to be easily misunderstood, thus engendering a gradual “iconotropic” process by which the original schemes were altered, invested with new meanings, and given a thoroughly distinctive appearance.27 Similar phenomena have been detected also in other cultural contexts, as in the case of the Indian-​like style introduced into medieval China through the imitation of famous Buddha statues.28 An albeit vaguely defined, exotic, or anachronistic appearance could be perceived, in such cases, as a visual attribute that enabled viewers to immediately understand the distinctive status of an image as especially worthy of worship.29 Whereas the imitation of Byzantine models is easily detectable in Western European pictorial arts, the impact of architecture seems to have been very limited, if one excludes those areas—such as Venice, the Salento, or Calabria—that were in direct contact with or under the political or ecclesiastical rule of Constantinople. On the other hand, Western architecture came frequently to be imitated in Eastern countries and adapted to the liturgical specificities of Byzantine- or Slavic-​rite churches. Patterns derived from the repertory of forms of Romanesque buildings (such as decorated portals and exteriors embellished with blind arcades, sculptures, archivolts, and elaborated windows) were used in pre-​Mongolian Rus’ (including twelfth- and thirteenth-​century churches in Kiev, Chernigov, Suzdal, Pereyaslavl-​Zalessky, Vladimir, and other sites) and, later on, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, in Serbia’s most important royal monastic foundations, such as Studenica or Dečani.30 These solutions were clearly regarded as positively contributing to enhance the beauty of sacred spaces and were not deemed to be at odds with either their combination with typical features of Orthodox churches (such as central domes) or the decoration of their walls with mural paintings made in a distinctively Byzantine manner. On the

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contrary, it can be remarked that the simultaneous use of Western-​like buildings and Greek-​like paintings was relatively commonplace in association not only with Orthodox churches but also in Latin contexts, as we will see below. Artistic Practice in Border Areas and in Culturally, Religiously, and Linguistically Mixed Societies In the regions inhabited simultaneously by different linguistic and religious groups (such as medieval Spain, crusader Palestine, or Lusignan Cyprus), the transmission of technical knowledge, material objects, and sets of forms was made easier by the shared experience of the same vital space. However, a selective use of styles, rather than an indiscriminate hybridization, seems to emerge from a detailed analysis of such contexts. In the Cypriot port of Famagusta, for example, artistic initiatives were promoted in the same period (the town’s golden age in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries) by almost all resident groups, including the Franks, Greeks, Armenians, and Arab Christians. All of them rivaled one another in promoting the construction and decoration of sumptuous churches, whereas they looked to either crusader Palestine or northern Europe in giving shape to the sumptuous appearance of their buildings, they embellished the walls with Byzantine religious paintings, framed with Italian Giottoesque ornamental bands.31 Similarly, in Toledo, the capital of Reconquista Castile, Christians, Muslims, and Jews shared an interest for an Islamic or Islamicate architecture and decoration, either repeating formulae rooted in local practice or evoking the new attractive décors developed in the Nasrid kingdom of Andalusia. An imposing Gothic style, inspired by French and German models, was selected only to lay emphasis on the distinctive status of the town cathedral, dominating the cityscape and manifesting its role as see of Spain’s primate. At the same time, all groups looked at Romanesque and Byzantine tradition and at the new forms coming from Italy when they had to deal with the pictorial medium.32 This holds true even with the Muslim-​ruled areas in the Iberian Peninsula. Whereas a specifically Islamic approach to figurative arts, associated with the representation of profane themes and indebted to Egyptian and Near Eastern models, had existed until the twelfth century (as documented by the painted fragments of a garden pavilion in the Archaeological Museum in Murcia),33 in the mid-​fourteenth century, the Sala de Justicia of the Alhambra in Granada was decorated with painted ceilings displaying themes and stylistic features inspired by contemporary Christian painting.34 Even in such religiously and culturally mixed contexts, human groups came to share specific sets of forms in a basically selective way, depending on such factors as the availability of specialized artists, the more or less immediate accessibility of some artworks used as models and sources of inspiration, the prestige associated with specific media and techniques, and the authority attributed to a few distinctive object types.

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Self-​Aware “Styles”? The Art of Adapting Visual Conventions to Specific Viewing Contexts Such types of cross-​cultural dynamics often took place in combination: while artists may certainly play an important role, other agents—both human (such as donors, audiences, political entities, and religious institutions) and cultural (such as common notions of political and religious authority, social prominence, and shared symbols)— could even be more decisive in encouraging communities to adopt some specific manifestations of other people’s art. In this sense, indifference to or refusal of some forms should be understood as the other side of the coin: any time we acknowledge that an image, an object type, or a “style” associated with a community X is appropriated by a community Y, we should also ask the question of why that specific item appealed to its imitators whereas other items were completely neglected. As stressed above, the circulation of artworks and artists certainly did not automatically engender artistic exchange. As in the case of Pirez and Brancaleon, itinerant masters could opt for a strategy of artistic mimicry and paint in a style that may not depart too much from the visual conventions of the country they were visiting. Alternately, they could remain loyal to the repertory of forms to which they were accustomed when their donors and audience were expected to understand and appreciate their works. In circa 1420, when an Apulian painter happened to work in a Latin church—Our Lady of the Castle—in Rhodes, he made use of the same Gothicizing devices he would have used in the decoration of a building in his native Salento.35 Byzantine artists working in Georgia and Russia in the late fourteenth century, such as Manuel Evgenikos and Theophanes the Greek, felt free to introduce and develop the so-​called expressionistic trend of late Palaiologan painting.36 In both instances, one can assume that the use of an Italian or a Greek style was deemed to be perfectly suitable and thoroughly unproblematic for the decoration of buildings belonging to communities that, albeit located in faraway countries, shared the artists’ religious habits. At the same time, they were rarely responsible for an unconditioned transposition of schemes and technical devices, since alterations and adaptations were needed to harmonize images and objects to different spaces, interactional contexts, uses, devotional sensibilities, and conditions of visibility. The art of adapting visual codes to the specificity of a place is best illustrated by the painted cycles of Santa Maria Collegiata and the cathedral of Saint Tryphon in Kotor, on the southern Dalmatian coast, which were made by Greek painters in the first decades of the fourteenth century, when this mostly Latin-​rite town was ruled by the Serbian kings of the Nemanjić dynasty; the presence of Byzantine masters is even recorded in archival documents. In both cases, one is struck by the unconventional choice to display Passion scenes in the altar space, which is alien to Byzantine cycles and certainly more in keeping with the increasingly popular emphasis in contemporary Italian piety on the most dramatic aspects of the Gospel narratives. Nevertheless, 88

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Figure 4.1 Mural painting of Saint Francis of Assisi, ca. 1300–20. Kotor, church of Santa Maria Collegiata. Photo: author.

if one looks at such details as bodily proportions, modeling devices, facial features, rendering of landscape and architectural elements, and chromatic palette, there is hardly anything that could remind viewers of contemporary Italian practice: in the Collegiata, the figure of Francis of Assisi stands out for its greenish proplasmos (first layer) and conventional appearance (fig. 4.1), whereas, in the cathedral, Saint Ambrose and Saint Augustine are clad as Byzantine metropolitans and given the austere facial type—furrowed with deep wrinkles—of the Eastern Church Fathers (fig. 4.2).37 A completely different approach appears in the painted cycle of Saint Basil in Stoliv, a small Latin-​rite church outside the town, which was decorated more than a century later, under special circumstances and in a thoroughly new political scenario, after the Kotor area had become part of the Venetian Stato da mar in 1420: as we learn from a bilingual Italian and Slavic inscription, the building was consecrated on the day of Mary’s Ascension (15 August) in 1451 and enriched with paintings in November Along the Art-​Historical Margins

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Figure 4.2 Mural painting of Saint Augustine, ca. 1331. Kotor, cathedral of Saint Tryphon. Photo: author.

of that same year on the initiative of a Stefan Kalodjurdjević, known as Spedon, who was a registrar and official translator in town. The task of decorating the interior was given to a local master named Mihailo, who, in his signature text, specified that he had been a pupil of the painter Jovo of Debar. It can be assumed that the latter was an émigré master from a village in present-​day North Macedonia, a region where a great 90

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Figure 4.3 (left) Mihailo, mural painting of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, 1451. Stoliv, church of Sveti Bazilije. Photo: author. Figure 4.4 (right) Mihailo, mural painting of Saint Sebastian, 1451. Stoliv, church of Sveti Bazilije. Photo: author.

many churches had been painted by Greek painters and their pupils until the country had been completely conquered by the Ottomans in the late fourteenth century.38 Mihailo adapted the hierarchical order used in painted cycles of Orthodox churches in the Balkans to the specific needs of a Catholic church. The lack of a dome encouraged him to display the Pantokrator in the upper zone of the apse, whereas the lower one was reserved for the usual officiating bishops, represented on both sides of an altar equipped with Latin-​type vasa sacra. The Ascension is distributed between the portion of wall over the apse and the vault, which displays God the Father in its center and the angelic hierarchies on its westernmost part. Below is a band decorated with angels and prophets within medallions. The nave walls are structured in an upper layer displaying the Dodekaorton (the sequence of Gospel scenes corresponding to the major feasts of the Orthodox liturgical year) and a lower one housing a sequence of saints. The latter are also mostly rendered according to Byzantine conventions, and their identity is largely revealed by Serbian tituli, but some significant changes were introduced to make them better understandable to Latin-​rite believers. Saint Catherine—a figure of universal renown, worshipped in both churches—is provided with the iconographic attribute of the broken wheel used in contemporary Western painting (fig. 4.3). Comparably, Saint Sebastian is rendered in the Italian way, with his body transfixed by multiple arrows (fig. 4.4). Special emphasis was placed on two holy men: Saint Francis (fig. 4.5) and Saint Tryphon (fig. 4.6)—Kotor’s patron saint—stand Along the Art-​Historical Margins

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Figure 4.5 Mihailo, mural painting of Saints Nicholas and Francis of Assisi, 1451. Stoliv, church of Sveti Bazilije. Photo: author.

out not only for their three-​quarter pose, involving them in an ideal dialogue with the apse images, but also for their distinctive style. Therefore, if universal saints were provided with a conventional Byzantine appearance, a definitely Italianate Gothic one was attributed to exclusively Latin saints: even if the modeling technique is the same, with its use of a greenish proplasmos highlighted by white brushstrokes, the rendering of draperies was linear for Orthodox saints and voluminous for Catholic ones. It may be assumed that this odd juxtaposition of different styles imitated by the same hand in the same space is a corollary of the artist’s use of models and patterns, made in distinctive forms, which may have been available in Kotor by then. Whereas previous artists had fashioned the images of Western saints in such a way as to look like their Eastern colleagues, fifteenth-​century ones seem to have deliberately used Italianate forms as visual devices, enabling viewers to more easily identify those figures who were, by then, venerated as especially efficacious 92

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Figure 4.6 Mihailo, mural painting of Saint Tryphon, 1451. Stoliv, church of Sveti Bazilije. Photo: author.

helpers in local Catholic devotion. In other words, painters and their audiences had become aware of the increasingly widespread perception of a stylistic divide between Byzantine and Western art and tended to associate distinctive sets of forms with specific visual and iconographic conventions.

Purposeful Combinations: The Making of New Marian Icons in the Venetian Stato da mar In Stoliv, different forms were purposefully juxtaposed and not blended: on the contrary, the adoption of either Byzantine or Italian visual codes was instrumental to ensuring the recognizability of each saint. At the same time, alla greca images were not perceived as improper or problematic in the decoration of Latin-​rite church spaces. Along the Art-​Historical Margins

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In the second half of the fifteenth century, the increasingly emphasized understanding of their visual features as retrospective, traditional, unrealistic, or abstract contributed to their appreciation as manifestations of a hallowed pictorial tradition deemed to have been established in the apostolic era. Icons, which were viewed as most distinctively “Greek” image types, were extensively exported from Venetian-​ruled Crete to Western Europe and throughout the Mediterranean and were often preferred to Renaissance paintings as material supports for meditational exercises and prayers. Nevertheless, their visual distinctiveness, viewed as a signifier of divine Otherness, was associated more with morphological, technical, and compositional devices—such as quadrangular panels, frontal positions, half-​length figures, a restricted chromatic palette, and marked outlines—than with a clear-​cut taxonomic approach to style. Indeed, many of the icons venerated not only in Western Europe but also as far as Ethiopia were said to have come from Greece or to be reflections of Mary’s and Christ’s authentic portraits made by Saint Luke the Evangelist, often displayed a distinctive mix of Byzantine and Italianate features. These two features were evidently not perceived as mutually exclusive but rather as complementing each other in some way.39 Traditionally, the blending of forms has been understood as a distinctive trend in post-​Byzantine icon painting on Crete. With the aim to overcome the colonialist views expressed in the 1930s by Sergio Bettini, who considered Venice the main center of icon production and dissemination in the Mediterranean, the Greek scholar Manolis Chatzidakis described Candia as the site where the activities and know-​how of Constantinopolitan painters had been transferred in the decades preceding and immediately following the Ottoman conquest of the imperial capital. Cretan icons were therefore characterized, in their basic features, as reflections of the high standard and “metropolitan” traditions of Byzantium, whose style was alien, albeit in different ways, to both local practice and the arts of the island’s rulers.40 This style was retrospective, since it kept loyal to earlier visual conventions, but it was revived by the mastery of particularly skilled painters. At the same time, it could not be denied that some works, like the Marian images known as Madre della Consolazione, stood out for their display of Italianate motifs, which, however, were inspired by Trecento Gothic rather than Renaissance painting. In this way, such mixed icons were described as doubly “anachronic,” since they both relied on old-​fashioned visual codes that clashed with the optical simulation of reality promoted by contemporary artists in Italy. According to Chatzidakis, while “purely” Byzantine icons were exclusively meant for the Orthodox and their loyalty to Palaiologan conventions manifested their stubborn resistance to foreign influence, Italianate ones were basically meant to suit the reactionary taste of some Venetian donors.41 Recent studies have deconstructed this view, while demonstrating that such mixes were far from new and isolated phenomena on Crete and in the wider context of the Venetian Stato da mar. Archival evidence made clear that Candia was home not only to Greek masters but also to Italian painters, who not infrequently collaborated even within the same workshops and were requested to paint in different “manners.” In this 94

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respect, some studies go so far as to interpret local arts in terms of “bilingualism” (diglossia), even if it is still disputed what documentary sources exactly meant when hinting at the visual distinction between alla greca and alla latina images: did they refer to the stylistic divide between traditional Byzantine and Italianate images or rather to morphological and technical distinctions, such as the use of icons instead of altarpieces or of tempera on wood instead of oil on canvas?42 Indeed, this framework still tends to implicitly assume that icons with Venetian-​ like elements were bearers of identity-​bound meanings that would have been out of place in a Byzantine-​rite context. If this were true, it would be hard to understand why Italianate icons happened to be preserved in Greek churches, imported into other Orthodox countries, and imitated in later Cretan works. Given that the Greek clergy of Crete did not even condemn the Latin use of three-​dimensional statues, it is unlikely that they were disturbed by Western pictorial conventions, unless they clashed with theologically delicate issues.43 Nor were they motivated to prevent their flock from sharing the Latin laity’s interest in making use of images infused with a more emotion-​laden approach to holy figures and sacred events. It is not by chance that forms stemming from Italian arts are often introduced in Crucifixion scenes, where they contributed to their dramatic efficacy through the display of animated crowds, suffering postures, and gesturing figures.44 The same is true with the image of the Virgin Mary: painting her “in the Italian way” (all’italiana) meant introducing a sentimental nuance into the composition, which laid emphasis on the intimate relationship of mother and son and aroused the viewer’s compunction. Furthermore, the display of precious and elegant clothes replacing the Theotokos’s traditional maphorion (hooded mantle) aimed to visualize her status as a noble and gracious lady who was ready to agree to her supplicants’ requests.45 Not surprisingly, such combinations of forms took place primarily in the context of devotional panels intended for private or domestic devotions, which could be easily shared by both Latin and Greek believers.46 They were not imaginatively created by post-​Byzantine painters on Candia, who simply revitalized and reinterpreted Marian image types that had been circulating in the Venetian Stato da mar well before the fall of Constantinople. Nor can their appearance be traced back to the missionary activity of the Franciscan order or to the spreading of a unionist ideology on the wake of the Council of Ferrara-​Florence, even if such factors contributed to the dissemination of some specific themes (such as Saint Francis and the embrace of Peter and Paul).47 In a number of earlier studies, I  have located around sixty icons from the second half of the fourteenth century, scattered throughout the Mediterranean from Spain to Mount Sinai and from Dalmatia to Cyprus and Sicily, where the Mother of God, rendered in keeping with Byzantine compositional and technical conventions, is attributed the look of a Venetian Madonna, wearing a red, gold-​embroidered tunic, an exuberantly decorated blue mantle, and a white or diaphanous veil that reveals her hair in place of the traditional coif (kekryphalos). Such works not only served as sources Along the Art-​Historical Margins

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of inspiration for later Cretan painters but also found their way to distant countries, such as Russia and Ethiopia, where they served as models for new Marian types.48 In the past, such objects had been confined to the conceptual rather than geographical space of the “Adriatic,” since their seemingly hybrid appearance challenged any attempt at a more precise categorization from the viewpoint of stylistic taxonomy: they looked too Byzantine to be ascribed to Italian painters and too Italian to be accepted as works of Byzantine masters.49 A closer inspection revealed that, while they took inspiration from devotional images produced in the workshops of Paolo Veneziano and his followers, they interpreted such schemes in a rather free and inventive way, combining the use of distinctively Palaiologan devices (modeling and lighting technique, facial features, body proportions, chromatic palette) with the ostensible display of richly ornamented Gothic-​type cloths and the introduction of carved frames and incised and/ or stippled haloes, which were typical of Venetian painted panels. Furthermore, they gave shape to four widely imitated Marian types, all standing out for their emphasis on Italianate dress: a Madonna with a wide white scarf-​like cloth transversally laid on her shoulder; a Virgin of Tenderness with the Christ Child grasping his mother’s chin; a Gothic-​clad Galaktotrophousa (nursing Virgin) with the Child reclining in her arms; and a variant of the latter where Mary, rendered as a sort of Schöne Madonna, holds a three-​flowered twig that the Child is attempting to grasp.50 If such works are strictly interconnected in their compositional, iconographic, and morphological features, they can hardly be ascribed to the same hands. Some of them are so perfectly in keeping with the Palaiologan pictorial technique that they can be assumed to have been made by Byzantine masters: for example, in a Virgin Galaktotrophousa of unknown whereabouts, the modeling of faces with a dark priming highlighted through thin white brushstrokes is combined with Mary’s softly undulating veil and the richly ornamented mantle, which parts upon her chest to show the underlying tunic (fig. 4.7).51 A more stylized, linear approach can be detected in other icons, some of which bear Greek inscriptions and can therefore be supposed to have been originally meant for Greek beholders. A tripartite panel once in the Ciardiello Gallery in Florence shares affinities with the mural paintings of the church of Agia Pelagia in Ano Viannos, Crete (1360), not only in its use of strongly simplified facial features, large heads, concentric hair locks, linear folds, flat surfaces, and disproportionate bodies but also in the rendering of Saint Bartholomew colored in deep red to suggest his being covered in blood (fig. 4.8). This very idiosyncratic interpretation of the Italian motif of the apostle showing his skin as an attribute of his martyrdom is repeated in several works of the mixed group and is paralleled only by a few Cretan mural paintings from the second half of the fourteenth century.52 Closely associated but not identical to the Ciardiello panel is a Virgin and Child Galaktotrophousa venerated in the church of San Martino in Calisese near Cesena, Italy, which betrays the painter’s uncertainty as to whether the underlying veil is a 96

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Figure 4.7 Virgin Galaktotrophousa icon, Venice or Crete, ca. 1350. Sold at Fischer’s, Luzern, in 1967. From Galerie Fischer, Große Jubiläums-​ Gemäldeauktion am 16. und 17. Juni 1967 in Luzern: Bedeutende Gemälde alter und neuer Meister aus amerikanischen und europäischen Sammlungen (Luzern: Galerie Fischer, 1967), p. 17, cat. no. 99.

separate cloth or the inner lining of the maphorion (fig. 4.9).53 Much closer to the Venetian archetypes is an icon on Mount Sinai in which Mary wears a diaphanous cloth below a blue mantle that is similarly embellished with golden dotted hems and stylized geometric patterns scattered on its surface (fig. 4.10).54 The same facial features with diminutive eyes, a restricted chromatic palette, strongly geometrized body parts, and chrysography consisting of parallel golden stripes occur almost identically in a Virgin Glykophilousa in the same collection and in two further works, both marked with Greek inscriptions: a hitherto unpublished image of Saint George on horseback on Mount Sinai (fig. 4.11) and a fragmentary triptych preserved in the Icon Museum of Saint Herakleidios’s Monastery in Kalopanagiotis, Cyprus (fig. 4.12).55 All such works can be supposed to belong to the hand of the same painter, who shared the same approach to forms encountered in the decoration of several Orthodox buildings in the second half of the fourteenth century, such as the mural paintings in the church of the Holy Savior in Vlithias, Selino, dating to between 1358 and 1359.56 In analyzing such paintings, we are confronted with a conundrum that traditional art-​historical taxonomies are thoroughly unable to solve. The information provided Along the Art-​Historical Margins

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Figure 4.8 Virgin Galaktotrophousa tripartite icon, with scenes of the Annunciation, Crucifixion, and saints, Crete (?), ca. 1360–70. Once Florence, Galleria Ciardiello; current location unknown. Photo courtesy of Fondazione Federico Zeri, Università di Bologna.

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by the works themselves seems to indicate that at least three factors played a role: the visual repertoire of Venetian Gothic Madonnas, the Palaiologan know-​how of Byzantine “metropolitan” artists, and the local traditions of indigenous Cretan painters, who provided visually simplified versions of models combining a sophisticated modeling technique with affected postures and sumptuously decorated cloths all’italiana. While it cannot be ruled out that some of the mixed images were made in either the lagoon or the Dalmatian coast, there are many good grounds to think of Candia, with its workshops led since the thirteenth century by both local artists and immigré masters from both Venice and Constantinople, as the site where Byzantine and Italian features were combined in the aim to create images whose devotional efficacy stemmed from their capacity to evoke simultaneously the authority of religious icons and prompt their beholders, irrespective of religious distinctions, to feel more intensely involved in the dialogue between the holy mother and son.57 Out of Bounds

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Figure 4.9 Virgin and Child Galaktotrophousa icon, Crete (?), ca. 1360–70. Calisese (Cesena), San Martino. Photo courtesy of the Ufficio arte sacra e beni culturali della Diocesi di Cesena-​Sarsina.

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Figure 4.10 Virgin and Child Galaktotrophousa icon, Crete (?), ca. 1360–70. Mount Sinai, Monastery of Saint Catherine. Photo by permission of Saint Catherine’s Monastery, Sinai, Egypt, courtesy of Michigan-​ Princeton-​Alexandria Expeditions to Mount Sinai.

Concluding Remarks Our analysis contradicts the assumption that images blending Italian and Byzantine forms became popular in the late fifteenth century, when the maniera greca and other pre-​Renaissance styles started being perceived as anachronistic or exotic. Mixed panels emerged already around the mid-​fourteenth century; they stood out for their unprecedented schemes, were widely circulated throughout the Mediterranean, and were transconfessionally appreciated as efficacious supports for the cult of Mary. The integration of Italianate elements into the conventions of icon painting was not perceived as improper, inasmuch as it proved instrumental in enhancing the devotional efficacy of the Virgin’s image and prompting the viewer’s emotional response. It can be easily assumed that all the interactional dynamics described in the first part of this chapter contributed to the emergence and diffusion of such works. Their portability/transportability was certainly an important factor: they largely traveled along the Venetian sea routes of the Mediterranean and were disseminated at a very large scale. The same can be said for their authors, who included immigrants from 100

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Figure 4.11 Saint George on Horseback icon, Crete (?), ca. 1360–70. Mount Sinai, Monastery of Saint Catherine. Photo by permission of Saint Catherine’s Monastery, Sinai, Egypt, courtesy of Michigan-​ Princeton-​Alexandria Expeditions to Mount Sinai.

Constantinople, Venetians trying their luck on Crete, and, most probably, artists who were ready to move elsewhere if the displacement proved to be profitable. In their turn, owners and viewers were not passive receivers of the images and did not only contribute to their circulation but also frequently caused their alteration, reuse, and transformation. In their hands, artworks inescapably underwent a process of material alteration, since they were displayed in private chapels and house tabernacles, close to, or framed within, other objects and images that looked different in their shape, materiality, iconography, and style.58 We can therefore speculate whether the physical encounter of Greek icons and Italian paintings in the domestic setting may have set the grounds for, and paved the way to, the creation of the new mixed images. Rhizomatic processes are perhaps more elusive, but it can be assumed that the emergence of similar ornamental solutions in Venice and Byzantium, for example, may be due to parallel developments, triggered by the shared use of the same models, rather than the result of direct exchange. For example, a tendency to multiply ornaments Along the Art-​Historical Margins

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on Mary’s mantle can be detected also in fourteenth-​century Palaiologan icons, even if the decoration was concentrated along the hems and not scattered throughout the woven surface, which was expected to be embroidered only with the three, often very elaborate crosses marking the Virgin’s forehead and shoulders. Not infrequently, these signs were given a star-​shaped appearance, which prompted Venetian painters, who had become unaware of, or uninterested in, their theological meaning as visual metaphors of the Trinity, to multiply them and transform the maphorion into a starred blue mantle. This iconotropic invention was later appreciated and developed by the Greek, or Greek-​trained, authors of the mixed Madonnas. It is possible that the combination of forms may have been made easier by the belief that the technical medium of painting was a distinctively Greek art. In a sense, engaging in the making of pictorial images meant imitating the Evangelist Luke—a Greek by birth—and perpetuating the centuries-​old tradition he had initiated, also via the introduction of new solutions. Innovations were not perceived as problematic, on the condition that they may contribute to make icons more suitable to new devotional sensibilities without weakening their prestige and auratic power. The respect of some generic features—such as a quadrangular shape, a relief frame, a half-​length presentation, and a strong visual emphasis on faces—were much more decisive than their style in ensuring their acknowledgment as objects worthy of worship. There is little doubt that the encounter of forms could be easier in Mediterranean ports like Candia, which stood out for their multicultural and multiconfessional societies and the wide-​range connectivity associated with their role in international trade, pilgrimage routes, and institutional networks. Exchange of knowledge, technical know-​how, and visual solutions were only natural in a place where workshops led by indigenous and foreign artists originating from both Constantinople and Venice were located close to one another; here Greek and Italian masters could easily establish a joint venture or a Greek could decide to work in a Venetian’s atelier. Nevertheless, the free circulation of ideas does not explain by itself the grounds on which some elements were used, reinterpreted, and transformed, while others were completely ignored. It emphasizes the how but does not sufficiently explain the why. The herewith analyzed examples indicate that forms were not indiscriminately appropriated, merged, and hybridized but rather used in a purposeful and selective way. Their basic aim was to achieve a subtle balance between the sense of sacred distance conveyed by Byzantine conventions and the emotion-​laden nuances introduced by the solutions originating from Italian art. While this encounter may look awkward to our modern eyes, it could take place only because it was expected to suit the devotional needs of its intended viewers, who, irrespective of their being Catholic or Orthodox, longed for a more direct physical and immersive dialogue with the heavenly protectors evoked in their material images.

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Figure 4.12 (opposite) Fragmentary triptych icon with scenes of the Annunciation, Crucifixion, Akra Tapeinosis, and saints, ca. 1360–70. Kalopanagiotis, Monastery of Saint Herakleidios, Icon Museum. Photo: author.

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Notes 1. Braudel, La Méditerranée et le monde; Horden and Purcell, Corrupting Sea; Abulafia, Great Sea. See also Dabag et al., New Horizons, and Catlos and Kinoshita, Can We Talk Mediterranean? 2. See Bowes and Tronzo, National Narratives. 3. See esp. Hoffman, Late Antique and Medieval Art; Hourihane, Interactions; Mersch and Ritzerfeld, Lateinisch-​griechisch-​arabische Begegnungen; Schmidt-​Arcangeli and Wolf, Islamic Artefacts; Saurma-​Jeltsch, Power of Things; Caillet and Joubert, Orient et Occident; Grossman and Walker, “Mechanisms of Exchange”; Bacci et al., “Qu’est-​ce que l’espace méditerranéen au Moyen Âge?”; Hilsdale, “Visual Culture”; Baader and Wolf, “Kunstgeschichte”; Bacile, Romanesque; Hoffmann and Redford, “Transculturation”; Lymberopoulou, Cross-​ Cultural Interaction. 4. On Cyprus, see Bacci, “Art of Lusignan Cyprus.” On non-​Chalcedonian communities, see Immerzeel, Identity Puzzles; Snelders, Identity and Christian-​Muslim Interaction; Immerzeel, Narrow Way to Heaven. 5. See, e.g., Triantaphyllopoulos, “Ένα βιβλίο για τη χριστιανική τέχνη της Κύπρου”; Chotzakoglou, “Reconsidering the 13th Century Painting”; Didebulidze, “Cultural Interactions.” 6. Baxandall, Patterns of Intention, 58–62; Baader, “Einfluss”; Bovey and Lowden, Under the Influence; Kim, Travelling Artist, 11–38. 7. Kuortti and Nyman, “Introduction”; Burke, Cultural Hybridity; Burke, Hybrid Renaissance; García Canclini, Culturas híbridas; Young, Colonial Desire; Papastergiadis, “Tracing Hybridity in Theory.” 8. Flood, Objects of Translation; Juneja, “Das Visuelle in Sprache übersetzen?”; Juneja, “Kunstgeschichte und kulturelle Differenz.” 9. Transkulturelle Verflechtungen. 10. Mersch, “Anzeichen untergründiger Verflechtungen,” 195. 11. DaCosta Kaufmann, Dossin, and Joyeux-​ Prunel, Circulations. 12. Shalem, Islam Christianized; Hoffman, “Pathways of Portability”; Shalem, Chasuble of Thomas Becket. 13. See esp. Baader, Shalem, and Wolf, “Art, Space, Mobility.” 14. Dubois, Guillouët, and van den Bossche, Transferts artistiques; Jurković, Mobility of Artists; Bilotta, Medieval Europe in Motion. 15. Faria and Dias, Álvaro Pirez de Évora, and Mascolo, “Sul percorso di Álvaro Pirez.” 16. Spencer, “Travels in Gojjam”; Spencer, “Discovery of Brancaleon’s Paintings”; Chojnacki, “Discovery of a 15th-​Century Painting”; Heldman, “Nicolò

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Brancaleon”; Fiaccadori, “Etiopia, Venezia e l’Europa”; Bianchi, “Brancaleon pittore in Etiopia.” 17. See esp. Jevtić and Yalman, Spolia Reincarnated. 18. Settis, “Continuità, distanza, conoscenza”; Tedeschi Grisanti, “Reimpiego di materiali”; Burresi and Caleca, Arte islamica; Contadini, Camber, and Northover, “Beasts That Roared”; Mathews, “Other People’s Dishes”; Balafrej, “Saracen or Pisan?”; Contadini, Pisa Griffin. 19. Terrasse, Mosquée al-​Qaraouiyin, 66–67, 80–81, and Dodds, Al-​Andalus, 272–73, 278–79. 20. See esp. Flood, “Medieval Trophy.” 21. On gadrooned or pillow voussoirs, see Creswell, Muslim Architecture of Egypt, 1:210–11; Kenaan-​Kedar, “Decorative Architectural Sculpture”; Ousterhout, Eastern Medieval Architecture, 480–81. On the horseshoe arch, see esp. Gómez Moreno, Excursión; Haupt, “Mesopotamische und spanische Kirchen”; Holland, “Origin of the Horseshoe Arch”; Dewald, “Appearance of the Horseshoe”; De Montéquin, “Arches in the Architecture,” 72–76; Araguas, Brique et architecture, 61–63; Bessac, “Observations,” 379–415. On the related debate on interlacing roundels, see Uscatescu and Ruiz Souza, “ ‘Orientalismos’ y ‘entanglement.’ ” 22. Belting, “Kunst oder Objekt-​Stil?”; Hanson, “Stuttgart Casket”; Hanson, “Rise and Fall”; Bollók, “Rediscovering Antiquities.” 23. Jacoby, “Silk Economics,” 220, and von Fircks and Schorta, Oriental Silks. More generally on the Byzantine reception of Islamic arts, see Walker, “Integrated Yet Segregated.” For the very special case of Norman Sicily, see Dolezalek, Arabic Script. 24. For different cases, see Ward, “Plugging the Gap”; Ritzerfeld, “Mamlūkische Metallkunst”; Schulz, “Infiltrating Artifacts”; Schulz, “Artistic Exchanges”; Auld, Renaissance Venice; Vryzidis, “Between Three Worlds”; Androudis, “Muslim and Latin Presence”; Silverman, “14th–15th Century Syrio-​Egyptian Brassware”; Kadoi, “How Islamic Ornament.” See also Behrens-​Abuseif, “European Arts.” 25. Bacci, “Icone bizantine,” 14–16. 26. See esp. Cutler, “Misapprehensions and Misgivings”; Bertelli, “Montecassino, Bisanzio, Roma”; Orofino, “Montecassino”; Rubin, Giorgio Vasari, 249–50, 287–320; Concina, “Giorgio Vasari”; Bickendorf, “ ‘Maniera greca’ ”; Spieser, “Art byzantin et influence”; Jurkowlaniec, “West and East Perspectives”; Drandaki, “A maniera greca.” 27. Bacci, “Westeuropäische Wahrnehmungsformen.” On iconotropy in art history, see Tomás and Sáenz-​Lopez, Iconotropy.

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28. Howard, “Pluralism of Styles.” 29. See the different interpretations in Belting, Bild und Kult, 369–90; Nagel and Wood, Anachronic Renaissance, 96–107; Holmes, Miraculous Image, 145–207; Garnett and Rosser, Spectacular Miracles, 23–34; Bacci, “Die dem heiligen Lukas.” 30. Ioannisyan, “Between Byzantium and the Romanesque West”; Živkov, “Western Influences”; Čurčić, Architecture in the Balkans, 491–99; Ousterhout, Eastern Medieval Architecture, 550–57. 31. On church shape, see esp. Plagnieux and Soulard, “Famagouste”; Olympios, “Shifting Mantle of Jerusalem”; Olympios, “Saint George of the Greeks”; Olympios, Building the Sacred; Kaffenberger, Tradition and Identity, 1:135–212, 374–87; 2:138–91. On embellishment, see Bacci, “Patterns of Church Decoration.” 32. See esp. Pavón Maldonado, Tratado de arquitectura, 4:411–540. On terminology, see Feliciano, “Invention of Mudejar Art,” and Martínez Tejera, Estudios sobre las “iglesias arabizadas,” 134–66. 33. García Avilés, “Arte y poder en Murcia.” 34. Dodds, “Paintings in the Sala de Justicia”; Porto Rodríguez, “Courtliness and Its Trujumanes”; Robinson, “Arthur in the Alhambra?” 35. On earlier datings around 1350, see Acheimastou-​Potamianou, “Η εκκλησία της Παναγίας,” 267–68; Kollias, Η μεσαιωνική Πόλη της Ρόδου, 117–19; Vaivre, “Peintures murales à Rhodes”; Archontopoulos, “Η ζωγραφική στη μεσαιωνική πόλη της Ρόδου,” 456. The work can be paralleled with Gothic murals in Galatina and Soleto, in the Salento area: see Ortese, Pittura tardogotica, 86–87. 36. On Manuil Evgenikos, see Belting, “Peintre Manuel Eugenikos”; trans. Belting, “Painter Manuel Eugenikos”; Lordkipanidze, Роспись в Цаленджиха. On Theophanes the Greek, see Lazarev, Theophanes der Grieche; Vzdornov, Феофан Грек; Alpatov, Theophanes the Greek. See also Vapheiades, Ύστερη βυζαντινή ζωγραφική, 355–57, and Deliyanni-​Dori, “ ‘Friends’ of Theophanes the Greek.” 37. Živković, Religioznost i umetnost u Kotoru, 278–88; Živković, “Tota depicta picturis graecis”; Živković, “In Encountering Western Culture.” 38. Nagorni, “Die Entstehungszeit der Wandmalerei”; Wessel, “Pictores graeci,” 101–2; Djurić, “U senci Firentinske unije”; Vujičić, Srednjovjekovna arhitektura, 247–52. 39. Chastel, “Medietas imaginis”; Nagel and Wood, Anachronic Renaissance, 108–22; Casper, Art and the Religious Image, 43–72; Bacci, “Alla maniera dell’evangelista Luca”; Bacci, “Images à la grecque.” On the Ethiopian examples, see, with different views, Heldman, “St. Luke as Painter,” 125–48; Krebs, “Preliminary Catalogue”; and Bacci, “Mediterranean Entanglements.”

40. Bettini, Pittura di icone cretese–veneziana. 41. Chatzidakis, “Essai sur l’école dite ‘italogrecque’ ”; Chatzidakis, Études sur la peinture postbyzantine, essays 1 and 4; Chatzidakis, “Peinture des ‘Madonneri.’ ” 42. Lymberopoulou, “Audiences and Markets”; Drandaki, “Between Byzantium and Venice”; Gratziou, “A la latina”; Drandaki, “Piety, Politics, and Art.” 43. This position of the Greek clergy is clearly stated by the sixteenth-​century priest Ioannis Morezinos in his collection of Marian miracles (Κλίνη Σολομώντος, 180). 44. Bacci, “Modèles italiens dans la peinture.” 45. Chatzidakis, Έλληνες ζωγράφοι μετά την Άλωση, 1:292–94; Baltogianni, Εικόνες Μήτηρ Θεού, 272–80; Lymberopoulou, “Audiences and Markets,” 189–92; Haustein–Bartsch, “Einige Bemerkungen und Fragen ”; Leontianakou, “Vierge allaitant.” 46. Bacci, “Devotional Panels,” and Voulgaropoulou, “From Domestic Devotion,” no. 390. 47. Derbes and Neff, “Italy, the Mendicant Orders”; Vassilaki, Painter Angelos, 111–35; Vassilaki, “Cretan Icon-​Painting”; Carr, “Labelling Images.” 48. Bacci, “On the Prehistory”; Bacci, “Greek Madonnas”; Bacci, Βένετο–βυζαντινές αλληλεπιδράσεις; Bacci, “Mediterranean Entanglements.” 49. Garrison, Italian Romanesque Panel Painting, 11. See also the debate on “Adriatic” icons in Gamulin, “Pittura su tavola”; Gamulin, “ ‘Maestro della Madonna di Tersatto’ ”; Bianco Fiorin, “Madonna ‘bizantina’ di Valvasone”; Bianco Fiorin, “Mostra di icone”; Frinta, “Searching”; Demori Staničić, Javni kultovi ikona u Dalmaciji, 138–57. 50. Bacci, “On the Prehistory,” 122–45. 51. Ibid., 133–36. 52. Ibid., 152–64. 53. Garrison, “Addenda ad indicem II,” 303, and Tambini, Pittura dall’alto Medioevo, 115–16. 54. Bacci, “Greek Madonnas,” 153–54. 55. Ibid., 154; “Saint George and the Dragon,” The Sinai Icon Collection, accessed 7 August 2021, https://​vrc​.princeton​.edu​/sinai​/items​/show​/7496; Chatzichristodoulou, “Entry no. 30”; Bacci, Βένετο– βυζαντινές αλληλεπιδράσεις, 100–105. 56. Spatharakis, Dated Byzantine Wall Paintings of Crete, 106–7, figs. 94–96. 57. Cattapan, “Nuovi elenchi”; Constantoudaki-​ Kitromilidis, “Fifteenth-​Century Byzantine Icon Painter”; Constantoudaki-​Kitromilidis, “Conducere apothecam”; Constantoudaki-​Kitromilidis, “Aspects of Artistic Exchange.” 58. For a notable example of icon set within a wider assemblage, see De Benedictis, “55. Tabernacolo eucaristico.”

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Mathews, Karen Rose. “Other People’s Dishes: Islamic Bacini on Eleventh-​Century Churches in Pisa.” Gesta 53 (2014): 5–23. Mersch, Margit, and Ulrike Ritzerfeld, eds. Lateinisch-​griechisch-​arabische Begegnungen: Kulturelle Diversität im Mittelmeerraum des Spätmittelalters. Berlin: Akademie-​Verlag, 2009. Mersch, Margit. “Anzeichen untergründiger Verflechtungen: Lokale Materialisierungen in der Levante.” In Transkulturelle Verflechtungen, 192–95. Morezinos, Ioannis. Κλίνη Σολομώντος: Ιστορίες θαυμάτων της Παναγίας [1599]. Edited by Eleni Kakoulidi-​Panou, Elene Karantzola, and Maria Chalvatzidake. Heraklion: Hetaireia Kretikon Istorikon Meleton, 2007. Nagel, Alexander, and Christopher S. Wood. Anachronic Renaissance. New York: Zone, 2010. Nagorni, Dragan. “Die Entstehungszeit der Wandmalerei und Identifizierung ihres Malers nach Fresko-​Inschrift in der Kirche Sv. Bazilije in Donji Stoliv (Golf von Kotor).” Zograf 9 (1978): 43–49. Olympios, Michalis. Building the Sacred in a Crusader Kingdom: Gothic Church Architecture in Lusignan Cyprus, c.1209–c.1373. Turnhout: Brepols, 2018. ———. “Saint George of the Greeks and Its Legacy: A Facet of Urban Greek Church Architecture in Lusignan Cyprus.” In Carr, Famagusta, 143–202. ———. “The Shifting Mantle of Jerusalem: Ecclesiastical Architecture in Lusignan Famagusta.” In Carr, Famagusta, 75–142. Orofino, Giulia. “Montecassino.” In La pittura in Italia: L’Altomedioevo, edited by Carlo Bertelli, 441–61. Milan: Mondadori Electa, 1994. Ortese, Sergio. Pittura tardogotica nel Salento. Galento: Congedo, 2014. Ousterhout, Robert G. Eastern Medieval Architecture: The Building Traditions of Byzantium and the Neighboring Lands. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. Papastergiadis, Nikos. “Tracing Hybridity in Theory.” In Debating Cultural Hybridity: Multi-​cultural Identities and the Politics of Anti-​Racism, edited by Pnina Werbner and Tariq Modood, 257–81. London: Zed, 1997. Pavón Maldonado, Basilio. Tratado de arquitectura hispanomusulmana. Madrid: Consejo superior de investigaciones científicas, 2009. Plagnieux, Philippe, and Thierry Soulard. “Famagouste.” In L’art gothique en Chypre, edited by Jean-​Bernard de Vaivre and Philippe Plagnieux, 218–96. Paris: De Boccard, 2006. Porto Rodríguez, Rosa María. “Courtliness and Its Trujumanes: Manufacturing Chivalric Imagery Across the Castilian-​Grenadine Frontier.” In Courting the Alhambra: Cross-​Disciplinary

Approaches to the Hall of Justice Ceilings, edited by Cynthia Robinson, 219–66. Leiden: Brill, 2008. Ritzerfeld, Ulrike. “Mamlūkische Metallkunst für mediterrane Eliten: Grenzüberschreitungen in Luxus und Machtrhetorik.” In Integration und Desintegration der Kulturen im europäischen Mittelalter, edited by Michael Borgolte, Julia Dücker, Marcel Müllerburg, and Bernd Schneidmüller, 523–39. Berlin: Akademie-​Verlag, 2011. Robinson, Cynthia. “Arthur in the Alhambra? Narrative and Nasrid Courtly Self-​Fashioning in the Hall of Justice Ceiling Paintings.” Medieval Encounters 14 (2008): 164–98. Rubin, Patricia L. Giorgio Vasari: Art and History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995. Saurma-​Jeltsch Lieselotte E., ed. The Power of Things and the Flow of Cultural Transformations: Art and Culture Between Europe and Asia. Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2010. Schmidt-​Arcangeli, Catarina, and Gerhard Wolf, eds. Islamic Artefacts in the Mediterranean World: Trade, Gift Exchange and Artistic Transfer. Venice: Marsilio, 2010. Schulz, Vera-​Simone. “Artistic Exchanges Across Afro-​Eurasia: A Global Taste for Metal Artifacts from Mamluk Syria and Egypt in Italy, West Africa, and China in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries.” Convivium 8, no. 2 (2020): 132–57. ———. “Infiltrating Artifacts: The Impact of Islamic Art in Fourteenth- and Fifteenth-​Century Florence and Pisa.” Konsthistorisk tidskrift 87 (2018): 214–33. Settis, Salvatore. “Continuità, distanza, conoscenza: Tre usi dell’antico.” In Memoria dell’antico nell’arte italiana: Dalla tradizione all’archeologia, edited by Salvatore Settis, 3:373–486. Turin: Einaudi, 1986. Shalem, Avinoam, ed. The Chasuble of Thomas Becket: A Biography. Munich: Hirmer, 2017. ———. Islam Christianized: Islamic Portable Objects in the Medieval Church Treasures of the Latin West. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1998. Silverman, Raymond A. “14th–15th Century Syrio-​ Egyptian Brassware in Ghana.” Nyame Akuma 20 (1982): 13–16. Snelders, Bas. Identity and Christian-​Muslim Interaction: Medieval Art of the Syrian Orthodox from the Mosul Area. Leuven: Peeters, 2010. Spatharakis, Ioannis. Dated Byzantine Wall Paintings of Crete. Leiden: Alexandros, 2001. Spencer, Diana. “The Discovery of Brancaleon’s Paintings.” In Proceedings of the First International Conference on the History of Ethiopian Art, 53–55. London: Pindar, 1989. ———. “Travels in Gojjam: St. Luke Ikons and Brancaleon Re-​Discovered.” Journal of Ethiopian Studies 12 (1974): 201–20.

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Spieser, Jean-​Michel. “Art byzantin et influence: Pour l’histoire d’une construction.” In Byzance et le monde extérieur: Contacts, relations, échanges, edited by Michel Balard, Élisabeth Malamut, and Jean-​Michel Spieser, 271–88. Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2005. Tambini, Anna. Pittura dall’alto Medioevo al tardo Gotico nel territorio di Faenza e Forlì. Faenza: Comune di Faenza, 1982. Tedeschi Grisanti, Giovanna. “Il reimpiego di materiali di età classica.” In Il duomo di Pisa, edited by Adriano Peroni, 153–64. Modena: Panini, 1995. Terrasse, Henri. La mosquée al-​Qaraouiyin à Fès. Paris: Klincksieck, 1968. Tomás, Jorge, and Sandra Sáenz-​Lopez, eds. Iconotropy: Symbolic and Material Changes of Cult-​Images in the Classical and Medieval Ages. London: Routledge, 2022. Transkulturelle Verflechtungen: Mediävistische Perspektiven. Göttingen: Universitätsverlag, 2016. Triantaphyllopoulos, Demetrios D. “Ένα βιβλίο για τη χριστιανική τέχνη της Κύπρου και σκέψεις για τη σημερινή κατάσταση της έρευνάς της.” Νέα Εστία 158, no. 1783 (2005): 778–86. Uscatescu, Alexandra, and Juan Carlos Ruiz Souza. “ ‘Orientalismos’ y ‘entanglement’ cultural: estímulos y desenfonques historiográficos.” Anales de Historia del Arte 22 (“2012): 297–308. Vaivre, Jean-​Bernard de. “Peintures murales à Rhodes: Les quatre chevaliers de Philerimos.” Académie des inscriptions et belles-​lettres: Comptes rendus 2 (2004): 919–43. Vapheiades, Konstantinos M. Ύστερη βυζαντινή ζωγραφική: Χώρος και μορφή στην τέχνη της Κωνσταντινουπόλεως 1150–1450. Athens: Ekdotike Athenon, 2021. Vassilaki, Maria. “Cretan Icon-​Painting and the Council of Ferrara-​Florence (1438/39).” Μουσείο Μπενάκη 13/14 (2013–14): 115–27. ———. The Painter Angelos and Icon-​Painting in Venetian Crete. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009. Voulgaropoulou, Margarita. “From Domestic Devotion to the Church Altar: Venerating Icons in the Late Medieval and Early Modern Adriatic”

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Religions 10, no. 6 (2019): 390. https://​www​.mdpi​ .com​/2077​-1444​/10​/6​/390. Vryzidis, Nikolaos. “Between Three Worlds: The ‘Veneto-​Saracenic’ Candleholder of Docheiariou Monastery.” Convivium 7, no. 2 (2020): 58–73. Vujičić, Rajko. Srednjovjekovna arhitektura i slikarstvo Crne Gore. Podgorica: CID, 2007. Vzdornov, Gerol’d. Феофан Грек: Творческое наследие. Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1983. Walker, Alicia. “Integrated Yet Segregated: Eastern Islamic Art in Twelfth-​Century Byzantium.” In The Eloquence of Art: Essays in Honour of Henry Maguire, 387–406. London: Routledge, 2020. Ward, Rachel. “Plugging the Gap: Mamluk Export Metalwork, 1375–1475.” In Facts and Artefacts in the Islamic World: Festschrift für Jens Kröger on His 65th Birthday, edited by Annette Hagedorn and Avinoam Shalem, 263–84. Leiden: Brill, 2007. Wessel, Klaus. “Pictores graeci: Über den Austausch künstlerischer Motive zwischen Orthodoxie und Katholizismus im Montenegro.” In Jugoslawien: Integrationsprobleme in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 98–104. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1984. Young, Robert. Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture, and Race. London: Routledge, 1995. Živkov, Stanislav. “Western Influences in Medieval Church Architecture in Serbia and Montenegro—From Romanesque Towards Gothic.” Hortus Artium Medievalium 7 (2001): 115–27. Živković, Valentina. “In Encountering Western Culture—The Art of the Pomorje (Maritime Lands) in the 14th Century.” In Sacral Art of the Serbian Lands in the Middle Ages, edited by Dragan Vojvodić and Danica Popović, 357–66. Belgrade: Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, 2016. ———. Religioznost i umetnost u Kotoru (XIV–XVI vek). Belgrade: Balkanoški Institut SANU, 2010. ———. “Tota depicta picturis graecis: The Style and Iconography of Religious Painting in Medieval Kotor (Montenegro).” Il capitale culturale 10 (2014): 65–89.

