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Romanesque Tomb Effigies
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ROMANESQUE TOMB EFFIGIES Death and Redemption in Medieval Europe, 1000–1200
S h i r i n Fo z i
The Pennsylvania State University Press University Park, Pennsylvania
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Publication of this book has been aided by a grant from the Millard Meiss Publication Fund of CAA.
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Frontispiece: Royal effigies of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II of England, Royal Abbey of Our Lady of Fontevrault (color plate 16). Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Fozi, Shirin, author. Title: Romanesque tomb effigies : death and redemption in medieval Europe, 1000–1200 / Shirin Fozi. Description: University Park, Pennsylvania : The Pennsylvania State University Press, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Summary: “Studies Romanesque effigies as a distinctive form of medieval sculpture, emphasizing the early twelfth century as a time of rapid change in the art, culture, and politics of northern Europe”—Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2020054796 | ISBN 9780271087191 (cloth) Subjects: LCSH: Effigies—Europe—History— To 1500. | Sculpture, Romanesque—Europe. Classification: LCC NB1820 .F69 2021 | DDC 733/ .5094—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov /2020054796 Copyright © 2021 Shirin Fozi All rights reserved Printed in Canada 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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For my daughters, Taraneh Marion Jones and Marzieh Elizabeth Jones, who will one day grow to know their history and all that it entails.
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Contents
List of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xiii List of Abbreviations xv Introduction 1 1 Epitaphs 13 2 Rulers 39 3 Patrons 79 4 Canonesses 115 5 Proliferation 155 Notes 181 Bibliography 199 Index 221
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Illustrations
Color Plates (after page 96)
Figures
1. Imperial sword (Reichsschwert), Weltliche Schatzkammer, Vienna
1. Sarcophagus of Chrodoara, Church of St. George and St. Ode, Amay 16
2. Reliquary bust (so-called Barbarossakopf ), Collegiate Church of St. John the Evangelist, Cappenberg
2. Sarcophagus of Chrodoara from an oblique angle, Church of St. George and St. Ode, Amay 17
3. Enamel epitaph of Geoffrey of Anjou, Musée Jean-Claude Boulard—Carré Plantagenêt, Le Mans
3. Sarcophagus of Queen Mathilda, St. Servatius, Quedlinburg 18
4. Royal effigies, St-Denis, Paris
4. Sarcophagus of Bishop Bernhard, Halberstadt Cathedral 19
5. Effigy of Fredegund from St-Germain-des- Prés, now St-Denis, Paris
5. Sarcophagus of Bishop Bernward, abbey church of St. Michael’s, Hildesheim 21
6. Childebert and Fredegund, in Jean du Tillet, Recueil des rois de France, Paris, BnF, fr. 2848, fol. 24r
6. Sarcophagus of Bishop Bernward, detail of inscription, abbey church of St. Michael’s, Hildesheim 22
7. Nellenburg effigies, Allerheiligen Monastery, Schaffhausen
7. Sarcophagus of Bishop Bernward, lid, abbey church of St. Michael’s, Hildesheim 22
8. Effigy of Gottschalk of Diepholz, St. Clemens, Bad Iburg 9. Effigy of Widukind of Saxony, St. Dionysus, Enger 10. Effigy of Abbess Beatrix, St. Servatius, Quedlinburg 11. Effigy of Abbess Adelheid I, St. Servatius, Quedlinburg 12. Effigy of Abbess Adelheid II, St. Servatius, Quedlinburg 13. Effigy of Bishop Roger, Salisbury Cathedral 14. Funerary slab of Bishop Alexander, Lincoln Cathedral 15. Funerary slab of Bishop Nigel, Ely Cathedral 16. Royal effigies of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II of England, Royal Abbey of Our Lady of Fontevrault
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8. Tomb slab of Bishop Bernward, lid, abbey church of St. Michael’s, Hildesheim 23 9. Tomb slab of Abbot Isarn, St-Victor, Marseille 27 10. Pier relief with Saint Peter in the cloister of the abbey, Moissac 31 11. Pier relief with effigy of Abbot Durand in the cloister of the abbey, Moissac 32 12. Pier relief with inscription in the cloister of the abbey, Moissac 33 13. Effigy of Rudolf of Swabia, Merseburg Cathedral 40 14. Effigy of Rudolf of Swabia from an oblique angle, Merseburg Cathedral 41 15. Coronation, from the Sacramentary of Henry II (Regensburg Sacramentary), Munich, BSB, Clm 4456, fol. 11r 50
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16. Wheel of Fortune, in miscellany, Montecassino, Archivio dell’Abbazia cod. 189, p. 146 53 17. Effigy of Frederick of Wettin, Magdeburg Cathedral 57
34. Nellenburg memorial plaque, Museum zu Allerheiligen, Schaffhausen 86
18. Effigy of Bishop Wichmann, Magdeburg Cathedral 57
35. Nellenburg memorial plaque, detail of upper arcade, Museum zu Allerheiligen, Schaffhausen 87
19. Imperial sword (Reichsschwert), Weltliche Schatzkammer, Vienna 59
36. Effigy of Gottschalk of Diepholz, St. Clemens, Bad Iburg 91
20. Basel Antependium, detail, Musée de Cluny 61
37. Saint Willibrord, in the gradual of the abbey of Echternach, Paris, BnF, lat. 10510, fol. 20v 93
21. Reliquary bust (so-called Barbarossakopf ), Collegiate Church of St. John the Evangelist, Cappenberg 65 22. Drawing after a lost enamel epitaph for Ulger, bishop of Angers, Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms. Gough Drawings Gaignières 14, fol. 191 67 23. Enamel with donor image of Henry of Blois, British Museum, London 68 24. Effigy of Childebert from St-Germain-des- Prés, now St-Denis, Paris 70 25. Effigy of Fredegund, detail of upper body, from St-Germain-des-Prés, now St-Denis, Paris 71
Illustrations
33. Effigy of Burkhard of Nellenburg, Allerheiligen Monastery, Schaffhausen 84
38. Dom Tragaltar, Erzbischöfliches Diözesanmuseum Paderborn 94 39. Dom Tragaltar, lid, Erzbischöfliches Diözesanmuseum Paderborn 95 40. Dom Tragaltar, detail of Bishop Henry of Werl, Erzbischöfliches Diözesanmuseum Paderborn 96 41. Dom Tragaltar, detail of Bishop Meinwerk, Erzbischöfliches Diözesanmuseum Paderborn 96 42. Ivory of Bishop Sigebert of Minden, now the cover of the prayer book of Mary of Guelders, Berlin, SBB, Ms. germ. quart. 42 100
26. Effigy of Fredegunde, detail of colored stone and glass tesserae, from St-Germain- 43. Sigebert of Minden with a priest and a deacon, in an evangelistary fragdes-Prés, now St-Denis, Paris 72 ment, Berlin, SBB, Ms. theol. lat. qu. 3, 27. Drawing after the effigy of Childebert, fragment 100 Roger de Gaignières collection, Oxford, 44. Sigebert of Minden at the altar, in the Bodleian Library, Ms. Gough Drawings Minden Sacramentary, Berlin, SBB, Ms. Gaignières 2, fol. 1 73 theol. lat. fol. 2, fol. 9r 101 28. Drawing after the lost effigy of Chilperic, 45. Bernward of Hildesheim at the altar, in the Roger de Gaignières collection, Oxford, Precious Gospels of Bernward of HildesBodleian Library, Ms. Gough Drawings heim, Dommuseum Hildesheim, DS 18, Gaignières 2, fol. 4 73 fols. 16v–17r 103 29. North transept portal, St-Denis, Paris 75 46. Effigy of Widukind of Saxony (plaster cast), 30. Effigy of Adelaide of Maurienne, St-Pierre current location unknown 105 of Montmartre, Paris 76 47. Enger reliquary, Kunstgewerbemuseum, 31. Nellenburg effigies, Allerheiligen MonasStaatliche Museen zu Berlin 107 tery, Schaffhausen 82 48. Saints Ambrose, Gervase, and Protase 32. Effigies of Eberhard and Burkhard of with two Benedictine monks, on the ciboNellenburg, Allerheiligen Monastery, rium of Sant’Ambrogio, Milan 110 Schaffhausen 83
x
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49. Effigies of Abbesses Adelheid, Beatrix, and Adelheid II, St. Servatius, Quedlinburg 116 50. Detail of architectural plaster at St. Servatius, Quedlinburg 122 51. Architectural plaster being prepared for reinstallation, ca. 1937–39, St. Servatius, Quedlinburg 123 52. Effigy of Abbess Beatrix, detail, St. Servatius, Quedlinburg 126 53. Row of Beatitudes above the arcade, abbey church of St. Michael’s, Hildesheim 134 54. Beatitude, abbey church of St. Michael’s, Hildesheim 134 55. Beatitudes, Magdeburg Cathedral 135 56. Tempietto Longobardo, Cividale 136 57. Detail of the Tempietto Longobardo, Cividale 137 58. Reliquary casket of Otto I or Servatius reliquary, Treasury of St. Servatius, Quedlinburg 138 59. Carolingian ivory from a reliquary, Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich 138 60. West wall of the Holy Sepulchre, St. Cyriakus, Gernrode 140 61. Female figure on the west wall of the Holy Sepulchre, St. Cyriakus, Gernrode 141 62. Saint Lucy, from the Passio sanctae Luciae, Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett Hs. 78 A 4, fol. 61r 142 63. Effigy of a saintly woman (Sisu?), abbey church of Drübeck 145 64. Effigy of Plectrudis, St. Maria im Kapitol, Cologne 149 65. Effigy of Reinhildis, Riesenbeck 151
66. Jamb statue from Corbeil (so-called Queen of Sheba), Musée du Louvre, Paris 157 67. Jamb statue from Corbeil (so-called King Solomon), Musée du Louvre, Paris 157 68. Effigy of Bishop Roger, detail, Salisbury Cathedral 159 69. Funerary slab of Bishop Alexander, Lincoln Cathedral 161 70. Funerary slab of Bishop Nigel, detail, Ely Cathedral 161 71. Effigy from Borghorst, LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur (Westfälisches Landesmuseum), Münster 165 72. Christ on the cross (Herrgott von Bentheim), Katharinenkirche, Bad Bentheim 166 73. Three of the royal effigies, Royal Abbey of Our Lady of Fontevrault 168 74. Group of royal effigies, Royal Abbey of Our Lady of Fontevrault 169 75. Entombment of Saint Guthlac, in the Guthlac Roll, London, BL, Harley Roll Y 6, roundel 16 169 76. Death of Saint Lambert, in manuscript from St-Bertin in Saint Omer, Boulogne- sur-Mer, Bibliothèque municipale, Ms. 46, fol. 1v 170 77. Epitaph of Presbyter Bruno of Hildesheim, Hildesheim Cathedral 171 78. Effigy of Isabelle of Angoulême, Royal Abbey of Our Lady of Fontevrault 175 79. King Louis IX of France ill in bed, in the Chronica majora of Matthew Paris, Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, Ms. 16, fol. 183r 176 80. Fragment of an effigy for the Widow Mathilda, Hildesheim Cathedral 178
Illustrations xi
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Acknowledgments
Had we but world enough and time, I would still be writing this book: following its threads into the vaults of more libraries and the crypts of more cathedrals; debating the meanings of its major monuments; uncovering overlooked examples that could add fresh layers to the story. Still there are some consolations in sending it off at last, and chief among these is the opportunity to thank some of the many people who have helped shepherd the project along over the years. This roster must begin with Jeffrey Hamburger, whose critical readings transformed the project’s first drafts, and Jacqueline Jung, whose incisive interventions brought its final iteration into focus. I am also profoundly grateful to Frank Fehrenbach, Robert Suckale, and Irene Winter, who encouraged the formative ideas in this book when they were just the beginnings of a dissertation. The bulk of the book was written over the course of an Andrew W. Mellon postdoctoral fellowship at Northwestern University and completed during my first years on the faculty of the University of Pittsburgh. Research was completed with the help of a dissertation prize from the Europäisches Romanik Zentrum of the Martin-Luther- Universität Halle-Wittenberg, a Faculty Research Grant from Northwestern, and a European Studies Center Grant from Pittsburgh; production costs were generously subsidized by an Edwards Endowed Publication Fund Grant from Pittsburgh and a Millard Meiss Publication Fund Grant from the College Art Association. I am thankful to have had not only funding from these institutions but also the assistance of individual staff members—especially Linda Hicks, Veronica Gazdik, and Karoline Swiontek at Pittsburgh, who have helped constantly with all tasks great and small. There is a very real chance that I might still be writing this book had Eleanor Goodman and Maddie Caso at Penn State University Press not gently convinced me to let it go; their tact and insight into this process has been profoundly helpful. I am indebted to Annika Fisher’s sharp eyes for vastly improving the final draft. I am also deeply conscious of how much I have relied upon the generosity of the archivists and curators who literally opened doors for me across Europe; special thanks are owed to Heike Jarecki and Bettina Stoll-Tucker for access to the picture archive of the Denkmalpflege in Halle, where I spent happy days luxuriating among historical photographs of the great monuments of Saxony-Anhalt. Even when I was a student, countless others welcomed me into their offices, retrieved keys that unlocked obscure chapels, and kept the lights on in museum galleries for precious minutes after closing time; there is not enough space here to thank them all, but it is no exaggeration to say the book could not have been completed without their many kindnesses.
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It is likewise impossible to list here the many medievalists and other colleagues whose friendship and guidance have warmed my spirit on the coldest days. Barbara Newman somehow always found time to encourage and prod this project along; I am also lucky to have had much good counsel from Jesús Escobar and Richard Kieckhefer during three years in Evanston. My Pittsburgh colleagues, including Josh Ellenbogen, Jennifer Josten, Barbara McCloskey, Christopher Nygren, and Kirk Savage, have been unfailingly generous with their time; I owe special gratitude to Bruce Venarde and Jacqueline Lombard, respectively, for their help with Latin translations and last-minute citations. Beyond this campus, Adam Cohen, William Diebold, Sonja Drimmer, Luke Fidler, Eliza Garrison, Heidi Gearhart, Sarah Guérin, Lynley Herbert, Joan Holladay, Danielle Joyner, Aden Kumler, Lawrence Nees, Pamela Patton, and Conrad Rudolph offered keen insights and asked big questions at critical junctures; further, the model of their own work has shaped my thinking in more ways than they know. Beatrice Kitzinger, Gerhard Lutz, and Christina Normore have been frequent interlocutors and thoughtful collaborators for many years now; it was amid our long discussions that this book truly took shape. Finally, its completion would have been impossible without the kind support of family, especially my dear parents, Aziz and Afsaneh Asgharzadeh- Fozi, and our much-loved cousins in Bonn, Munich, and Ulm. My husband, partner, and best friend, Thomas Helm Jones IV, has been infinitely patient ever since we were teenagers dreaming of a sea-journey on the highway across America—and even if the reality is decidedly less glamorous than that distant dream, I would not trade it for the world.
Acknowledgments xiv
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Abbreviations
BL
British Library, London
BnF
Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris
BSB
Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich
MGH Monumenta Germaniae Historica SBB
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Staatsbibliothek, Berlin
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Introduction
At its heart, the act of contemplating medieval effigies is an exercise in seeing the dead. This point was first made clear to me in the summer of 2000, when an internship at The Cloisters of the Metropolitan Museum of Art presented the opportunity to lead a group of New York City school children to the thirteenth-century tomb effigy of a French knight identified as Jean d’Aluye.1 It was not unusual, I told them, for such effigies to depict people who were suffering when they died: who had been sick or ravaged by violence, or who had simply grown old. Yet northern European effigies from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries chose not to betray this harsh truth. Such tomb sculptures, at least in this period, were made not only to show the dead to the living but also to conceal damaged, fragile, ephemeral corpses behind idealized bodies and smooth, young faces. My goal was to make clear to a sixth-grade audience that the effigy before us showed the dead man not as he went to the grave but rather as his original viewers had expected him to rise at the end of time, recast and revived in a state of grace and perfection. As I paused in my clumsy attempt to translate these concepts into what I imagined to be age-appropriate terms, one boy turned to me and smiled. “That’s just like when my mom died,” he explained serenely. “She had been sick with cancer for a long time, and she had lost all her hair, but for the wake they dressed her up with a wig and make-up, so we could remember the real her.” I have no recollection of what I said in response; I only remember feeling struck by the untroubled way in which the boy related his memory. Perhaps, as I hoped in that moment, he found something genuinely useful in the unexpected comparison between his mother and the handsome knight at The Cloisters. Clearly there had been some value in the experience of seeing his mother again, seemingly healthy after her illness, and her final appearance had taken hold as a reassuring image, even if the act of saying goodbye was painful. Part of this catharsis lay in the restoration of the body to
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its prior state, in the image of itself as it once was and as it should have been, or could have been, if met with another fate. This book is in many ways a meditation on the insight of that young boy, centered on the tensions between representing the dead as they were and as they once could have been. His removal of “the real her” from the other realities of illness, death, and time is much like the abstraction of the medieval effigy, which offers an ersatz body that invokes and yet hides the grim truths of the ever-present corpse within the tomb. The resulting paradox of simultaneous confrontation and alienation is strangely akin to Michel de Certeau’s description of engaging with mystic texts without participating in the deep sense of religious conviction that produced them: What these authors bring into play is therefore not reducible to an interest in the past, nor even to a voyage into the recesses of our memory. They are like statues erected to mark the boundaries of an “elsewhere” that is not remote, a place they both produce and guard. They form, with their bodies and their texts, a frontier that divides space and transforms their reader into an inhabitant of the country, or the suburbs, far from the nowhere where they house the essential. They articulate in this way the foreignness of our own place, and therefore a desire to return to our native land.2
Romanesque Tomb Effigies 2
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In describing the chasms that separate believers from atheists, medieval authors from modern readers, and the living from the dead, de Certeau formulates the haunting notion of “an ‘elsewhere’ that is not remote,” which applies with uncanny power to the spaces lurking beyond the medieval effigy. By representing the bodies of the dead in the durable, tactile, and effectively public medium of monumental sculpture, effigies articulate the unknowable passage from the present world into the afterlife. There is no reason to imagine that the tension this creates would have been less vividly apparent to medieval eyes than it is today. To the contrary, the invitation of these sculptures to consider the corpses in their past, present, and future states would have been all the more compelling for an audience that believed, almost as a matter of course, in bodily resurrection.3 While Gothic tombs like the knight in New York have received comparatively rich scholarly attention in recent decades, this book looks instead to the less frequently studied Romanesque effigies that first emerged at the end of the eleventh century and began to proliferate widely by the end of the twelfth. The swift rise of the medieval tomb effigy within a relatively short span of time has made it all too easy to overlook the ways in which such monuments must have been provocative, even shocking, when they first appeared. By presenting the first generation of European effigies squarely within their Romanesque contexts, this study explores the available evidence with an emphasis on the novelty of the format in its earliest incarnations. Rigorous attention to this material, which carefully situates the known examples from circa 1080 to 1160 in the broad timeframe of circa 1000 to 1200, demonstrates two crucial points that
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have yet to be fully established: none of the known Romanesque effigies were commissioned by the people they represent, and the identifiable examples unfailingly focus on individuals whose legacies had been tarnished and whose lives were marked by measures of failure rather than triumph. By the thirteenth century, when the knight at The Cloisters was carved, it had become almost commonplace for aristocratic men and women to plan their own effigies, a trend that only intensified in the later Middle Ages. Such objects were commodities that solicited remembrance and prayers for departed patrons. As shown in this book, however, earlier effigies operated differently. Representing fallen warlords and failed dynasties, Romanesque effigies possessed an urgency that was rooted in the need not only to remember the dead but also to rescue them—and their successors—from public humiliation. It is this desire to fix the past, this attempted amelioration of memory, that distinguished Romanesque effigies from their later counterparts. Each surviving example is unique in its details and grapples with this purpose in a singular manner, but when brought together, they provide clear evidence for a poignant and unexpected conclusion: the twelfth-century effigy experienced a sharp rise in popularity not because it offered a novel means of celebrating the successful but rather because it opened compelling new pathways for memorializing the defeated. Examining the earliest known effigies of northern Europe—the case studies that mark the creation and codification of the genre—heightens the myriad issues raised by the strained relationship between the paired bodies, the organic corpse and the artistic representation, of the funerary monument. Romanesque effigies emerged in a time that witnessed dramatic increases in the making of large-scale sculpture across a broad geographic expanse. Situating the genesis of the effigy in relation to this apparent explosion in the visual arts, and particularly in relation to a renewed interest in sculpture embedded in an architectural context, raises two essential points that inform this study. First, Romanesque effigies should not be segregated from the broader implications of inhabiting ecclesiastical space with the startling presence of the human body in a tactile format, both in the form of friezes and other fixed reliefs and in the portable, three-dimensional form of reliquaries and related movable sculptures. Effigies constitute a distinctive artistic genre, but they also existed in dialogue with other visual programs and with other works of art, which enlivened their immediate vicinity. Second, the representation of the human figure was undergoing a remarkable expansion in use and meaning at this time. Romanesque artists, patrons, and audiences were pushing the applications of sculpture beyond the previous limitations of its existing forms. The rising popularity of monumental sculptures of the crucified Christ and the enthroned Madonna, the startling impact of figural or “speaking” reliquaries, and the newfound sophistication of historiated capitals and narrative friezes: these ambitious artworks come from the same context that produced Romanesque effigies, which are distinct from these forms and yet ever in dialogue with them. Thus the sepulchral function and enlivened form of the effigy, its relative rarity, and its focus on individual bodies from the recent, local past in northern Europe (rather than saintly
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Introduction 3
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personalities from the distant Mediterranean origins of early Christianity) endowed its first examples with a unique, evocative charge. Effigies mediated encounters with the essential mysteries of death and resurrection, articulating thresholds between this world and the afterlife or between the time of the present and the end of days. The Romanesque examples were among the most striking invitations to contemplate the afterlife and its eschatological promises in European art—and the first to do so via the audacious format of monumental sculpture that visualized the dead.
Historiography
Romanesque Tomb Effigies 4
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Given the wealth of surviving evidence and the provocation of its types, it is no surprise that the genre of the tomb effigy has become a focal point for the study of Gothic and Renaissance sculpture. What is more difficult to explain is the relative lack of scholarly interest in the rise of these effigies in the Romanesque period as a broad-based phenomenon. There has been no shortage of articles that address individual early effigies in specific case studies, but this book is the first to bring the key surviving monuments together as aspects of a phenomenon whose sum is greater than its separate parts.4 Several points could be advanced to explain why this work has yet to be undertaken: the first known medieval effigies are geographically scattered; they are diverse in style and materials; there is no unifying presence of a single workshop or known patron; and most are poorly preserved, removed from their original sites of installation, and notoriously difficult to date. Despite these problems, however, the shared goal of representing the bodies of the local dead in full-figure relief amply justifies the examination of these sculptures as a group. Further, there is a concentration of a large proportion of the surviving tombs in Saxony (in the modern German states of Lower Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt), which is to say, the broad swath of land that constituted the heart of the twelfth-century Holy Roman Empire. A few more early effigies are found in regions that are now Switzerland, France, and England; on the whole these objects seem to appear at sites that were investing heavily in monumental sculpture, though notable exceptions do exist. Finally, while the subjects of Romanesque effigies are surprisingly diverse—male and female, lay and religious, stemming from the great imperial houses and from the petty aristocracy—one common theme emerges from their lives. Each case seems centered in some way on frustrated ambitions and a legacy that was marred by the failure to meet certain expectations, great or small. It was the need to correct these fraught histories, to replace negative memories with positive interpretations, that spurred the formulation and rising popularity of tomb effigies in twelfth-century Europe. Romanesque effigies compensate for these frustrations by pushing against the grain of history to reinvent the past rather than simply echoing it. This point can only be clarified by gathering all well-documented examples in a single study that combines detailed assessments of individual tombs with a conception broad enough to recognize
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the points of resonance that unify the scattered monuments as a coherent group. Tomb sculpture has not previously received such treatment in the manner of the foundational monographs on emergent Romanesque genres, such as Ilene Forsyth’s magisterial work on wood statues of the enthroned Madonna (1972), Walter Cahn’s tome on illuminated Bibles (1982), Ursula Mende’s focused study of cast bronze doors (1994), or the corpus of Beatus manuscripts by John Williams (1994–2003, with the fourth volume on eleventh- and twelfth-century examples appearing in 2002).5 This fact points to a tendency to overlook these monuments or else to accept their abrupt appearance as a matter of survival rather than formation. Effigies are also generally absent from monographs addressing Romanesque sculpture in an architectural context, including Arthur Kingsley Porter’s early work on the pilgrimage roads (1923) and Meyer Schapiro’s posthumously published lectures (delivered 1967; edited by Linda Seidel, 2006), presumably because they are not, strictly speaking, “architectural” monuments.6 Ambitious overviews of Romanesque sculpture, such as Hanns Swarzenski’s landmark volume on the art of church treasuries (1954) and M. F. Hearn’s examination of the rebirth of monumental sculpture (1982), also generally exclude tomb sculpture as neither “free- standing” nor “architectural,” while studies of iconography, such as Seidel’s own book on church façades in Aquitaine (1981), have focused instead on narrative, again at the expense of the effigy.7 Given the abundance and complexity of the surviving evidence, it is also unsurprising that these studies have not aimed to be comprehensive in the manner of Otto Demus’s (1970) and Marcia Kupfer’s (1993) books on wall painting or Louis Grodecki’s work on stained glass (1977).8 The detachment of almost all surviving Romanesque effigies from their original installations has also removed them from any semblance of “visual programs” and further pushed them to the periphery of medieval art history. A certain postwar focus on areas west of the Rhine has also relegated Saxony-Anhalt, the region where the largest group of early effigies has survived, to a distant frontier. This marginalization persists, even though this area was quite central to the European Middle Ages and its effigies occupied highly visible spaces within institutions that once held great power. Thus while the best-known examples of Romanesque tomb sculpture have been the subject of important articles, few have been fully integrated into broader accounts of medieval art since the publication of Erwin Panofsky’s Die deutsche Plastik des elften bis dreizehnten Jahrhunderts in 1924. While the medieval effigy itself is not understudied—far from it—the shape of the field has privileged Gothic and later tombs, and Romanesque monuments have routinely been sidelined in their favor.9 The early examples appear briefly in studies that approach a given geographic region across broad expanses of time, such as Nigel Saul’s volume on English tombs (2009) or Gabriele Böhm’s dissertation on Westphalian effigies (1993), or studies that scrutinize a single site exhaustively, as Alain Erlande- Brandenburg has done for the French necropolis at St-Denis (1975).10 A few influential books have endeavored to examine the changing tradition of tomb sculpture over the course of the Middle Ages and to encompass monuments from across Europe; these include most notably Panofsky’s landmark lectures on Tomb Sculpture (1964), Kurt
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Introduction 5
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Romanesque Tomb Effigies
Bauch’s richly illustrated Das mittelalterliche Grabbild (1976), and Hans Körner’s ambitious Grabmonumente des Mittelalters (1997).11 Though all three are notable contributions to the field of tomb sculpture, they do not highlight Romanesque effigies, and indeed they even seem to share a certain antipathy toward them. Each study presents a unique thesis that explains the formation of the effigy using ancient sources, relegating the work of the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries to a merely transitional status. Panofsky suggests that the first northern European effigies were translations of the mosaic tombs of North Africa and Spain into sculpture; Bauch emphasizes the influence of recumbent figures from the classical world; Körner looks to pre-Christian Saxony for possible prototypes among pagan stele.12 Each historian placed emphasis on the survival or revival of past forms, reflecting a common inclination to historicize the effigy as part of an evolutionary arc from ancient to Renaissance art. The resulting arguments fostered teleological models in which the products of the Romanesque period were suppressed, only finding value as the awkward early stages of something that would truly take root in the thirteenth century and achieve maturity sometime in the late fifteenth. The groundbreaking effigies of the eleventh and twelfth centuries have thus been measured primarily against the misleading rubrics of other points in time, which rendered their place within the visual and material culture of their own generation invisible. Tied to a broad propensity to value continuity over change, the approaches modeled by Panofsky, Bauch, and Körner share a tendency to overemphasize relationships between ancient and medieval tombs. The centuries-long gap between the last figural tombs of the late antique world and the rise of their medieval analogues has too often been overlooked, along with the impact of medieval Christian theology on visualizations of the dead. Despite the self-consciously classicizing efforts of Carolingian and Ottonian artists to promote the “new Rome” in the North, evidence for the notion that the early Saxon effigies were directly inspired by Roman tomb sculpture is thin at best. Unlike the late antique gemstones that were proudly displayed in medieval treasuries or the Roman columns and capitals that were carefully reintegrated in Romanesque architecture, ancient funerary statuary was neither brought into medieval churches nor adapted as a form of spolia for new monuments. Roman sarcophagi were occasionally reused in rare Carolingian and Ottonian burials, as seen most famously among the elite imperial tombs of the ninth and tenth centuries, but these impressive imports have little in common with the various figures from the ancient Mediterranean that Panofsky and Bauch suggest as potential models for medieval effigies.13 The latter may well have been known in the high Middle Ages, but there are no sources to suggest that they were given much attention. Reused ancient sarcophagi arguably had greater visibility, but the format itself—which featured sculpture on the side of the sarcophagus and not on the lid—differs dramatically from the rectangular slabs that carry Romanesque effigies. The few known sculpted sarcophagi of the eleventh and twelfth centuries are much closer to these ancient antecedents in many ways, but none
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survive in close relationship to a figural effigy, and conversely none of the surviving effigies of this period exist in dialogue with a classicizing sarcophagus.14 Wresting the analysis of Romanesque effigies away from narratives about the revival or rediscovery of Mediterranean antiquity is thus an essential goal of this book, as it allows the monuments to be situated more clearly within the context of their time, in relation to the contemporary developments in sculpture that had a far greater impact on their formation. The result is a critical reassessment of Romanesque effigies through the lens of the visual culture that produced them and a rejection of the older model in which these sculptures represent little more than transitional stages that laid groundwork for later achievements. Once the break between the ancient and the medieval monuments is fully acknowledged and attention drawn to the fact that the continuous production of the northern European effigies began at the end of the eleventh century, these early sculptures take on new force as the objects that first established a pattern that would endure for centuries to come. Indeed, as shown in the chapters below, there is little or nothing that appears “transitional” about Romanesque effigies at all. To the contrary, they stake their claims and inhabit medieval spaces with a sense of completion and self-assurance that is breathtaking in its audacity.
Methods A focus on the Romanesque effigy—and an insistence on examining these monuments without attempts to claim morphological relationships either to earlier or to later tombs—prompts a larger shift in methodology. From the outset this project has looked primarily to the surviving monuments and their relationships to the known artistic production of their time. I have therefore avoided relying upon the lost monuments that sometimes appear in medieval texts, except in rare cases where those texts also relate to effigies that survive and offer concrete visual evidence. Thus, for example, the discussion of early effigies in Paris addresses only briefly the missing monuments that appear in antiquarian drawings, prioritizing the few that remain over many more of uncertain date and appearance that were lost. The difficulty of assessing written sources concerning potentially vanished Romanesque effigies is demonstrated in the case of the tenth-century bishop Gebhard of Constance (d. 995), whose tomb was described by a mid-t welfth-century chronicler as bearing a iacentes imago (recumbent image).15 Gebhard’s bones, however, were recognized as saintly relics by 1134, and the veneration associated with his memory in the decades after this event would undoubtedly have had a profound effect on the format of the monument associated with his body. As noted by Körner, the medieval source makes no indication of the date when the imago was made or of its materials, or whether it was a full-body portrait, a roundel, or another image type altogether. The textual source postdates the effigies of the Nellenburg counts of Schaffhausen, meaning that the Constance image could well
Introduction 7
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Romanesque Tomb Effigies 8
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have been made after those monuments and echoed their appearance—or perhaps not. There is simply no way to know for certain. Rather than speculating further about the date and appearance of Gebhard’s lost tomb or about the use of vague terms like imago in this and other contexts, this book focuses instead on the examples that survive. The Nellenburg effigies present a related but separate problem: only half of the effigies from this group are extant. In this case the evidence of the surviving effigies is brought to bear on the lost examples from the set, but only cautiously.16 Where texts do come into play, the goal is not to provide a basis for reconstruction but rather to consider the discourses that were current among medieval audiences. Charters and chronicles are thus cited with some regularity, but the most significant primary sources for this study are the texts that were sometimes inscribed on the effigies themselves. Though often overlooked by art historians, the brief testimonials offered in these inscriptions were clearly composed with great care and intended to shape how viewers perceived the dead. The evidence they present is central to this book, and particular care has been taken to consider them from a range of perspectives, examining not only the core information they provide but also their visual and literary nuances. By centering surviving examples rather than interpolating indirect evidence, this book makes one more methodological intervention: its arguments focus on close observations of early effigies from a three-dimensional point of view, in the physical spaces that they inhabit. By invoking “physical spaces” I do not mean to make arguments aimed at reconstructing original installation sites, as these are largely lost, and the surviving evidence has already been discussed by others.17 I refer instead to the physical, plastic qualities of the objects themselves: their materials, scale, contours, and modeling, all of which offer essential evidence for discussions of how the sculptures were encountered. Compositional choices offer hints regarding intended experience: for example, inscriptions could be oriented to encourage a single ideal vantage point from which to see the effigy or positioned to nudge the reader to walk around and consider it from multiple angles. Architectural framing devices likewise provide more than stylistic clues about dates or workshop influences; they give useful indications of the integration of sculptures into larger contexts. The style of the figures, their plasticity, and their approaches to the tactile presence of the body are also more than mere reflections of the trajectory of the historical development of sculpture; they actively position individual tomb effigies in relation to the physical space of the viewer. I do not use any of the arguments drawn from such formal observations to contend that the original locations of the sculptures can be identified with great specificity; indeed, I avoid too much conjecture about whether early effigies were in fact placed in relation to particular altars, whether they were set in direct proximity to burial sites, or whether they could act as cenotaphs at some distance, great or small, from the dead bodies that they represent. These questions are difficult, if not impossible, to answer with confidence. Surely the existence of a body is central to conceptualizations of the effigy, but to claim that the two bodies of the dead, the sculptural and the biological, were in constant tension is not the same as insisting that they were necessarily placed together.
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The former seems clear; the latter, an open question. I have noted cases where such positioning has been demonstrated, but I do not extend such arguments to cases where the archeological record is unclear. No claims about potential sacramental functions of tomb sculpture are advanced in this book; the ritual commemoration of the dead has been taken up by others elsewhere, and it remains difficult to determine whether the figures were conceived for specifically liturgical or broadly memorial purposes.18 In other words, I pay close attention to the physical properties of the objects as they exist in space and as they invoke the visual traditions from which they emerged. Within each chapter, my guiding principle is always to approach Romanesque effigies first and foremost as sculptures that used current visual strategies to convey meaning to local audiences, often drawing upon the associations carried by materials. While I then balance the resulting observations against information concerning the sites and individuals in question, the two approaches—material and social—always go hand in hand. It is no real surprise that metalwork would be linked with royal bodies, an association that seems tethered to the spiritual associations of gold and enamel beyond mere opulence. More intriguing is the link between patrons and the use of stone, which links monuments to architecture—but this is, as of yet, a provisional tie, as is the suggestion that some plaster effigies seem better suited for walls than floors. Above all, my interest throughout this book is not aimed at uncovering an “iconography” of materials, which cannot be sustained from the evidence found in Romanesque effigies, but rather at a broad exploration of the connotations of materials in relation to the art of the time—in other words, how materials carried meaning within the specific contexts at hand. It is not possible, at least not at present, to claim with certainty that the selection of materials for Romanesque funerary monuments was consistently linked to the specific identities of the individuals in question. Still a certain resonance between materials and social class remains, and I have organized the chapters of this book accordingly. The monuments have also been treated in chronological order within each chapter, but given that their dates remain somewhat uncertain, I have avoided staking too much on exactly when a given monument may have been made in relation to comparative works, political changes, or the biographies of potential patrons. The exception, of course, is when a date offers a clear terminus ante (or post) quem for a sculpture: in a case like that of Rudolf of Swabia, in which the monument responds quite specifically not only to the legacy of the dead person but also to the manner in which he died, the monument could hardly have been planned during his life. In each effigy discussed in this book, there already exists a consensus on dating, usually giving a range of fifteen or twenty years; in a few instances the unveiling of the sculpture might reasonably be related to an inscription (as with Durand of Moissac) or a consecration date (as with the abbess effigies at Quedlinburg). Oftentimes, however, the date has been determined via style. In these cases, I avoid repeating the stylistic analysis done by others. In almost all of the effigies discussed in this book (with a few notable exceptions), the early scholarship has prioritized style and date more than political, cultural, or theological questions;
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Introduction 9
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Romanesque Tomb Effigies 10
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this book leans heavily in the latter direction in hopes of breaking new ground. I also confess here to a certain reluctance to subscribe too closely to those dates determined primarily by style. As art historians have long been aware, any artist may well have been “avant-garde” or “old-fashioned” in the eyes of their first audiences; after a lapse of many centuries, it is difficult to recover if a given style or motif was perceived as a novelty or an echo in its own time. I have also avoided arguments that rely heavily on geographic proximities, mainly because the thin rates of survival make arguments for regional trends difficult to sustain. The majority of stone and plaster effigies known from before 1180 were found in the course of modern excavations, meaning that many were lost, and more might well be uncovered in future digs. Metalwork effigies, on the other hand, probably existed in greater numbers but were simply melted down, and their materials repurposed—thus their presence speaks to the later economic conditions of specific sites but offers at best limited insight regarding the original geographic distribution of such monuments. It is likewise unclear if the apparent concentration of Romanesque effigies in Germany, with only a handful of monuments in France and England, is related to medieval regionalisms or merely the result of losses that occurred during the English Dissolution of the Monasteries, the French Revolution, and the Reformation across Europe. The suggestion that effigies suffered the least in Germany amid these upheavals would be an intuitive assertion at best, given the lack of clear documentation. In some examples the visual and historical contexts of the effigies can be reconstructed with considerable clarity; in others the sources permit only a sketchy glimpse into the past. The greater goal is to outline all of the evidence, pictorial and textual, that informs each individual monument and ultimately to bring these studies together as evidence toward understanding the Romanesque effigy. This assemblage of information from as many case studies as possible is essential because the effigies vary tremendously in their subjects, materials, and stylistic qualities, and yet their very multiplicity is countered by a surprisingly consistent pattern that distinguishes these monuments from their earlier and later counterparts. Despite their obvious points of difference, Romanesque effigies can be seen as united in their function as public monuments to the local past and as attempts to reshape living memory at points of crisis. No effigy from this period can be characterized as a personal commission seeking prayers for a patron’s own salvation; the plaintive ora pro nobis of the later Gothic tomb effigy is nowhere present in these examples. The first monuments were made, with striking regularity, for individuals whose deaths were pivotal events in eras of upheaval—of military catastrophe, dynastic failure, or other similar structural trauma. Even as the sculptures were reminders of the past life of the individual or signs of their expected eschatological future, they were also aimed to ameliorate the present by linking current events to that greater arc of time. This characteristic raises one more distinction that is fundamental to this book: the contention that Romanesque effigies were not made to memorialize individual lives but rather to harness those personal legacies as vehicles for addressing communal
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concerns. This claim, too, can only be made clear once Romanesque effigies are treated separately from the Gothic, given that later medieval effigies have often been framed as personal appeals on behalf of the dead to address their fears of the afterlife.19 In this respect, my study is indebted to the long-running debates about the emergence of the individual in the twelfth century that have played out over the past several decades of scholarship.20 To the extent that individual biographies gained newfound prominence in this period, it can also be argued that these people were represented not in the modern sense of “individual” personhood but rather raised as exemplars of the social groups that they embodied. This point is pivotal in understanding that Romanesque effigies were not made to promote the survival of a patron’s own individual memory but rather as monuments that shaped local responses to broadly shared concerns. It also complicates our understanding of the relationships between medieval memorial culture and the function of funerary sculpture. Following the work of Karl Schmid and Otto Gerhard Oexle, several recent scholars have examined the measures taken by medieval people, particularly through the structure of monastic institutions, to ensure that their names would not be forgotten and that prayers for their salvation would continue until the end of time. Much of the evidence presented in these studies, along with the evidence used by Mary Carruthers to trace medieval memory systems, emerges from texts found in manuscripts and charters.21 Compelling as the data from codices may be—including the many illustrated Lives of saints that feature extraordinary commemorative images—I wish to avoid facile conflations of the memory systems developed in books with the memories embedded in tomb sculpture. As a visible monument in a quasi-public space, the Romanesque effigy far exceeds the simple record of a name and date of death that would be contained in a Liber memorialis. The attitudes that the effigies project resonate more closely with the concept of “cultural memory,” as described by Jan Assmann and others, than the very particular mechanisms of memoria that have occasionally been tied to them. Assmann’s notion of crisis points as triggers for the production, preservation, and promotion of communal memory resonates remarkably well with the first generation of European tomb effigies.22 The appearance of Romanesque effigies not only as texts or illustrations but also as sculptural presences that approximate the size and shape of the dead bodies they accompany also seems to echo concepts traced in Caroline Walker Bynum’s rich study of bodily resurrection.23 As she has shown, both body and soul were considered integral components of the medieval self. The same anxieties about the body that inspired theological discourse from the Church Fathers through the early fourteenth century added particular pressure on effigies, I think, to be three-dimensional. They were tactile not in the sense that they necessarily were touched by early viewers (though this certainly seems likely) but that they could be touched: sculptural bodies, by nature, inhabit space in a way that flat pictures do not. This inherent characteristic makes effigies curiously literal in their direct projection of the body into the space of the viewer. Assmann and Bynum describe social and theological needs that could be met by effigies, which presented the body not only as an icon of individual salvation
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Introduction 11
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but also as a site for the promised redemption of communities experiencing trauma, defeat, and loss. The evidence to support this model lies not only in the theoretical synthesis of ideas but also in the specific monuments discussed below. As noted above, though the arc of the book is loosely chronological, the effigies are divided into thematic chapters. In the first I examine three eleventh-century epitaphs that carry rich images and inscriptions, reflecting the sophisticated tradition of funerary monuments that gave rise to the medieval effigy. The second, third, and fourth chapters turn to effigies representing rulers, patrons, and canonesses, with a focus on the earliest examples from the period circa 1080 to 1160. The fifth and final chapter offers a glimpse of the rapid proliferation of the effigy type that took place in the final third of the twelfth century, as the use of sculpture expanded to become a popular commodity available to an ever-widening circle of wealthy elites. Rather than attempting to catalogue every known effigy, which would be beyond the scope of this book, I have brought together case studies that offer a coherent history of the rise of a genre. With striking regularity, effigies are linked to accounts of crisis and disruption, from the Great Saxon Revolt in Germany to the Anarchy in England—situations in which individual bodies could be displayed, framed, and controlled to reshape personal defeats into larger spiritual triumphs. Thus, the most ambitious monument to sacred kingship of the entire eleventh century, the gilded-bronze effigy of Rudolf of Swabia, was made for a rebel who failed rather than a conqueror who actually reigned. Some subsequent effigies—including the counts of Nellenburg and Diepholz, along with the ill-fated Saxon warlord Widukind—were likewise tied to catastrophic military outcomes, but many more were linked to the vicissitudes of fortune in a more abstract sense: dynastic anxieties, institutional memories, and eschatological hopes are projected sharply at sites like Quedlinburg, where imperial pride was met with appeals to humility and sacred detachment from a transient world. Romanesque effigies are strikingly diverse in their materials and geographies as well as, above all, in the individuals they represent; my arguments in this book have tried to take these differences into close account. The unifying thread, however, is clear: the monuments were created at junctures when the legacies of the individuals in question, as well as the institutions that held their bodies, were experiencing calamity and change. Effigies developed to address deeply felt needs, bridging the worlds of the living and dead so that the complex legacies of the past could be reshaped in light of the concerns of the present. It was only at the end of the twelfth century that this purpose would shift as the effigy format rapidly gained widespread popularity and shed its original rarified meaning, its associations with communal crises gradually dissipating into more generalized pleas for individual salvation. Romanesque Tomb Effigies 12
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Epitaphs
1
The medieval tomb effigy emerged not as a revival of an ancient practice but rather as a distinctive format that was new in its own time. Still, the suggestion that its first makers reached back across centuries to recall antiquity remains oddly difficult to shake. Such a characterization is embedded in Erwin Panofsky’s Tomb Sculpture (1964), for example; a single chapter addresses late antique and high medieval material together and smoothly elides a gap of several centuries.1 More recent recourse to this grand narrative has been implicit rather than explicit, but the effigies’ powerful break in the tradition deserves emphasis here. Given the persistence of classical forms across time and their flourishing popularity in eleventh- and twelfth-century Europe in particular, it may indeed seem rash to insist that anything medieval was forged without recourse to the distant past.2 Nevertheless, in the context of a time broadly suffused with a style dubbed “Romanesque,” there is oddly little evidence that the medieval effigy owes a specific debt to ancient monuments.3 The notion of representing the enlivened body on a funerary relief is too intuitive and too obvious to be read as proof that ancient analogues were necessary sources of inspiration, and it is also far from clear that surviving Roman tombs received much attention in this era.4 While some eleventh- and twelfth- century northern European works in other formats do offer direct homages to ancient sources, the clarity with which they stake their claims to Romanitas only makes it all the more noticeable that the first tomb effigies seem, at most, only obliquely related to antiquity.5 Far more relevant to their rise were the ambitious epitaphs and sarcophagi of the eleventh century, which drew on late antique precedents in certain respects but also presented significant breaks with the past. This chapter highlights three eleventh-century monuments that seem especially prescient in relation to the figural tomb effigy. Though they set the stage in some sense for the materials that follow, the goal in presenting them here is not to pigeonhole the objects as mere precursors of later works. Such an approach would risk replicating
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Romanesque Tomb Effigies 14
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the same teleological narratives in which the first effigies have themselves been read as simple forerunners of later tombs. Nor is it possible to offer a comprehensive study of early medieval epitaphs here; this would require an entire book in its own right.6 My purpose instead is to consider the key themes and visual strategies that were already present in the elite funerary monuments of the eleventh century, which also informed the production of the first European effigies. These monuments highlight the sophistication with which tomb sculpture addressed its audiences and articulated the physical presence and spiritual absence of the dead. In promoting a special intimacy between the body and its keepers, eleventh-century epitaphs also already reflect a fundamental break between the ancient Mediterranean, with its horror of the corpse, and the embrace of bodily remains that was central to medieval European Christianity.7 Unlike figural tombs, medieval epitaphs present a nearly unbroken tradition that was established north of the Alps long before the eleventh century.8 Perhaps the most prestigious Carolingian example is the stately black marble epitaph of Pope Hadrian (d. 795), commissioned by Charlemagne and heavily laden with imperial ambitions in its use of classicizing script and valuable materials.9 It still survives in the Vatican, moved to its present location in the portico of St-Pierre in 1619, after Hadrian’s burial chapel in the south transept of the Constantinian basilica was demolished in the course of sixteenth-century renovations.10 Carolingian sources describe the monument as made in Francia, suggesting it arrived in Rome not only as a sign of Charlemagne’s ties to the papacy but also as evidence of Frankish access to the literary and artistic skills required for its production. Early texts also describe the lettering as “golden,” though no trace of the presumed original gilded leaf survives.11 The origin of the stone has not yet been determined, but it may very well have been quarried in northern Europe, perhaps near Namur and Dinant in present-day Belgium. Two black porphyry columns stand in Charlemagne’s palace chapel at Aachen; they were likely among the valuable materials he had shipped north from Ravenna and Rome in the 790s, perhaps in emulation of the ancient emperors who had prized this material.12 Whether the stone of the epitaph was also reused spolia or freshly extracted in Charlemagne’s empire, its use was a public demonstration of Frankish access to a rare, precious resource. Its text was composed by Alcuin, who had competed for the honor against Theodulf of Orléans, and its epigraphy is probably linked to the school Alcuin established at around the same time in Tours, where he was made abbot in 796.13 A notable feature of Alcuin’s composition is that the text is voiced in first person from Charlemagne’s own point of view, making the poetic epitaph into a direct address from the king to the pope. One memorable verse cries out: post pat/rem lacrima/ns ka/rolvs ha/ec carmina scribsi / tv mihi dvlcis amor t/e modo plango pater / tv memor esto mei seqvitvr t/e mens mea semper (Weeping after my father, I, Charles have written these verses. / You, for me sweet love, you now I lament, father. / You be mindful of me; my mind follows you always).14 Though Alcuin’s authorship and Charlemagne’s own inability to write in Latin are both well-documented, there is still something arresting in how the text credits Charlemagne, not Alcuin, as the “writer” of its emotional testimony. This shift
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of authorial voice was hardly rare in ancient or medieval poetry, but in this context, it offers a powerful reminder that invention and patronage were deeply intertwined in premodern Europe. In sum, each aspect of the epitaph—material, craftsmanship, and text—reflects a larger phenomenon that modern scholars have dubbed the Carolingian “renovatio.”15 As such they reflect not only a general debt to classical antiquity but also the pointed efforts of Carolingian intellectuals to claim the refinements of the past in service of the new Frankish empire. Hadrian’s epitaph carries no images aside from a delicate rinceau border that also appears on other ninth-century works of high quality.16 Remarkably few early medieval funerary monuments seem to have been marked with figural sculpture, and in contrast to the consistency of the effigy format after circa 1080, these never seem to have coalesced into a continuous tradition. The closest semblance of a codified practice appears to have emerged not in the making of tombs but rather in their reuse: as Janet Nelson and others explore, the Carolingians in particular appropriated late antique sarcophagi for royal burials.17 The best-known of these, probably then as now, is the “Persephone sarcophagus” in Aachen, long associated with Charlemagne though curiously ignored by Einhard and other early sources.18 The Ottonian emperors generally favored plain sarcophagi, although, as Matthias Exner shows, there is evidence that these were at times accompanied by mosaics and wall painting to represent the dead, particularly in Italy.19 Such pictorial funerary programs seem to have been rare, however, and they are mostly known through texts that are difficult to interpret with clarity. The sarcophagus itself—a stone coffin for the corpse—had already appeared in northern Europe in the era of the Roman provinces, which makes the ninth- and tenth- century practice of importing ancient examples rather than carving new ones from local stone all the more striking. At the same time, however, the prominence of reused late antique sarcophagi in the ninth and tenth centuries also draws attention to the fact that the eleventh- and twelfth-century examples made in northern Europe—unlike contemporaneous sarcophagi in Spain, for example—show little desire to echo ancient practice in their application of images and texts.20 While the most lavish Spanish sarcophagi from this period show narrative scenes on their sides, the northern European examples generally have rough-hewn sides, and the decoration is restricted to nonnarrative figures on their lids. This practice may well reflect their intended use: while Roman sarcophagi were generally set into niches and approached from the side, the sarcophagi produced in medieval Europe seem to have been lowered into funerary shafts, from which their lids may have been visible to viewers peering down from above. Should the graves ever be disturbed, the lids may have also served to identify the dead. While the popularity of stone sarcophagi among the Carolingians and Ottonians likely accounts for their rising prominence in the tenth century, a few rare examples were known in the Merovingian period as well. Perhaps the first figural sarcophagus to survive in early medieval Europe north of the Alps is the astonishing tomb of Chrodoara of Amay (ca. 555–before 634), discovered in 1977 and carved at an uncertain
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Epitaphs 15
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Fig. 1 Sarcophagus of Chrodoara, Church of St. George and St. Ode, Amay. Photo courtesy of the Musée communal d’archéologie et d’art religieux, Amay.
Romanesque Tomb Effigies 16
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date, either shortly after her death or, as seems more likely, around the time of her elevation to sainthood in 730 (figs. 1–2).21 The lid presents a veiled woman in shallow, full-figure relief. She is shown standing with an abbatial staff over a dense interlace design that fills the zones below her feet and above each of her shoulders. Over her head, a titulus identifies s(an)c(t)a chrodoara, and a verse at the end of the lid above the head suggests she was an aristocratic donor: chrodoara nvbelis, / magna et inclitis, ex sv / a svbstancia, dictavit s(an)c(t)o / aria (Noble Chrodoara, grand and illustrious; from her own wealth she enriched the sanctuaries).22 Little is known about Chrodoara, called Saint Oda in her largely anachronistic thirteenth-century vita, but she seems to have been a nun and not an abbess, despite the attribute on her funerary portrait. Perhaps the patrons of her tomb, whether members of her clan or monastic community (or both), added the staff as part of the anachronistic elevation of her status. Thus—though separated from other figural tomb sculptures in the region by some four centuries and accompanied by only slim traces of textual evidence—this early figure already hints toward a pattern of reshaping memory in a funerary context. The church in Amay, forty miles southwest of Aachen, was rebuilt in the eleventh and sixteenth centuries but has Gallo-Roman foundations. It is thought to have been first consecrated during Chrodoara’s life, perhaps under her patronage, and the sarcophagus may reflect the mix of Roman legacy and Germanic culture that existed in Amay at that time. This context would explain its links to roughly contemporaneous Saxon stelae, which were proposed by Körner as forerunners for medieval effigies; a similar interlace pattern appears, for example, on the Reiterstein von Hornhausen in Saxony-Anhalt, and a highly abstracted male figure is carved in shallow relief on the gravestone from Niederdollendorf near Bonn.23 These monuments are dated to the seventh century, which invites the suggestion that the Chrodoara image may be a Christian extension of an existing tradition, blended with the Romanizing use of a sarcophagus. No clear indication has survived, however, that this single and largely exceptional figure was a point of inspiration for later monuments—nor is there any hint of how soon after Chrodoara’s 730 elevation the sarcophagus was buried and forgotten until its modern rediscovery.24 The Chrodoara tomb remains an outlier for its rich carvings, precocious date, and evocative parallels to pre-Christian monuments. Most of the stone sarcophagi from the seventh through tenth centuries were plain; some were marked with crosses on their
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Fig. 2 Sarcophagus of Chrodoara from an oblique angle, Church of St. George and St. Ode, Amay. Photo courtesy of the Musée communal d’archéologie et d’art religieux, Amay.
lids to signal eschatological salvation, and a few of these were marked with inscriptions. An unusually evocative pair of such sarcophagi was produced for Queen Mathilda (ca. 894–968) and Bishop Bernhard of Halberstadt (d. 968), respectively buried in the abbey of St. Servatius in Quedlinburg (fig. 3) and Halberstadt Cathedral (fig. 4).25 Both died in 968, a coincidence that was noted by Widukind of Corvey when he recorded the story of a hermit who had a vision of their souls carried together “in inexpressible glory to heaven by an infinite multitude of angels.”26 Setting aside doubts about the source of this miraculous vision, Widukind’s decision to highlight the account may well reflect a calculated orchestration of theological and political aims. As Ernst Schubert suggests, the paired monuments appear designed to repair some fraught intraparty tensions by linking the deaths of two powerful individuals. Though almost austere, with simple crosses and laconic inscriptions, the paired sarcophagi are distinctively and elegantly designed to focus attention on a salvific message. Each sarcophagus gives a name and date of death for the individual it contains; Queen Mathilda’s adds the formulaic Latin phrase cvivs anima eternam optineat reqviem (may her soul have eternal rest).27 Immediately evident is the careful planning of the inscriptions, placed so the name falls on the horizontal bar of the cross, literally underscoring its importance. Both sarcophagi are preserved in burial shafts that suggest they have remained in situ. The Halberstadt sarcophagus is in the cathedral choir and may well have been left undisturbed during later Gothic renovations. The Quedlinburg sarcophagus is in the crypt, just to the right of the presumed location of the grave of Mathilda’s husband, King Henry the Fowler; the column set over one end suggests that this sarcophagus, too, remained in place during later rebuilding campaigns. It is not clear if either
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Fig. 3 Sarcophagus of Queen Mathilda, St. Servatius, Quedlinburg. Photo courtesy of the Archiv der Bau- und Kunstdenkmalpflege, Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie Sachsen-Anhalt, Halle (Saale).
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sarcophagus lid was visible after burial, which seems unlikely but not impossible. It is more plausible to interpret the lids’ texts as lofty equivalents for the inscribed lead tablets that were sometimes included among prestigious grave goods from the eleventh century as identifiers for the dead.28 It is also likely that the combination of image and text served an apotropaic function, protecting the dead during the long wait for resurrection—or during the pause before elevation to saintly status and the attendant recovery of bones as sacred relics. The lack of a comparable sarcophagus for Henry, Mathilda’s husband, adds an interesting twist to the situation at Quedlinburg. It is difficult to reconstruct a scenario in which a stone sarcophagus for Henry would be destroyed while Mathilda’s survived intact; some fragments of wood and a plain stone slab at Quedlinburg may well be the remnants of a wood sarcophagus that deteriorated over time. Henry had died much earlier, in 936, and perhaps at that time it did not seem necessary to make an elaborate, inscribed sarcophagus for the king: the entire convent of St. Servatius, where Henry’s widow and granddaughter, both named Mathilda, served as founding abbesses, was in a sense his monument. By the time Queen Mathilda passed away, thirty-two years after her husband, circumstances had changed considerably: Henry and Mathilda’s son Otto had become the first Saxon emperor, Mathilda had acquired a reputation for
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Fig. 4 Sarcophagus of Bishop Bernhard, Halberstadt Cathedral. Photo: Klaus G. Beyer, © Constantin Beyer.
sanctity that only increased after her death, and Quedlinburg had become a key center for imperial displays of power and piety. Mathilda’s prominent sarcophagus, therefore, most likely served roles that did not come into play in her husband’s case: it was not only a counterweight to a rival episcopal tomb at Halberstadt but also a sign of her sanctity and a part of a larger effort to promote Quedlinburg as a spiritual stronghold for the Ottonians. Though ambitious epitaphs remained a rarity in the eleventh century, the few that survive reflect a growing desire to mark tombs with complex commentaries on the status and expectations of the dead. The three examples I highlight below are among the
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most complex of their time, and it is striking that their erudite texts and refined carvings were all made for monastic audiences: each commemorates an abbot or a bishop, or in one case a man who was both. While each slab has been linked to the patronage of a specific person, it is difficult to distinguish between personal and institutional “ownership” of monastic bodies. This would be true even if firmer documentation on patronage were available; in each case here, such sources are largely absent. It thus seems more useful to note that all three men were influential in their respective institutions, and their posthumous legacies were invoked in times of change. The goal in bringing their monuments together here, however, is not to argue for exceptional qualities possessed by any of these three individuals but rather to consider how they fit together in an eleventh-century pattern that emphasized the ambiguous state of the dead against the backdrop of monastic memory and its attendant salvific expectations. Despite this hope of redemption, or perhaps because of it, each monument seems cautionary rather than celebratory in its approach to death, focusing on the precarious fate of even the most illustrious individuals during their long wait for eventual resurrection.
Bernward of Hildesheim
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Thanks to the great bronze doors inscribed with his name, unsurpassed in the Ottonian era for their technical skill and iconographic ambition, Bernward of Hildesheim (ca. 960–1022) is familiar to virtually all students of medieval art. The long list of works linked to his patronage includes not only the doors but also luxurious manuscripts, a remarkable array of sculptures in a variety of materials, and the abbey church of St. Michael’s in Hildesheim, which is located just up the hill from the cathedral where Bernward spent his episcopal career.29 This impressive series closes with a lesser-known but equally notable ensemble: Bernward’s stone sarcophagus (figs. 5–6), its finely carved lid (fig. 7), and a pendant memorial slab (fig. 8).30 Like many works associated with his name, Bernward’s tomb is unparalleled in the first quarter of the eleventh century. In its unique use of images and texts, however, it shares the same ambivalence toward the dead body—a sense of simultaneous horror and attraction— that would remain a fixture of European memorial culture for centuries to come. The funerary monument is described in the Vita Bernwardi, a biography that has traditionally been ascribed to Thangmar, Bernward’s teacher and early mentor, which survives in more than two dozen manuscripts.31 Though Thangmar’s authorship is still widely acknowledged, the text is likely a compilation in which Thangmar’s version was mixed with later additions. The earliest full manuscript was copied in the late twelfth century, perhaps at the time of Bernward’s canonization in 1193, but it draws upon a dossier already assembled during Bernward’s lifetime to support Hildesheim’s efforts to assert authority over Gandersheim, despite a competing claim from Mainz.32 Thus the biography is little help in establishing a precise date for the sarcophagus or the slab, but it does give a terminus ante quem and also specifies that the tomb was
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set in the crypt of St. Michael’s before the altar of the Virgin.33 It relays not only the inscriptions from the two surviving monuments discussed here but also the text of a third inscription that was set on a pillar to the right of the tomb. This object has long since disappeared without a trace.34 Because there is no way to ascertain what that epitaph looked like or when it was added to Bernward’s tomb, it is set aside for the present discussion.35 Still it offers one more indication of the careful attention paid to Bernward’s body, even before the 1193 canonization, when his sarcophagus was opened and his relics removed. Bernward’s biography describes him as an artifex, or artist, and praises his skill in painting, metalwork, and architecture.36 This designation may well be among the later additions to Thangmar’s text; its veracity was widely accepted by the twelfth century but has been debated in modern scholarship.37 A few decades ago it was still possible to suggest the sarcophagus may have been carved by Bernward himself; this notion no longer seems tenable, but his personal involvement in its design still seems likely.38 The trope of Bernward as artist is rooted not only in the text of the biography and the many surviving works bearing inscriptions with his name but also in the unusual intellectual complexity of these objects, many of which—like the famous bronze doors—seem to be products of a particularly agile mind, well-versed in theology and iconography. As Tobias Frese notes, Bernward had a keen interest in philosophy and was likely influenced by the commentary on Plato’s Timaeus written by Calcidius in the fourth century.39 In the case of his tomb sculpture, support for Bernward as “concepteur” lies not only in its ties to this tradition but also in the deeply personal nature of the text on the slab, as well as the overall ambitious scale and complexity of the work. Such arguments are generally convincing, but they also reflect a long historiographic tradition—arguably stretching from the Middle Ages to the present day—of viewing Bernward as an exceptional patron, to the point where “Bernwardian art” (bernwardinische Kunst) has become a recognizable term in its own right. Given the extraordinary richness of the material, such an approach is easily justifiable, but at least in the case of the sarcophagus, it is equally important to consider relationships to other works of the type beyond Hildesheim. Regardless of whether the sarcophagus was made during Bernard’s own lifetime or shortly after—and, by extension, whether it should be viewed primarily as a vehicle of the bishop’s personal agenda or if the emphasis on Bernward’s unique artistic agency has been exaggerated—it is precisely the tension between the tomb as a site for individual salvation and as an expression
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Fig. 5 Sarcophagus of Bishop Bernward, abbey church of St. Michael’s, Hildesheim. Photo courtesy of Dommuseum Hildesheim.
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Fig. 6 Sarcophagus of Bishop Bernward, detail of inscription, abbey church of St. Michael’s, Hildesheim. Photo courtesy of Dommuseum Hildesheim. Fig. 7 Sarcophagus of Bishop Bernward, lid, abbey church of St. Michael’s, Hildesheim. Photo courtesy of Dommuseum Hildesheim.
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of communal hopes that connects the sarcophagus and memorial slab to broader trends that would inform the history of European tomb sculpture across the next two centuries. The plain sarcophagus is roughly hewn, but its lid is highly finished. It may once have been set into a shallow shaft that hid its sides from view but left the upper portions exposed. The lightly abraded surface may well be the result of medieval visitors touching the lid, perhaps as an act of veneration, though it is difficult to know if or when such handling may have occurred.40 Its current installation in the crypt of St. Michael’s, which features the slab set on short columns over the lid, is a modern reconstruction that approximates its original configuration to the best of current knowledge. The gabled lid is pitched at a moderate angle, each side forming a long rectangle circumscribed by a flat, inscribed band. Within these bands are busts of winged, haloed angels that alternate with triangular, undulating flames. The short ends of the lid are carved with a Lamb of Christ and seven flames at the head and a cross at the feet. Because
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Fig. 8 Tomb slab of Bishop Bernward, lid, abbey church of St. Michael’s, Hildesheim. Photo courtesy of Dommuseum Hildesheim.