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5 Looking at the “Center” from the “Border” An Exchange of Franco-​Ottoman Gifts and the Perception of Art Around 1400

Michele Tomasi

Since the turn of the second millennium, the borders of the Middle Ages have considerably expanded in the scholarly literature, as the contributions gathered in this volume amply demonstrate.1 This extension of the boundaries of medieval art history pose questions to those who continue to work on what was once the center. We need to ask how, based on the addition of new territories to the discipline, we can rethink what is at the heart of the traditional canon. This article offers a consideration of what we can learn of the field’s new borders. It seeks to show how considering spaces that were usually excluded from the history of medieval art can help us to understand better what still frequently remains the core of the art-​historical narrative. To do this, I use as a starting point the political-​diplomatic imbroglio that involved the court of France and the Ottoman court around 1400—or, rather, the echo of those events in the narrative sources produced in France at that time. These stories are also relevant here because they feature men who perceived themselves as occupying the center of the world being forced to confront those at its margins, an area that they understood imperfectly and that they therefore approached with deeply rooted and often negative preconceptions. Since we can reconstruct this episode only by interpreting the narrative given by three chroniclers of the late Middle Ages, this approach also questions the relationship of art history with the neighboring disciplines of history and literary history; it thus forces

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us to reflect on the role that written sources play in the construction of art history, alongside that of monuments and artworks.2 In 1397, King Charles VI of France (r. 1380–1422) sent an embassy to the Turkish sultan Bayezid I (r. 1389–1403). Diplomatic gifts were exchanged between the two courts as part of negotiations to procure the release of French hostages imprisoned by the Ottomans.3 In this chapter, I will first briefly summarize the historical context in which these negotiations took place. I will then turn my attention to the narratives of three chroniclers who are our main sources for how these events were perceived in France at the time. Indeed, beyond the historical facts, what interests me is how people then thought about and interpreted what happened to them.4 This is why the body of my contribution will contain a close reading of these literary texts, which I will carry out by decoding the key words that the three authors use to explain the facts. Drawing inspiration from the work of Michael Baxandall, Bernard Guenée, and Mary Carruthers, I will seek to understand how these words embody and express the categories through which writers and their readers constructed the meaning of events.5 This analysis will ultimately allow me to show how the experience of radical Otherness led these chroniclers to reveal how French aristocrats around 1400 thought about art, its functions, and its reception. It will be useful to begin with a short summary of the events. In 1396, at the request of King Sigismund of Hungary (r. 1387–1437), King Charles VI of France agreed to send an army to help counter the expansionism of the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid, who was extending his dominion over the Balkans. The French contingent was placed under the authority of Jean de Nevers, son of an uncle of the French king, the Duke of Burgundy Philip the Bold (r. 1364–1404).6 The army embarked on a crusade against the infidel, together with its Hungarian and Polish allies. On 25 September 1396, under the ramparts of the city of Nicopolis, the Turks inflicted a crushing defeat on the Christian army, particularly on the French cavalry. Several illustrious members of the French nobility were killed, while others were taken prisoner—including Jean de Nevers himself. To obtain their release, the French Crown was forced to open delicate negotiations and pay a high ransom (fig. 5.1).7 The defeat of Nicopolis was considered by the Turks to be a very minor episode. Contemporary Ottoman writers, even those who were very close to Bayezid, make no mention of this victory, and the first references to it, from several decades after the battle, are brief and passing.8 The reactions were quite different in France: the main chroniclers of the time reported in detail on the preparation of the crusade, its tragic course, and its repercussions.9 The events figure largely in the works of Jean Froissart, author of a chronicle in four books in the vernacular language that is a major source for the knowledge of European history in the second half of the fourteenth century.10 It is in his fourth book, which likely remained unfinished due to his death around 1404, that Froissart gives his version of the Nicopolis disaster.11 Having spent his entire life in the orbit of several important courts of the time, Froissart recounts the tragedy from a 114

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Figure 5.1 Payment of the ransom to Bayezid I. From Jean Colombe and collaborators, Passages oultre mer de Sébastien Mamerot, Bourges, ca. 1474–75. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 5594, fol. 267v. Photo: BnF.

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point of view similar to that of the French aristocracy. Its narrative must be compared to that provided by the other main witness of French history of the period, Michel Pintoin, cantor of the abbey of Saint-​Denis and official historiographer of the reign of Charles VI. His description of the episode in question within his Latin chronicle, which covers Charles’s entire reign, is based on direct knowledge of the reactions that the defeat provoked at the French court.12 I will not analyze the whole account that these two authors give of the 1396 crusade and its consequences. What interests me most as an art historian are the chapters by Froissart that describe the preparation and sending of the gifts that the French princes decided to offer to the Turkish sultan in order to obtain his benevolence toward the hostages.13 To shed light on the stakes of Froissart’s narrative, I will compare it to Pintoin’s. It is essential to keep in mind that these two texts have a referential character, that their authors were very close to the elites of their time, and that their readers belonged essentially to the aristocracy. These works thus primarily express a system of values and a vision of the world shared by the nobility. It will be useful to juxtapose Froissart’s and Pintoin’s reports with the account given by a third contemporary writer, the anonymous author of the biography of one of the most illustrious men in arms of the time, Marshal Boucicaut. This biography was completed in 1409.14 These narrative sources are only partially confirmed by archival documentation. Indeed, the accounts of Burgundy and the Crown accounts, which are incomplete, keep only a few records on the expenditure made on presents offered to the sultan.15 There is reason to believe that on this issue both Froissart and Pintoin are largely reliable. Nevertheless, their veracity is not a crucial point for my purpose, rather, it is essential that their narratives purport to be faithful and appeared true to their readers.16 We can therefore take them as credible testimonies of the perceptions that aristocrats held of this world of Otherness: the court of Bayezid. According to Froissart, the bad news of Nicopolis’s defeat arrived quickly at the French court; it was initially greeted with disbelief. However, the princes had to face the sad reality when a knight from Picardy named Jacques de Helly, instructed by Bayezid, came to confirm the facts. The sire of Helly was in charge of this diplomatic mission because he had served the sultan’s father, Murad I, but he was of French origin: he was therefore well suited to play the role of intermediary between the Ottoman world and France.17 Froissart reports that the French princes also wanted to take advantage of his dual culture and asked him to find out what gifts might make the sultan favorably disposed toward them: Sir James de Helly was asked what jewels could be transmitted and sent from the King of France to the said Sultan, which could please him more, so that the count of Nevers and the other prisoners might fare the better. The knight said that Bayezid would take great pleasure in viewing tapestries from Arras or Picardy, as long as they represented good ancient histories; he would also 116

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be fond of white falcons, called gyrfalcons. Moreover, he thought that fine and thin white linen from Reims, and scarlet cloths, would be very happily welcomed by the Sultan and his lords. There was plenty of cloths of gold and silks in Turkey, with which the King and his lords were amply provided, and consequently they would take pleasure [esbatements] and amusement [plaisances] in novelties.18 Jacques de Helly thus advised the French court to send tapestries, gyrfalcons, Reims linen, and scarlet cloth. The story attributes to the sultan the desire for two types of objects: useful animals for one of the noblest forms of hunting—a seigneurial activity par excellence—and luxury products. Cloth from Reims and scarlets were luxury textiles that were extremely popular at the time.19 The inventories of the greatest lords contain many of these fabrics: there are “thin cloths of Reims” in the inventory of King Charles V written in 1379, as well as in that of his brother, the famous Jean de Berry, who owned “two large sheets of very delicate and very thin cloths of Reims, to put on a bed of state.” The Duchess of Orléans, Valentine Visconti, also possessed “a dozen of fine towels from Reims, seven of them being thin.”20 These references confirm that these textiles were extremely expensive and reserved for a small elite. Elsewhere in his text, Froissart tells us that another prince from Western Europe, Gian Galeazzo Visconti, Duke of Milan (r. 1378–1402), sent fabrics from Reims to the same sultan to ensure his benevolence: “[He] had every year sent him presents of hounds and hawks, or the finest linen or woolen cloth that could be procured at Reims, which is very agreeable to the Heathen and to the Saracens, who have none but what comes from our country.”21 That Reims textiles are considered the equivalent of hunting dogs or birds indicates the level of appreciation they could evoke.22 According to Froissart, Helly also advised the court to offer Bayezid tapestries depicting antique subjects.23 This gift suggestion is perfectly plausible. Other texts document that Philip the Bold regularly used the gift of tapestries as a tool for diplomacy, allowing him to oblige high-​ranking individuals.24 Dozens of donations are known since the mid-1380s, presented to members of the royal family (including Isabella of Bavaria, Valentine Visconti, Jean de Berry, and Louis II of Bourbon) and to great foreign princes (including King Richard II of England; his uncles Edmund of Langley, John of Gaunt, and Thomas of Woodstock; Duke Albert III of Austria; Gian Galeazzo Visconti; and King Martin I of Aragon). The great ecclesiastical dignitaries, such as the bishop of Arles and ducal chancellor Jean Canard and the cardinal Jean de Brogny, were also beneficiaries.25 I do not need to stress here that historiated tapestry weaving, a materially valuable and technically difficult product, was a relatively recent innovation. Historiated tapestries were then produced only in a small region of northern Europe that was politically under the control of the Duke of Burgundy. He could therefore easily use his privileged position to distinguish figures via these gifts whose recognition he wanted to ensure. Looking at the “Center” from the “Border”

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No Turkish source confirms Bayezid’s interest in tapestries. Nevertheless, it is possible that a prince from such a different culture might still have appreciated these artifacts. We know that another non-​Latin monarch in those same years was seduced by similar hangings. Between 1399 and 1402, Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos (r. 1391–1425) made a long journey to Rome, Milan, London, and Paris in order to obtain the help of his counterparts in Western Europe against the Ottoman threat.26 During his stay in Paris, he was housed at Louvre Castle. He later wrote a long ekphrasis of a tapestry representing Spring that, according to him, adorned his room.27 Since the end of the nineteenth century, specialists have debated whether this highly elaborate and literary text was based on real experience.28 I do not want to get into the controversy here, but the fact remains that the emperor composed a virtuoso literary piece about a tapestry. The sultan, just like the Byzantine emperor and regardless of his greater cultural distance from the French court, could have also been charmed by this kind of sumptuous hanging. Indeed, another source credits a similar appreciation for European textiles to a different Asian prince. In 1403, Archbishop John of Sulṭāniyya visited the French royal court on a diplomatic mission inspired, or at least approved, by the Turco-​Mogol commander Timur (r. 1370–1405).29 During his stay in Paris, John wrote a short treatise in French on the great conqueror.30 According to the prelate, among the things that Timur Beg loves more than any others [were] first, fine and thin textiles, especially of the colors of fine seed and crimson; item [textiles] the color of pink; item thin [textiles] of the colors white and green; thin cloth as those from Reims; item branches of coral; item a coral tree; item cups of crystal and other vessels ornamented with gold and silver; item silver vessels ornamented with polished emeralds arranged in the French way; item good Cypriot camlets; item certain very strange fish teeth; item bankers made like in France; item noble tapestries like those in France.31 This text is another source that describes the preferences of an Eastern lord through the lens of a Westener—John was an Italian Dominican.32 Like Helly, however, John had spent his career since 1377 in the East, first in Armenia and then in Persia, so we can assume he had firsthand knowledge of the cultural environment and people he wrote about. Let us return to Froissart. He reports that the tapestry ultimately sent to Bayezid represented scenes from Alexander the Great’s life, in particular his military conquests: “I will tell you what they [six pack animals] were charged with. Two of them were loaded with tapestries, taken and made in Arras, of the best craftmanship that could be found. These tapestries represented the story of King Alexander and the most important part of his life and his conquests, which thing was very pleasant and agreeable to see to all honorable and good people. Two other pack animals were charged with fine white and 118

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thin Reims cloths, the two last pack animals with fine white and vermilion scarlets.”33 Froissart informs us that Bayezid claimed to be a descendant of Alexander the Great and that he dreamed of conquering the world just like the illustrious king of Macedonia did.34 In the aftermath of the battle of Nicopolis, the sultan would have joked with the members of his court, Foissart reports, mocking the Christians he had just defeated and imagining the triumphs to come: “And he himself made them laugh, joke and have fun, and said that soon they would pass with a great army into the kingdom of Hungary and conquer it. And then they would take over all the other Christian kingdoms and countries. And he would reduce them to obedience. They could practice their religion, provided that he would have lordship. And he wanted to rule like Alexander of Macedonia, who was King of the world for twelve years, and of whom he said he was a descendant by blood.”35 Turkish sources confirm that the figure of Alexander was very prominent at the Ottoman court. Ahmedî, the greatest Turkish poet of the fourteenth century, frequented the court of Bayezid and composed İskendernāme, a romance in verse telling the story of the ancient ruler (the first version was completed before 1390, with an expanded version appearing in 1402). He dedicated this work in its final form to Amir Sulayman, one of Bayezid’s sons.36 It is also well known that Alexander the Great became an increasingly popular figure at the court of Burgundy.37 He became central to the self-​representation of the later Burgundian dukes Philip the Good and Charles the Bold, and Philip the Bold already owned several hangings with stories of the Macedonian monarch. In 1386, he bought one “tapestry with the story of King Alexander” from Jean Cosset, and, as a 1392 New Year’s gift, he offered to the Duchess of Orléans a “tapestry of fine Arras thread, decorated with gold and silver from Cyprus with the story of the conquest of Babylon by King Alexander.”38 The postdeath inventory of his widow, Margaret of Flanders, dating from 1405, mentions one “tapestry of Cassanus and King Alexander” and one “tapestry, with rips and holes in several places, which speaks of Alexander”—the latter perhaps to be identified with the tapestry purchased in 1386.39 In 1398, the duke bought several items left by the late Count of Blois, Guy II of Châtillon, a great patron of Froissart, including one “big tapestry with thread of gold containing the story of King Alexander and of the King of Aire.”40 It is therefore perfectly credible that Philip the Bold sent Bayezid a tapestry with the story of the Macedonian hero, which would thus have been one of the oldest to illustrate a subject that would have great success and wide circulation in this medium (fig. 5.2).41 In the mythical figure of the ruler, the donor and the recipient could both find a common reference allowing them to communicate across the gap that separated their two cultures. But we can read more into this gift. At face value, the tapestry was certainly meant to flatter the recipient, who saw himself as Alexander’s heir and similarly wanted to conquer vast territories. Nevertheless, knowing the meaning and prominence ascribed to Alexander by the Burgundian court during the fifteenth century, we can also surmise that Philip the Bold already saw in him a model for himself. Thus, while the gift was apparently a way to praise Bayezid, it was also a way for the Duke of Burgundy to Looking at the “Center” from the “Border”

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Figure 5.2 Story of Alexander the Great, Tournai (?), ca. 1460. Tapestry, 4.16 × 9.58 m. Genoa, Villa del Principe—Palazzo di Andrea Doria. Photo: Villa del Principe— Palazzo di Andrea Doria © ADP s.r.l.

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assert his own greatness. Hence the Alexander tapestry possessed an aura of revenge that would only have been perceptible in Paris or Dijon. Whatever the meaning that could or should have been detectable in this double-​ edged diplomatic gift, the tapestry may never have reached its destination, according to Froissart’s account.42 Sigismund of Hungary is said to have prevented the envoys of the king of France who were transmitting the gifts from taking the textiles out of his territory, allowing them to continue with only the birds of prey. Indeed, as Sigismund explained to them, “I will not pay much attention to gyrfalcons, since birds fly easily from one country to another: they are offered and soon lost; but tapestries are things to show, to keep, that remain and are to be seen forever.”43 This passage is an eloquent testimony to the value attached to tapestries in Europe around 1400. Since Froissart is the only source we have about these hangings and their fate, it is impossible to ascertain the veracity of his story.44 What we do know of the historical and artistic context of the years around 1396 makes his account plausible. In any case, this episode is important since it reveals the attitudes toward the arts that Froissart shared with his patrons and readers. If we take up the first extract I quoted from the Chronicles, we see that, according to Froissart, the sultan and his family would have appreciated cloth from Reims and scarlet fabric more than cloths of gold and silk because they already had those in abundance, whereas they could not easily obtain the former. Similarly, according to the chronicler, the Duke of Milan understood the benefits of offering this type of textile because it was difficult for Turks to attain. These texts reveal that the “exotic” character of a luxury good was considered a quality in itself. An identical spirit emerges from the passage that Le livre des fais du bon mareschal Bouciquaut devotes to the presents sent from Paris to Bayezid: “The messengers went to the Bazat and presented [the sultan] with very rich and beautiful Out of Bounds

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gifts from the King of France and from the Lords, and many gracious things, like the most beautiful hawks and falcons that one could see, and the gloves to carry them, all covered with pearls and precious stones that are worth a lot of great treasures, scarlets, fine linens, rich cloths of Reims, and all such things they don’t have over there.”45 The phrase “all such things they don’t have over there” reveals a similar attitude to the one expressed by Froissart. That the two worlds, Christian and infidel, agree in this matter is clearly shown in the Froissardian passage on Gian Galeazzo Visconti. In exchange for the gifts he received from the Duke of Milan, reports the chronicler, “the Sultan sent back to him other gifts and rich presents of cloths, gold and precious stones, of which they have great abundance among them while we only get them with great risk, except through Venetian, Genoese and Italian merchants, who will seek them out among them.”46 Whatever the Ottoman court’s disposition toward exotic objects, they were highly prized in French courts, and here Froissart and Boucicaut’s biographer assume that the sultan’s court must have shared a similar attitude.47 A careful comparison of different texts and preserved objects from this period shows that this taste for luxury products that came from afar and were difficult to obtain was indeed a dominant feature in the princely courts of the Valois. There is even a word that refers to these coveted goods: the adjective estrange, which should be translated, in my opinion, as “exotic.”48 Let me briefly touch on this topic.49 A frequently mentioned passage from the biography of Charles V, written around 1404 by Christine de Pizan, shows how this adjective was used. In the text, Christine describes the habits of the wise king: Then he went to Vespers, after which, in summer time, sometimes he entered in his garden. Here, if he was in his hôtel Saint-​Pol, occasionally the queen came to him or his children were brought to him. There he talked to the women and asked them about the well-​being of his children; every now and then he was presented with exotic [estranges] gifts from various countries, artillery or other war harnesses, and various other things, or merchants brought in velvets, gold cloths, or other things and all kinds of beautiful exotic [estranges] things or jewels, which he showed to the connoisseurs of such things, people belonging to his family.50 Here, objects described as estrange are clearly associated with ideas of Otherness, preciousness, pleasure, and intimacy. What is estrange is prized because it is difficult to obtain, because it belongs to another culture. It is in this sense that we can understand the use of the word in a letter from Jean de Berry to Pierre Salmon in 1408, in response to a missive the latter had sent to him from Italy. In his note, this curious character had informed the duke that “in this city of Siena there is a marquetry worker, and he makes images of marquetry so beautiful and well dressed in various colors of wood that no one was ever seen working better than him in this art.”51 He also had offered Looking at the “Center” from the “Border”

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Figure 5.3 Entry of Isabella of Bavaria in Paris. From Jean Froissart, Chroniques, book IV, Bruges, ca. 1470–72. London, British Library, MS Harley 4379, fol. 3r. Photo © The British Library Board, Harley 4379.

to negotiate with the artist to have him go to France with the prince. The duke did not send Salmon the money he asked for, and the transfer was not made. What interests us here, however, is that Jean de Berry, in answering the letter, spoke of the craftsman in these terms: “And with that you have found a very solemn worker of marquetry and images of marquetry, with whom, since you know we take pleasure in exotic things [choses estranges], you would like to negotiate so that he would come to us.”52 Estrangeté is associated here with a difficult technique that was not commonly practiced in France and with the notion of pleasure, confirming our reading of Christine’s passage. At the end of her quote, Christine de Pizan shows us the king surrounded by members of his family who join him in admiring exotic products as connoisseurs. It is interesting to compare this scene with an extract from Froissart’s Chronicles. The chronicler describes the presentation of precious gifts to King Charles VI by the bourgeoisie of Paris. These gifts are offered to the sovereign on the occasion of the first solemn entry of Isabella of Bavaria and Valentine Visconti to the capital in 1389 (fig. 5.3).53 Froissart 122

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tells how a delegation of bourgeois went to the king to bring him, on a litter, a large quantity of gold or gilded silver tableware. A member of the delegation addresses the monarch: “ ‘My dearest sire and noble King, your Parisian bourgeois present you at the joyful advent of your reign all these jewels that are on this litter—Many thanks, answered the King, good people, they are beautiful and rich.’ Then the townsmen rose and retired and took leave and the King gave them. When they left, the King said to Sir Guillaume de Bordes and to Montagu who were with him: ‘Let us see more closely the presents, what they are.’ They came up to the litter and looked over.”54 Let us note the behavior that Froissart attributes to the king and his companions: the three of them stand up and go look closely at the goldsmith’s pieces. We are reminded of the attitude that Christine de Pizan ascribes to Charles V and his family. It should be noted that Guillaume de Bordes and Jean de Montaigu were two close advisors to Charles VI, two intimates even.55 Christine could have also described them as connoisseurs. It is significant that Froissart attributes similar practices to Bayezid and his entourage. The chronicler reports that, in order to secure the gratitude of the king of France and the Duke of Burgundy, the king of Cyprus, James of Lusignan (r. 1382–98) decided to have a gold nef made to offer it to the sultan and thus incline him more favorably toward the Christians (fig. 5.4):56 On the other hand, King James of Cyprus knew well, that if he could any how soften the anger of the Sultan, so that he would be willing to accept an amicable agreement concerning the French lords he held in prison, that they might be courteously delivered, he should greatly oblige the King of France, the Duke of Burgundy, and the French. To accomplish this, the King of Cyprus had a nef made of gold, no matter what the cost, very richly and very nobly wrought, that might be worth twenty thousand ducats, which he sent by his knights as a present to the Sultan Bayezid. It was so beautifully and so well-​ crafted that it was a pleasure to look at it, and was graciously and gratefully accepted by the Sultan, who replied, he would return him double its value in courtesy and affection.57 It should be noted that the lexicon used to talk about sumptuary objects refers to the realm of pleasure: here it is said that the nef was very pleasant to look at. The passages quoted above contain other terms related to this semantic domain: tapestries are pleasant and agreeable to look at (“la quelle chose estoit tres plaisant et agreable à veoir à toutes gens d’onneur et de bien”), and Froissart asserts that exotic things would give the Ottomans pleasure and entertainment (“prendoient en nouvelles choses leurs esbatemens et leurs plaisances”). It is therefore obvious that the most refined works are considered in aristocratic circles to provide a form of delight.58 In fact, as for Charles V and his family, as for Charles VI and his advisers, according to Froissart, the contemplation of precious and beautiful pieces is an activity that the sultan practiced in small groups. The gift of the Looking at the “Center” from the “Border”

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Figure 5.4 The Burghley Nef, Paris, 1527–28. London, Victoria and Albert Museum; supported by the Art Fund (Cochrane Trust) and the Goldsmiths’ Company. Photo © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

king of Cyprus is indeed received and commented on by Bayezid and the members of his council: “And for this reason, he then gave and presented the beautiful golden nef to the Sultan, in order to have his affection and gratitude. And his gift was accepted with great joy and much appreciated by the Sultan and by the members of his council.”59 In this case, therefore, it is also conceivable for Froissart that infidels share the preferences and aristocratic practices and values of their Western and Christian counterparts. Like the French princes, Bayezid is supposed to appreciate exotic luxury objects and is considered capable of admiring them by discussing their merits with members of his entourage; like French nobility, he engages in hunting, the aristocratic activity par excellence. Therefore the tastes of the Ottoman court and the Western courts are considered aligned. This basis of shared values accords with the sensitive analysis of Marie-​Thérèse de Medeiros, who demonstrates that Froissart gives a very nuanced image of both the sultan, in particular, and the Turks, in general, sometimes even expressing admiration for the Muslims who were traditionally enemies of the French. Despite accounts of cruelty, the Ottomans and the Christians share equally sincere religious motivations, the same admiration for prowess, the same curiosity 124

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toward others. The sultan could even be admired for his religious tolerance and his willingness to surround himself with knights from Western Europe.60 By paying such heed to the assemblage of the Alexander the Great tapestries and the Reims textiles, Froissart highlights the commonalities between the tastes, values, and behaviors of the two worlds. However, this feeling of proximity has its limits. Pintoin sketches a similar yet specular image of the one given by Froissart of Bayezid and his entourage admiring the nef offered by the king of Cyprus. The official chronicler did not say a word about the gifts that had been sent to the sultan. Perhaps to dwell on them would have been an unbearable admission of the inferiority, at least momentarily, of the French court toward the infidels. On the other hand, Pintoin reports on the Parisian “connoisseurs” who gathered to comment and interpret the gifts that the sultan sent to the French court after Nicopolis, through the intermediary of the Burgundian knight Jacques de Vergy. These are clearly exotic objects: In the opinion of those present, these gifts were not of great value; but they had the merit of rarity and exoticism [non communia, sed peregrina]. The King having asked the lords who were there what they thought of it, they replied by seeking to give meaning to each object, that the Turk had undoubtedly wanted by this present to awaken the King’s warrior ardor. There was indeed an iron club used to break helmets, a horse that had its nostrils split so that it could provide a longer run, a drum, ten small woolen helmets, and six Turkish bows whose strings were made of human guts. Now, as the Turks made use of these things in their expeditions, on the battlefields, or when they pursued their routed enemies, Vergy himself was of the opinion that these gifts were intended to remind the King of the victory won in Hungary over the Christians.61 In this remarkable excerpt, the Latin adjective peregrinus seems to translate the French estrange in the sense that Christine de Pizan or Jean de Berry used it. It is true that Ottoman gifts do not belong to the category of the sumptuary arts, which are normally associated with the French term. But it should be noted that the chronicler feels the need to specify that the gifts were peregrina even if they were not precious (“non multum sumptuosa”), thus indicating that normally peregrini objects should be luxurious.62 But while the presents sent by the French court appealed to shared values and practices between the two cultures, the militant gifts from the Ottoman court expressed a much more aggressive message: they embodied a distinct Turkish identity and affirmed their military superiority, which had already manifested itself and would be further confirmed in the future. The donations sent by Bayezid embody the promise that the sultan had made to his family after the victory of Nicopolis: that they would “take over all the other Christian kingdoms and countries. And he would reduce them to Looking at the “Center” from the “Border”

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obedience.”63 It should be recalled that according to Pintoin, Nicopolis’s defeat was a punishment inflicted by God on Christians for their sins. Indeed, the French knights had been arrogant, frivolous, and vain, while the Turks, although inhumanly cruel, were nonetheless brave, faithful to their god, disciplined, and determined. Speaking of the donations brought by Jacques de Vergy, the chronicler could once again highlight the military value and rigor of the Ottomans and present it as an example to his French readers, implicitly criticizing their vices.64 Reading these chroniclers shows that in France around 1400, the contemplation of sumptuous objects was a source of pleasure for aristocrats. The delight is first and foremost aroused by luxury textiles and goldsmith’s works. Such contemplation was an activity that took place in a familiar or even intimate setting, within small, close-​ knit groups of people who were tightly linked with one another. One of the most appreciated qualities of precious objects, besides value and technical mastery, was exoticism—of materials, of techniques, and of typologies. The luxury goods that were admired in this way participated fully not only in material and cultural life but also in politics and diplomacy. This involvement of sumptuary products in international relations—if I may use this anachronistic term—was only possible, however, because the worlds that communicated through them recognized one another. It is only because one group knows or believes that others (in this case, the Ottomans) will react to objects like they do (in this case, the French) that these artifacts could function as a fruitful way to establish a dialogue. Indeed, the example examined here reminds us that Western Europe and the Turkish empire were not totally separate worlds, even in the field of the arts. The elites of the Western kingdoms were not unaware of or indifferent to the Ottomans. By using artistic works, by talking about them, they acted and built a discourse that considered this other universe, which seemed so distant but with which they had to interact. What is thrilling, in my view, about the new directions of research on artistic borders is that they do not play the “margins” against the “center” but propose a widening redefinition of the canon. Within this new landscape, attention is thus focused on the dynamics of exchange between different spaces and on the processes of identity formation. In this way, no opposition in principle is drawn between the boundaries and the core of the traditional narrative. Rather, this approach leads to a better consideration of both and allows for the recognition of the historical importance of interplay between the spaces that have long been marginalized and those that have been deemed central. By analyzing a particular case, I have sought to open up the discourse in three directions. I have tried to show that, even when studying the Parisian milieu in the late Middle Ages, it is beneficial to broaden one’s horizons and consider a space that has been often perceived as marginal—in this case, the Ottoman world. I have also attempted to illustrate how useful it is to focus on artifacts that are still too often treated as peripheral: in this case, textiles and tapestries.65 Finally, I have tried to cross the frontiers between disciplines and exploit a type of written source that art historians normally leave in the hands 126

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of historians or historians of literature. My purpose was to make the center and the margins interact in order to shed new light on the former. It is precisely by relating an episode of interaction that Froissart and Pintoin reveal to us how, namely in regard to luxury productions, the French elites around 1400 defined their own practices sometimes in opposition to and sometimes in harmony with the Ottomans. By seeking to understand the relationships that, at a given moment, stretched between Paris and a space that does not belong to the traditional canon of medieval art, we can shed new light on the Parisian court environment; by expanding our gaze to include Anatolia, we can identify new aspects in the study of sumptuary objects in French aristocratic culture and society around 1400.

Notes I am deeply grateful to the editors for their help in improving my text, to the anonymous reviewers for their very productive suggestions, and to Annika Fisher for her careful editing. 1. See the introduction to this volume by Thomas and Walker. 2. I deal with some of this material, in a broader framework, in Tomasi, Écrire l’art en France. 3. For an outline of the life of the sultan, see Kastritsis, “Bayezid I”; for an introduction to the broader context, see Lindner, “Anatolia, 1300–1450.” For a full account of these negotiations, see Atiya, Crusade of Nicopolis, 98–112. 4. As Valentin Groebner points out, “If we take seriously the conditions and practices of recording gifts in writing, then these texts on gifts reflect not pure concepts but their application—in short, the inseparability of material and discursive practices” (Liquid Assets, 11). 5. “Especially in the so delicate and complex field of the history of mentalities, outside the history of words, there is no salvation.” Guenée, “État et nation en France,” 3. See also Baxandall, Giotto and the Orators, and Carruthers, Experience of Beauty. 6. It was precisely by bravely fighting in Nicopolis that Jean earned his nickname “the Fearless.” On him, see Schnerb, Jean sans Peur, esp. 83–110. 7. On the crusade of Nicopolis, see Atiya, Crusade of Nicopolis; Vaughan, Philip the Bold, 59–78; Paviot and Chauney-​Bouillott, “Nicopolis, 1396– 1996”; Nicolle, Nicopolis 1396. On the payment of the ransom, see Wright, “Investment in Goodwill.” For a more recent, perceptive analysis of its actual impact on the arts, see Nash, “Martyrdom of St Denis.” 8. Kaçar and Dumolyn, “Battle of Nicopolis.” 9. Gaucher, “Deux regards sur une défaite”; Srodecki, “ ‘Contre les ennemis’ ”; Martenet, “Récit de

la bataille.” See, moreover, the excellent analysis by Medeiros, Hommes, 271–317. 10. For a short introduction to Froissart, see Ainsworth, “Froissart.” For more information and bibliography, see The Online Froissart, https://​www​ .dhi​.ac​.uk​/onlinefroissart​/apparatus​.jsp​?type​=​bibl, and “Jean Froissart,” Arlima: Archives de littérature du Moyen Âge, https://​www​.arlima​.net​/il​/jean​ _froissart​.html. 11. Froissart, Chroniques. Translations from sources are mine, unless otherwise stated; for Froissart, I also consulted Thomas Johnes’s translation. On the fourth book of the Chronicles, see Varvaro, Tragédie de l’Histoire. 12. Bellaguet, Chronique du Religieux de Saint-​ Denys. The best introduction to Michel Pintoin is Guenée, “Michel Pintoin.” For more bibliography, see “Michel Pintoin,” Arlima: Archives de littérature du Moyen Âge, https://​www​.arlima​.net​/mp​/michel​ _pintoin​.html​#car. 13. On gift-​giving in France around 1400, see Buettner, “Past Presents,” and Hirschbiegel, Étrennes. For an overview of the intense scholarly debate on gifts and gift-​giving since Marcel Mauss’s groundbreaking article of 1924, see Schrift, Logic of Gift, and Hilsdale, “Gift.” For gift exchanges between East and West, see Biedermann, Gerritsen, and Riello, Global Gifts. 14. Lalande, Livre des fais. 15. Atiya (Crusade of Nicopolis, 142–43) publishes two lists detailing gifts sent from the duke of Burgundy to the sultan through two embassies (on which, see Atiya, Crusade of Nicopolis, 102). The first one comprises two harnesses, seven saddles, and two saddle trees; the second one includes twelve horses complete with their harnesses, two bloodhounds, ten greyhounds, twelve gyrfalcons, twelve dozens of gloves, precious textiles, and eleven pieces

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of plate. Delaville Le Roulx transcribes a 1396–97 Burgundian account concerning expenditures for the presents and the embassies (France en Orient, 2:26–36). 16. Fowler, “Froissart.” 17. Gardette, “Jacques de Helly.” 18. Froissart, Chroniques, §53, ed. Varvaro, 482–83. 19. Tomasi, “ ‘Parler art.’ ” 20. See Graves, Deux inventaires, 126–27, no. 653. The word I translate as “thin” is “délié.” The exact meaning of this adjective is not soft to the touch (as I mistakenly wrote in Tomasi, “ ‘Parler art’ ”) but so fine as to become translucent; on this, see Jolivet, “ ‘Pour soi vêtir honnêtement,’ ” 73, and Tomasi, Écrire l’art en France, 76–78. 21. Froissart, Chroniques, §50, ed. Varvaro, 433. 22. On hierarchy of gifts, see Buettner, “Past Presents,” 608. 23. This gift of tapestries has been briefly discussed in Wilson, Power of Textiles, 132–33. For analysis from the Ottoman point of view, see Necipoğlu, “Visual Cosmopolitanism,” 3–4, and Artan, “Objects of Consumption,” 907–8. 24. As Thomas Campbell wrote, “A list of recipients of Philip’s gifts reads like an international who’s who of the rich and mighty of the day” (Tapestry in the Renaissance, 15). 25. Brassat, Tapisserien und Politik, 44–45; Joubert, “Le Moyen Âge,” 14 and 355n14; Wilson, Power of Textiles, 113–47. 26. Dendrinos, “Manuel II Paleologus in Paris.” 27. For the Greek original, a translation, and a perceptive commentary, see Baxandall, Giotto and the Orators, 86–87, 148–49. 28. See Davis, “Manuel II Paleologus’ A Description,” and Peers, “Manuel II Palaiologos’s Ekphrasis.” 29. Forbes Manz, Rise and Rule of Tamerlane. 30. Moranvillé, “Mémoire sur Tamerlan.” 31. Ibid., 463–64; see also Roxburgh, “Ruy González de Clavijo’s Narrative,” 127–28, whose partial translation I quote and complete. 32. Casali, “John of Sulṭāniyya,” 291–95. 33. Froissart, Chroniques, §53, ed. Varvaro, 483–84. 34. Necipoğlu rightly stresses this point (“Visual Cosmopolitanism,” 3). 35. Froissart, Chroniques, §52, ed. Varvaro, 473. 36. There is no complete critical edition of this romance. See Kastritsis, “Alexander Romance,” and Toutant, “Premier roman d’Alexandre,” both with further bibliography. 37. Blondeau, Conquérant pour quatre ducs. See also Stock, Alexander the Great, and the multiple volumes in the collection Alexander Redivivus published by Brepols. 38. These tapestries are mentioned in the Burgundian accounts that were published by Deshaines, Inventaires et extraits, 2:639, 687.

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39. Ibid., 2:908. 40. The relevant account is published in ibid., 2:722. 41. Rapp Buri and Stucky-​Schürer, “Alexandre le Grand,” and, more recently, Stucky-​Schürer, “Krieg und Frieden im Spiegel der Tapisserie,” esp. 325–26, with earlier bibliography. The celebrated tapestry in the Doria Pamphilj collection in Genoa, although dating from around 1460, can give an idea of such an object. On this hanging, see Barbe, Stagno, and Villari, Histoire d’Alexandre le Grand. 42. Groebner, rightly emphasized the “ambiguity and multiple meanings of gifts” (Liquid Assets, 11). 43. Froissart, Chroniques, §53, ed. Varvaro, 489. 44. Here Froissart’s account is doubtful, since, at the time the French ambassadors reached Buda, King Sigismund was in Dalmatia (Atiya, Crusade of Nicopolis, 104). Necipoğlu points to the fact that the Syrian chronicler Ibn ʿArabshah (d. 1496) describes a “curtain” Timur had taken from Bayezid I’s treasury and brought to Samarqand after his victory against the Sultan in 1402 (“Visual Cosmopolitanism,” 3–4 and 54n17 [for a quotation of the description]). She suggests this lost hanging might have been one of those sent by the French court, a view also followed by Artan, “Objects of Consumption,” 908. As appealing as this hypothesis sounds, it is impossible to prove. 45. Lalande, Livre des fais, 126–27. 46. Froissart Chroniques, §50, ed. Varvaro, 433. 47. On Ottoman views, see Necipoğlu, “Visual Cosmopolitanism,” 3–4, and Artan, “Objects of Consumption,” 907–8. 48. Several scholars already analyzed this concept, notably Buettner, “Past Presents,” 604–5; Di Fabio, “ ‘Nous prenons plaisir en choses estranges’ ”; Lindquist, Agency, Visuality and Society, 123–26; Perkinson, “Likeness,” esp. 71–83. My conclusions differ from theirs; I treated this question in Tomasi, “Entre ‘estat tenir’ et ‘esbatement,’ ” esp. 135–39. 49. For a fuller discussion, see Tomasi, Écrire l’art en France, 111–20. 50. Christine de Pizan, Livre des fais, 1:46. For bibliography on Christine de Pizan and her Livre des fais, see “Christine de Pizan,” Arlima: Archives de littérature du Moyen Âge, https://​www​.arlima​.net​/ad​ /christine​_de​_pizan​.html​#chv. 51. Champeaux, “Relations du duc de Berry,” esp. 410. 52. Ibid., 411. The artist was possibly the sculptor Domenico di Niccolò, known as “dei Cori” precisely because of his mastery of creating stalls decorated with marquetry: see Bagnoli, “Domenico di Niccolò.” 53. On this event, see Autrard, Charles VI, 228–40; on its treatment by Froissart, see Ribémont, “Entrée d’Isabeau de Bavière à Paris.”

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54. Froissart, Chroniques, §1, ed. Varvaro, 19–20. 55. On Guillaume de Bordes, see Henneman, “Who Were the Marmousets?,” 45; on Jean de Montaigu, see Plagnieux, “Jean de Montaigu.” 56. On medieval nefs, see Lightbown, Secular Goldsmiths’ Work, 30–31. Although much later in date, the beautiful Burghley nef is a rare surviving example of such a precious object. 57. Froissart, Chroniques, §58, ed. Varvaro, 515–16. On Cypriot goldsmith’s work of this period, see Trélat, “D’or et d’argent.” 58. Tomasi, “Entre ‘estat tenir’ et ‘esbatement,’ ” 132–35. 59. Froissart, Chroniques, §58, ed. Varvaro, 517–18. 60. Medeiros, Hommes, 231–44, 271–316.

61. Bellaguet, Chronique du Religieux de Saint-​ Denys, 2:564 (book 18, §9). 62. One should also note that among the “dons estranges” sometimes presented to Charles V according to Christine de Pizan, “artillery or other war harnesses” were foremost. See Christine de Pizan, Livre des fais, 1:46. 63. Froissart, Chroniques, §52, ed. Varvaro, 473. 64. On the contrary, Froissart had no interest in dwelling on Ottoman gifts, insofar as they would have brought Bayezid back to that barbaric dimension to which, in the writer’s eyes, he did not belong. 65. On hierarchies among techniques in medieval art studies and the need to revise them, see Hourihane, From Minor to Major.

Bibliography Ainsworth, Peter F. “Froissart, Jean.” In The Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle, edited by Graeme Dunphy, 1:642–45. Leiden: Brill, 2010. Artan, Tülay. “Objects of Consumption: Mediterranean Interconnections of the Ottoman and Mamluks.” In A Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture, edited by Finbarr B. Flood and Gürlu Necipoğlu, 2:903–30. Hoboken: Wiley Blackwell, 2017. Atiya, Aziz Suryal. The Crusade of Nicopolis. London: Methuen, 1934. Autrard, Françoise. Charles VI: La folie du roi. Paris: Fayard, 1986. Bagnoli, Alessandro. “Domenico di Niccolò.” In Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, 40:643–47. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1991. Barbe, Françoise, Laura Stagno, and Elisabetta Villari, eds. L’histoire d’Alexandre le Grand dans les tapisseries au XVe siècle. Turnhout: Brepols, 2013. Baxandall, Michael. Giotto and the Orators: Humanists Observers of Painting in Italy and the Discovery of Pictorial Composition, 1350–1450. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971. Bellaguet, Louis-​François, ed. Chronique du Religieux de Saint-​Denys, contenant le règne de Charles VI de 1380 à 1422. Reprint by Bernard Guenée. 3 vols. Paris: Éditions du CTHS, 1994. Biedermann, Zoltán, Anne Gerritsen, and Giorgio Riello, eds. Global Gifts: The Material Culture of Diplomacy in Early Modern Eurasia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Blondeau, Chrystèle. Un conquérant pour quatre ducs: Alexandre le Grand à la cour de Bourgogne. Paris: CTHS/INHA, 2009. Brassat, Wolfgang. Tapisserien und Politik: Funktionen, Kontexte und Rezeption eines repräsentativen Mediums. Berlin: Mann, 1992.

Buettner, Brigitte. “Past Presents: New Year’s Gifts at the Valois Courts.” Art Bulletin 83 (2001): 598–625. Campbell, Thomas P., ed. Tapestry in the Renaissance: Art and Magnificence. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2002. Carruthers, Mary. The Experience of Beauty in the Middle Ages. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Casali, Chiara. “John of Sulṭāniyya.” In Christian-​ Muslim Relations: A Biographical History, vol. 5, 1350–1500, edited by David Thomas and Alex Mallet, 291–97. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Champeaux, Alfred de. “Les relations du duc de Berry avec l’art italien.” Gazette des Beaux-​Arts 38 (1888): 409–15. Christine de Pizan. Le livre des fais et bonnes meurs du sage roy Charles V. Edited by Suzanne Solente. 2 vols. Paris: Société de l’histoire de France, 1936–40. Davis, John. “Manuel II Paleologus’ A Description of a Spring in a Dyed, Woven Hanging.” In Porphyrogenita: Essays on Byzantine History and Literature of Byzantium and the Latin East in Honour of Julian Chrysostomides, edited by Charalambos Dendrinos, Jonathan Harris, and Judith Herrin, 411–21. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003. Delaville Le Roulx, Joseph. La France en Orient au XIVe siècle. 2 vols. Paris: Thorin, 1886. Dendrinos, Charalambos. “Manuel II Paleologus in Paris (1400–1402): Theology, Diplomacy, and Politics.” In Greeks, Latins, and Intellectual History, 1204–1500, edited by Martin Hinterberger and Chris Schabel, 397–422. Leuven: Peeters, 2011. Deshaines, Chrétien. Inventaires et extraits divers concernant l’histoire de l’art dans la Flandre, l’Artois et le Hainaut. 2 vols. Lille: Danel, 1886.

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Di Fabio, Clario. “ ‘Nous prenons plaisir en choses estranges’: Genova francese e il sire di Boucicaut.” In Genova e la Francia: Opere, artisti, committenti, collezionisti, edited by Piero Boccardo, Clario di Fabio, and Philippe Sénéchal, 61–75. Cinisello Balsamo: Silvana, 2003. Forbes Manz, Beatrice. The Rise and Rule of Tamerlane. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Fowler, Kenneth. “Froissart, Chronicler of Chivalry.” History Today 36 (1986): 50–54. Froissart, Sir John. Chronicles of England, France, Spain and the Adjoining Countries . . . Vol. 2. Translated by Thomas Johnes. London: Henry G. Bohn, 1849. ———. Chroniques de France et d’Angleterre: Livre quatrième. Edited by Alberto Varvaro. Brussels: Académie royale de Belgique, 2015. Gardette, Philippe. “Jacques de Helly, figure de l’entre-​deux culturel au lendemain de la défaite de Nicopolis.” Erytheia 24 (2003): 111–24. Gaucher, Élisabeth. “Deux regards sur une défaite: Nicopolis (d’après la Chronique du Religieux de Saint-​Denis et le Livre des faits de Boucicaut).” Cahiers de recherches médiévales et humanistes 1 (1996): 93–104. Graves, Frances, ed. Deux inventaires de la maison d’Orléans (1398 et 1408). Paris: Champion, 1926. Groebner, Valentin. Liquid Assets, Dangerous Gifts: Presents and Politics at the End of the Middle Ages. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002. Guenée, Bernard. “État et nation en France au moyen âge.” Revue Historique 237 (1967): 17–30. ———. “Michel Pintoin: Sa vie, son œuvre.” In Bellaguet, Chronique du religieux de Saint-​Denys, 1:i–lxxxv. Guiffrey, Jules, ed. Inventaires de Jean, duc de Berry (1401–1416). 2 vols. Paris: Leroux, 1894–96. Henneman, John Bell. “Who Were the Marmousets?” Medieval Prosopography 5 (1984): 19–63. Hilsdale, Cecily J. “Gift.” Studies in Iconography 33 (2012): 171–82. Hirschbiegel, Jan. Étrennes: Untersuchungen zum höfischen Geschenkverkehr im spätmittelalterlichen Frankreich der Zeit König Karls VI. (1380–1422). Munich: Oldenburg, 2003. Hourihane, Colum, ed. From Minor to Major: The Minor Arts in Medieval Art History. University Park: Penn State University Press, 2012. Jolivet, Sophie. “ ‘Pour soi vêtir honnêtement à la cour de monseigneur le duc de Bourgogne’: Costume et dispositif vestimentaire à la cour de Philippe le Bon de 1430 à 1455.” PhD diss., Université de Bourgogne, 2003. Joubert, Fabienne. “Le Moyen Âge: Un art nouveau.” In Histoire de la tapisserie en Europe, du Moyen

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Âge à nos jours, by Fabienne Joubert, Amaury Lefébure, and Pascal-​François Bertrand, 9–75. Paris: Flammarion, 1995. Kaçar, Hilmi, and Jan Dumolyn. “The Battle of Nicopolis (1396), Burgundian Catastrophe and Ottoman Fait Divers.” Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire 91 (2013): 905–34. Kastritsis, Dimitris. “The Alexander Romance and the Rise of the Ottoman Empire.” In Islamic Literature and Intellectual Life in Fourteenth- and Fifteenth-​ Century Anatolia, edited by A. C. S. Peacok and Sara Nur Yıldız, 243–83. Würzburg: Ergon, 2016. ———. “Bayezid I.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam, 3rd ed., edited by Kate Fleet et al. Leiden: Brill, 2015. http://​dx​.doi​.org​/10​.1163​/1573​-3912​_ei3​_COM​ _24544. Labarte, Jules, ed. Inventaire du mobilier de Charles V, roi de France. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1879. Lalande, Denis, ed. Le livre des fais du bon messire Jehan le Maingre, dit Bouciquaut, mareschal de France et gouverneur de Jennes. Geneva: Droz, 1985. Lightbown, Ronald. Secular Goldsmiths’ Work in Medieval France: A History. London: Society of Antiquaries of London, 1978. Lindner, Rudi Paul. “Anatolia, 1300–1450.” In The Cambridge History of Turkey, vol. 1, Byzantium to Turkey, 1071–1453, edited by Kate Fleet, 102–37. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Lindquist, Sherry. Agency, Visuality and Society at the Chartreuse de Champmol. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008. Martenet, Marie-​Gaëtane. “Le récit de la bataille de Nicopolis dans les Chroniques de Jean Froissart: De l’échec à la gloire.” Questes 30 (2015): 125–39. Medeiros, Marie-​Thérèse de. Hommes, terres et histoire des confins: Les marges méridionales et orientales de la Chrétienté dans les “Chroniques” de Froissart. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2003. Moranvillé, Henri. “Mémoire sur Tamerlan et sa cour par un dominicain, en 1403.” Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes 55 (1894): 433–64. Nash, Susie. “The Martyrdom of St Denis, the Chartreuse de Champmol and the Battle of Nicopolis.” In Maelwael Van Lymborch Studies, edited by André Stufkens, 12–45. Turnhout: Brepols, 2022. Necipoğlu, Gürlu. “Visual Cosmopolitanism and Creative Translation: Artistic Conversations with Renaissance Italy in Mehmed II’s Constantinople.” Muqarnas 29 (2012): 1–81. Nicolle, David. Nicopolis 1396: The Last Crusade. Oxford: Osprey, 1999. Paviot, Jacques, and Martine Chauney-​Bouillott, eds. “Nicopolis 1396–1996.” Special issue, Annales de Bourgogne 68, no. 3 (1996): 5–99.

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Peers, Glenn. “Manuel II Palaiologos’s Ekphrasis on a Tapestry in the Louvre: Word over Image.” Revue des études byzantines 61 (2003): 201–14. Perkinson, Stephen. “Likeness, Loyalty, and the Life of the Court Artist.” In The Limbourg Brothers: Reflections on the Origins and the Legacy of Three Illuminators from Nijmegen, edited by Rob Dückers and Pieter Roelofs, 51–83. Leiden: Brill, 2009. Plagnieux, Philippe. “Jean de Montaigu ou la résistible ascension d’un parvenu à la lumière des arts.” In La creation artistique en France autour de 1400, edited by Élisabeth Taburet-​Delahaye, 103–18. Paris: École du Louvre, 2006. Rapp Buri, Anna, and Monica Stucky-​Schürer. “Alexandre le Grand et l’art de la tapisserie du XVe siècle.” Revue de l’Art 119 (1998): 21–32. Ribémont, Bernard. “L’entrée d’Isabeau de Bavière à Paris: une fête textuelle pour Froissart.” In Feste und Feiern im Mittelalter, edited by Detelf Altenburg, Jörg Jarnut, and Hans Hugo Steinhoff, 515–22. Sigmaringen: Thorbeke, 1991. Roxburgh, David J. “Ruy González de Clavijo’s Narrative of Courtly Life and Ceremony in Timur’s Samarqand, 1404.” In The “Book” of Travels: Genre; Ethnology and Pilgrimage, 1250–1700, edited by Palmira Brummet, 113–58. Leiden: Brill, 2009. Schnerb, Bertrand. Jean sans Peur: Le prince meurtrier. Paris: Payot, 2005. Schrift, Alan D., ed. The Logic of the Gift: Toward an Ethic of Generosity. New York: Routledge, 1997. Srodecki, Paul. “ ‘Contre les ennemis de la foy de Dieu’: Das Kreuzzug von Nikopolis und das abendländische Türkenbild um 1400.” In Das Bild des Feindes: Konstruktion von Antagonisme und Kulturtransfer im Zeitalter der Türkenkriege, edited by Eckhard Leuschner and Thomas Wünsch, 33–49. Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 2013. Stock, Markus, ed. Alexander the Great in the Middle Ages: Transcultural Perspectives. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016.

Stucky-​Schürer, Monica. “Krieg und Frieden im Spiegel der Tapisserie.” In La pensée du regard: Études d’histoire de l’art du Moyen Âge offertes à Christian Heck, edited by Pascal Charron, Marc Gil and Ambre Vilain, 323–34. Turnhout: Brepols, 2016. Tomasi, Michele. Écrire l’art en France au temps de Charles V et Charles VI (1360–1420): Le témoignage des chroniqueurs. Turnhout: Brepols, 2022. ———. “Entre ‘estat tenir’ et ‘esbatement’: L’orfèvrerie selon les chroniqueurs français sous le règne de Charles V et Charles VI.” In Orfèvrerie gothique en Europe: Production et réception, edited by Élisabeth Antoine-​König and Michele Tomasi, 125–41. Rome: Viella, 2016. ———. “ ‘Parler art’ en France autour de 1400: L’expérience esthétique selon Jean Froissart et Michel Pintoin.” Memini Travax et documents 22/23 (2017). https://​journals​.openedition​.org​ /memini​/986. Toutant, Marc. “Le premier roman d’Alexandre versifié en ottoman ou les fondements d’une didactique princière.” Turcica 47 (2016): 3–31. Trélat, Philippe. “D’or et d’argent: L’orfèvrerie chypriote entre Orient et Occident (XIIe–XVIe siècles).” In Antoine-​König and Tomasi, Orfèvrerie gothique en Europe, 239–54. Varvaro, Alberto. La tragédie de l’Histoire: La dernière œuvre de Jean Froissart. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2011. Vaughan, Richard. Philip the Bold: The Formation of the Burgundian State. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2002. Wilson, Katherine Anne. The Power of Textiles: Tapestries of the Burgundian Dominions (1363–1477). Turnhout: Brepols, 2018. Wright, Christopher. “An Investment in Goodwill: Financing the Ransom of the Leaders of the Cursade of Nikopolis.” Viator 45 (2014): 261–98.

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6 Alexander the Great’s Encounters with the Sacred in Medieval History Writing From the Shahnameh to the Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César

Suzanne Conklin Akbari

Alexander the Great is a useful figure in thinking through the challenges and the opportunities that arise when we consider borders, boundaries, or limits—for two reasons. First, narratives of Alexander consistently emphasize his transgression of the ordinary limits of the world: the third-​century Greek text of Pseudo-​Callisthenes describes his conquest of the most distant geographical extremes, while the fifth-​century Latin account of Orosius opens by explaining how the very boundaries that mark the limits of Europe, Africa, and Asia are defined by the markers set by Alexander.1 As a result, he is an apt figure to use in thinking through our own limits. Second, Alexander narratives are ubiquitous, found in a wide range of literary traditions spanning Europe, Asia, and Africa. The third-​century Greek account of Pseudo-​Callisthenes gave rise to both the abundant European versions of the text and those found in Asia and Africa, the former mainly by way of the fourth-​century Latin adaptation attributed to Julius Valerius, and the latter primarily through the early Syriac translation. There are medieval Alexander narratives in Castilian, Catalan, Dutch, English, French, German, Icelandic, Italian, and so on, and there are also Arabic, Geʿez, Hebrew, and Persian versions—and many others. How can we even begin to approach such a diverse tradition? It is unsurprising that some of the most useful work has been collaborative, bringing together teams of scholars to address this wide-​ranging body of texts and images.2 And this brings me to

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some broad methodological questions: how far can we go with this kind of comparative or cross-​cultural work? Is it useful to attempt a wide-​ranging analysis in the hope of spurring some useful provocations to future research? Or is it problematic even to make this attempt because of the difficulty in addressing such diverse fields of study with sufficient competence? In the following pages, I will explore the iconography and textual descriptions of Alexander’s encounters with sacred space, focusing particularly on his experience at the gates of Jerusalem in the European tradition and his experience at the Kaʿba in Persian literature. By examining how this moment is portrayed in thirteenth-​century manuscripts of the Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César and in fourteenth- and fifteenth-​ century manuscripts of the Shahnameh, I will give an account of what is at stake in such representations of the sacred. Emphasizing the symbolic logic of gateways and monumental structures, I will suggest how we might relate these to the symbolic logic that appears in medieval maps produced in the eastern Mediterranean, both under Christian rule (in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem) and under Muslim rule. My aim is not to provide an exhaustive account or to give a final word but rather to open up a conversation about what is and is not possible in such a bold exploration. In this approach, I take up some of the challenges laid out by Sebastian Conrad in What Is Global History?, where, in a chapter section provocatively titled “When Was the Global?,” he invites premodern historians to engage in work that is at once comparative and global: such work “might still be organized as a comparison, but it could pursue very explicitly a global history agenda. . . . [I]t would build on some form of structured integration and treat it as an important context.”3 To put it another way, I propose that by juxtaposing Alexander’s encounter with sacred space in two dramatically different contexts, we can think through the implications of the global turn using a figure that loomed large in the historical and literary imagination across an extraordinarily wide range of cultures. We can explore our own limits, even as we look back on his.

Alexander at the Kaʿba: The Persian Shahnameh The Shahnameh or “Book of Kings” is sometimes called Persia’s national epic. It has a cosmological or encyclopedic quality as well, beginning with the creation of the world, the emergence of the first human beings, and an account of their lineage. Its author, Abul-​Qâsem Ferdowsi, links cosmology and national epic by evoking the great mythic heroes of the Persian past before gradually moving into a more conventional account of the lineage of the kings of Persia almost up to Ferdowsi’s own time, in the first decades of the eleventh century. The material becomes steadily more grounded in historical fact as the text goes on: heroic kings who live for several hundred years dominate the middle section, which makes up the bulk of the work, but rulers of normal life spans appear in the later ages. The figure of Alexander the Great appears at the crucial 134

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junction linking the age of heroes with the history of the kings. Alexander appears as a transitional figure, more than a man yet an integral part of the history of Persian rule. The description of the end of his reign is followed by an extremely brief overview of the dissolution of his empire into a number of small principalities before the rise of the Sasanian dynasty, whose royal lineage makes up the rest of the Shahnameh. The poem ends not in Ferdowsi’s own time but instead with the last Sasanian ruler, Yazdgerd III, who was forced off his throne by the invading Arab Islamic armies in 651 ce. This poetic celebration of Persian mythic and historical heritage thus draws a discreet curtain over the period when the advent of Islam threatened to overwhelm the native culture. Moreover, the Shahnameh provides a powerful counternarrative to the history of conquest, a counternarrative that depends a great deal upon the figure of Alexander the Great. For Persians, it is an article of faith that their nation has never been conquered, even though at times it may have adopted new customs, new religions, and new rulers. In keeping with this perspective, the figure of Alexander is presented in the Shahnameh not as a Macedonian invader but as a Persian prince. Instead of being the alien enemy of the Persian ruler, as in Pseudo-​Callisthenes’s account, he is Darius’s secret half-​brother and rival. The legends of Alexander the Great, who emerged from Macedonia to build an empire that stretched from Spain to India, were widely disseminated all around the Mediterranean Sea, reaching throughout Europe and much of Asia and as far south as Ethiopia. The basic outline of the Alexander (Sekandar) story as presented in the Shahnameh will be familiar to anyone who has read any one of the many versions of his legend, including the war against Darius (Dara), ruler of Persia; the battles against Porus (Foor), king of India; and the letters describing the marvels of the East exchanged by Alexander with his old teacher, the Greek philosopher Aristotle (Arestalis). Yet Ferdowsi faced a particular challenge in describing Alexander’s journeys of conquest into the remotest reaches of the Orient, where he ultimately met his doom. For European readers, Alexander’s adventures in Babylon were set in the exotic Orient; for Ferdowsi’s readers, Babylon was just down the road. Ferdowsi therefore constructs an even more oriental Orient for his hero, sending Alexander as far as China in search of marvels. At the same time, Ferdowsi’s Alexander is also made familiar to Persian readers, drawn into the lineage of Persian kings. The rivalry between Alexander and his half-​brother ends in the death of Darius, who gives his kingdom to Alexander on the condition that Alexander marry his daughter and uphold the local religion of Zoroastrianism. Here, conquest is transformed into cultural assimilation, and the heroic age moves smoothly into the lists of Persian kings. Implicitly, the transition ushered in by Alexander foreshadows the greater transition that informs the last lines of the Shahnameh, which recount the rule of the Sasanian Yazdgerd III. He would be the last native ruler of Persia until the rise of the Samanid rulers of Khorasan—Ferdowsi’s patrons—in 819 ce. In many respects, Ferdowsi’s life of Alexander follows the narrative line set by Pseudo-​Callisthenes, featuring many of the same episodes: the birth of the marvelous Alexander the Great’s Encounters with the Sacred

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Figure 6.1 Iskandar (Alexander) at the Ka’aba. From Abul-​Qâsem Ferdowsi, Shahnameh, Shiraz, 1441. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS suppl. persan 493, fol. 342r.

and loyal horse Bucephalus, the battle against Darius and conquest of Babylon, the ongoing war against Porus in India, and the encounter with the exotic and powerful queen Candace (Qaydafeh), whom Pseudo-​Callisthenes places in the distant south. In addition, however, some anomalies appear; among these is Alexander’s visit to Mecca, where he encounters the world’s holiest site, the Kaʿba. While the episode itself is quite brief in the Shahnameh, illuminated images of Alexander at the Kaʿba began to appear in manuscripts of the text in the fourteenth century and became abundant in the fifteenth.4 A striking example appears in a manuscript dated by colophon to 1441 (fig. 6.1). It shows Alexander, clothed in red and accompanied by others, gesturing toward the entrance to the Kaʿba, which is covered in a rich black cloth. The group

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is enclosed within the architectural space of the walls encircling the Kaʿba, the Bait al-​Haram (sacred house). The earliest example of this motif appears about a century earlier, in a manuscript produced in Shiraz in 1330 (fig. 6.2). This image is one among a series depicting Alexander at the Kaʿba that has been surveyed by Marianna Shreve Simpson in a detailed study of this scene in Shahnameh manuscripts from the earliest known example to early modern times. Simpson shows how the emphasis on ritual performance, especially pilgrimage, gradually increased and demonstrates that the depiction of Alexander in Shahnameh manuscripts was inflected by other iconographic traditions, especially those found in Nizami Ganjavi’s Khamsa.5 In this image, we see not a distinct image block cut off from the surrounding text but rather a kind of bleeding together, where image extends out over the text on right and left, and the image itself includes text as a prominent feature at the top. This is markedly different from the well-​defined image blocks that appear in later representations of this scene in Shahnameh manuscripts. We also will not find a textual banner in the later illuminations; here, the strip of cloth covering the upper part of the Kaʿba reads, “al-​Kaʿba al-​bait Allah.” This is a clear anachronism: in Ferdowsi’s text, Alexander is not a Muslim, and the time frame is explicitly before the emergence of Islam. Nonetheless, the iconographic program pushes the manuscript in another direction, positing the ruler’s physical, momentous encounter with the sacred. Alexander is seated, while another figure close to the door, in a role that Simpson describes as a kind of “tour guide,” is Nasr, of the tribe of Ismail, who appeals to Alexander for help in throwing off the tyrant Jaza’, who has been persecuting his people in Mecca and the surrounding region.6 A second image of Alexander at the Kaʿba appears in a Cambridge manuscript dated 1435 (fig. 6.3). This image is clearly distinct from the Shiraz manuscript of 1330, and it is better preserved than (although clearly related to) the slightly later image of 1441 noted previously (see fig. 6.1). Both feature a similar gateway, angled at the top as though to suggest the opening of the door. In both cases, the figure of Alexander is regal, depicted to the side of the entrance, which is opened to him by his guide. As noted above, the episode of Alexander at the Kaʿba is quite brief in Ferdowsi’s text; however, the iconographic program that emerges in the fourteenth century clearly magnifies this moment.7 Why does this happen? Simpson suggests that the explanation may have to do with the way that religion is depicted in the Alexander episode: Ferdowsi shows Alexander as a Christian—he marries a bride “according to Christian custom” and swears an oath to Queen Qaydafeh “by the Messiah’s faith” and by “the Holy Ghost.”8 The Kaʿba, then, in Simpson’s reading, functions in the text of the Shahnameh not as a pilgrimage site for Muslims but as a geographical center about which the whole wide world is organized: as Simpson puts it, “This place offered a fixed and familiar point of geographical and cultural reference for his audience within an itinerary that otherwise involved distant frontiers (like Andalusia) and even uncharted territories (such as the end of the world).”9

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While the text downplays the Islamic nature of the site, the iconographic program of the manuscripts, by contrast, develops its sacrality and emphasizes the phenomenon of pilgrimage.10 This can be seen in the Paris manuscript completed just a few years later in 1441, which shares many features of the Cambridge manuscript (see figs. 6.1 and 6.3): for example, it also shows the crenellations demarcating the holy precincts and the black cloth (kiswa) covering the Kaʿba. Later manuscripts, however, handle this scene a bit differently. One such work, dated to 1450, is held at the University of Michigan Museum of Art (fig. 6.4). It is close in time to the other fifteenth-​century examples discussed above but shows some interesting variations: we continue to see architectural forms, crenellations, and even the cityscape of Mecca. In the Michigan manuscript, however, we find less of an emphasis on the opening gateway of the Kaʿba: the draped cloth of the kiswa provides less of a sense of immanent access than in the earlier images, and the human figures are turned away from the edifice. What this image does provide—what is strikingly new here— is the illumination of the skyscape above, in a display of farr (glory). Farr is a term that appears repeatedly in the Shahnameh and is particularly featured in the Alexander episode. Alexander is said to be “resplendent with farr” upon his initial encounter with Darius; the Persian king tells him that “the royal farr shines from your forehead as if you were a Kayanid prince.”11 Farr was, from a very early date, associated with the light emanating from fire, the sun, and the stars, and it was used to describe mythic kings and heroes. In Islamic Persia, farr was integrated into the pictorial depiction of the Prophet and some saintly figures, such as imams, in the form of golden flame.12 Illustrations of the Prophet’s miʿraj (ascent into the heavens) offer a particularly interesting foil to the representation of farr in the scene of Alexander at the Kaʿba seen in the Michigan manuscript.13 For example, the opening pages of an early sixteenth-​century manuscript of Sa’di’s Bustan, most likely from Bukhara and Herat (fig. 6.5) show the Prophet Muhammad mounted on his steed, Buraq, illuminated by a halo in the form of a golden flame. He is, in turn, surrounded by clouds of golden flame, in a convergence of the glories of the heavens with the divine light conveyed by the Prophet himself. Yet unlike other representations of this scene, which show only the Prophet mounted on Buraq, perhaps in the company of attendant angels or other heavenly figures, this image from Sa’di’s Bustan also features, in a lower register, three devout sages presumably meditating on the Prophet’s journey.14 The earthly flame that mounts from the brazier behind them reaches upward, almost but not quite touching the heavenly flames, in an evocation of the proximity—but slight separation—of the human and the divine. Alexander the Great’s Encounters with the Sacred

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Figure 6.2 (opposite) Iskandar (Alexander) at the Ka’aba. From Abul-​Qâsem Ferdowsi, Shahnameh, Shiraz, 1330. Istanbul, Topkapı Sarayi Müzesi Kütüphanesi, MS H. 1479, fol. 170v. Photo © Presidency of the Republic of Turkey, the Directorate of National Palaces. Figure 6.3 Iskandar (Alexander) at the Ka’aba. From Abul-​Qâsem Ferdowsi, Shahnameh, Shiraz, 1435. Cambridge, Cambridge University Library Fitzwilliam MS 22-1948, fol. 18v. Photo © The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.

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Figure 6.4 Iskandar (Alexander) at the Ka’aba. From Abul-​Qâsem Ferdowsi, Shahnameh, Shiraz, 1450. Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Museum of Art, MS 1963, fol. 346r. Photo © University of Michigan Museum of Art, Museum Purchase, 1963​/1​.65.

While depictions of the Prophet emphasize nur (divine light), depictions of Alexander the Great emphasize farr (regal glory). At the same time, the relationship between these two is blurred in Alexander’s encounter at the Kaʿba. In theological terms, the pre-​ Islamic concept of farr could merge, in iconographic settings, with the Islamic concept of nur, so that the emanation of glory from the individual person could be understood as a kind of reflection of the divine nature, though it remained ontologically distinct from it. This can be seen particularly well in the image from the Michigan manuscript (see fig. 6.4): the divine light appears above, in the heavens, in a manifestation of divine illumination that can be understood both in theological terms and Neoplatonic terms as nur, light. It is also, however, the site of displacement of Alexander’s farr. We see this in the treatment of the gold at the top of the frame, signifying the divine light.

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Figure 6.5 The Mi’raj of Muhammad. From Sa’di, Bustan, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan, probably Bukhara or Herat, ca. 1525–35. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, MS 1974.294.2, fol. 3v. Purchase, Louis V. Bell Fund and The Vincent Astor Foundation Gift, 1974. Photo: Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The other places where this gold appears is on the door of the Kaʿba and in the crown of Alexander, below which his face is downcast. The roof of the Kaʿba is, as it were, crowned with gold—a gold that seamlessly merges with the gold of the heavens. The whole scene conveys a complex message about the nature of kingship, the relationship of farr and nur, and the limitations of human glory in the face of the divine. This is very different from what we saw in the earlier Shahnameh manuscripts. Here again, a comparison with the iconography of miʿraj manuscripts is helpful. A manuscript of Jami’s Yusuf wa Zulaikha made in Shiraz, circa 1585 to 1590 (fig. 6.6) shows the Prophet, mounted on Buraq, ascending into the heavens in a scene generally similar to that in the upper register of the New York folio. Here, too, golden clouds of fire borne by angels surround the Prophet, although this image also includes personifications of the planets and constellations. What is strikingly different, though, is the

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Figure 6.6 The Mi’raj of Muhammad. From Jami, Yusuf wa Zulaikha, Shiraz, ca. 1585–90. Istanbul, Topkapı Sarayi Müzesi Kutüphanesi, MS H.1084, fol. 11a. Photo © Presidency of the Republic of Turkey, the Directorate of National Palaces.

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inclusion of the Kaʿba and sacred precincts of Mecca at the base of the image. The door of the Kaʿba is shut, the building soberly draped in its black kiswa. In a detailed account of the architectural features of this scene, Christiane Gruber comments on the complex geographical logic that underlies this cosmological vision, revealed by a later Ottoman scribe who had written labels in gold beneath the buildings. Instead of writing the names of the Kaʿba and adjacent structures, she notes, the scribe had mistakenly identified buildings on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount rather than those around the Kaʿba in Mecca. She suggests, “To represent the ascension of the Prophet over Mecca—omitting Jerusalem as the interim, earthly stop—would simply not be acceptable to an Ottoman commentator.”15 Alternatively, it is possible that the enigmatic, half-​enclosed buildings that appear in the middle of the painting—which Gruber labels as “unidentified”—are the subject of the Ottoman scribe’s golden labels, in the form of semiabstract architectural elements that mark the Prophet’s point of departure into the heavens. The miʿraj was the second part of an extended process, with the night journey from Mecca to Jerusalem (isra’) followed by the heavenly ascent (miʿraj), departing from the site of the Dome of the Rock, where devout Muslims believe that the imprint of the Prophet’s sandal can still be seen on the rock at the base of the shrine. In this reading, a typological sequence links the bottom register of the painting, showing the Kaʿba, with the middle register, showing the abstracted buildings of Jerusalem, and finally with the upper register, which shows the Prophet mounted on Buraq, extending his hand and raising his face to the heavenly clouds of flame that flow from above. As in the Michigan manuscript showing Alexander the Great at the Kaʿba, light is the medium that links heaven and earth and the means of demarcating the line that separates divine and human glory (see fig. 6.4).

Alexander at the Gates of Jerusalem: The French Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César The Alexander tradition is diverse and complex, and the place of the Histoire ancienne within that lineage is a curious one: while it is a French vernacular text, composed just a few decades after Alexander romances such as the Roman de toute chevalerie and the Roman d’Alexandre, it integrates that narrative within a larger account of the history of the world. As in Orosius’s fifth-​century universal history, Seven Books of History Against the Pagans, the Histoire ancienne opens with a geographical overview that nods to the foundational role of Alexander in establishing the boundaries of the ecumene. While Orosius depicts Alexander as a bloodthirsty tyrant, however, the author of the Histoire ancienne has a more expansive vision: although Alexander is an overreacher, which leads to his ultimate downfall, his experiences—battles against a Babylonian king; the apocalyptic aura of his exploration of the remotest Orient; and, above all, his experiences at Jerusalem—position him as a typological prefiguration of the crusader kings of the Latin Kingdom. Alexander the Great’s Encounters with the Sacred

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The Jerusalem narrative found in the Histoire ancienne does not appear in Orosius’s universal history. It entered into the tradition through Latin translations of Josephus (especially Pseudo-​Hegesippus) and was popularized by its inclusion in widely disseminated texts, such as the Historia scholastica of Peter Comestor.16 For Josephus, Alexander’s encounter at the gates of Jerusalem is a profoundly textual moment, which is typologically linked to another crucial textual moment: the flight of refugees from the fallen city of Jerusalem after the destruction of the Temple, bearing books in Hebrew that would become the foundation of a spiritual rebirth.17 In that light, it is fruitful to compare the depiction of Alexander at the gates of Jerusalem as presented in the mid-​thirteenth-​century Dijon manuscript of the Histoire ancienne (fig. 6.7) with the earliest Shahnameh illustration of Alexander at the Kaʿba (see fig. 6.2). The image from the Dijon manuscript shows the moment when the high priest, accompanied by other elders of the community, greets Alexander at the gates of Jerusalem, hoping to dissuade him from conquering this city, as he has done so many others. To their surprise, the conqueror bows down before the high priest, stating that he had seen him, dressed in his ceremonial white garments—including the golden plate adorned with the Tetragrammaton—in a prophetic dream. Alexander then enters the temple, makes a sacrifice, and offers gifts to the Jewish community.18 Josephus’s account is reflected in the Histoire ancienne, which states that the high priest “had carried before him a tablet of well-​wrought gold, held up high, with the name of Our Lord written on it in the Hebrew language” (si fist devant lui porter une table d’or mout bien faite et haut amont levee, ou li nons Nostre Segnor estoit escris en ebriu language).19 Here in the text, the breastplate is a tablet of gold, written in Hebrew characters. For the illustrator of the Dijon manuscript, however, this was an opportunity to transform the moment into a recognition not of the truth of the God of Israel but of the incarnate Christ. The high priest carries not a golden tablet but what looks more like a three-​dimensional object; Bianca Kühnel has suggested that we might even see it as a pyx, a ceremonial container for the consecrated Host.20 As we will see, other manuscripts of the Histoire ancienne represent this sacred object differently. For the moment, however, let us consider the object in textual terms: what goal is served by this transformation of the plate with the Tetragrammaton into the inscribed or carved object that the high priest holds? In a study of ivory objects, Sarah Guérin has argued that pyxes made to hold the transubstantiated body of Christ were privileged objects, containers that participated in a profound spiritual hermeneutic: “As the Ark sheltered the Tablets of the Law, that is, the Word of God, so did Mary bear Christ, that is, the Word made Flesh (John 1:14), in her womb. Just as the sacrament house and Eucharist could stand in for the Ark of the Covenant and the Tablets of the Law, Mary sheltering Christ was a parallel iteration of the same Old Testament metaphor.”21 In other words, as the container of the Host, the pyx refers at once to the body of the Virgin bearing the Word of God and to the Ark of the Covenant bearing the Tablets in a prefiguration of the Incarnation. In this way, Alexander’s encounter at the gates of 144

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Figure 6.7 Alexander at the gates of Jerusalem. From Wauchier de Denain, Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César, Acre, 1260s. Dijon, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 562, fol. 170v. Photo: Bibliothèque municipale de Dijon.

Jerusalem participates in a complex temporality, located both prior to the Incarnation, in the Macedonian’s own historical moment, and in the post-​Incarnation time of salvation. Another approach to the image in the Dijon manuscript would be to highlight the fact of inscription. What exactly is the function of written text in the encounter with the sacred—not only in the scene illustrated in the Dijon manuscript showing Alexander at the gates of Jerusalem but also in the early fourteenth-​century Shiraz manuscript of the Shahnameh (see fig. 6.2)? In particular, is it significant that the textual element entirely drops out of the iconography of this scene in subsequent manuscripts of the Shahnameh? There is much more to be said about this, particularly with reference to the supersessionist logic that governs both of these images. In the image from the Dijon manuscript, we see Alexander at the gates of Jerusalem, facing a sacred object that is at once Judaic (the golden plate inscribed with the Tetragrammaton) and Christian (a pyx-​like object), manifesting simultaneously the Old and the New Covenant and thus participating in a complex temporality. In the image from the Topkapı manuscript, we see Alexander at the Kaʿba, with a textual banner at the top reading “al-​Kaʿba al-​bait Allah” (the Kaʿba [cube] of the House of God). While the text of the Shahnameh positions Alexander as a Christian in a pre-​Islamic world, the illumination positions the reader firmly in a Muslim perspective. The illustrations thus participate in a similar supersessionist hermeneutic, where Jewish and Christian identities in the Alexander the Great’s Encounters with the Sacred

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Figure 6.8 Alexander at the gates of Jerusalem. From Wauchier de Denain, Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César, Acre, 1280s. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS 20125, fol. 232r.

Histoire ancienne, and Christian and Muslim identities (as well as Persian Zoroastrian and Muslim identities) in the Shahnameh, are held in tension. Other illustrations of this scene in the Histoire ancienne are less committed to the supersessionist impulse than what we see in the Dijon manuscript. An exemplar made in Acre in the 1280s is similar to the Dijon manuscript in some respects and yet significantly dissimilar (fig. 6.8). Both images include three priestly figures on one side and three knightly figures on the other; in both, Alexander is kneeling, and a horse appears in the scene. The left-​right distribution is consistent. The architectural forms differ: the Dijon manuscript illustrates distinctive building shapes that recall monumental structures in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, such as the Dome of the Rock and the church of the Holy Sepulchre.22 In addition, the colors of the clothing worn by the priestly figures varies slightly, and the three knights and Alexander are helmeted, hiding their faces (and one might also note that the high priest’s face has been scraped). Most important, however, the object of veneration is quite different. Where the text invites us to envision a single golden plate marked with the Tetragrammaton, and the Dijon manuscript presents a three-​dimensional pyx-​like object, the Paris manuscript portrays a form that appears to be the two tablets of the Law. The effect is not simply 146

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to underline the supersessionist hermeneutic we already saw manifested in the Dijon manuscript but to ground it specifically in divine law, reminding us of the fulfillment and replacement of the Old Law of Moses by the New Law of Christ. Beyond thinking comparatively about these two traditions found in the Histoire ancienne and the Shahnameh, both depicting Alexander’s encounter with the sacred, is there more to conjecture? We have already noted that the representations of Alexander at the Kaʿba that emerge in the early fourteenth century (1330) and take off in the fifteenth century constitute an innovation that defies the relatively minor role that the episode plays in Ferdowsi’s text. Why did this interest develop in fourteenth-​ century Shiraz? Simpson suggests that an interest in pilgrimage practices in the region may have played a role, but she does not speculate further. Considering the iconography of Alexander at Jerusalem in the manuscripts of the Histoire ancienne may offer another possibility. All five of the earliest manuscripts of the Histoire ancienne were produced during the thirteenth century, within a few decades after the work’s composition, in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem prior to the fall of Acre in 1291. Jaroslav Folda and Lisa Mahoney have demonstrated that the scriptoria of Acre produced manuscripts of high quality with distinctive features, while recent work on the orthographic and phonological features of the “French of Outremer” has done much to reveal the unique linguistic and literary culture of the region.23 Is it possible that there was more cross-​fertilization, in cultural terms, in that region than has as yet been recognized? The artistic traits of the Acre scriptoria, so well illustrated in the Dijon manuscript of the Histoire ancienne, are sometimes very loosely called “Byzantine,” but it would be more apt to describe them as the product of a syncretic, emergent style proper to the eastern Mediterranean region.24 Might this style—and might these iconographic practices around Alexander’s encounter with the sacred— have extended more widely along the trade routes and lines of cultural communication as far as Shiraz? What might we learn about the artists and artisans who inhabited this environment? Could presentation manuscripts have circulated across this cultural divide? Would manuscripts have traveled as war booty? Thus far we have been looking at the image of Alexander’s encounter with the sacred in isolation, whether in the Persian tradition or the French. Contextualizing these briefly helps to show which elements of the Alexander story are most typically illustrated. Both in the Paris manuscript made in Acre (fig. 6.8) and in a comparable early manuscript of the Histoire ancienne held in London (British Library, Additional MS 15268),25 six images are devoted to the Alexander section of the text. The former includes the following: Jerusalem (fig. 6.8), the Wheel of Fortune, Alexander’s armies confronting the Indian armies of Porus, a three-​horned beast, a two-​headed beast, and Alexander and Porus facing each other to battle in single combat. The British Library manuscript also devotes six images to the Alexander section, many of which overlap with those found in Paris manuscript: the two battle scenes (collective and individual) are the same, and the two monstrous beasts are the same. The two differences in the London manuscript Alexander the Great’s Encounters with the Sacred

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are, first, the opening illustration, where the Amazons are shown instead of Alexander at the gates of Jerusalem and, second, the omission of Fortune’s wheel to instead provide, later in the text, the Trees of the Sun and the Moon that prophesy Alexander’s premature death.26 Both of these images—the Wheel of Fortune and the oracular Trees—forecast Alexander’s future but within strikingly different frames of reference. Anne Derbes and Mark Sandona have explicated the inclusion of the Amazons in this pivotal position in the context of female patronage of the Histoire ancienne and related texts from the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem.27 What remains is to ask why Jerusalem might have been included or left out in the illustration programs: when is it seen as a crucial moment—as in the Dijon manuscript—and when is it seen as superfluous? Let us return now to the comparative frame of reference, considering the Dijon manuscript of the Histoire ancienne (dating from the 1260s, produced in Acre) against the Paris manuscript of the Shahnameh (dating from 1441, produced in Shiraz) (see figs. 6.7 and 6.1). As noted above, there are undoubtedly some common features in their iconographic programs. These include the supplicant hands of Alexander in both; his crown and red gown; the clusters of men on each side of the frame, in both pictures; and the central focus, in each case, on a doorway marking the point where the sacred enters the world. Is this just a coincidence? Or could there be a shared context that links these images, this evocation of Alexander’s relationship to the divine? This is not a question that can be answered conclusively in this essay, but it may be a useful question to pose for future research. One also might want to think in broader terms about the illustration programs, especially with regard to how architectural forms can signify transitions in historical time. An example is the depiction of the Temple of Janus in the Dijon manuscript (fig. 6.9), an image that I have written about before and that Kühnel has also brilliantly addressed.28 This is a very different subject from Alexander at the gates of Jerusalem, but nonetheless one that is thematically comparable to the juxtaposed image from the Shahnameh. As Orosius emphasizes, the gates of the Temple of Janus, located in Rome, were periodically shut in order to mark the times of peace that conclude periods of violent warfare. The most important of these periods, for Orosius and for those who adapted his work—as did the writer of the Histoire ancienne—is the pax Augustiana, the period of peace during the reign of Augustus Caesar that heralded the birth of Christ. The gates of the Temple of Janus were also shut during other moments of peace, and one of these, which occurred during the Punic Wars, is depicted here. We might note some parallels with the scene in the Shahnameh illustrated in the Paris manuscript (see fig. 6.1), as well as with the Cambridge manuscript (see fig. 6.3), where the gateway-​ like quality of the Kaʿba at the center of the image is even more pronounced. Might we observe in these two images, widely separated in their cultural context, a similar alignment of physical space—that is, the liminal space of the doorway—and historical time, at the point where a significant transitional moment is marked?

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Figure 6.9 Temple of Janus. From Wauchier de Denain, Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César, Acre, 1260s. Dijon, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 562, fol. 204v. Photo: Bibliothèque municipale de Dijon.

To pursue this line of thought requires us to ask what significant transitional moment is marked in this image from the Shahnameh. In the text of Ferdowsi, Alexander’s visit to the Kaʿba is brief and does not seem to convey a particularly striking message. For the manuscript’s illustrators, however, this moment could be seen as a richly meaningful turning point in historical time in light of the supersessionist hermeneutic we discussed earlier. To what extent is pilgrimage evoked in this scene at the Kaʿba? To what extent is Alexander an apt avatar for the experience of the individual pilgrim? And how exactly is sacred space evoked in this scene? I want to make it clear that I am not arguing that the iconographic program of the Acre manuscripts of the Histoire ancienne (especially the Dijon manuscript) inspired the iconographic program of the Shahnameh manuscripts that show Alexander at the Kaʿba; instead, I am asking whether both derived from a regional artistic culture that shared certain pictorial conventions and had some common interests concerning the depiction of sacred space. To highlight this point, let us return to the Dijon illumination of the Temple of Janus (see fig. 6.9) and the same scene in the London manuscript also produced at Acre (fig. 6.10). Only in the Dijon manuscript do we see the harshly schematic vision of the temple, with the two bold gates framing a keyhole-​like insert in the middle. The gates of Janus seem to be almost a portal to some other reality, to a cyclical escape from linear time. The British Library manuscript, by contrast, puts the statue off to the side, adjacent to a scene of banqueting Roman senators. It is clear that the Dijon manuscript participates in a different iconographic and spatial logic.

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Figure 6.10 Temple of Janus. From Wauchier de Denain, Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César, Acre, 1280s. London, British Library, Additional MS 15268, fol. 242v. Photo © The British Library Board, Additional MS 15268.

Mapping the Sacred This logic, I would suggest, has a lot to do with how those living in the eastern Mediterranean during the thirteenth century thought about Jerusalem. The depiction of Alexander kneeling here at the gate, as in the image from the Dijon manuscript (see fig. 6.7), also offers a glimpse of the center of the world. Medieval maps of Jerusalem produced in the early thirteenth century, like the one held at Saint-​Omer (Bibliothèque de l’Agglomération, MS 776) and a closely related late twelfth-​century map held in London (fig. 6.11), evoke in detailed terms a city that was at once a thriving urban metropolis and the symbolic center of the world. The latter map, in particular, reflects a detailed, practical knowledge of the twelfth-​century city under Latin rule. It features a meat market and money exchange, in addition to religious buildings like the church of the Holy Sepulchre and the “Temple of the Lord” (that is, the Dome of the Rock), signifying a lived daily reality. At the same time, the map includes richly symbolic forms, such as the looming central Porta Speciosa that lends an atemporal, even apocalyptic dimension to the map image. Beyond these qualities—of local accuracy and realism and of apocalyptic symbolic space—the Jerusalem maps present a microcosm of the greater world, of which the holy city is the fixed center. Their perfectly circular form is reflected, for example, in the famous Psalter Map produced in the 1260s (London, British Library, Additional MS 28681).29 The function of Jerusalem as the central point in space—and pivotal moment in time—is thus affirmed by the maps, just as it is in the illustration programs of at least some of the Acre manuscripts of the Histoire ancienne. Maps produced in the eastern Mediterranean can also provide a valuable context for the symbolic logic of the Shahnameh manuscripts examined above. One such example is a map of the Maghrib in a late twelfth-​century manuscript of a geographical survey, an abridgment of the tenth-​century Kitāb al-Masālik wa l-mamālik (Book of roads and 150

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Figure 6.11 Jerusalem city map, Voormezeele, second half of the twelfth century. London, British Library Additional MS 32343, fol. 15v. Photo © The British Library Board, Additional MS 32343.

kingdoms; fig. 6.12).30 In her study of Islamic maps of the region, Karen Pinto provides a detailed analysis of this image, which she localizes to the eastern Mediterranean. Readers of the Shahnameh have long been puzzled by the attribution “Andalus” as the name of the realm of the beautiful and powerful queen whom Alexander encounters; in many versions of the Alexander narrative, this queen is identified as Candace, queen of Ethiopia, but in the Shahnameh, she is called “Qadayfeh,” queen of “Andalus.”31 In general terms, we might explain this transposition of Ethiopia for al-​Andalus (Muslim Spain) as a way of emphasizing remoteness, in something like the way China is introduced into the Shahnameh as an even more distant site for exploration and conquest. In other words, the queen is associated with distant lands to the West that are as far away as it is possible to get from Alexander’s climactic eastern conquests in India and beyond. In order to take stock of this transposition more fully, however, we might look at the spatial depiction of the West on this map of the Maghrib contained in the Alexander the Great’s Encounters with the Sacred

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Figure 6.12 Map of the Maghrib. From Abū Isḥāq al-Iṣṭaḵ hrī, abridgment of Kitāb al-Masālik wa l-mamālik, eastern Mediterranean, ah 589 / 1193 ce. Leiden, Bibliotheek der Rijkuniversiteit, MS or. 3101, p. 20. Photo: Leiden University Libraries.

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abridgment of al-Iṣṭaḵhrī’s geography—specifically at how al-​Andalus is depicted, as the large circular land mass to the right, with the red sphere of Cordoba at its center (see fig. 6.12)—to help us unpack the textual logic of the Shahnameh. As Pinto points out, the two mountainous forms shown here, the Jabal al-​Qilal at lower left and the Jabal Tariq—that is, Gibraltar—together form a kind of symbolic barrier that marks the furthest extent of the Mediterranean. As the Pillars of Hercules, these two mountains form a two-​part gate that both anticipates and is fulfilled by the boundary marks set out by Alexander at the extreme points of the world. Renaming Candace, queen of Ethiopia, as “Qadayfeh,” queen of “Andalus,” reinscribes one set of limits—in the remotest South—with another set of limits—in the remotest West, marked by the Pillars of Hercules. Remoteness is always relative, and it is continually reinvented based on where the form of representation, whether textual, iconographic, or cartographic, is produced. I would like to close with the methodological questions with which I began. Can an exploration of these two very different textual and iconographic conventions be fruitful, bearing in mind that each of these traditions—that of the Histoire ancienne Out of Bounds

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manuscripts, on the one hand, and that of the Shahnameh manuscripts, on the other— carries with it a tremendous scholarly burden? I am not personally equipped to delve equally deeply into both of these traditions; would it be wiser to leave the Persian manuscripts to the scholar of Near and Middle Eastern studies and the French manuscripts to the specialist in European medieval studies? Or is there something to be gained by positioning oneself in the awkward middle, to try to take stock of the complex environment of the eastern Mediterranean? Speaking for myself, it seems impossible to investigate the manuscripts of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem without trying to account fully for the complex interplay of cultures found there: those people who were at once fully European, belonging to their various “nations,” and yet also deeply integrated into the Asian world of trade, exchange, and “rough tolerance.”32 It may be the case that only a creative—even daring—approach will bring us closer to them.

Notes 1. Orosius, Seven Books of History 1.2; trans. Deferrari, 7–8, with explicit references to Alexander italicized: Europe begins, as I have said, in the north at the Tanais River, where the Riphaean Mountains, standing back from the Sarmatian Sea, pour forth the Tanais flood. The Tanais, sweeping past the altars and boundaries of Alexander the Great to the territories of the Rhobasci, swells the Palus Maeotis, whose immense overflow spreads afar into the Euxine Sea near Theodosia. From the Euxine near Constantinople a long narrow body of water leads to the sea which we call Mare Nostrum. The Western Ocean forms the boundary of Europe in Spain at the very point where the Pillars of Hercules stand near the Gades Islands and where the Ocean tide comes into the straits of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Africa begins with the land of Egypt and the city of Alexandria. On the shore of that Great Sea, the waters of which touch all the continents and the lands in the center of the earth, we find the city of Paraetonium. From there the boundaries of Africa lead through districts which the inhabitants call Catabathmon, not far from the camp of Alexander the Great above Lake Chalearzus, whence they pass near the lands of the Upper Avasitae and across the deserts of Ethiopia to reach the Southern Ocean. The western boundary of Africa is the same as that of Europe, that is, the entrance of the Strait of Gades; its furthest boundaries are the Atlas Range and the islands which people call Fortunate. 2. Stock, Alexander the Great, and Zuwiyya, Companion to Alexander Literature.

3. Conrad, What Is Global History?, 110–14, at 114. 4. For an overview of pictorial representations of Alexander in Islamic manuscripts (Persian, Ottoman, and Mughal), see Milstein, “Picturing the Archetypal King,” 48–63. 5. Simpson, “From Tourist to Pilgrim,” 127–46. See also Simpson and Marlow, Princeton’s Great Persian Book of Kings, and Davidson and Simpson, Ferdowsi’s “Shāhnāma.” 6. Simpson, “From Tourist to Pilgrim,” 132. 7. The episode is thirty verses long, of which twenty concern the encounter with Nasr and the overthrow of the tyrant. The episode opens with eight verses on Alexander’s trip to Mecca and the sanctity of the place, and it closes with two verses where Alexander walks on foot to the Kaʿba as the people praise him. See ibid., 128–29, and Davis, Shahnameh, 596–97. 8. Davis, Shahnameh, 587, 608; see Simpson, “From Tourist to Pilgrim” 129. 9. Simpson, “From Tourist to Pilgrim” 130. 10. Ibid., 135. 11. Davis, Shahnameh, 567. 12. “The most noticeable legacy of farr, though, is the symbol of shoulder-​flames used in the representation of saintly Islamic figures. Perhaps because Zoroaster’s farr was said to have descended from the Heavens and manifested itself ‘in the form of fire’ (Gnoli), flaming haloes were perceived to underline holiness, and were extended to Islamic saintly figures. The flaming bust on the fire altar of Sasanian coinage, especially on the reverse of some Ḵosrow II (Khosrow) issues, may have provided the prototype for such representation. To this day, flaming-​shoulders still mark the images of the Prophet and the Imams.”

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Encyclopaedia Iranica, s.v. “farr[ah] ii. Iconography of farr[ah].” See also Encyclopaedia Iranica, s.v. “farr[ah].” 13. For an overview of the iconography of miʿraj manuscripts, beginning in the early fourteenth century, see Encyclopaedia Iranica, s.v. “meʿrāj ii. Illustrations.” 14. See the detailed account of this image in Gruber, “Between Logos (Kalima) and Light (Nur),” 229–62, esp. 239–40. Gruber suggests that the painting was added later to the manuscript (text dated 1514, painting added circa 1550, Bukhara). For a striking example of a similar scene except for the three sages seated below, dated 1436–37 (likely Herat), see Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, supp. Turc MS 190, fol. 5r, reproduced as fig. 1.1 in Gruber, Timurid “Book of Ascension,” 189. On the relationship of textual descriptions of the “light of Muhammad” (nur Muhammad) to visual depictions of a golden nimbus around the Prophet’s head, see Gruber, Timurid “Book of Ascension,” 311–13. 15. Gruber, Timurid “Book of Ascension,” 350. 16. On the specifics of how both Josephus’s Bellum Judaicum and Antiquitates Judaicae found their way into the Zacher Epitome of Julius Valerius that was the source of many of the European vernacular versions of the Alexander narrative, see Akbari, Idols in the East, 88–90. 17. On Alexander’s encounter at the gates of Jerusalem, see Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 11.8.4–6, ed., trans., and rev. Shilleto, Wilson, and Whiston, 2:296–300; and on the flight of refugees, see Josephus, The Jewish War 7, ed., trans., and rev. Shilleto, Wilson, and Whiston, 5:124–73. 18. Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 11.8.5, ed., trans., and rev. Shilleto, Wilson, and Whiston, 2:298–99. 19. Gaullier-​Bougassas, L’histoire ancienne jusqu’à César, 34, lines 13–14. 20. Kühnel, “Perception of History,” 161–86, at 163. I am grateful to Sarah Guérin for drawing my attention to a large (35 cm) ivory casket of possibly eastern Mediterranean origin, the “Sainte Châsse de Sens,” which bears a striking resemblance to the pyx-​like object carried in the Dijon manuscript illustration (fig. 6.7). See Hanson, “ ‘Sainte Chasse,’ ” and Nees, “What’s in the Box?,” 67–77. 21. Guérin, “Meaningful Spectacles,” 53–77, at 62 (see 71).

22. Kühnel, “Perception of History,” 166–67. 23. Folda, Crusader Art in the Holy Land, 393–479, and Mahoney, “Histoire ancienne,” 31–52. On the linguistic communities of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, see Morreale and Paul, French of Outremer, especially the essays by Laura Minervini (15–29) and Fabio Zinelli (221–46). 24. Mahoney emphasizes the “Byzantine” quality of the Histoire ancienne manuscripts but ultimately concludes that they reflect “a rich dialectical relationship with local culture within the specific tensions of the Levant” (“Histoire ancienne,” 40–42, at 46). On the complex interrelationships of various ethnic and linguistic groups in the Latin Kingdom, see MacEvitt, Crusades. 25. Discussion of this manuscript can be found in Morrison and Hedeman, Imagining the Past in France, 103–4. Record and images available at the British Library, http://​www​.bl​.uk​/manuscripts​ /FullDisplay​.aspx​?ref​=​add​_ms​_15268​&​index​=​0. 26. London, British Library, Additional MS 15268, fol. 203r: the Amazons surrendering to Alexander; fol. 204r: the battle between the Macedonians and the Indians, with elephants; fol. 208r: the beast with three horns; fol. 210v: The beast with two heads; fol. 214v: Alexander and the prophesying trees; fol. 217r: the battle between Alexander and Porus. 27. Derbes and Sandona, “Amazons and Crusaders,” 187–229. 28. Akbari, “Embodying the Historical Moment,” 617–43, and Kühnel, “Perception of History,” 161–86. 29. On these maps, see Akbari and Mittman, “Seeing Jerusalem,” 116–41. 30. The manuscript (Leiden, Bibliotheek der Rijkuniversiteit MS or. 3101; map of the Maghrib at p. 20), is dated AH 589 / 1193 ce and contains an abridgment of the tenth-​century Kitāb al-Masālik wa l-mamālik by Abū Isḥāq al-Iṣṭaḵhrī. See Abū Isḥāq al-Iṣṭakhrī, Kitāb al-Masālik wa l-mamālik. 31. On the depiction of Candace in Alexander narratives, see Akbari, Idols in the East, 96–104; see also Akbari, “Where Is Medieval Ethiopia?,” 80–91, esp. 86–87. 32. On premodern discourses of national identity, see Akbari, “Historiography,” 368–85. On “rough tolerance,” see MacEvitt, Crusades, passim.

Bibliography Abū Isḥāq al-Iṣṭakhrī. Kitāb al-Masālik wa l-mamālik. Edited by M. J. de Goeje. 1870; rev. ed., Leiden: Brill, 2014.

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Akbari, Suzanne Conklin. “Embodying the Historical Moment: Tombs and Idols in the Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César.” Journal of Medieval

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and Early Modern Studies 44, no. 3 (2014): 617–43. ———. “Historiography: Nicholas Trevet’s Transnational History.” In The Oxford Handbook of Chaucer, edited by Suzanne Conklin Akbari and James Simpson, 368–85. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. ———. Idols in the East: European Representations of Islam and the Orient, 1100–1450. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009. ———. “Where Is Medieval Ethiopia? Mapping Ethiopic Studies within Medieval Studies.” In Toward a Global Middle Ages: Encountering the World Through Illuminated Manuscripts, edited by Bryan Keene, 80–91. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2019. Akbari, Suzanne Conklin, and Asa Simon Mittman. “Seeing Jerusalem: Schematic Views of the Holy City, 1100–1300.” In Aspects of Knowledge: Preserving and Reinventing Traditions of Learning in the Middle Ages, edited by Marilina Cesario and Hugh Magennis, 116–41. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018. Conrad, Sebastian. What Is Global History? Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016. Davidson, Olga M., and Marianna Shreve Simpson, eds. Ferdowsi’s “Shāhnāma”: Millennial Perspectives. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013. Davis, Dick, trans. Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings. New York: Viking, 2006. Derbes, Anne, and Mark Sandona. “Amazons and Crusaders: The ‘Histoire Universelle’ in Flanders and the Holy Land.” In France and the Holy Land: Frankish Culture at the End of the Crusades, edited by Daniel H. Weiss and Lisa Mahoney, 187–229. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. Encyclopaedia Iranica. Edited by Ehsan Yarshater. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982–. Folda, Jaroslav. Crusader Art in the Holy Land: From the Third Crusade to the Fall of Acre. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Gaullier-​Bougassas, Catherine, ed. L’histoire ancienne jusqu’à César ou Histoire pour Roger, châtelain de Lille de Wauchier de Denain: L’Histoire de la Macédoine et d’Alexandre le Grand. Alexander Redivivus 4. Turnhout: Brepols, 2012. Gruber, Christiane J. “Between Logos (Kalima) and Light (Nur): Representations of the Prophet Muhammad in Islamic Painting.” Muqarnas 26 (2009): 229–62. ———. The Timurid “Book of Ascension” (Miʿrajnama): A Study of Text and Image in a Pan-​Asian Context. Valencia: Patrimonio Ediciones, 2008. Guérin, Sarah M. “Meaningful Spectacles: Gothic Ivories Staging the Divine.” Art Bulletin 95, no. 1 (2013): 53–77.