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they appear in consistent groups of seven, the flames have been interpreted as references to the seven lamps of fire in the Book of Revelations.41 The two sides of the lid are not identical, with five angels on the proper left-hand side and only four on the right. The total number of nine may well be a reference to the nine choirs of angels, another biblical citation, and the asymmetries of the overall design has added force to the suggestion that these numerological readings were a crucial aspect of the design.42 With this in mind, Peter Lasko extends the interpretation of the sets of seven flames to suggest an allusion to the seven candlesticks in Zacharias 4:2, which appear as part of a vision portending the successful construction of a temple—a point that Lasko links to the building of St. Michael’s itself.43 Whether or not such readings can be accepted with certainty, the images seem to reflect the disparate fates of body and soul; one is reduced to ashes while the other ascends to heaven. In this context it is striking that the framing text on the lid does not specify Bernward’s name. Instead, it bears an excerpt from the Book of Job that was widely featured in the liturgy for the dead: scio enim, qvod redempt[or] mev[s vi]vit et in nov[i]ssimo / die de / terra svrrectvrvs svm [e]t rvrsvm circvmdabor pelle mea / et in car / ne mea vi / debo d(ev)m salvatorem mevm, qvem visvrvs svm ego ipse et / ocvli / mei conspectvri svnt et non alivs reposita est hec spes mea in sinv meo. For I know that my Redeemer liveth, and in the last day I shall rise out of the earth. And I shall be clothed again with my skin, and in my flesh I shall see my God. Whom I myself shall see, and my eyes shall behold, and not another: this my hope is laid up in my bosom.44
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It is only when the sarcophagus is opened—that is, the lid removed so that the remains of the dead might be exhumed—that the naming inscription becomes visible: bfrnvvardvs / ep(iscopv)s servvs ser / vorvm chr(ist)i (Bernward, bishop, servant of the servants of Christ).45 The humility of the hidden inscription offers an intriguing contrast to other, better-known monuments in Hildesheim. For example, Bernward’s name is prominently emblazoned on his great bronze doors, and the bishop is shown performing mass before the Virgin in an opening of the so-called Precious Gospels, one of the most celebrated portraits of the Middle Ages. Bernward’s almost obsessive interest in enshrining his personal memory at St. Michael’s can hardly be doubted; nor could early visitors to the crypt of the abbey have failed to understand that it was his remains in the sarcophagus. Nevertheless, the contrast between the ubiquity of Bernward’s name in Hildesheim and its concealment on his sarcophagus hints at a tension between his memoria and the fate of his physical remains. The funerary slab also plays a key role in the relationship between Bernward’s name, his body, and his eschatological expectations. Until somewhat recently, the slab had frequently been published as a twelfth-century monument based on stylistic criteria, whereas the sarcophagus had uniformly been dated to between circa 1020
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and 1025, or around the time of Bernward’s death in 1022. Recent epigraphic analysis has shown, however, that both monuments were likely carved together in the early eleventh century.46 The unified date has since been largely accepted and conforms to Thangmar’s description in Bernward’s vita.47 Once the objects are seen as a pair rather than products of separate centuries, the relationship between them becomes at once more complicated and more compelling. The plaque is too heavy to have been moved with frequency, and the current configuration on short columns over the sarcophagus follows the evidence for a similar use of memorial slabs at Speyer.48 Lacking archeological information to establish this point conclusively, the arrangement remains open to question, but still it seems clear that the sarcophagus held the body while the plaque mediated between the living and the dead, set almost like an altar above the burial shaft and acting as an epitaph, a raised stone to commemorate the body, in tension with the sarcophagus lid and its more direct link to the body. The text of the plaque is strikingly different from that of its pendant: pars hominis bernwardvs / era(m); nvnc premor in isto / sarcofago diro, vilis / et ecce cinis. / pro dolor, officii cvlm(en) / qvia non bene gessi / sit pia pax animai, / vos et am(en) canite. Part of a man, Bernward, was I; now I lie pressed in this dreadful sarcophagus and behold: worthless ashes. Woe is me that I have not carried out the dignity of my high office well! May merciful peace be granted to my soul, and you, sing Amen.49 This text presents death as fracture: framed in past tense, the body is only one part of the individual, and now that the living soul has departed, the body is only ashes and dust. The text speaks of mortification and unworthiness; it begs the reader to pray for the dead. Its arrangement around the central cross segregates the writing itself, echoing a theme of separation and fragmentation. At the top, set like a titulus above the whole, are the words that assert Bernward’s remaining body is only a “part of a man” and lament its location, “pressed in this dreadful sarcophagus.” Even as the words pars hominis assert that the body is only a part of the self and not the whole, the broken arrangement of the text around the cross emphasizes that the humiliation of the body will be redeemed after its resurrection. Isto is separated from sarcophago, and the separation of the two words across the image leads the reader downward to the base of the cross, carved with foliage to recall the regenerative nature of salvation. The words diro (dreadful), vilis (worthless), and cinis (ashes) are isolated as a group on the sinister side of the cross, aligned above officium as if to remind the viewer that the high office of bishop alone, if not carried out well, is not enough to ensure final salvation. On the other side of the cross appear the words sarcofago, et ecce pro dolor, which reinforce the likelihood that the plaque was designed for installation as a cover for a shaft that contained the sarcophagus.
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What stands out in both slab and sarcophagus is the generalized nature of the imagery and the humble, self-effacing qualities of the biblical inscriptions. In contrast to Bernward’s more famous manuscripts and their celebrated images of the Hildesheim bishop himself approaching the divine presence of sacred figures, the sarcophagus and plaque make no effort to visualize the body that they represent.50 The monastic community at St. Michael’s, as members of the intellectual elite of their time, would have been sensitive to such cues. They would have noticed the bene from non bene gessi, the word broken in two by the spike of the cross, and perhaps felt compelled to ask: what could count as a high office carried out “well” against the daunting prospect of eschatological judgment? The inscription on the plaque thus signals self-doubt in a show of humility; the sarcophagus lid pushes this trope even further by omitting Bernward’s name altogether. This information has been relegated to the hidden interior of the sarcophagus, where it was carefully carved on the rim but presumably left invisible after the interment of its subject. As with the tenth-century sarcophagi at Quedlinburg and Halberstadt, inscriptions with name and office act as authentications. The effect is very different on the cross plaque, which puts Bernward’s name in a prominent place. By pushing the name from the lid, where names were more commonly placed, to a concealed edge, the sarcophagus emphasizes the absence rather than the presence of the dead. This sense of alienation is emphasized by the convoluted path taken by the text across the gabled surface. Twisting around angels and flames, these words may have been easier to read if placed at the bottom of a shaft, seen from above by a viewer who could move to follow the text. Still, the text itself may not have been read so much as recognized: quoted from scripture, its function seems apotropaic rather than informative. The text on the plaque was straightforward in its arrangement and thus more clearly addressed viewers, emphasizing the humility of death and inviting contemplation of the medieval discourse of the ephemeral nature of human life. The sarcophagus, on the other hand, may not have been intended for a visitor’s gaze at all; instead, its art primarily protected the body, its words acting together with angels and flames to keep watch over the body and to guarantee its salvation.
Isarn of Marseille
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A very different presentation is found some 1200 kilometers to the southwest in France, where the unique late eleventh-century plaque of Abbot Isarn of Marseille (d. 1047) in the abbey of St-Victor offers a strange blend of body and epitaph (fig. 9).51 Unlike most Romanesque funerary monuments, Isarn’s figure can be linked directly to late antiquity because the slab itself is the base of a Roman sarcophagus, cut out of its original context.52 Its appearance, too, has an ancient source; its visual formula— a body seemingly suppressed beneath a funerary slab, with only the head and feet poking out at either end—has at least one close parallel among the plentiful ruins of southern France.53 It may be suggested, however, that this relationship does not
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Fig. 9 Tomb slab of Abbot Isarn, St-Victor, Marseille. Photo: Foto Marburg / Art Resource, New York.
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account for all aspects of the medieval monument and that (despite tantalizing written records of Isarn’s personal interest in antiquity) the ties between the monument and its ancient “models” also existed in tension with the new goals of the eleventh century.54 The plaque far exceeds its potential precursor in its use of image and text by adding a lengthy biographical inscription that covers the body. This act of layering the text over the body, as if to suppress the physical remains beneath the weight of the written record, seems to have been a wholly medieval invention. The striking visual relationship between the flat slab of the inscription and the face and feet framing it on either side is matched by the vivid Latin text: sacra viri clari svnt hic ista patris isarni, membra svis stvdiis glorificata piis / qvae felix vegetans anima provexit ad alta, morib(vs) egregiis pacificisq(ue) animis / na(m) redimitvs erat hic virtvtis speciebus, vir d(omi)ni cvnctis p(ro) qvib(vs) est hilaris / qvae fecit docvit abbas pivs atq(ue) beatvs / discipvlosq(ve) svos compvlit esse pios / sic vivens tenvit regim(en) sed clavdere lim(ina), compvlsvs vit(a)e est acriter misere / rexit bis denis septemq(ue) fidelit(er) annis, com(m)issu(m)q(ve) sibi dvlce55 gregem d(omi)ni / respvit octobris t(er)ras octavo kalendas, et cepit rvtili regna svbire poli. Here lie the sacred remains of the famous man, Father Isarn, made glorious by his pious zeal, which a blessed animating soul carried to the heavens. For he, a man of outstanding manners and peaceful disposition, had been redeemed by the splendors of virtue. A man of the Lord to all for whom what he did is joyous; a pious and blessed abbot, he taught and compelled his disciples to be pious. Living thus he maintained his rule, but he was forced to shut forcefully the gateway of this wretched life. For twenty-seven years he ruled faithfully the Lord’s flock sweetly entrusted to him. He cast off the earth on the eighth kalends of October and began to approach the realms of the glowing red sky.
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Compared to the inscriptions on the Bernward monument, the lavish praise of the Isarn epitaph seems at once more personalized and more compelling. Where Bernward’s tomb seems content to express a bland benedictional tone, the Isarn inscription lays out a full-throated and highly detailed celebration of individual legacy. What is striking, however, is that no matter how praiseworthy the abbot’s life has been, it is also described as “pitiable” or “miserable” by its end. Much like at Hildesheim, the viewer is invited to believe that no one, not even the great abbot, can be deemed truly worthy in the retrospective view of Christian burials; the nature of life itself (vita) is to be pitied (misere) because it is not, ultimately, a lasting state. No matter how good this life may have been, it pales in comparison to the afterlife and promised resurrection. Such sentiments hold true even in an exemplary life, full of virtues, after which the soul has ascended to heaven, and the body is identified as “saintly remains.” This last
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contradiction is the most important: the corpse is sacred, yet the living body, in the moment of dying, is pitiable. This divide is reinforced by the inscriptions at Isarn’s head and feet: cerne, p(rae)cor, que lex homini(s) noxa p(ro)toplasti in me defuncto, lector, inest misero (Look, reader, I beg of you, at what the law of man, through the guilt of Adam, imposes on me in death and wretchedness) and sicque gemens corde dic, dic: deus huic miserere am(en) (and thus, sighing in your heart, speak, speak: God have mercy on this man. Amen). The mood of this text is much closer to that of the Bernward plaque. The word misere is used twice, once each at the head and the feet, and instead of praising the dead man, it emphasizes his need for mercy. The reference to original sin at the head works in tandem with the repeated command, dic, dic (speak, speak) at the feet, offering a moving plea for pity and prayers for the dead abbot. How, then, was Isarn’s sophisticated monastic audience expected to interpret this early appearance of a body, or at least of some body parts, on a funerary monument? The text offers clues, especially by placing the words that evoke pity, the ones most clearly tied to the physical experience of death, around the exposed body parts. The text, distanced from the body—indeed, the thing that suppresses and hides the body—is the site where the vita of Isarn can be celebrated. This celebration is tied to the mention of the “sacred remains” in its first lines, suggesting the possibility of bodily sanctity, even if life is pitiable. Two aspects of death emerge: the pathetic death of the individual, in which the body becomes a miserable husk, and the happy death of the saint, in which the body becomes a sacred, imperishable object, a site of contact between the present world and the afterlife. The view of the body held in tension between these two aspects of death—death as dust and death as salvation—offers one more clue about how viewers were expected to see this monument. The text is carefully arranged in eight lines—the first three are small, the next two broad, and the final three are small again. An additional inscription along the top edge records the year of Isarn’s death as 1048; though similar to the original text, the shallow cuts and awkward placement of this line suggest its slightly later date.56 The central lines are highlighted epigraphically: the letters are larger and further apart, marked out by small crosses at either end, and the text is aligned with the hidden body along the spinal column. At this location the text clarifies the value of his works: “a pious and blessed abbot, he taught and compelled his disciples to be pious.” This emphasis on teaching may well be rooted in Isarn’s activities in life—which included forging a close alliance with Odilo of Cluny and advocating for reform—but it surely also reflected the greater institutional legacy of St-Victor, where John Cassian’s activities seven centuries earlier had set an educational standard that would be emulated across Christendom. As noted above, it has long been suggested that the sculpture was carved from the base of a Roman sarcophagus, quite possibly one brought to Marseille for this specific purpose.57 This reuse of ancient marble suggests the links between the epitaph and the sarcophagus form were integral to the monument, as if the surface invites viewers to look down into a sarcophagus—or to see through the epitaph and imagine the body in the tomb in a direct manner that is almost crass. The shock of this confrontation
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should not be lost amid the ensuing growth of funerary images, at least not until the early thirteenth century when a new insistence on picturing the dead as dead underscored the growing acceptance of such imagery and entailed an audience that was perhaps less sensitive to the idea of tomb sculpture as visualizations of death. In the mid-eleventh century, however, the frisson of reusing ancient sarcophagi as a material for funerary monuments would have been felt. Even in 1100, when the famous pier reliefs at Moissac were also carved from reused sarcophagi, the charge of reusing a material that had long housed the early Christian dead would have produced an aura of eschatological expectation in the cloister. The image of Abbot Durand, discussed next, thus occupied an ambiguous place between funerary connotation and commemorative function for its earliest viewers.
Durand of Moissac
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Moissac is not an easy site to describe in broad strokes. The former abbey church of St-Pierre preserves two of the most celebrated sculptural monuments of the twelfth century, the south porch portal with its imposing Last Judgment scene and the cloister, arguably the most richly carved example of its type (fig. 10).58 The seventy-six cloister capitals feature a range of motifs including complex saintly narratives and finely designed foliate capitals, juxtaposing models of sanctity and the paradisiacal connotations of gardens.59 These capitals present an intriguing dialogue with the famous apostle piers that show large-scale depictions of Christ’s companions in shallow marble reliefs carved from repurposed ancient sarcophagi.60 The apostles are bookended by the exceptional monument for Abbot Durand of Bredon in the center of the eastern cloister walkway (fig. 11) and the dedicatory inscription that is prominently placed in the corresponding location in the center of the western cloister walkway (fig. 12). The inscription highlights the fact that the cloister was made during the time of Abbot Anquêtil, inviting comparison of the abbots through image and text. The inscription’s date of 1100 suggests the cloister was finished twenty-eight years after Durand died in 1072. Although his image is set upright within a complex program of architectural sculpture and not (as far as can be known) tied to an expressly funerary function, its resonance with the effigy type can scarcely be ignored: here is a full-figure body, monumental in scale, representing a deceased leader who is still present within the reach of living memory. The representational strategies of the Durand slab could certainly invite speculation that the slab existed in a funerary context before it was placed at the center of the west gallery, but such conjecture is not required to make the point that the plaque uses a vocabulary shared with tomb effigies—at a very early date—to commemorate a pivotal figure who had brought Cluniac reform to Moissac and presided over an age of remarkable expansion. Dating the figure to circa 1100 makes it second only to Rudolf of Swabia in the chronology of Romanesque effigies, but it would be a stretch to see the figure as a “response” to a rising fashion for such objects. It stands
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instead as a challenge to any assumption that the “tomb effigy” itself emerged for a strictly funerary purpose. Given the limits of our knowledge concerning how other early effigy-type slabs were originally installed, it would be artificial to exclude Moissac from a history of effigies simply because of its largely intact architecture. To the contrary, its survival suggests that the term “effigy” itself needs broadening to embrace monumental figural plaques that memorialized local individuals, particularly in cases where the formal resonances of the frontal body in low relief on a rectangular slab seem so strong. This is not to say, however, that the relationship between early effigies and the body did not matter. Corporeal presence and absence are still evoked by the figure: there is a strong likelihood that Durand was interred at Moissac, perhaps before the high altar inside the adjacent church. Given that the effigy frames the abbot in saintly terms, the presence of his body at the abbey (even if not directly behind the slab) would have lent the slab a potency not unlike that of a more narrowly “funerary” context.61 Moissac thus dismantles notions that sculptural effigies were developed specifically for installations on the ground or in relation to liturgical practices.62 Most surviving effigies from this period, indeed all but a handful, were found by archeologists in the nineteenth century. Even in the example of the only effigy from before circa 1150 thought to survive in situ on a floor, the monument of Rudolf of Swabia, the cathedral around it was dramatically altered in the Gothic period. Given how little is certain about the early installation of effigies, it is quite possible that even more examples were also once intended for vertical placement on walls.63 In the case of the Durand monument, juxtaposition with the Anquêtil inscription invites reconsideration of the role of image and text in commemorative contexts. It is ultimately the formal qualities of the relief, combined with the subject matter of an individual from the local history of the site itself, that make the sculpture so pertinent here. The Moissac cloister suffered damage in 1212 during the Albigensian Crusade and was soon rebuilt, apparently using some of the original materials.64 It is not certain that the sculptures remained in their original locations, though they are unlikely to
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Fig. 10 Pier relief with Saint Peter in the cloister of the abbey, Moissac. Photo: Scala / Art Resource, New York.
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Fig. 11 Pier relief with effigy of Abbot Durand in the cloister of the abbey, Moissac. Photo: Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz—Max-Planck-Institut (Roberto Sigismondi).
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Fig. 12 Pier relief with inscription in the cloister of the abbey, Moissac. Photo: Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz—Max-Planck-Institut (Roberto Sigismondi).
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Romanesque Tomb Effigies 34
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have been altered again after the arcades were configured with the present thirteenth- century arches. This uncertainty makes it especially important to exercise caution when advancing ideas about the capitals, whose somewhat chaotic arrangement does not seem to follow a “program” so much as a set of loosely defined monastic themes. The pier reliefs, however, present a more easily defined internal logic in their placement—and being fewer and heavier, they are more likely to have remained unmoved during renovations.65 Eight figural pier reliefs survive, positioned at the corners of the cloister and the centers of its walkways. The apostles appear most often in pairs that wrap around the two sides of corner piers facing the walkways. The use of marble slabs of similar size and analogous placement on cloister piers brings the apostles into dialogue with the two abbots, but the carvers were also careful to distinguish Durand through stylistic choices. The apostles are shown with their heads in profile, as if following the walkways with their gazes, and their arms crossed before their bodies. These dynamic poses create an impression of animation that is absent from the stiff, frontal image of Durand. The abbot looks forward; his body is defined by far stricter geometries, and his arms are pressed to his sides at an almost cartoonish angle. The presence of such soft, wispy, and sensitively modeled figures as the famous Isaiah of the south porch is a reminder that we cannot follow previous generations too closely in ascribing stylistic differences to hypothetical dates or artistic inclinations alone. These different treatments of the human figure are also surely linked to the eschatological content of the tympanum set above the wistful Old Testament prophets of the south porch trumeau, as well as to the similarly charged juxtaposition of Christ’s apostles and the community of Cluniac monks in the cloister. Durand operated as the lynchpin of the latter pairing, blurring the lines between the distant and recent pasts. The hieratic stiffness of his body gives it additional power, and its central placement in between the Peter and Paul reliefs confirms the Benedictine analogy likening an ideal abbot’s relationship with his monks to Christ’s position among his apostles. Prominently located opposite the entrance to the chapter house, where it confronted the monks as they entered the cloister from their daily reading sessions, the iconic, posthumous image of the abbot was an effective reminder of the apostolic ideals of Benedictine monasticism. The titulus on the framing arch above reads s(an)c(tv)s dvrannvs e(pisco)p(v)s tolo / sanvs et abb(a)s moysiaco, reminding viewers that Durand was not only abbot of Moissac but also bishop of Toulouse. The monument thus made a claim for the abbot’s saintliness while reminding the monks (and potential visitors) that the former abbot had also held a position of great significance to the entire region, beyond their walls. More difficult to explain is the appearance of the inscribed plaque for Anquêtil, which has at times been characterized as a self-important monument that chiefly served to mark the achievements of a single abbot in building the cloister. Caution is required in ascribing motives to Cluniac monks, particularly in this period when lavish inscriptions were as carefully planned as any other elements of a sculptural program. The Anquêtil plaque is made of the same marble as the other piers and is also very likely reused from an ancient sarcophagus. The two reliefs for abbots correspond
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not only in their shared materials but also in their installation, which literally aligns the current abbot behind his predecessor. The two plaques thus effectively frame the cloister; they also encapsulate the 1080s, which was a turbulent time for Moissac. After the death of Durand, the ambitious but unpopular Abbot Hunaud brought the monastery into conflict with neighboring aristocrats. Anquêtil became abbot amid much controversy in 1085, when a jealous monk accused him of wrongdoing and set fire to the town. The pope had to intervene to settle the matter—a clear sign of how far the situation had gotten out of hand. With this in mind, it seems Anquêtil’s decision to include the inscription in the cloister was more than a mere expression of personal ambition: it was a larger attempt to link the present time with the successful past of Durand and to create closure for the difficult events of more recent history. Rather than reading the plaque—and indeed, the whole cloister—as an attempt for Anquêtil to celebrate himself, we might see it as, more significantly, a monument around which the community could affirm its unity and the success of the reformed Cluniac site as a whole, with Anquêtil as its figurehead. The inscription runs as follows: anno ab i(n)carna / tione aeterni / pri(n)cipis millesimo / centesimo factv(m) / est clavstrv(m) istvd / tempore / dom(i)ni / ansqvitilii / abbatis / amen (In the year 1100 from the Incarnation of the eternal prince, this cloister was erected in the time of Abbot Anquêtil. Amen). The inscription itself, with the emphasis on the name of Anquêtil in the center, has played a large role in interpretations of this monument as a sign of personal ambition. What is most striking, however, is the linking of his name with tempore Domini, a reference to temporality, the time of the world. Paired with the Durand plaque, the textual representation of Anquêtil acts as a marker of time, inviting future monks to read themselves as successors to a tradition that spanned generations: from the time of Durand, to the time of Anquêtil, to the present day. The letters at the bottom add a potential clue concerning this play with time. Their meaning is still uncertain, but a plausible solution was proposed in the seventeenth century by the Benedictine scholar Estiennot (1639–1699) and rediscovered by Leah Rutchick.66 The interpreted letters read: v(ir) v(itae) v(enerabilis) / m(oyssiacum) d(omum) m(elioravit) / r(estuit), r(estauravit), r(exit) / f(auste), f(ortunate), f(eliciter) (Man of venerable life, he improved the house of Moissac; he built it, restored it, ruled it—fortunately, prosperously, fruitfully). This kind of radical abbreviation is best understood through the lens of Ilene Forsyth’s recent explorations of the playful qualities of cloister inscriptions. Already in 1929, Meyer Schapiro had pushed back against the suggestion by Paul Deschamps that the inscriptions were haphazardly arranged, but it was Forsyth who fleshed out their sense of delight in inventiveness in relation to the Benedictine cautions against boredom.67 As Forsyth points out, the monks were expected to remain in the monastery “not for a few sunny hours or for the few days of a study retreat but for all days, all years, all one’s time on earth.”68 In the case of the plaque, its unusual reduction of the text to initial letters offers a kind of code, and—as Forsyth argues, in the case of certain capitals—it is also possible that the code
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Romanesque Tomb Effigies
may have held more than one meaning. Nevertheless, as Rutchick explores, there are good reasons to follow Estiennot for a primary interpretation. The suggestion that the words vir vitae venerabilis are borrowed from the opening line of Gregory the Great’s vita of Saint Benedict is particularly compelling.69 There can be little doubt that the monks at Moissac would have been familiar with this text and thus able to recognize the allusion. What is more difficult, however, is accepting that the use of the opening line of Benedict’s life story was meant boastfully, as Forsyth suggests. While there is indeed a certain presumptuous quality in the appropriation of these words at Moissac, the purpose seems rather to reinforce the process of imitation through which monks aspire to the ideals of their models. The idealization of Durand and his elevation to the company of the apostles through an image was echoed in the textual likening of Anquêtil to Benedict. Whether or not this text was conceived during Anquêtil’s own lifetime, as is traditionally maintained, is somewhat beside the point: it was made in anticipation of a future in which the abbot would become, like his predecessor, a model for the next generation. Looking back at the monument for Isarn of Marseille, it becomes difficult to see inscriptions of monastic achievement as signs of individual greatness in specific abbots; they seem instead to be models of idealized, exemplary behavior. The intent was to inspire future members of the community to remember the dead and to perform similar good works. Indeed, it is tempting to imagine the Moissac cloister as a response, in some ways, to the Isarn plaque: where the Marseille monument used the inscription to suppress the body, the two elements have been pulled apart at Moissac to commemorate two abbots in dialogue with one another. In this vein it becomes all the more apparent that the Anquêtil plaque, its text carefully set within a neat geometric frame, bears some resemblance to an early medieval epitaph in its own right. Reading the inscription in context, the allusion of the Anquêtil plaque to the vita of Saint Benedict becomes an elegant parallel for the Christlike qualities of the Durand effigy. This effect is reinforced not only by the frontal, formal, abstract image of the abbot but also by its place in the larger program of the cloister, framed by apostles whose relative naturalism underscores the hieratic forms of Durand himself. Even the arrangement of the figures, with Peter and Paul set on either side of the abbot and the lesser apostles dispersed on the other piers, seems to map out the entire cloister with Durand as a focal point. Comparisons of Durand to Christ and of Anquêtil to Benedict require close observation and a deep understanding of both the images and texts involved. It would be hard to think of a better site than the cloister of Moissac for such a program, where the monks would have had both the education and the time required for such contemplation. The progression from image to text, from Durand to Anquêtil, moves from an older generation to a younger one. Allusions to Christ and Benedict extend this progression to the longer history of Christianity itself, turning the attention of the monks away from the turbulent events of recent history and toward the larger arc of salvation, in which they form an essential part.
36
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The cloister is inhabited by enduring monuments to the two influential abbots: Durand in the form of an upright effigy and Anquêtil through the dedicatory inscription. The Durand relief is not, strictly speaking, a tomb effigy; the sculpture is set into a pier in the cloister of the abbey church and, as such, is not known to have existed in close relation to a body. This acknowledgment, however, points to a larger problem: none of the monuments currently classified as tomb effigies from this period survive in situ. Only one—the effigy of Rudolf of Swabia, which we will discuss soon—is widely accepted as remaining in its original location in the crossing of Merseburg Cathedral; however, in this case the later Gothic renovations of the site make it likely that it was displaced at least temporarily during construction. It is also unclear whether the body of the fallen anti-king was actually interred beneath the slab.70 The inscription certainly makes this case, as discussed in the next chapter, but even so, it seems the effigy alone was not necessarily enough to indicate the presence of an underlying corpse. The intended placements of other early examples are far less clear. The Durand plaque, in contrast, remains installed in the cloister for which it was apparently made. Had the site been dismantled and not merely damaged in later conflicts, with its elements dispersed and their original configuration forgotten, scholars may well have declared the frontal, full-figure body of Durand, carved in low relief on a marble slab, to be the finest and earliest recumbent tomb effigy in France. As it is, the unique position of Durand within the Moissac program is an effective reminder that early commemorative relief sculptures were not necessarily limited to floor installations over bodies. This awareness opens the door to the suggestion that other Romanesque effigies may have also been integrated upright into sculptural programs, though the material evidence needed to prove this point conclusively has long since been lost.
Conclusion The monuments considered here are among the first surviving Romanesque memorials for individuals. Deeply influenced by a tradition extending back to the influential work of Jacob Burckhardt, some modern scholars have looked for the “rise of the individual” across medieval and Renaissance art, privileging images of specific medieval people as signs of emerging self-consciousness and self-aggrandizement. Such readings, however, risk imposing modern sensibilities onto the study of the past, and they seem particularly out of place against the monastic contexts in which Bernward of Hildesheim, Isarn of Marseille, and Durand of Moissac were buried. In this period, expressions of the self are tempered with expressions of self-mortification, and the culture of memoria is deeply tied to cautions against vanity, against hubris, and against placing too much confidence in the achievements of this world when faced with final judgment. The monuments commemorate individuals, but the inscriptions carefully situate the individual within a larger social frame.
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Although the emergence of the effigy marked a watershed for the history of medieval tomb sculpture, the earliest examples follow many themes that were evident decades earlier among prestigious epitaphs. The power of this format does not fade quickly; even as Rudolf of Swabia was being memorialized with a sculptural effigy, his rivals in the imperial necropolis at Speyer were commemorated with plain inscribed slabs. The Quedlinburg abbesses were unified through their effigies but distinguished from the saintly founder-forebear Mathilda, whose body remained buried in a simple sarcophagus. At Bad Iburg, Benno II of Osnabrück was commemorated with an inscription and a hagiographic vita, while a figural effigy was only made in the case of his later, less important successor Gottschalk of Diepholz. This hierarchical use of image and text to memorialize individuals inverts but echoes the arrangement at Moissac, where the contributions of Abbot Anquêtil are recorded in the prominent monumental inscription set into the center pier of the western cloister gallery. Moissac is the only one among these examples where the figure rather than the text represents the more powerful individual; it is also the only one to memorialize its subject in fully hagiographic terms, without reference to the shortness of life or the abjection of death. The beetle-like body of Durand is an abstracted icon, deliberately contrasted with the softened, dynamic bodies of Moissac’s apostolic patrons, Peter and Paul. The pontifical insignia of the bishop-abbot, his ornately banded regalia, and the crozier pressed to his side confirm the abbot’s body as the focal point of the cloister. Dated to the turn of the twelfth century, the figure also seems tied to contemporary developments to the east: though clear evidence for direct transmission is lacking, it is compelling to imagine the networks created by Cluniac or Hirsau reforms might have linked the twelfth-century effigies in German monasteries to points of inspiration in France.
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Rulers
2
It remains one of the enduring ironies of art history that the earliest surviving tomb effigy from the Middle Ages does not represent a king but rather an anti-king: someone who never ruled a kingdom, much less an empire, and instead fought and lost a war against his king as the chosen champion of the pope. In a marked point of contrast with Gothic royal funerary monuments, which were often celebrations of enduring dynastic triumph, the first known recumbent effigy in medieval Europe grapples instead with humiliating loss and failed expectations. The monument in question is nevertheless ambitious in its design and execution. It survives as an extraordinary bronze figure, cast in remarkably shallow relief except for the head, which protrudes as a rounded dome from the attenuated surfaces of the body (figs. 13–14). The clothing details are chased with intricate patterns that evoke rich embroidery, and enough traces of gold survive to suggest that the entire sculpture was once extensively (or fully) gilded. The pupils of the open, staring eyes are formed by prominent recesses that, although empty now, were most likely inlaid with glittering enamels or stones that enlivened the gleaming sculpture. Though in many ways a shadow of its former self, it remains a resplendent artifact of the chaotic denouement of the Great Saxon Revolt and marks the tomb of Rudolf of Swabia (ca. 1025–1080), the rebel warlord who was once rumored to have received a crown from Pope Gregory VII (ca. 1015–1085) at the height of the Investiture Controversy, only to die far from home after sustaining terrible wounds from a battle on the banks of the Weissen Elster near Merseburg. Rudolf’s effigy was produced sometime soon after his death on 16 October 1080. No records survive to indicate how it was funded or when it was installed, but it was most likely completed before the Salian king Henry IV (1050–1106) took control of Rome and was crowned emperor in 1084, precipitating the final collapse of the Saxon rebellion.1 Whether the effigy was installed shortly before this moment, as argued below, or sometime after, as others have suggested, its survival beyond its immediate
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Fig. 13 Effigy of Rudolf of Swabia, Merseburg Cathedral. Photo: Foto Marburg / Art Resource, New York.
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political context and through the cathedral’s Gothic and early modern renovations to the present seems almost miraculous. While the removal of the gilding (which must have been done carefully, as there is little damage to the bronze) and the inlay of the eyes may hint that Rudolf’s importance waned in later centuries, the survival of the sizeable monument indicates he was never fully forgotten. In hindsight, some of this enduring significance must be attributed not only to Rudolf’s role in Saxon history but also to the sensitive manner in which the monument itself shaped local memory of the vanquished anti-king. For early audiences, the placement of a shining effigy on a floor must have seemed contradictory and nothing short of extraordinary. This chapter is chiefly concerned with these tensions. The sculpture conveys victory tempered by defeat and life rooted in death, not only through its text and image but also in the very concept of a crowned, gilded, and yet abject figure, set supine at the viewer’s feet. Rather than designate Merseburg as a singular point of departure for the longer history of the effigy type, this chapter situates the object in its Romanesque context: first, through the political lens of the Investiture Controversy and the aftermath of Rudolf’s defeat; second, as tied to the theological implications of figural metalwork; and finally, as one of a small but significant set of memorials made for high-ranking aristocrats in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The aim is not to deny that Rudolf’s effigy occupies a special place in the history of medieval sculpture—nor to refute the numerous studies that have made this point clear—but rather to recover a sense of the novelty of this effigy when it first appeared, the anxieties and assurances that it once projected, and yet also the legibility of its visual rhetoric.
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Fig. 14 Effigy of Rudolf of Swabia from an oblique angle, Merseburg Cathedral. Photo courtesy of the Archiv der Bau- und Kunstdenkmalpflege, Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie Sachsen-Anhalt, Halle (Saale).
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Two foundational studies of the Rudolf effigy deserve special mention here: first, Berthold Hinz argues for its role as a political rallying point orchestrated by bishop Werner of Merseburg (d. 1093); second, Thomas E. A. Dale situates the visual qualities of the sculpture within a discourse of idealized portraiture, particularly in Romanesque representations of royal and saintly figures.2 Both offer cogent explanations of the historical and visual formulation of the first medieval effigy and focus on the monument as a fundamentally celebratory, honorific format. This reading resonates with partisan medieval texts that describe Rudolf’s “glorious” and “honorable” burial.3 What it sets aside, however, is the equally urgent, pervasive sense of tragic loss that also accompanied the monument. It is true the chroniclers of the time preferred to emphasize glory and honor, but there is also little doubt that these texts were attempting to redeem the terrible humiliation of the Saxon rebels and compensate for ugly, stinging defeat. The monument did much the same. Indeed, the powerful need to recast crisis as victory was the reason this particular king—and none other—was commemorated in a radically new form at such an early date. By turning away from a view of Rudolf’s tomb as the successful launch of a prestigious “type” and confronting it instead with attention to its insecurities, this chapter revisits the sculpture as it existed before the rise and eventual triumph of the recumbent effigy. It also reconsiders the idea of representing the heroics of death through a figure cast in bronze, chased in shining gold, and yet still lying supine, defeated, in a tomb. This perspective extends to the additional monuments presented at the end of the chapter and offers some resolution for the curious fact that the first royal effigies seem to have been made not for the most successful or most powerful individuals of Romanesque Europe but rather for its most glorious losers.
Rudolf of Swabia in Merseburg The identification of the bronze effigy as a projection of Rudolf’s body, open-eyed and yet dead in the tomb, is spelled out in the Latin verses that frame his death in ambitious terms: rex hoc rodvlf(us)—patru(m) p(ro) lege p(er)e(m)ptus / plorandus merito—conditvr in tumvlo rex illi similis—si regnet tempore pacis / consilio gladio—non fuit a karolo / qva vicere sui—rvit hic sacra uictima belli mors sibi uita fvit—ecclesiae cecidit Romanesque Tomb Effigies 42
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Here King Rudolf—for the law of the fathers slain Rightly to be lamented—he is buried in this tomb. A king like him—had he reigned in a time of peace
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By wisdom, by the sword of justice—there was none since Charlemagne. Where his men triumphed—there he fell, sacred victim of war Death to him was life—he died for the Church.4 The contrast between Rudolf’s tomb and typical conventions for royal and imperial burial could scarcely have been more pronounced. In this period, prominent members of the ruling Salian dynasty were typically laid to rest in simple stone sarcophagi in Speyer Cathedral. Austere stone slabs, raised on low columns over individual sarcophagi, carried laconic inscriptions to identify the dead.5 Simple copper crowns and lead tablets, modest in material and craftsmanship but rich in symbolism, have also been found inside some of the Speyer tombs.6 Some are inscribed with the rank, titles, date of death, and lineage of the individual.7 These brief notations, presumably included to avoid confusion in case of later exhumations, are a far cry in style and character from the highly visible and ambitiously literary poem composed for Rudolf. Earlier Carolingian and Ottonian tombs, as discussed in the previous chapter, were similarly austere. Some featured images, but these were almost certainly in mosaic rather than sculpture and only found in Italy.8 Others bore lengthy poetic epitaphs, but these were mostly laudatory biographies rather than the bold lament for Rudolf.9 The possibility that Rudolf’s gilded effigy may have reflected the lost tomb of Charlemagne himself, not as it existed but as it was later imagined, is taken up separately below. The key to Rudolf ’s monument, however, lies in the contrast between Merseburg and its contemporary royal analogues. Ephemeral pomp and circumstance may have accompanied the burial rituals of the Salian rulers, but their lasting graves were nothing like Rudolf’s. To medieval viewers familiar with Speyer—including the insiders who counseled Henry IV—the first effigy must have looked extravagant, if not outright gaudy, with its dazzling materials, full-figure representation, and self-important poetry.10 The paradoxical use of a gilded body to mourn a downfall rather than celebrate a triumph would only have cemented the object’s impact as a strange inversion of the current visual culture of royal burials. This point was famously and perhaps sarcastically underscored by Otto of Freising (ca. 1114–1158), who recorded the story of how Henry IV eventually came to Merseburg Cathedral, where Rudolf’s effigy survives to this day, and gazed down on the tomb of his dead challenger. According to Otto, when someone dared to ask Henry “why he permitted a man who had not been a king to lie buried as though with royal honors,” the emperor replied rather smugly, “I wish that all my enemies lay as honorably buried!”11 Henry, it would seem, was not impressed. Even if his apparent indifference only reflected his partisan bias (or Otto’s anachronistic perspective when writing some fifty years later), the text remains an apt reminder that the effigy celebrated one side of a bitterly divided aristocracy during their revolt and that its original political context would have led to inevitably mixed reactions. With the benefit of hindsight, it has been all too easy for the past century of scholarship to frame Rudolf’s tomb as a watershed achievement in the history of sculpture and to assume its fine craftsmanship and
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luxurious materials universally impressed early audiences and inspired the effigies that followed it—that it soon became, to borrow the title of one study, the paradigm of its genre.12 This interpretation may perhaps be true for the longue durée of the effigy (or its modern historiography), but a closer focus on metalwork in the eleventh and early twelfth centuries suggests instead that the novelty of the object, made to be unlike anything else of its time, was part of its intended effect. It was not only the opulence of Rudolf’s effigy but also its eccentricity that prompted Henry’s snide joke—or inspired Otto of Freising to relate the story to elite insiders at the court of Frederick Barbarossa. Of course, the joke could only be funny in hindsight, years after the Great Saxon Revolt had crumbled, the Investiture Controversy had been more or less resolved, and Henry had finally received the imperial crown. For their own part, the designers of Rudolf’s effigy had quite serious intentions in mind, seeking to transform his physical demise from wounds sustained in battle into a spiritual victory for the church. They could hardly have anticipated that effigies would become prestigious by the turn of the thirteenth century. For its makers and early viewers, this sculpture was not the starting point of a larger tradition that would spread across the whole of Western Europe in future generations but rather a monument of its own time, defined by the pressing partisan hopes, lofty theological expectations, and highly complex visual culture of its patrons.
Rudolf and the Investiture Controversy
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Rudolf of Swabia, also known as Rudolf Rheinfelden, was an ambitious young nobleman during the early years of the reign of Henry IV, twice married to close blood relatives of the king and initially counted among his leading supporters.13 This relationship soured during the Investiture Controversy, when Henry’s quarrel with Pope Gregory VII about the limits of royal power and the right to appoint bishops resulted in his excommunication in 1075. It was around the same time that Rudolf joined other high-ranking noblemen in rebellion against the king. A powerful selection of Saxon leaders met in Forchheim (Franconia) in March 1077, shortly after they had received the disappointing news of Henry’s rapprochement with the pope in Canossa. The choice of Forchheim reflected their self-conscious ambitions, as it had been the site of the election of Conrad I in 911, after the death of Louis the Child had marked the end of the East Frankish Carolingians.14 In 1077 a new generation was looking to make another major break with a fading dynasty, this time to replace the Salians with a new sovereign. Rudolf attended the meeting, as did his influential peers Berthold of Carinthia and Welf of Bavaria. The potential of these magnates had already been acknowledged two years before, when Gregory VII had written an open letter to the trio, emphasizing the importance of good kingship and encouraging them to show deference to Rome (in contrast to Henry’s insolence) if they should come to power.15 The presence of two papal legates at Forchheim hinted at Gregory’s continued interest
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in the proceedings, despite his public reconciliation with the king. When the assembly resulted in Rudolf’s election as the new anti-king in opposition to Henry, the pope did not at first express support for this rival claim. Relations between Rome and the empire remained tense, however, paving the way for Gregory to switch sides and support the rebels after Henry’s embarrassing loss to Rudolf three years later at the battle of Flarchheim (Thuringia) in March 1080. Rudolf ’s triumph was momentous but short-lived. On 14 October of the same year, his army won another battle in Thuringia, this time near Hohenmölsen on the banks of the Weissen Elster, but Rudolf’s own right hand was cut off in the melee. The grievously injured anti-king was transported to Merseburg, the nearest city, where he died just a few days later. His party was left seriously weakened by the death of their captain: although the war continued for several years, Henry’s elevation to emperor in 1084 soon caused the Great Saxon Revolt to lose momentum. Rudolf’s effigy was thus not made to commemorate a successful reign but rather to mourn a devastating loss that proved a turning point in a larger conflict. The shock extended beyond the mere death of a successful warlord because the pope himself— angry at the behavior of Henry IV, who had dared to claim that the authority of kings exceeded that of popes—had prophesied the death of a “false king” in 1080.16 Thus Rudolf ’s death rattled the foundations of papal infallibility itself. This ramification likely helped shape the particular enthusiasm with which the chronicles composed after his death—constructed by partisans with full knowledge of Rudolf ’s ultimate fate—lavished so much praise on him as an ideal king. Like the effigy, the texts point beyond the calamitous October campaign to invoke the role of Rudolf as a defender of the church and an embodiment of the old alliance of imperial and papal power that traced back to Charlemagne. On the other side, it must have been all too easy for Henry’s supporters to revel in Rudolf’s death, which was particularly embarrassing through the loss of his right hand, a body part that carried special weight in political and theological discourse.17 The fatal wound was soon read as a sign that God himself had condemned the rebellion and sided with the Salian king against the pope.18 Henry seems to have interpreted these events as a potential opening for peace with the weakened Saxons; among his overtures was an offer in December 1080 to crown his eight-year-old son, Conrad, as their new king and to never enter Saxony himself again.19 The offer was rejected immediately, and its full implications apparently never explored; it is not clear whether Conrad would have acted as his father’s vassal or coruler, or how the arrangement would have affected Henry’s imperial ambitions. Still, the idea of a king offering to effectively banish himself from a traditional seat of power was a remarkable gesture of reconciliation, suggesting the opposition’s military successes had impressed Henry enough to seek compromise rather than victory, even on the heels of Rudolf’s death. The Saxons, too, seem at first to have felt confident about their military prowess as they moved to regroup under a new anti-king.20 Pope Gregory weighed in on the impending election from afar, counseling the Saxon leaders in a letter of March 1081
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to not pick a bad king in their haste and urging them to select a candidate who would again show the proper humility before Rome.21 Gregory’s apprehension suggests that, despite the obvious setback of Rudolf’s death, the pope still believed the Saxons could recover and seize power. Such optimism gradually subsided, however, and the revolt faded after the mid-1080s. The lingering power of Rudolf ’s party complicates the historical context of his effigy because its exact date is difficult to pinpoint, making it unclear whether the sculpture was conceived in defeat at the war’s end or as a rallying point for a group still engaged in rebellion. The sculpture seems to carry some measure of this uncertainty, presenting an ambiguous memorial that could carry its meaning against a backdrop of victory or defeat. The new anti-king, elected in 1081, was Hermann of Luxemburg, also called Her mann of Salm (1035–1088).22 History has painted Hermann as a largely forgettable character in contrast to Rudolf, but Ulrich Schmidt has persuasively challenged the prevailing picture of Hermann as an insignificant personality.23 Schmidt notes that Hermann was a wealthy and powerful prince; ironically, it was his coronation as anti- king that hurt his reputation, especially when most of his family remained loyal to Henry.24 Hermann’s relative obscurity in modern accounts may also reflect his cautious policies, which included avoiding direct conflict and rallying his base of support in the Saxon heartland rather than taking on new military risks. Such strategies did little to pull his reputation out from under the shadow of Rudolf’s brief but thrilling career, but they seem to have been a practical approach to rebuilding from the weakened position of his party. Though the sources for Hermann himself are laconic, his leadership seems to have been at least a moderate success: the second anti-king had no great victories but also suffered no great defeats. He may even be credited with supporting efforts to commemorate the legacy of his predecessor, thus cementing historical memory of the Great Saxon Revolt. The early texts praising Rudolf were largely written during Hermann’s tenure; even though Hermann himself received short shrift in these accounts, the attention paid to Rudolf served to solidify the status of the crown he claimed. Perhaps letting the positive attention focus on his fallen counterpart reflected his restraint rather than weakness. Meanwhile, the celebration of Rudolf as hero held the potential to remove the stigma from his death, inviting reinterpretation of the loss as a sacrifice that paved the path for Hermann’s own desired victory. The apparent emphasis on Rudolf in written sources from the period circa 1081 to 1085, during Hermann’s time as anti-king, adds to the likelihood that the effigy was forged amid a Saxon effort to shift his death from humiliation to martyrdom. Recent literature has favored a date closer to 1090, citing the clear effort required to assemble the raw materials and cast the sculpture as key factors in determining a timeline.25 This dating would align the effigy with a fully postwar perspective, taking a retrospective view of the civil war from a position of defeat after Henry’s elevation to emperor. As noted above, there is little in the image or text to make such a date impossible, and indeed the postwar survival of the monument depended on its openness to purely retrospective readings. It is hard to believe, however, that so much would
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be invested in a political monument after the Saxon party had been defeated, and the time required to acquire the bronze must also be weighed against the enthusiasm for its purpose. Access to resources must have played a determining role, but the local abundance of bronze is evident in such landmarks as the great bronze doors and column of Hildesheim (ca. 1000–1015), which are quite massive in comparison to the thin plaque that bears Rudolf’s effigy. Hermann’s coronation as the new anti-king took place at Goslar, the wealthy city at the foot of the Rammelsberg, in early 1081. It seems plausible that he maintained control of the rich mines located there at least until 1085, when the newly crowned emperor entered Saxony with his army, and the anti-king fled to Denmark. Although Hermann eventually returned to Germany and fought in a few more small skirmishes, he never regained a strong position, and the revolt effectively ended with his death in 1088. The sources are silent regarding the patronage of Rudolf ’s tomb, though it is thought that the Merseburg bishop Werner von Wolkenburg (1059–1093) must have been largely responsible for its construction. Hermann, too, probably had a hand in procuring the bronze and supporting the project; ultimately it seems unlikely that Rudolf’s emergence as a heroic model could take place without at least tacit support from the new anti-king. If we add strong support from elite Saxon insiders, the richness of the effigy does not preclude a rapid timeline for construction, and its conspicuous use of precious metals may well have signified the monetary and political capital of the party. It is in the immediate aftermath of Rudolf’s death that the investment of bronze, gold, and wax required to construct the ambitious effigy would have promised the greatest return. Further, the language of its inscription—suggesting that Rudolf’s defeat was a sacrifice “for the law of the fathers” and “for the Church”—carries a sense of purpose that would have been more difficult to justify after the war was lost. Given the difficulties of dating the monument on style alone, it is most convincing to situate the effigy in the context of efforts to rally support under Hermann. A date between 1081 and 1085 would also align the inscription with the laudatory texts that were composed in the aftermath of Rudolf’s death, calling on the Saxons to keep fighting despite the loss of their elected leader. Above all, this early date affirms the ambition and the audacity of the effigy, which mourns Rudolf’s death but also gives it a triumphant and optimistic gloss. Viewed from the political climate of the early 1080s, the formal achievements of the effigy take on special resonance because they represent not only the fraught history of its subject but also the rising tensions within his party. Although the iconography used to represent Rudolf follows the conventions of the time, the effigy’s use of materials is unusual, its large scale is remarkable, and its placement of the kingly image on the floor is exceptional. Each of these aspects has been noted in previous studies for their relationships to the whole of Romanesque sculpture: the signs of kingship on the effigy effectively visualize Rudolf’s failed efforts to claim a crown; its gilded bronze surfaces and inlaid eyes liken the object to reliquaries, making Rudolf a veritable icon of sanctified kingship; and the body’s horizontal placement marks a vivid point of
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departure for the half-millennium of recumbent effigies that would follow.26 These points were likely as essential for medieval audiences as they have been for modern art historians, but they still leave open the question of how such elements would have been viewed in the immediate aftermath of Rudolf ’s death, particularly when the Great Saxon Revolt was still ongoing. For example, the figure bears the expected accoutrements of a medieval ruler: a crown on his head, an orb and lily scepter in his hands, and slender spurs set on his feet. Each of these attributes is unremarkable in itself when compared to the full arc of the development of medieval images of German kings and emperors.27 When considered in light of the Great Saxon Revolt, however, their usual meanings are destabilized. These signs of authority held broad currency in royal iconography found on coins, manuscripts, and metalwork; what is evocative here is their application to the large-scale tomb of an anti-king. It is not easy to guess if various insignia were, to some extent, tailored to suggest items Rudolf held in life or if they were simply drawn from a contemporary repertoire for visualizing kingship. There is certainly little to suggest late eleventh-century portraits considered notions of likeness or accuracy in a modern sense; on the other hand, signs of rank or office were generally applied with deep consideration of their real-life analogues and symbolic associations. Bauch notes that Rudolf’s crown does not seem to match known images of imperial crowns from the eleventh century, though the surface in this area is too heavily abraded to reconstruct its original appearance with certainty.28 The implications are tantalizing: was the form of the crown an intentional break with the conventions of the time? Could it have been modeled after an actual crown, perhaps one sent from Rome? Such questions must remain unanswered, given that the sources suggesting Gregory sent a crown to Rudolf only date to the twelfth century, do not offer a detailed description, and do not even agree on the text of its inscription. Sigebert of Gembloux recorded the inscription as Petra dedit Petro, Petrus diadema Rodulfo; Otto of Freising gave Roma dedit Petro, Petrus diadema Rodulfo; and Helmold of Bosau, at a slightly later date, appears to conflate the earlier accounts as Petra dedit Romam Petro, tibi papa coronam.29 These texts do little to confirm the existence of an historical crown, but at the very least, they reflect consciousness of Rudolf’s claims not only to sovereignty but also to papal support. If, as one source relates, even Henry himself could eventually admit that Rudolf had indeed been a legitimate king in some measure, it was for one specific reason: Rudolf had briefly carried the support of Rome.30 The crown on the effigy is suggestive of this link, though its source remains unclear. Rudolf’s orb and scepter have no such relationship to written sources; there is no mention or trace of similar items that Rudolf (or Hermann) may have possessed, and their appearance in coins and seals are as likely to be symbolic as referential. The scepter, in particular, features an unusual pair of small leaves protruding from the middle of the shaft, echoing the familiar “lily” form of its terminal end but appearing just below the upper edge of Rudolf’s shoulder. Schramm interprets this detail as evidence that the scepter had been extended at a later date, suggesting the leaves on the shaft mark
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the site of its original endpoint. As Bauch notes, however, this scarcely seems possible: the proposed modification would require such radical changes that the leaves might as well have been removed, and in any case, the surface of the bronze shows no sign of related reworking. Future technical examination may yield more information, but at present it seems more likely that the idiosyncratic scepter is original. Its origins are unclear, but it finds a striking parallel in another major military monument from the eleventh century: a nearly identical scepter is held by Edward the Confessor in the initial scene of the Bayeux Tapestry.31 As unlikely as it seems that anyone in Merseburg could have known this embroidered analogue, it cannot be ruled out that the form may relate to sanctified or idealized kingship. Perhaps the greatest impact of the scepter and the orb, however, is not in their exact shape but rather in the attention they draw to the figure’s hands. The tapering fingers were modeled and cast with particular finesse, and their forms enliven the delicate attributes that they grasp. In the present state of the bronze, their smooth surfaces form a contrast against the chasing of the figure’s clothing; this effect was likely even more pronounced when the gilding was fresh. The articulation of the hands is especially fraught in light of Rudolf’s death through the loss of his right hand; the effigy offers redemption through an iconic presentation of the body made whole again, its claims to kingship fulfilled. The semiotic value of a gilded bronze surface—which drew upon associations with coins, seals, and above all figural reliquaries—has been explored in detail in Dale’s landmark study.32 Just as reliquaries contained the fragmented bodies of the saints but presented them in outward images of wholeness, the effigy contrasts the dismembered reality of Rudolf’s hidden corpse with the smoothly reintegrated image of his body in a healed and perfected state. At the same time, however, the effigy also resists fully cloaking Rudolf with the vocabulary of saintliness, and the ways in which the monument departs from established conventions of reliquary production must have been equally evident to early viewers. Above all, the adaptation of reliquary-like effects for placement upon the ground give the image an aura of vulnerability that is wholly absent from its upright counterparts in the treasury, and its appearance as a low relief rather than a three-dimensional receptacle for bodily remains allows its delicate surfaces almost to melt away, save for the sharply protruding head. Panofsky describes the effect as “frail and floating” and compares its weightlessness to the fragile figures of Ottonian manuscript illumination.33 This characterization remains compelling, but rather than linking such qualities to the nascent stage of development for funerary sculpture in the medieval West, as Panofsky attempts, it makes more sense to read the effigy as a deliberate effort to reconcile Rudolf’s status as a heroic figure with the complicated reality of his precarious political legacy. The recumbent position of Rudolf’s effigy reads today as a standard feature, but in its own time, this placement was far from obvious. As Exner has recently shown, an ancient tradition of standing images seems to have survived among prestigious early medieval monuments.34 The placement of a funerary portrait on the floor, however,
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Fig. 15 Coronation, from the Sacramentary of Henry II (Regensburg Sacramentary). Munich, BSB, Clm 4456, fol. 11r. Photo: DeA Picture Library / Art Resource, New York.
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seems to have been a strange novelty. Its freshness is emphasized by the inscription, which is arranged along the outer edges of the monument to articulate the dynamic relationship of the standing viewer and the supine effigy. The text runs around the body in a continuous track, starting in the upper left corner above the head. On all four sides, the lettering is oriented to the center, leading the viewer in a continuous, rectangular loop around the body and inviting contemplation from all angles. A search for comparisons shows that framing inscriptions generally avoid running upside-down in relation to the body in eleventh-century art. For example, the image-text arrangement in Rudolf’s effigy echoes the depiction of the coronation of Henry II, framed by words, in the Regensburg Sacramentary (fig. 15).35 In the manuscript, however, the inscription faces outward so the text under the feet aligns with the body. The manuscript has a clear orientation, within which Henry is shown upright along with his inscription. Rudolf, in contrast, was designed to be a recumbent projection of the tomb; the circling inscription reflects his physical entrapment in the ground. Read in relation to the placement of the words around the body, the Latin verses direct readers to encounter the king not only from a normative position before his feet or at his side but even as if upside-down.36 To this day, visitors in Merseburg can be observed walking in circles around the effigy as they attempt to puzzle out its inscription. The linear pathway of the text around the figure guides this experience, inviting viewers to see the disorientation of the floor-bound body while reading about Rudolf’s physical fall and spiritual redemption. The opening line of the poem is set above the head of the effigy, nudging the viewer to begin reading from a position at the effigy’s feet. From here the body is seen as if standing, and the text introduces the figure: “Here King Rudolf, for the law of the fathers slain.” The last word, peremptus (slain), fits tightly into the corner of the slab. The emphasis of the text lies primarily on the presentation of Rudolf as a king “for the law of the fathers,” and peremptus marks a transition to the next phrase. Following the inscription along the next edge, viewers shift to the tomb’s side. The body is no
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longer perceived frontally but rather as if lying in state. The text likewise proceeds from introducing to mourning Rudolf: “Rightly to be lamented, he is buried in this tomb— A king like him, had he reigned in a time of peace.” The text that began as a titulus over the head of the king becomes an elegy at his side. Rounding another corner, the next line is set below the feet, reversed in relation to the body and pushing the reader to see the body turned awkwardly upside-down. Here the text underscores the great loss of Rudolf’s death by invoking no lesser foil than Charlemagne himself: “by wisdom, by the sword of justice, there was none since Charlemagne.” As the text reaches the proper right of the sculpture, the inscription’s upward path leads steadily from death to renewal: “Where his men triumphed, there he fell, sacred victim of war—death to him was life; he died for the church.” Returning full circle to the auspicious opening, the text promises resurrection through implied martyrdom. As death gives way to life, the church emerges triumphant, and the sacrifice of the hero is redeemed. Without surviving documentation regarding the patronage of the sculpture, there is little hope of reconstructing the means by which its form was first conceptualized. Evidence for its interpretation comes, first and foremost, from the composition itself, the circular arrangement of the text and its attendant invitation to circumambulate the supine image of the king while reading its inscription, aligning the poem with a shifting view of the body. It must also be emphasized that all of these elements—the gilded bronze body on the floor, the narrative qualities of the poem, and the creation of an effigy itself—are extraordinarily rare at the end of the eleventh century. It seems clear, therefore, that the monument was imagined in ambitious terms from the outset and would aspire to unusual degrees of complexity. The theme itself, on the other hand, is central to sacred and secular narratives across the Middle Ages: death and resurrection, triumph and defeat, loss and redemption.37 The Passion of Christ is the paradigmatic example, beginning with the quasi- imperial Entry into Jerusalem and leading to the Agony, Betrayal, and Crucifixion before finding redemption in the Resurrection and Ascension. The lives of medieval saints offer countless variations on this theme, so much so that the exchange of aristocratic comfort for ascetic poverty and saintly apotheosis appears almost as a topos of the genre.38 Life that becomes death is an equally familiar trope in medieval literature, perhaps most famously and bluntly spelled out in Gottfried von Strassburg’s Tristan and Isolde at the end of the twelfth century: “also lebt ihr Leben, lebt weiter ihr Tod / also leben auch sie noch und sind doch tot” (thus lives their life, thus lives their death / thus they live still and yet are dead).39 The emphasis on the heroism of a dead military commander was also not unique to Merseburg; it could even be compared to the Song of Roland and other epic poems that were gaining popularity across northern Europe in this period.40 The purpose here is not, of course, to equate the Merseburg inscription to these famous counterparts wholesale but rather to note that its central goals—to repurpose a shocking loss as a tale of martyrdom and redemption and to offer a rallying point for Rudolf’s embattled political party—would have been both familiar and relevant for its intended audiences.
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The framing inscription thus aligns with a larger literary tradition. Whether the image of the king on the floor or the motion of a circling viewer also became vehicles for contemplating Rudolf ’s fraught destiny is more difficult to ascertain. Still, the image of a tumbling royal body—a king seen first standing, then falling, and then upside-down, before turning back to an upright position—found a powerful visual expression in the Rota fortunae (Wheel of fortune), which had emerged as an enduring metaphor for the cyclical nature of human history (and the narratives that inevitably emerge from it) in classical antiquity.41 The device was retooled by Boethius in his Consolation of Philosophy and brought to bear on a Christian understanding of the vagaries of life, but the first visualizations of the Wheel of Fortune do not appear until the eleventh century. Two early examples are bound in a miscellany at Monte Cassino that includes Boethius among its texts.42 The drawings appear on either side of the same folio: an earlier, apparently unfinished version of the novel iconography on the recto (p. 145) and a polished rendition with inscriptions on the verso (fig. 16; p. 146). Pictures attributed to the same hand appear elsewhere in the book to illustrate a text by Bede, suggesting the work of an artist attuned to the interplay of word and image. Although the passages from Boethius that describe the Rota fortunae are not included in this manuscript, the “vicissitudes of Fortune” are invoked in a poem facing the second illustration (p. 147).43 On page 146 only the reigning figure at the top of the wheel is depicted dressed as a king; the precarious nature of his power is emphasized in the falling, grasping bodies of the other three, each clothed according to their status, with the abject figure at the bottom nearly naked. The link to kingship is reinforced by their respective inscriptions: regno (I reign), at the top; regnavi (I have reigned), along the proper left of the image, descending; sum sine regno (I am without a kingdom), below the feet; and regnabo (I will reign), along the proper right of the image, ascending. This iconography recurs in several slightly later manuscripts; a twelfth-century example featuring experimental pen work and handsome details is kept at the University of Manchester.44 Though eleventh-century examples like the Monte Cassino manuscript are scarce today, more images from this tradition must have existed: for example, Bishop Balderic of Dol (Brittany) certainly encountered a Wheel of Fortune at Fécamp (Normandy) by 1100, and though it does not survive, his account implies the motif was familiar to him and others in his circles.45 The narrative of the poem that frames Rudolf’s effigy follows the regno-regnavi- sum sine regno-regnabo progression that marks the Rota fortunae images. “Here King Rudolf” announces his rule across the top; “he is buried” and “had he reigned” move his career to the past tense; non fuit a Karolo at the bottom reminds readers that Rudolf did not, in the end, actually rule anything; and the “sacred victim of war,” whose death became life, suggests that Rudolf will become a king again in his resurrected body. Paired with the image and set into a circling pathway that invites viewers to contemplate the king’s body from different points of view, the text adds echoes of Boethius to the conceptualization of the monument. The exceptional placement of a monumental sculpture on the floor would invite consideration of the king’s fallen state but also his
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Fig. 16 Wheel of Fortune, in miscellany. Montecassino, Archivio dell’Abbazia cod. 189, p. 146. Photo courtesy of the Archivio dell’Abbazia (Roberto Mastronardi).
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eventual return. If, as recent scholarship suggests, the effigy survives in situ despite later Gothic renovations of Merseburg Cathedral, it is also striking that viewers who approached the choir would have first glimpsed the king upside-down, just as they do today.46 Reference to the Wheel of Fortune, particularly during the period when this motif first emerged in medieval art, provides a powerful model for resolving the ambiguities of an honorific image that lies on the ground.47 No informed viewer could have failed to register the monument as a large piece of bronze, covered with a fine layer of gilding. First and foremost, the work was a highly conspicuous use of valuable resources and signified confidence on the part of the rebels—they were the ones who chose to invest the material value of the metals on a monument rather than on their military or other expenses. The bronze itself was almost certainly procured from the rich mines of the Rammelsberg, and thus the luxurious use of the materials signified access to, if not control of, this essential resource.48 At the same time, however, the materials were more than merely political in their value—the connotation of metalwork in a cathedral was primarily sacred rather than secular. Even before the inscription reminded viewers of Rudolf’s position as the “sacred victim of war,” the gleaming materials of the effigy pushed its subject matter toward a position of sanctity, presenting him in dialogue with the newly fashionable figural reliquaries of the time.
Rudolf and the Reliquary Tradition
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Rudolf’s effigy was made to compensate for the disastrous implications of his demise and to rally support for his political party by retooling an untimely death as a quasi- saintly opportunity for apotheosis. Following the historical circumstances that shaped its creation, the monument reflects a complex negotiation between its spiritual and secular goals. Hinz, in particular, focuses on Bishop Werner of Merseburg as the most likely patron of the effigy and Bruno of Magdeburg as the possible author of its verses, associating the monument’s propagandistic dimension closely with political goals.49 These individuals are highly probable candidates for sponsorship of the project, but rather than reviewing Hinz’s arguments here, I wish to turn from the sculpture’s origins to its impact. As if to sweep misfortune under the proverbial rug, the monument positions death itself as transformative rather than shattering: a good sacrifice and not a bad omen. This reading also implies, directly or indirectly, that even though Rudolf’s death marked the decline of the Saxon rebellion, the patrons of his monument persisted in using his body politically. The saintly overtones of the object have been read (most notably by Panofsky and Dale) as sanctity in the service of politics, stemming from the interdependence of church and state that characterized medieval Europe. Still, it is equally essential to see limits in this “saintly” aspect of Rudolf ’s effigy. Truly hagiographic objects emphasize redemption to the point where death itself becomes a
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joyous event. Representations of dead or dying saints often mitigate suffering through the appearance of angels to carry the ascending soul or other devices of joy that highlight triumph and negate loss.50 Rudolf ’s case is deliberately ambiguous: isolated, recumbent, and yet gilded, the monument maintains the tension between sacrifice and victory. Apotheosis is indeed suggested but held in constant check by a persistent sense of loss. Dale has explored the relationship between Rudolf’s effigy and the figural reliquaries of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, arguing convincingly that the metalwork tomb was shaped by conventions for portraying saints in the same period. Dale addresses notions of portraiture in this vein, rightly asserting that Rudolf’s effigy bears the idealized, abstracted features observed in contemporary reliquaries. This association provides an effective foil for Rudolf’s image but also prompts new questions: if early audiences saw this effigy in dialogue with reliquaries, how did they account for the differences in their forms? If Rudolf’s effigy represented a variation of an established format, how would its alterations have been understood? The key divergences are not the style or iconography of the monument but rather its supine orientation and lack of mobility. So-called speaking reliquaries were vertical and detached, encountering viewers as upright half-length or enthroned bodies, or body parts like busts or arms, that could come and go, participating in processions but also retreating into treasuries where they hid from sight until another ritual occasion prompted their reappearance.51 The movement of reliquaries through the physical world echoed the living presence of saints in heaven. Maintaining simultaneous presence in this world and the next, saints could work miracles through the reliquaries that became the agents of their eternal presence.52 Rudolf’s effigy, in contrast, is fundamentally constrained by the permanence of its format, anchored in its stationary pose. Unlike reliquaries, which were portable carriers for fragmented but movable bodies, the static effigy reflected burial in the ground, bound to the coherent but unmoving body of the dead anti-king. The relief format endowed the subject with incomplete plasticity, setting the body against the pictorial plane as if stuck in a doorway, present and yet unable to fully enter the physical space of the living, offering a curious mix of physical presence and representational absence. Rudolf’s body has mass, particularly its bulging head, but even this shape is incomplete in comparison with three- dimensional reliquaries. Just as the moving reliquary matched the active presence of the medieval saint, the Merseburg effigy established a new sculptural form in which the visible and yet immobile body reflected the stasis of the dead man, caught like a fly in amber, petrified in place until his eschatological resurrection. It is not only the mobility of the figural reliquary that is at stake in these physical formats: it is also the reliquary’s illusion of an active, seeing gaze.53 With the enamel eyes of the upright figure oriented to its audience, the reliquary is given horizontal sight. Its ritual movement and enlivened status allowed viewers to see and to be seen by it; they could be simultaneously be subjects and objects in their encounters with the enshrined presence of the living saint. Contrasted with this tremendous, interactive power of the portable reliquary, the presence of the stationary, recumbent effigy is
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strictly limited. Rudolf’s eyes can never confront viewers directly (except perhaps when reproduced in photographs, frontal and detached on the pages of a book); instead he looks upward past the viewer standing to one side, staring into the empty cathedral vaults above, removed at a perpendicular angle from the living world of the spectator. Thus the power of the dead anti-king to project presence is limited not only by the monument’s lack of ritual movement; it is also sharply undercut by the figure’s inaccessible gaze. No matter how much the enamels or semiprecious stones set in the recesses of the eyes may once have sparkled, their stationary, inaccessible position prevented Rudolf’s face from taking on the eerie presence that characterizes a figural reliquary. The first effigy thus evoked the qualities of the reliquary without acquiring them fully, subverting a familiar paradigm to commemorate an individual who lacked the living presence of a saint. Where reliquaries communicated the paradoxically living presence of fragmentary relics, the effigy negotiated the interplay of presence and absence in the deceased body, marking the individual as here and yet also profoundly elsewhere. Rooted to the body under the cathedral floor, Rudolf’s image normalized and yet maintained his death, allowing his quasi-saintly presence to reside and yet not to live. The past was embodied but not present. While metalwork reliquaries were encountered with some regularity in the decades before 1150, metalwork effigies seem to have been an extremely rare phenomenon in this period. The other surviving effigies from this time are carved in stone or cast in plaster but not made from bronze. In the second half of the twelfth century, a few spectacular examples appear in the vicinity of Merseburg, including the effigies of the archbishops Frederick and Wichmann at Magdeburg Cathedral (figs. 17–18).54 The rarity of such figures may be due to the accidents of survival; metalwork is more easily repurposed than stone, and the material rewards are greater. Nevertheless, even taking textual sources into account, Rudolf’s tomb remains exceptional in its materials and subject matter. The contradictory elements of Rudolf’s tomb negotiate the lines between saintly and secular commemoration. This status was made possible by the political and theological awkwardness of its time: a set of patrons with nothing to lose and the ambiguous support of the pope, whose endorsement was supposed to guarantee success and yet had merely resulted in Rudolf’s death and the ensuing decline of his party. Rudolf’s effigy occupies the crossroads of the prospective and the retrospective; it reflects theological expectations but also retains an elegiac atmosphere. This sense of sorrow also makes the effigy possible in a period when nothing else quite like it exists; it was a monument for an anti-king without a dynastic successor, an individual whose claim to kingship existed in isolation. (Rudolf had given up the idea of dynastic succession before his death; the next king would be freely elected.) The politics of investiture were linked to theology, and the Saxons understood their cause with little distinction between faith and politics. To them, it was only natural that political ambitions would integrate spiritual concerns. Though it has become something of a commonplace to apply the term “political theology,” as coined by Ernst Kantorowicz, to royal images in sacred spaces, the term bears special weight in light of the pope’s support of the
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Fig. 17 Effigy of Frederick of Wettin, Magdeburg Cathedral. Photo: author, with permission from Magdeburg Cathedral. Fig. 18 Effigy of Bishop Wichmann, Magdeburg Cathedral. Photo: author, with permission from Magdeburg Cathedral.
doomed anti-king. Kantorowicz presented a model in which images of kingship stand as much for continuity as for historical memory: the death of the king occasions the coronation of the next king. Images of kingship facilitate that transition, but for Rudolf there is no transition, only loss. This paradox elides the fundamental problem that haunts the visible memorials of kings: the king cannot be both living and dead, and in their first generation, such images focus on the problem of death itself. It was not until the thirteenth century, as the prestige of funerary monuments grew, that this tension dimmed and effigies became symbols of power. This development may even account for the appearance of effigies in groups: for example, the royal effigies of St-Denis appear together in an overwhelming number, as if the stone carvers of thirteenth-century Paris aimed to affirm the continuity, and thus the success, of the Capetian line. It is also no coincidence that the thirteenth-century Capetians were the progenitors par
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excellence of sacral kingship. Kantorowicz himself did not discuss Rudolf, focusing instead on Ottonian manuscripts. Still, early metalwork representations of the dead fit his notion of “political theology” with eerie consistency. Such objects are rare in Romanesque art; when the effigy was new and strange, the image of the king lying dead threatened continuity. This is not to say, however, that no golden images of kings were produced in this era: the next section considers Rudolf’s effigy in relationship to the most pertinent examples, followed by prominent royal images in metalwork and a reconsideration of why so few of these shining monuments survive.