Hanson, John Eric. “The Ivory Casket in Sens Known as ‘La Sainte Chasse.’ ” PhD diss., Courtauld Institute, University of London, 1996. Josephus, Flavius. The Works of Flavius Josephus. Edited, translated, and revised by A. R Shilleto, Charles William Wilson, and William Whiston. 5 vols. London: G. Bell and Sons, 1890. Kühnel, Bianca. “The Perception of History in Thirteenth-​Century Crusader Art.” In France and the Holy Land: Frankish Culture at the End of the Crusades, edited by Daniel H. Weiss and Lisa Mahoney, 161–86. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. MacEvitt, Christopher. The Crusades and the Christian World of the East: Rough Tolerance. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008. Mahoney, Lisa. “The Histoire ancienne and Dialectical Identity in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem.” Gesta 49 (2010): 31–52. Milstein, Rachel. “Picturing the Archetypal King: Iskandar in Islamic Painting.” In Romance and Reason: Islamic Transformations of the Classical Past, edited by Roberta Casagrande-​Kim, Samuel Thrope, and Raquel Ukeles, 48–63. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018. Morreale, Laura K., and Nicholas L. Paul. The French of Outremer: Communities and Communications in the Crusading Mediterranean. New York: Fordham University Press, 2018. Morrison, Elizabeth, and Anne D. Hedeman. Imagining the Past in France: History in Manuscript Painting, 1250–1500. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2010. Nees, Lawrence. “What’s in the Box? Remarks on Some Early Medieval and Early Islamic Precious Containers.” Source: Notes in the History of Art 33, nos. 3–4 (2014): 67–77. Orosius, Paulus. Historiarum adversum paganos libri vii. In Orose: Histoires (Contre les Paiens), ed. and trans. by Marie-​Pierre Arnaud Lindet. 3 vols. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1990. ———. The Seven Books of History Against the Pagans. Translated by Roy J. Deferrari. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2001. Simpson, Marianna Shreve. “From Tourist to Pilgrim: Iskandar at the Kaʿba in Illustrated Shahnama Manuscripts.” Iranian Studies 43 (2010): 127–46. Simpson, Marianna Shreve, and Louise Marlow. Princeton’s Great Persian Book of Kings: The Peck “Shahnama.” New Haven: Yale University Press for Princeton University Art Museum, 2015. Stock, Markus, ed. Alexander the Great in the Middle Ages: Transcultural Perspectives. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016. Zuwiyya, David, ed. A Companion to Alexander Literature in the Middle Ages. Leiden: Brill, 2011.

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7 Fashioning the Gendered, Classed, and White Self A Sephardi Cultural Project

Eva Frojmovic

In medieval Aragon, illuminated Hebrew books of devotion were a prominent vehicle of identity formation for their Jewish patrons. Since only the wealthier Jewish people could afford such illuminated books, they offer useful case studies of how members of this patronal class constructed their subjectivities in terms of gender, class, and race. Whether a painted Seder meal (the ritual meal in a Jewish home on the eve of the Passover holiday) in an Aragonese Passover Haggadah (the prayer book for the Passover home ritual) was depicted as a family affair or as a high-society banquet, more was at stake than text-​based iconography. In this essay I will investigate how illuminations of the Seder meal served not only as the “mirror, mirror on the wall” for their intended audiences, in which they could see themselves as a carefully ordered (seder is Hebrew for order), classed, gendered, and, not least, “white” social group; I will also read these Seder scenes as inverted mirror images of the Host-​desecration fantasies depicted in some fourteenth-​century Aragonese altarpieces, in which meals also take center stage. In the negotiation of class, gender, and race in images of Jewish and Christian homes, Muslims were imagined as the third partners, often depicted as dark-​skinned and exoticized “Moors,” whose visualization served as a foil for the whitening of both Christians and Jews.

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The present essay provides a counterweight to neomedievalist retrotopias associated with white supremacism.1 Medieval Jewish studies have tended to avoid the term race, because aligning anti-​Jewish imagery with racism, even in the past, might threaten the fragile acceptance and self-​positioning of emancipation-​era Jews as white.2 In the post-​ Holocaust world, such dilemmas cast a long shadow all the way back into the Middle Ages. Many white supremacists, for their part, pay lip service to “Judeo-​Christian tradition,” a seemingly flattering but divisive co-​optation. Learning from critical race studies in the study of medieval anti-​Judaism can be extended into the realm of Jewish book and visual culture.3 A gendered analysis of the interplay between representations of Judaism and Jewish self-​representation produces an intersectional interpretation, adding complexity to a race studies–informed approach to self-​representation that always takes place in the presence of representation. Intersectionality refers to the way in which one type of difference is modified and complicated by another difference: how gender and class and race interarticulate.4 The intersection of class, gender, religion, and race in Sepharad (medieval Iberia, as it is called by its Jewish inhabitants in Hebrew) is complicated by the ambivalent sociopolitical position of Jews in relation to both Christians and Muslims in Christian Aragon. The interarticulation of gender, class, and race in representations of “modern-​day” (fourteenth-​century) Jewish selves in some Aragonese illuminated Hebrew manuscripts of the Passover Haggadah reveals a visual counter(auto)ethnography in the face of a dangerous new ethnography of Host desecration. While the term ethnography has been probed by medievalists since the 1980s, the concept of autoethnography has been adopted by scholars of medieval and early modern culture much more recently.5 Writing about Andean self-​representation in the colonial era, Mary Louise Pratt defined an autoethnographic text: “If ethnographic texts are a means by which Europeans represent to themselves their (usually subjugated) others, autoethnographic texts are those the others construct in response to or in dialogue with those metropolitan representations.”6 I propose reading images of Jewish Seder meals as autoethnographic images that were addressing themselves to Jewish audiences but that did so conscious of spurious Christian ethnographic representations of Host desecration. Jewish patrons simultaneously authored images of Jewish domesticity that fashioned a classed, gendered, and raced self, while at the same time negotiating the phantasmagoric ethnographic images that others made of Jews and their imagined hidden rituals. In the present essay, I invoke the concept of self-​fashioning to argue that the commissioning of preciously illuminated books from highly prized painters was performance of subjecthood; the portrayals of one’s own society in these codices constitute highly self-​conscious acts of self-​fashioning of the Sephardi elite during a time of instability.7 The fulcrum of my inquiry is the pairing of two fourteenth-​century paintings depicting Muslims in Jewish homes: the Seder scene in the Sarajevo Haggadah (fig. 7.1)

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Figure 7.1 The Seder table. From the Sara­ jevo Haggadah, ca. 1350. Sarajevo, National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina, B–H. zem. muz. 9313 (olim 9034), fol. 31v. Photo courtesy of the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

and the Host desecration predella panel of an altarpiece from the convent of Santa María de Sigena (see fig. 7.4). Other Seder scenes from other Aragonese Haggadah manuscripts serve to investigate the importance of meal imagery in the process of Jewish self-​fashioning as upper-​class and white, while other altarpieces expand our understanding of the ethnography of Host desecration.

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From Courtly Commensality to Transgenerational Knowledge Transmission: The Seder Nights of Aragon In many Iberian and especially Aragonese Haggadah codices illuminated from the late thirteenth century onward, the ritual meal known as the Seder, which inaugurates the Passover festival, takes center stage. Depictions of it are sometimes even multiplied. We should ask why that is so and how the patrons are depicted in these scenes in terms of class, gender, and race—not as portraits of specific people but, rather, as a kind of social portrait of a patronal class. The presumably earliest illustrated Haggadah from Iberia, the late thirteenth-​ century Hispano-​Moresque Haggadah (London, British Library, MS Oriental 2737), includes perhaps the most detailed sequence of full-​page autoethnographic images detailing the preparations for Pesach and the meal: two pages devoted to matzah baking, two pages for the immersion of utensils and dishes, two pages for the distribution of matzah and haroset (a mash of fruit and spices, symbolic of the mortar used by Hebrew slaves in Egypt), the roasting of the Pesach lamb/ram (labeled “This one makes the Pesach”), and finally the Seder table, labeled “This is the table.”8 Women appear to work hard to prepare for Passover but are absent from the exclusively homosocial festive table attended by beardless young men, where high social status is suggested by the patterned tablecloth strewn with a profusion of elegant dishes. A single book, a Haggadah within the Haggadah, is among the precious objects on this table. A very different gender dynamic is found in a group of three Haggadot from the second quarter or the middle of the fourteenth century, probably from Aragon/ Provence: the Rylands Haggadah and its close relatives, the Brother Haggadah and the Sister Haggadah. In these three books, the emphasis is on courtly sociability, which is performed through the increasingly complex articulation of gender (commensality of fashionable ladies and gentlemen) and class distinction (presence of servants). Children remain absent. High social rank is consistently asserted by the illuminated richness of table and dress. On the last page of the prefatory biblical picture cycle in the Rylands Haggadah, a depiction of the Seder simultaneously asserts and undermines the “clear demarcation between those who serve and those who sup.”9 The page combines the killing, blood daubing, and roasting of the sacrificial lamb (above) with a bipartite Seder meal (below). The upper register is titled, “A lamb for each family household [Ex 12:3]; And they shall take some of the blood and put it on the doorposts [Ex 12:7] . . . roasted over the fire [Ex 12:8].” This titulus implies a biblical setting. The lower register’s Seder sequence is the only one within the prefatory picture sequence (fols. 13v–19v) that is not labeled. The page poses a number of thorny issues. Are the short-​tunicked men, who are carrying out the slaughtering and roasting, servants?10 They certainly look like the servants in attendance at the meal below, but at the same time they are supposed to be ancient Israelites on the eve of the institution of the original Passover. It appears 160

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that the achievement of freedom can only be pictured as a transformation from servile to lordly status, a transition from labor to leisure, which is externalized by a change in dress (low-​class short tunic versus noble robes). Work is a priori unfreedom—a very socially specific conception of freedom. The questions multiply. The Seder meal is held simultaneously in two rooms at two tables, served by two small servants hurrying to serve wine at both tables. Why this unnecessary doubling? Why does the elderly man in the room on the right keep his book (which should be used during the Seder) firmly closed, with clasps clamping the binding shut? Why are the woman and the younger man in the chamber on the left already eating (no eating should happen before Kiddush is made, and Kiddush has not been made yet)? Everything seems to be happening at the same time and not in the sequential order that is the essence of the Seder night. The didactic utility of this miniature is therefore minimal, and its purpose must be other than teaching the sequence of ritual actions. That the Seder participants in the picture are dining in considerable style is evident from the formulaic opulence of the tables (immaculately white tablecloths draped over trestle tables and a plethora of dishes, some glass and some silver) and the richness and fashionability of the clothing: the men wear a cloak and surcote (short-​sleeved long overgarment), respectively, over long-​sleeved undergarments, whose tight-​fitting sleeves bristle with small buttons. The lady’s surcote and underdress are decorated with conspicuous golden buttons of different sizes and trimmed with golden borders. Her headgear is particularly interesting because, while the men’s fashionable soft hats refuse to conform to any stereotyped Jewish item (no trace here of the Iberian Jewish hooded cloak), the lady’s golden tocado (headdress) is definitely identifiable as a decorated and jeweled headdress with the ornamental miniature bonnet (bonetillo) worn by well-​off Aragonese Jewish women, especially on festive occasions.11 This type of women’s headdress will occupy us repeatedly throughout this paper, since it is used in both Jewish books and Christian altarpieces to identify Jewish women. The couple, with their intimate relationship inside an enclosed space, alludes to the courtly conventions of an intimate meal between lovers. Note that no children are present at table. One is left to wonder about the ethnoreligious identity of the diminutive short-​ tunicked men in the lower half of the page, who may be servants.12 Are they meant to be Jewish or not? The transformation from slavery to freedom, which is an essential theme of the Seder, together with the “class-​consciousness” of the patron class, paradoxically makes the Israelites above look like their liberated descendants’ (possibly non-​Jewish) servants below. In the Brother Haggadah, the Seder scene is doubled, and the courtly atmosphere is considerably extended: two facing pages (fols. 7v and 8r) of mixed-​gender Seder meal pictures connect the prefatory picture cycle (of which the first Seder meal scene is the final page) with the beginning of the text (whose initial word is illustrated with Fashioning the Gendered, Classed, and White Self

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the second Seder meal scene).13 On the right-​hand page (fol. 7v), what appears as a straightforward reiteration of the Rylands Haggadah Seder picture actually differs in significant details. Above, the Pesach sacrifice in Egypt is in progress, and once again we are faced with the same ambiguity: ancient enslaved Israelites or present-​day kitchen staff? Whereas in the Rylands Haggadah, the Seder scene remained unlabeled, in the Brother Haggadah, a biblical proof text identifies this postbiblical festive banquet with a biblical commandment: “Let the children [lit. sons] of Israel make the Passover in its appointed season” (Nm 9:2).14 Similarly to the Rylands Haggadah’s Seder, formulaic opulence reigns at the tables: patterned tablecloths draped over trestle tables, scattered food and drink and fine tableware, including silver. Whereas in the Rylands Haggadah, the right-​hand Seder compartment is reserved for a single bearded gentleman, on folio 7 of the Brother Haggadah, two couples are dining in their respective “apartments,” which appear to be connected by doors through which a single short-​tunicked servant boy hurries. In the right-​hand apartment, a young man and a young woman jointly grasp the large silver goblet (the cup of blessing?). Whether this action signals love or competition, it is hardly appropriate for the Seder, where each celebrant is supposed to empty their own cup.15 In the left apartment, a surprisingly bareheaded, bearded elder holds a large silver goblet with both his hands, while his lady touches a smaller red goblet of her own and points to the carafe. Again, much is made of the fashionable clothing: decorated surcotes, costly buttons, a fashionable soft hat for the young man at the right, and tocados for the women. But more is to come. Directly opposite, on folio 8r, a crowded dinner party is in full swing in the initial-​ word panel of the Aramaic mnemonic “Atan mi’pirka” customarily prefacing Sephardi Haggadah texts. Flanked by short-​tunicked servants slaughtering and spit-​roasting a ram (inscribed in golden letters “roasted on the fire,” to remind us of the biblical commandment), eleven adults have assembled, cheek by jowl, behind a long table covered by a floor-​length white and patterned tablecloth, which is covered with matzah, knives, and bowls on feet. Centrally placed among them, two women are identified by their traditional Aragonese Jewish tocados as married, while all the men—young and old, bearded or clean-​shaven—are bareheaded. As on the opposite page, everything seems to be happening at the same time rather than in order: cooking, drinking (two of the men hold up silver cups), eating (three appear to be eating celery sticks, and a man and a woman each hold a knife). It is difficult to identify a specific ritual moment that would correspond to the choreography of the Seder. Elegant disorder instead of order (seder) seems to reign, but this elegant disorder embodies the social order of upper-​class society. In the Brother Haggadah, the constant presence of women at the Seder table is as noticeable as their scarcity in the Rylands Haggadah or even absence from the Hispano-​Moresque Haggadah’s Seder. But until now, no children have been glimpsed at any of the Seders. The multigenerational transmission of knowledge and tradition to children only comes to the fore in the Sister Haggadah.16 The Sister Haggadah’s 162

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prefatory picture cycle creates a new iconographic configuration: on the page opening folios 17 verso to 18 recto, a scene of public reading in the synagogue is juxtaposed with the Seder meal. Even more women characters perform as part of the Sister Haggadah’s Pesach past and present—though not in the synagogue. And finally, children make an appearance. Already the preceding images of Pesach preparations are gendered: while matzah and possibly haroset are being distributed only to men,17 two elaborately dressed and tocado-wearing women take brooms to floor and ceiling, while a father and son carry out Bedikat Hametz (the ritual search for leaven by candlelight, which occurred the night before the Seder night), equipped with a feather.18 Realistically, wealthy Jewish women were unlikely to wield the broom in pre-​Pesach cleaning without the aid of servants, or they might have removed their impractical and fragile tocado for the occasion. The ritual performance of Bedikat Hametz and its blessing remain a masculine prerogative, while the feminine pendant (house cleaning) draws attention to the gendering of Pesach preparations. The subsequent double page juxtaposing a family Seder meal to a male synagogue congregation configures gender relations in terms of transgenerational transmission of knowledge. Thirteen adult men and one boy sit or stand in the synagogue, where an officiant atop a high bimah (reader’s pulpit) reads aloud. Among the two book owners (that is, the elite), one appears to be instructing the boy, transmitting knowledge from generation to generation.19 In this homosocial synagogue space, masculinity is articulated through the transmission of (men’s) knowledge: “The master of the house and the sons of his house, who are reciting the Haggadah,” runs the titulus above. The tension between men’s knowledge (and its transmission) and the social claims of women comes to a head in the concluding Seder meal opposite the synagogue scene on folio 18 recto. Echoing the facing synagogue scene, the Seder is inscribed: “The master of the house and the sons of his house who make the Seder on the eve of Pesach.” The inscription excludes women, but women are central in this assembly, which is characterized as high-​status by the rich tableware on the black-​and-​white checkerboard-​patterned tablecloth (which hangs halfway down over a table that appears to stand on pillar legs, not on trestles, and beneath which cats or dogs vie for scraps) and two precious open Haggadot. Julie Harris suggests that women’s sensual knowing is proffered as equivalent to men’s book learning.20 Certainly, the two women, one wearing the tocado (indicating she is married) and one with loose, flowing long hair (indicating she is unmarried), perhaps indicative of two generations, are placed centrally. But the central placement of the two bookless women, framed by two pairs of men with books, can also be read differently. The women are framed by two male study pairs: a “father and son” group (my scare quotes indicate a type rather than realism) on the left and two young men on the right. Each pair shares one book between them, which spells out the beginning of the Haggadah text proper: “Ha-​Lachma” (This bread of affliction . . .). This is the first Fashioning the Gendered, Classed, and White Self

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time a child appears at the Seder table. With the father-​son-​book configuration linking the two facing pages of synagogue and Seder, the transgenerational transmission of men’s knowledge is visualized as key.21 To sum up thus far: these Seder meal scenes are “society portraits” that do not precisely illustrate specific moments in the sequence of the Seder. These three Haggadah codices all construct their patrons as belonging to an elevated social class. Gender is integral to this assertion of social status. Through the choreographed interaction between ladies and gentlemen and between masters and servants (a hierarchy potentially at odds with the Haggadah’s narrative transformation of serfs into free men), gender plays a significant role in creating a courtly ambience. Relatively little space is allocated to the multigenerational family; this theme is introduced only in the Sister Haggadah. The so-​called Barcelona Haggadah, perhaps from Aragonese Roussillon, contrasts with this triad of codices in both format and rhetoric.22 In the Barcelona Haggadah’s imagery, all of which is integrated into the initial-​word panels in the text, we find a thoroughly didactic emphasis, linking ritual-​specific imagery with instructional texts. The didactic element in this Haggadah is expressed through “family portraits” featuring increasing numbers of children (rather than the “society portraits” of courtly couples prevalent in the Rylands and Brother Haggadot). No fewer than four times do we encounter a Seder table in this codex, and always it is a familial multigenerational one. The Barcelona Haggadah’s first Seder table scene (fol. 17v) forms the initial-​word panel to “Atan mi-​pirka,” the Aramaic instructional mnemonic mentioned above. The elegant table and the sophisticated diners asserting an elevated social status are familiar. Yet the conventional table dressing should not distract us from the real innovation here: the covered matzah basket characteristic of Sephardi custom, which we have not encountered before on any painted Seder table, heralds the Barcelona Haggadah’s attention to precise ritual detail. Equally distinct is the party of celebrants. The adults are dressed up in their finest, as in the aforementioned Haggadah manuscripts. But this time, order (seder) and a new hierarchy is evident between the leader and the rest of the celebrants. Only the clearly identified leader, a bearded and cloaked man of authority seated in an elaborate chair at the head of the table, grasps the “cup of blessing” with both hands. The other people present an orderly, multigenerational familial cross-​section: a youth in a cap, a middle-​aged man in a blue hooded cloak with a pointed top, a mother-​and-​child subgroup (male child pointing upward [to the initial word?] sitting close to a married woman wearing a tocado), and finally a younger man who pours out wine, as the instructional text demands. Nobody is eating or drinking yet. Since the wine pourer does not appear to be a servant, the class-​hierarchical element of the servant in stereotypically courtly Seders, such as we have seen above, is reduced.23 The second Seder table image (fol. 19v) also illustrates an instructional rubric text: “And they drink, leaning left.” Five celebrants drink the first cup, resting their cheek 164

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on one of their hands (not all the left), thus fulfilling the commandment to recline, regardless of gender or age.24 The head and foot of the table are occupied by two bearded men on chairs, joined by a woman in a gilded tocado flanked by two male youngsters in caps, who may be children. Below, a bearded man is washing his hands (illustrating the continuation of the instructions) with the assistance of a smartly dressed young man or boy holding a jug and towel. The moments in the order of the Seder can be identified with precision, unlike in the Rylands, Brother, or Sister Haggadot. At the third Seder table on folio 20 verso, the division of the middle matzah (labeled “Matzah”) and the concealment of the afikomen (the broken piece of matzah saved for the end of the meal) also precisely illustrate a rubric that instructs how these actions are to be done. We can here see the number of children multiply to four, including a girl. One child grabs the arm of the adult who is stuffing the afikomen under the tablecloth. No fewer than three open books lie on the table, but no adult women attend this time. Only the fourth Seder table scene (fol. 28v) illustrates a liturgical text, “Ha-​lachma anya” (This bread of affliction . . .), the start of the Haggadah narrative. Once again, a family clan has assembled, with two bearded men occupying the extreme ends of the table on comfortable chairs, while two male youths in caps flank a girl and a woman wearing a simple white headscarf. The didactic emphasis lies on the transgenerational transmission of (embodied) knowledge between men: the boy nearest to the leader (on the left) is made to carry the covered matzah basket on his head around the table during the recitation of “This bread of affliction . . . ,” thereby materially demonstrating the content of the text to all participants. Unlike in the other Haggadot, here children are present in all the Seder table scenes, appearing in increasing numbers. One woman is present in most of these meals, with the exception of the afikomen scene. The construction of the celebrants as a “family” seems directly tied to the didactic attention to precise ritual detail. Having seen a spectrum of possibilities by means of which class and gender were represented in Seder scenes, we now turn to the question of race. Until now, we have had very little to say about race other than that it is difficult to distinguish physiologically between “those who serve and those who sup.” In reality, at least some of the servants in Jewish households must have been Christians or Muslim (or descendants of Muslims), and some must have been people of color, but in the images, everybody seems to be an unmarked Caucasian. The dark-​skinned, veiled servant woman sharing the table in the Sarajevo Haggadah’s only Seder scene therefore marks a departure (fig. 7.1).25 Here, the axes of class, gender, and race/religion/whiteness are negotiated in the most complex and ambivalent way of all the Seders we have seen thus far. The Seder scene combines the by-​now-​familiar formulaic indications of social status with a representation of the transgenerational transmission of ritual knowledge between men. The only Seder scene in the richly illuminated codex is entirely separate from the prefatory biblical picture cycle, which takes us from the creation of the world to Fashioning the Gendered, Classed, and White Self

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the messianic temple and thence back to the present, with a final group of images illustrating “The master of the house distributing haroset and matzah” and a synagogue scene. The Seder scene is found quite far into the Seder proceedings; coming after the first part of the Hallel and the blessing of the second cup, it heads an extensive set of instructions for the remaining portion of the Seder. Rather than pinpointing a precise moment in the Seder, everybody seems to be at a different stage of the ritual: the beardless leader on the right drinks from the largest golden goblet while he alone leans on a patterned cushion placed conspicuously on the table. Turning towards the leader, a young boy lifts his cup but does not drink yet; the hooded man next to him is taking hold of his cup, which is still on the table; another young man cuts something with a golden knife.26 There are only two women in this image, both seated at the extreme left of the image: a splendidly dressed lady behind the table and a humbly dressed dark-​skinned servant in front of the table, lifting up a matzah. The ritual moment is not specified; perhaps the image visualizes some of the different stages of the Seder enumerated on these two pages of instructions: “And each one [masc. sing.] drinks his cup, and they shall make the Seder as it is written.” The family is of a high status: their dress and appearance are fashionable: multicolored and layered cloaks and surcotes, clean-​shaven faces, complicated fashionable hats alongside the “Jewish” hooded cloak, and a jeweled tocado. The high fashion is enhanced by its contrast with the modest dress of the servant. The group has assembled at a handsomely laid trestle table covered with a floor-​length gleaming white cloth, a glass carafe, and golden dishes and goblets, under the light of a glass lantern in the shape of a mosque lamp and a golden or gilded star-​shaped metal Shabbat lamp. Meaning is produced by binaries along two axes, right-​left and back-​front. Class difference is articulated by the masters seated behind the table and the servant seated in front of it. Gender difference is articulated through the juxtaposition of the master of the house on the right versus the lady of the house and female servant on the left. The two women, the tocado-clad, light-​skinned lady (the “mother”—in quotation marks in order to signal her symbolic role and undermine any realistic reading) and the veiled dark-​skinned servant are both placed at the left, opposite the master of the house, defining a women’s space—but their class difference is preserved by placing the servant woman, who may serve as a signifier of wealth on a par with the splendid table and the costly lighting, on the “wrong” side, the servant’s side, of the table. The woman servant functions as an additional foil for the social status of her masters. Her darkness produces them as white subjects. Although both women are placed at the women’s end of the table, they are directly contrasted: white skin versus dark skin, plain versus luxurious clothing, simple veil versus elaborate tocado, family’s side versus servant’s side of the table. “The category of women as a coherent and stable subject” is a mirage, writes Judith Butler.27 Although the lady and the servant both sit at the foot of the table, they are divided by more than its width. We see a simultaneous constitution of gender’s binary singularity (women’s 166

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end of the table) and its splitting (lady’s/servant’s side of the table) at work here. Their relations with each other and with the other participants need to be seen through the intersections of gender, class, and religion/race. In what sense has the dark-​skinned servant woman been included in the Seder? Cecil Roth believes the “Negress” to be a converted slave who was now considered a member of the family.28 Marianne David and Javier Muñoz-​Basols interpret her as indicative of diversity and pluralism.29 Adam Cohen, by contrast, concludes that she must have been an enslaved person and that “the depiction of the black slave is a . . . visual counterpoint to the freedom being celebrated by the Jews at the Passover Seder . . . such a black, female slave would have been viewed in especially negative ways.”30 While some Muslims could have been Africans, many could have looked like Jews themselves—and indeed also like Christian Iberians. The Seder images are not realistic depictions; all are staged, ideological images, in which ethnic markers stand for social distinctions. The skin color and physiognomic features of the Sarajevo Haggadah’s dark-​skinned servant woman need not be taken literally. The fair appearance of the Jewish family is also an ideological representation that serves to establish a class axis along the lines of light skin / upper class and dark skin / lower class.31 Rather than attempt to guess the Sarajevo Haggadah servant’s “real” status, we should ask what networks of difference are brought into focus by her figure and what ideological work this unusual iteration of the meal scene accomplishes. The servant’s presence, although giving the impression of inclusion, is not really inclusive but is necessary to create all the binaries at play in the scene. As Cohen points out, in the Sarajevo Haggadah, the servant woman is not the only person of color. When Joseph is sold by his brothers (fol. 12r), the Ishmaelite merchants specified in the biblical text sport the same dark skin and upturned noses (rendered in profile for added effect) as the servant at the Seder table. Because of this shared physiognomy, we can also call the servant woman at the Seder an Ishmaelite. Jewish people continued to use the term Ishmaelite for Muslims in the present, making a conceptual link between the ancient Ishmaelites and contemporary Muslims in Iberia. According to Ross Brann, “Moor arguably served as the principal linguistic vehicle for suppressing the indigenous nature of the Andalusi Muslim cultural heritage in Iberia and rendering Andalusi Muslims as others in a projected Christian Iberia.”32 Calling this servant an Ishmaelite woman allows us to avoid the specifically Iberian-​Christian stereotypes that Brann identifies as weighing heavily on the term Moor. A similar set of ideological binaries as the one that over-​determines this servant woman’s appearance was also articulated in the Rylands Haggadah, where the “Wicked Son” was depicted as a dark-​skinned scimitar-​wielding warrior in Muslim dress: in the Rylands Haggadah, Moor is both Other and brother. In the Sarajevo Haggadah, the network of difference is constructed by a set of binaries determined from the place of the leader: head of the household / rest of the household; men’s end of the table / women’s end; masters’ side of the table / servant’s side; people of color / white folks. And yet, because the Fashioning the Gendered, Classed, and White Self

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Ishmaelite woman servant participates at this Seder rather than merely serving at it, she occupies an irreducibly ambiguous place, which undermines the very network of differences it is meant to articulate.

In Light of Another’s Image: The Ethnography of Host Desecration If the Haggadot’s imagery of the Pesach Seder meal affords a highly staged image of Jewish domesticity (one that is calculated to produce the Jewish subject as free, leisured, wealthy, aristocratic, and white), then such Jewish self-​fashioning emerged in a secret dialogue with a Christian ethnography of imagined Jewish attacks on the eucharistic Host. Some images in Haggadot sought to picture religiously specific home rituals of the Seder night, such as the Sephardi Seder basket, customs concerning the matzah, the act of reclining. This is the time period when a new anti-​Jewish accusation, that of Host desecration, spread throughout Christian Europe in texts, pictures, and judicial trials, giving a very different image of Jewish home rituals. The emergence of Christian visual representations of Host desecration appear to have preceded by two decades the actual Host desecration trials in Aragon, though the relationship between depictions and trials, between images and actions, is complex.33 Gender plays out differently in the imagery of Host desecration and in trial records, but both share an attention to verisimilitude, even if it is articulated in different ways. Anti-​Jewish “ethnographic” imagery of Jewish Host desecration was integral to the rising eucharistic cult in northern Iberia after 1317, when this cult was introduced by papal bull.34 Aragonese altarpieces and altar frontals depict the “Gentile tales” (Rubin) of Host desecration not as communal synagogal rites but as familial domestic ones, which makes them useful to contrast with the domestic performance of the Seder.35 The earliest Aragonese depiction of Host desecration appears between circa 1348 and 1351 in the Corpus Christi Chapel in the choir of the important Cistercian royal convent Santa Maria Vallbona de les Monges in the province of Urgell.36 Despite its secluded location, the Corpus Christi Chapel was nevertheless firmly tied into Aragonese networks of worldly power. Festooned with very worldly architectural sculpture of secular ladies smiling from head corbels along lacy arches, patronal family coats of arms gleamed bright and gilded. The chapel’s shallowness in the choir wall quite near the separation between nave and choir allowed its prominent altar to be visible from the nave through the choir screen.37 The retable and frontal, of equal dimensions, each composed of two registers of three lateral panels flanking a central double-​register panel, which together formed a large unified pictorial surface. The chapel’s theatricality is reinforced by the unity of the retable’s and altar frontal’s twenty-​four flanking panels. The anti-​Jewish tale of Host desecration knits the retable and the frontal together iconographically. There is some uncertainty about the exact subject matter of this unique series of unusual and modern eucharistic events and miracles interspersed 168

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with a Last Supper. For our purpose, what matters is the relative preponderance of miracles involving Jews, which are narrated in seven of the twenty-​four lateral panels. The sequence begins in the lower register of the retable’s right wing and proceeds from left to right. First, a hooded Jewish man, witnessed by another Jewish man, stabs the Host on a large wooden table, causing it to bleed. Next, the bleeding Host is impaled on a lance by a Jew, witnessed by two other men (fig. 7.2). This sequence then continues on the altar frontal, on the upper register of the left wing, reading from left to right. First, a Jew, this time alone, attempts to boil the Host in a cauldron over a fire blazing inside a building (fig. 7.3). Next, a Christian woman salvages the Host in front of the Jew. The next scene provides closure by showing the Host restituted to an altar, with two candle-​holding angels in attendance. In this portion of the sequence, no Christian accomplices appear, and the Host is profaned by men only, but a Christian woman, presumably a servant in the Jewish house, acts as rescuer. In the lower register of the frontal’s left wing, either the same story continues or a related one is narrated, progressing from left to right.38 First, a Jewish man and his wife are burned at the stake in the presence of other Jews. In the next scene, the Fashioning the Gendered, Classed, and White Self

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Figure 7.2 Jews stabbing a eucharistic wafer; Jews impaling a eucharistic wafer. From Master of Vallbona de les Monges (Guillem Seguer [?]), Altarpiece of the Corpus Christi (detail), ca. 1335–45. Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, former collections of the Museu Provincial d’Antiguitats de Barcelona, 1879. Photo © Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona, 2021.

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Figure 7.3 A Jewish man boiling a eucharistic wafer; a Christian woman salvaging the eucharistic wafer from the cauldron. From Master of Vallbona de les Monges (Guillem Seguer [?]), Altarpiece of the Corpus Christi (detail), ca. 1335–45. Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, former collections of the Museu Provincial d’Antiguitats de Barcelona, 1879. Photo © Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona, 2021.

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Christian woman who rescued the Host dies, receiving her last Communion from the Virgin and saints. There are two further panels with Jewish protagonists on the altar frontal’s right wing: a Jew accepting the Eucharist, followed by the baptism of a Jew. In this Christian anti-​Jewish ethnography, the alleged practices of Jewish neighbors in the privacy of their homes are revealed step-​by-​step. The modernness of the anti-​Jewish subjects is consistent with the rest of the altar retable and frontal complex, which showcases most likely the modern Saint Dominic and the recently deceased, not-​ yet-​canonized Imelda Lambertini; taken in sum, the assemblage of scenes emphasizes women’s devotion and the conversion, or exclusion, of social outsiders. The public spectacle of execution at the stake appears no fewer than three times in the Corpus Christi altar, presenting the maximum assault on senses and emotions. The verisimilitude of costume realism (the “Jewish” hooded cloak and the Aragonese Jewish women’s tocado) invests the Host desecration libel with a quasi-​ethnographic authority. Wearing the tocado was not mandatory; yet the latter is ostentatiously worn—even unto death—in all the altarpieces that feature Host desecration libels. This deceptive costume realism lends a spurious ethnographic authority to the imagery of Host desecration. The contrast between the Last Supper’s resplendent white-​clothed table Out of Bounds

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(itself a mirror image of the chapel’s altar) against the raw wooden kitchen table on which the Host is maltreated by the Jews foregrounds, by seemingly realistic means, the contrast between correct and incorrect treatment of the Eucharist. Like Vallbona, the royal monastery of Santa María de Sigena in Villanueva de Sigena in the province of Huesca was a nunnery with long-​established royal and aristocratic patronage in Aragon. The titular altarpiece, commissioned by the convent’s vicar, Brother Fortaner de Glera of the Hospitaller’s Order (who led the convent between 1358 and 1373), presents a central vertical axis of three scenes: the Crucifixion at the top, the Virgin enthroned with a donor at the center, and the Last Supper in the predella (fig. 7.4). The predella’s the Last Supper contrasts the institution of the Eucharist with Judas’s unmasking as traitor—he alone stretches his hand out toward the roast lamb in the dish; he lacks a nimbus; and he is accompanied by a small black demon. His physiognomy is marked by a hooked nose.39 The Last Supper is flanked by four eucharistic miracles. On the left, a pair of miracles prove that even nonrational animals revere the Host: in one, the bees of a sinful but repentant peasant construct a tiny chapel out of wax, and in the other, fish return the Host thrown away by a sinful but repentant fisherman.40 These two scenes’ outdoor public settings contrast with the right-​hand panels’ interior settings, which artfully allow glimpses of secret rites in domestic spaces. These two panels pair the stories of two Christian women’s transgressions, implicating Jewish and Muslim accomplices respectively. Each of these two lateral predella panels has been subdivided by means of the painted architecture into two successive moments. In the left panel (to the right of the central Last Supper), a Jewish pawnbroker (dressed in the “Jewish” hooded cloak) first acquires a consecrated Host from a Christian woman who appears desperate to redeem a pledged garment—a business transaction under duress (fig. 7.4). In his home, in the presence of his family (note his wife’s tocado), the Jewish pawnbroker then stabs the Host on a bare trestle table, making it bleed profusely. A further stage in the nefarious home ritual shows the boiling of the Host in a cauldron, where it miraculously transubstantiates into a nimbed child, hands folded in prayer. Thus, the two stages of the desecration evidence the two components of the Eucharist: Christ’s blood and his flesh. The unintended transubstantiation elicits the astonishment of the Jew’s wife and child, which may betray the family to their neighbors and will likely lead to the father’s execution, while his wife and son can be saved, both vitally and theologically, by their conversion. These images from Santa María de Sigena relate to another version of the well-​ known Miracle des Billettes (the Host desecration case of Paris in 1290). Unlike in the version referenced at Vallbona, a Jewish nuclear family (rather than a group of men) is implicated. In the adjacent rightmost predella panel, an elaborately dressed Christian woman (note her head dress is not a tocado) expels from her apartment a very dark-​ skinned, barefoot man dressed in pantaloons, an embroidered tunic, and a turban, who is carrying a cloak. Behind them, in an open box or chest, lies a prone child, hands Fashioning the Gendered, Classed, and White Self

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Figure 7.4 Last Supper; Christian woman swaps a eucharistic wafer for a cloak from a Jewish man; the Jewish man stabs the eucharistic wafer in the presence of his wife and son; the Christian woman sends away a Muslim man with a cloak; the eucharistic wafer ruptures Christian woman’s throat during Eucharist. From Jaume Serra, Altarpiece of the Virgin (detail), ca. 1367–81. Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, purchased 1918. Photo © Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona, 2021.

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crossed over his chest. To the right, we appear to witness the woman’s punishment for attempting to take Communion in a state of sin: a bleeding Host supernaturally bursts from her throat, refusing to be swallowed by the sinner—a visceral warning. No textual source for this miracle tale is known; the Catalan poet Jaume Roig (d. 1478) included in his didactic Espill (Mirror) a story about a Christian woman persuaded by an alfaquin (Muslim cleric) to steal a Host for magical purposes.41 According to that later text, when the conspirators opened the box in which the Host was hidden, they discovered a small child—a magic trick to outdo the magic powers of the alfaquin! The left half of the right predella panel would appear to capture the moment after the shocking discovery. As in Vallbona, the theme of hidden transgression is crucial in Sigena. Bees and fish treat the Host with reverence, thus inspiring human repentance. While animals refrain from harming the Host, it is made to bleed or transubstantiate in the transgressive hands of Jews and Muslims (and their Christian women accomplices). An imaginary ethnography gives insight into hidden places, for our purposes especially the Jew’s house. The Jewish kitchen (the locations of the Passover lamb’s ritual slaughter in the Haggadah) and the Jew’s table (a perversion of the Christian altar) play an important role. So do the costume realism of the Jew’s hood, the Jewess’s tocado, and the Muslim’s pantaloons, embroidered tunic, and turban. In the Sigena altarpiece, meaning is created by parallelism and contrast: open rural versus enclosed urban spaces, naive peasants versus sinful ladies, repentance and pardon versus conspiracy and punishment, Christians versus Jews and versus dark-​skinned Muslims. The Sigena predella panels juxtapose animals against Jews and Muslims and implicate matters of gender, race, and religion in the salvational drama. Animal/human, Christian/non-​Christian, and male/female distinctions serve to contrast repentance with transgression. In both tales, Christian women squirrel away the Host by failing to swallow it during Mass, leading to dire consequences Out of Bounds

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(especially for Jews). Yet the ambiguous presence of Jews and Muslims adds a further complexity: unlike the biblical Judas and the Elders, unlike fish and bees, and unlike the dark-​complexioned alfaquin, contemporary Jewish bodies were not easily distinguishable from Christian Aragonese bodies. Dress had to construct identity instead. The painted Jewish women are just as plump and pretty as their Christian counterparts—the tocado was necessary to tell Christian and Jewish women apart. The fair Jewish boy and the miraculous nimbed child in the cauldron or the boy in the chest could be twins. Invisible sin and virtue have to be made visible. Could the structural parallelism between the Jews and the markedly Black alfaquin have served to unwhiten the adjacent Jewish family by analogy? The thematic linkage between eucharistic devotion and anti-​Jewish ethnography of Host desecration was diffused into more provincial churches in the fourteenth century. A third fourteenth-​century instance of anti-​Jewish ethnographic imagery shows the spread of these themes into provincial areas, in this case the parish church of Saint James in the Pyrenees town of Queralbs, a far more modest structure than the royal monasteries discussed above. The panel of the Passion and Eucharist in the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya in Barcelona was likely an altar frontal.42 Beneath the five scenes from Christ’s Passion, five matching scenes in the fragmentary lower register seem to mostly relate to Corpus Christi: Saint Gregory’s Mass, a pope instructing a college of cardinals, a pope walking in a Corpus Christi procession, a Jewish couple attacking the Host with a hammer, and an unidentified scene with a Christian woman. While the bearded but bareheaded man can only be identified as Jewish by his action (he is about to bring down a hammer onto the Host), his alarmed wife is easily identified by her tocado, investing Jewish visibility in women.43 An altarpiece depicting the Institution of the Eucharist from the Hermitage of Saint Bartolome near Villahermosa del Río (Castellón) north of Valencia was painted between circa 1385 and 1390 (figs. 7.5 and 7.6).44 It deserves mention because it is indicative of the much wider diffusion of anti-​Jewish Host desecration imagery across the Crown of Aragon, in this case in the mountains of northwestern Valencia. In Villahermosa, too, the ill-​treatment of the Host by Jews is juxtaposed to its proper veneration in a papal procession. In six episodes, the images at Villahermosa portray the Miracle des Billettes at length. They picture four different maltreatments of the Host: after it is taken from a church and pawned or sold by a Christian woman, it is stabbed, hammered, attacked with a sword, and boiled by three men and two women. The domesticity of a Jewish kitchen (juxtaposed to the Last Supper, at which Judas occupies the servants’ side) is once again foregrounded: the Host bleeds profusely onto the large kitchen table, while the Jewish householder incongruously raises a curved scimitar to strike it, rather than a kitchen knife. Villahermosa also retains costume “realism”: bearded men clad in hoods and women wearing a simplified version of the tocado, which, despite some modifications, still serves to establish sartorial difference (to distinguish the Jewish women from the Christian woman who purveys the Fashioning the Gendered, Classed, and White Self

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Figure 7.5 Christian woman taking the Eucharist; Christian woman swapping the eucharistic wafer against a robe in a Jew’s household; Jewish man stabbing the eucharistic wafer in the presence of four women. From Retable of the Eucharist (detail), ca. 1380–90. Parish Church, Villahermosa del Rio (Castellón). Photo © Codex / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-​SA 4.0).

Host to the Jews). In sum, Villahermosa presents the most detailed ethnography of Jewish Host desecration. In modern scholarship, the historical and ideological significance of these representations of Jewish Host desecration is contested. Iberian scholars have interpreted these images as manifestations of growing anti-​Semitism, often making wider claims about “Spanish” anti-​Semitism. Yet Molina Figueras has cautioned about a “paradox: the most explicit visual stigmatizations of the Jews . . . are frequently found in works devised for small or select audiences, and not for what we might call the general public.”45 Therefore, Molina continues, “It seems difficult to . . . establish links with certain episodes of religious violence,” such as the anti-​Jewish outrages sweeping the peninsula in 1391.46 Yonatan Glazer-​Eytan has, moreover, identified significant differences between the exemplum-​like altar paintings and the evidence-​based trial records, placing them in quite different contexts: whereas the devotional images deployed Host-​desecration narratives to embed eucharistic devotion in ideas around Christian communitas (and its boundaries), trials played out the dramatic assertion of royal power on the bodies of Jews and on their aljamas (Spanish Jewish communities). In my reconsideration, I want to draw attention to a further distinction between images and trials, as well as a commonality. First, in the extant trial records, the crime is a business transaction between Christian men (who sell the Hosts and their silver custodia for profit) and Jewish men. But in the altar paintings, based on various versions of the Miracle des Billettes, Christian women are involved and act under extenuating circumstances. The

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Figure 7.6 Jewish man attacking the eucharistic wafer with a hammer, a sword, and by boiling in a cauldron, in the presence of other Jewish men and women. From Retable of the Eucharist (detail), ca. 1380–90. Parish Church, Villahermosa del Rio (Castellón). Photo © Codex / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-​SA 4.0).

commonality that I want to draw out is the importance of evidence (in the trials) and of ethnographic observation (in the images)—these, I suggest, share a concern about proof and truth. The Christian altar panels purport to give Christian viewers a glimpse of imagined secret Jewish rites of Host desecration allegedly taking place in hidden domestic settings (as distinct from the temple or synagogue). The Host desecration libel accused Jews of misappropriating and wounding eucharistic wafers in order to test their efficacy. Host desecration accusations arose as textual and artistic constructs serving specific Christian ideological needs in the wake of the introduction of the eucharistic cult and the development of the feast of Corpus Christi.47 In these pseudo-​ethnographic desecration tales, the efficacy of the Host was “proven” by miracles, which led to the Jews’ conversion or their violent death. Without wishing to revive claims that ascribe a direct causality between these images and the deterioration of Christian-​Jewish relations in the fourteenth century, nevertheless, this cluster of works is symptomatic of an anti-​Jewish ethnographic sensibility in the service of a new eucharistic movement. Haggadah images of the Seder meal counterpose their own interpretations of verisimilitude to this dangerous new ethnography of what goes on inside Jewish houses.

Conclusion: Sephardi Seders as Self-​Fashioning and Autoethnography Richly appointed Seder scenes construct the celebrants as belonging to a particular social stratum in which freedom is understood as white people’s capacity to engage in

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conspicuous consumption and leisure, while, by contrast, servile labor is associated with dark skin and/or femininity. Paradoxically, the Haggadah shared some of the values of Aragonese society across the Jewish-​Christian religious divide. At the same time, these self-​fashionings and autoethnographies also responded to the new imagery and discourse of Jewish Host desecration. The upper echelons of the Aragonese Jewish community could never take their identity for granted. These Jewish court functionaries and tax farmers occupied an unstable position between the royal power seeking to exploit them at the expense of the aristocracy, on the one hand, and the aristocratic magnates seeking to exclude them from access to royal power, on the other hand. Even within the royal family, competition over who controlled the Jews could lead to fatal outcomes for the latter. After successful opposition of the Aragonese barons against the king’s perceived favoritism toward the Jews, they needed to refashion their sense of self in the face of diminished influence and status outside the Jewish community.48 As some well-​connected Sephardim sought exemptions from some of the burdens carried by the community as a corporation, internal cohesion within the Jewish community was threatened by class struggles between rich and poor. Images of the Seder meal serve to perform the Sephardi Jewish subject as classed, gendered, and raced. Especially where these Seder scenes are repeated within the same codex, they self-​consciously exceed that which is iconographically necessary by doubling meals and repeating preparations. Why this excess?49 I read these images as a form of intersectional, symbolic self-​fashioning and as an autoethnography. Festive meals were invoked in religious and secular imagery alike as mirrors of the ideal social order.50 That is why, even when women are absent from the table, gender is always present. When servants appear, at issue is their relationship with their masters, which alone defines who is free on this night of celebrating freedom. Dark-​skinned people produce everybody else’s whiteness. Haggadah illustrations depicting women holding or reading books (or the absence of such depictions) have been studied as reflections of sociological developments, such as the history of women’s literacy.51 Marc Epstein and Julie Harris suggest that illuminated Haggadah manuscripts may have served as wedding gifts for women. Yet the widespread inclusion of liturgical texts for synagogue use (including hymns and the haftarah) suggests that these manuscripts played a key role in men’s cultural lives.52 Cohen has sought to triangulate the study of servitude with the study of gender. Building on all these explorations and on their expanding understanding of gender relations, my focus here is a broadened conception of the intersectionality of gender in uneasy tension with other forms of difference, such as class, religion, and race. And gender is not only about women but also about masculinity, which need not be taken for granted and as requiring no study.53 How Jewish men of a certain social stratum constructed their subjectivities tells us so much about how women (whether ladies or the enslaved) were depicted and vice versa. 176

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Beyond the internal interarticulation of gender, class and race, Jewish autoethnography in the guise of representations of one’s own contemporary cultural practices may have been a response to powerful ethnographic texts that fabricated fantasies of Host desecration and of ritual murder. In the face of these, the broad daylight falling onto the Jewish Seder tables may have had a self-​assuring purpose. A concluding look at the Sarajevo Haggadah enjoins us to compare the structural role of the Muslim servant woman of color with that of the alfaquin in the Santa María de Sigena retable (see fig. 7.1). In the Sigena altarpiece, the pairing of Jews with a dark-​skinned Muslim suggests that Jews were not quite white, they were t(a)inted by association. In the Sarajevo Haggadah, by contrast, the Muslim servant woman constructs her Jewish masters as white, just as the Ishmaelite merchants in the sale of Joseph are marked as African to contrast with blond and white Joseph and his brothers and just as, in the Rylands Haggadah, the “Wicked Son” in the guise of a Muslim warrior constructs the “Wise Son” as white. Paradoxically, although the servant at the Sarajevo Haggadah’s Seder table is sidelined and demoted as a woman, each of her qualities—African, Muslim, and servile—marks her out as different, and that “difference” reinforces the “order” of the Seder table. The Haggadah shores up the racial identity of Jews as white, while the Sigena altarpiece seeks to undermine it. Jewish identity in the Haggadah and Jewish difference in the altarpiece are articulated by means of (always both classed and gendered) dress. It is sartorial and structural difference that marks contemporary Jews, not epidermal difference. Skin color did not have one single meaning in late medieval Aragonese art.54 Rather, we need to be aware of the contradictory fluidity with which it can shift and be repositioned, very differently from modern “scientific” understandings of race; as Geraldine Heng writes, “Race is a structural relationship for the articulation and management of human differences, rather than a substantive content.”55 This recognition of the medieval malleability of racial thinking helps us to come to terms with the impossibility of unraveling the intersections explored in the present essay. Pamela Patton, in a Castilian context, notes that “the richest evidence for the conceptual linkage of Jews and Muslims in Iberia . . . emerges in images that . . . freely combine or confuse the two groups’ respective cultural trappings in a manner that stands at odds with the presumed familiarity of both Jews and Muslims to Iberian Christians.”56 It is precisely this slippage that the fourteenth-​century Aragonese altarpieces seem to build on and that the Haggadah’s illuminations of contemporary Jewish Pesach observance seek to counter by performing Jewish masculinity and femininity as white and courtly in the presence of both white and dark-​skinned servants. Skin tone, physiognomy, and dress worked together to produce and fix meaning in a network of difference, yet meaning always remained unstable. The Haggadah’s repeated yet varied autoethnographic representations of the Seder meal, so suitable as a performative space for Jewish gendered class construction, also serve as a Jewish counterethnography in the face of a new anti-​Jewish ethnographic Fashioning the Gendered, Classed, and White Self

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mode of representation. Against the fantasies of nefarious rites carried out by Jewish couples or families in the privacy of their kitchens, the Haggadah presents the kitchen as a locus of sacrifice, indeed, but one biblically mandated: the slaughter, blood daubing, and roasting commanded in Exodus. The Seder meal, in turn, counters the institution of the Eucharist in the Last Supper, whose depictions also emphasized elegant dining on pristine white tablecloths set with fine tableware (seen in Vallbona, Sigena, and Villahermosa) while vilifying Judas as a low-​class Jewish traitor. These contrasts and correspondences are hardly casual. These autoethnographic images were constructed by Jewish subjects in response to or in dialogue with Christian representations of Jewish enmity to the Eucharist (Judas at the Last Supper and Host desecration). In saying that they are not “authentic” images but counterimages, I do not wish to question the authenticity of medieval Sephardi Seders. I wish to underscore their depictions’ ideological purposes, among which was the desire to appropriate “the idioms of the conqueror.”57

Notes 1. See Albin et al., Whose Middle Ages? See also Rambaran-​Olm, “Not Qwhite Right.” 2. See Merback, Beyond the Yellow Badge. For modern passing (and its critique), see Brodkin, How Jews Became White Folks. 3. In chronological order, Nirenberg, “Race and the Middle Ages”; Nirenberg, “Was There Race Before Modernity?”; Altschul, “Future of Postcolonial Approaches”; Heng, “Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages I”; Heng, “Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages II”; Kim, “Reframing Race”; Heng, Invention of Race. 4. Butler, Gender Trouble, 3, and Hancock, Intersectionality. 5. On the medieval historical theory of degeneracy, see Fernández-​Armesto, “Medieval Ethnography,” 280; on perspectivalism and openness, see Bynum, “Wonder,” and Khanmohamadi, In Light of Another’s Word; on the limits of perspectivalism, see Mittman, “Mandeville’s Jews.” 6. Pratt, Imperial Eyes, 7. See also Pratt, “Transculturation and Autoethnography,” 28, and Khanmohamadi, In Light of Another’s Word, 37–56 and 158–62. 7. Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-​Fashioning, 3. Stephen Greenblatt’s concept of self-​fashioning— that individuals fashioned their subjectivities by means of the arts and artifice, that the self was not simply preexisting but had to be crafted and performed—has been taken up in medieval Sephardi cultural history. See P. Roth, “ ‘My Precious Books and Instruments.’ ”

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8. London, British Library, MS Oriental 2737, fol. 91r. British Library, http://​www​.bl​.uk​ /manuscripts​/Viewer​.aspx​?ref​=​or​_2737​_f091r; Margoliouth, Catalogue, vol. 2, no. 609; Narkiss, Hebrew Illuminated Manuscripts, 1:45–51, cat. no. 9; vol. 2, figs. 79–104; Harris, “Love in the Land of Goshen.” On the ritualization of Pesach preparations, see Kogman-​Appel, “Ritualizing the Cleaning.” 9. Camille, Mirror in Parchment, 87. See Manchester, John Rylands University Library of Manchester, MS 6, fol. 19v. University of Manchester, https://​www​.digitalcollections​.manchester​.ac​ .uk​/view​/ms​-hebrew​-00006​/44; Loewe, Rylands Haggadah, 31; Kogman-​Appel, “Picture Cycles of the Rylands Haggadah”; Kogman-​Appel, Illuminated Haggadot, 127. 10. Loewe, Rylands Haggadah, 14. 11. Goldman-​Ida, “Sephardic Woman’s Head-​ Dress,” and Motis Dolader, “Judíos oscenses.” 12. The servant on the opposite page (fol. 20r), presumably by a different hand, has darker skin than the ones on folio 19 verso. Lowe comments: “The servant may be rinsing the cup (see accompanying text) rather than pouring out the wine. Although his skin is dark, the features are not negroid” (Rylands Haggadah, 15). 13. London, British Library, MS Oriental 1404, fols. 7v–8r. British Library, http://​www​.bl​ .uk​/manuscripts​/Viewer​.aspx​?ref​=​or​_1404​_f007v; Harris, “Good Jews”; Kogman-​Appel, Illuminated Haggadot, 91–97; Epstein, Brother Haggadah. 14. See Epstein, Brother Haggadah, 21.