Rudolf and the Royal Tomb
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Nine centuries later, the wry remarks made by Henry IV as he stood musing over Rudolf ’s grave remain evocative. His wish that all enemies could lie so “honorably buried” neatly encapsulates the irony of a monument commemorating a glorious loser and the tensions between victory and defeat, life and death, that it raised. It is impossible to know if the visit actually took place or if Otto’s account had been embellished or even invented outright. Following the text, the visit seems to have occurred after Henry’s imperial coronation in 1084 but before his forced abdication in 1105, roughly five decades before Otto composed his text. Its veracity cannot be established, but even so the story remains a rare and useful source for the reception of Rudolf’s monument in the first generation after it was made, long before royal effigies gained popularity in the second half of the thirteenth century. It emphasizes the strangeness of the monument and also its apparent notoriety. Otto does not describe the effigy in detail, leaving readers to parse “as though with royal honors” against their own expectations. The words likely reflect the iconography of crown, orb, and scepter, but the phrase is striking given that Otto was writing for a specific audience that had much at stake in such details: the anecdote appears in the opening chapters of The Deeds of the Emperor Frederick, composed at the request of Otto’s nephew, Frederick Barbarossa. The imperial audience for whom the text was intended comprised members of a social upper crust, who were thus familiar enough with the conventions and traditions of royal burials to grasp the emperor’s implied condescension. With all this in mind, Otto’s text becomes a central source, and its details raise useful questions. For example, Otto makes careful use of the subjunctive in describing Rudolf’s burial, reminding his audience that the anti-king was not actually interred “with” royal honors, but only “as though.” The anecdote is then followed with mention of Berthold usurping Rudolf ’s duchy in Swabia, adding the embarrassing fact that Rudolf not only failed to become king but also failed to preserve the interests of his own family. It is also noticeable that the word “royal” is used for Rudolf ’s false claim, while Henry is unfailingly described as imperial. Otto is thus careful to mark Rudolf as the loser of the civil war, juxtaposing the words of the living emperor with the tomb of the dead rebel as a reminder that the splendid effigy was little more than
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an aberration and its aspirations a mere pretense because Rudolf’s ambitions had been suitably dashed. No matter how eloquently the sculpture attempted to situate Rudolf within a rhetorical tradition about the vagaries of fortune and the poetics of loss, for Otto the effigy was notable for other, less sympathetic reasons. Gaudy in comparison to the sober epitaphs of Speyer, the monument did not fit easily within existing tradition, and its role as the starting point for the history of tomb sculpture could hardly have been imagined, even in the mid-t welfth century. The clearest comparisons for Rudolf’s effigy in its own time are not found in the field of monumental sculpture but rather among precious, small-scale objects. The best-known example is the Reichsschwert (imperial sword) of the Holy Roman Empire, which features a succession of standing kings on its golden scabbard (fig. 19, color plate 1). Unlike the effigy, which features an inscription to emphasize Rudolf’s specific name and fate, the scabbard shows only nameless kings, appearing as a series to reinforce their never-ending office rather than their individual histories. The precise relation between the two monuments is difficult to pinpoint, especially because the techniques used to make them are quite different: the scabbard is repoussé, and the effigy is cast in lost wax. The scabbard is also difficult to date, though it is usually assigned to the early eleventh century. It is certainly intriguing to imagine the effigy as an echo of the golden kings, as if the comparison would mark Rudolf as a member of such a prestigious community, with the gilded effigy sheathing the body in the tomb like the scabbard
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Fig. 19 Imperial sword (Reichsschwert). Weltliche Schatzkammer, Vienna, SK XIII 17. Photo: KHM-Museumsverband.
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sheaths the imperial sword. It is difficult to know, however, if the intended audiences at Merseburg would have been familiar with the sword specifically or if the craftsmen who cast the effigy could have accessed its kings as a model. It seems more likely that the works shared a similar language of ideal kingship and that a royal figural type that was relatively widespread in elite objects, such as ceremonial armor or golden book covers, was being adapted for monumental use. It is ultimately the transmission of the image of a king to large scale that remains the most distinctive feature of Rudolf’s effigy, rather than its relation to any specific singular model that may have inspired its details. Monumental representations of eleventh- and twelfth-century kings are surprisingly rare, particularly images of specific and recent kings in contrast to royal figures from the mythic past of the Old Testament or the distant future of the Apocalypse. The appearance of biblical types is unsurprising in Romanesque sculpture; they offered ideal models for good behavior and were a popular theme for monastic and lay audiences alike. Unfortunately, some of the key examples of kings in Romanesque sculpture survive without tituli or other identifying information, leaving it unclear which kings exactly they were meant to represent. Notable examples include the pair of twelfth-century kings now installed in the Liobakirche in Fulda, often interpreted as Carolingian kings but utterly unremarkable in their iconography, and the crowned figure in the cloister of Bad Reichenhall near Salzburg.55 The latter figure is usually designated as Frederick Barbarossa due to a later inscription, probably added in the fourteenth century; whether this identification was originally intended by the sculptors is ambiguous. Even the enigmatic king at Müstair and the celebrated crowned men of the ciborium in Sant’Ambrogio, Milan (see fig. 48), share this problem: the combination of their prominent placements, their early dates, and the patronage of their respective institutions has led to a near consensus that they represent Charlemagne, Otto the Great, and Otto II, respectively, despite a complete lack of identifying inscriptions.56 The diminutive figures of Henry II and Kunigunde kneeling at the feet of Christ on the Basel Antependium have likewise been identified not through inscriptions but from context (fig. 20).57 The antependium seems a good stylistic fit for the dedication date of Basel Cathedral in October 1019; added to Henry and Kunigunde’s patronage, this has prompted the association between the figures and the imperial couple. Within the sculpture itself, however, the kneeling donors are the only figures who are not named through texts. The contrast with Christ and the saints is a useful reminder that, even though royal figures from this period are often assigned names using information about chronology, patronage, or iconography, the relationship between specific individuals and the rank or office that they represented is often left strangely ambiguous. This situation makes it all the more notable that Rudolf’s effigy not only names the anti-king specifically but also gives important clues about his identity that exceed the norms of its era. In contrast, the framing poem on the Basel Antependium offers a prayer in praise of God, seeking intercession, but doing little to identify its crowned patrons.58
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This distinction highlights not only the tensions between anonymous, eternal models of kingship and specific, mortal examples that was explored by Kantorowicz in his formulation of “the king’s two bodies” but also larger questions about the individual in the eleventh and twelfth centuries that have been discussed by Colin Morris, Caroline Walker Bynum, Susan Kramer, and many others. While the details of this argument are open to debate, the larger point is clear: by the eleventh century, the office of kingship was held to be distinct from the person of the individual, and while kings came and went, each individual stepped into an undying, immortal role at the moment of his coronation that he left behind in the hour of his death. A monument showing the dead body of a ruling king lying supine in the grave would have jostled uncomfortably against this paradigm because a king in death was no longer king. Images, particularly public ones, required anonymous or universal models: they were made so that the present king could be held to a greater standard and judged accordingly. Perhaps it is no coincidence that the images that interested Kantorowicz the most occurred in manuscripts, which are more easily linked to specific patrons because they were often inscribed with names and dedicatory poems: yet even so, their rhetoric of salvation often extended beyond the singular ruler. Rudolf’s effigy, too, was affected by this ambiguity: his monument was made for a specific occasion, but it was also shaped by greater concerns. In Rudolf’s case, the crowned figure on the floor was a unique monument to failed ambition, a poignant image of loss and redemption that was, almost by definition, not connected to a ruling dynasty. The case of an actual king was rather different—which is probably why it was only in the thirteenth century, after the effigy had been established as a prestigious genre through other examples made for bishops, abbesses, and aristocrats of lower rank, that royal effigies could gradually gain momentum. It took time for the fundamental awkwardness of a king on the floor to be forgotten and for the static body of the effigy to be viewed as if asleep (perhaps in the manner of King Arthur, eternally bound for Avalon), understood by the Gothic era as eternally living rather than emphatically dead.
Fig. 20 Basel Antependium, detail. Musée de Cluny, Cl. 2350. Photo © Genevra Kornbluth.
Charlemagne as Model: Deauratus cum imagine Rulers
From the outset, this chapter has argued for the relative isolation of Rudolf’s effigy, emphasizing the novelty of a golden floor monument for a king in the late eleventh
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century and its role as a self-conscious break from the practices of the Salian kings. This originality does not mean, however, that it had no sources. As discussed above, Rudolf ’s effigy drew upon contemporary reliquaries and other sculptural forms in forging meaning. Reaching back further, another site of inspiration can be suggested: Charlemagne’s tomb, not as it was created in the early ninth century but as it was remembered through the brief description in his biography. The invocation of Charlemagne in the inscription on Rudolf’s effigy seems commonplace at first glance, given the ruler’s enduring fame and popularity as the ideal first emperor in the North. It must have carried special resonance for Rudolf’s former supporters, however, given that the lofty aspirations of their political party rested chiefly in their role as the allies of the pope. There could be no better model for the interweaving of papal and imperial authority than Charlemagne, which makes the application of his name to Rudolf’s effigy a pointed rebuke of Henry IV. Continuing interest in Charlemagne across the Middle Ages led to the enduring popularity of Einhard’s Vita Karoli (Life of Charlemagne), which circulated among the educated elite of Saxony and Swabia in the eleventh century.59 Contemporaries including Adam of Bremen, Norbert of Iburg, and Frutolf of Michelsberg had access to a Vita Karoli manuscript in Bamberg and drew upon it in their own writings.60 Such transmission makes Einhard a natural source for knowledge about Charlemagne’s funerary monument, which had disappeared by the year 1000. Its absence is made clear in reports of Otto III, who, unsure of its exact location, searched for the tomb at Aachen and discovered Charlemagne’s nearly intact corpse.61 The monument had most likely been lost in 881, when Aachen was invaded and sacked by the Normans, but a tantalizing description is preserved in the Vita Karoli. The text is concise: “arcusque supra tumulum deauratus cum imagine et titulo exstructus” (a gilded arch with an image and an inscription was erected above his tomb).62 Einhard’s description of Charlemagne’s tomb offers a plausible model for Rudolf’s effigy: a gilded monument with a portrait and a poetic inscription.63 One essential difference, however, is evident: while Charlemagne’s golden likeness had been placed upon a triumphal arch or arcosolium in a style derived from ancient practice, Rudolf’s image was set modestly on the floor. This shift from arch to floor reflected the shift from Charlemagne’s glory to the pathos of Rudolf’s untimely death. The extraordinary contradictions of Rudolf’s effigy—its surface of shining gold that belies its humble location on the floor—make sense as part of a larger attempt to invoke Charlemagne as a model without negating Rudolf’s failure to achieve the success of the great Frankish emperor. Einhard’s brief description has been subjected to much debate, and several reconstructions of Charlemagne’s tomb have been proposed.64 It is not clear, for example, why Einhard failed to mention the Persephone sarcophagus that may have formed part of the ninth-century monument, now kept in Aachen’s treasury. Perhaps the ancient sarcophagus was used for a different purpose; perhaps it was brought to Aachen later; or perhaps Einhard simply thought it less important than the spolia from Rome and Ravenna that he discusses in other parts of his account. From the perspective of
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eleventh-century reception of Charlemagne’s tomb, however, Einhard’s laconic account was the most authoritative source of knowledge concerning the long-lost original monument. Einhard was the obvious and most trusted source for constructing comparisons to Charlemagne, and his influence appears in written chronicles as well as in Rudolf’s effigy. For example, some sources report that Rudolf had to be coerced into accepting a crown, echoing Einhard’s famous (though dubious) claim that, had Charlemagne only known what was about to happen, he might not have entered St. Peter’s on the day of his “surprise” coronation.65 Other authors offer conflicting accounts of the events surrounding Rudolf’s election, with some claiming that Rudolf was active in taking the crown for himself.66 These differences reinforce the likelihood that the more flattering versions were constructed to invite comparison to Charlemagne’s humility; the conflicting stories reflect differing attitudes not only toward Rudolf as an individual but also toward the legitimacy of the Saxon rebellion and the wisdom in choosing an anti-king who would restore the ties to Rome that had been a defining aspect of Charlemagne’s career. Rudolf’s supporters were not the only elite members of medieval society inspired by the first northern European emperor. Self-conscious comparisons to Charlemagne are easy enough to find across the eleventh and twelfth centuries, both in the inscriptions of major monuments and in textual accounts. For example, the great doors commissioned by Archbishop Willigis of Mainz (ca. 940–1011) for his cathedral bear an inscription proudly claiming to be the first bronze doors since the time of Charlemagne, explicitly linking Mainz to Aachen and associating the monumental use of bronze closely with Carolingian prestige.67 Henry IV was compared to Charlemagne by his staunch supporter Benzo of Alba, who wrote during the same years when Rudolf’s effigy was cast.68 Benzo recounts an imaginary conversation in which Charlemagne speaks to Henry, calling him Hymago mea (my image).69 He emphasizes how both emperors had similarly defeated rebellions in Saxony: Charlemagne against the pagan warlord Widukind and Henry against Rudolf. Such sources demonstrate the currency of Charlemagne as a model for ideal kingship in the eleventh century, making it not only plausible that Rudolf’s effigy looked to Einhard for inspiration but even surprising that Charlemagne’s imperial tomb was not imitated more often, with the Salian emperors opting for burial under plain stone slabs rather than golden images or lofty arches. It is tempting to suggest that such ambitious monuments may well have existed and are simply lost today, disappearing like Charlemagne’s own arcosolium in times of war. Such assertions, however, present multiple problems. It is hard to imagine a coherent corpus of imperial funerary monuments disappearing without a trace in either the physical or the textual record. Further, there is no lack of evidence regarding imperial burials in the later Carolingian, Ottonian, and Salian periods; they simply take drastically different forms than Charlemagne’s tomb, appearing as sarcophagi that were either reused from the ancient world or carved with simple, austere forms.70 Imperial representations are comparatively scarce in Romanesque sculpture; among the most prominent
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are the Ottonians on the Milan Ciborium and Henry II and Kunigunde on the Basel Antependium, mentioned above. The catch, however, is that these imperial bodies do not bear tituli, and they are prominently placed in deference to saints, crouching forward from the spandrels or prostrate at the feet of Christ. Monuments comparable to Einhard’s description are rare, making the appearance of Rudolf’s effigy all the more extraordinary at the close of the eleventh century. Two powerful metalwork monuments from the century after Rudolf’s death, both idiosyncratic and unusually ambitious for their type, are useful for contextualizing the Merseburg tomb in relation to its later echoes: the portrait-like Cappenberg reliquary and the enamel epitaph of Geoffrey Plantagenet at Le Mans. Curiously, the earliest effigies in Paris also include two figures, both representing queens, which seem to reference contemporary metalworking techniques in stone. These monuments, introduced briefly below, add an intriguing dimension to the use of shining materials in tomb sculpture and particularly in royal commemoration.
The Cappenberg Reliquary, or the So-Called Barbarossakopf
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The vividly realized face of a head reliquary in Cappenberg, most likely dating to the 1150s, has long been identified as a portrait head of Frederick Barbarossa (fig. 21, color plate 2).71 Much like the effigy of Rudolf of Swabia, this object has been the center of intensive debates regarding the use and meaning of portraiture in Romanesque sculpture. It is only very recently, however, that the link to Barbarossa has been debunked by Ulrich Rehm and the head convincingly shown to have been fashioned as a reliquary of John the Baptist from its inception. Rehm argues powerfully for a complete rethinking of the sculpture, countering a weighty historiographic tradition that has rhapsodized about the Barbarossakopf since the nineteenth century.72 The misconception is rooted in twelfth-century sources that describe a silver “portrait bust” of the emperor, erroneously conflated with the surviving sculpture by modern scholars. Even though this silver bust has long since disappeared, its presence in the sources is worth noting as evidence for the creation of metalwork ruler images at an early date. The Cappenberg reliquary, too, remains useful for this discussion, even if it always represented a saint and not a sovereign. In tracing the historiography of the reliquary and the ways in which features like the diadem were mistakenly used to support a link to Barbarossa, Rehm underscores, ironically, the many similarities between royal and saintly images in the twelfth century. The same imperial overtones recognized by past art historians still exist within the sculpture, including its facial hair and features. More particularly, its gilded surface and inlaid eyes offer some glimpse of the original appearance of the Rudolf effigy, and here, too, the resonance points to the larger blurring of heavenly and terrestrial power that Kantorowicz aptly called a political theology.73 Meanwhile, the documented existence of a silver portrait itself adds a new note of irony because it brings the story full circle, in a sense, to Frederick Barbarossa, the ultimate audience of Otto’s amusing anecdote about Henry IV taunting Rudolf’s
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gilded bronze grave. Frederick, too, had been honored with a metalwork portrait, possibly also harkening back to the model of Charlemagne; perhaps Otto’s remarks knowingly contrasted Frederick’s legitimate imperial portrait with Rudolf’s pretentions. Taken together with the lively facial features of the Cappenberg reliquary, the anecdote suggests a shift taking place in the 1150s. Otto of Freising himself largely looked past Charlemagne and compared his nephew to Augustus Caesar instead, but the text was incomplete at the time of Otto’s death in 1158. It was finished by Otto’s pupil Rahewin, who compared Frederick freely to Charlemagne and used Einhard as a direct literary model. Rahewin was active during the years leading up to Charlemagne’s canonization in 1165, and he and Frederick Barbarossa both had ties to Rainald of Dassel, the Cologne archbishop who led the campaign to make Charlemagne into a new imperial saint. In the twelfth century, Charlemagne provides a model for a new kind of saintly emperor. In such a heady moment for the expansion of imperial sanctity—indeed, the generation when the Holy Roman Empire assumed its Holy mantle—it is not unreasonable to imagine that the lost portrait of Barbarossa may not have differed so greatly from the surviving sculpture that was associated with his name for so long. Nor would it be a surprise if the Barbarossa portrait had deliberately echoed Einhard’s description of the lost portrait of Charlemagne that had once adorned his tomb, echoing the ambition of Rudolf’s tomb, only without the sense of anxiety that had come with Rudolf’s dramatic death.
Fig. 21 Reliquary bust (so-called Barbarossakopf). Collegiate Church of St. John the Evangelist, Cappenberg. Photo: bpk Bildagentur / Collegiate Church of Saint John the Evangelist, Cappenberg / Art Resource, New York.
Geoffrey Plantagenet at Le Mans Rulers
The figural epitaph of Geoffrey Plantagenet (1113–1151), made for his tomb in the cathedral of Le Mans in the 1150s, is perhaps the largest and most ambitious enamel of
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Fig. 22 (opposite) Drawing after a lost enamel epitaph for Ulger, bishop of Angers. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms. Gough Drawings Gaignières 14, fol. 191. Photo: Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.
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the twelfth century (color plate 3).74 T he impulse to classify art objects into separate categories has led to a broad association of enamels with smallness of scale, distinct from the “monumentality” of tomb sculpture, narrowly defined. Panofsky is careful to distinguish the plaque from other monuments, for example, due to the expectation that its reduced size disqualified it from consideration as a true effigy. Measuring 63.5 × 33.2 cm, the plaque itself renders this distinction rather arbitrary in hindsight: created at the maximum possible size for the technical possibilities of its material, the Le Mans figure was certainly monumental in its conception. It is mentioned with some frequency in early sources, beginning with a charter in which Geoffrey’s son King Henry II of England endowed masses to be held daily “at the altar in front of my father’s tomb.”75 Texts from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries describe the plaque attached, upright, to the penultimate column in the nave of St-Julien, and while it is clear that this was at best a reinstallation, there seems to be some likelihood that this placement echoed the medieval disposition of the figure.76 It seems implausible that the monument was set on the floor, given that early sources record a “mausoleum” for Geoffrey; still, the plaque was always intended to be seen at the site of burial, near the body, and specifically while masses were said for Geoffrey’s soul. Occupying a highly visible location in the cathedral, the enamel’s bright colors and lustrous surface, in addition to its bold size, endowed the object with a sense of monumentality that made it an appropriate marker for Geoffrey’s adjacent burial. It is possible, but far from certain, that more such plaques were forged in western France in the mid-twelfth century. What appears to be a similar enamel effigy for Bishop Ulger of Angers (d. 1149) was among the monuments recorded by Gaignières (fig. 22).77 The figure does not survive, however, and it is impossible to be certain whether it dated to the time of the bishop’s death or to the thirteenth century, when enamel effigies were somewhat more widespread.78 It has been suggested that Geoffrey’s wife, the empress Mathilda, may also have been commemorated with an enamel plaque.79 Thus Geoffrey’s monument comes with an important caveat: it is possible to imagine the object as part of an elite corpus made for high-ranking individuals in Anglo-Norman France during the mid-twelfth century. Such a corpus would have been a projection of Plantagenet ambition and an early expression of the sacral roots of power; still, its scope can hardly be reconstructed through the lone survival of Geoffrey’s plaque. The enamel also shares certain unexpected affinities with Rudolf’s monument. First and foremost, the figures are both metalwork, which appropriates certain elements more usually associated with reliquaries and applies them to a layman. Geoffrey’s plaque also uses a poetic inscription to contextualize its hero, though it appears as a titulus above the figure, without the disorienting effect of Rudolf’s circling text. It reads: ense tvo, princeps, pr(a)edonvm tvrba fvgatvr / eccle(s)iisq(ve) qvies pace vigente datvr (By your sword, prince, the band of robbers is put to flight; / And with peace flourishing, repose is given to churches). The circumstances are different, but the text resonates with the Merseburg inscription insofar as the political and military success of the hero is equated with the
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well-being of the church. As a metalwork monument, placing an image of the dead above the grave in glittering materials, it also resonates with Einhard’s description. In his biography of Geoffrey, composed around 1170, the chronicler Jean de Marmoutier described the plaque as an “imago ex auro et lapidibus decenter impressa” (image of gold and stones, fittingly impressed).80 This characterization offers an evocative contemporary view of the oversized plaque: its materials are emphasized, and the “impression” borrows the same sealing metaphor that was associated with the Rudolf tomb.81 Geoffrey’s plaque was not set upon a structure resembling Charlemagne’s lost arcosolium, but given the rarity of figural monuments made to commemorate aristocratic burials, the golden surface and metalwork portrait still invite this comparison. The details of the story are almost diametrically opposed to Rudolf’s case, but Geoffrey’s life was also set against a backdrop of civil war, and his family was also enmeshed in politics. As forefather of the Plantagenet dynasty and second husband of the empress Mathilda, Geoffrey was not a king or an emperor himself, but he was part of a family with strong imperial ties. His unusually lavish funerary monument thus uses gold and enamel to reflect the ambition of his dynasty while sidestepping the awkwardness of showcasing an actual dead king. Geoffrey had died unexpectedly, shortly after his thirty-eighth birthday and without signs of poor health. His relative youth makes it difficult to imagine he had commissioned the plaque for his own tomb, particularly given the rarity of the object itself and the lack of a documented tradition of commissioning memorials for one’s own grave. Twelfth-century sources credit the bishop, Guillaume de Passavant, as the patron of his lavish tomb, but it has also been suggested that Geoffrey’s widow, Mathilda of England, and even his son, the future English king Henry II, may also have been
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Fig. 23 Enamel with donor image of Henry of Blois. British Museum, London, 1852,0327.1. Photo: British Museum.
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involved.82 Mathilda, the proud daughter of Henry I and granddaughter of William the Conqueror, had retained the title “empress” from her first marriage to the Salian emperor Henry V, and she fought bitterly against her cousin, Stephen of Blois, during England’s Anarchy. It was her second husband, Geoffrey, who fathered her son, who would become King Henry II of England. By the time of Geoffrey’s death in 1151, Mathilda had begun to focus her political ambitions on Henry’s career. A sense of ambition certainly pervades the enamel itself, and whether it was commissioned by Mathilda or someone else in this circle the object remains an extraordinary example of Limoges enamel, perhaps the largest size possible at the time.83 Though smaller than life-size, it approaches monumental scale, particularly in relation to typical enamels. Together with its size and shape, the beveled framing borders reinforce the impression that the object was installed alone as a monument over a tomb rather than a memorial affixed to a larger treasury object. The latter is more frequent in this period, seen in objects like the Otto-Mathilda cross in the treasury of Essen Cathedral or (closer in time and context) the plaque with a donor portrait of Henry of Blois (1096–1171) that was likely set on a portable altar donated to Winchester Cathedral during Henry’s tenure as bishop, perhaps around 1150 (fig. 23).84 To Panofsky’s point about size, the fact must be added that the enamel epitaph for Geoffrey Plantagenet is not, strictly speaking, a sculpture (though it is a piece of metalwork and, in that sense, similar to the Rudolf monument), and perhaps installed upright on a column, its image of Geoffrey brandishing a sword confronting viewers with an ever-vigilant stance.85 This placement suggests a distinctive function: rather than create the illusion of looking through a surface into the tumulus where the deceased lies buried, the object presents the deceased, his past life and future resurrection, using a format that would be visible even from a considerable distance. Although the comparisons to Rudolf, Charlemagne, and Henry of Blois may seem far-flung, they reflect Mathilda’s position at the center of a tightly knit community
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of high-ranking aristocrats. Her first husband, Henry V, was the son of the same Henry IV who had fought against Rudolf; he would have been familiar with Rudolf’s monument, at least by reputation. Henry of Blois was Mathilda’s first cousin, and although they spent much of their lives as opponents (Henry mostly supported his brother Stephen during the Anarchy), they belonged to the same political circles and moved through the same regions of France. Most important of all, Mathilda’s own sense of political ambition rendered her doubtless interested in Charlemagne, the archetype of the good ruler. It would have been deeply appealing to her to frame her husband in imperial terms, affirming her own status as empress, while also advancing the career of her son.
Royal Effigies in Paris The earliest effigies in Paris also represent royal figures and are roughly contemporary with the Cappenberg head and the enamel epitaph of Geoffrey of Anjou. Despite their provenance from prominent sites and their use to represent major figures from the history of the French monarchy, the three surviving figures offer a fragmentary and, at times, contradictory picture. These effigies are dated roughly between 1150 and 1165, and while they cannot be called a set, they show their trio of crowned subjects with some notable similarities. In a sense, they represent the first “official” royal effigies in Europe, in contrast to the effigy of Rudolf of Swabia, whose claim to a throne was never secure. Two of the effigies were made for St-Germain-des-Prés and represent a Merovingian king and queen. These monuments share an approximate date but are radically different in their use of materials. The king is carved in gray limestone and holds a model church, signaling his role as donor (fig. 24; color plate 4).86 In contrast to his deep relief, the queen’s effigy is composed of colored stone and glass tesserae (figs. 25–26; color plate 5). Assembled in a flat mosaic, its technique recalls the contoured styles of manuscript illumination, stained glass, and—above all—champlevé enamel. Virtually unique in the known corpus of medieval sculpture, this rare example of something akin to an opus sectile pavement technique finds its sole surviving parallel in a third Romanesque effigy in Paris: the fragmentary effigy of a queen in the church of St-Pierre on Montmartre (see fig. 30). In this instance, the fragmentary surface is marked by shallow depressions in between stone contours set flush with the surface of the plaque, in a design that recalls the Merovingian queen. This example, too, seems to be a stone approximation of champlevé technique; the figures are created by removing contoured “zones,” which are then filled with materials. The better-preserved Merovingian queen has small, irregular pieces of stone, glass, and perhaps ceramic set into a kind of heavy mortar, inclusions reminiscent of the materials that went into enamels. Thus, two queens at two sites were once linked by memorials created by the rare use of an expensive, labor-intensive technique, with few indications of how they might be tied with one another or with the limestone king from around the same time. Despite the uncertainty
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Fig. 24 Effigy of Childebert from St-Germain-des-Prés, now St-Denis, Paris. Photo © Ministère de la Culture / Médiathèque du Patrimoine, Dist. RMN–Grand Palais / Art Resource, New York.
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that surrounds all three tombs, their contemporaneous appearance and interrelated historical context deserves some comment here. The king and queen from St-Germain- des-Prés, installed amid the thirteenth- century effigies of the St-Denis necropolis since the early nineteenth century, have been identified as the Merovingians Childebert and Fredegund with the help of early modern manuscripts that include the presentation copy of Jean du Tillet’s Recueil des rois de France, given to the French king Charles IX in 1566 (color plate 6), and the great portfolios of antiquarian drawings assembled by Roger de Gaignières (fig. 27).87 Childebert (ca. 496–558) was a son of Clovis and a brother of Clothar; Fredegund (d. 597) was queen consort of Clothar’s son Chilperic. A related monument for Chilperic (ca. 539–584) appears alongside Fredegund in the Recueil des rois (color plate 6) and again, on his own, in Gaignières (fig. 28).88 This effigy, however, seems to have been lost during the French Revolution, perhaps at the same time that the decision was made to move the Childebert and Fredegund figures to St-Denis.89 Any attempt to reconstruct Chilperic’s monument is complicated by the contradictory evidence of these two drawings. In the Gaignières drawing now at the Bodleian, Chilperic is presented in a line drawing with grisaille wash, but in the much earlier painted page now in Paris, the same monument appears brightly colored and lacks the frame with its circling inscription. The Bodleian drawing suggests that the lost effigy once harmonized closely with Childebert, but this evidence must be handled cautiously. The version in the Recueil des rois carefully distinguishes its rendering of Chilperic from the unusual speckled stone and copper inlays of the Fredegund figure. Even as this detail reveals a clear interest in the physical tombs, other signs indicate a sense of inventive freedom: both figures appear as if excised from their slabs, and their feet rest on arcades that—despite their pseudo- Romanesque style—are not actually evident in the surviving Fredegund sculpture.