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15. Sarit Shalev-​Eyni has studied depictions in which women contest the male prerogative of blessing and drinking from the cup of blessing, which seem to question the gender politics of ritual (“Manipulating the Cup of Blessing”). 16. London, British Library, MS Oriental 2884. See images at British Library, http://​www​ .bl​.uk​/manuscripts​/Viewer​.aspx​?ref​=​or​_2884. Margoliouth, Catalogue, vol. 2, no. 608; Narkiss, Hebrew Illuminated Manuscripts, vol. 1, no. 12; vol. 2, figs. 155–208; Metzger, Jewish, 304; E. Cohen, “ ‘Sister Haggadah’ ”; Kogman-​Appel, “Sephardic Picture Cycles”; Harris, “Good Jews,” 279; Kogman-​Appel, Illuminated Haggadot, 47–88; Tahan, Hebrew Manuscripts, 98–100; Mann, “Jews and Altarpieces,” 105–6; Harris, “Making Room at the Table,” 131–53. 17. The label reads, “And you shall guard the Matzot” (Ex 12:17). 18. London, British Library, MS Oriental 2884, fol. 17r; see Kogman-​Appel, “Ritualizing the Cleaning.” 19. London, British Library, MS Oriental 2884, fol. 17v; see Harris, “Good Jews.” 20. Harris, “Making Room at the Table.” 21. For the cultural context, see Abrahams, Hebrew Ethical Wills, and Wengrow, Book of Mitzvah Education. 22. London, British Library, MS Additional 14761, Provençal rite, ca. 1350–70. British Library, http://​ www​.bl​.uk​/manuscripts​/FullDisplay​.aspx​?ref​=​Add​ _MS​_14761. Margoliouth, Catalogue, vol. 2, no. 605; Narkiss, Hebrew Illuminated Manuscripts, vol. 1, no. 13; vol. 2, figs. 209–45, plate 51; E.Cohen, “Decoration,” 24–43; E. Cohen, “Three Sephardic Haggadot”; Tahan, Hebrew Manuscripts, 103–5; Kornfeld, “Meanings in the Margins”; Kogman-​Appel, “Haggada de Pàques.” 23. The Babylonian Talmud (Pesachim 108a) mandated that servants must participate in the freedom ritual of reclining, while exempting wives from reclining, except for “important women.” 24. Gartner, “Leaning at the Passover Seder.” 25. Sarajevo, National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina, B–H. zem. muz. 9313 (olim 9034), fol. 31v. See Müller and Schlosser, Die Haggadah von Sarajevo; C. Roth, Sarajevo Haggadah; Kogman-​ Appel, Illuminated Haggadot, 24 and chapter 4; David and Muñoz-​Basols, “Sarajevo Haggadah”; Sabar, Sarajevo Haggadah; A. Cohen, “Freedom and Slavery.” 26. Cohen interprets the item being cut as haroset (“Freedom and Slavery,” 17n7). 27. Butler, Gender Trouble, 4. 28. C. Roth, Sarajevo Haggadah, 33, and Strauss, “Jewish Art,” 160. 29. David and Muñoz-​Basols, “Sarajevo Haggadah,” 262. 30. A. Cohen, “Freedom and Slavery,” 28.

31. Barlow, “Muslim Warrior.” See also Patton, “What Did Medieval Slavery Look Like?” 32. Brann, “Moors?,” 313. 33. Glazer-​Eytan, “Jews Imagined and Real.” The earliest painting is from 1348 to 1351; the earliest trial is that of Barcelona in 1367. 34. For the preceding period, see Aron-​Beller, “Jewish Image Desecrator,” 44: “Where tales of Christ’s blood or the bleeding of a consecrated host appear in the Cantigas [de Sancta Maria], Jews are not involved.” 35. Rubin, Gentile Tales. 36. Master of Vallbona de les Monges (Guillem Seguer?), altarpiece and altar frontal of the Corpus Christi Chapel, tempera on panel, 106.5 × 223.2 × 9.3 cm and 108.8 × 222 × 8.7 cm, respectively; Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona, inv. nos. 009919-000 and 009920-000), https://​ www​.museunacional​.cat​/en​/colleccio​/altar​-frontal​ -corpus​-christi​/mestre​-de​-vallbona​-de​-les​-monges​ -guillem​-seguer​/009919​-000 and http://​www​ .museunacional​.cat​/en​/colleccio​/altarpiece​-corpus​ -christi​/mestre​-de​-vallbona​-de​-les​-monges​-guillem​ -seguer​/009920​-000. See Melero Moneo, “Eucaristía y polémica antisemita”; Rodríguez Barral, “Eucaristía y antisemitismo”; Molina Figueras, “Imagen y su context”; Favà Monllau, “Noves consideracions”; Patton, Art of Estrangement, 63–65; Glazer-​Eytan, “Jews Imagined and Real,” 46–49. 37. Favà Monllau, “Noves consideracions,” 63. 38. See Melero Moneo, “Eucaristía y polémica antisemita,” and Rodríguez Barral, “Eucaristía y antisemitismo” (who considers these to be two separate miracles). 39. Jaume or Pere Serra, Altarpiece of the Virgin, 1362–75, tempera on panel, 346.3 × 321 × 26 cm; Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona, inv. no. 015916-CJT (from the monastery of Santa María de Sigena in Villanueva de Sigena, Huesca), https://​ www​.museunacional​.cat​/en​/colleccio​/altarpiece​ -virgin​/jaume​-serra​/015916​-cjt. 40. Rodríguez Barral, “Eucaristía y antisemitismo.” 41. Ibid., 306. In Espill, the man is named an alfaquin (al-​faqīh, theologian). My thanks to Pamela Patton for reminding me that such stories were circulated via the Cantigas de Santa Maria (CSM number 208: The Heretic who Placed a Host in a Beehive / Hostia in alvearium proiecta). 42. Panel of the the Passion and Eucharist, second half of the fourteenth century, tempera on panel, 103.4 × 203.5 cm; Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona, inv. no. 004376-000, https://​ www​.museunacional​.cat​/en​/colleccio​/panel​-passion​ -and​-eucharist​/anonim​/004376​-000. 43. See Lipton, “Where Are the Gothic Jewish Women?”

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44. Collecció Parroquial de Villahermosa del Río. Blaya Estrada, “Devoción eucarística y antisemitismo”; Favà Monllau, “Retablo eucarístico de Villahermosa”; Ruiz i Quesada, “Maestro de Villahermosa.” 45. Molina Figueras, “La imagen y su contexto,” 39. Translation mine. 46. Ibid., 41. Translation mine. 47. Rubin, Gentile Tales. 48. Assis, Jewish Economy; Assis, Golden Age of Aragonese Jewry; Klein, Jews, Christian Society, and Royal Power; Barton, Contested Treasure. 49. On redundancy and excess, see Camille, “Book of Signs.” 50. Frojmovic, “Feasting at the Lord’s Table,” and Shalev-​Eyni, “Between Carnality and Spirituality.” 51. Kogman-​Appel correlates images of women as readers with changes in Jewish women’s literacy (“Portrayals of Women with Books”). 52. Epstein proposes that the visual prominence of biblical women point to women’s integral role in

the work of redemption (Medieval Haggadah, chapter 8); see also Harris, “Love in the Land of Goshen.” Harris argues that the Sister Haggadah ascribes value to women’s religious practice performed by means of the senses (so important on the Seder night) as a critical counterbalance to the bookish way in which the Haggadah had developed (“Making Room at the Table”); see also A. Cohen, “Haggadah multi-​sensorielle.” 53. See Karras, From Boys to Men. In Jewish studies, see Satlow, “ ‘Try to Be a Man’ ”; Boyarin, Unheroic Conduct; Boyarin, Itzkovitz, and Pellegrini, Queer Theory; Rosen-​Zvi, “Rise and Fall.” 54. Patton, “Introduction.” 55. Heng, “Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages II,” 332. Italics original. 56. Patton, Art of Estrangement, 111, and Patton, “Ethiopian-​Headed Serpent.” 57. Pratt, “Transculturation and Autoethnography,” 28.

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———. “La Haggadah multi-​sensorielle.” Cahiers de civilisation médiévale 55 (2012): 521–39. English translation: “The Multisensory Haggadah.” In Les cinq sens au Moyen Age, edited by Éric Palazzo, 305–31. Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 2016. Cohen, Evelyn M. “The Decoration.” In Schonfield, Barcelona Haggadah, 24–43. ———. “The ‘Sister Haggadah’ and Its ‘Poor Relation.’ ” Proceedings of the Eleventh World Congress of Jewish Studies, edited by World Union of Jewish Studies, Division D.2 (Art, folklore, music), 17–24. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1994. ———. “Three Sephardic Haggadot and a Possible Missing Link.” In Jewish Studies in a New Europe: Proceedings of the Fifth Congress of Jewish Studies in Copenhagen 1994, edited by Ulf Haxen, Hanne Trautner-​Kromann, and Karen Lisa Goldschmidt Salamon, 142–51. Copenhagen: Det Kongelige Bibliotek, 1998. Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome, and Bonnie Wheeler, eds. Becoming Male in the Middle Ages. New York: Garland, 1997. David, Marianne, and Javier Muñoz-​Basols. “The Sarajevo Haggadah: A Cultural Metaphor for Diaspora Studies.” In Defining and Re-​Defining Diaspora: From Theory to Reality, edited by Marianne David and Javier Muñoz-​Basols, 251–70. Oxford: Inter-​Disciplinary Press / Brill, 2011. Epstein, Marc Michael, ed. The Brother Haggadah: A Medieval Sephardi Masterpiece in Facsimile. London: Thames and Hudson, 2016. ———. The Medieval Haggadah: Art, Narrative, and Religious Imagination. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011. Favà Monllau, Cèsar. “Noves consideracions entorn al joc de retaule i frontal de Vallbona de les Monges.” Butlletí del Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya 10 (2009): 57–85. ———. “El retablo eucarístico de Villahermosa del Río y la iconografía del Corpus Christi en la Corona de Aragón.” Locus Amoenus 8 (2005–6): 105–21. Fernández-​Armesto, Felipe. “Medieval Ethnography.” Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford 13 (1982): 275–86. Frojmovic, Eva. “Feasting at the Lord’s Table.” images 7 (2015): 5–21. ———. “From Naples to Constantinople.” Library 18, no. 2 (1996): 87–109. Gartner, Yaakov. “Leaning at the Passover Seder: Sephardic Women Compared with Ashkenazic Women.” Sha’anan 8 (2002): 141–46. Glazer-​Eytan, Yonatan. “Jews Imagined and Real: Representing and Prosecuting Host Profanation in Late Medieval Aragon.” In Jews and Muslims Made Visible in Christian Iberia and Beyond, 14th to 18th Centuries, edited by Borja

Franco Llopis and Antonio Urquizar-​Herrera, 40–69. Leiden: Brill, 2019. Goldman-​Ida, Batsheva. “The Sephardic Woman’s Head-​Dress in Spain and in the Ottoman Empire.” In From Iberia to Diaspora: Studies in Sephardic History and Culture, edited by Y. K. Stillman and N. Stillman, 525–30. Leiden: Brill, 1999. Greenblatt, Stephen. Renaissance Self-​Fashioning from More to Shakespeare. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980. Hancock, Ange-​Marie. Intersectionality: An Intellectual History. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 2016. Harris, Julie A. “Good Jews, Bad Jews, and No Jews at All: Ritual Imagery and Social Standards in the Catalan Haggadot.” In Church, State, Vellum, and Stone: Essays on Medieval Spain in Honor of John Williams, edited by Thérèse Martin and Julie A. Harris, 275–96. Leiden: Brill, 2005. ———. “Love in the Land of Goshen: Haggadah, History, and the Making of British Library, MS Oriental 2737.” Gesta 52, no. 2 (2013): 161–80. ———. “Making Room at the Table: Women, Passover and the Sister Haggadah (London, British Library, MS or. 2884).” Journal of Medieval History 42, no. 1 (2016): 131–53. Heng, Geraldine. “The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages I: Race Studies, Modernity, and the Middle Ages.” Literature Compass 8, no. 5 (2011): 315–331. ———. “The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages II: Locations of Medieval Race.” Literature Compass 8, no. 5 (2011): 332–50. ———. The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Karras, Ruth Mazo. From Boys to Men: Formations of Masculinity in Late Medieval Europe. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003. Khanmohamadi, Shirin. In Light of Another’s Word: European Ethnography in the Middle Ages. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014. Kim, Dorothy. “Reframing Race and Jewish/Christian Relations in the Middle Ages.” Transversal 13, no. 1 (2015): 52–64. Klein, Elka. Jews, Christian Society, and Royal Power in Medieval Barcelona. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006. Kogman-​Appel, Katrin. “Une Haggada de Pàques provenant du Midi de la France: Le programme des images dans le manuscrit de Londres Add. 14761.” In Culture religieuse méridionale: Les manuscrits et leur contexte artistique, edited by Michelle Fournié, Daniel Le Blévec, and Alison Stones, 327–46. Toulouse: Editions Privat, 2016. ———. Illuminated Haggadot from Medieval Spain: Biblical Imagery and the Passover Holiday.

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University Park: Penn State University Press, 2006. ———. “The Picture Cycles of the Rylands Haggadah and the So-​Called Brother Haggadah and Their Relation to the Western Tradition of Old Testament Illustration.” Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library 79, no. 2 (1997): 3–20. ———. “Portrayals of Women with Books: Female (Il) literacy in Medieval Jewish Culture.” In Reassessing the Roles of Women as “Makers” of Medieval Art and Architecture, edited by Thérèse Martin, 2:525–64. Leiden: Brill, 2012. ———. “Ritualizing the Cleaning of the House Before Passover in Medieval Ashkenaz: Image and Text in Illuminated Haggadot.” In Ritual Dynamics in (Holy) Jewish and Christian Contexts, Between Bible and Liturgy, edited by Claudia D. Bergmann and Benedikt Kranemann, 28–55. Leiden: Brill, 2019. ———. “The Sephardic Picture Cycles and the Rabbinic Tradition: Continuity and Innovation in Jewish Iconography.” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 60 (1997): 451–81. Kornfeld, Abby. “Meanings in the Margins: Between Text and Image in the Barcelona Haggadah.” PhD diss., Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, 2013. Lipton, Sara. “Where Are the Gothic Jewish Women? On the Non-​Iconography of the Jewess in the Cantigas de Santa María.” In “The Elka Klein Memorial Volume,” special issue, Jewish History 22, no. 1/2 (2008): 139–77. Loewe, Raphael. The Rylands Haggadah: A Medieval Sephardi Masterpiece in Facsimile: An Illuminated Passover Compendium from Mid-14th Century Catalonia in the Collections of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester. Manchester: John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 1988. Mann, Vivian B. “Jews and Altarpieces in Medieval Spain.” In Uneasy Communion: Jews, Christians, and the Altarpieces of Medieval Spain, edited by Vivian B. Mann, 76–126. London: Giles, 2010. Margoliouth, George. Catalogue of the Hebrew and Samaritan Manuscripts in the British Museum. 4 vols. London: British Museum, 1899–1935. Melero Moneo, Marisa. “Eucaristía y polémica antisemita en el retablo de Vallbona de las Monges.” Locus Amoenus 6 (2002–3): 21–40. Merback, Mitchell, ed. Beyond the Yellow Badge: Anti-​ Judaism and Antisemitism in Medieval and Early Modern Visual Culture. Leiden: Brill, 2007. Metzger, Thérèse, and Mendel Metzger. Jewish Life in the Middle Ages: Illuminated Hebrew Manuscripts of the Thirteenth to the Sixteenth Centuries. New York: Alpine Fine Arts Collection, 1982. Mittman, Asa. “Mandeville’s Jews, Colonialism, Certainty, and Art History.” In Postcolonising the

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Medieval Image, edited by Eva Frojmovic and Catherine E. Karkov, 91–119. Abingdon: Routledge, 2017. Molina Figueras, Joan. “La imagen y su contexto: Perfiles de la iconografía antijudía en la España medieval.” In Els jueus a la Girona medieval (XII ciclo de conferencias Girona a l’Abast), 33–85. Girona: Bell-​lloc, 2008. Motis Dolader, Miguel Ángel. “Los judíos oscenses en la Plena y Baja Edad Media.” In Los judíos de la Corona de Aragón en los siglos XIV–XV, edited by Angelina García, 96–113. Valencia: Generalitat Valenciana, 1989. Müller, David H., and Julius von Schlosser. Die Haggadah von Sarajevo: Eine spanisch-​ jüdische Bilderhandschrift des Mittelalters. Vienna: Alfred Hölder, 1898. Narkiss, Bezalel. Hebrew Illuminated Manuscripts in the British Isles: A Catalogue Raisonné. Vol. 1, The Spanish and Portuguese Manuscripts. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982. Nirenberg, David. “Race and the Middle Ages: The Case of Spain and Its Jews.” In Rereading the Black Legend: The Discourses of Religious and Racial Difference in the Renaissance Empires, edited by Margaret R. Greer, Walter D. Mignolo, and Maureen Quilligan, 71–87, 335–45. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. ———. “Was There Race Before Modernity? The Example of ‘Jewish’ Blood in Late Medieval Spain.” In The Origins of Racism in the West, edited by Miriam Eliav-​Feldon, Benjamin Isaac, and Joseph Ziegler, 232–64. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Patton, Pamela Anne. Art of Estrangement: Redefining Jews in Reconquest Spain. University Park: Penn State University Press, 2012. ———. “An Ethiopian-​Headed Serpent in the Cantigas de Santa María: Sin, Sex, and Color in Late Medieval Castile.” Gesta 55, no. 2 (2016): 213–38. ———. “Introduction: Race, Color, and the Visual in Iberia and Latin America.” In Envisioning Others: Race, Color, and the Visual in Iberia and Latin America, edited by Pamela A. Patton, 1–17. Leiden: Brill, 2016. ———. “What Did Medieval Slavery Look Like? Color, Race, and Unfreedom in Later Medieval Iberia.” Speculum 97, no. 3 (July 2022): 649–97. Pratt, Mary Louise. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. London: Routledge, 1992. ———. “Transculturation and Autoethnography: Peru, 1615/1980.” In Colonial Discourse / Postcolonial Theory, edited by Francis Barker, Peter Hulme, and Margaret Iversen, 24–46. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994. Rambaran-​Olm, Mary. “Not Qwhite Right: Part Two of ‘Sounds About White.’ ” Review of

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The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe, by Mathew Gabriele and David M. Perry. https://​mrambaranolm​.medium​.com​/not​ -qwhite​-right​-eec188b9f961. Rodríguez Barral, Paulino. “Eucaristía y antisemitismo en las plástica gótica hispánica.” Boletin del Museu e Instituto Camon Aznar de Ibercaja 97 (2006) 279–347. Reprint La imagen del judío en la España medieval: El conflicto entre cristianismo y judaísmo en las artes visuales góticas, 171–214. Girona: University of Girona Press, 2008. Rosen-​Zvi, Ishay. “The Rise and Fall of Rabbinic Masculinity.” Jewish Studies Internet Journal 12 (2013): 1–22. Roth, Cecil. The Sarajevo Haggadah. London: W. H. Allen, 1963. ———. “The Sarajevo Haggadah and Its Significance in the History of Art.” In Roth, Sarajevo Haggadah, 7–53. Roth, Pinchas. “ ‘My Precious Books and Instruments’: Jewish Divorce Strategies and Self-​Fashioning in Medieval Catalonia.” Journal of Medieval History 43, no. 5 (2017): 548–61. Rubin, Miri. Gentile Tales: The Narrative Assault on Late Medieval Jews. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999. Ruiz i Quesada, Francesc. “Maestro de Villahermosa: Retablo de la Institución de la Eucaristía.” In Espais de Llum: Borriana Vila-​real Castelló,

2008–09, edited by Jaime Sanahuja, Pere Saborit, and David Montolio, 218–23. Valencia: Generalitat Valenciana, 2008. Sabar, Shalom, ed. The Sarajevo Haggadah—History and Art: Facsimile of the Manuscript and Accompanying Text Volume. 2 vols. Sarajevo: National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina, 2018. Satlow, Michael. “ ‘Try to Be a Man’: The Rabbinic Construction of Masculinity.” Harvard Theological Review 89 (1996): 19–40. Schonfield, Jeremy, ed. The Barcelona Haggadah: An Illuminated Passover Compendium from Fourteenth-​Century Catalonia in Facsimile (MS British Library Add. 14761). London: Facsimile Editions, 1992. Shalev-​Eyni, Sarit. “Between Carnality and Spirituality: A Cosmological Vision of the End at the Turn of the Fifth Jewish Millennium.” Speculum 90, no. 2 (2015): 458–82. ———. “Manipulating the Cup of Blessing: Gendered Reading of Ritual Images in European-​Hebrew Books.” Studies in Iconography 39 (2018): 207–34. Strauss, Heinrich. “Jewish Art as a Minority Problem.” Jewish Journal of Sociology 11, no. 2 (1960): 147–71. Tahan, Ilana. Hebrew Manuscripts: The Power of Script and Image. London: British Library, 2007. Wengrow, Charles, trans. and ed. The Book of Mitzvah Education. New York: Feldheim, 1992.

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8 Beyond Traditional Boundaries Medieval Art and Architecture in Eastern Europe

Alice Isabella Sullivan

The history of art often ignores that, by its very nature, it is confronted by analogous problems: by choices of knowledge, alternatives that entail loss, whichever option is chosen. —Georges Didi-​Huberman, Confronting Images

The question of what the labels medieval, Byzantine, or the Middle Ages mean in geographic and temporal terms within the field of art history remains open to discussion. Research continues to broaden, enhance, and complicate the picture, as exemplified by the contributions to this volume. Although the “map of art history” is ever shifting, the artistic production of Eastern Europe has yet to find a place.1 How should we understand what happens in Eastern Europe during the Middle Ages—particularly in the northern regions of the Balkan Peninsula and the territories around the Carpathian Mountains, which developed along the northern fringes of the Byzantine Empire and at the crossroads of the Latin, Greek, Slavic, and later also Ottoman traditions? What makes the art, architecture, and visual culture of these territories medieval, and how should it be studied relative to the more established narratives of art history? The answers to these questions are not simple, but certain considerations of the cultural heritage of Eastern Europe can help broaden, redefine, and even complicate how we ought to define, study, and teach medieval and Byzantine art history.

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Figure 8.1 Map of Europe showing the Iron Curtain. Photo: Andrei Nacu.

The medieval art, architecture, and visual culture of Eastern Europe have not been at the forefront of art-​historical scholarship. In part, inconsistencies in the definition of what constitutes Eastern Europe—or Southeastern Europe, or Central Europe, or East-​Central Europe—at any given moment have been responsible for the marginalization.2 To a large degree, the limited approaches have also been a consequence of twentieth-​century politics. The actual and ideological barriers imposed by the Iron Curtain rendered much of the relevant literature inaccessible and new fieldwork difficult to carry out (fig. 8.1). As a result, international students and scholars lacked access to the resources necessary to examine more fully and seriously the artistic production of the Balkans and the Carpathians. Throughout the twentieth century, these regions were unjustifiably seen “as somehow distinct from the real Europe of the western Atlantic alliance,” which led to “an unstudied ignorance or neglect of much of the continent.”3 The fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989 initiated a reassessment of individual and national identities throughout Europe, which again enabled intellectual and physical 186

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contacts between regions that for decades had remained distant and inaccessible to one another.4 Scholarship that was limited and had stagnated for much of the twentieth century was now being reinvigorated. With respect to the artistic production of Eastern Europe, however, the studies that emerged in the last decade of the twentieth century generally prioritize iconographical and archaeological approaches and tend to frame local stylistic developments in opposition to external influences from Byzantium or the West, asserting instead a localized and independent artistic identity for particular centers. This is the case with nationalistic discourses in other formerly communist or Soviet states: rather than bring to the fore the debt to Byzantine or Western artistic traditions in the emergence of local styles, local artistic production is defined and celebrated as a concentrated and isolated development aimed to assert an independent artistic identity. On the issue, Antony Eastmond writes, “Both under communism and post-​independence, there is a clear trend towards identifying difference, whether to replicate the political divide of the Iron Curtain before 1989, or to accentuate the historical roots of the fractures between the Orthodox peoples of the ex-​Soviet world after the collapse of the USSR.”5 These discourses rooted in nationalistic concerns do little to encourage an inclusion of the art and architecture of these “marginal” regions into the broader narratives of Western medieval and Byzantine art history. My approach to the study of the medieval artistic production of Eastern Europe takes into account the historical circumstances of the Balkans and the Carpathians between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries as well as the connections that extended between select regions and their neighbors that resulted in the visual and semantic eclecticism evident in art, architecture, and visual culture. To demonstrate these points, this essay examines the artistic developments in the principality of Moldavia—a territory that extended within the borders of northeastern modern Romania and the Republic of Moldova—during the second half of the fifteenth century and the first half of the sixteenth century (fig. 8.2). The material evidence reveals local negotiations between competing traditions that contributed to the rise of new visual forms in art and architecture. In the decades after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, as the Ottoman Turks turned their attention toward the Balkans and regions of the Carpathians, Moldavia emerged as a powerful principality along Europe’s eastern frontier. Situated at the crossroads of Western European, Slavic, Byzantine, and Ottoman cultures, this Carpathian region took on a central role in the refashioning of diverse artistic traditions in a local context. Given Moldavia’s location at the point of intersection of diverse cultures at least from the fourteenth century onward, the visual culture of the principality came to exhibit an eclecticism with respect to sources, with elements adapted from especially Western medieval, Byzantine, and Slavic models alongside forms developed locally. This visual syncretism, most evident in the artistic and architectural projects of Stephen III “the Great” (r. 1457–1504) and Peter Rareș (r. 1527–38 and 1541–46), Beyond Traditional Boundaries

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Figure 8.2 Map of the Romanian Principalities and Eastern Hungary between 1457 and 1504. Photo: Andrei Nacu.

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contributed to the development of a local Moldavian visual idiom.6 In the decades that followed the rule of these two distinguished princes, other patrons of princely and noble rank adopted in their commissions the distinctly Moldavian modes of designing, building, and decorating objects of art and architecture, further transforming local forms.7 But in the century that followed the collapse of the Byzantine Empire, it was Stephen and Peter, who, through their artistic patronage and with guidance from Church officials, contributed to projects that gradually transformed the sacred landscape of Moldavia.8 For example, Stephen built more than four dozen churches, chapels, and monasteries during his extensive reign, as well as contributed to the promotion of scriptoria and embroidery workshops in Moldavia. His illegitimate son and heir, Peter, continued these efforts, as did other rulers of the principality who followed in their footsteps. Out of Bounds

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Figure 8.3 Church of the Holy Cross, view from the southwest, 1487. Pătrăuţi Monastery, Moldavia, modern-​ day Romania. Photo: author.

Stephen ruled for almost half a century, and his efforts transformed Moldavia into a bastion and buttress protector of the Christian faith. Between 1457 and 1487, Stephen engaged in extensive projects that fortified his principality at key sites in order to defend it and keep at bay especially the Ottoman incursions into his territory.9 Stephen set up a clever and thoughtfully designed infrastructure of fortresses and fortified royal courts along the perimeter of the principality, which ensured Moldavia’s protection from all sides. By the spring of 1487, Moldavia entered a period of relative political, military, and economic stability as a result of Stephen’s military initiatives and strategic efforts.10 At this time, after three decades of extensive civic and military building campaigns and numerous battles to ensure the safety of his domain, Stephen turned his attention toward ecclesiastical artistic and architectural projects. Between 1487 and 1488, construction began on four monastic churches (katholika) that offer a glimpse into the development of Moldavian ecclesiastical architecture during the last decades of the fifteenth century. First, between 8 and 13 June 1487, the church of the Holy Cross at Pătrăuți Monastery and the church of Saint Procopius in Bădeuți (Milișăuți) went up.11 The following year, the church of Saint Elijah near Suceava and the church of Saint George at Voroneț Monastery were erected.12 Only the katholikon at Pătrăuți still stands today in minimally altered form (figs. 8.3 and 8.4). Several of the major features in church architecture in the region are first encountered in Stephen’s initial churches. All four edifices are quite modest in size, measuring between 16.5 and 22.5 meters in length. They each rise over a triconch plan consisting of a square pronaos with the entrance situated at the center of the west facade, a naos Beyond Traditional Boundaries

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Figure 8.4 Plan, Church of the Holy Cross, 1487. Pătrăuţi Monastery, Moldavia, modern-​day Romania. Photo: Tudor Urcan.

with two lateral apses extending to the north and south, and a semicircular eastern apse. The layout of Pătrăuți offers an apt example of this scheme that reveals the early stages of the development of the triconch plan in the ecclesiastical architecture of Moldavia (fig. 8.4). Single, narrow entryways lead from one space to the next, and a large carved and gilded iconostasis with painted icons in multiple registers rises at the threshold between the naos and the altar. This wall of icons physically divides and visually conceals the altar area and its spiritual orchestration of the mysteries of the Eucharist from the naos, where the faithful gather.13 Stephen’s initial four churches share additional features: the small-​scale windows throughout that illuminate the pronaos, naos, and altar areas, as well as the particular subdivision of the roofs with sections draping each of the interior spaces separately. The silhouette of these edifices is further accentuated by the slender steeple-​like dome over the naos that is supported by a unique vaulting system specific to Moldavian churches built beginning in the second half of the fifteenth century.14 The support system of these domes comprises a series of so-​called oblique arches that consist of overlapping arches and pendentives, with the upper set at a forty-​five-​degree angle to the vertical. This design diminishes by almost half the span of the naos. It also offers an intricate visual scheme at the point of transition to the dome above and additional surfaces for painted decorations. In each of the four churches, moreover, rows of niches on the exterior of the tower and around the side apses aid in this effect. Although the exterior decorations are no longer preserved in their entirety at the church in Pătrăuți, except for the scene of the Last Judgment and an icon of Saints Constantine and Helena on the west facade, the interior contains rich mural cycles that emulate Byzantine iconography and stylistic patterns, labeled with Greek tituli (fig. 8.5).15 It is quite possible that this small church was built and decorated by masons and artists that traveled to Moldavia in the decades after the fall of Constantinople 190

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in 1453, an event that displaced people across the Eastern Orthodox world. The interior murals at Pătrăuți, begun in 1487 and repainted between 1496 and 1499, offer the earliest notable example of Moldavian monastic church painting.16 The pronaos displays images of the Holy Martyrs and the Pious Women, large representations of the Marriage at Cana and the Procession of the Soldier Saints, as well as an image of Christ Pantokrator in the dome. The naos is dominated by the Passion cycle and images of military saints, as well as a votive image and the icon of Saints Constantine and Helena, akin to the one in the main entrance tympanum. The chancel at Pătrăuți displays images of bishops and the scenes of the Last Supper, the Communion of the Apostles, and Christ Washing the Feet of the Apostles. Based on stylistic grounds and the presence of Greek inscriptions, scholars have proposed that the murals were executed either by an artist from Constantinople or another Byzantine cultural center or by George of Trikala (d. 1530), who also worked on the church of Saint George in Hârlău, where he was later buried.17 Such artists would have facilitated the movement of ideas, technique, and artistic forms between distant regions. Although the architecture of the church at Pătrăuți, as elsewhere in Eastern Europe, has often been discussed in isolation from the mural decorations that adorn the interior Beyond Traditional Boundaries

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Figure 8.5 Interior of naos with murals, view toward the west, Church of the Holy Cross, 1487. Pătrăuți Monastery, Moldavia, modern-​ day Romania. Photo: Petru Palamar.

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and exterior walls of the building and from the objects and furnishings that played a role in liturgical rituals, recent work has revealed remarkable facets of the careful design and decoration of the church. For example, the priest at Pătrăuți, Gabriel-Dinu Herea, has observed certain light effects in the interior of the church on special feast days that reveal how sunlight was deployed within the building to underscore theological and ideological statements.18 The observations reveal that once the church was erected, the painter carefully chose the iconography and its placement on the wall of the church relative to the moving sunlight. For example, the icon of Saint Auxentius, located inside a niche carved into the north wall of the naos, close to the altar, is illuminated on the saint’s feast day, 13 December, around one in the afternoon. In 1487, this feast day also corresponded with the winter solstice. There are many other examples like this one documented in the church at Pătrăuți. During the summer solstice, the first ray of sunlight that enters the church illuminates the image of Prophet Isaiah painted on the drum of the naos dome. He holds a scroll with the text of Psalm 112(113):3, which calls for the praising of God from dawn until dusk. As such, the katholikon stands as a case study that, once fully examined and recorded, will offer the foundation for future analyses of how medieval churches in Moldavia and throughout the Byzantine-​Slavic cultural spheres were designed, erected, and decorated, taking into account both their concrete aspects and ephemeral phenomena. The consecration of the katholikon at Pătrăuți on 14 September—the feast of the Holy Cross—had special meaning for Stephen. On this same day in 1472, the Moldavian prince married his second wife, Maria Asanina Palaiologina of Mangup (d. 1477).19 Maria’s visage survives on the richly embroidered cover designed for her grave in Putna Monastery in Moldavia, the monastic church built to serve as Stephen’s princely mausoleum (fig. 8.6).20 The union between Stephen and Maria of Mangup set in motion an array of cultural, artistic, and ideological transformations for Moldavia and its ruler.21 For one thing, Stephen initiated a series of ongoing endowments not only to monasteries in his own domain but also to those monastic communities on Mount Athos at a moment when other Christian leaders were reducing or ending altogether their Athonite patronage.22 His efforts ensured his perpetual commemoration by the Athonite communities and, by extension, rendered Moldavia, as a polity, an heir to Byzantine Orthodoxy.23 Furthermore, Stephen’s Athonite patronage and his marriage to Maria of Mangup certainly contributed to the promotion of significant forms of Byzantine spirituality and artistic practices in Moldavia. For example, Moldavian workshops and scriptoria began producing manuscripts and liturgical embroideries rooted in Byzantine techniques, styles, and patterns.24 The monasteries of Neamț and Putna, to name just two examples, fostered impressive embroidery workshops with a recognizable style of precious metalwork.25 Maria of Mangup contributed to the development of these workrooms by nurturing Byzantine embroidery traditions in Moldavia. Following her marriage, she likely brought with her to the new court objects that served as models for local artists, as well as craftsmen trained in Byzantine 192

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Figure 8.6 Burial cover of Maria Asanina Palaiologina of Mangup, ca. 1477. Embroidery with gold and silver thread and colored silk on a red satin foundation, 1.88 × 1.02 m. Putna Monastery Treasury. Photo: Putna Monastery.

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workshops who locally executed lavish embroideries and other kinds of objects for secular and ecclesiastical use.26 Maria, supposedly, was also an embroiderer herself, although little evidence survives to reveal the extent of her work and expertise.27 Maria’s burial cloth is one renowned example of an embroidery executed in a style characteristic of the Palaiologan era yet reinvigorated in the Moldavian cultural sphere in the crucible of the post-1453 world.28 It features a richly worked funerary portrait of the Moldavian princess executed in colored silks and embroidered with polychrome silks and gold threads; the now largely damaged background consists of couched gold threads arranged vertically. The cloth shows Maria’s full length in a recumbent pose, like a gisant, with her arms folded across her chest and her hands gently clasped.29 Her oval face has elements of individuality: a small mouth, long thin nose, and arched eyebrows. Her hair, parted down the middle, is mostly concealed by her elaborate headdress, finely worked with precious stones and pearl hangings. Jewels also adorn Maria’s ears, neck, and fingers. Her regal attire is complete with a sumptuously brocaded dress and caftan-​like mantle with red lining and long sleeves reaching to her ankles (a blue-​green granatza of Perso-​Assyrian origin). Maria reposes underneath a cusped trefoil arch that delineates her figure and balances the composition. The presence of the arcature is also suggestive of her royal status. It is decorated with the monogram of the Palaiologan dynasty and a repertoire of decorative and vegetal motifs found on other contemporary embroideries from the Putna workshop.30 In place of a decorative border around the perimeter, Maria’s grave cover displays a dedicatory inscription in Church Slavonic.31 While formulaic, the inscription is unusual in that it is interrupted in the corners by four emblems. In the upper left and lower right are the double-​headed eagles, the imperial symbols of Byzantium. The lower-​left corner shows the famous and widespread monogram of the Palaiologan dynasty, which appears again in a correct and a reversed position in the decorations of the trefoil arch in the central register of the embroidery (in the correct orientation on the left roundel and in a reversed position in the right roundel).32 The upper-​right corner shows the initials for Maria’s other family name, Asanina.33 These important dynastic emblems represent the earliest known identifiers of this kind on any extant embroidered work in Moldavia. The monasteries of Neamț and Putna also maintained large scriptoria that produced numerous manuscripts related to the various religious services of the Orthodox Church. Lavish Tetraevangelia (manuscripts of the canonical Gospels of the four Evangelists) were written and decorated in Moldavia and either given to local churches and monasteries or gifted to other Orthodox communities outside the principality (fig. 8.7). Stephen and his followers are known to have made numerous donations of manuscripts, liturgical objects, and money to the monasteries on Mount Athos, for example, as mentioned above. In the Moldavian Tetraevangelia, each of the Gospel texts, written in Church Slavonic, is preceded by an ornamented headpiece made up of sinuous interlocking circular motifs and a full-​page richly illuminated Evangelist 194

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portrait (Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John) rendered in a late Byzantine style yet utilizing an iconography that dates back to the sixth century.34 The text and illuminations were certainly created by various scribes and artists, likely using common models, as each scriptorium developed a distinctive style. Dedicatory inscriptions in extant manuscripts also reveal the names of key learned and skilled scribes and painters, among them Gabriel (Gavril/Gavriil), son of the Moldavian nobleman Paisie Uric, active during the first half of the fifteenth century, and Theodore Mărie̦sescul, who created multiple volumes under Stephen’s patronage. But unlike the textiles and manuscripts, which were produced both locally in Moldavian workshops and brought into the principality from elsewhere, precious metalwork production appears to have been commissioned from workshops along the western slopes of the Carpathian Mountains, which generally followed Gothic principles of design and manufacture. Numerous liturgical vessels and crosses arrived in Moldavia from across the Carpathians. One censer executed with exquisite detail in gilded silver and precious stones was gifted by Stephen to Putna Monastery on Beyond Traditional Boundaries

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Figure 8.7 Opening pages of the Gospel of Saint Mark. From Tetraevangelion, Humor Monastery, 1473, fol. 80v–81r. Putna Monastery Treasury. Photo: Putna Monastery.

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Figure 8.8 Censer, 1470. Gilded silver with pearls and precious stones, 40 × 16 cm. Putna Monastery Treasury. Photo: Putna Monastery.

12 April 1470, as indicated by the inscription in Church Slavonic along its six-​lobed base (fig. 8.8). The quatrefoil designs of the object, the distinctive foot with the fretwork motif around its edges, and the hatching between the letters of the inscription are all Gothic features characteristic of liturgical vessels produced in Transylvanian and Hungarian workshops from the mid-​fifteenth century onward.35 Such objects would have been requested for local use and also gifted to religious locales outside the principality. During the second half of the fifteenth century, Moldavia experienced sustained changes in the production of art and architecture under Stephen’s direct patronage. But it was under the leadership of Stephen’s heir, Peter Rareș, that the artistic production of Moldavia took on new visual forms. Most striking, the churches became larger and more elaborate in design, and most also received extensive murals both inside and outside. Upon ascending to the throne, Peter, like his father, initially concerned himself 196

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with political and military matters. But the failed Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1529 seems to have given new hope to Moldavia’s leader that perhaps the Ottomans could be defeated and pushed back from Europe.36 These epochal events carried various political, military, cultural, and artistic ramifications, including for Peter, whose artistic and architectural patronage took on new dimensions. With these initiatives, Peter not only continued and enhanced his father’s ecclesiastical projects, promoting local workshops and scriptoria, but he also left his own mark on Moldavia’s artistic landscape. The church of the Annunciation at Moldovița Monastery, erected and painted under Peter’s patronage between 1532 and 1537, offers the best-​preserved example of how church architecture and its decorations developed in Moldavia by the third decade of the sixteenth century (figs. 8.9 and 8.10).37 At Moldovița, the large central katholikon was built first, followed by the cells of the nuns, the living quarters of the abbess, the princely house (now a museum), the treasury, and the refectory (dining hall). The monastery also received rectilinear fortification walls and towers, which helped set the monastic world apart and protected the community in times of need. Such protective structures were also present at other sites across the Carpathians and the Balkans, whose tumultuous histories required special defense mechanisms.38 Unlike Stephen’s churches, the layout of Peter’s churches, as  evident at the katholikon at Moldovița, is more elongated and elaborate. The church, characteristic of Moldavian monastic ecclesiastic architecture as it evolved in the initial decades of the sixteenth century, is built on an elongated triconch plan that consists of an open barrel-​vaulted exonarthex at the west end with three arched entrances on the north, south, and west sides of the building. A single narrow entryway leads into the domed rectangular pronaos of the church, which displays two large windows on both the north and south walls. This space, in turn, leads through another small entryway into a small barrel-​vaulted burial chamber (gropniță) with a single small window facing south. No such funerary room is found in the churches built during the previous century. At Moldovița, this room gives access through another small entrance to the triconch naos, where liturgical ceremonies are celebrated. Toward the east end of the church extends the chancel, separated from the naos by a large iconostasis. The layout, architectural features, and furnishings make clear that the interior of the church comprises a longitudinal progression of spaces of different dimensions and serving diverse functions that grow progressively darker as one approaches the altar area. Moreover, as the faithful progress through the exonarthex, pronaos, and burial chamber toward the naos and altar, they are mentally primed for their eventual passage into the naos.39 The single central entryways leading from one space to the next guide and control the physical progression through the church, but the brightly colored mural cycles create a dramatic effect and further inflect visually this passage. These brightly colored mural cycles set in multiple registers are among the most striking visual features of the Moldavian churches from the early sixteenth century.40 Executed by local and traveling artists, the image programs display Christological, Beyond Traditional Boundaries

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Figure 8.9 Church of the Annunciation, view from the southeast, 1532–37. Moldovița Monastery, Moldavia, modern-​day Romania. Photo: author. Figure 8.10 Church of the Annunciation, view from the southwest, 1532–37. Moldovița Monastery, Moldavia, modern-​day Romania. Photo: author.

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Mariological, and hagiographical stories interspersed with monumental images of historical and apocalyptic scenes, as well as full-​length depictions of saintly figures and angels. Some, like the church of the Holy Cross at Pătrăuți Monastery, include tituli and inscriptions in Greek; others, like the church of the Annunciation at Moldovița Monastery, display inscriptions in Church Slavonic.41 Although the mural cycles follow, by and large, Byzantine stylistic and iconographic forms, select iconographies derive from Western prototypes, such as, for example, the iconography of the Tree of Jesse and the image of the Agnus Dei, with the latter appearing in both interior and exterior murals.42 Moreover, the images were carefully conceived in relation to the architecture of the buildings and the various functions of their distinctive spaces. In other words, the image cycles were calibrated to enhance and give visual expression to the specific purpose of the part of the building onto which they were painted, and some were even adapted to address princely and local needs and concerns. Fragments of expansive mural cycles survive on the exteriors of medieval Orthodox churches from the Byzantine and Slavic cultural spheres, as is the case at the church of Saint Nicetas in Banjane, North Macedonia, erected circa 1300 and renovated 1484 (fig. 8.11).43 Such plastered and painted exteriors were, in fact, quite common, although few examples survive to allow scholars to form a comprehensive picture of the phenomena. The Moldavian corpus of ecclesiastical monuments from Peter’s reign, plus a few later churches, reveal how Byzantine modes of church building and decoration not only continued but were also transformed after the fall of the empire in 1453. In my opinion, the cool and relatively dry climate of the Carpathians, as well as the remote location of the Moldavian churches, may explain the extraordinary preservation of their exterior frescoes, offering a glimpse into a now-​lost mode of cladding religious structures. Nevertheless, the murals found on the exteriors of the churches would have welcomed a circumambulation of the monuments in the context of certain liturgical ceremonies, such as those that occur in modern times in Romania during the Easter celebrations, for example.44 The Moldavian churches display a vast repertoire of painted scenes. The images in the pronaos and burial chamber have multiple registers of events from the Menologium—the texts describing the religious feasts and martyrdoms of Orthodox saints corresponding to each day of the year. Each register shows the saints celebrated in a particular month—thus the images wrap clockwise around the space of the pronaos and also the burial chamber from top to bottom, visualizing a passage of earthly time on the inner walls of the church.45 Moreover, reflecting Byzantine conventions of church decoration, the interior of the naos received scenes from the life of Christ and the Virgin, representations of full-​length figures of military saints, and a votive painting that shows the patron presenting a model of the church to Christ enthroned via the intercessory role of the holy figure to whom the church is dedicated.46 At Moldovița, the votive mural displays Peter and his immediate family in the presence of Christ with

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Figure 8.11 Church of Saint Nicetas in Banjane, view from the northwest, ca. 1300, renovated 1484. North Macedonia. Photo: Wikimedia Commons / Ehrlich91 (CC BY-​SA 4.0).

the Virgin Mary as intercessory, since the church is dedicated to the Annunciation. The height of the churches also allowed for the inclusion of additional religious scenes, such as Christ’s miracles, which appeared frequently in Serbian monumental mural cycles. This suggests that the conception (and execution) of the Moldavian frescoes may have come about both through direct Byzantine models and others mediated through regions of the Balkans, such as present-day Serbia, Bulgaria, and North Macedonia, with which Moldavia established connections especially though the Orthodox Church. Among the scenes painted on the exteriors of the Moldavian churches, Christological and Mariological iconographies predominate. For example, the south wall of the burial chamber often shows a monumental scene of the Tree of Jesse with narrative vignettes of prophetic moments from the Old Testament and full-​length depictions of Greek philosophers.47 Such depictions, which include Plato and Aristotle, among others, display passages from their texts that reveal allusions to the coming of Christ. These elaborate representations of the Tree of Jesse, in their iconographic conception, meanings, and functions, were both genealogical and prophetic in content. They were intended to highlight, first and foremost, the notion of lineage—that of Christ in the 200

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painted representation and that of the prince who was buried in the space extending beyond the painted exterior. In addition to the Tree of Jesse, the exterior south wall of the church at Moldovița, as in other examples, depicts the Akathistos hymn—the oldest performed hymn dedicated to the Virgin Mary sung in the Eastern Orthodox Church. The Akathistos was often represented in twenty-​four scenes that stand for its twenty-​four stanzas.48 The text of the hymn and the murals of the Akathistos celebrate the role of the Virgin Mary in the Incarnation, the Redemption, and their mysteries, as well as her protective role for humankind. By the middle Byzantine period, the Akathistos evolved into a war hymn believed to bring divine protection to the Byzantine capital and, by extension, to the entire empire during moments of struggle. During the later Palaiologan era, and in particular after the fall of the Byzantine Empire, the representations of the Akathistos acquired historical dimensions and came to incorporate scenes depicting the siege of Constantinople that show the Byzantine capital saved through divine intervention.49 In some instances, the mural of the siege shows one of the specific attacks Constantinople weathered during its long history. The siege mural at Moldovița references several historical moments, in particular the triumphant victories during the attacks of the Avars and the Persians in 626 ce, of the Arabs in 717/18 ce, and of the Rus’ in 860 ce. The inclusion of contemporary artillery presents an anachronism that brings the relevance of these earlier victories into the present. In light of the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 and the ongoing Ottoman threat in the regions of the Balkans and the Carpathians, the image seems to hold out assurance that divine aid is forthcoming. Indeed, in drawing on older Byzantine sources, this powerful, multilayered story of divine assistance in the fight against non-​Christian enemies functioned as a pictorial commentary on the continuing Ottoman threat against Moldavia’s independence, political stability, and religious identity. Conflations of temporalities on a single pictorial plane, as evident in the mural of the siege, are also present in other painted scenes at Moldovița. The west facade displays scenes from Genesis interspersed with moments from the Last Judgment painted on the entire eastern wall of the exonarthex, which are visible through the narrow arched openings. The overlapping of scenes from Genesis and the Last Judgment would have prompted an awareness of the scriptural beginning and end-​time. This visual dialogue thus conflated temporalities on a visual plane that stressed existence in time, serving as an appropriate marker for the beginning of the path to salvation, namely through the church proper. As such, the open exonarthex, as evident at Moldovița and elsewhere, provided a space of transition between the natural world and the sacred space of the church that, in turn, was further charged both visually and spatially. Although built and decorated so as to suit the needs of the Orthodox faith and its rituals, the church at Moldovița, as elsewhere in Moldavia, also displays distinct Gothic features.50 Most striking are the three-​tier buttresses on the exterior, which find visual parallels in the Saxon churches from neighboring Transylvania and the Beyond Traditional Boundaries

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Catholic churches in nearby Hungary, as well as the door and window framings and the window tracery that derive from Gothic models.51 Such knowledge circulated in Moldavia through workshop practices, although little information survives about the masons who worked on local projects. An exception is Ioan Zidarul (John the Mason) from Bistrița, who was summoned to Peter’s court to work on his ecclesiastical projects, especially the church of Saint Demetrios in Suceava, begun in 1534.52 Given the distinctly Gothic features of the Moldavian churches, the masons, like John, were certainly trained in Transylvanian workshops that generally followed East-​Central European Gothic building practices and designs. Through architectural drawings and trained figures, building knowledge thus circulated in workshops to either side of the Carpathian Mountains, informing local projects. The Gothic forms present on the Moldavian churches from this period find an intriguing parallel in the ways in which classical elements were introduced to enhance the exteriors of Muscovite churches of the same period. For example, Tsar Ivan III (r. 1462–1505) summoned in 1474 the Italian military architect Aristotele Fioravanti to construct the walls of the Kremlin. While in Moscow, Fioravanti also ended up working on the cathedral of the Dormition in the Kremlin, consecrated in 1479 (fig. 8.12). The register of blind rounded arcades, the engaged columns, and the subdivision of the facades were first introduced here. Italian forms on Muscovite buildings, however, functioned in a foreign idiom. The painting tradition was not impacted by Italian conventions, and architecturally, classical forms were articulated only as part of the exterior decoration in the cathedral of the Dormition and other later buildings. In both the Moldavian and the Muscovite churches, Gothic and classical forms, respectively, appear in decorative features that do not affect or transform the prescribed Eastern Christian structure and functions of the churches. For Moldavia, workshop practices in the region and the presence of stone cutters from among Transylvanian Saxons to the east of the Carpathians offers a pragmatic explanation. Another hypothesis highlights the symbolic purchase of the Gothic elements, which helped Orthodox Moldavia symbolically align its character and mission with the Christian world of Western Europe for which the Gothic became a key mode of conveying Christian identity. The distinguishing architecture and iconographic programs of the Moldavian churches were thus designed to express complex social and religious politics, as well as to elucidate local processes of image translations, the transfer of artistic ideas, and the particular dynamics of cultural contact in a region that developed at the crossroads of different traditions and competing worldviews. I would propose, then, that we consider the Moldavian corpus as the product of its particular historical moment and its development in light of cultural interactions between Moldavia and its neighbors, both close and more distant. The Moldavian cultural plurality, primarily facilitated through objects and people traveling from disparate places, resembles the eclecticism embraced in the artistic sphere in Venice, Cyprus, Crete, and Moscow, for example, as well as regions like Georgia and Armenia—all prominent centers that, too, forged 202

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Figure 8.12 Cathedral of the Dormition, Kremlin, Moscow, view from the southeast, 1474–79. Photo: Wikimedia Commons / Daniel Kruczynski (CC BY-​SA 2.0).

certain connections with the Byzantine world and with the cultures of Western Europe at various moments throughout their histories.53 The specific ways in which the Moldavian churches compare to those from other regions that present similar compound visual vocabularies is a topic that deserves further exploration. Scholars to date have studied the ecclesiastical art and architecture of Moldavia largely from specific, somewhat limiting angles. As might be anticipated, Romanian historians, archaeologists, and conservators have contributed to the greater part of the research on this material, and they have focused predominantly on formal, archaeological, and iconographic studies. Through these efforts, a great deal has been revealed about the forms of the buildings, the details of the complex iconographies of the mural programs, and issues of patronage. Relatively few scholars have attempted to embed the structures in their larger historical contexts, to engage in detailed comparative work, or to consider the imagery in relation to liturgy, for example.54 Beyond Traditional Boundaries

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In addressing the architecture, image programs, and functions of the Moldavian churches in the context of religious politics and patronage, the Orthodox liturgy, the cult of saints, and the theory of images, I analyze the extent to which these churches aided in the construction of a new sacred landscape in Moldavia at a crucial historical moment, while presenting visual responses and commentaries to a series of crises located in the past, present, and future: the events of 1453, the declared end of the world in 1492 (as predicted by some Eastern Christians),55 and the failed Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1529. To this list, it would also be worth adding the spread of the Protestant Reformation, to which the vast Christological and Mariological iconographic cycles on the Moldavian churches may have served as a response.56 As such, one way to interpret the vast patronage of the Moldavian rulers in the post-​Byzantine period and the distinctive architectural and iconographic character of their monuments is as a response to critical times. The artistic production, as such, reveals not only a deep faith but also hints at the anxieties and fears among the locals, which find visual manifestations in the solid fortification of sacred sites and the political and military dimensions embedded in mural iconographies, to name but two examples. A more expansive and thorough examination of the Moldavian artistic production, and of medieval art in Eastern Europe more broadly, could help encourage a rethinking of standard art-​historical narratives. Rigid and reinforced Western canons of rationality remain prevalent in scholarship, and current stories of the developments of medieval, early modern, Byzantine, and post-​Byzantine art continue to exclude the artistic production of Moldavia and Eastern Europe more generally from their geographic, thematic, cultural, and temporal purviews. A reevaluation of these issues involves, too, a scrutiny of existing periodizations, since “medieval” artistic forms were produced in Moldavia and other Eastern European centers well into the eighteenth century. And here, the words of Speculum’s first editor, E. K. Rand, written in his introduction to the inaugural volume, hold true: “Just how many centuries are included in the Middle Ages everybody knows but no two can define in the same way. . . . [We] need not consider dates and border-​lines, if the point of [the] discourse is directed at what everyone would agree is Mediaeval.”57 But, what makes the Moldavian material medieval? I regard this period as “medieval” for this region of Eastern Europe and others like it because the architectural, iconographic, and stylistic developments in the crucible of the post-1453 world speak to the enormous spiritual power of Byzantium in the area of the Carpathians as well as in Eastern Europe more generally.58 In fact, it would be possible to see beyond the Moldavian material and reimagine a now-​lost Byzantine tradition of church building and decoration, for which only fragments survive and to which the Moldavian churches respond and reimagine in a local context.59 Although it is true that often art historians “have to look beyond the frontiers of Byzantium to tell the story of the empire and its art,” as Eastmond notes, they also ought to consider carefully and critically inspirations from elsewhere that contributed to the development of “local” styles.60 Within 204

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the Orthodox Christian world and beyond, Byzantium offered visual, religious, and ideological models, but the art and architecture of particular regions took form as a result of the networked position of those places relative to other cultures, including Byzantium, and of local developments. Moreover, from political and cultural standpoints, this period marks the rule of princes from local families (domnii pământene), which was a form of governance replaced by the so-​called Phanariote rule instituted by the Ottoman Porte in the early eighteenth century.61 The Phanariote rule lasted in Moldavia from 1711 to 1821 and in Wallachia from 1714 until 1821. In this new phase, the two Romanian principalities were no longer ruled by local princes but by princes appointed by the Ottoman Porte, who were originally wealthy Greek merchants and bankers from important families from the Greek quarter of Constantinople known as Phanar, hence the name Phanariote. Dimitrie Cantemir (r. 1710–11) was the last Moldavian autochthonous prince before the Phanariote period commenced. This rule lasted for a little more than a century until 1821, when the Romanians returned to the throne. Finally, it is with, and through, the concerns of a medievalist that I tackle the artistic production of this region, focusing on issues of patronage, cross-​cultural contacts, the structuring of sacred space, workshop practices and traveling artists, and notions of history, cultural memory, images as sites of transformation, etc. Some of these topics, of course, are also concerns of scholars of the early modern period. The Eastern European material does not fit neatly within the preexisting geographic and temporal parameters of the study of Western medieval and Byzantine art.62 It also moves away from “centers.” But while it is important to place Eastern Europe on the map of art-​historical and historical scholarship, it is also important to avoid making it insular. Rather, it is crucial that this material is examined through connections and that its local artistic and architectural styles be placed in dialogue with other traditions. In doing so, scholarship should emphasize the relevance of this corpus of objects and monuments and those like it to the study of other artistic developments and local negotiations between competing traditions. In this regard, as Ivan Stevović aptly notes, “A world at the crossroads could by no means be simply local.”63 The Moldavian material presents a fascinating study. Together with the rest of the artistic production of Eastern Europe, it might allow us to begin to expand the geographic and temporal parameters and also to mend some of the divisions within the fields of medieval and Byzantine art history, while engaging in nuanced conversations about cultural contacts, the roles of patrons and artists, the impact of religious communities, and other relevant topics. And perhaps the ideal moment has now come to address such material and issues. The current “global turn” in medieval studies and art history is, in my opinion, the perfect moment to move beyond traditional boundaries in art-historical and historical scholarship and begin to chart how cross-​cultural interactions contributed to diversity, shaped notions of identity, and yielded eclectic visual cultures in regions that truly developed at the crossroads of different traditions, among them Latin, Greek, and Slavic.64 Beyond Traditional Boundaries

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Historians of art certainly face “choices of knowledge” and “alternatives that entail loss,” to return to Georges Didi-​Huberman’s remarks from the opening epigram of this chapter. But my proposal is not for an alternative; rather, it is for an openness to explore new territory and to move beyond traditional narratives. What lies “beyond” may help us reveal new artistic developments and negotiations between competing traditions in local contexts, as well as more nuanced facets of the stories of Western medieval and Byzantine art, history, and culture in which art history as a discipline has been more firmly grounded. Looking to Eastern Europe—especially at a time when alliances are shifting and wars are ongoing, like Russia’s war in Ukraine—brings to the fore the complexity of visual cultures that have long been silenced at the expense of other histories, yet ones that underscore the value of looking to the Middle Ages through cultural connections that complicate and transcend traditional boundaries.

Notes 1. Nelson, “Map of Art History,” 28–40. 2. See Klaniczay, “Von Ostmitteleuropa zu Westmitteleuropa,” 17–48. 3. DaCosta Kaufmann, Court, Cloister, and City, 16. 4. See Barta, Fall of the Iron Curtain. 5. Eastmond, “Limits of Byzantine Art,” 316. 6. On the topic, see Sullivan, The Eclectic Visual Culture of Medieval Moldavia, and Ousterhout, Eastern Medieval Architecture, esp. 667–76. 7. See Sullivan, “Post-​Byzantine Visual Idiom,” 57–82. 8. Sullivan, “Athonite Patronage of Stephen III,” 41–44, and Bogdanović, “Relational Spiritual Geopolitics,” 97–153, esp. 112–14. 9. Sullivan, The Eclectic Visual Culture of Medieval Moldavia, 40–47. 10. See Beldiceanu, Moldavie ottomane, 244; Gorovei, “Pacea moldo-​otomană,” 807–21; Guboglu and Mehmet, Cronici Turcești, 1:137, 187. 11. On Pătrăuți, see, more recently, Sullivan, Herea, and Ivanovici, “Space, Image, Light,” 81–100. The church at Bădeuți (Milișăuți) was destroyed by the Austrian army in 1917 during World War I. Sullivan, “Painted Fortified Monastic Churches,” 663–65. 12. Sullivan, “Painted Fortified Monastic Churches,” 666–71. 13. On the iconostasis, see Florensky, Iconostasis; Lidov, Iconostasis; Gerstel, Thresholds of the Sacred. 14. See Vătășianu, “Bolțile moldovenești,” 415–31; Nesterov, “Bolta moldovenească,” 110–19; Ousterhout, Eastern Medieval Architecture, 673. 15. Bouchard, “ ‘Cavalcada’ de la Pătrăuți,” 13–14. 16. The most recent restoration of the mural cycles at Pătrăuți concluded in 2015.

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17. His tombstone is now in the National Museum of Art in Bucharest (MNAR 14 888/37). Grabar, “Croisades,” 19–27, esp. 26; Marinescu, “Pictori greci,” 690–95, esp. 691–92; Bedros, “Gheorghe din Trikkala,” 498. 18. For a preliminary publication, see Sullivan, Herea, and Ivanovici, “Space, Image, Light,” 81–100. See also Ivanovici and Sullivan, eds., Natural Light in Medieval Churches. 19. Gorovei and Székely, Maria Asanina Paleolo­ ghina. 20. On Maria’s tomb cover at Putna Monastery, see Diez, “Moldavian Portrait Textiles,” 377–85, esp. 377, and Székely, “Mănăstirea Putna,” 73–99. 21. Sullivan, “Athonite Patronage of Stephen III,” esp. 35–41. 22. Ibid., esp. 9–31. 23. The Byzantine emperors had been notable patrons of Mount Athos especially during the Palaiologan era (1260–1453). See Speake, Mount Athos. 24. Sullivan, “Byzantine Artistic Traditions,” 125–60. 25. Holy Putna Monastery, 307–73, and Cojocaru, Treasury of Putna Monastery. In general, the style of embroidery with precious metal or gold is known as chrysokentema (χρυσοκέντημα, lit. goldstitching). 26. Johnstone, Byzantine Tradition in Church Embroidery, 84–85. 27. Evans, Byzantium, 59. 28. See Sullivan, “Byzantine Artistic Traditions,” 150–55. 29. Ćurčić, “Late Byzantine Loca Sancta?,” 251–61, esp. 253; Semoglou, “Contribution,” 4–11, esp. 8; Grabar, “Thème du ‘gisant,’ ” 143–56, esp. 149–54.

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30. See, for example, Arta din Moldova, 152–53. 31. Sullivan, “Byzantine Artistic Traditions,” 154. 32. Gorovei and Székely, Maria Asanina Paleolo­ ghina, 157. 33. Millet and des Ylouses, Broderies religieuses de style byzantine, 2:79, and Gorovei and Székely, Maria Asanina Paleologhina, 158. 34. See Krueger and Nelson, New Testament in Byzantium. 35. On the topic, see Wetter, Objekt, Überlieferung und Narrativ. 36. Sullivan, “Visions of Byzantium,” 55–59. 37. See Sullivan, “Moldavian Art and Architecture,” 200–31. 38. See Ćurčić and Hadjitryphonos, Secular Medieval Architecture, and Ćurčić, Architecture in the Balkans. 39. Herea, Pelerinaj, 15. 40. Sullivan, The Eclectic Visual Culture of Medieval Moldavia, chapter 5, and Platon, “Secol de cercetare,” 82–103. 41. The majority of the Moldavian churches carry inscriptions and tituli in Church Slavonic. The church of the Holy Cross at Pătrăuți Monastery (1487) is one key example that displays inscriptions in Greek. 42. See Bedros, “ ‘Hybrid’ Iconography,” 199–220. 43. Another example is the church of Saint George at Kurbinovo (1191). See Ćurčić, Architecture in the Balkans, 392. 44. Sullivan, “Visions of Byzantium,” 49–51, esp. fig. 25. 45. Cincheza-​Buculei, “Programme iconographique,” 21–58, and Cincheza-​Buculei, “Programul iconografic,” 85–93. 46. On votive portraits, see Cazacu and Dumitrescu, “Culte dynastique,” 13–102, and Ștefănescu, “Gift-​Giving.” 47. See Watson, Early Iconography. See also Henry, “Arbre de Jessé,” 1–31; Taylor, “Three Local Motifs,” 267–75; Taylor, “Historiated Tree of Jesse,” 125–76. 48. See Peltomaa, Image of the Virgin, and Spatharakis, Pictorial Cycles. 49. Sullivan, “Visions of Byzantium,” 31–68. 50. On the topic, see Balș, “Influence de l’art gothique,” 9–13, and Fabini, “Chiese-​castello,” 7–22. 51. Balș, “Influence de l’art gotique,” 10. The Graphic Collection of the Akademie der Bildenden

Kunste in Vienna preserves comparable examples; see Böker, Architektur der Gotik, esp. 307, 316, 325, 337. 52. See Lăpedatu, “Ioan Zidarul,” 83–86; Ilovan, “Casa ‘Ioan Zidarul,’ ” 190–96; Orășanu, “Maison patricienne de Bistriza,” 57–69. 53. Noteworthy studies include Bacci, “Some Thoughts,” 203–27; Bacci, “Veneto-​Byzantine ‘Hybrids,’ ” 73–106; Dale, “Cultural Hybridity,” 151–92; Georgopoulou, “Late Medieval Crete and Venice,” 479–96; Olympios, “Treacherous Taxonomy,” 417–37. 54. See Herea, Pelerinaj, and Herea, Symbolic Presence. 55. Székely, “Ștefan cel Mare,” 255–62, and Mareș, “Sfârșitul lumii,” 193–207. 56. Papacostea, “Moldova în epoca Reformei,” 55–78, and Suceveanul, “Bisericile cu pictură exterioară,” 406–44, esp. 422. 57. Rand, “Editor’s Preface,” 4. Lisa Fagin Davis, Executive Director of the Medieval Academy of America, brought attention to this passage in the September 2018 issue of the MAA Newsletter. 58. See Rossi and Sullivan, Byzantium. 59. One example would be the tradition of painting churches on their exteriors with frescoes. 60. Eastmond, “Limits of Byzantine Art,” 317. 61. See Runciman, Great Church in Captivity, 360–84 (“The Phanariots”). 62. For a recent exploration of the issues, see Rossi and Sullivan, “Late Medieval Visual Culture.” 63. Stevović, “Architecture of Medieval Serbia,” 1. Although Stevović was writing about the medieval artistic production of Serbia, his statement, in my view, holds true universally. 64. On the global turn, note, for example, the University of Michigan symposium on 8–9 February 2019 on the topic “De-​centering the Global Middle Ages.” The 94th annual meeting of the Medieval Academy of America in 2019 had the theme “The Global Turn in Medieval Studies” (University of Pennsylvania, 7–9 March 2019). The International Center of Medieval Art has recently supported several projects that fall outside the bounds of traditional narratives in the field. Moreover, the “Global Middle Ages” project (G-​MAP) is an ongoing initiative hosted at the University of Texas, Austin. See also Rossi and Sullivan, Eclecticism.

Bibliography Arta din Moldova de la Ștefan cel Mare la Movilești. Bucharest: National Museum of Art, 1999. Bacci, Michele. “Some Thoughts on Greco-​Venetian Artistic Interactions in the Fourteenth and

Early Fifteenth Centuries.” In Wonderful Things: Byzantium Through Its Art, edited by Antony Eastmond and Liz James, 203–27. Farnham: Ashgate, 2013.

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———. “Veneto-​Byzantine ‘Hybrids’: Towards a Reassessment.” Studies in Iconography 35 (2014): 73–106. Balș, Gheorghe. “Influence de l’art gothique sur l’architecture roumaine.” Bulletin de la section historique de l’Académie Roumaine 15 (1929): 9–13. Barta, Peter I., ed. The Fall of the Iron Curtain and the Culture of Europe. London: Routledge, 2013. Bedros, Vlad. “Gheorghe din Trikkala.” In Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, 52:498. Leipzig: Saur, 2006. ———. “The ‘Hybrid’ Iconography of the Agnus Dei in Moldavian Wall Paintings.” In Rossi and Sullivan, Eclecticism in Late Medieval Visual Culture, 199–220. Beldiceanu, Nicoară. La Moldavie ottomane à la fin du XVe siècle et au début du XVIe siècle. Paris: Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner, 1969. Bogdanović, Jelena. “The Relational Spiritual Geopolitics of Constantinople, the Capital of the Byzantine Empire.” In Political Landscapes of Capital Cities, edited by Jessica Joyce Christie, Jelena Bogdanović, and Eulogio Cuzmán, 97–153. Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2016. Böker, Johann Josef. Architektur der Gotik: Bestandskatalog der Weltgrößten Sammlung an gotischen Baurissen (Legat Franz Jäger) im Kupferstichkabinett der Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien. Vienna: Anton Pustet, 2005. Bouchard, Jacques. “ ‘Cavalcada’ de la Pătrăuți: Inscripțiile picturii.” Analele Putnei 1, no. 2 (2005): 13–14. Cazacu, Matei, and Ana Dumitrescu. “Culte dynastique et images votives en Moldavie au XVe siècle.” Cahiers Balkaniques 15 (1990): 13–102. Cincheza-​Buculei, Ecaterina. “Le programme iconographique des peintures murales de la chambre des tombeaux de l’église du monastère de Dobrovăț.” Cahiers Balkaniques 21 (1994): 21–58. ———. “Programul iconografic al gropnițelor Moldovenești.” In Arta Românească, Arta Europeană: Centenar Virgil Vătășianu, edited by Mihai Porumb, 85–93. Oradea: Editura Muzeului Țării Crișurilor, 2002. Cojocaru, Alexie. Treasury of Putna Monastery: Embroideries and Fabrics. Translated by Ștefana Totorcea. Putna: Editura Mitropolit Iacov Putneanul, 2016. Crăciun, Casian. Reprezentarea imnului Acatist în iconografia moldovă din secolul al XVI-​lea. Galați: Episcopia Dunării de Jos, 1999. Ćurčić, Slobodan. Architecture in the Balkans from Diocletian to Süleyman the Magnificent. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010. ———. “Late Byzantine Loca Sancta? Some Questions Regarding the Form and Function of

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Epitaphioi.” In The Twilight of Byzantium: Aspects of Cultural and Religious History in the Late Byzantine Empire, edited by Slobodan Ćurčić and Doula Mourike, 251–61. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991. Ćurčić, Slobodan, and Evangelia Hadjitryphonos, eds. Secular Medieval Architecture in the Balkans: 1300–1500 and Its Preservation. Thessaloniki: AIMOS, 1997. DaCosta Kaufmann, Thomas. Court, Cloister, and City: The Art and Culture of Central Europe, 1450–1800. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. Dale, Thomas E. A. “Cultural Hybridity in Medieval Venice: Reinventing the East at San Marco After the Fourth Crusade.” In San Marco, Byzantium, and the Myths of Venice, edited by Henry Maguire and Robert S. Nelson, 151–92. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collections, 2010. Didi-​Huberman, Georges. Confronting Images: Questioning the Ends of a Certain History of Art. University Park: Penn State University Press, 2005. Diez, Ernst. “Moldavian Portrait Textiles.” Art Bulletin 10, no. 4 (1928): 377–85. Eastmond, Antony. “The Limits of Byzantine Art.” In A Companion to Byzantium, edited by Liz James, 313–22. Oxford: Wiley, 2010. Evans, Helen C., ed. Byzantium: Faith and Power (1261– 1557). New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. Fabini, Hermann. “Le chiese-​castello della Transilvania ed i monasteri fortificati Ortodossi della Moldavia in Romania.” Castellum: Revista dell’Istituto italiano dei castelli 46 (2004): 7–22. Florensky, Pavel. Iconostasis. Translated by Donald Sheehan and Olga Andrejev. Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1996. Georgopoulou, Maria. “Late Medieval Crete and Venice: An Appropriation of Byzantine Heritage.” Art Bulletin 77, no. 3 (1995): 479–96. Gerstel, Sharon, ed. Thresholds of the Sacred: Architectural, Art Historical, Liturgical, and Theological Perspectives on Religious Screens, East and West. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2006. Gorovei, Ștefan S. “Pacea moldo-​otomană din 1486: Observații pe marginea unor texte.” Revista de Istorie 35, no. 7 (1982): 807–21. Reprinted in Ștefan cel Mare și Sfânt, 1504–2004: Portret în istorie, 496–515. Putna: Sfânta Mănăstire Putna, 2003. Gorovei, Ștefan S., and Maria Magdalena Székely. Maria Asanina Paleologhina: O prințesă bizantină pe tronul Moldovei. Putna: Sfânta Mănăstire Putna, 2006. Grabar, André. “Les croisades de l’Europe orientale dans l’art.” In Mélanges Charles Diehl, 19–27. Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1930.

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———. “Le thème du ‘gisant’ dans l’art byzantin.” Cahiers Archéologiques 29 (1980–81): 143–56. Guboglu, Mihail, and Mustafa Mehmet, eds. Cronici Turcești privind țările române. Vol. 1, Sec. XV–XVII. Bucharest: Editura Academiei, 1955. Henry, Paul. “L’arbre de Jessé dans les églises de Bukovine.” In Extrait de la Bibliothèque de l’Institut Français de Hautes-​Etudes en Roumanie, vol. 2, Mélanges 1928, 1–31. Bucharest: Cultura Națională, 1929. Herea, Gabriel-​Dinu. Pelerinaj în spațiul sacru Bucovinean. Cluj-​Napoca: Patmos, 2010. ———. The Symbolic Presence of the Sun at Pătrăuți. Translated by Alice Isabella Sullivan, foreword by Marc Eduard Frîncu, introduction by Vladimir Ivanovici. Timișoara: Editura Universității de Vest, 2020. Holy Putna Monastery, 1466–2016: 550 Years Since the Laying of the Foundational Stone. Putna: Editura “Mitropolit Iacov Putneanul,” 2016. Ilovan, Vasile. “Casa ‘Ioan Zidarul’ din Bistrița.” File de Istorie 3 (1974): 190–96. Ivanovici, Vladimir, and Alice Isabella Sullivan, eds. Natural Light in Medieval Churches. East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450–1450, 88. Leiden: Brill, 2023. Johnstone, Pauline. The Byzantine Tradition in Church Embroidery. London: Tiranti, 1967. Klaniczay, Gábor. “Von Ostmitteleuropa zu Westmitteleuropa: Eine Umwandlung im Hochmittelalter.” In Böhmen und seine Nachbarn in der Přemyslidenzeit, edited by Ivan Hlaváček and Alexander Patschovsky, 17–48. Ostfildern: Jan Thorbecke, 2011. Krueger, Derek, and Robert S. Nelson, eds. The New Testament in Byzantium. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2016. Lăpedatu, Alexandru. “Ioan Zidarul lui Petru-​Vodă Rareș.” Buletinul Comisiunii Monumentelor Istorice 5 (1912): 83–86. Lidov, Alexei, ed. The Iconostasis: Origins—Evolution— Symbolism. Moscow: Progress-​Tradition, 2000. Mareș, Alexandru. “Sfârșitul lumii (anii 7000 și 8000) în textele slavo-​române și românești din secolele al XV-​lea–al XVIII-​lea.” Studii și Materiale de Istorie Medie 22 (2004): 193–207. Marinescu, Florin. “Pictori greci în țările române.” Istorie și cultură 44, no. 2 (2009): 690–95. Millet, Gabriel, and Hélène des Ylouses. Broderies religieuses de style byzantine. 2 vols. Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes, Sciences Religieuses 55. Paris: E. Leroux; Presses Universitaires de France, 1939–47. Nelson, Robert. “The Map of Art History.” Art Bulletin 79, no. 1 (1997): 28–40. Nesterov, Tamara. “Bolta moldovenească: Aport original al meșterilor moldoveni la tezaurul

arhitectural universal.” Akademos 30, no. 3 (2013): 110–19. Olympios, Michalis. “Treacherous Taxonomy: Art in Venetian Crete Around 1500 and the ‘Cretan Renaissance.’ ” Art Bulletin 98, no. 4 (2016): 417–37. Orășanu, Ana Maria. “Une maison patricienne de Bistriza au XVIe siècle ‘La maison de Ion Zidaru.’ ” Revue Roumaine d’Histoire 15, no. 1 (1976): 57–69. Ousterhout, Robert G. Eastern Medieval Architecture: The Building Traditions of Byzantium and Neighboring Lands. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. Papacostea, Șerban. “Moldova în epoca Reformei: Contribuție la istoria societății moldovenești în veacul al XVI-​lea.” Studii: Revistă de Istorie 11, no. 4 (1958): 55–78. Peltomaa, Leena Mari. The Image of the Virgin in the Akathistos Hymn. Leiden: Brill, 2001. Platon, Gabriela. “Un secol de cercetare a picturii murale medieval din Moldova.” Teologie și Viață, nos. 5–8 (2013): 82–103. Rand, E. K. “Editor’s Preface.” Speculum 1 (1926): 4. Rossi, Maria Alessia, and Alice Isabella Sullivan, eds. Byzantium in Eastern European Visual Culture in the Late Middle Ages. East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450–1450, 65. Leiden: Brill, 2020. ———, eds. Eclecticism in Late Medieval Visual Culture at the Crossroads of the Latin, Greek, and Slavic Traditions. Sense, Matter and Medium: New Approaches to Medieval Material and Literary Culture 6. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021. ———. “Thematic Overview: Late Medieval Visual Culture in Eastern Europe.” In Encyclopedia of the Global Middle Ages. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019. Runciman, Stephen. The Great Church in Captivity: A Study of the Patriarchate of Constantinople from the Eve of the Turkish Conquest to the Greek War of Independence. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1968. Semoglou, Athanassios. “Contribution à l’étude du portrait funeraire dans le monde byzantin (14e–16e siècles).” Zograf 24 (1995): 4–11. Spatharakis, Ioannis. The Pictorial Cycles of the “Akathistos” Hymn for the Virgin. Leiden: Alexandros, 2005. Speake, Graham. Mount Athos: Renewal in Paradise. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002. Ștefănescu, Laura-​Cristina. “Gift-​Giving, Memoria, and Art Patronage in the Principalities of Walachia and Moldavia: The Function and Meaning of Princely Votive Portraits (14th–17th Centuries).” MA thesis, Utrecht University, 2010. Stevović, Ivan. “Architecture of Medieval Serbia: Appropriation and Synthesis.” Conference

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paper delivered at The 48th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, 2013. Suceveanul, Irineu Crăciunaș. “Bisericile cu pictură exterioară din Moldova, I.” Mitropolia Moldovei și Sucevei 45, nos. 7–9 (1969): 406–44. Sullivan, Alice Isabella. “The Athonite Patronage of Stephen III of Moldavia, 1457–1504.” Speculum 94, no. 1 (2019): 1–46. ———. “Byzantine Artistic Traditions in Moldavian Church Embroideries.” In “L’évolution de la broderie de tradition byzantine en Méditerranée orientale et dans le monde slave (1200–1800),” edited by Joëlle Dalègre, Elena Papastavrou, and Marielle Martiniani-​Reber. Special issue, Cahiers Balkaniques 48 (2021): 125–60. ———. The Eclectic Visual Culture of Medieval Moldavia. Visualising the Middle Ages, 15. Leiden: Brill, 2023. ———. “Moldavian Art and Architecture Between Byzantium and the West.” In Rossi and Sullivan, Byzantium in Eastern European Visual Culture, 200–31. ———. “The Painted Fortified Monastic Churches of Moldavia: Bastions of Orthodoxy in a Post-​ Byzantine World.” PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2017. ———. “A Post-​Byzantine Visual Idiom in Moldavian Art and Architecture.” In “Afterlife of Byzantine Monuments in Post-​Byzantine Times,” edited

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by Elena Boeck, special issue, Études Byzantines et Post-​Byzantines 3, no. 10 (2021): 57–82. ———. “Visions of Byzantium: The Siege of Constantinople in Sixteenth-​Century Moldavia.” Art Bulletin 99, no. 4 (2017): 31–68. Sullivan, Alice Isabella, Gabriel-​Dinu Herea, and Vladimir Ivanovici. “Space, Image, Light: Toward an Understanding of Moldavian Architecture in the Fifteenth Century.” Gesta 60, no. 1 (2021): 81–100. Székely, Maria Magdalena. “Mănăstirea Putna: loc de memorie.” Studii și Materiale de Istorie Medie 22 (2004): 73–99. ———. “Ștefan cel Mare și sfârșitul lumii.” Studii și Materiale de Istorie Medie 21 (2003): 255–62. Taylor, Michael D. “A Historiated Tree of Jesse.” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 34/35 (1980–81): 125–76. ———. “Three Local Motifs in Moldavian Trees of Jesse, with an Excursus on the Liturgical Basis of the Exterior Mural Programs.” Revue des Études Sud-​Est Européennes 12 (1974): 267–75. Vătășianu, Virgil. “Bolțile moldovenești: Originea și evoluția lor istorică.” Anuarul Institutului de Istorie Națională no. 5 (1928–30): 415–31. Watson, Arthur. The Early Iconography of the Tree of Jesse. London: Oxford University Press, 1934. Wetter, Evelin. Objekt, Überlieferung und Narrativ: Spätmittelalterliche Goldschmiedekunst im historischen Königreich Ungarn. Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2011.

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9 “The Summit of the Earth” What Armenian Texts Can Do for the History of Medieval Art and Beyond

Christina Maranci

What would happen if we transported Anania Shirakats‘i, the seventh-​century polymath, to the Upper East Side of New York City in September of 2018, ushered him up the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and bought him a ticket to the blockbuster exhibition Armenia!? That show focused on the fifth to eighteenth centuries, highlighting Armenia’s connectedness to other cultures through politics, religion, and trade. Loans from the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin, the Armenian Patriarchates of Jerusalem and Istanbul, the Catholicosate of the Great House of Cilicia, and other institutions from across Europe and the Americas introduced museumgoers to a treasury of objects, many on view in the United States for the first time. This massive achievement, spearheaded by Helen C. Evans, Mary and Michael Jaharis Curator of Byzantine Art, earned acclaim across media outlets and enjoyed record-​breaking attendance. Its catalogue, Armenia: Art, Religion, and Trade in the Middle Ages, quickly sold out and required subsequent printings.1 Perhaps Anania would have regarded the fifth- and sixth-​century architectural fragments on display in the first gallery as antiquities and wondered at the intricate designs made by the carvers of the huge khach‘k‘ars (carved cross stones). He might have enjoyed inspecting the gold jewelry from the city of Dvin and studying the refined technology of the ceramics. He might have prayed before the reliquaries, pored over

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the manuscripts, and relished the minute needlework of the textiles. Close reader of Ptolemy, he probably would have been intensely curious about the magnificent eighteenth-​century map on display. Or maybe, catching sight of the Greek and Roman galleries en route to the show, Anania would have skipped Armenia! entirely. Would he have shared the great pride that so many of us felt in the Armenological world and in the Armenian community to see our culture on display at the most prestigious public arts institution in the country? I myself not only savored seeing the objects, so long known only from publications, mounted carefully on podia or within vitrines; I also enjoyed watching people admiring them. Just as exciting for me (and for many others, to judge from images posted on social media) was the huge banner emblazoned with the word Armenia on the Met’s facade. Framed between the solemn intercolumniations of McKim, Mead, and White, Armenia, it seemed, had finally joined the history of art. For a culture with traumatic genocide in its past and with heritage that is, to this day, subject to the custodianship (or lack thereof) of neighboring states, Armenia! was an opportunity to celebrate. Increasingly since the 1990s—as this very volume attests—scholars have recognized the importance of expanding the borders of medieval art to include regions such as the South Caucasus. Every year, and with ever greater frequency, publications offer an expansive view of visual and material culture, often including Armenia and its neighbors within their framework. My own introductory text on Armenian art was published with Oxford in 2018; I could not have imagined that, in earlier decades, such a prestigious publishing house would have accepted a monograph solely concerned with Armenian art.2 The Met show can therefore be viewed as a public culmination of decades-​long efforts to include Armenia in Anglophone histories of art. “What took you so long?” Anania might have asked (in  Classical Armenian, of course), “And what is the big deal?” For that worldly and educated scholar, Jerusalem might have been the center of the earth, but Armenia was “the summit of the earth” (կատար երգրի / katar ergri), as described in the Geography attributed to him. Within an extensive description of the entire known globe, including Europe, Africa, and East Asia, the author gives the following vivid description of the historical lands of Upper Armenia: [Upper Armenia] is the highest [region], not only of Armenia but of the whole world and this is why it is called the “summit of the earth.” It issues waters to the four corners of the earth, giving rise to four very powerful rivers: the Euphrates to the west, the Arax to the east, the Gayl to the south and the Acampsis, i.e. the Voh, to the north. It has three large mountains. It has [among its] animals the stag, the goat, the wild sheep, sheep, deer, and pig; among wild fowl, the partridge, the bustard, stork, etc. It also has hot springs and salt deposits and all the abundance of the earth.3

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For Anania, the Armenia! exhibition might have therefore seemed an entirely appropriate vehicle to display the culture of a land so rich in resources and mounted high above the rest of the world. I invoke Anania and the Geography in order to show how contemporary textual sources can assist and challenge us as we seek to broaden our conceptualization of medieval art. Of course, it is beyond dispute that primary sources provide an essential framework for understanding visual and material culture. Yet as I have discovered in my own research, often to my own surprise, close knowledge of Armenian textual traditions accompanying works of art does not necessarily narrow one’s perspective by deepening it. On the contrary, Armenian-​language inscriptions, biblical texts, manuscript colophons, chronicles, commentaries, treatises, apocrypha, and liturgical rituals, just to mention a small fraction of the existing textual genres, frequently offer a vivid sense of Armenia’s relations to surrounding cultures and its place within the world in general. This point seems important to make in the context of the present volume, which explores ways to include formerly marginalized cultures, such as Armenia, in the study and teaching of medieval art. The following pages will consider five combinations of art and text: the seventh-​century church of Zvart‘nots‘, pages from the Cilician manuscript known as the Lectionary of Het‘um II, the Monastery of Surb Step‘anos of Darashamb, a set of Armenian-​inscribed Kütahya tiles, and, finally, an Armenian pilgrim’s account of the medieval monuments of Western Europe. The presentation of each of these cases is necessarily kept brief in order to convey the variety of ways that reading Armenian texts can support a more geographically and culturally expansive medieval art history.

Seventh-​Century Writing and the Church of Zvart‘nots‘ I will start with the seventh-​century church of Zvart‘nots‘, about which I have published in detail elsewhere.4 Commissioned by the Armenian patriarch Nersēs III (ca. 641– ca. 661 ce), Zvart‘nots‘ and its adjacent residential complex are today in ruins, having been destroyed in an earthquake of the late tenth or early eleventh century (fig. 9.1). Yet even in its present state (which includes some reconstruction in the modern period), Zvart‘nots‘ remains a striking site, its church rising from a platform of seven tall steps, its copious sculptural program, now in pieces, laid out on the grounds to the south and east. The church plan is a unique combination of round (or more precisely thirty-​two-​sided) perimeter wall and inner tetraconch of columnar exedrae (fig. 9.2). These columns were crowned with Ionic basket capitals bearing the Greek monograms of the patron, while four thick diagonal piers featured massive eagles with their wings outspread. Excavations of the early twentieth century revealed an Armenian-​inscribed sundial, a short foundation inscription in Greek, and, more mysteriously, an Urartian stele of Rusas II.

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Figure 9.1 Zvart‘nots‘ Cathedral, view of ruins. Vagharshapat, Armenia. Photo: author.

The complexity of the church, its impressive appearance, and its historical significance have earned Zvart‘nots‘ close attention, and many, including myself, have published interpretations of its plan, epigraphy, and decoration. In 1971, Eugene Kleinbauer compared its plan to fifth- and sixth-​century monuments of Syria and Mesopotamia, such as the church of Apamea, which also feature double-​shell layouts with inner tetraconchs.5 In more recent years, Dora Piguet-​Panayotova and Armen Kazaryan compare Zvart‘nots‘ to the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, noting, among other parallels, the enclosing rotunda form.6 My own work stresses connections with the Byzantine world, both through Greek inscriptions and the program of capital sculpture, whose eagles and cross monograms find a parallel in lead seals from sixthand seventh-​century Constantinople. Other scholars have highlighted the Armenian features of Zvart‘nots‘: its rubble masonry construction, so typical of monuments in the region; its dedication to the theophany of Saint Gregory, the patron Saint of Armenia; and the Armenian inscription on its sundial.7 Conspicuous in the scholarly literature, perhaps not surprisingly, is the theme of “mixture”: T‘oros T‘oramanyan observed in 1905 that “the church of Zvart‘nots‘ in general represents a mixture (խառնուրդ) of Roman, Byzantine, Greek, and Armenian styles.”8 It is noteworthy, too, that general remarks on Zvart‘nots‘ often take the form of a concessive clause: “Although Zvart‘nots‘ may look Byzantine or Syrian, it is in fact an Armenian building.” The art-​historical literature thus led me in several different directions at once. How could a monument be so resistant to categorization? Turning my attention from the physical evidence and embarking on a sustained period of reading contemporary texts 214

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Figure 9.2 Plan of Zvart‘nots‘ Cathedral, ca. 1913. From Josef Strzygowski, Die Baukunst der Armenier und Europa (Vienna: Anton Schroll, 1918), fig. 112.

led me to another way of thinking about Zvart‘nots‘. During this process, my central source was the History attributed to Sebēos of Bagratunis, which not only offers a detailed account of the complex politics of seventh-​century Armenia but also makes specific mention of the construction of Zvart‘nots‘ and includes a long section on its patron, Nersēs. Even more, the History sets local affairs within a much broader, even cosmic sweep: Armenian events are framed within the context of the Byzantine-​ Sasanian wars, the earliest of the Islamic conquests, and the coming apocalypse.9 The Geography attributed to Anania Shirakats‘i, by its very nature, is also global in sweep and constitutes the earliest surviving description of the entire known world in the Armenian language.10 Here, too, close description of Armenian regions are inserted within the broadest possible frame, from Spain and England to China. Other Armenian texts from this period also exhibit such worldliness: Timothy Greenwood has discussed the Anonymous Chronicle, a two-​part compilation dated between 686 and 689/90 ce.11 Drawing from older sources, including Annianus of Alexandria and Eusebius of Caesarea’s Chronographia, it presents in its first part a world history, beginning with a biblical genealogy; its second part is an ecclesiastical history in which the compiler has inserted passages about Armenian affairs, including the story of the conversion of Trdat III and the creation of the Armenian alphabet. In these three cases, Armenian writing of the “The Summit of the Earth”

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latter seventh century situates Armenia within a vast geopolitical context, reaching far beyond local affairs to Byzantium, Persia, the Islamic world, the Holy Land, and, in the case of the Geography, the entire world. Jean-​Pierre Mahé, Timothy Greenwood, and others have associated the unprecedented scope of this writing with the so-​called crises of the seventh century, which the texts framed in cosmic and eschatological terms.12 In placing Armenia within such a universal construct, seventh-​century writing offers a powerful means to interpret Zvart‘nots‘, whose dates of construction span the first Islamic conquests, the end of the Sasanian dynasty, and the faltering of the Byzantine Empire. Like contemporary texts, Zvart‘nots‘, I argue, locates Armenian tradition within a broad geographical sweep. While the art-​historical scholarship on the church tends to categorize and force the visual evidence into traditions, whether “Syria,” “Byzantium,” “Armenia,” “Holy Land,” or a “mixture,” contemporary historiographical and geographical models allow for a more expansive interpretation of the monument. As I have developed elsewhere, these texts also suggest an additional parallel for Zvart‘nots‘ in the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, built only a few decades later in 691 ce. Not only does that monument bear a similar architectural plan and (as Lawrence Nees argues) sculptural features, it also uses similarly universalizing visual rhetoric.13 Although constructed by different communities and with different faiths, both monuments draw from multiple visual traditions to make broad claims on the landscape in the middle of the geopolitical shifts of the seventh century.

Text and Image in the Lectionary of Het‘um II

Figure 9.3 (opposite) Headpiece. From Lectionary of King Het‘um II, 1286. Yerevan, Matenadaran MS 979, fol. 293r. Photo courtesy of Matenadaran.

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A sense of worldliness is inherent to the region of Armenian Cilicia in southwest Asia Minor, which served as a commercial and diplomatic nexus on the eastern Mediterranean. An Armenian kingdom existed between 1199 and 1375, accompanied by a tradition of royal artistic patronage. In the realm of illuminated manuscripts, the 1270s and 1280s witnessed the development of an astonishingly exuberant new pictorial style. Developing further the narrative programs of celebrated painter T‘oros Ṙ oslin (ca. 1210–ca. 1270), artists of the later thirteenth century created a new, highly pitched aesthetic, using a wide range of colors, stacking complex forms in tall pictorial wedges, cramming forms into corners, and using expressive and vivid figures.14 From this “baroque” period, as it has been called, date some of the most compelling and powerful examples of artistic contact with Byzantium, Western Europe, and the Mongol Empire. A beautiful example of this tradition is found in the Lectionary of King Het‘um II, dated 1286 (Yerevan, Matenadaran, MS 979). Folio 293 recto features an extraordinary headpiece (fig. 9.3). Complex patterns, bold colors, and shimmering gold create a dizzyingly effect, only heightened by the profusion of living creatures: the right margin is an explosion of tendrils, fruits, and vines, inhabited by dragons, rabbits, birds, and felines Out of Bounds

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and topped with a three-​faced human upon which a majestic eagle perches. In the central headpiece is the youthful Christ Emmanuel, framed by an ornate medallion and flanked by majestic silver-​gray lions. Their spiral-​curled manes and those of the blue felines below them recall, as scholars note, similar motifs on Mongol and Yuan dynasty porcelain and silks. What accounts for such visual links? As Dickran Kouymjian observes, the economic and political relations of Cilicia with the Mongols presented rich opportunity for the transmission of artistic ideas. During the Ilkhanid period, Mongol suzerainty extended from China to Anatolia, enabling the circulation of goods for various purposes, including trade and diplomacy. To protect his kingdom from both the Seljuks and the Mamluks, Het‘um I (r. 1226–70) formed an alliance with the Mongols. Traveling to Karakorum between 1253 and 1256, he met with the Great Khan (Möngke) and recognized Mongol suzerainty, as did his son Levon II (r. 1269–89). These visits would have presented ample opportunity for gift exchange and for the exposure of Cilician elites to wares from Mongol-​controlled China. In seeking further to explore the reception and function of the exotic motifs in their new context, the studies of Alicia Walker and Matthew Canepa offer useful methodological and interpretive tools. Canepa, remarking upon this very lectionary and its scholarship, asks what new meanings and correspondences enveloped the forms in their novel context.15 One could answer that the exotic creatures of this folio suit the aesthetic flamboyance of contemporary Cilician deluxe commissions. They might also have conveyed prestige, as deliberate evocations of luxury objects intended to demonstrate the status of the aspiring young Het‘um II as a rightful heir to the throne and peer of neighboring rulers. However, we can begin with even more basic work, by reading the collection of texts on the folio itself that the headpiece crowns. Despite the rich literature on this manuscript, these texts seem to have gone unexamined by art historians. The readings are for 7 April, the feast of the Annunciation. The first reading is Psalm 67 (68), concerning the victory of God over the enemies of his people. Most appropriate to the Annunciation is verse 4, “Let them rejoice” (ուրախ եղիցին), echoing Gabriel’s exhortation to the Virgin. The manuscript contains a partial refrain of verse 12—“The Lord gave word” (Տէր տացէ զբան / Tēr tats‘ē zban) Although the manuscript omits it, the verse refrain continues, “They proclaimed the news with great power” (ոյք աւետարանեն զօրութեամբ բազմաւ / oyk‘ awetaranen zōrut‘eamb bazmaw).16 In place of this phrase, a dragon opens its jaws and lashes its tongue, as though it had not quite finished repeating the divine word it had received. Those singing the Psalm would recognize the theme of foreign submission continuing in verse 19: “And you ascended the heights, you captured captivity, took the plunder, shared the gifts and gave them to the sons of man, even to the unbelievers, so that you might reside among them.” Also noteworthy is verse 30, which reads: “Because of your temple in Jerusalem, kings will offer you gifts.” The Armenian word for gifts in this later verse is not pargev, as in verse 19, but patarag (պատարագ, lit. offering) the same word used in Matthew 218

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Figure 9.4 Headpiece, detail. From Lectionary of King Het‘um II, 1286. Yerevan, Matenadaran MS 979, fol. 293r. Photo courtesy of Matenadaran.