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Fig. 25 Effigy of Fredegund, detail of upper body, from St-Germain-des- Prés, now St-Denis, Paris. Photo: author.
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Fig. 26 Effigy of Fredegund, detail of colored stone and glass tesserae, from St-Germain-des-Prés, now St-Denis, Paris. Photo: author.
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The artist also rendered the draped cloak drawn around the right side of Chilperic’s body with the weighty mass of a Gothic model; though such evidence can only be read cautiously, it is a reminder that the figure could also have originated in the 1230s (the same era as the royal effigies of St-Denis) rather than the 1160s.90 For this reason its identification as a twelfth-century monument remains highly uncertain, as does its position in relation to the other effigies for the Merovingians. It has therefore largely been set aside from the discussion here. The most striking aspect of these figures is that two of the first “official” royal effigies known in Europe were not made for members of a current dynasty but rather for figures from the distant past. The Merovingian effigies are generally dated circa 1160 to coincide with the completion and dedication of the choir where they were likely installed, consecrated to Saint Germain (ca. 496–576; canonized in 754) by Pope Alexander III in 1163. Thus 1163 is a likely terminus ante quem, an estimate that is also backed by stylistic evidence.91 Germain himself had consecrated an earlier church on the same site to Saint Vincent on 23 December 558, the same day as the death of its patron, Childebert. The making of Childebert’s effigy, shown clasping the church model in hands, in time for the consecration of 1163 is thus more than just a reminder of the Merovingian as an early founder; it also celebrates the close ties that Germain had maintained with the monarchy and highlights the patron saint’s role in consecrating the very site that would now be dedicated to him. As with all royal effigies in medieval Europe, these sculptures occupy the intersection of politics and theology, appearing at first as manifestations of the “king’s two bodies,” in Kantorowicz’s phrase, because the effigy offers a durable “double” for the ephemeral remains.92 In the case of the St-Germain-des-Prés effigies, however, it is
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Fig. 27 Drawing after the effigy of Childebert, Roger de Gaignières collection. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms. Gough Drawings Gaignières 2, fol. 1. Photo: Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. Fig. 28 Drawing after the lost effigy of Chilperic, Roger de Gaignières collection. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms. Gough Drawings Gaignières 2, fol. 4. Photo: Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.
also difficult to overlook the implied tension between these images of Merovingian royalty and the renewed attention to the royal necropolis at St-Denis that took place in the twelfth century. Could the charismatic Abbot Suger, who strengthened royal ties to St-Denis so emphatically in the 1140s, have provoked a rival Parisian abbey into staking a stronger claim by emphasizing both Saint Germain and the Merovingians as their early founders? Renewed emphasis on the Merovingians at St-Germain-des- Prés would certainly be an apt response to the rediscovered Carolingian foundations celebrated in Suger’s writings.93 Even if his De administratione was primarily intended for internal readers at St-Denis itself, Suger’s specific boasts about Carolingian connections may well have reflected a wider atmosphere of competition.94 St-Germain would have been well-positioned to respond: the Merovingians were not only an older dynasty but also a group whose power was historically centered in the Île-de-France itself, not Aachen.95
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Fig. 29 (opposite) North transept portal, St-Denis, Paris. Author: Andrew Tallon. © Mapping Gothic France, The Trustees of Columbia University, Media Center for Art History, Department of Art History and Archaeology.
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At St-Germain, the impetus for a sudden display of royal connections may also have been tied to existential threats from far beyond the environs of Paris. The monuments certainly appeared at a fraught moment: France was still reeling from the disastrous Third Crusade, Louis VII would not produce a male heir until 1165, and the ascendance of Plantagenet power—largely the fruit of Louis’s contentious divorce from Eleanor of Aquitaine, which left Eleanor free to marry the ambitious young Henry II of England—was causing considerable anxiety in Paris. It would be somewhat facile to argue that all of this led directly to the appearance of royal effigies at St-Germain, but the intent here is not to propose a narrow causation. Instead, my goal is to situate these effigies within a climate of both local and international tension. I also wish to gauge the implications of the apparently gendered difference between the king, represented in a relief carved in limestone, and the curious mosaiclike technique used to represent the two queens, one appearing at St-Germain and the other at St-Pierre on Montmartre. The relationship between surviving effigies of Childebert and Fredegund is inflec ted by the visual connections between each object and other prominent monuments produced on the Île-de-France in the same decade. Even in the absence of textual sources for the reception of these sculptures, the shared stylistic traits that existed among various monuments—which could be attributed to the same elite circle of patrons and artists—makes it seem likely that they once built a hermeneutic of royal imagery across the Capetian capital and its environs. The Childebert effigy has long been attributed to the same workshop that produced the royal jamb statues of the north transept portal at St-Denis (fig. 29). The connection to the so-called Porte des Valois (which earns its nickname from its proximity to the later medieval burial chapel of the Valois dynasty) is complicated by the fact that, although its sculptures are generally dated to circa 1165 to 1170, the ensemble is not believed to have been installed until the early thirteenth century. While it is thus difficult to know who may have seen the sculptures at an early date, the patrons and artists responsible for their creation may well have envisioned programmatic connections across multiple sites. The identities of the jamb figures at St-Denis are also ambiguous—it is unclear whether they represent Old Testament kings, the early kings of France, or some other royal identities—but, regardless, they seem to work together with the tympanum to reinforce the notion of the kings of France as “supporters” of St-Denis. Certainly the appearance of effigies from the same workshop representing the Merovingian kings, most likely installed in the choir of the church at the very time when it was rededicated to Saint Germain, would have resonated with the ideal of the kings of France as both the protectors and the loyal vassals of the church.96 The term “vassal,” which has been rightly problematized in studies of the French monarchy, is invoked here for its emphasis on the military capacities of kings. This stress may in turn offer some justification for the fact that only kings—and not queens—were carved for the St-Denis portal by the workshop that also produced the Childebert effigy and perhaps the lost effigy for Chilperic as well.97 As men they could be identified as the sculptural incarnations of military support for
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Fig. 30 Effigy of Adelaide of Maurienne, St-Pierre of Montmartre, Paris. Photo: Erik Gustafson, with permission from St-Pierre, Paris.
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the faith, but their female counterparts seem to have embodied a very different set of concerns. Given the lack of documents to establish the patronage of the three Paris effigies or their relative dates, it is only possible to offer broad suggestions concerning their interrelationships. Still, it is evocative that the king was given the tactile presence and limestone materials of the competing royal necropolis at St-Denis, as if linking their foundational character directly to burial. Even as the Childebert effigy seems tied, both stylistically and conceptually, to parallel images being constructed for St-Denis, the Fredegund figure recalls her apparent “sister” on Montmartre (fig. 30). Kathleen Nolan has demonstrated that the fragmentary figure at St-Pierre was almost certainly a monument for France’s powerful dowager queen, Adelaide of Maurienne.98 Adelaide had cofounded the abbey with her husband, Louis VI, and took the veil there a year or two before her death on 18 November 1154. The 1155 visit made by Louis VII to his mother’s tomb is recorded in a contemporary charter, and he was almost certainly involved in the patronage of her effigy.99 As Nolan and others suggest, it is also possible that Adelaide could have commissioned her own tomb. Given that the first recorded instance of a tomb effigy commissioned by its intended recipient occurs a full generation later in the 1180s, however, this point is far from certain. It seems safer to view the patronage of tombs at both St-Germain and St-Pierre as programmatic collaborations of church and state, sponsored with some poorly understood combination of royal and ecclesiastical funds but intended to serve the intertwined political and spiritual interests of both constituencies. The close resonance between the effigies of Fredegund and Adelaide, so rare in their technique and so similar in date and style, associates the two queens across time. This visual likening is almost certainly unconcerned with the historical details of their lives—Fredegund, who quite possibly murdered her rivals and famously feuded with
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Brunhilda of Austrasia, seems an unlikely candidate for veneration, at least as far as her biography is concerned. Her personal faults, however, do not preclude a distant and vaguely conceived appropriation of the past, in which any rumors of misconduct were intentionally forgotten or disregarded in favor of an idealized view of the early French monarchy. Perhaps the motivation was to rewrite a problematic history, but given the distance of several centuries between Fredegund’s life and her effigy, this mechanism seems far less pressing here than in the other examples from the earlier twelfth century. It would hardly be the first time that the distant past was used as a cipher for present concerns without regard for historical detail. The relationship with the Adelaide effigy is also evocative in this regard, as it brings the two queens together to establish membership in institutions—the monarchy itself and important monastic centers—in a manner that transcends both time and dynastic concerns. The use of the unusual inlaid technique of the two monuments, so deeply reminiscent of enamel, may reflect a shared desire to emphasize a sacred role for royal women. Together with their probable date of circa 1153 to 1163, their visual qualities put them in an evocative dialogue with the spectacular enamel effigy for Geoffrey of Anjou, which likewise dates to the 1150s. Given that the size of Geoffrey’s plaque was itself exceptional, it does not seem possible in the 1150s to have produced full-scale effigies in enamel. Translated to stone, a related effect was achieved. Further, the stone effigies have a preciousness of their own, given that enamel can be manufactured, but stone must be quarried. The quality of the stone on the Fredegund tomb recalls the luxury of Byzantine stone revetments, portable altars, and the building materials famously imported to northern European sites by Carolingian and Ottonian emperors.100 Evoking colored stones like porphyry and probably raised upon small columns that produced the effect of an altar, the effigies drew a deliberate connection with costly containers for sacred matter—as if the capacity of queens to produce royal heirs made them literal receptacles of sacral kingship.101
Conclusion Though it is often said that the continuous tradition of medieval European effigies began with Rudolf’s monument in Merseburg, this sculpture remains a strange outlier in many respects. Perhaps the first gilded bronze effigy was too problematic, too highly specific, to be emulated widely. Even in the thirteenth century, when Limoges enamel was used for some of the most expensive tombs in Europe, only fifty or so examples are documented, and of those, only a handful have survived.102 Even accounting for the preciousness of the material, the challenges of casting large-scale figures, the likelihood of such monuments being melted down for materials, and above all the awkwardness of using a technique more commonly associated with saints for the bodies of recently deceased aristocrats, the relative paucity of metalwork tombs remains striking, underscoring the exceptional context of Rudolf’s death.
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Despite its extraordinary nature, however, Rudolf ’s effigy established certain themes that continued to be present among early effigies, most notably the precarious nature of power, the swift reversals of fortune, and the promised redemption of resurrection. Though the use of metalwork was largely limited to royal bodies, as discussed above, figural effigies made of humbler materials continued to echo similar themes of death and redemption, triumph and loss, tradition and upheaval across the twelfth century. Therefore, even though Rudolf’s tomb did not inspire an immediate avalanche of close imitations, many of its innovations would be taken up over the course of the twelfth century and repeated in other materials, at other sites. In this way, it became a source for monuments that evoked its new and provocative format to represent the dead to a living public in sore need of reassurance in times of chaos and concern.
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Patrons
3
Stone effigies survive across large swaths of Europe from the twelfth century onward and were probably always more plentiful than monuments in other media. They were also the most closely related to the production of sarcophagi: especially in the early period, many stone effigies present a trapezoidal shape, wider at the head and narrower at the feet, suggesting they were either used as sarcophagus lids or shaped to evoke them. Though intimately tied to this funerary function, stone effigies also grew in tandem with the rise of ambitious programs of architectural sculpture in northern Europe. In rare instances like the Durand figure at Moissac, effigy-type slabs were integrated into extended visual cycles.1 At Moissac the elision between the reality and the representation of the abbot’s body, which had once walked through the same cloister that now held its static image, offered a blurred boundary between the physical fabric of the church and the bodies inhabiting its spaces. The use of arches and columns as pictorial frames on effigies, as seen at Moissac and again in the effigies in this chapter, seems to underscore this point. A related phenomenon may be detected in the model churches held by the Childebert effigy from St-Germain-des-Prés, in the last chapter, and by the Eberhard effigy in Schaffhausen, discussed below.2 While this motif also appears elsewhere in medieval art, its use on effigies in particular creates a poignant inversion: the effigy is shown holding the same tiny building that in actuality holds the effigy and its audiences. The point is made all the more powerful when the effigy and the building are created of the same stone, as if to cement the material links between the monuments for the dead and the institutions that were tasked with protecting their bodies and legacies until the end of time. The use of stone together with visual motifs that heighten these tensions between body and space seems to have been especially favored among the effigies made for founders and reformers in the twelfth century. While the fantastical cityscape above Geoffrey of Anjou’s enamel image has been interpreted as the Heavenly Jerusalem,
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the relatively restrained arcades that line the Nellenburg effigies seem instead to reflect the dominant architectural forms of the abbey church within which they were housed. The resulting links between the figures and their physical context form a striking contrast to the conversely distancing and dematerializing effect of metalwork effigies. These visual differences seem to reflect more than the relative prestige or even the costs of their materials. Gilded bronze and enamel invoked the sacral dimensions of kingship while stone effigies echoed the very construction of their sites, focusing attention on local rather than regal authority. It is also noticeable that, while royal figures were very often also donors in the Middle Ages, this overlapping status is only rarely found among the individuals known to have had effigies in the period before circa 1160. Where it does occur, as in the effigies from St-Germain-des-Prés, the distinction seems to have prompted an odd split in the monuments themselves: Childebert’s effigy carries the model church to emphasize the patronage of the Merovingian royal family, but it is Fredegund’s tomb, with its rare inclusions of copper wiring and glass tesserae, that evokes the transcendent qualities of royal bodies. Even so, Fredegund’s effigy— like the parallel Adelaide effigy in Montmartre—is itself highly unusual, created in a technique that mediates between the materials of stone and the appearance of enamel. In this way, these enigmatic effigies seem to reflect a double claim to memorialization, as queens and also founders. This chapter turns to three monuments from circa 1110 to 1130 that represent individuals who were not royals in any sense but rather members of influential donor families. The effigies made for the Nellenburg family at Schaffhausen and Gottschalk of Diepholz at Bad Iburg are among the earliest in stone, preceded only by the upright figure of Durand at Moissac. The third, representing the eighth-century warlord Widukind of Saxony, is among the earliest in hard stucco or plaster. Though the details are different in each case, all are linked to dramatic reversals of fortune and the decline of dynasties whose wealth had once seemed secure. Each also seems part of an attempt by a monastic church to lay claim to key donations, even as the fates of those very gifts had been rendered insecure. Thus while the architectural frames on these objects are not uncommon in medieval sculpture, the trope seems in these instances to emphasize links between individuals and the richly endowed sites that claimed their patronage. While their materials are less lavish than the gilded and enameled tombs of the previous chapter, they are also more clearly aligned with the spaces in which the bodies and effigies were intended to be seen. It is likely that many stone and plaster effigies were originally brightly painted, which would have dramatically altered their effects and masked their surfaces, but this would not necessarily have changed their close relationship to the surrounding architecture. After all, it is equally likely that the churches would also have been painted as part of the same program, and that their polychrome surfaces would have had a highly dramatic, harmonizing effect. Unfortunately, there is simply not enough evidence at present to pursue this point further, though the state of the research may change as new technical studies of medieval monuments are undertaken and new technologies applied to the study of stone.
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Despite the differences in social rank represented in the monuments gathered here—and the fact that their subjects were drawn from both the near and distant pasts—each reflected the stakes of preserving aristocratic legacies in an era of reform, and each attempted to reify institutional connections at a pivotal time. The monuments below are thus products of the same culture of memoria that permeated medieval monastic life, but they also represent a distinctive visual strategy aimed at activating that vibrant system. Even though the details of the specific cases are distinct, as a group they point to larger patterns through which memorial culture could protect local agendas and shield the overarching interests of ecclesiastical institutions against backdrops of ominous political strain.
The Nellenburg Family in Schaffhausen The effigies for the Nellenburg family are preserved in Schaffhausen, a small Swiss city just west of Lake Constance that lies so close to the national border that it is surrounded on three sides by German towns (figs. 31–33; color plate 7).3 The earliest effigies in Switzerland, they are also the first to commemorate a social group carved as a united series rather than to remember an individual. Unfortunately, definitive analysis of this point is hampered by the incomplete state in which the ensemble survives. Only two effigies from the original set were unearthed intact, both found during the 1921 excavations of the eleventh-century monastic church that the family founded, which has been dedicated to “Allerheiligen” (all saints) since its inception.4 A later dig revealed the fragmentary female head of a third effigy; the rest have apparently been lost. It seems likely that the original group once included five Romanesque effigies to mark the burials that were still recognized when the Rüergerschen Chronicle was written circa 1600. Named for its author, the local historian Johann Jakob Rüeger, this text describes how the grave of Count Eberhard of Schaffhausen (d. 1078) once lay before an altar under the western arch of the crossing of the church.5 Eberhard had founded the church in 1064; he retreated there as a monk sometime before his death. In the 1080s his widow, Ita (d. after 1105), founded an adjoining convent dedicated to Saint Agnes, where she withdrew as a nun by 1087. Control of these two foundations passed around this time to their son Burkhard (d. after 1100), who invited monastic reform.6 The donation of additional lands in 1080 must have been Burkhard’s initiative, meaning his status also approached that of a founder. Rüeger specified that Eberhard, as founder of Allerheiligen, was buried with four family members: Ita; Burkhard; Burkhard’s wife, Hedwig; and Irmentrud, an obscure cousin who, like Ita, entered Allerheiligen’s adjoining convent dedicated to Saint Agnes. Because both intact effigies represent men, they are easily identified with Eberhard and Burkhard. The figure that carries a church model is designated as the father through the long beard that signifies seniority, while the effigy that sports a shorter beard and carries a small tree represents Burkhard, evoking the land donation he
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Fig. 31 Nellenburg effigies, Allerheiligen Monastery, Schaffhausen. Photo courtesy of the Museum zu Allerheiligen, Schaffhausen.
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added to Allerheiligen’s endowment after Eberhard’s death in 1078.7 The original manuscript copy of Rüeger’s chronicle preserves a small drawing of the Eberhard effigy, badly abraded but still legible, which is annotated in Rüeger’s own hand to confirm the identification.8 The third effigy is harder to identify since only a veiled fragment of a woman’s head has survived. It is commonly labeled as Ita, though in fact it could well be a remnant of any of the three women described by Rüeger.9 The two well-preserved effigies are carved as if standing upright, with Eber hard’s feet set upon a Romanesque arcade and Burkhard’s planted on a grassy hill. These ground lines give the figures a firm orientation in physical space that is fundamentally different from the weightless, immaterial effect of the Rudolf effigy and seems to affirm the links between the aristocratic Nellenburg family and the site of Schaffhausen. The arches under Eberhard’s feet are matched by a continuous arcade that decorates the outer edges of both effigies and mostly likely served as a unifying motif for the five-part group as a whole. This device asserts the planned recumbent position of the effigies, aptly using microarchitecture to affix the bodies to the ground. Even as the ground beneath the feet of the figures suggests that they were conceptualized as if standing upright, the ornamental bands reflect that the slabs were once set horizontally. These twin points of orientation—the horizontal slabs and the “upright” pictorial plane—create the jarring internal contradiction that has been famously discussed by Panofsky. These effigies are the earliest in which this deliberate tension can be observed, suggesting the juxtaposition of life and death that reflects the ambiguous theological status of the medieval body before its promised resurrection. The use of this trope to assert the presence of the Nellenburg family as key patrons of the monastery, which seems straightforward on its surface, becomes provocative if we consider that the family, large and thriving in the mid-eleventh century, faced a dramatic change of fortune by the time the monuments were carved in the early twelfth century. The effigies thus represent not only the individual family members but also the all-important contrast between the sudden decline of a family over the course of a generation and the conversely permanent nature
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Fig. 32 Effigies of Eberhard and Burkhard of Nellenburg, Allerheiligen Monastery, Schaffhausen. Photo: author, with permission from the Museum zu Allerheiligen, Schaffhausen.
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Fig. 33 Effigy of Burkhard of Nellenburg, Allerheiligen Monastery, Schaffhausen. Photo: author, with permission from the Museum zu Allerheiligen, Schaffhausen.
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of their ecclesiastical legacy as the donors of a major monastic institution. Due to the absence of framing texts on the sculptures themselves, this point can only be recovered by reading the sculptures against the historical context of Schaffhausen. The church and tree held by Eberhard and Burkhard, respectively, secure their identities as donors and position father and son within a complex history of donation images that, as Stephanie Luther has recently shown, appear only rarely in northern monumental sculpture and here for the first time.10 Thanks to Rüeger, we also know of the inclusion of their wives, marking the first known instance of paired effigies for married couples—another tradition that would often be repeated in effigies after circa 1200 but seems to have been rare in earlier examples.11 The nearly total loss of the women’s effigies makes it impossible to know how they may have been arranged, but the fact that each effigy is fully framed within a border indicates that each individual was given their own slab and not paired, as would become common among late medieval effigies for married couples in particular.12 A potential explanation for the inclusion of Irmentrud in the monument can be found in the Schaffhausen Stifterbuch from circa 1400, which describes her as a pious leper. The text chronicles how Irmentrud was ostracized by her immediate family because of her disease; these relatives reportedly sickened and died as divine retribution for their cruelty. Irmentrud then took refuge among her Nellenburg kin and eventually took vows at St. Agnes.13 Heinz Gallman has noted the Stifterbuch’s close agreement with charters that corroborate much of the information it offers about eleventh-century events, lending credence (though admittedly not certainty) to its account of Irmentrud’s life.14 If Irmentrud did indeed suffer from leprosy, then the tantalizing prospect emerges that one of the first known effigies was created for a woman who was not only unmarried but also afflicted by one of the most dreaded of medieval diseases. Perhaps this effigy, not unlike that of
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Rudolf of Swabia, provided compensation for the disappointments of the mortal body, counteracting the tragedy of corporeal damage or devastating illness with an assurance of bodily redemption. Irmentrud’s presence may thus have signified not only an extension of the family unit but also a visible sign of the promise of bodily redemption. Though it is impossible to recover how this tension may have been depicted within the monument itself, Irmentrud’s reputation surely affected how the effigy was understood at least by the time the Stifterbuch was written down, if not much earlier. A very different configuration of the Nellenburg family appears in another unusual commemorative sculpture at Schaffhausen: a memorial plaque that was found in 1955 (figs. 34–35).15 Rüeger makes no mention of it and may not have seen it, given that it was reused in the early modern period as flooring material in the northern aisle of the church. The surface of the stone is heavily abraded, suggesting it was walked on frequently, and while the condition of the sculpture is too poor to offer precise dating, its forms and inscriptions seem to fit in the period of circa 1100 to 1120, making it either contemporary to the effigies or perhaps slightly earlier than them. There are few clues, textual or archeological, to clarify its original placement, and it is not clear if the plaque was ever visible in proximity to the effigies.16 Even in this decontextualized state, however, its shared focus on the Nellenburg family means that it, too, played a role in presenting the family to the local monastic and lay community. Although much of its surface is lost, the plaque still retains a patterned vegetal border similar to the framing devices of the two extant effigies. These borders run in uninterrupted loops along the long sides of the rectangular object and end in four-part arcades at the short sides, giving the composition a vertical orientation. Four figures inhabit the arches along the top. The four arches on the bottom are also filled: figures stand under the two middle arches, and vegetation swirls in the outer ones. Two more registers in the middle of the plaque each contain a single wide arch in which a figure on the left greets a haloed saint to the right. While the inscriptions on the plaque are mostly lost, enough fragments of text survive to identify a number of the figures. Under the wide central arches, Eberhard hails Christ the Redeemer in the upper pairing, and Ita gives a donation to Saint Agnes in the lower one. Given that Allerheiligen was originally consecrated as a chapel dedicated to Christ the Redeemer, these two scenes link the piety of the couple directly to the ecclesiastical institutions that they endowed. The male figures on the top and bottom registers correspond numerically to Eberhard and Ita’s six sons, and the surviving fragmentary inscriptions confirm these identifications. Along the top edge, the second figure from the left is marked “1078,” the year of the death of their son Udo, who rose to become archbishop of Trier in 1066. The third figure is marked abbas, which suggests their son Ekkehard, abbot of the Reichenau from 1071 to 1088. The fourth is marked Eberhard, a son who died in battle in June 1075. Three more sons, their inscriptions lost, are Heinrich, who died in the same military struggle as young Eberhard; Adalbert, who died as a child; and Burkhard, the family’s remaining heir after three of his brothers died young and two took clerical vows.17
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Fig. 34 Nellenburg memorial plaque. Museum zu Allerheiligen, Schaffhausen. Photo © Stadtarchiv Schaffhausen (Hans Bührer, J 07 .02/120).
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The plaque, like the effigies, represents the Nellenburg family as a group, but it selects a very different set of individuals to accomplish this purpose. It also reflects the hierarchy among the six sons. Udo and Ekkehard, as archbishop and abbot, are given places of honor at the center of the top tier, each grasping a crozier or staff and shown frontally making an orant gesture. In contrast, the figures to either side raise their hands toward their praying brothers. Eberhard, the best-preserved among the group, presents a round object to Ekkehard, while the heavily abraded brother at the far left seems to follow suit. Given that Eberhard and Heinrich died in the same battle, perhaps the man at far left represents Heinrich as the counterpoint to his brother, giving this register over to sons who had been sacrificed through either death or devotion. The brothers on the lowest register also turn in space, interacting with one another. Though the center of the plaque is damaged, obscuring the details of Eberhard’s gesture, Ita gives a festuca to Saint Agnes, and her husband was likely shown in a parallel act of donation.18 As Hans Seeliger notes, these gestures of gift-giving demonstrate devotion; given the inclusion of their six sons, Eberhard and Ita transcend mere physical donation and seemingly dedicate their entire line. The figure to the left in the bottom register echoes the gesture of the parents and is axially aligned with them; this may well represent Burkhard, the heir. Such an arrangement would offer the pleasing image of Burkhard turning in space
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Fig. 35 Nellenburg memorial plaque, detail of upper arcade. Museum zu Allerheiligen, Schaffhausen. Photo: author, with permission from the Museum zu Allerheiligen, Schaffhausen.
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toward his brother Adalbert, the son who died youngest, as if to show the last living son honoring the dead as part of his continued patronage of Allerheiligen. The plaque offers a coherent representation of the Nellenburg family, but with two notable omissions: the daughters, Adelheid and Irmgard. The two arches filled with foliage on the bottom register make their absence especially pointed; the exclusion was not a response to spatial limitations. The sisters were most likely left out because they had been married off into other families. Ita, the sole woman on the monument, appears as mother and matriarch. Her daughters belong elsewhere because their bodies and their progeny extended the family lines of their husbands, not their father. Their absence underscores the narrowly patriarchal construction of the plaque in striking contrast with the effigies, which featured married couples from two successive generations along with Irmentrud. The distinction seems to have been that the effigies focused on the bodies of family members who were prominent and present at the abbey itself, while the plaque focused on the Nellenburg sons as a brotherhood unified around their parents’ spiritual ambitions. Such unity belied the political circumstances that engulfed the Nellenburg family toward the end of the eleventh century. Eberhard had entered Allerheiligen as a lay brother in the 1070s, passing his authority to Burkhard during a decade when the tensions sparked by the Investiture Controversy were escalating on both sides of the Alps. The conflicts that ensued divided the brothers. Allerheiligen sided with the pope, as did Burkhard and Ekkehard, but Udo, Eberhard, and Heinrich all died as supporters of Henry IV: Udo in 1078 during the siege of Tübingen and the others in battle near Homburg in Thuringia in 1075.19 When the plaque was carved is not clear, but the date of 1078 above Udo gives a terminus post quem; as noted above, a date after 1100 seems most likely. This time frame situates the plaque near Burkhard’s death, during his lifetime but after it had become clear that his marriage to Hedwig would fail to produce an heir. It was during this period that the sources relate renewed political uncertainty at Allerheiligen, together with the emergence of Burkhard’s nephew, Adalbert of Mörsberg, as an apparent heir for the Nellenburg family.20 Adalbert, not to be confused with the contemporaneous abbot Adalbert of Metzingen, had taken on the role of Vogt at Allerheiligen in the 1090s; in 1099 he appeared together with the abbot at the Synod of Constance to advocate for the abbey during a property dispute.21 Given that Adalbert was the son of Eberhard, a brother who died supporting Henry IV, the transition of power from Burkhard to Adalbert must have revived twenty years of lingering animosity between the two political factions that had split the family. The plaque, with its presentation of all six brothers encircling their parents, counters this tension with a monument of familial reconciliation. It is tempting to imagine that the bottom register, showing Burkhard alongside his long-dead brother Adalbert, might have also signaled solidarity with the nephew of the same name. Without a secure date for the plaque, it is difficult to assign this idea to a specific patron. Everyone, however, stood to gain from its message of a smooth transition of power: Burkhard and Ita, if they were still alive; their remaining heir, Adalbert; and
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Adalbert the abbot. The plaque has often been characterized as a family memorial, and there is archeological evidence suggesting it may once have been installed at Eberhard’s tomb.22 Such a funerary function would only enhance rather than diminish the political ramifications of its visual program. In this way the plaque served communal rather than narrowly personal goals, commemorating figures not merely to ensure their individual salvation but also to promote the institutional interests of the monastic foundation they had entrusted with their legacy. Much like the plaque, the effigies are heavily abraded and difficult to date, leaving their patronage similarly in doubt. While there is a consensus that they were probably made after Burkhard’s death, dating has swung widely between 1100 and 1130 over the past decades.23 My own inclination is to support a date around 1120, but rather than argue narrowly for a specific point in time, I wish instead to emphasize that the effigies belong to the period when Adalbert of Mörsberg was rather unfortunately establishing himself as a petty tyrant, engaging in a series of disputes with Allerheiligen.24 The stylistic unity of the group suggests that all five effigies were likely constructed in one program, and the surviving iconographic features support a reading of the overall program as an effort to document the Nellenburg gifts, cementing claims to the donations while also ensuring that these endowments (particularly land) would be remembered and respected. There are enough indications of turbulence in early twelfth-century Schaffhausen that it is again difficult to pinpoint a particular moment when the effigies were most likely to have been made and whether they were a donation from Adalbert of Mörsberg to lay claim to his ancestors’ legacy or perhaps from abbot Adalbert to defend the Nellenburg endowments against those same claims. One more clue adds a final wrinkle to these possibilities: one of Adalbert’s three daughters was named Irmentrud, and in the Stifterbuch she is clearly identified as the same Irmentrud who entered Allerheiligen, even though Adalbert himself is otherwise largely excluded from the text. Given the regularity with which names were repeated within the medieval family, it is difficult to verify whether these two women were indeed the same, and by extension whether the depiction of Irmentrud among the effigies was related in some way to her father’s machinations. If so, this link would further solidify the role of early effigies not only in maintaining the memory of the dead but also in protecting the value of their legacy for the living. Joan Holladay has recently suggested the Nellenburg effigies may deliberately echo the format of Rudolf’s tomb in Merseburg to demonstrate fidelity to papal interests.25 While possible, it is difficult to make this argument conclusively, given that such monuments could serve multiple competing agendas even within a single family or institution. Even so, the underlying tensions between political and eschatological needs formed the fulcrum around which the effigy form developed, and it is surely no coincidence that the ongoing fallout from the Great Saxon Revolt would remain a key thread in this story. Both the plaque and the effigies suggest that the Nellenburg family required special commemoration—not to celebrate the great power of the family Eberhard and Ita created but rather to compensate for its swift unraveling.
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Gottschalk of Diepholz in Bad Iburg
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The effigy of Gottschalk of Diepholz is still preserved at Bad Iburg, the abbey that was a favored retreat for the bishops of Osnabrück in the eleventh and twelfth centuries (color plate 8 and fig. 36).26 In this instance, the person shown in the sculpture was not himself the central patron of the church but instead the scion of an aristocratic family whose patronage shaped his episcopal career. Removed from its original location at an early date and now installed in the nave of the church, the effigy is finely carved in thin, shallow relief on a slab of pinkish-gray limestone. Its gently trapezoidal shape is derived from sarcophagus lids, and it is likely (though not quite certain) that the carving once served this function.27 The body appears frontally in finely carved priestly robes; the oval face is clean-shaven and calm; the short hair is tonsured. The arms are held at chest height, with the left hand grasping a book and the right held palm outward in greeting.28 The feet are shod in elegant slippers and set over an arcade that is similar in scale and concept to the architectural motifs that frame the Nellenburg effigies. Another arch overhead separates the figure from the abstract fluting in the slab’s upper corners. Stylistic similarities between these leafy spandrels, related designs on the sides of the slab, and similar patterns in metalwork and manuscripts suggest a date in the 1120s.29 Such dating fits the identity of the figure, which is known thanks to the text of the framing inscription: nobili / vm nat(vs) p(rae)sul iacet hic tvmulat(vs)—annis octo sve prefvit ec / clesiae—cvi ui / te finis fverat cvm fine decembris—hic godescalcvs erat, christus ei / faueat (The noble-born bishop lies buried here. Eight years he led the Church, he whose life ended with the end of December. This was Gottschalk; may Christ favor him). The only medieval bishop of Osnabrück named Godescalcus, or Gottschalk, was Gottschalk of Diepholz, who was consecrated in 1110 and died in 1118.30 The text must have been composed after its subject had passed away; there is no epigraphic reason to think the words are not original to the sculpture, which indicates the sculpture was made posthumously along with the text. A date in the 1120s also fits the sequence of events that followed Gottschalk’s death. Like Merseburg and Schaffhausen, Osnabrück had been closely involved in the Investiture Controversy; its bishop at the time, Benno II, had been among the staunchest supporters of the emperor. Decades later the process of appointing bishops was still a point of local contention, and after Gottschalk died in 1118, an ugly five-year conflict broke out.31 The dispute centered on two candidates. Thiethard, the eventual bishop, was chosen by the cathedral chapter, but his rival, Conrad, had the support of Henry V.32 The ensuing local war was not resolved until 1123; this date presents a plausible occasion for the creation of the effigy.33 It is not hard to imagine the new bishop or his supporters turning to an idealized memorial for a local figure from the recent past to assert a sense of continuity in the aftermath of a great communal crisis. In many ways, this history follows the model of Durand at Moissac. It harnesses the image of a powerful bishop, who lived before an intervening turbulent time,
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Fig. 36 Effigy of Gottschalk of Diepholz, St. Clemens, Bad Iburg. Photo: Foto Marburg / Art Resource, New York (Andreas Lechtape).
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to project a sense of continuity and to gloss over the troubled recent past. Such a comparison, however, only highlights the most puzzling aspect of the Gottschalk effigy: its lack of episcopal vestments. If the goal was to affirm prestige through a bishop’s body, we might expect that rank would be emphasized by clothing the effigy in the ornate regalia usually associated with bishops, such as a miter, crozier, and richly decorated robes. Many variations of these emblems were depicted in Romanesque art, and the treatment of episcopal dress was notably diverse. A bishop’s chasuble could be overlaid with a pallium, which was typically (though not always) reserved for archbishops and conferred to indicate the special favor of the pope; another, less frequent variation was the rationale, which held a similar honorific function but had a distinct shape. A popular alternative to these marks of prestige was to depict a bishop in a cope or chasuble with prominently embroidered Y-shaped bands that visually echoed a pallium. The intricacies mattered a great deal, as Maureen Miller in particular has shown, but it is not always easy to put regalia from the twelfth century, whether known through textual sources or preserved examples, in dialogue with the conventions of art.34 Surviving garments are often preserved as relics or found as reclaimed grave goods (or both), and the best-known examples are likely exceptional rather than ordinary. The ornate robes preserved in some extant treasuries are evidence of lavish dress worn on special occasions, but we might presume that the clothing worn in daily life was relatively restrained.35 Images, however, follow no such restrictions, and liturgical vestments often appear in narrative scenes that do not actually show the liturgy. For example, the tenth-century leaf attributed to the eponymous “Gregory Master” from Trier shows Gregory the Great wearing a narrow white pallium over a chasuble with golden Y-shaped edging, highlighting status through rich episcopal signs.36 A related image in a gradual from the abbey of Echternach, possibly from the same workshop, shows Saint Willibrord dressed in more typical fashion, with the pallium over a simpler chasuble (fig. 37).37 Whether in images of unnamed bishops or in portraits of specific individuals, such garments reflect status but not necessarily reality. This divergence makes it difficult to know if the elaborate robes on the Moissac figure, marked with geometric forms to indicate dramatic Y-shaped embroidered bands on the chasuble, are particularly close to what Durand wore as bishop of Toulouse. Whether invented or observed, the rich details belong squarely to the larger iconographic tradition of showing bishops in an elaborately ornamented style.38 In the case of the Gottschalk effigy, the absence of regalia is so complete that it must be read as meaningful—and not as a reflection of the vestments available in the diocese. The sculpture shows the bishop in clothes that would suggest a priest of lower rank, perhaps a deacon or canon. This choice is an odd outlier even among the many variations on episcopal dress observed in the era. The most frequent insignia— miter, crozier, and either a pallium or a pontifical chasuble with Y-shaped bands—are all conspicuously absent. The carefully carved layers of clothing culminate instead in a remarkably plain chasuble. This outer layer has been pulled up over the forearms to create crisp, V-shaped folds that expose a dalmatic visible at the figure’s knees and
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shins. This garment was often woven in white wool and decorated with silk edging along the bottom hem, suggested by the fine details that appear a few inches above Gottschalk’s feet. The two fringed forms hanging down from under the dalmatic represent the ends of his stola, a long, narrow band that would drape over the shoulders and reach almost to the ground. Finally, the last layer under the stola, the alb, falls in wonderfully carved tube folds above the bishop’s feet and wraps around the body, revealing a third central fold between his slippers. This simple garment was usually made from plain white cloth. These fine details, especially the delicate fringes of the stola, the ornately embroidered dalmatic hem, the softly wrinkled collar, and the thinly scalloped folds in the chasuble, lend a refined quality to the bishop’s attire. The elegance of the carving makes it difficult to imagine that its deviation from typical episcopal iconography was a mistake or that additional elements were painted rather than carved. Medieval sculpture is always open to the possibility or even likelihood that its original polychromy was later stripped or overcleaned, but nevertheless an overwhelming number of sculptures showing bishops—in stone and ivory, as well as coins and seals—present the details of the vestments carved or struck on their surfaces. As at Moissac, these include the decorated bands that typically suggest a pallium or ornate chasuble. Against this tradition, Gottschalk’s effigy seems almost perversely austere, and its remarkably well-preserved details offer no traces of a painter’s intervention. Bishops depicted without insignia are rare in Romanesque Germany. Examples include a miniature in the vita of Remaclus of Stavelot in Bamberg (ca. 1020), showing a bishop-saint without miter, pallium, or crozier: as in the Iburg effigy, the only marker of status is a book clasped in the left hand.39 The caption, Remaclus Episcopus, was added much later, as if to avoid any possible confusion caused by the austere garments. Closer to Bad Iburg in date and style are the images of bishops on the so-called Dom Tragaltar, a portable altar in Paderborn attributed to Roger of Helmarshausen and dated between 1120 and 1127 (figs. 38–41).40 Böhm cites the stylistic qualities of its
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Fig. 37 Saint Willibrord, in the gradual of the abbey of Echternach. Paris, BnF, lat. 10510, fol. 20v. Photo: BnF.
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Fig. 38 Dom Tragaltar. Erzbischöfliches Diözesanmuseum Paderborn. Photo © Erzbischöfliches Diözesanmuseum Paderborn (Ansgar Hoffmann).
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figures as additional evidence for dating the Bad Iburg effigy to the 1120s.41 My interest here is not only in style but in the recurring use of strikingly simple robes to depict bishops. This restraint is not true of all episcopal figures on the altar’s metalwork surfaces: for example, the standing bishop on its underside clearly holds a crozier in his left hand and wears a pallium. The early Christian bishop-saints Kilian and Liborius, framing the majestas Domini on the object’s side, are similarly marked with crozier and pallium, though all three lack miters. In contrast to these figures, however, the two bishops on the top surface are plainly clad. They are identified through inscriptions as recent, local figures: Meinwerk (ca. 975–1036; bishop after 1009) and Henry II of Werl (ca. 1050–1127, bishop after 1084). These smaller figures combine twisting, active gestures with an apparent lack of episcopal insignia to indicate lower status in comparison to the bishop-saints. Despite their turned shoulders, they display enough of their bodies to show simple chasubles, the embroidered hems of their dalmatics, and the fringed ends of their stolae. Henry has a crozier in his left hand, but Meinwerk provides a rare close comparison for the Gottschalk effigy because his rank is reflected in the text alone. Simple robes underscore the humility of both men in contrast to the saints Kilian and Liborius, constructing spiritual hierarchy through the selective inclusion and exclusion of signs. A similar use of regalia to signal rank appears in the lavish Parma Ildefonsus (ca. 1090–1100), one of only a small handful of books to survive from the scriptorium of Cluny.42 While the text itself offers a defense of the virginity of Mary, the images focus on its transmission from its author, Ildefonsus, the seventh-century bishop of Toledo, to its present iteration through copies made by scribes and presented to patrons. Bishops with the pallium appear regularly, as for example in the scene of the scribe Gomez presenting a codex to Bishop Godescalc. On one of its key pages, however, Ildefonsus
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kneels in plainer garb before the Virgin, who holds a codex in her hand as if graciously receiving his work. Given his status, Ildefonsus could have been depicted in episcopal robes like Godescalc, but his simple monastic habit is closer to the robes shown on Gomez. Meyer Schapiro noted this inconsistency in his classic 1964 study of the manuscript, and he suggested Ildefonsus was shown in the costume of a monk to act as an example for the brethren at Cluny.43 This choice not only linked the manuscript to its monastic context but also emphasized the humility of Ildefonsus before Mary. In both illuminations, monastic clothing is used to signal deference to a richly dressed spiritual authority. This use of clothes to demarcate internal hierarchies within an image cycle finds a few powerful parallels in other manuscripts, including the dedication cycle of the earlier Egbert Psalter (ca. 980). Egbert’s pallium is emphasized when he receives the manuscript from the simply dressed scribe Roudbrecht but obscured in the next opening, as he turns to offer it, in turn, to a resplendent Saint Peter.44 Such images offer competing evidence against the suggestion that missing attributes on medieval images of bishops were largely arbitrary: when viewed in context, it becomes clear that visual simplicity could be deployed to reflect a kind of virtuous modesty.45 Given that the high quality of the carving on the Iburg effigy makes its odd lack of insignia difficult to dismiss, a similar association with humility makes sense to explain its peculiarly understated quality. Such a reading, however, would require viewing the Gottschalk effigy as part of a larger program rather than as an image in isolation: the instances cited above, after all, appear in image cycles or complex programs where the simplicity of one bishop is contrasted with the ornate regalia of another. The Gottschalk effigy, however, was already removed from its intended context in the Middle Ages, possibly after the fire that damaged Iburg Abbey in 1349.46 There is no guarantee that the effigy was ever installed in relation to other images
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Fig. 39 Dom Tragaltar, lid. Erzbischöfliches Diözesanmuseum Paderborn. Photo © Erzbischöfliches Diözesanmuseum Paderborn (Ansgar Hoffmann).
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Fig. 40 Dom Tragaltar, detail of Bishop Henry of Werl. Erzbischöfliches Diözesanmuseum Paderborn. Photo © Erzbischöfliches Diö zesanmuseum Paderborn (Ansgar Hoffmann). Fig. 41 Dom Tragaltar, detail of Bishop Meinwerk. Erzbischöfliches Diözesanmuseum Paderborn. Photo © Erzbischöfliches Diö zesanmuseum Paderborn (Ansgar Hoffmann).
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at all, much less in a coordinated program like the cloister at Moissac. Instead we have a fragmentary picture of the abbey church and its relationships to the bishops of Osnabrück and the counts of Diepholz, two powerful local groups whose interests intertwined. It is from this picture that we may glean some context for the Iburg effigy. Although the diocese of Osnabrück had existed since the early ninth century, the fortified monastery on the Iburg was still a very new institution in Gottschalk’s time: it was founded in 1080, at the height of the Investiture Controversy, by Bishop Benno II (ca. 1020–1088).47 Unlike Gottschalk, who is himself a thinly documented figure, Benno II appears with relative frequency in sources from this period. He is known to have sided consistently with Henry IV against Pope Gregory VII, for which he was excommunicated in 1076 and again in 1080. These activities continued until Gregory died in 1085; it was around this same time that Benno retired to live the last years of his life as a monk at Bad Iburg. His vita, composed shortly after his death, was authored by Norbert, third abbot of the Iburg (d. 1117). Norbert was Benno’s contemporary and yet lived long enough to have known Gottschalk as well—indeed, it was during the latter’s tenure as bishop that Benno’s canonization was being promoted in Osnabrück.48 Benno’s pallium of fine Byzantine silk—a sign of his close ties to Rome before the outbreak of tensions between the pope and Henry IV—still survives in the Osnabrück cathedral treasury.49
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Norbert describes the dispute over possession of Benno’s body that took place shortly after the bishop’s death; this quarrel forced the abbot to arrange a hasty funeral before the corpse could be removed to Osnabrück for burial in the cathedral.50 Retaining the body was a significant achievement, and the grave likely remained a focal point of monastic memory well beyond the time when Gottschalk’s effigy was added to the abbey church. Its importance was underscored by the inscription on Benno’s epitaph, recorded by Norbert, which made explicit reference to burial in the place his “hope has built”: quis sim, lecturi, quod sum quandoque futuri / dicite praesul have, benno, perhenne vale. / quem mea spes struxit, locus hic mea funera luxit / te, Iuli, novies tres peragente dies (Who I may be, future readers, and what I am at the time, / Say: “Hail Bishop Benno, eternal farewell.” / This place, which my hope has built, mourned me in death, / When in you, July, nine times three days pass).51 The text references Benno’s dedication to the new abbey and ends with a numerical riddle revealing his date of death, 27 July, and incidentally confirms that the poem was written posthumously despite its familiar use of first person to address readers. The epitaph itself does not survive, but Norbert offers a useful comment about its appearance: he notes that “because it could not be of metal,” it was made of stone. This specification is surprising, given that metalwork epitaphs are scarcely known in the eleventh century, aside from a few plain lead tablets interred as grave goods. Perhaps a tradition of metal epitaphs was widespread but has since been lost, or perhaps Norbert was alluding to metalwork reliquaries as a nod to Benno’s potential canonization. Though the text was written soon after the Rudolf effigy was cast in Merseburg, it would be hard to imagine Norbert had that monument in mind, given Benno’s loyalty to Henry IV. In light of other surviving stone examples, it seems unlikely the epitaph held any figural decoration.52 A plain inscribed slab, perhaps like that of Abbot Ramwold of St. Emmeram in Regensburg (d. 1000), would seem more plausible.53 In contrast to the rather bland inscription written on Gottschalk’s effigy decades later, Benno’s epitaph recorded the specific achievement of the founding of the abbey and employed the language of memento mori. The existence of the epitaph, together with Benno’s powerful legacy at the Iburg, is a useful reminder that the first effigies were not necessarily made for donors or founders per se.54 If the goal had simply been to highlight a key figure from the past as inspiration for the present, Benno would be the logical choice. He had not only founded the Iburg but was also the most important recent bishop in the area; there are no indications that Gottschalk had a comparably noteworthy career. This contrast offers a partial answer to the vexing simplicity of the clothing on the effigy: the absent regalia might be read as a sign of humility, or even deference, before Benno’s achievements. In this regard the effigy echoes the images of Henry of Werl and Meinwerk on the portable altar in Paderborn and similar programs: omitted vestments could signify meekness before others who had a greater claim to saintliness and sacred memory. Still, the effigy itself, no matter how self-effacing its iconography, remains an object of undeniable prestige. No further effigies are known for bishops of Osnabrück before the thirteenth century, and Gottschalk is the only individual with a twelfth-century
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effigy in the cathedral or the abbey. The simple fact that he had been the most recent bishop before the war of 1118 to 1123 is not enough in itself to justify this honor. The inscription, however, offers a key reminder that the tomb memorialized not only the individual but also, by extension, his family. Its opening, nobilium nat(us) (noble- born), seems to acknowledge Gottschalk as the first bishop in the diocese born to an aristocratic family, albeit one that had only very recently risen to prominence. The hereditary lands of Diepholz were positioned along the border between the neighboring dioceses of Osnabrück and Minden. Among the few eleventh-century sources to mention the family is a note written between 1080 and 1088, during the later years of the episcopacy of Benno II, that describes how “Lady Gisela, a noble woman, with the consent and with the just praise of her family members and her brother Gottschalk,” gave generously to the diocese, including (suspiciously) lands that would later form the heart of the landed wealth of Diepholz.55 Gisela was the paternal aunt of the bishop depicted in the effigy; the Gottschalk named in the text was his father.56 The elder Gottschalk outlived his son, only to die in 1118 during the local war that took place after the bishop’s death. The fortunes of the family during the conflict of 1118 to 1123 are not documented in detail, but it is clear they were closely involved and suffered losses. The effigy may have been intended not only to commemorate Gottschalk the individual but also to cement the fragile ties between the diocese, the abbey, and a local aristocratic family after they had been deeply strained by the local crisis. Gottschalk, who had been appointed by Henry V but emerged as a supporter of the Saxons during various rebellions during his tenure as bishop, may have offered a palatable figure of reconciliation precisely because his own career was shaped by these same tensions.57 Even though the inscription emphasizes Gottschalk as the first noble bishop at Osnabrück, his lineage is hardly impressive given the sheer numbers of European bishops descended from royal or imperial households in this era.58 Carolingian and Ottonian emperors in particular had made a point of appointing their younger or illegitimate sons to politically significant dioceses, including Drogo of Metz (801–855), illegitimate son of Charlemagne; Brun of Cologne (953–965), brother of Otto the Great; and Wilhelm of Mainz (954–996), Otto’s illegitimate son. Pope Gregory V (972–999) was a son of Otto of Carinthia and thus great-grandson of Otto the Great and cousin to Otto III. In the early eleventh century, when most German ducal families boasted Carolingian, Liudolfing, or Conradine ancestry, nearly all of the imperial sons destined for priesthood became bishops.59 Herbert Zielinski shows how the dominance of bishops from the imperial family declined with the Salians, perhaps because they simply had fewer sons to spare for ecclesiastical office.60 It is not hard to imagine that the Investiture Controversy may have also had a chilling effect on such appointments. Nevertheless, by the twelfth century the tradition of the “imperial bishop” had long been established, and an influential or aristocratic connection remained the rule rather than the exception among German prelates. The early bishops of Osnabrück were of notably humble origins; Gottschalk represented a shift in prestige for the diocese, but only in a rather limited sense. In this context, the inscription identifying Gottschalk
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as “noble-born” may unintentionally reflect the nouveau riche status of the counts of Diepholz as ambitious but still insecure newcomers. This status makes it all the more remarkable that they secured not just one but two episcopal appointments for members of their family in a single generation: the bishop of Osnabrück and also his cousin and contemporary, a second Gottschalk of Diepholz, who was bishop of Minden (1105–12).61 The two appointments, both in dioceses in which the family held land, are probably the clearest markers of the family’s dramatic rise in fortune.62 This distinction was also a rare occurrence for the cathedral of Minden, where both Gottschalks had served as canons before becoming bishops. Zielinski observes a pattern in which a small set of cathedral schools, centers of enormous power from 1002 to 1125, trained a disproportionately large number of canons who later became bishops. The most dominant locales were Hildesheim (which produced thirty-six bishops in this period), Goslar (twenty-nine bishops, including Benno II of Osnabrück), Magdeburg (nineteen bishops), and Halberstadt (fifteen bishops).63 Smaller centers such as Hamburg-Bremen and Paderborn produced fewer bishops, and these were more likely to be elevated within their own diocese than outside it.64 Just five canons from Minden would secure episcopal appointments in this era, which includes the two Gottschalks of Diepholz. The one depicted in the Iburg effigy was also the only Minden canon to become bishop in a diocese outside Minden itself.65 These numbers suggest that his appointment was highly unusual and likely related to his family’s position within the two dioceses in question.66 These ties between the counts of Diepholz and the local diocese open new possibilities about the resonance between the Iburg effigy and an ivory from the Minden treasury (fig. 42), now in Berlin, that has long been accepted as a depiction of Sigebert of Minden and dated to his tenure as bishop (1022–36).67 Böhm notes that, despite its much earlier date, the ivory presents close parallels for the style and composition of the effigy.68 Both use shallow, attenuated relief to suggest the volume of the body and nested drapery to emphasize its slender proportions. Beyond merely reflecting the geographic proximity of Bad Iburg to Minden, these stylistic affinities may also be rooted in personal connections. Sigebert’s legacy must have been known to all young priests in the cathedral where he had been canon and bishop, and the ivory was likely even seen by Gottschalk as part of the binding of a liturgical manuscript. It shows Sigebert in a frontal pose, flanked symmetrically by four tonsured priests, smaller in scale, that present books with veiled hands and spread a cloth below his feet. The decorated band set over the bishop’s upper chest, showing two large round medallions with a fringed end of cloth hanging from each one, represents Sigebert’s well-documented rationale.69 Together with a miniature in an evangelistary fragment, also from Minden and now in Berlin, it is probably one of the two earliest depictions of a rationale (fig. 43).70 In their strikingly specific quality, both images offer an impression of meticulous fidelity to an existing garment, offering an unusual exception to the generalized images of vestments more commonly observed in this period. Both objects are drawn from a group of
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Fig. 42 Ivory of Bishop Sigebert of Minden, now the cover of the prayer book of Mary of Guelders. Berlin, SBB, Ms. germ. quart. 42. Photo: bpk Bildagentur / Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin / Ruth Schacht / Art Resource, New York. Fig. 43 Sigebert of Minden with a priest and a deacon, in an evangelistary fragment. Berlin, SBB, Ms. theol. lat. qu. 3, fragment. Photo: bpk Bildagentur / Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin / Art Resource, New York.
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manuscripts associated with Sigebert’s patronage, and both are thought to be portraits intended to showcase this prestigious vestment. Frontal and hieratic, the images also form a sharp point of contrast with a third portrayal in which the Minden bishop appears in a much plainer set of robes (fig. 44). The miniature is part of the image cycle of the Minden Sacramentary, also now in Berlin, and shows Sigebert standing before an altar to receive a chalice from Mary, who appears in the guise of Ecclesia triumphans.71 Remarkably, there would be no way to identify the figure as a bishop, much less as Sigebert specifically, without the framing inscription that addresses him by name. It reads, “Take, Sigebert, the sacred gift of perpetual life,” and it is arranged so the name appears in the upper corner behind his
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Fig. 44 Sigebert of Minden at the altar, in the Minden Sacramentary. Berlin, SBB, Ms. theol. lat. fol. 2, fol. 9r. Photo: bpk Bildagentur / Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin / Art Resource, New York.
image.72 The audacity of the page, with Sigebert shown in delicate slippers standing face to face with Mary, is mitigated by the modest omission of episcopal regalia. The ivory, which likely adorned the cover of this same sacramentary, offers a strong point of contrast. Images of Sigebert thus adhere to a strict sartorial hierarchy, with magnificent regalia in the iconic portraits but, conversely, simple robes when the bishop appears in proximity to a figure of greater spiritual rank. Sigebert’s images show an intense engagement with divine presence that traces back to some of the most stunning works of an earlier generation, including the presentation images in the Precious Gospels of Bernward of Hildesheim (ca. 1015) and the Uta Codex (ca. 1025).73 These older manuscripts, however, took great care to separate
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the bishop and the abbess from the enthroned Madonna. Bernward is shown in a distinct space, on a different page from Mary, his marvelous robes encasing his body and emphatically presenting the whole opening as a formal liturgical drama (fig. 45).74 Uta appears in much closer proximity to the Madonna in her codex, gazing upward from a position at her feet, but the abbess appears in a dove-gray habit without a crown, her body unframed, in contrast to the holy figures in their own medallion-like enclosures all around her.75 Even accounting for the golden book in her hands, its upper edge carefully aligned with the golden armature of the page, Uta’s close proximity to sacred presence is mitigated by the visual strategies that distinguish her place within an intricate spiritual hierarchy. In this, the imagery parallels the bishops on the Paderborn portable altar, made a century later, or the images of the Parma Ildefonsus and the Egbert Psalter, suggesting that simplicity, no less than its opposite, could be deployed to avoid erosion of the hierarchies that defined the visualization of sacred space. Even so, the directness with which Sigebert meets Mary’s gaze in the Minden Sacramentary is almost breathtaking. In harmonizing his clothing with hers and avoiding fancy vestments or insignia that could compete with her helmet and banner, the artist conceptualized an austere and yet daring liturgical portrait that speaks almost paradoxically to both the bishop’s humility and his extraordinarily intrepid piety. It is tempting to think that the makers of the Gottschalk effigy knew the Minden manuscript and used its styles and strategies to inform the making of the monument. Even if the relationship is not quite so direct, the difference is a matter of degrees; the objects in the Minden treasury still belong to the same world as the effigy, simultaneously advocating for a bishop’s power and yet signaling his ultimate humility. While Sigebert’s manuscripts are believed to be the commissions of the bishop himself and thus part of his own conscious self-memorialization, the Gottschalk effigy belongs instead to the nascent tradition of the funerary effigy. Like the examples before it in Moissac, Merseburg, and Schaffhausen, it is a wholly posthumous invention, rooted in a time of civil unrest. As is also evident in other German examples, the period was shaped by the Investiture Controversy and the ensuing crises of authority. Even though Osnabrück sided with Henry IV against Rudolf during the Great Saxon Revolt itself, Gottschalk’s effigy employs similar tactics in responding to the war’s fallout a generation later: it, too, amplifies formats and themes from the treasury in conceptualizing monumental sculpture in bold new terms. Gottschalk of Diepholz stood at the intersection of three communities whose interests aligned: a family working to retain recently acquired prominence, the bishops of Osnabrück, and the monks of Bad Iburg. It remains difficult to isolate any of these three groups as the particular patrons of the effigy because the visualization of Gottschalk in the cloister of Bad Iburg in the period from 1120 to 1130 suited the political interests of all three. In its deference to Benno II, the body of Gottschalk seems to acknowledge the greater significance of his predecessor, yet he also adds his presence to the growing legacy of the Iburg itself and cements ties to the bishops of Osnabrück as well as to a powerful local family. It could even be suggested that, even though
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neither Gottschalk nor the counts of Diepholz could be considered “founders” at Bad Iburg, they did represent its new hopes of an aristocratic identity. In this, the apparent humility of the bishop’s clothing might be related to another, even more fundamental point of tension between the body itself, the new prestige of the counts of Diepholz, and the sudden ennobling of the bishops of Osnabrück in their monastic residence, just one generation after the founder had staked his political fortunes on choosing imperial power over the distant authority of Rome.
Fig. 45 Bernward of Hildesheim at the altar, in the Precious Gospels of Bernward of Hildesheim. Dommuseum Hildesheim, DS 18, fols. 16v–17r. Photo courtesy of Dommuseum Hildesheim.
Widukind of Saxony in Enger Few medieval warlords can boast as romantic a posthumous reputation as Widukind of Saxony, the eighth-century leader of the pagan resistance against Charlemagne, whose surrender in 785 marked a key milestone for the expansion of the Frankish Empire.76 Though the historical Widukind was likely disgraced after this point and probably died as an exile in a distant monastery, by the late tenth century he was recognized as an ancestor of Mathilda, wife of Henry the Fowler and mother of Otto the Great.77 This shift led to a series of anachronistic rehabilitations of Widukind’s legacy, which gradually transformed the defeated pagan warrior into a triumphant Christian king of the medieval imagination. His position was commemorated in a plaster effigy dated between 1120 and 1130 that is still housed in the collegiate church of St. Dionysus in
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Enger (Westphalia), deep in the traditional Saxon heartland (color plate 9).78 Though the figure is little known today, it played an important role in early studies of German sculpture—most notably in the writings of Panofsky—and was reproduced in prominent cast collections in European museums, often alongside Rudolf ’s Merseburg effigy.79 In recent years the plexiglass that protects the original Widukind sculpture has made it challenging to photograph, which is why some of the best pictures available today are, unfortunately, taken from casts (fig. 46). The transformation from pagan outcast to Christian hero has thus long been seen as pivotal for understanding Widukind’s effigy; my goal in this section, however, is to situate the sculpture more precisely within its greater historical arc.80 Sources for Widukind written during his lifetime are sparse, especially compared to the more frequent mentions of his name in later medieval texts.81 He is first noted five years after the start of the Saxon-Frankish wars, already leading Saxon opposition to the growing Frankish empire. He fought for nine years until his eventual defeat; soon after, in 785, he was baptized at Attigny. One source names Charlemagne as his godfather; another mentions Charlemagne as the sponsor of a three-day celebration. Though such reports can neither be authenticated nor entirely trusted, their proliferation suggests that the Franks were not content with mere conquest, aiming instead at conversion and assimilation. Indeed, within a few generations the successful integration of the Saxon aristocracy into high medieval society is visible in the many elite Westphalian families who claimed descent from Widukind. For example, the translation of the relics of Saint Alexander to the abbey of Wildeshausen in 865 was recorded by the monks Rudolf and Meginhardt from Fulda, who cited Walbert, a grandson of Widukind, as their patron.82 Mathilda’s claim to Widukind as an ancestor was almost certainly part of what made her an attractive bride for Henry the Fowler, along with her hereditary claims to significant lands in the area around Enger. Through this union, and the subsequent rise of their son Otto the Great, Widukind’s descendants came to rule the new empire less than two centuries after his defeat. The resulting revival of his memory reflects Widukind’s enduring role in the historical self-definition of the new Saxon nobility. With the extinction of the Carolingian line in the East and the subsequent rise of the Ottonians, Widukind’s position as a founding father would eventually affirm the right of his line to hereditary rule. Despite his growing importance, Widukind’s pagan roots were not forgotten in the tenth and eleventh centuries. As Gerd Althoff demonstrates, the name Widukind was rare in this period and only documented within this family line. Althoff shows how several male descendants who carried Widukind’s name were destined to take monastic vows.83 This link may reflect penance on the part of the family: to atone for the pagan roots of their ancestor, younger sons were given this name before taking vows and entering a celibate life. Althoff also notes the haunting presence of a certain Widukind on the Reichenau in the early ninth century, who lived as a monk for more than three decades without ever being promoted to priesthood. Although the thin
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Fig. 46 Effigy of Widukind of Saxony (plaster cast), current location unknown. Photo: Foto Marburg / Art Resource, New York.
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sources make a definitive identification impossible, Althoff’s arguments invite the conclusion that this monk was none other than the great Saxon warlord himself, banished from his homeland and living out his days in monastic confinement in the distant South. If this is indeed the case, then the Enger effigy takes on a more complicated relationship to Widukind’s body, acting either as a cenotaph or perhaps as an attempt to evoke or invent a grave where none existed (or to see the tomb of Widukind in the burial of some other forgotten nobleman). Widukind’s historical connections to Enger itself are thin, at best, and the archeological record is of little help in establishing his bodily presence. Excavations have uncovered three early medieval burials at the site, but none seems to be a likely match for the defeated Saxon warrior.84 The neo-Gothic collegiate church at the site today still retains some twelfth-century sculpture (most notably two stone tympana, in addition to the plaster effigy), but the original fabric of the church has largely been lost. Enger’s rich eighth-century reliquary is now in Berlin, along with other highlights from its treasury (fig. 47); the reliquary, however, is thought to have been a donation from Queen Mathilda rather than from Widukind himself. It is only in the twelfth century, around the time that the effigy was made, that Enger claimed Widukind as its founder. The most plausible reconstruction, therefore, is that Queen Mathilda visited the area in the tenth century and gave a lavish endowment to Saint Dionysus in honor of her ancestral line. Later, probably in the twelfth century, the combination of early medieval reliquaries in the treasury and a long-cherished link to the Saxon dynasty inspired embellishment of the historical record, and the new narrative that the church had been founded by Widukind himself was reified through his presence in the form of a plaster effigy. What is most striking about this chronology is that the last Salian emperor was replaced by the Supplinburg emperor Lothair III in 1125 and, in 1127, he would face a challenge from the Hohenstaufen Conrad III, who eventually became king in 1138. Just as the Salians could lay claim to Ottonian ancestry through the line of Luitgarde (932–953), daughter of Otto the Great, the Hohenstaufen emperors were descended from Agnes (1072–1143), daughter of the Salian Henry IV. For the collegiate church at Enger, the installation of a Widukind monument in the 1120s thus affirmed threads of continuity in a time of political change, anachronistically claiming and visualizing the common ancestor of these successive dynasties as an ideal embodiment of sacred kingship. The Widukind effigy is still preserved in the church at Enger, where it lies supine over the lid of an early modern sarcophagus. The current ensemble, datable to the eighteenth century, frames the twelfth-century effigy with Latin inscriptions that may have been copied or otherwise derived from the original monument. The date of these texts and their relationship with the effigy, however, remains uncertain, and I have therefore regretfully set them aside for the present discussion.85 Although the surfaces of the sculpture have weathered over time, the object as a whole is intact except for two columns, one to either side of the figure, which have been cut away. This removal must have been a deliberate choice, as it is difficult to imagine any accidental
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damage to the columns that would have left the effigy unscathed. Such a drastic intervention suggests that the effigy was moved from a very different context at the moment when it was repurposed as the lid of the early modern sarcophagus. It may be conjectured that, much like the figures from Quedlinburg discussed in the next chapter, the Widukind effigy was once set upright against a wall, with its framing columns originally having an effect like those that flank Durand of Moissac, integrating the figure in an architectural context. The eighteenth-century patrons of the new monument probably reused the sculpture in recognition of its age but viewed the columns as extraneous to its intended purpose. An upright installation, imagined along the lines of Moissac and Gernrode (also in the next chapter), changes the impact of the sculpture considerably. What maintains its status as an effigy, however, is its essential function of animating and activating the presence of the dead at a site that claimed, or wished to claim, the individual body in question. Widukind, shown as a standing figure with crown and scepter, had special meaning at Enger; the addition of his effigy either compensated for his bodily absence or else attempted to assert his (almost certainly invented) presence. The sculpture of Widukind has been noted for its resemblance to the bronze effigy of Rudolf of Swabia, reflecting a shared use of Romanesque conventions for the iconography of ideal kingship. The similarities are stronger in frontal photographs than in first-hand observation; a single vantage point emphasizes their crowns and scepters while drawing attention to the analogous contours of their respective cloaks. Seen in three dimensions, the two sculptures are strikingly different. While the Merseburg effigy is defined by the smooth, shallow planes of delicately cast bronze, Widukind’s plaster monument is comparatively rough and thick. The sensitively chased details of the Rudolf monument suggest the close scrutiny of wealthy patrons, whereas Widukind’s heavy, bulging monument, with its flat body and puffy-eyed face, suggests the opposite. The latter monument cannot be dismissed as merely “provincial” in style, however, given that the sculpture’s surface is heavily abraded and its presumed original polychromy has been lost. The flaking late-medieval paint of its current state does not enhance its appearance, and its unfortunate location beneath a glass hood behind the
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Fig. 47 Enger reliquary. Kunstgewerbemuseum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. Photo © Genevra Kornbluth.