2:12 to describe the gifts of the Magi and also that used to refer to the divine liturgy (as in Greek: eucharist).17 In verses 31 and 32, the psalmist specifies further those paying homage to God: “Envoys will come from Egypt; India [Հնդիկք/Hndikk‘] shall reach its hands to God. Kingdoms of the earth, praise God, and sing psalms to God.” Noteworthy here is the term used for envoys, հրեշտակք (hreshtakk‘), whose primary meaning is angel. Thus, the text once more evokes for the reader the imagery of the Adoration of the Magi. Psalm 67 (68) also abounds in animal themes, including the “beast among the reeds, the assembly of bulls, and the ranks of cattle” (verse 31), reflected also in the painted bovines in the margins of the folio. Particularly charming is verse 24, “Just as your feet will bathe in blood, so will the tongues of your dogs bathe in the blood of your enemies,” recalling the visible red tongues of the creatures in the headpiece (fig. 9.4). The left text column continues this catalogue of the natural world with Proverbs 11:30 to 12:4, “The Summit of the Earth”

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mentioning, among other things, trees, fruits, and roots. The phrase “the fruit of the righteous is the tree of life” appears just below a bird’s tail and offers a lovely textual counterpart to the explosion of tendrils on the right-​hand margin. Below Proverbs, the right-​hand text column pursues the themes of Psalm 67 with the prophecy of Zechariah: “Sing and rejoice, daughter of Sion. For behold, I will come and dwell in your midst, says the Lord. Many nations shall take refuge in the Lord on that day, and shall be his people; and will dwell in your midst. And you shall know that the Lord almighty has sent me to you” (Zec 2:10–11). This text, like those mentioned above, offers a way to understand the Yuan dynasty–inspired lions and dragons of the headpiece as pictorial testimony of the “many nations” (ազգք բազումք / azgk‘ bazumk‘) who “take refuge in the Lord.”18 One can imagine the immediate political resonances of such a message for Het‘um II, who presumably would have sung and prayed before this beautiful and sizeable book (which measures 33.4 by 21 centimeters). Singing of the submission of foreign nations to the Lord might have offered some encouragement to address Cilicia’s delicate political relations with the crusader powers, the rise of the Ilkhanate dynasty in Iran, and the beginning of Mamluk attacks on Cilicia. What seems certain, however, is that reading this gorgeous page offers a powerful and historicizing context in which to understand the motifs of the headpiece: not just as worldly expressions of elite identity or as traces of international trade and diplomacy but as contemporary interpretations of the liturgical readings.

Epigraphic and Architectural Readings of Surb Step‘anos Armenian inscriptions offer an equally powerful means to interpret the surfaces upon which they are written, as demonstrated by a monastic complex 15 kilometers northwest of Julfa (East Azarbaijan Province, Iran), a historically Armenian community that was depopulated during the Ottoman-​Safavid wars of the seventeenth century (fig. 9.5). The monastery is dedicated to Saint Stephen (Surb Step‘anos) the Protomarytr and is also known as Darashamb, after a now-​abandoned village in the vicinity.19 The monastery is first attested in tenth-​century sources; by the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, it was a celebrated center for manuscript illumination. Surviving buildings date to the later seventeenth century, largely between 1650 and 1690, when the Safavids reoccupied the region; construction and decoration continued into the early nineteenth century, when the interior was plastered and painted.20 Numerous wall inscriptions identify the monastery’s main sponsor as Hakob Jughayets‘i (catholicos of Etchmiadzin, 1655–80); many other texts record donations from pilgrims and parishioners. Seventeenth-​century inscriptions also identify the site as the resting place of the “Holy Thousand,” who were martyred, along with Vardan Mamikonean, in the battle of Avarayr in 451. 220

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Figure 9.5 Surb Step’anos, Darashamb, later seventeenth century. East Azarbaijan Province, modern-​ day Iran. Photo: Hrair Hawk Khatcherian.

The complex of Surb Step‘anos is rectangular with round corner towers and an entry gate at the west. The southeast complex is built into the mountain slope, its roofs forming paved terraces. While most of the construction is roughly processed masonry, the church and bell tower employ the traditional rubble-​masonry technique. The abundant relief decoration draws upon a long tradition in Armenian architecture. Even the striking main entrance, its deep vault crowned with a muqarnas hood and flanked by engaged columns, recalls thirteenth- and fourteenth-​century Armenian appropriations of Seljuk elements. Other features of the church point to fresh impulses from the Islamic world: the dome rests on squinch-​net vaulting, a device known from Timurid and later Safavid architecture, while the west entrance, with its vase-​shaped engaged columns, flanking blind ogee arches, and framed rectangular panels, also recalls the contemporary architecture of Iran, executed here in stone rather than tile. Images of Christ, saints, and the twelve Apostles, carefully set within identical rectangular frames, adorn the drum (fig. 9.6). Figures feature bulbous bodies and large heads with deeply chiseled eyes. On the west facade, just below the gable, is a Crucifixion; on the east side, in the same position, an angel and the Trinity observe the stoning of Saint Stephen. Print sources may explain the striking carving style of the reliefs. Executed in broad planes of stone with few surface details and set against large uncarved expanses, the figures are highly readable from below. In their upright rectangular frames, they recall the aesthetic of contemporary printed books in their strength and simplicity. “The Summit of the Earth”

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Figure 9.6 Carvings on drum of Surb Step‘anos, later seventeenth century. Darashamb, East Azarbaijan Province, modern-​ day Iran. Photo: Hrair Hawk Khatcherian.

Carved figures constitute only one element of the complex decorative program of the drum. Raised stars or palmettes, executed in interlace, crown each framed image. An interlaced ogival arcade, set on spiral colonnettes, defines each facet of the drum. The colonnettes are cleverly conceived: each spiral is formed by the twisted tails of two dragons whose heads form capitals, thereby recalling the decorated handle of the episcopal crozier (gavazan) of the Armenian Church. Seraphim occupy the spandrels of the arcade. Each facet is crowned, just below the roof, with a small khach‘k‘ar flanked by rosettes. Even the umbrella roof is carved: crosses crown each gable, while decorative waterspouts in the form of human and animal heads nestle in the crevices between them. Scholars of Armenian architectural history have not been particularly charitable to Surb Step‘anos. In part, this may be symptomatic of a general privileging of the earlier periods of Armenian architecture, including the golden age of the seventh century, the “Renaissance” (as it is sometimes called) of the tenth and eleventh centuries, and the era of the foundation of many monastic complexes in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. By contrast, sites of the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries, which often recall the forms of previous building traditions, have tended to receive less attention. Some monuments from this period, such as Surb Step‘anos, have been judged harshly: in 1980, one scholar referred to it as an unsuccessful “synthesis of heterogeneous elements.”21 This assessment is at striking odds with that of historians and philologists, who have studied carefully the massive epigraphic corpus preserved on the walls of the complex. Around 159 texts survive, mostly dating from the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. While sixteen of the texts describe the dedication and restoration of the church, a great many more (sixty-​seven, to be exact) are votive and/or memorial in function.22 These inscriptions, most of which appear on the west and south 222

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facades, record donations not only from local families and communities but also from pilgrims from farther afield: Van, Trebizond, Hamadan, New Julfa, Nor Nakhchevan (near Rostov-​on-​Don), Arapkir, Tiflis, and Yerevan—that is, from the Black Sea to Iran and across Persian, Ottoman, and Russian spheres of influence. These memorial texts, which have been transcribed, translated into Italian, and studied by Gabriella Uluhogian, are short and generally occupy the space of one facing stone (sometimes spilling over onto adjacent stones).23 Many are placed below, above, or alongside a khach‘k‘ar (carved cross stone). The inscriptions generally follow a formula, including a plea to remember the individual as well as other family members, and provide a toponymic and the date in the Armenian era (for the common era, add 551). One such example is located on the western facade of the main church, near the large northern niche: Յ[Ի]Շ[Ա]Տ[Ա]Կ Է Ք[Ա]ՐՍ ԱՐ[Ա]ՊԿՐ ՑԻ Մ[Ա]ՀՏ[Ե]ՍԻ ԳԷՐՔ ԻՆ Կ[Ո]Ղ[Ա]ԿՑՈՒՆ Խ[Ա]ՆՈՒՄ[Ի]Ն ԹՎ[ԻՆ] ՌՃՂԹ ԻՆ

Y[i]shatak ē k‘ars ar[a]pkrts‘i maht[e]si Gerk‘in k[o]gh[a]kts‘un kh[a]num[i]n. T‘v[in] 1199. This stone is in memory of Gerk‘, pilgrim from Arapgir, [and] of [his] spouse Khanum. In the year 1199 [1750].24 Like almost all of the memorial inscriptions, this text begins with the identification of the physical object—in this case, “this stone” (քարս), and in many others, “this holy cross” (սուրբ խաչս / surb khach‘s); this latter identification often, although not always, appears when the text frames a khach‘k‘ar. Noteworthy is that Gerk‘ is identified as a mahtesi (pilgrim to Jerusalem), an epithet found on thirteen other votive inscriptions at Surb Step‘anos.25 The mobility of Gerk‘ is further attested by the next phrase, which tells us that he is from Arapgir, a city located seventy kilometers north of Malatya, and more than eight hundred kilometers west of Surb Step‘anos‘. The text then mentions Gerk‘’s family: in this case his spouse (koghakits‘) Khanum. Most other such texts also mention children and parents, thus recalling Armenian epigraphic practices going back at least to the sixth century and suggesting (as has been proposed for those earlier monuments) that multiple generations were remembered at the site.26 Uluhogian has called attention to the value of these texts for studying language change in Armenian regional dialects, cultural contact, migration, and commerce among Armenian communities in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. The great abundance of memorial inscriptions also powerfully testifies to the importance of the site and, presumably, its positive impression on visitors. In studying these texts, “The Summit of the Earth”

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as Uluhogian writes, “a crowd of unknown pilgrims emerge who, for centuries, have visited . . . and have left a sign of their faith and hope.”27 For the historian of art and architecture, the texts also raise many further questions. What is the sequence of donating, designing, and inserting the stones into the building wall? Who transmitted the message to the carver? How much did it cost? As Uluhogian notes, the orthography of the inscriptions suggests dialectical and linguistic diversity, but what does this diversity, in turn, imply about the carving process?28 Recent scholarship on ancient and medieval epigraphy offers many additional avenues for inquiry.29 What is revealed by the placement of the texts on the building and their proximity to other texts or decoration? Each of the memorial texts on the drum, for example, is set above a particular saint, inviting one to imagine a relationship between the deceased and the holy figure. It is also noteworthy that the Arapgir texts appear in a group, as though to signal a geographical and/or social community.30 The engraved texts and their placement may also shed light on contemporary reading and viewing practices. Many of the memorial texts appear on the west wall, thus suggesting a venue for gathering and commemoration. Finally, recent scholarship on the aesthetics of epigraphy further invite us to understand the carefully carved texts and their khach‘k‘ars as part of, rather than separate from, the elaborate decorative program of the facade, with its polychrome masonry, figural representation, and intricately carved designs.31 Distributed evenly across each of the facets, the drum texts are carefully set below their khach‘k‘ars and framed by seraphim in each of the spandrels. Most important for the present essay, however, is that the texts explicitly locate Surb Step‘anos within a broad geographical network, reflecting the devotion of hundreds of pilgrims and their families. While earlier scholarship was dismissive of the architecture of the building, contemporary texts convey an entirely different message, offering a point of departure for a more capacious analysis of the monument that challenges older assessments of its inadequacy.

Biblical and Historical Narratives in Kütahya Tiles I wish to expand my discussion to consider a group of inscribed tiles produced in Kütahya, two hundred kilometers southeast of Constantinople.32 Kütahya was a center for ceramics manufacture in the Ottoman era, with production peaking in the early eighteenth century, when tiles were made for the decoration of churches, mosques, and tombs across the empire, as well as for the Ottoman court.33 Scholars link Kütahya ceramic technique and decoration to a wide range of traditions, from Europe to South Asia. While drawing from contemporary Safavid and Ottoman wares, and from Iznik in particular, Kütahya ceramics employ a broad color range including bright yellow, cobalt blue, turquoise, red, green, black, and even purple. Specific motifs, such as floral sprays, medallions, and pinecone shapes, may also derive from Chinese wares, as do imitative 224

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blue-​and-​white wares. Figural iconography, such as seraphim or Resurrection scenes, draw from European prints. Finally, as Yolande Crowe notes, the bright polychrome flower patterns of many Kütahya ceramics imitate Indian printed chintzes, perhaps reflecting connections with Armenian merchant colonies of early eighteenth-​century India.34 The integration of so many different visual traditions parallels the geopolitical shifts of the early modern era, which, for Armenians, meant increasing participation in trade networks extending from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean. A remarkable set of Kütahya tiles is found in the cathedral of Saint James in the Armenian Quarter of Jerusalem.35 These tiles were originally intended for an ambitious repair to the Holy Sepulchre in 1719, a joint effort among Armenians, Greeks, and the Latin Church that never came to fruition. However, probably between 1727 and 1737, the tiles were instead used to renovate what is known as the Etchmiadzin Chapel, located south of the main church of Saint James. There are forty-​five tiles in total, of which twenty-​seven bear a continuous inscription, running below scenes that mostly depict the New Testament. The inscription is not complete, and the tiles are now placed in various locations in the chapel and thus do not consistently follow the sequence prescribed by the text. Nevertheless, enough remains for Charles Dowsett to have reconstructed two short chronicles recording the intended use of the tiles for renovating the Holy Sepulchre, the troubled financial and spiritual state of the Armenian patriarchate of Jerusalem, the election of Grigor, from Tarōn, as Patriarch of Jerusalem, and a series of fires in Constantinople in 1719, which resulted in the destruction of churches there.36 One such tile, bearing a scene of the Resurrection, shows Christ standing within a bank of clouds atop the church of the Holy Sepulchre. The upper margin reads “Holy Resurrection” and the lower reads “In this year there occurred in the city of Istanbol” (fig. 9.7).37 One selection of four tiles (B9–B12) shows scenes of the Betrayal, Christ teaching in the synagogue, the Last Supper, and the Flagellation (fig. 9.8). The Betrayal tiles bears the words “of such bitter and insufferable [mischiefs]”; the tile with Christ teaching in the synagogue has the line, “He looks after [it] in a bitter and troubled time when four hundred, . . .”; the Last Supper tile continues, with “. . . purses of gold in debt was the monastery of Saint James.” The combination of biblical scenes and inscribed chronicle creates a pair of narratives, biblical/hagiographical and historical, that seem to converge and diverge from each other at particular points. Another particularly apt convergence of texts happens in tile B18, where “The sheikh killed and cut off their heads” is paired with the martyrdom of Saint Stephen. In a similar vein, the text relating the earthquake of Constantinople appears just under the oil-​bearing women’s approach to Gabriel, who appeared, according to Matthew 2:28, with a violent quake of the earth. The tile of the Flagellation produces more complex meanings. In this scene, four men in diverse attire deliver “The Summit of the Earth”

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Figure 9.7 The Resurrection, Kütahya tile, eighteenth century. Armenian Cathedral of Saint James, Jerusalem. Photo: author.

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Figure 9.8 Mock-​up of four Kütahya tiles from the Armenian cathedral of Saint James, Jerusalem, eighteenth century. From John Carswell and C. J. F. Dowsett., Kütahya Tiles and Pottery from the Armenian Cathedral of St. James, Jerusalem (Antelias: Armenian Catholicosate Of Cilicia, 2005), vol. 1, pl. 5, B9–B12. © Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. Composite image: author.

Judas betrays with a kiss

Jesus as teacher preaches to the Jews

Of such bitter trouble and insufferable [mischiefs?] . . .

He looks after [it] in a bitter and troubled time when four hundred . . .

violent punishment to the wounded Christ. Above is the title is the text, “The torments of Christ,” while an inscription below reads, “This dome of [of the church of] the Holy Resurrection was built for three nations.”38 The tile of the Flagellation thus confronts the viewers with a rather startling contrast, showing, on the one hand, how a virtuous act of coordinated patronage was planned by the Greeks, Latins, and Armenians, and, on the other, how members of various groups (if we interpret the differentiated attire correctly) acted together in the torment of Christ. One wishes to know more about the planned use of these tiles within the Holy Sepulchre and the details of this joint Greek/Latin/Armenian project, including why it fell apart. I am also curious about why it was important at this moment to compose an inscription relating the events in contemporary Constantinople to be read by visitors to the Holy Sepulchre and why this text was combined with imagery in a continuous format. As John Carswell and Charles Dowsett suggested in 1972, the mention of the dome (Armeno-​Turkish ghupē) on tile B12 depicting the Flagellation suggests a possible location within the martyrium.39 Leaving these questions aside, however, we can still make a few assertions. Scholars observe that the Kütahya tiles draw from a broad artistic spectrum, including medieval Armenian manuscript illumination; European print; and Chinese, Safavid, Ottoman, and Indian visual traditions. The texts also convey the mobile and connected character of the early eighteenth-​century Armenian world: we have seen that the tiles conflate the biblical and the contemporary. They also conflate places: preserved in the Armenian cathedral of Jerusalem, in a chapel dedicated to the Holy See, intended for the Holy Sepulchre, made in the city of Kütahya, and recording recent events in

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Jesus seated in the upper chamber

 . . . purses [of gold] in debt was the monastery of St. James

The torments of Christ

This dome [ghupē] of (the Church of) the Holy Resurrection was built for three nations

Constantinople and Jerusalem, the tiles chart a dizzying superimposition of topographies. The combined textual and visual evidence thus offers a powerful sense of Armenia’s position within the world.

Armenian-​Language Perspectives on Monuments of Medieval Europe Thus far, this essay has explored Armenian-​language texts for what they reveal about Armenian monuments, ceramics, and manuscripts. Yet, as the genre of pilgrimage literature makes clear, Armenian texts also shed light on other artistic cultures. These and other texts provide insight into the reality of travel in medieval and early modern Europe, fresh perspectives on familiar monuments, and also, sometimes, historical and archaeological information that is otherwise unattested. For example, Yovsēp‘, the seventh-​century visitor to the Holy Land, makes note of the offset position of the tomb within the Anastasis Rotunda, information lacking in the account of the European pilgrim Arculf.40 Almost a millennium later, Simēon Lehats‘i offers an extraordinarily detailed description of the wires used to stage passion plays in Rome.41 For the monuments of medieval Western Europe, the account of Martiros of Eznka (Erznka, mod. Erzincan) is particularly fascinating. Martiros lived in the second half of the fifteenth century and traveled across Europe between 1489 and 1496. Describing himself as a bishop of Erznka (today Erzincan, Turkish Republic), he arrived in Constantinople, boarded a ship on 11 July 1490, and thence traveled to Venice, Rome,

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Figure 9.9 Map of places visited by Bishop Martiros of Eznka (Erznka, mod. Erzincan), ca. 1489–96. Google Maps. Diagram: author.

Switzerland, throughout Germany, Flanders, France, Spain (down to Gibraltar), and then back to Italy, where he was in Rome for Great Lent of 1496; the account ends shortly thereafter. Martiros’s account, numbering approximately 2,750 words, is preserved in at least three manuscripts, all miscellanies: one dated to 1648 (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS 308); another dated to the eighteenth century (Yerevan, Matenadaran, MS 3488), and another of the nineteenth century (Venice, San Lazzaro, MS 232 [olim 812]), the texts of which have all been published.42 In 1827, moreover, Antoine Jean Saint-​Martin published a French translation of Paris, MS 308 (then MS 65 of the Bibliothèque du Roi).43 Martiros’s text has received surprisingly little attention, earning only handful of publications in Armenian and other languages.44 Moreover, his account remains important for what it reveals about Western medieval art, despite the fact that Martiros makes extensive comments on holy sites throughout his travels. One exception to this neglect, however, is a recent interactive multimedia project, by Christiane Esche-​Ramshorn and Stanislav Roudavski, focused on the travels of Martiros.45 Martiros journeyed to Europe, as he states in the opening of his account, in order to visit the tombs of Saints Peter and James, thus already offering a sense of the scope of his journey (fig. 9.9).46 During his voyage, Martiros viewed and recorded in detail the

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physical disposition of the holy sites he visits. He provides specific spatial and physical data: locations left and right, cardinal points, measurements, colors, and materials. He also describes the iconography of his subjects, with particular attention to sculpture. Given present limits of space, a few examples must serve to convey a sense of his account. At San Marco, he notes that “above the doors, very high up, were four yellow carved bronze horses, appearing very large, and each one standing with one leg lifted up.”47 In Rome, he visited Saint Peter’s, noting its “cast metal doors,” upon which “one panel was Paul and the other was Peter,” thus recalling the Filarete door of 1445.48 In Rome, he also mentions Nero’s Golden House (ներոն թագաւորին դարպսին / neron t‘agaworin darbsin), discovered only a few years before his arrival in 1490.49 He describes the Marienschrein at Aachen (սանդա մարիայ տաքս, Santa Maria Taks‘), “where is [found] the all-​holy and glorious cloak of the holy Mother of God.”50 In Cologne, he viewed the tomb of the Three Kings, noting that “the heads of the three are placed on the top of the tomb.”51 Martiros wrote of many more places, shrines, and relics, only occasionally resorting to the perennial despair of the ekphrasist: “How can one recount with language,” he writes upon leaving Paris, “the excellence of the city?”52 Yet his description of the west facade of Notre-​Dame is fulsome, including a minute description of the central Last Judgment Portal, the archivolts, and the jambs. His gaze then travels higher, to the royal gallery and rose window: “And also above are the twenty-​eight kings, shown with crowns on their heads, and they stand, like humans, all of them. And farther above is the Mother of God, the holy God-​bearer, ornamented with gold and various colors, with, standing on the left and right, the holy archangels in her service.”53 This is a precious attestation of the facade of Notre-Dame from before the French Revolution. It also suggests careful inspection, probable note-​taking, and lingering for some time outside the monument. Also noteworthy is his description of the sculpted figures who “stand, like humans” (կանգնել են մարդուպէս / kangnel en mardupēs). This phrase, omitted in Saint-​Martin’s translation, might suggest a wish to relate the three-​dimensionality of the sculptures, whose in-​the-​round disposition perhaps struck Martiros as worthy of comment. One notes, in this respect, that three-​ dimensional figural sculpture is virtually unknown in medieval Armenian church decoration, while bas-​relief sculpture on churches, as well as on mosques, madrassas, and tombs, would have been familiar to a resident of fifteenth-​century Erznka.54 Martiros’s attentiveness to sculpture and materials is also clear from his description of the facade of the cathedral of Cologne, where he reveals, too, curiosity of a different kind: “And that church, where [one finds] the tomb of the Magi kings, is carved up above and also on the outside. And on the opposite face, on the outside wall of the nave, is carved the holy Mother of God, worthily decorated, and our Lord Christ is in her arms, and a crown is placed there on her head, adorned with precious stones, gems, and pearls, such as ever existed. We asked the priests of the church what would

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this cost; they said 215,000 florins.”55 Martiros’s observations are puzzling for many reasons. First, he notes an image of the Mother and Child “outside the wall of the nave” (նաւ պատի դուրս / naw pati durs), potentially suggesting an exterior wall sculpture of the Virgin and Child.56 Yet, at the time of Martiros’s visit, only the south facade was furnished with sculpture, and these were jamb figures of the Apostles, not the Virgin and Child.57 It seems that either Martiros misremembered, or we ought to construe the phrase “outside wall of the nave” not as referring to an exterior facade of the cathedral but either to an internal wall (or construction) or to the inside surface of the perimeter wall of the church. Perhaps Martiros refers here to an interior sculpture: the Mailander Madonna, the polychrome Gothic sculpted dated around 1280/90. This statue today stands in the Marienkapelle, west of the southernmost radiating chapel, and was particularly revered in the fifteenth century.58 This would make sense of the jeweled decoration adorning the figure (hardly appropriate for a location on the exterior facade but recalling the appearance of the [admittedly restored] Madonna). The fact that Martiros turns next to a description of the main altar further suggests he is referring to an interior sculpture. Clearly, more study is required in order to draw conclusions about his enigmatic statements. His query about the cost of the sculpture (the whole ensemble? the crown only?) is also fascinating. Since the Florentine florin contained 3.5 grams of nominally pure gold, 215,000 florins was a vast sum in any context, perhaps suggesting either a miscommunication, a scribal error (although all three manuscripts record this number), or, perhaps, that the local canons enjoyed a little joke at Martiros’s expense.59 In any case, we are provided here with a rare case in which medieval sculpture was assigned a cash value. Much more awaits the reader of Martiros’s text, which offers also vivid details about the strains and triumphs of pilgrimage. Martiros managed three visits with Pope Innocent VIII (r. 1484–92), obtaining a papal letter that served him well during his journey.60 In Basel, however, he and his companion were arrested for suspected espionage.61 During the second half of his trip, beginning in Gascony, Martiros developed foot pain exacerbated by overland treks, suffered from exhaustion, and encountered “wild and ferocious beasts.”62 Throughout his account, Martiros reveals a preoccupation with fish: those who eat fish (the English), the large size of some fish, and, mysteriously, four giant “sides” (կողեր/kogher) of fish placed in (or outside?) the abbey church of Saint-Denis.63 This and other matters await the careful scrutiny of scholars. Above all, one hopes for a thorough study of Martiros’s text, including a critical edition considering all available manuscripts, a linguistic analysis of the text (Martiros occasionally uses Arabic, Turkish, and Latin terms), and a fresh translation. Crucial, too, would be collaborative efforts with experts in Western medieval art and architecture and in the history of pilgrimage and travel. Such work would serve to connect diverse disciplines, and it would provide a textual dimension to a broad and integrated study of medieval art history.64 230

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Conclusion Taken individually and evaluated on the basis of methodology alone, the cases detailed in this essay may not seem particularly surprising. Historiography, text-​image analysis, epigraphic studies, and pilgrimage literature have long been used by art historians to understand their subject matter. What I wish to argue here, however, is that, in some cases, reading primary sources does not narrow one’s focus but broadens it.65 This essay has explored five examples in which Armenian-​language texts offer an invitation to reinterpret works of art and architecture within a broad frame. Seventh-​century historical and geographical writing—and its preoccupation with Armenia’s position in relation to world events—offers a way to capture the complexity of Zvart‘nots‘ that is more satisfying than an analysis of material evidence alone. Similarly, reading the scriptural passages below the headpiece of the Lectionary of Het‘um suggests that the exotic lions and dragons of the headpiece might be read not only as signs of trade capital and elite status but also as visual expressions of Christian universalism. Examination of the inscriptions on the church of Surb Step‘anos demonstrate how the church functioned as a site of devotion within an expansive network of pilgrimage and how it can be understood as a cohesive visual experience integrating built, carved, and inscribed wall surfaces. Just as the inscription on the Saint James tiles connects one tile to the next, it also provides, together with the imagery, a sense of the connectedness between the Armenian communities across the early modern world, as well as with their trading partners and also with the Greek and Latin churches of Jerusalem. Finally, as the case of Martiros demonstrates, Armenian-​language accounts not only offer archaeologically valuable information about Western medieval monuments, but they also highlight the mobility and the diversity of their medieval spectators. These texts, like that of Anania’s Geography, provide a rich and vivid sense of Armenia’s place in the world: not at the margins but as a central part of a vibrant, dynamic, and sometimes surprising history of art.

Notes 1. Evans, Armenia. 2. Maranci, Art of Armenia. 3. Anania Shirakats‘i, Geography, 1:59. For the Armenian text, see Muradean, and Iwzbashean [Yuzbashyan], “Movses Khorenats‘i,” 2:2151, lines 58–59. 4. See Maranci, Vigilant Powers; Maranci, “Monument and the World”; Kazaryan, “Chancel and Liturgical Space”; Donabédian, Âge d’or, 190–98. 5. See Kleinbauer, “Origins and Function,” and Kleinbauer, “Zvart’nots and the Origins of Christian Architecture.”

6. See Piguet-​Panayotova, “Recherches,” and Kazaryan, “Chancel and Liturgical Space.” See also Gharibian, Jérusalem Nouvelle. 7. The dedication is described in the History Attributed to Sebeos, trans and annot. Thompson, Armenian History Attributed to Sebeos, 1:112. It alludes to the theophany described in Agathangelos, History of the Armenians, 275–77. 8. T‘oramanyan, Zvart‘nots‘-Gagkashen, 31. 9. See Thomson, Armenian History Attributed to Sebeos, and Greenwood, “Sasanian Echoes.” 10. See Anania Shirakats‘i, Geography, and Maranci, Vigilant Powers, 182–84.

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11. Greenwood, “New Light from the East.” 12. See Mahé, “Entre Moïse et Mahomet,” and Greenwood, “Sasanian Echoes.” 13. Nees, Perspectives on Early Medieval Art, 130–38. 14. See Maranci, Art of Armenia, 114–19. 15. Walker, Emperor and the World, and Canepa, preface to “Theorizing Cross-​Cultural Interaction.” 16. Note: All biblical texts are from the Zohrab edition of the Armenian Bible as digitized on https://​ arak29​.org; the English translations are my own. 17. The conceptual conflation of foreign tribute and liturgical offering is also evoked in the canon tables of the Sandghka Gospels (Yerevan, Matenadaran, MS 3973), of 1050. On folio 1 verso, for example, resting atop a headpiece featuring a full-​bosomed, bearded sphinx confronting a feline, is a broad and footed vessel covered with a textile (անդ) decorated with pseudo-​Arabic script. See Maranci, Art of Armenia, 89–91. 18. Similar text-​image relations characterize folio 334 verso, where the luxurious headpiece features dragons and phoenixes chasing a pearl; the text below provides readings for the feast of Vardavaṙ, including Psalm 95, which exhorts all the earth to sing to the Lord (viz 95:1–5). 19. See Maranci, Art of Armenia, 190–93; Manoukian and Manoukian, Surb Stephanos; Der Nersessian, Armenian Art, 244; Thierry and Donabédian, Armenian Art, 513. 20. For a chronology, see Manoukian and Manoukian, Surb Stephanos, 18–19, 54. 21. Ibid., 9. 22. Uluhogian, Silloge della epigrafe armena, 8–9. 23. Ibid. 24. Ibid., 55. 25. On this term as used at Surb Step‘anos, see ibid., 45–46. 26. See, for example, Greenwood, “Corpus”; see also Maranci, Vigilant Powers, 244–48. 27. Uluhogian, Silloge della epigrafe armena, 8. 28. Also on issues of inscriptions and language, see Safran, “Language Choice.” 29. For Byzantine inscriptions, see Papalexandrou, “Text in Context.” 30. Ann Marie Yasin has argued for this function of text regarding North Africa (“Funerary Monuments”). 31. Eastmond, Viewing Inscriptions. 32. See Maranci, Art of Armenia, 187–89; Kouymjian, “Role of Armenian Potters”; Carswell and Dowsett, Kütahya Tiles and Pottery; Crowe, “Kütahya Ceramics”; Landau, “Ceramics.” 33. Carswell and Dowsett, Kütahya Tiles and Pottery, 2:4–12. 34. Crowe, “Kütahya Ceramics.” 35. Carswell and Dowsett, Kütahya Tiles and Pottery, 1:12–26.

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36. See ibid., 1:28–29. 37. Ibid., 1:35. 38. Ibid., 1:41. 39. Ibid. For further discussion of the Holy Sepulchre, see ibid., 1:13. 40. Maranci, Vigilant Powers, 136–44. 41. Bournoutian, Travel Accounts of Simeon of Poland. 42. For Yerevan, Matenadaran, MS 3488, see Eganyan, Zeytʻunyan, and Antʻabyan, Ts‘uts‘ak, 1:1024. For the Venice, San Lazzaro, MS 232, olim 812, see Sargisean, Hayerēn Tseṙagrac‘, 505–6; for Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS 308, see Macler, Catalogue des Manuscrit, 159–60. 43. Martiros, Relation. 44. For a textual study of Martiros, a transcription of Yerevan, Matenadaran, MS 3488, and further references, see Hakobyan, “Martiros Erznkats‘u Chanaparhordakan Not‘erě.” 45. See Esche-​Ramshorn and Roudavski, “Evocative Research.” 46. Martiros, Relation, 61, with French trans. on p. 31. 47. Ibid., 62, with French trans. on p. 32. 48. Ibid., 63, with French trans. on p. 34. 49. Ibid. I thank Cristelle Baskins for bringing this to my attention. 50. Ibid., 67, with French trans. on p. 39. 51. Ibid., 65, with French trans. on p. 37. 52. Ibid., 71, with French trans on p. 44. 53. Ibid., 70, with French trans. on p. 43–44. 54. For discussion of an exceptional, almost in-​the-​round sculpture of the Bagratid King Gagik (early eleventh century), see Maranci, “Krikor (Grigor) Balakian’s Ruins of Ani.” 55. Martiros, Relation, 65–66, with French trans. on p. 37. 56. Note the manuscript differences, however, for the phrase in question: Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS 308: “նաւ պատի դուռս”; Yerevan, Matenadaran, MS 3488: “նօպաթ [a corruption of նաւ and պատ?] ի դուրս,” and Venice, San Lazzaro, MS 232: “նաւ պատի դուս.” 57. I thank Joan Holladay for this information and for discussing the problem with me. 58. Joan Holladay, email message to author, 15 September 2019. 59. I thank Martha Carlin and Joan Holladay for discussing this with me. 60. Martiros, Relation, 64, with French trans. on p. 35. 61. Ibid., 65, with French trans. on p. 36. 62. See, for example, ibid., 75, with French trans. on p. 50. 63. “And the main church, where is found the tombs of the kings; on the left side are placed four sides of fish, each side 5 fathoms and 3 spans in

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measure, and they say that this sea has immense fish” (ibid., 68, with French trans. on pp. 41–42). Saint-​Martin suggests that the fish may have been suspended on the wall of the church as “curiosités naturelles” (ibid., 42n1). This seems curious indeed. 64. This sentiment has also been noted by Esche-​ Ramshorn and Roudavski, “Evocative Research,” 61. A project on Martiros is underway, produced as a collaborative venture hosted by Dr. Zara Pogossian of the University of Florence and entitled ArmEn—Armenia Entangled: Reimagining Cultural Encounters and Connectivity in Medieval Eurasia, 9th–14th Century.

65. Of course, textual study requires, at best, knowledge of Armenian. For some useful websites, see https://​societyforarmenianstudies​.com​/2018​ /02​/12​/armenian​-studies​-digital​-resources; http://​ titus​.uni​-frankfurt​.de​/texte​/etcs​/arm​/zohrab​ /armat​/armat​.htm​?armat774​.htm; https://​haygirk​ .nla​.am; http://​www​.digilib​.am; http://​www​.flib​ .sci​.am​/arm​/index​.php; https://​archive​.org​/stream​ /ClassicalArmenianDictionary​/New​_dictionary​ _Armenian​_English​#page​/n251​/mode​/2up; https://​ www​.nayiri​.com; http://​www​.matenadaran​.am​/​?id​=​ 83​&l​ ng​=​4; https://​calfa​.fr.

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and Beyond: Imagining Possible Pasts in the Ways to Heaven Project.” Digital Creativity 23 (2012): 58–78. Evans, Helen C., ed. Armenia: Art, Religion, and Trade in the Middle Ages. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2018. Gharibian, Nazénie de Vartavan. La Jérusalem Nouvelle et les premiers sanctuaries chrétiens de l’arménie. Yerevan: Isis Pharia, 2009. Greenwood, Timothy. “A Corpus of Early Medieval Armenian Inscriptions.” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 58 (2004): 27–91. ———. “New Light from the East: Chronography and Ecclesiastical History Through a Late Seventh-​ Century Armenian Source.” Journal of Early Christian Studies 16, no. 2 (2008): 197–254. ———. “Sasanian Echoes and Apocalyptic Expectations: A Re-​Evaluation of the Armenian History Attributed to Sebeos.” Le Muséon 115, nos. 3–4 (2002): 323–97. Hakobyan, V. “Martiros Erznkats‘u Chanaparhordakan Not‘erě,” Haykakan SSṘ Gitut ‘yunneri Akademiayi Teghekagir 6 (1957): 97-110. Kazaryan, Armen. “The Chancel and Liturgical Space in the Church of Zvart‘nots‘.” [In Russian.] In Ikonostas: Origins, Development, Symbolism, edited by Alexei M. Lidov, 85–104. Moscow: Progress-​Traditsiia, 2000. Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. “The Origins and Function of the Aisled Tetraconch Churches in Syria and Northern Mesopotamia.” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 27 (1973): 89–114. ———. “Zvart’nots and the Origins of Christian Architecture in Armenia.” Art Bulletin 54 (1972): 245–62. Kouymjian, Dickran. “The Role of Armenian Potters of Kutahia in the Ottoman Ceramic Industry.” In Armenian Communities in Asia Minor, edited by

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Richard G. Hovannisian, 107–30. UCLA Armenian History and Culture Series 13. Costa Mesa: Mazda, 2014. Landau Amy S. “Ceramics.” In A Legacy of Armenian Treasures: Testimony to a People, edited by Edmond Y. Azadian and Sylvie L. Merian, 69–93. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013. Macler, Frédéric. Catalogue des manuscrit arméniens et géorgiens. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1908. Mahé, Jean-​Pièrre. “Entre Moïse et Mahomet: Réflexions sur l’historiographie arménienne.” Revue des études arméniennes 23 (1992): 121–53. Manoukian, Agopik, and Armen Manoukian, eds. Surb Stephanos: Documenti di architettura armena. Vol 10. Milan: Ares, 1980. Maranci, Christina. The Art of Armenia: An Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. ———. “Krikor (Grigor) Balakian’s Ruins of Ani: A Surprising Source for Armenian Architecture.” Venezia Arti 27 (2018): 35–48. ———. “The Monument and the World: Zuart‘noc‘ and the Problem of Origins.” In “The Medieval South Caucasus: Artistic Cultures of Albania, Armenia, and Georgia,” edited by Erik Thunø and Ivan Foletti, special issue, Convivium: Exchanges and Interactions in the Arts of Medieval Europe, Byzantium, and the Mediterranean 3, supp. (2016): 70–87. ———. Vigilant Powers: Three Churches of Early Medieval Armenia. Turnhout: Brepols, 2015. Martiros. Relation d’un Voyage Fait en Europe et Dans L’Océan Atlantique, a la fin du XVe siècle, sous le règne de Charles VIII, par Martyr, éveque d’Arzendjan. Edited, translated. and commentary by Antoine Jean Saint-​Martin. Paris: Dondey-​Dupré, 1827. Muradean, Paroyr, and Karēn Iwzbashean [Yuzbashyan]. “Movsēs Khorenats‘i.” In Matenagirk‘ Hayots‘, vol. 2, The Fifth Century [in Armenian], 1737–2916. Armenian Classical Authors. Ant‘elias: Great House of Cilicia, 2003.

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Nees, Larry. Perspectives on Early Medieval Art in Jerusalem. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Papalexandrou, Amy. “Text in Context: Eloquent Monuments and the Byzantine Beholder.” Word and Image 17, no. 3 (2001): 259–83. Piguet-​Panayotova, Dora. “Recherches sur les tetraconques à déambulatoire et leur décor en Transcaucasie au VIIe siècle.” Oriens Christianus 73 (1989): 166–212. Safran, Linda. “Language Choice in the Medieval Salento: A Sociolinguistic Approach to Greek and Latin Inscriptions.” In Zwischen Polis, Provinz und Peripherie: Beiträge zur byzantinischen Geschichte und Kultur, edited by Lars M. Hoffmann, 853–82. Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz, 2005. Sargisean, Barsegh, ed. Hayerēn Tseṙagrac‘ Matenadaranin Mkhit‘areants‘i Venetik. Venice: San Lazzaro, 1924. Strzygowski, Josef. Die Baukunst der Armenier und Europa. 2 vols. Vienna: Schroll, 1918. Thierry, Jean-​Michel, and Patrick Donabédian. Les arts arméniens. Paris: Mazenod, 1987. Thomson, Robert W., trans. and notes. The Armenian History Attributed to Sebeos. Historical commentary by James Howard-​Johnson. 2 vols. Translated Texts for Historians 31. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999. T‘oramanyan, T‘oros. Zvart‘nots‘-Gagkashen. Yerevan: Sovetakan Grogh, 1984. Uluhogian, Gabriella. Silloge della epigrafe armena di S. Stefano di Giulfa. Ricerca sull’architettura armena 22. Milan: Centro Studi e documentazione della cultura armena, Facoltà di architettura, Politecnico di Milano, 1981. Walker, Alicia. The Emperor and the World: Exotic Elements and the Imaging of Middle Byzantine Imperial Power, Ninth to Thirteenth Centuries C.E. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Yasin, Ann Marie. “Funerary Monuments and Collective Identity: From Roman Family to Christian Community.” Art Bulletin 87, no. 3 (2005): 433–57

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Contributors Suzanne Conklin Akbari is Professor of Medieval Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Her books include Seeing Through the Veil: Optical Theory and Medieval Allegory and Idols in the East: European Representations of Islam and the Orient, 1100–1450, as well as numerous coedited volumes, including Marco Polo and the Encounter of East and West; A Sea of Languages: Rethinking the Arabic Role in Medieval Literary History; The Ends of the Body: Identity and Community in Medieval Culture; and The Oxford Handbook of Chaucer. Akbari is currently completing a monograph called Small Change: Metaphor and Metamorphosis in Chaucer and Christine de Pizan, and working on another one, The Shape of Time, on premodern ideas of periodization. She is involved in two collaborative projects on global medieval studies, The Book and the Silk Roads (https://​booksilkroads​.library​ .utoronto​.ca) and Practices of Commentary (https://​globalcommentary​.utoronto​.ca). Michele Bacci is Professor of Medieval Art at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, and a member of the Academy of Europe. He is the author of numerous studies on the cultural and art-​historical contacts of East and West in the Middle Ages and on the history of the religious practices associated with cult objects and holy sites. His publications include Il pennello dell’Evangelista, Pro remedio animae, Lo spazio dell’anima, San Nicola il Grande Taumaturgo, The Many Faces of Christ, The Mystic Cave: A History of the Nativity Church in Bethlehem, and, most recently, Veneto-​Byzantine Interactions in Icon Painting (1280–1450), in Greek. Jill Caskey is Associate Professor of Medieval Art at the University of Toronto Mississauga and the University of Toronto St. George. Her interests gravitate toward the mobile (merchants, conquerors, pilgrims, relics, portable objects) and their intersections with the immobile (architecture, wall painting, mosaics, and architectural sculpture). Most of her publications examine the dynamics of patronage, emphasizing the social and political implications of commissions in both secular and religious settings. Materiality and historiography are also major themes in her work. Caskey’s research focuses primarily on southern Italy and Sicily and their ever-​shifting relationships to northern Europe and the diverse, contested Mediterranean basin. Her most recent book, written with Adam S. Cohen and Linda Safran, is Art and Architecture of the Middle Ages: Exploring a Connected World.

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Eva Frojmovic is Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Leeds. She is a medieval art historian with interests in manuscript illumination, cultural diversity, transcultural relationships, intersectionality. She is the coauthor (with Frank Felsenstein) of Hebraica and Judaica from the Cecil Roth Collection, coeditor (with Catherine Karkov) of Postcolonising the Medieval Image, and editor of Imagining the Self, Imagining the Other: Visual Representation and Jewish-​Christian Dynamics in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period. Sarah M. Guérin is Assistant Professor in the History of Art department at the University of Pennsylvania. She is a specialist in medieval ivory carving, marrying traditional historical approaches, such as economics and intercontinental exchange, with questions derived from postcolonial theory, the anthropology of the image, and materiality. Her work has appeared in such journals as the Art Bulletin, the Journal of Medieval History, and the Medieval Globe, and she was a member of the scientific committee for an exhibition on medieval trans-​Saharan trade entitled Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture and Trans-​Saharan Trade. Her monograph treating the first century of Gothic ivories, French Gothic Ivories: Material Theologies and the Sculptor’s Craft, is forthcoming. Christina Maranci is the Mashtots Professor of Armenian Studies at Harvard University. She is the author of three books and more than ninety articles and essays on medieval Armenian art and architecture, including most recently The Art of Armenia: An Introduction. Her monograph on the seventh-​century architecture of Armenia, Vigilant Powers: Three Churches of Early Medieval Armenia, won both the Sona Aronian Prize for best Armenian studies monograph from the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) and the Karen Gould Prize for Art History from the Medieval Academy of America. Maranci has worked on issues of cultural heritage for over a decade. Her campaign for the cathedral of Mren, near Ani, resulted in its inclusion on the World Monuments Watch List for 2015–17. Pamela A. Patton is director of the Index of Medieval Art at Princeton University. She is the author of Pictorial Narrative in the Romanesque Cloister and Art of Estrangement: Redefining Jews in Reconquest Spain and has edited or coedited several volumes, including Envisioning Others: Race, Color, and the Visual in Iberia and Latin America; (with Henry Schilb) The Lives and Afterlives of Medieval Iconography; and (with Catherine A. Fernandez) Iconography Beyond the Crossroads: Image, Meaning, and Method in Medieval Art. Her articles have appeared in Gesta, Speculum, Medieval Encounters, and the Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies, among others. She is a coeditor of Studies in Iconography and a field editor for Oxford Bibliographies in Art History. Maria Alessia Rossi is an Art History Specialist at the Index of Medieval Art at Princeton University. Her main research interests include medieval monumental art in the 236

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Byzantine and Slavic cultural spheres, cross-​cultural contacts between the Eastern and Western Christian world, and the role of miracles in text and image. She coedited (with Andrea Mattiello) Late Byzantium Reconsidered: The Arts of the Palaiologan Era in the Mediterranean and (with Alice Isabella Sullivan) Byzantium in Eastern European Visual Culture in the Late Middle Ages. Rossi is the cofounder of the initiative North of Byzantium and the digital platform Mapping Eastern Europe. Currently, she is working on a monograph exploring the role of Christ’s miracles in monumental art in late Byzantium. Alice Isabella Sullivan is Assistant Professor of Medieval Art and Architecture at Tufts University, specializing in the artistic production of Eastern Europe and the Byzantine-​ Slavic cultural spheres. She has published in the Art Bulletin, Speculum, and Gesta, among other venues, and is coeditor (with Maria Alessia Rossi) of Byzantium in Eastern European Visual Culture in the Late Middle Ages and Eclecticism in Late Medieval Visual Culture at the Crossroads of the Latin, Greek, and Slavic Traditions. She is also cofounder of North of Byzantium and Mapping Eastern Europe—two initiatives that explore the medieval history, art, and culture of the northern frontiers of the Byzantine Empire in Eastern Europe. Thelma K. Thomas is Associate Professor of the History of Art at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, where she teaches late antique, Byzantine, and Eastern Christian art. Much of her research has addressed the visual and material culture of late antique Egypt. Recent and current writing projects explore art and commerce, textiles and dress, and expressive developments of the monastic habit as worn and as represented in painted portraits during the early centuries of Christian monasticism in Egypt. With her coauthor, Jennifer Ball, she is writing a book on Byzantine silk. Her most recent curatorial project was the exhibition Designing Identity: The Power of Textiles in Late Antiquity and editing the companion volume of essays. At present, she continues museum work by consulting on special exhibitions and permanent gallery re-​installations. Michele Tomasi is Professor of Medieval Art History at Lausanne University. He has published widely on Italian and French art from the thirteenth to the early fifteenth centuries, with a focus on materials, production methods, artists, patronage, and marketing. He is also interested in the history of art history. His books include Monumenti d’avorio: I dossali degli Embriachi e i loro committenti and Le arche dei santi: Scultura, religione e politica nel Trecento veneto. He recently coedited (with Nicolas Bock) Art et économie en France et en Italie au XIVe siècle: Prix, valeurs, carrières; his new project is titled Écrire l’art en France au temps de Charles V et Charles VI: Le témoignage des chroniqueurs (forthcoming). Alicia Walker is Professor of Medieval Art and Architecture at Bryn Mawr College. Her primary fields of research include cross-​cultural artistic interaction in the medieval Contributors

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world from the ninth to thirteenth centuries and gender issues in the art and material culture of Byzantium. She is the author of The Emperor and the World: Exotic Elements and the Imaging of Byzantine Imperial Power and coeditor of Negotiating the Secular in Medieval Art: Christian, Islamic, Buddhist and the special issue of Medieval Encounters entitled “Mechanisms of Exchange: Transmission, Scale, and Interaction in the Arts and Architecture of the Medieval Mediterranean.” She has also published articles in Gesta, the Art Bulletin, Medieval History Journal, Muqarnas, the Medieval Globe, and Ars Orientalis, among others.

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Index Italicized page references indicate illustrations. Endnotes are referenced with “n” followed by the endnote number. Abiodun, Rowland, 55 Achi, Andrea Myers, 69n9 Acre scriptoria, 147 Adam of Bremen, 21–22, 23, 31, 33, 37 Aden, Jonathan E., 66 Adoration of the Magi, 219 Afrāsiāb (Uzbekistan), 25, 26, 26–33, 27, 28, 29, 30 Africa. See West Africa; West African art; West African masks Afrique fantôme (Lieris), 65 Ahmedî (Turkish poet), 119 Akathistos (hymn), 201 Akra Tapeinosis, 97, 102 al-​Andalus, 84, 87, 151–52, 152 Al’baum, Lazar’ I., 27 Albert III, Duke of Austria, 117 Alcalá, Pedro de, 62–63 Alexander the Great French romances featuring, 143 French tapestries featuring, 118–21, 120 globalization of, 7, 133, 135 iconography of, 139, 140, 140–41, 141 legends of, 135 manuscript narratives of, 135–36, 147–48, 151–52 Ottoman cultural claims to, 119 Turkish romances featuring, 119 See also Alexander the Great at the Ka’ba Alexander the Great at the Ka’ba (Shahnameh narrative) divine light and glory iconography, 139–41, 140, 141, 143 French histories and iconographic comparisons, 144, 148 historical time indicators, 148 inscription function, 145–46 manuscript copies and iconographic comparisons, 136, 136–39, 138, 139 narrative descriptions, 136 religious perspectives, 134, 137, 139, 145–46 subject interest, 147, 149 Alhambra (Granada, Spain), 87 alla greca. See Byzantine style

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Altarpiece of the Corpus Christi (Master of Vallbona de les Monges/Guillem Seguer [?]), 168–71, 169 (detail), 170 (detail) Altarpiece of the Virgin (Jaume Serra), 171, 172 (detail) Amazons, 21, 148, 154n26 Ambrose, Saint, 89 âme d’un peuple africain, L’ (Henry), 63, 63 anachronism, 94, 100, 137, 201 analytical presentism, 10 Androgynous Statue, 56, 57 animals, as diplomatic gifts, 117, 127n15 Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Museum of Art, MS 1963, 139, 140, 140, 143, 144 Annianus of Alexandria, 215 Annunciation, 96, 97, 98, 102, 218 Anonymous Chronicle, 215 Anse aux Meadows, L’, 38 anti-​immigration agendas, 10 anti-​Semitism, 16n42, 157, 174 Apamea church (Syria), 214 Apostles, 191, 221, 230 appropriation of art techniques and practices, 24, 32–33, 81, 85, 221 of artworks, 31, 82, 83–84, 100 of materials and spolia, 83–84 of style and visual conventions, 85–86, 88–93 Aratus (deity), 46n41 Archinard, Louis, 54, 55 Arculf (pilgrim), 227 Aristotle, 135, 200 Armenia art history scholarship, 212, 222 cathedrals of, 213–16, 214, 215 ceramic tiles of, 224–27, 225, 226, 227 exhibitions on, 211–12 geographic descriptions of, 212 illuminated manuscripts of, 216–20, 217, 219 medieval patronage, 216 monasteries and memorial inscriptions, 220–24, 221, 222 patron saints of, 214 pilgrimage literature in language of, 227–30 textual sources on, 212, 215–16 Armenia! (exhibition), 211–12 Armitage, David, 4, 10, 12

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Art and Architecture of the Middle Ages (Cohen, Safran, and Caskey), 22 artists cross-​cultural style, 80, 82, 85–86, 87, 97–98, 100 mobility of, 83, 100–101, 190–91 style collaborations among, 94–95 artworks and materials, as cultural interchange objects, 31, 82, 83–85, 100, 101, 147 See also gift-​giving, diplomatic Ascension of Christ, 91 ascension (mi’raj) of Muhammad, 139–43, 141, 142 Augustine, Saint, 15n22, 89, 89 autoethnography, 8, 158–59, 160, 168, 176 Auxentius, Saint, 192 Babylonian Talmud, 179n23 Bădeuți (Milișăți, Romania), Saint Procopius, 189–90, 206n11 Baffin Island (Canada), 37, 38, 39 Ballo, Sidi, 67 Bamana (language), 60, 63, 67 Banakourou (Mali), 63 banal medievalism, 16n45 Bandiagara sculptures, 56–58, 57 Banjane (North Macedonia), Saint Nicetas, 199, 200 Barcelona Haggadah, 164–65 bard traditions, 67–68 Bari (Italy), San Nicola, 41, 43 Battle of Avarayr, 220 Battle of Hastings, 31 Battle of Nicopolis, 114, 116, 119, 125–26 Baumer, Christoph, 31 Baxandall, Michael, 114 Bayeux Embroidery, 31, 38 Bayezid I (sultan) biographical information, 119 diplomatic gift exchanges, 114, 115, 116–21, 120, 123–24 French aristocracy and cultural comparisons, 124–25 Bedikat Hametz, 163 Belle Da Costa Greene Award, 12 bells, 84 Beothuk, 38 Bern, Burgerbibliothek, MS 12011, 41, 42 Berry, Jean de, 117, 121–22, 125 Berzock, Kathleen Bickford, 53 Betrayal of Christ, 225, 226 Bettini, Sergio, 94 Bird, Charles, 67–68, 73n80 bird masks and costumes, 60–68, 63, 64, 65 Black Hebrew Israelites, 16n42 Blier, Suzanne, 55 Block Museum, 53–54 bonetillo (headdress), 161 Bonne of Luxembourg, 41, 44 “Book of Kings.” See Shahnameh (Ferdowsi)

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Boucicaut, Marshal, 116, 121 Brancaleon, Nicolò, 83, 88 Brann, Ross, 167 Brilliant, Richard, 31 Brother Haggadah, 160, 161–62 Bucephalus (horse), 136 Buddha statues, 86 Buddhism, 26 Buraq (horse), 139, 141, 141, 142, 143 Burghley Nef, The, 123–24, 124 burial cloths, 192–94, 193 Bustan (Sa’di), 139, 141 Butler, Judith, 166 Byzantine Empire art production in, 185, 186 challenges to study of, 186, 186–87 coinage designs appropriated from, 31–32 cross-​cultural interactions, 25, 38 imperial symbols of, 193, 194 war hymns of, 201 Western Romanesque architectural imitation in, 86–87 See also Byzantine style Byzantine style (Greek style, alla greca) of Acre scriptoria, 147 of Armenia cathedrals, 214 artistic imitation as cross-​cultural interchange method, 85 artist mobility and innovation with, 88 of Moldavian art, 192, 194–95 of Moldavian mural paintings, 190, 191, 197–99, 200 perception and value of, 85–86, 93–94, 100 terminology usage debates, 185 Caillié, René, 61 Calendar of Cordova, 72n56 Calisese (Cesena, Italy), San Martino, 96–97, 99 Camara, Seydou, 67–68 Cambridge University Library, MS 22-1948, 137, 139, 139, 148 Canada cross-​cultural interactions, 38–39 earliest textual references to, 21–22, 23, 31, 33, 37–38 early names for, 37 See also Tuniit Canard, Jean, 117 Candace of Ethiopia (Qadayfeh of Andalus), 136, 137, 151, 152 Candia, 94–98, 103 Canepa, Matthew, 218 Cantemir, Dimitrie, 205 Cape Dorset excavations, 33 Cappella Palatina, Palermo (Italy), 38 Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time (exhibition), 53–54 caricatures, 41, 43

Index

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Carruthers, Mary, 114 Carswell, John, 226 Catherine of Alexandria, Saint, 91, 91–92 censers, 195–96, 196 ceramics, 70n27, 224–27, 225, 226, 227 Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, 119 Charles V (king of France), 117, 121, 123 Charles VI (king of France), 114, 116, 122–23, 124–25 Charlottesville rally (2017), 10–11 Chatzidakis, Manolis, 94 Cheng, Bonnie, 32 children Haggadah scenes with, 160, 161, 162–63, 164, 165 Host desecration scenes with, 171–72, 173 in pilgrim memorial inscriptions, 223 China Alexander the Great in, 135 Armenian art, comparisons with, 218, 220, 224–25 coinage design, 31, 32 dragon-​boat festivals of, 30, 30, 31 Sogdian iconography from, 27, 27, 28–29, 30, 31 Sogdian relations with, 25, 26, 29, 29, 30, 30, 31, 32 Christ Armenian ceramic tiles featuring, 225, 225, 226, 227 Armenian illuminated manuscripts featuring, 217, 218 icon style preferences for, 94 Incarnation iconography, 144–45, 145 in Kotor mural paintings, 91 Marian icon types with, 96 in Moldavian mural paintings, 191, 199–201 monastery architecture featuring, 221 Christianity art styles conveying identity of, 202 Iberian religious relations, 158, 167 Islamic textiles used as relics or liturgical garments for, 82 See also Eastern Orthodox Christianity; pilgrimages Christian women clothing as identification, 171, 173–74 Host desecration, roles in, 169, 170, 171, 172–73 Christine de Pizan, 121, 122, 123, 125 Chronicle of Montecassino (Marsicanus), 85–86 Chronicles (Froissart), 114, 116–17, 118–25, 129n64 Chronographia (Eusebius of Caesarea), 215 chrysokentema (goldstitching), 192–94, 193, 206n25 church architecture in North Macedonia, 199, 200 in Moldavia (Romania), 189, 189–92, 190, 191, 197–202, 198, 206n11, 207n41 in Russia, 202, 203 Cilicia (Armenian kingdom), 216–20, 217, 219 Ciwara kun (Mali antelope mask), 54, 55 Cohen, Adam S., 22, 167, 176 coinage, 31–32, 153n12 collaboration, as scholarly methodological model, 61

College Art Association, 12 Colleyn, Jean-​Paul, 66 Colombe, Jean, 115 colonialism European exploration of West Africa, 54 medieval temporality, 6 scholarly methodology derived from, 41, 43–44 traditional religions practiced during, 66 Columbus, Christopher, 36, 37 Comaroff, John and Jean, 58, 69 Comestor, Peter, 144 Compendium of Chronicles (al-​Din), 35 Confessions (Augustine), 15n22 Conrad, Sebastian, 134 Constantine, Saint, 190, 191 Constantinople architectural style as influence, 86 Armenian tiles featuring events in, 225, 226 artist transplants from, 98, 101, 103, 190–91 siege of, as mural painting theme, 201 textile production and technique imitation, 85 cordage artifacts, 38 Corpus Christi Chapel altarpiece, 168–71, 169, 170 Corpus of Early Arabic Sources (Levtzion and Hopkins), 58, 70n29 Cosset, Jean, 119 costume realism, 170, 172, 173 counterethnography, 177 Crete (Greece), 94–98 critical (strategic) presentism, 4 cross-​cultural interactions Armenian-​Mongol alliances, 218 diplomatic gifts for, 83, 126 early texts describing, 21–22, 23, 27, 33, 36, 37, 37, 37–38 Indigenous sculptural works featuring, 23, 33, 35, 36, 37, 39, 40–41 methods of, 81–87 Norse migration into France, 38 painted chambers featuring, 23, 25, 26–33 research projects on, 80–81 style adaptations due to, 83, 88–93 See also hybridity cross stones, 211, 223, 224 Crowe, Yolande, 225 Crucifixion, 95, 97, 98, 102, 171, 221 crusade battles, 114, 116 Curtis, Edward, 36 Cyprus art production in mixed society of, 87 diplomatic gift exchanges, 123–24, 124 Monastery of Saint Herakleidios, Icon Museum, 97, 102 Dakar-​Djibouti Mission, 64, 65, 65–66 Darashamb (Armenia), Surb Step’anos, 220–24, 221, 222

Index

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241

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Darius I (king of Persia), 25, 27, 135, 136, 139 David, Marianne, 167 Dečani Monastery (Kosovo), 86 decolonization, 41, 43–44 Defrémery, Charles, 61 Derbes, Anne, 148 Didi-​Huberman, Georges, 185, 206 Dieterlen, Germaine, 66 Dijon, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 562 (Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César), 144–45, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 149–50 Din, Rashid al-, 35 Dodekaorton, 91 Dogodouman, Mali, 67 Dogon, 57–58, 70n25–26 Domenico di Niccolò (dei Cori), 121–22, 128n52 Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem, 143, 145, 145, 150, 151, 216 Dominic, Saint, 170 doorway iconography, 136, 139, 148–50, 149 Dorset people. See Tuniit Dowsett, Charles, 225, 226 Dozy, Reinart, 62–63, 72n54, 72n56 dragons, 216, 218, 220, 222, 232n18 Duanwujie (festival), 30, 30, 31 Dyula (Jula-​Jali), 67, 71n45 eagles, double-​headed, 193, 194 Eastern Orthodox Christianity Byzantine paintings and intentional imitation, 85–86 hymns of, 201 in Moldavia, 192, 201 Eastmond, Antony, 187, 204 Edmund of Langley, Duke of York, 117 Eid al-​Fitr feast, 60–63, 67 Eiríks saga rauð, 37, 38 Eiríksson, Leifr, 37 Elliot, Andrew B. R., 16n45 embroidery, 31, 38, 188, 192–94, 193 Empire of Mali (West Africa) androgynous wood statues, 56–58, 57 antelope masks, 54, 55 art acquisition methods, 65, 65–66 bird (kònò) power association masks, 63, 63–67, 64 European exploration and mask collecting from, 54–55 history of, 59–60 linguistics of, 60 oral historical traditions, 68 terracottas, 55 travel narratives on, 59, 59–63, 67, 68–69 Epistola de insulis nuper inventis (Columbus), 36, 37 Epstein, Marc Michael, 176 Esche-​Ramshorn, Christiane, 228 Espill (Roig), 172 Etchmiadzin Chapel tiles, 225 Ethiopia, 23, 83, 94, 151

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ethnography anti-​Jewish, 168–75 autoethnographic texts, defined, 158 counter, 177–78 Haggadah imagery as Jewish autoethnography, 8, 158–59, 160, 168 as scholarship tool, 56–58 Ethnography and the Historical Imagination (Comaroff and Comaroff), 58 ethnohistory, 57 Eucharist, 170–72, 172, 173, 174 See also Host desecration Europeans Indigenous peoples, representations of, 36 North American Indigenous sculpture depicting, 23, 33, 34, 36 West African exploration and mask collecting, 54–55 Eusebius of Caesarea, 215 Evans, Helen C., 2, 211 Evgenikos, Manuel, 88 exoticism, 94, 121–23, 125 Famagusta, (Cyprus), 87 farr (divine glory), 139–41, 140, 141, 143 fashion ethnographic authority through realism of, 170, 172, 173 as Jewish identity indicator, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 177 as Jewish social status indicator, 160, 161, 162, 164, 166 in Moldavian burial cloths , 193, 194 Ferdowsi, Abul-​Qâsem, 134 See also Shahnameh (Ferdowsi) Ferguson, Birgitta Wallace, 38 Fez (Morocco), Mosque al-​Qarawiyyin, 84 fibulae, 35 Fili, Abdallah, 72n54 Fioravanti, Aristotele, 202 Flagellation, 225–26, 227 Folda, Jaroslav, 147 fool imagery, 41, 44 Fortaner de Glera, 171 France diplomatic gift exchanges, 6, 114, 116–24, 120, 125–26, 127n15 Norse migration and cross-​cultural interactions in, 38 Ottoman aristocracy and cultural comparisons, 124–25 Ottoman Empire relations, 114, 116 textiles, popularity of, 117–18 West African explorations and art collecting of, 54–55 Francis of Assisi, Saint, 89, 89, 91–92, 92 freedom, 161, 167, 168, 179n23 Froissart, Jean, 114, 116–17, 118–25, 129n64

Index

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Gagliardi, Susan, 57, 66 Galaktotrophousa (Marian icon type), 96–97, 97, 98, 99, 100 Ganay, Solange de, 71n51 Gaozong (Tang emperor), 29, 30, 30 gender in Haggadah synagogue scenes, 163 Host desecration imagery vs. trials and, 174 Host desecration scenes and roles of, 169, 170, 171, 172–73 intersectionality and, 158 Jewish women’s marital status indicators, 162–63 Seder scenes and roles of, 160, 162–63, 164, 165, 167 Seder scenes and social hierarchy, 164, 165, 166, 167–68 women’s literacy in Haggadah illustrations, 176 Genesis, 201 Geography (Shirakats’i), 212, 215 George, Saint, 97, 101 George of Trikala, 191 Gesta (History of the Archbishops) (Adam of Bremen), 21–22, 23, 31, 33, 37 Gibb, H. A. R., 61 gift-​giving, diplomatic Armenian-​Mongol alliances, 218 Carpathian metalworks, 196 as cross-​cultural interaction method, 83, 126 Cyprus to Ottoman, 123–24, 124 to French court, 121, 122–23, 125 French-​Ottoman exchanges, 6, 114, 116–23, 120, 126, 127n15 popular objects for, 117–18 responses to, 123, 126 Glazer-​Eytan, Yonatan, 174 globalism of Alexander the Great, 7, 133, 134 defined, 23 early texts featuring, 21–22 as medieval art history approach, 2–3, 5, 8–13 Godwinson, Harold, 31 Golden House, Rome (Italy), 229 goldstitching, 192–94, 193, 206n25 Gothic (Western, Latin) style in relation to Byzantine icons, 93–101, 103 in relation to Byzantine mural paintings, 88, 89–93 Carpathian metalworks, 195–96 cross-​cultural exchanges and, 83, 87, 88 Moldavian churches, 201–2 Russian cathedrals with, 202 granatza (Perso-​Assyrian mantles), 194 Greek style (alla greca). See Byzantine style Greenland, 21, 35, 37, 38–39 Greenwood, Timothy, 215, 216 Gregory, Saint, 214 Grenet, Frantz, 29–30, 32, 46n26 Griaule, Marcel, 64, 65, 65–66 Grigor of Tarōn (patriarch of Jerusalem), 225

Grœlendinga, 37 Gruber, Christiane, 143 Guenée, Bernard, 114 Guérin, Sarah, 144 Guillaume de Bordes, 123 gyrfalcons, 117, 120, 127 Haggadot (Jewish Passover books) autoethnographic illustrations of, 8, 158–59, 160, 168, 176, 177–78 children featured in, 163, 164 content descriptions, 160, 163, 165–66 defined, 157 gender and use of, 176 gender roles, 160, 163 intersectionality in, 158 marital status indications, 162, 163 prefaces for, 162 women’s literacy representations, 176 See also Seder Hall of the Ambassadors (Uzbekistan), 25, 26, 26–33, 27, 28, 29, 30 Harald Hardradi, 21–22, 23, 31 Hârlău (-Romania), Saint George, 191 haroset rituals, 160, 163, 166 Harris, Julie, 163, 176 Helena, Saint, 190, 191 Helly, Jacques de, 116–17 Helmer, James, 36 Heng, Geraldine, 38, 177 Henry, Joseph, 63, 63 Herea, Gabriel, 192 Hermitage of Saint Bartolomé, Villahermosa del Río (Spain), 173–74, 174 (detail), 175 (detail) Het’um I (king of Armenia), 216–20, 217 (detail), 219 (detail) Hinduism, 26 Hispano-​Moresque Haggadah, 160, 162 Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César Alexander the Great narratives in, 144–50, 145, 146 architectural forms as historical time indicators, 148 content descriptions, 143 inscription function, 145–46 patronage theories, 148 religious perspectives, 134, 145–46 sacred space perceptions, 150 Temple of Janus iconography, 148, 149, 149, 150 Historia scholastica (Comestor), 144 historical time, 148 History (Sebēos of Bagratunis), 215 History of the Archbishops (Gesta) (Adam of Bremen), 21–22, 23, 31, 33, 37 Hodos, Tamar, 32–33 Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem, 146, 150, 151, 214, 225, 225 Holy Thousand martyrs, 220 Hopkins, John F. P., 58

Index

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horses of Alexander the Great, 136 as diplomatic gifts, 125, 127n15 in gates of Jerusalem iconography, 146, 146 in mi’raj (ascension) iconography, 139, 141, 141, 142, 143 painted chambers featuring, 29, 30 in Saint George iconography, 97, 101 San Marco, decorated with, 229 symbolism of, 29 as trade commodity, 25 Host desecration Christian altarpieces featuring, 168–74, 169 (detail), 170 (detail), 172 (detail), 174 (detail), 175 (detail), 177 Christian women roles in imagery of, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173–74 ethnographic authority strategies, 170, 172, 173 function of, 174–75 historical context of, 174 miracle narratives of, 171–72, 173, 174–75 racial implications in, 172, 177 Seder imagery comparisons, 158 Seder scenes as response to, 177–78 settings for, 168 trials for, 168, 171, 174 Hungary, 114, 119, 196, 202 hybridity of Armenian cathedrals, 214, 216 of Armenian ceramic tiles, 224–25, 226–27 of Armenian monasteries, 222 cross-​cultural interactions producing, 80, 82, 85–86, 87, 97–98, 100 defined, 80 Marian icons, 94–98, 97, 98, 99, 100, 100–101, 102, 103 of Moldavian churches, 201–2 of Moldavian metalworks, 195–96 mural paintings, 89–93, 97 Russian cathedrals, 202 saint icons, 97, 101, 102 Iberia. See Spain Ibn Battuta, 58–63, 59, 67, 68–69 Ibn Juzayy, 59, 62, 71n38 Iceland, 21, 38, 39 “ICMA and Expanding the Medieval World” (roundtable), 12 Ibn ʿArabshah, 128n44 iconotropic process, 86 icons Byzantine painting style for, 85–86 cross-​cultural mobility of, 100 roles of, 86 stylistic hybridity in, 94, 95–96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 100 stylistic traditions, 94 Western Christian intentional imitation of Eastern, 86

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identity contrasts, 40–41, 42, 43 ideological presentism, 10 Ife masks, 55, 56 Igloliorte, Heather, 41 illuminated manuscripts Acre production of, 147 Armenian, 216–20, 217 (detail), 219 (detail) hierarchies of treatment featured in, 41, 44 mi’raj of Muhammad featured in, 139–43, 141, 142 Moldavian, 188, 192, 193, 194, 194, 194–95, 197 styles and techniques associated with, 85 Temple of Janus imagery, 148, 149, 149, 150 See also Alexander the Great at the Ka’ba; Haggadot; Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César; Seder; Shahnameh (Ferdowsi) imitation, as cross-​cultural interaction, 85–87 Incarnation, 144–45, 145, 201 Inclusivity and Diversity Committee (Medieval Academy of America), 12 India Alexander the Great narratives battling king of, 135, 136, 147 Armenian tile motif comparisons, 225 Chinese imitation of statuary of, 86 cross-​cultural interactions, 25 painted chambers with iconography of, 29, 29–30 Indigenous people early textual references to, 33, 37–38 manuscript illustrations featuring, 36, 37 periodization of sculptural works by, 35 scholarly value of sculptural works by, 36 See also Tuniit influence, defined, 80 Innocent VIII (pope), 230 inscriptions Alexander the Great manuscript narratives, 139, 145, 145 Armenian cathedrals, 213, 214 Armenian Kütahya tiles, 224–27, 225, 226, 227 Armenian monasteries and memorial, 220, 222–23 Armenian sundials, 214 for language study, 223 Moldavian burial cloths, 193, 194 Moldavian church murals, 190, 191, 199 West African, 70n26 “Insula hyspana,” from Epistola de insulis nuper inventis (Columbus), 36, 37 International Center of Medieval Art (ICMA), 2, 12 International Congress of Medieval Studies (2019), 12 intersectionality, 158, 166–67 Inuit, 33 Inupiat, 33 Iron Curtain, 186, 186–87 Isabella of Bavaria, 117, 122–23 Isaiah (prophet), 192 Ishmaelites, 167–68

Index

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İskendernāme (Ahmedî), 119 Islam mi’raj of Muhammad, 139–41, 141, 143 sacred spaces of, 134–43, 136, 138, 139, 140 See also Muslims Islamic (Ottoman) style Armenian monasteries, 221 art production in mixed societies, 87 medieval periodization challenges, 23 textile mobility and imitation, 82 Iṣṭaḵrī, Abū Isḥāq al-, 150–52, 152 Istanbul, Topkapi Sarayi Müzesi Kütüphanesi, MS H. 1479, 137, 138, 144, 145–46 Italian Gothic (Western, Latin) style in icons, 93–101, 103 in mural paintings, 88, 89–93 Russian cathedrals with, 202 Ivan III (tsar), 202 ivory, 40, 53 Jabal al-​Qilal, 152, 152 Jabal Tariq (Gilbraltar), 152, 152 Jacques de Vergy, 125, 126 Jaharis, Mary and Michael, 211 James of Lusignan (king of Cyprus), 123, 124 Jami, 141–43, 142 Jean de Brogny, 117 Jean de Montaigu, 123 Jebba Island (West Africa), 70n13 jèliw, 67–68 Jenness, Diamond, 33 Jenné terracottas, 55 Jerusalem Alexander the Great narratives at gates of, 143–50, 145, 146 cathedrals of, 225 churches in, 146, 150, 151, 214, 225 maps and medieval perceptions of, 150–51, 151 mi’raj of Muhammad and, 142, 143 shrines in, 143, 145, 145, 150, 151, 216 Jewish Face, 41 Jewish people clothing and accessories identifying, 161, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173 derogatory caricatures as, 41 holidays and ritual meals of, 157 identity and self-​fashioning representations, 157, 158, 168, 176 other religions relations, 158, 167 See also Haggadot; Host desecration; Seder John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, 117 John of Sulṭāniyya, 118 John the Mason, 202 Joseph (biblical character), 167 Josephus, 144 Jovo of Debar, 90–91 Judas Iscariot, 171, 173, 178, 225, 226

Jughayets’i, Hakob, 220 Jula-​Jali, 67, 71n45 Ka’ba. See Alexander the Great at the Ka’ba Kalodjurdjević, Stefan, 90 Kalopanagiotis (Cyprus), Monastery of Saint Herakleidios Icon Museum, 97, 102 Kama blon, 71n51 Kangaba, Mali, 71n51 Kazaryan, Armen, 214 Keene, Bryan, 23 Keita clan, 71n51 Kéla, Mali, 71n51 Kéméni, Ségou, Mali, 64, 65, 65–66, 72n75 Kensington Runestone, 38 khach’k’ars (Armenian cross stones), 211, 223, 224 Khamsa (Nizami Ganjavi), 137 Kim, Dorothy, 11 kiswa (black cloth), 139, 139, 140, 143, 143 Kitāb al-​Masālik wa l-​mamālik (al-​Iṣṭaḵrī), 150–52, 152 Kleinbauer, Eugene, 214 Knappett, Carl, 22, 26 knowledge, 68, 163–64, 165 kònò (bird) power association masks, 63, 63–68, 64, 65 Kotor (Montenegro) patron saints of, 91 Saint Tryphon Cathedral mural paintings, 88–89, 90 Santa Maria Collegiata, 88–89, 89 Sveti Bazilije (Saint Basil), Stoliv, 89–93, 91, 92, 93 Kouymjian, Dickran, 218 Krautheimer, Richard, 24, 32, 35, 36, 44 Kremlin, Moscow (Russia) Cathedral of the Dormition, 202, 203 wall construction, 202 Krishna (Hindu deity), 29 Kühnel, Bianca, 144, 148 Kütahya tiles, 224–27, 225, 226, 227 Lambertini, Imelda, 170 lapis lazuli, 25, 27 Last Judgment, 190, 201, 229 Last Supper altarpieces featuring, 171, 172 Armenian tiles featuring, 225, 227 as Eucharist example, 169, 170–71, 178 as Moldavian mural painting subject, 191 Law, 146, 146–47 Lectionary of King Het’um II, 216–20, 217 (detail), 219 (detail) Lehats’i, Simēon, 227 Leiden, Bibliotheek der Rijkuniversiteit, MS or. 3101, 151–52, 152 Leo IX (pope), 21 Levon II (king of Armenia), 218 Levtzion, Nehemia, 58, 71n37 Liber ad honorem Augustalis (Peter of Eboli), 41, 42 Libyco-​Berbers, 70n27

Index

00i-252 Patton 6p.indb 245

245

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Lieris, Michel, 65, 65–66 lions, 217, 218, 220 Lipton, Sara, 41 liturgical objects, 192, 195–96, 196 London, British Library Additional MS 15268, 147–48, 149, 150 Additional MS 28681, 150 Additional MS 32343, 150, 151 MS Additional 14761, 164–65, 179n22 MS Harley 4379, 122, 122–23 MS Oriental 1404, 160, 161–62, 178n13 MS Oriental 2737, 160 MS Oriental 2884, 162–63, 179n16 Louis II of Bourbon, 117 Luke the Evangelist, Saint, 94, 103 Macron, Emmanuel, 69n11 Madonna (Marian icon type), 96 Madre della Consolazione, 94 Maghrib maps, 150–52, 152 Mahé, Jean-​Pierre, 216 Mahoney, Lisa, 147 Mali, 60 See also Empire of Mali Mamikonean, Vardan, 220 Mande culture, 60–69 Manuel II Palaiologos (emperor), 118 manuscripts and texts Alexander the Great romances, 119, 143 on Armenia, 212, 215–16 cultural transmission and role of, 31 French-​Turkish battle accounts, 114, 116 French-​Turkish diplomatic negotiations, 113–17, 115, 118–26, 129n64 global expeditions and cultural interactions in, 21–22 Host desecration narratives, 172 Indigenous people featured in, 33, 36, 37, 37–38 pilgrimage literature, 227–28 representations of diversity in, 41, 42 research projects on Muslim, 61 on tapestries, 118 travel narratives, 58–63, 67, 68–69, 227–30 See also illuminated manuscripts Manuscripts of the Muslim World project, 61 map production, 150–52, 151, 152 Mapungubwe, South Africa, 55 Maria Asanina Palaiologina of Mangup, 192–94, 193 Măriȩsescul, Theodore, 195 Mark, Saint, 195, 195 Marsicanus, Leo, 85 Martin I (king of Aragon), 117 Martiros of Eznka (Erznka, mod. Erzincan), 227–30, 228 Mary (Mother of God) altarpieces featuring, 171 Eastern Orthodox hymns dedicated to, 201

246

00i-252 Patton 6p.indb 246

icon types, 96 as subject of mural paintings, 199, 200, 201 pilgrimage literature on shrines of, 229, 230 portrait style preferences for authenticity, 94 rhizomatic processes and iconographic alterations, 101, 103 stylistic hybridity in icons of, 94–98, 97, 98, 99, 100, 100–101, 102, 103 masks, 35, 35 See also West African masks Master of Vallbona de les Monges (Guillem Seguer?): Altarpiece of the Corpus Christi, 168–71, 169 (detail), 170 (detail) Matisse, Henri, 55 matzah baskets, 164 matzah rituals, 160, 162, 163, 165, 166 164, 168 McMaster, Gerald, 36 McNaughton, Patrick, 66, 67 Mecca Alexander the Great’s pilgrimages to, 136–43 cityscape imagery, 136, 140, 142, 143 mi’raj narrative and, 143 Medeiros, Marie-​Thérèse, 124 Medieval Academy of America, 12 medieval art history, overview diversity and inclusivity, 11–12 ethical obligations of, 10–11 globalist approaches to, 2–4, 5, 12–13 presentist approaches to, 3–5, 10, 11–13 scholarly challenges to, 2, 56–58 scholarly methodology for, 9, 54, 61 Medieval Climate Anomaly, 35 Medieval Globe (journal), 14n5, 53 Medievalists of Color, 11–12 Mediterranean Alexander the Great legacy, 135 cross-​cultural interactions impact on, 80, 82, 85–86, 87, 97–98, 100 icons and stylistic hybridity, 94–98, 100–101, 103 map production, 150–51, 152 mural paintings and stylistic hybridity, 89–93, 97 perceptions of, 79–80 Menologium (Eastern Orthodox service book), 199 Mersch, Margit, 81 metalwork, 81, 85, 192, 195–96 Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibitions at, 211–12 mi’raj of Muhammad manuscripts at, 139, 141 Mihailo, 90–93, 91, 92, 93 Miracle des Billettes, 171–72, 173, 174 mi’raj (ascension), 139–43, 141, 142 misogynist ideologies, 10, 11 mobility of artists, 83, 100–101, 190–91 of artworks, 82 (see also gift-​giving, diplomatic) globalization due to, 22 of spectators, 223, 231

Index

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Modigliani, Amedeo, 55 Moldavia art history scholarship on, 185–87, 203–6 artistic production influences on, 204 art production and patronage, 187–88, 192, 196–97 church architecture, 189, 189–92, 190, 191, 197–202, 198, 206n11, 207n41 as cultural crossroads, 7, 187, 202–3, 205 embroidery production, 188, 192–94, 193 geographic descriptions, 187 history of, 187, 189, 197, 205 manuscript production, 188, 192, 193, 194, 197 metalworks, 195–96, 196 mural paintings, 190–91, 197–99, 198, 200 periodization classifications, 204 Moldovița Monastery, (Romania) Church of the Annunciation, 197–202, 198 Molina Figueras, Joan, 174 Monaco, Lorenzo, 83 Monastery of Saint Catherine, (Egypt) Mount Sinai, 97, 100, 101 Monastery of Saint Herakleidios Icon Museum (Cyprus), 97, 102 mondialisation, 22–23, 32 Möngke Khan (Great Khan), 218 Mongol Empire, 36, 216, 218 Moors, 157, 167 Moscow (Russia), Cathedral of the Dormition, 202, 203 Mosque al-​Qarawiyyin, Fez (Morocco), 84 motivational presentism, 4 Mount Athos, 192, 194 Mount Sinai, (Egypt) Monastery of Saint Catherine, 97, 100, 101 Muhammad (prophet), 139–43, 141, 142 Muñoz-​Basols, Javier, 167 Murad I (sultan), 116 mural paintings of Moldavian church exteriors, 197–99, 198, 200 in Moldavian church interiors, 190–91, 191, 199 stylistic adaptations and hybridity, 88–93, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 97 Musa, Mansa (emperor), 13, 60 Muslims clothing indicating, 171, 172, 172 Host desecration scenes and roles of, 171, 172, 172 Iberian Christian relations with, 158, 167 in Jewish and Christian domestic imagery, 157, 167, 177 Jewish terminology for, 167 nationalism, 4–5, 10, 11 Nature of Things, The (film), 40 Neamț Monastery (Romania), 192, 194 Nees, Lawrence, 216 Nero (emperor), 229 Nersēs III (patriarch), 213, 215

networks, defined, 81 See also trade networks Nevers, Jean de, 114, 116 Newfoundland, 37, 38 New York Cloisters Collection, 69.86, 41, 44 Metropolitan Museum of Art, MS 1974.294.2, 139, 141 Nicholas, Saint, 92 Nigeria, 70n27 Nizami Ganjavi, 137 Normans (French Norse), 38, 41, 42 Norse people art forgeries representing migration of, 38 cross-​cultural interactions of, 36, 38–39, 40, 41, 52 Indigenous sculpture featuring, 23, 33, 35, 36, 37, 38 textual traditions of, 33, 37–38 Norse sagas, 33, 37–38 North Macedonia, Saint Nicetas, 199, 200 Notre-​Dame Cathedral, Paris, 229 Nowrūz festival, 27, 29 nsibidi system, 70n27 Numidian, 70n27 nur (divine light), 140, 140–41 nyama (life forces), 67 nymakala (occupational castes), 67 Obalufon II (Ife ruler), 55, 56 one-​placeness, 32 oral history performances, 61, 67–68 Orosius, 133, 143, 144, 148 Otherness cross-​cultural interaction and representation of, 81 exotic gifts associated with, 121 French gift-​giving and perception of Ottoman as Other, 114, 116 Indigenous perception of European as Other, 37 of Muslims in Iberia, 167 Ottoman Empire diplomatic gift exchanges, 6, 114, 116–24, 120, 125–26, 127n15 French aristocracy and cultural comparisons, 124–25 principalities of, 187 Sogdian cross-​cultural interactions with, 27, 27 Turkish migrations, 36, 190–91 See also Bayezid I (sultan) Ottoman Porte, 205 Our Lady of the Castle, Rhodes (Greece), 88 out of bounds, defined, 1–2 “Out of Bounds: Exploring the Limits of Medieval Art” (conference), 2 painted chambers Afrāsiāb (Uzbekistan), 25, 26, 26–33, 27, 28, 29, 30 Panjikant (Tajikistan), 31, 46n31 Palestine, 84, 87

Index

00i-252 Patton 6p.indb 247

247

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Panjikant (Tajikistan), 31, 46n31 Pantokrator, 91, 191 parallelism, 80, 172, 173 Paris Notre-​Dame Cathedral, 229 Saint-​Denis Abbey Church, 230 West African art in, 56, 57, 63–64, 64 See also Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS 308, 228 MS 20125, 146, 146–47 MS fr. 5594, 114, 115 MS suppl. persan 493, 134–37, 136, 139, 148 Passages oultre mer de Sébastien Mamerot (Colombe and collaborators), 114, 115 Passion, 88, 173, 191 Passover. See Haggadot; Seder Pătrăuți Monastery (Romania), Church of the Holy Cross, 189, 189–92, 190, 191, 207n41 Patton, Pamela A., 177 Paul, Saint, 95, 229 pax Augustiana, 148 peregrinus, 125 Persia Armenian geopolitical relations with, 216 Constantinople attacks by, as mural painting theme, 201 cultural assimilation legacy, 135 national epics of (see Shahnameh) Sasanian dynasty of, 25, 27, 28, 29, 135, 153n12 Peter, Saint, 95, 229 Peter of Eboli, 41, 42 Peter Rareș of Moldavia, 187–88, 196–97, 199, 202 Phanariote rule, 205 Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, 114, 117, 119–20, 123 Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, 119 Picasso, Pablo, 55 Piguet-​Panayotova, Dora, 214 pilgrimages Alexander the Great narratives of, 142–50, 145, 146 Armenian memorial inscriptions, 223 cross-​cultural interactions due to, 103 historical value of literature from, 227 Western European manuscripts of, 227–28, 228 See also Alexander the Great at the Ka’ba Pillars of Hercules, 152, 153n1 Pinto, Karen, 151 Pintoin, Michel, 116, 125–26 Pirez, Álvaro, 83, 88 Pisa (Italy), 84 Plato, 200 pleasure, contemplation of, 123, 126 Pliny the Elder, 29 plundering, 55 Pogossian, Zara, 233n64 Porta Speciosa, 150 Porus (king), 135, 136, 147

248

00i-252 Patton 6p.indb 248

power (initiation) associations, 63, 63–66, 64, 65, 66–67 Pratt, Mary Louise, 158 presentism, 3–5, 10, 11–13 Procession of the Solider Saints, 191 Protestant Reformation, 204 Psalter Map, 150 Pseudo-​Callisthenes, 133, 135, 136 Pseudo-​Hegesippus, 144 Punic Wars, 148 Putna Monastery, Moldavia (Romania), 192–94, 193, 195–96, 196 pyxes, 144, 145, 145 Qadayfeh of Andalus (Candace of Ethiopia), 136, 137, 151, 152 Queralbs, Saint James, 173 Qu Yuan, 30 race anti-​Jewish associations impacting perceptions of, 172, 177 intersectionality and, 158 Jewish self-​fashioning and, 158 medieval perception of, 177 Norse relations with Indigenous, 38 physiognomy and construction of, 39, 41, 44 as social status indicator, 166, 167, 177 racist ideologies, 10, 11 Rand, E. K., 204 reclining rituals, 165, 168, 179n23 Recueil des sources arabes (Levtzion and Hopkins), 58, 70n29 Reims textiles, 117, 118–19, 127n15 remoteness, 150–52 Renaissance, 94 Republic of Mali, 60 Resurrection, 225, 225 Retable of the Eucharist, 173–74, 174 (detail), 175 (detail) rhizomatic processes, 81, 84–85, 101, 103 Rhodes (Greece), Our Lady of the Castle, 88 Richard II (king of England), 117 Riḥla (Ibn Battuta and Ibn Juzayy, comp.), 59–63, 67, 68–69 Roig, Jaume, 172 Roman art and culture, 31, 83, 214 Roman d’Alexandre, 143 Roman de toute chevalerie, 143 Romanesque, 86, 87 Rome (Italy), 229 Ṙ oslin, T’oros, 216 Roth, Cecil, 167 Roudavski, Stanislav, 228 Rylands Haggadah, 160–61, 162, 167, 177 Sa’di, 139, 141 Safavids, 220, 221, 224 Safran, Linda, 22

Index

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sagas, Norse, 33, 37, 38 Saint Demetrios, Moldavia (Romania), 202 Saint-​Denis Abbey Church, Paris (France), 230 Saint Elijah, Moldavia (Romania), 189–90 Saint George on Horseback, 97, 101 Saint James, Queralbs (Spain), 173 Saint James Cathedral, Jerusalem, 225, 225–27, 226, 227 Saint-​Martin, Antoine Jean, 228, 232–33n63 Saint Nicetas (North Macedonia), 199, 200 Saint-​Omer, Bibliothèque de l’Agglomération, MS 776, 150 Saint Peter’s, Rome (Italy), 229 Saint Procopius, Moldavia (Romania), 189–90, 206n11 saints as icon painting themes, 97, 100, 101 monastery architecture featuring, 221 as mural painting themes, 89–93, 91, 92, 93, 199 Saint Tryphon Cathedral, Kotor (Montenegro), 88–89, 90 Sala de Justicia (Alhambra), 87 Salmon, Pierre, 121 Sàmi people, 33, 37–38 Sandghka Gospels, 232n17 Sandona, Mark, 148 Sanguinetti, Beniamino, 61 San Marco, Venice (Italy), 229 San Martino, Calisese (Cesena, Italy), 96–97, 99 San Nicola, Bari (Italy), 41, 43 Santa Maria Collegiate, Kotor (Montenegro), 88–89, 89 Santa María de Sigena, Villanueva de Sigena (Spain), 171–72, 172 (detail), 177 Santa María de Vallbona de les Monges (Spain), 168–71, 169, 170 Sarajevo Haggadah race depicted in, 165, 167, 177 Seder scenes, 158, 159, 165–66, 177 social status and figure placement, 167–68 Sarr, Felwine, 65 Sasanian Empire, 25, 27, 28, 29, 135, 153n12 Savoy, Bénédicte, 65 Schöne Madonna (Marian icon type), 96 scriptoria Acre, 147 Moldavian, 188, 192, 193, 194, 197 sculpture Armenian cross stones, 211, 223, 224 figurines, 38 marble thrones, 41, 43 masks, 23, 33, 34, 35, 35, 36 monastery architecture, 221–22, 222 West African, 56–58, 57 See also wands, shaman; West African masks Sebastian, Saint, 91, 91–92 Seder autoethnographic scenes of, 157, 158, 159, 160–62, 164, 167, 176 children at, 160, 161, 163–64, 165

defined, 157 gender roles during, 160, 162, 165, 166–67, 179n23 instructional texts for (Haggadot), 160, 161–62, 163, 164, 165 race depicted in, 158, 159, 165, 166–67 reclining at, 165, 168, 179n23 social class indications, 160–61, 162, 164, 166–67 themes for, 161 Seguer, Guillem: Altarpiece of the Corpus Christi (?), 168–71, 169 (detail), 170 (detail) Seljuks, 218, 221 seraphim, 222, 224, 225 Serbia, 86, 88, 91, 200 Serra, Jaume: Altarpiece of the Virgin, 171, 172 (detail) servants Haggadah illustrations and depictions of race, 159, 161, 165, 166–67, 177 Haggadah illustrations and social class distinctions, 160–61, 162, 164, 166, 176 in Host desecration scenes, 169, 170, 170 Seven Books of History Against the Pagans (Orosius), 133, 143, 144, 148 Shahnameh (“Book of Kings”) (Ferdowsi) authorship, 134 contents, 134, 135–36, 151–52 divine light and glory iconography, 139–41, 140, 141, 143 historical time indicators, 148 inscription function, 145–46 pilgrimage themes, 137, 147, 149 symbolism of geographic remoteness, 151–52 See also Alexander the Great at the Ka’ba Shalev-​Eyni, Sarit, 179n15 shamanism defined, 47n71 masks used in, 35, 35 sculptural works used in, overview, 35 wands or sticks used in, 23, 33, 34, 35, 39–41, 40 Shirakats’i, Anania, 6, 211 shoulder-​flames (motif), 153n12 Sigismund of Hungary, 114, 120 Silk Routes, 25 Simpson, Marianna Shreve, 137, 147 Sister Haggadah, 160, 162–64, 180n52 Skrælings, 37–38 Skritefingi (Sàmi people), 33, 37–38 slaves, 25, 160, 167 Smith, Linda Tuhiwai, 41–42 social class Haggadah illustrations and clothing styles, 62, 160, 161, 164, 166 Haggadah illustrations and figural hierarchy, 164, 166–67 Haggadah illustrations and servants, 160–61, 164 Haggadah illustrations and table settings, 160, 163, 164, 166 intersectionality and, 158

Index

00i-252 Patton 6p.indb 249

249

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Society of the Missionaries of Africa, 63 Sogdians coinage, 31–32 cross-​cultural interactions of, 25–26, 32 literacy of, 31 painted chambers, 23, 25–33, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30 textile designs, 27–28, 28 tomb furniture, 32 Songhai Empire, 62 Spain (Iberia) anti-​Semitism in, 174 cross-​cultural interactions in, 87 Hebrew names for, 158 intersectionality in, 158 Jewish domesticity, illustrations of (see Haggadot; Host desecration; Seder) Jewish sociopolitical identity in, 176 race and Otherness in, 167 religious plurality in, 158, 167, 177 Spedon, 90 spolia, reuse of, 83 Starnina, Gherardo, 83 Stato da mar, 89–96 steles of Rusas II, 213 Stephen, Saint, 220, 221, 225, 227 Stephen III “the Great” (prince of Moldavia), 187–89, 192, 194–96 Stevović, Ivan, 205 Stoliv (Montenegro), Sveti Bazilije (Saint Basil), 89–93, 91, 92, 93 Story of Alexander the Great (tapestry), 119, 120 strategic (critical) presentism, 4 Straumsfjörðr, 38 Studenica Monastery (Serbia), 86 Suceava, Moldavia (Romania), Saint Demetrios, 202 Saint Elijah, 189–90 Sulayman, Amir, 119 Sulayman, Mansa, 59, 62 summer solstice, 21, 27, 30, 192 sundials, 213 Sunjata, 68 Sunjata Keita, 68, 71n51 sunlight, and church architecture, 192 surcotes, 161, 162, 166 Sutherland, Patricia, 35, 38 Tang Empire (China), 29, 29, 30, 30, 31, 32 tapestries as French diplomatic gifts to sultans, 6, 116, 117, 118–21, 120 popularity and value of, 117–18, 120 popular subjects for, 119, 120 Tellem (Pre-​Dogon) statues, 56–58, 57, 70n26 Temple of Janus, 148, 149, 149, 150 temporality anachronistic, 94, 100, 137, 201

250

00i-252 Patton 6p.indb 250

decolonizing medieval, 6 historical time devices, 148 presentist approaches to, 3–5, 10, 11–13 Tera, Kalilou, 73n80–81 Tetraevangelia, 194, 194–95 Tetragrammaton, 144, 145, 146 textiles Byzantine imitation of Arabic tiraz bands, 85 Islamic, as Christian relics, 82 Moldavian embroidery production, 192–94, 193 popularity of French, 117 Reims, as diplomatic gifts, 117, 118–19, 127n15 Sogdian identity expressed through, 27–29, 28, 29, 29 See also tapestries theft of artifacts, 65–66 Theophanes the Greek, 88 Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, 117 thrones, marble, 41, 43 Thule, 33, 34, 35, 36, 38 Tifinagh (alphabet), 70n27 tiles, ceramic, 224–27, 225, 226, 227 Timur (Turco-​Mogol commander), 118, 128n44 Timurid, 221 tiraz bands, 85 tocados (headdresses) in Host desecration scenes for costume realism, 170, 172, 172 Seder scenes featuring, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166 Toledo (Spain), 87 Tomb of the Three Kings, 229 T’oramanyan, T’oros, 214 trade networks African, 53, 71n45 Armenian, 217, 220, 225 cultural encounters through, 25 globalism of medieval, 2–3 Mediterranean, 103, 147 Sogdian, 26, 31, 32–33 Tuniit-​Norse, 38–39, 40 Transkulturelle Verflechtungen: Mediävistische Perspektiven (research project), 80 transculturation, 80 translation, 80 Transylvania, 196, 201–2 Trdat III (king of Armenia), 215 Tree of Jesse, 199, 200 Trees of the Sun and the Moon, 148 triptychs, 97, 102 Tryphon, Saint, 91–92, 93 Tsoede bronzes, 70n13 Tuck, Eve, 45 Tuniit (Dorset people) artistic activity timeline, 34 artistic motivation, 39, 41 cross-​cultural interactions, impact of, 39 early textual references on, 38

Index

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excavation discoveries and cross-​cultural evidence, 38–39 history, 33–34, 36 sculptural works of, 35, 35, 38, 40 See also wands, shaman Turfan (China), Xinjiang, 25, 26, 28 Tuttle, Kelly, 61 Tzara, Tristan, 55 Uluhogian, Gabriella, 223–24 ’Umari, al-, 60 Urania (deity), 46n41 Urgell (Spain), Santa María Vallbona de les Monges, 168–71, 169, 170 Uric, Gabriel, 195 Uric, Paisie, 195 Varkhuman (king), 27–28, 28, 29, 29, 31, 32 Vasari, Giorgio, 85–86 Veneziano, Paolo, 96 Venice San Lazzaro, MS 323 [olim 812], 228 San Marco, 229 Villahermosa del Río (Spain), Hermitage of Saint Bartolome, 173–74, 174 (detail), 175 (detail) Villanueva de Sigena (Spain), Santa María de Sigena, 171–72, 172 (detail), 177 Vínland (now Canada), 21–22, 23, 31, 33, 37 Vínland Map, 38 Virgin and Child Galaktotrophousa (Calisese, Cesena), 96–97, 99 Virgin and Child Galaktotrophousa (Mount Sinai), 97, 100 Virgin Galaktotrophousa (Ciardiello Gallery, unknown location), 96, 98 Virgin Galaktotrophousa (Fischer’s Gallery, unknown location), 96, 97 Virgin Mary. See Mary (Mother of God) Virgin of Tenderness (Marian icon type), 96 Visconti, Gian Galeazzo, Duke of Milan, 117 Visconti, Valentine, Duchess of Orléans, 117, 119, 122–23 Vite (Vasari), 85–86 Vlithias, Selino (Greece), Holy Savior, 97 Voroneț Monastery (Romania), Church of Saint George, 189 Walker, Alicia, 218 walled towns, 31, 46n31 wands, shaman cross-​cultural interactions represented on, 23, 33, 35, 36, 37, 39 descriptions, 33, 34, 39, 40–41 function, 39–40, 40 material for, 33, 40 medieval categorization, 34 scholarly perceptions of, 36

war booty, 83, 147 Washington, DC, Library of Congress, Incun.1494. V47, 36, 37 West Africa linguistics of early, 58, 70n27 pictographic protowriting of ancient, 70n27 textual references to, 58, 70n29 travel narratives on, 58–63, 59, 67, 68–69 West African art androgynous wood statues from, 56–58, 57 archaeological scholarship on, 55 best known medieval works in, 55 European acquisition methods, 55, 65, 65–66 European interest in, 54–55 pictographic protowriting on, 70n27 scholarly methodology challenges, 53–54, 56–58 See also West African masks West African masks bird (kònò), 63, 63–68, 64, 65 dating conventions, 54–55, 70n25 derogatory characterizations of, 6 European acquisition methods, 65, 65–66 European collections of, 54–55 Ife copper-​alloy, 55, 56 Mali antelope, 54, 55 periodization challenges, 54–55 scholarly methodology challenges, 54 survival challenges, 55 travel narratives describing, 58, 60–63, 67, 68–69 Western (Gothic) style Carpathian metalworks, 195–96 cross-​cultural exchanges and, 83, 87, 88 Moldavian churches, 201–2 See also Italian Gothic Style What Is Global History? (Conrad), 134 Wheel of Fortune, 147, 148 white supremacism, 10–11, 158 William of Normandy, 31 Yang, K. Wayne, 45 Yasoda (Hindu deity), 39 Yazdgerd III (king), 135 Yerevan, Matenadaran MS 979, 216–20, 217 (detail), 219 (detail) MS 3488, 228 MS 3973, 232n17 Yuan Dynasty, 218, 220 Yusuf wa Zulaikha (Jami), 141–43 , 142 Zahan, Dominique, 66, 72n75 Zechariah (prophet), 220 Zidarul, Ioan, 202 Zoroastrianism, 26, 27, 29, 135, 146, 153n12 Zvart’nots’ Cathedral (Armenia), 213–16, 214, 215

Index

00i-252 Patton 6p.indb 251

251

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00i-252 Patton 6p.indb 252

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