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altar in the small church at Enger is equally dampening to its visual appeal. The formal differences between the two effigies are in part the result of different circumstances; unlike Merseburg, Enger was far removed from the center points of crisis during the Great Saxon Revolt and from any natural resources that compare to the rich mines of the Rammelsberg. The sculptures also reflect key differences in media and installation: one a metalwork portrait on the floor, the other figure in a material—plaster—that was usually placed against a wall.86 The most striking similarities between the two men are found not in the formal qualities of their monuments but rather in their biographies: both were sympathetic underdogs in momentous wars, and both of their military failures were later recast as larger, spiritual triumphs by partisan supporters. Here is another ruler whose losses would be retooled as part of a larger history of salvation and whose memory was tinged with both embarrassment and praise. While Rudolf’s quasi-saintly commemoration in Merseburg may point to the local bishop’s support of the Saxon cause, the monument at Enger is evidence of a local desire to strengthen claims to Widukind as founder, thus adding to the history of the local church as well as to Widukind’s rehabilitation in Saxon cultural memory. With the rise of Widukind’s later descendants and the gradual wane of the stigma attached to his name, the new format of the effigy would have been the ideal medium to represent the defeated warrior as a successful king. The crooked middle finger on Widukind’s proper right hand is a curious feature on an otherwise conventional royal image and deserves some comment here. The hand is splayed over the chest, and the strange middle finger arches prominently across the index finger toward the thumb. The result is a peculiar gesture that resists easy iconographic definition; comparisons are difficult to find, and yet the oddness of the hand is impossible to ignore. It seems derived from an ancient gesture for speech, normally represented as the middle finger bent to touch the thumb, but the gap between the fingertips seems to deviate deliberately from this convention. Sibille Mozer-Petković suggests this variant might be a sign for the healing arts (an attractive but ultimately unsubstantiated thesis), perhaps borrowed from Byzantine sources. 87 A study co-authored by Bernd Herrmann, Hedwig Röckelein, and Susanne Hummel proposes that the historical Widukind of the ninth century may have actually had a crooked middle finger, pointing to a deformed hand of a body excavated from the church at Enger as evidence.88 Linking the hand to the Saxon warlord on the basis of DNA testing is difficult at best; while the graves at Enger are roughly contemporaneous to Widukind’s lifetime, it is important to remember, as Böhm rightly points out, that the first textual assertion that Widukind’s body was buried there does not appear until 1216.89 Even if it could be broadly established that the excavated skeletons include Widukind’s bones, or bones that were considered his in the Middle Ages, it is still difficult to imagine a physical deformity such as a bent finger being commemorated, much less celebrated, in an early twelfth-century portrait. Herrmann, Röckelein, and Hummel offer the provocative solution that the idiosyncratic depiction may have been an attempt to meld a reference to an actual bent finger with an iconographic
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detail associated with speech and reason—and, therefore, with signs of good leadership; these more traditionally art-historical aspects of their argument are the more convincing.90 Rather than reading the peculiar gesture as a reference to Widukind’s authority or a potential deformity in his mortal body, I see the hand as an evocation of his fraught legacy of resistance, conversion, and eventual rehabilitation. Its contours follow the same shape as a hand that grasps the orb of the world, a gesture associated with kings and Christ, particularly in the maiestas Domini pages of Carolingian Gospel books.91 Widukind’s open fingertips on the effigy seem to emphasize the absence of such an orb, or the incompleteness of his authority. A similar sense of ambiguity is evident in a slightly later twelfth-century manuscript in Engelberg, Switzerland, that shows the prophet Jeremiah making the same gesture as he confronts a typological depiction of Christ.92 In the text below, Jeremiah’s first words are “Lord God: behold, I cannot speak.”93 Here the open fingers signal the paradox of Jeremiah’s self-declaration of muteness: he speaks of an inability to speak. Earlier in the same manuscript, a finely dressed figure makes the same gesture to open the Book of Ruth; perhaps this man is the dispossessed Elimelech, displaced by famine and silenced by untimely death.94 These parallels are not intended to support a narrowly defined iconography for the open-fingered gesture but rather to suggest that it offered visual cues of frustration or aspiration. Appearing on the effigy, the gesture may allude to Widukind’s biography as it was reimagined amid the shifting political tides of the early twelfth century. Further evidence, also geographically distant but in a shared medium, can be gleaned from the Milan ciborium (fig. 48).95 This complex object, with fourth-century columns bearing a tenth-century superstructure, features large plaster reliefs that most likely date to the second half of the tenth century. Its sculptures include a frontal, full-figure representation of Saint Ambrose, carrying an unidentified object in his left hand and raising his right hand in a gesture much like the Widukind effigy, albeit in the style typical of its earlier date. Ambrose’s thumbs and forefingers are raised and pressed against his body in the same manner; the middle finger traces a similar arc and crosses over the forefinger in the same spot; even the sleeve of the figure’s robes fall away from the wrist at the same angle. The gestures are not quite identical: Ambrose bends his fourth finger along with the third, his palm and wrist showing a closer observation of the anatomy of a hand, and the curve of the third and fourth fingers seem somewhat more naturalistic than the stiffer, boneless hand of Widukind. These differences, however, are consistent with the broader stylistic distinctions between the two sculptures; indeed, the gap between the softly modeled Milan figures and the abrupt, staring eyes and frowning lips of the Widukind effigy makes the resonance of their gesturing hands all the more notable. Despite their geographical distance and temporal divide, the two sculptures share more in common with each other than might be thought at first glance. The Widukind effigy and the figure of Ambrose on the Milan ciborium are both made of hard plaster on a monumental scale; both sculptures celebrate the presence of a significant local figure who lived many generations before
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Fig. 48 Saints Ambrose, Gervase, and Protase with two Benedictine monks, on the ciborium of Sant’Ambrogio, Milan. Photo: Scala / Art Resource, New York.
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but continued to be important to the cultural memory of the place where he had lived; and both objects present the figure to a communal audience through the format of a large-scale figural relief. The raised hand of Ambrose, like the hand of a Christ in majesty, carries a benedictional quality. Its significance, however, need not be so narrowly defined. The bent fingers of the saint, framed by the flat hands of Gervase and Protase to either side and the supplicant hands of the monks below, provide a potent visual wrinkle in a composition of smooth and static forms. They speak of arrested motion, appearing as if they were about to come together in a gesture of speaking, to reach down and accept the proffered model of the church, to extend toward the mysterious sacral object in the saint’s left hand, or perhaps to straighten toward the viewer to become a gesture of greeting. The flex of the fingers becomes a suggestive image that is not easily resolved, and its appeal is reinforced by the four figures around Saint Ambrose, who gaze not toward his eyes but rather to his hands. Coded, hieratic, stiff, and frontal, the saintly imago finds animation only in the curve of the fingers. Returning to Widukind’s effigy,
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context and identity have changed, but the dynamic hand and its bent finger remain a site of suggested movement. The flexed middle finger resonates with gestures of speech and benediction without conforming to any single, specific model. In resisting iconographic norms, the arch of the finger breaks the static quality of the abstracted body by introducing motion through an almost arbitrary but still deliberately orchestrated sign of plasticity. Here, too, a comparison with the effigy of Rudolf of Swabia proves useful. The Widukind sculpture, no matter how carefully painted, could never have matched Rudolf ’s shining surface in its richness; the heavy forms of Widukind’s body, the bunched folds of his mantle, and the large shoes on his feet also seem clumsy next to the Merseburg figure.96 The plaster effigy relies upon contours rather than volumes to form its details, which explains why the bent finger is so eye-catching and why it is one of the sculpture’s few details to truly recall Merseburg in the gracefulness of its form. Rudolf’s fingers are also depicted as long and delicate, but their curves and arches serve as framing devices for the familiar signs they contain: the scepter and orb of the good medieval king. This formula is nowhere better established in the eleventh century than in the golden scabbard of the Reichsschwert in the Vienna treasury (see fig. 19, color plate 1).97 Each of the kings adorning the scabbard holds the orb and scepter, yet each figure presents his insignia to the viewer with a different gesture: sometimes the orb is in the right hand, sometimes the left; sometimes the scepter is held perpendicular to the ground, sometimes slung diagonally across the shoulder; sometimes the king holds a staff instead. The other signs of kingship—the crowns, rich mantles, and boots with spurs—remain stable, as do the unchanging frontal faces and bodies of the kings. These wonderfully consistent royal bodies present a constant tension with the changing display of arms, hands, orbs, and scepters. As with Saint Ambrose, it is the free play of the hands that gives a kind of life to the otherwise immobile royal figures. As variations on a theme, the figures on the Reichsschwert scabbard model the iconography of kingship that was common in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Though the accepted image of kingship was open to countless variations, certain points seem consistent. Hands generally carried attributes of kingship, usually an orb and scepter. Empty hands could conversely become attributes when used for gestures of command or speech, but the expressive play of Widukind’s bent finger resists this familiar iconographic model and highlights the emptiness of his hand instead. Fingers in Romanesque art usually bend to grasp tangible things, like the orb held by Christ in countless depictions or the key of Saint Peter in the Moissac cloister, carefully framed by the saint’s distorted fingers. At Enger, the arc of the finger may suggest all that is missing: the shape of the orb, the action of speech, the power that Widukind lost. Its evocative emptiness ultimately inverts the fullness of his other hand, which grasps the scepter through the mantle to emphasize the sanctity of kingship, denied to Widukind in life but redeemed through his Saxon descendants. Widukind’s effigy appeared at just the moment when the rule of his descendants through Mathilda—the Ottonians and their Salian successors—was transitioning to
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a new chapter with the rise of the Hohenstaufen dynasty. A crowned monument to Widukind honored this lineage, and by extension the heritage of the Westphalian Saxons, while also drawing attention to his deep ties to Enger. Instead of leaving out the other, more problematic aspects of Widukind’s legacy, however, my reading of the monument insists that early audiences were not ignorant of their own history and remained attentive to the complexity of Widukind’s status even as they embraced images that recalled the larger questions concerning kingship that had been raised by the Investiture Controversy. Beyond merely reimagining Widukind, the sculpture actively engages with the ongoing rehabilitation of Saxon history. It reinvents Widukind as a good king, but its eloquent, empty hand hints that this was, at best, a poetic fiction. Widukind is thus given a muted celebration, promoting Saxon rulers without quite forgetting the ambiguous roots of their power in the conversion, but also the resistance, of their defeated pagan forebears.
Conclusion
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Vastly different from Rudolf’s strange and singular effigy, the sculptures in this chapter present figures whose biographies fit more neatly into general expectations for medieval society. The counts of Nellenburg and Diepholz were local aristocrats and donors who supported institutions in Schaffhausen and Osnabrück, respectively; their effigies commemorated not only individual bodies but also the larger patterns of patronage through which their family networks had become intertwined with the interests of the church. Widukind of Saxony, meanwhile, may have suffered grave defeat in his own lifetime, but by the twelfth century the success of his family line had lent a kind of glamor to his legacy, leaving the collegiate church in Enger eager to claim his body in the image of a normative medieval king. All three sites present effigies carved with architectural frames that visually connected the bodies to the surrounding monastic institutions that housed them, as if claiming the past as a direct anchor for the present. So forceful is their visual rhetoric of success that it is only upon careful consideration that the seeds of dissent accompanying each monument become evident and even begin to resonate with the themes of Rudolf ’s monument in Merseburg: they, too, emerge in contexts of loss, upheaval, and political disappointment. Despite great differences in the particulars of the three sites, what is so striking about their combination is not that the individual controversies informing these effigies were identical but rather that each local crisis seems to have prompted recourse to the effigy as a suitable format for a particular kind of visual intervention. In each case, circumstances invited renewed attention to the bodies of the dead, and full-figure sculptures were used to reimagine and reconfigure the embodied past in relation to the changing needs of present, living communities. Less precious and less dazzling than their metalwork counterparts, the monuments in this chapter appear almost commonplace compared to the golden surface
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and inlaid eyes of the Rudolf effigy or the virtuoso enamel epitaph in Le Mans. Still, the stone and plaster sculptures in this chapter, like the finely carved marble slab of Durand of Moissac, must have been impressive monuments in their own time—not only for the visual impact of their execution but also for the audacious decision to memorialize individuals whose lives and legacies were intimately connected to local history. The muddled archeological picture leaves uncertainties about whether all of these figures were strictly defined as funerary monuments in their own time, but even if intended for display in a space apart from the corpse, each monument engages with the historical presence and the expected eschatological return of the people in question. These sculptural bodies circumscribed the spaces of the living with durable bodies for the dead, and in this way they bridged past and present to create a unified community in time. Such themes are also evident in the next chapter but extend from the dynastic tensions of ruling families to the rarified atmosphere of elite convents and the very different experiences of the aristocratic women who lived there.
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Canonesses
4
It comes as no great surprise to historians of the Ottonian Empire that the aristocratic convent of St. Servatius in Quedlinburg should house the earliest surviving group of medieval effigies depicting women (fig. 49, color plates 10–12). The abbey had been led by the daughters and sisters of Ottonian emperors since its founding in the tenth century, and it ranked alongside Essen and Gandersheim as one of the most prestigious centers of female monasticism in Europe.1 In 1129 the newly rebuilt church was reconsecrated, almost fifty years after the catastrophic fire that had heavily damaged the structure in 1070.2 Close similarities between the patterns framing the three Romanesque effigies of St. Servatius and the architectural ornament of the current building suggests they once formed part of the same sculptural program that was probably completed by the 1129 consecration.3 The Quedlinburg effigies can thus be dated as roughly contemporary to the lost effigies of Ita, Hedwig, and Irmentrud at Schaffhausen, but they possess three essential differences. First, the Schaffhausen group included two men, whereas the Quedlinburg effigies show only women; second, the Quedlinburg group was defined by monastic affiliation over family ties (though it is true that the categories of kinship and spiritual service are intertwined at both sites); and third, the Quedlinburg figures were cast in hard plaster and not carved in stone. The first two points can be chalked up to the fact that the Quedlinburg effigies commemorated unmarried canonesses and were made to be encountered within the rarified space of an elite convent. The last observation, however, is more difficult to explain. Given the dazzling contents of the Quedlinburg treasury and the use of stone sculpture elsewhere at the same site, the fact that the figures were made of plaster cannot be tied to practical concerns about cost or availability. It seems instead to have been a medium valued for its expressive possibilities, accounting for many of the most virtuosic sculptural programs of the twelfth century and particularly prominent in Germany’s Harz region.
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Fig. 49 Effigies of Abbesses Adelheid, Beatrix, and Adelheid II, St. Servatius, Quedlinburg. Photo courtesy of the Archiv der Bau- und Kunstdenkmalpflege, Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie Sachsen-Anhalt, Halle (Saale).
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In this chapter, my goal is to provide a fuller account of the known figural effigies made for monastic women in the early twelfth century. I pay particular attention to Quedlinburg due to the outstanding position of this site not only within the history of women in medieval art, or even in the history of the tomb effigy, but also in the much larger history of monumental sculpture in the commemoration of local figures from the recent past. The closely related figures at Gernrode and Drübeck in this section further reflect the richness of the surviving sculptural programs in Germany’s Harz region, particularly among convents (or rather, Damenstiften [women’s foundations] established for aristocratic canonesses), and the comparisons also showcase the use of hard plaster as a sculptural material. The emergence of these monuments, all dated to the first half of the twelfth century, in close proximity to one another presents a powerful opportunity to reconsider the use of this fragile and highly expressive material for durable monuments. Seen within the surviving corpus of Romanesque plaster sculpture, the Quedlinburg effigies in particular present some vexing stylistic questions. Their bodies are formed with simple geometric shapes, most evident in their columnar legs and sloping shoulders. Drapery folds and anatomical details are expressed less through modeling than through sharp lines, incised over the surfaces of the three sculptures. These contours run mostly parallel over the heavy robes that enclose the figures, nesting in V-folds over
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their shins and swirling around their stomachs, creating linear patterns more familiar from manuscripts than sculpture.4 The enigmatic woman on the west wall of the Holy Sepulchre in Gernrode, discussed below, bears similar lines to define the drapery but shies away from the stark abstraction of the Quedlinburg sculptures by limiting its use of surface incisions and relying on the swelling of volumes to define mass. The heads, too, are different; where the Quedlinburg women are given simple, masklike features with wide, staring eyes, the face at Gernrode presents softer contours, and its head tilts downward in a more naturalistic nod. Even the hands are gentler and more expressive at Gernrode, in direct contrast to the stiff, syncopated gestures of the Quedlinburg women, who lift and press their decorated books to their chests. These differences remain difficult to explain; they reflect the tension between mimesis and abstraction that inflects art across the Middle Ages. The traditional connoisseur’s impulse to privilege the former as “sophisticated” and dismiss the latter as “naïve” was underscored by Bauch’s assessment in 1976: “The disposition of the hands differs, but everything else [in the Quedlinburg effigies] has been copied [from the Gernrode figure]. Thus the significantly constructed sculpture at Gernrode has been oversimplified and misunderstood, not by sculptors in fact, but rather by stonemasons. . . . So one cannot truly speak of a ‘change in style’ here, but rather only of the artisanal coarsening of an outstanding model.”5 The practice of art history has changed considerably in the past forty years, and it is no longer possible to project anachronistic distinctions onto medieval “sculptors” and “stonemasons” or to read the monuments through a primary lens of distinguishing models from copies. It is also quite difficult to assert that a notable distortion of the sculpted body was purely a matter of “artisanal coarsening” and not the very same Stilwandel (change in style) that Bauch so readily rejected. Nevertheless, even if the meaning of these qualitative changes is assessed differently today, Bauch’s distinction still requires a thoughtful response. Style is not a peripheral issue; rather, it is central to the formation of the Quedlinburg effigies. The stakes in claiming them as “sculpture” rather than “masonry” are high because this distinction—meaningless though it may be as a means of defining the craftsmen who made the objects—brings with it the question of whether the monument can be assessed seriously as a thoughtful, carefully planned commentary on relationships between the living and the dead and between the future and the past, within the elite space of St. Servatius. As I contend in the discussion below, the sheer ambition of the sculptures, their inscriptions, and their place within the visual program of the church makes it virtually impossible to see anything “coarse” or unintended in their appearance. Instead, the sculptures are defined by their heightened abstraction, and their reliance on surface effects and geometric simplification should be read in dialogue with the greater questions of death and resurrection that are the central concerns of the monuments themselves. Along with the figure of Widukind of Saxony, the works in this chapter offer an opportunity to focus on plaster effigies. Hard plaster, or stucco, was used for some of the most stylistically daring and technically accomplished sculptural programs of Romanesque Germany.6 Though the finished material shares many characteristics
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with stone and could be mistaken for stone at a glance, the physical properties of plaster and the techniques with which it was formed are quite different. Plaster can be pressed or poured into molds when soft and chased for fine details after hardening, and its durable surfaces and relatively low density made it ideal for mural sculpture. Recent excavations at sites including Corvey and Reims suggest that plaster was in continuous use for church decorations from at least the Carolingian period. Further south in Italy, the spectacular ninth-century Madonna in Brescia and the early ensemble of six enigmatic women at Cividale del Friuli offer evidence that the Carolingians may have adopted the medium from their Lombard rivals, and the tenth-century ciborium of Sant’Ambrogio in Milan, discussed in the previous chapter, suggests that the material was also favored under the Ottonians.7 Substantial plaster programs from the eleventh and twelfth centuries also survive in the southern passes of the Alps; among the most important are the significant but insecurely dated materials at St. Johann in Müstair, which include a relief of the Baptism of Christ (probably late eleventh century), a standing emperor often identified with Charlemagne (twelfth century), and the fragmentary but beautiful angels in the vaults of the Ulrichskapelle in the same complex (eleventh century).8 By the late twelfth century, plaster had taken a prominent position in some of the most important sites within one hundred kilometers of Quedlinburg, including the choir screens at St. Michael’s in Hildesheim (1190s) and the Liebfrauenkirche in Halberstadt (ca. 1200), as well as the balustrade from the abbey church at Gröningen in the Harz, which is now housed in Berlin (ca. 1150–60). Despite the survival of these major monuments from the eighth through early thirteenth centuries, few studies have focused on medieval plaster compared to other media.9 This deficit may be due in part to the fact that the monuments tend to be reliefs rather than freestanding sculptures and are thus only rarely collected by museums. There is also a lingering tendency to focus on “traditional” materials of sculpture and to privilege materials either taken from treasuries or with clear links to classical antecedents, reinforcing the historiographic focus on ivory, bronze, and marble. Notable exceptions include Waldemar Grzimek’s 1975 catalogue as well as numerous, more recent technical studies.10 Nevertheless, the shrugging of shoulders implicit in Bauch’s assessment of Quedlinburg’s pathbreaking effigies makes all too clear the extent to which plaster has been open to suspicions of low quality as “faux” stone, particularly when the technique was applied in highly abstracted form. The thin historical record has left an unclear path to establish the monetary value of plaster in relation to stone or other media; even if such metrics were available, the relative cost of materials, local or imported, would have varied wildly depending on geography, political circumstances, and shifting trade routes. It is therefore difficult to assume that plaster was typically a cost-saving alternative to stone or that the preference was rooted in economic factors rather than particular advantages of the material itself. In fact, the greatest concentration of programs of Romanesque plaster appears in contexts where it is difficult to imagine much penny-pinching: it is impossible to overstate the richness of the treasuries at sites like Milan, Hildesheim, or Halberstadt.
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The Quedlinburg and Gernrode sculptures that Bauch compared were made for abbeys with lavish endowments and were not formed in isolation but rather as figural elements within extravagant visual programs. At Gernrode, the sophisticated handling of the lone female figure stands in dialogue with the rest of the Holy Sepulchre composition, including the lush framing foliage of the western wall, which is inhabited by griffons, birds, and humans carved in a markedly different style from the standing woman. The Quedlinburg figures have been removed from their original installation, but a notable diversity of styles can also be observed at St. Servatius, even among the various human, animal, and plant motifs that are all associated with the reconsecration of 1129. These ambitious programs at both sites underscore the difficulty of dismissing stylistic difference as the mere ineptitude of poorly trained masons. Further, the prestige of plaster for these convents—both with proud ties to the Ottonian past—is attested by the survival of the Milan ciborium in particular. Set on porphyry columns over the great golden altar by Wolvinius in the crossing of Sant’Ambrogio, which is among the most prestigious sites anywhere in the Ottonian Empire, the ciborium could hardly be called “cheap” in its use of plaster. It seems more likely that the physical properties of plaster—malleable and yet durable, easily obtained and yet long-lasting—dictated the choice of the material. This reasoning is likely to have been valid not only in tenth-century Milan but also in twelfth-century Saxony. The tightly focused topic of this chapter, which examines three effigies that all use plaster to represent the bodies of women in the Harz region, reflects the surviving evidence: these examples are the earliest effigies in this area, and—with the notable addition of the Widukind effigy in Enger—the earliest made of plaster. Widukind’s relationship to this group is also evocative, as the cultivation of his memory in Westphalia is closely connected to the career of Mathilda, queen mother of the Ottonian dynasty and founding abbess of St. Servatius in Quedlinburg. It is easy to imagine that the monument for Mathilda’s ancestor Widukind at Enger, a site related to her childhood, may have been linked to the commemoration of her direct descendants Adelheid, Beatrix, and Adelheid II at Quedlinburg, where she herself was buried. The monuments were made of the same material, probably during the same decade, and perhaps similarly spurred by political changes across the empire. Whether these parallels are the result of coordinated planning across two sites or a more generalized reflection on the use of this material in the early twelfth century, however, can be little more than a matter of conjecture.
The Quedlinburg Abbesses The tenth century marked a golden age for female monastic institutions in the Ottonian empire. The most prestigious of these housed aristocratic women who lived as canonesses rather than nuns, meaning they did not take strict vows, enjoyed considerable luxury, and were highly educated in environments that often fostered strong engagement with art and literature.11 Even among the prominent subset of convents associated
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with imperial patronage, St. Servatius in Quedlinburg held a particularly glamorous position due to its role as the burial site of Henry the Fowler and his queen, Mathilda of Saxony. Perched high on a steep, rocky hill and towering over a thriving medieval city on the edge of the Harz region, the abbey offered a comfortable and secluded life for its elite canonesses. Mathilda herself had been founding abbess before passing the honor to her granddaughter, also named Mathilda, daughter of Otto the Great and sister to Otto II. After the queen’s own death, St. Servatius was ruled by a series of princesses from her direct line, all daughters of emperors, for more than a century. Even after this close association with the imperial line faded in the later Middle Ages, Quedlinburg continued to house aristocratic women until its dissolution in 1803.12 Marked as a UNESCO World Heritage site along with the rest of the town since 1994, St. Servatius reflects its erstwhile splendor in the Carolingian and Ottonian highlights of its treasury as well as its remaining twelfth-century textiles, metalwork, and sculptures.13 Nine funerary monuments, all made for abbesses, were discovered in the nave of the church during excavations conducted by Conrad Wilhelm Hase and Ferdinand von Quast in the 1860s.14 Dating from the twelfth through sixteenth centuries, some display figural sculptures; others carry only heraldic devices, according to the fashion of their respective times.15 Little is known for certain about the original locations of the monuments; they were probably set in close proximity to the burials of the abbesses before the altar in the nave, but they were moved in the wake of the Reformation, set in a new location in the nave, and eventually covered. The spectacular discovery of the sculptures together belies the fact that they were produced over the course of five centuries, reflecting their vastly different historical and visual contexts. The three earliest tomb figures, however, are highly consistent in style—so much so that they seem to have been made in a single campaign (color plates 10–12). This grouping is unique among the tombs at Quedlinburg—the other six monuments seem to have been made independently from one another—and highly unusual among Romanesque effigies. Even in comparison to the multifigural groups at Schaffhausen and St-Germain-des-Prés, the Quedlinburg set remains exceptional. The women are not members of a nuclear family but rather consecutive occupants of their shared rank as abbess and members of the imperial family. Two were half-sisters, and the third their distant cousin, but the monument makes no mention of these or any other family ties in its framing inscriptions. Instead, both image and text prioritize office over family. Equally surprising, the ensemble does not include the founders of St. Servatius but turns instead to three women who entered the fully established convent as girls, each becoming abbess and filling the shoes of their shared ancestor, Queen Mathilda. The women did not live at the abbey simultaneously but ruled Quedlinburg in succession over the course of six decades, despite being pictured identically, without indication of chronology. This method contrasts most notably with Schaffhausen, where Eberhard and Burkhard sport different beard lengths to reflect their relative ages as father and son. Quedlinburg offers no such signs of differentiated identities or familial relationships, giving the women virtually identical bodies, attributes, and clothes to emphasize
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their commonalities over their differences. Even beyond the negation of temporality, the total sublimation of individual identity is a radical feature at Quedlinburg: death and monasticism have united the women, making them indistinguishable without their framing texts. These inscriptions, the only means of identifying the three women, limit individual information to a name and date of death in the tightly arranged texts beneath the feet of each figure. Only a viewer with outside knowledge of their lives would know that the women represent the third, fourth, and fifth abbesses of St. Servatius and that they were born into the highest levels of Ottonian society: Adelheid I (ruled 1039–43) was a daughter of Otto II and Theophanu; Beatrix (ruled ca. 1045–62) was the only child of Henry III and his first wife, Gundhilda of Denmark; and Adelheid II (ruled 1063–95) was the first daughter of Henry III and his second wife, Agnes of Poitou. Though Beatrix and Adelheid II were born into the Salian dynasty, all three women shared an Ottonian heritage—the Salians were descendants of Henry and Mathilda through Luitgarde, daughter of Otto the Great.16 It is essential, however, that such information concerning imperial lineage is only found in other sources of historical knowledge. Strikingly, the inscriptions on the sculptures offer no hints of status beyond the designation of “abbess” in each text. Even the distinction between the two Adelheids can be made only by checking their dates of death against other sources; the effigies themselves omit mention of family or lineage and give only the month and day of death, not the year. Like the images, the texts offer no hints concerning the temporal differences among the women, presenting them as a unified group with no indication that their successive rules represent three different periods of time. Each woman is represented as a full-figure plaster effigy in high relief, set into a deep, basin-like space that is framed with a rich palmetto border. Adelheid I occupies a slightly wider slab and raises her right hand in greeting, but the group is otherwise strikingly uniform.17 The inscriptions also share a common thread, presenting Psalm verses that emphasize the ephemeral nature of the physical world. The texts appear on the frames around the effigies, together with the names and dates of death that identify the women. They can be transcribed as follows: xviiii. k(a)l(endas) feb(rvarii) hathelh(eidis). abb(at)i(ssa) o(biit). + homo vanitati similis f / actvs est. dies / eivs sicvt vmbra preterevnt. + On the fourteenth of January Adelheid the Abbess died. Man is like to vanity. His days pass away like a shadow. [Ps 143:4] iii. idv(s) ivl(ii) beatr / ix abb(atiss)a o(biit). + cvm interierit homo non / svmet om(n)ia / ne q(ve) descendet cvm eo gl(ori)a eiv(s). + Canonesses
On the thirteenth of July Beatrix the Abbess died. For when he dies he will take nothing away, nor shall his glory descend with him. [Ps 48:18]
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Fig. 50 Detail of architectural plaster at St. Servatius, Quedlinburg. Photo: author.
iii. idv(s) ian(varii) hathelh(eidis) abb(atiss)a ob(iit). + homo sicvt fenvm dies eivs ta / mqvam. / flos agri sic efflorebit. + On the eleventh of January Adelheid the Abbess died. The days of man are like grass. As a flower of the field, so will he flourish. [Ps 102:15]
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Dating the trio of effigies presents some difficulties, largely due to the relative diversity of styles in twelfth-century German sculpture. The death of Adelheid II in 1095 offers a firm terminus post quem, with most scholars favoring a date in the second quarter of the twelfth century.18 Some, like Bauch, have suggested dates as late as the 1160s due to the perceived derivative formation of the bodies, while others viewed the forceful primitivism of the same stylistic features as indicative of the 1120s.19 Recent analyses have avoided framing the debates around problematic tropes of vigor or degeneracy altogether and relied on evidence from the building history of St. Servatius instead. The upper church had been all but destroyed by fire in 1070, and the newly rebuilt structure was reconsecrated in 1129. Through a rigorous comparison of the border motifs on the effigies with similar details in the remnants of architectural plaster at the site, Antje Middeldorf Kosegarten demonstrates that the figures and the decorative
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motifs were almost certainly completed in the same campaign (fig. 50).20 This conclusion not only supports a date of circa 1129 for the effigies but also suggests that they were integrated in a larger programmatic context. Although the forms of the plaster seem to suggest a doorway and are currently installed as part of a screen in the upper choir, it should be noted that their present location can be traced back to the restorations of the twentieth century, documented in a series of undated photographs in the archives in Halle (fig. 51). Rather than isolated images commemorating a small set of elite individuals for their personal salvation, the Romanesque effigies of Quedlinburg were integrated into the larger fabric of the church, positioning women from the recent past as a collective ideal for the living community of the twelfth century. Past literature on these three effigies has largely followed three lines of interpretation. First, the sculptures have been characterized as sites of memoria, designed to keep the abbesses firmly present in the minds of the monastic community that prayed for their salvation.21 Second, they have been cast in a nostalgic light, described as proud reminders of the abbey’s imperial past during an era of relative decline.22 Third, they have been conversely linked to politics and their patronage debated in relation to monastic reform and ongoing efforts to redefine the abbey’s prestigious history.23 Each of these readings carries some appeal; a memorial function can hardly be denied, and
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Fig. 51 Architectural plaster being prepared for reinstallation, ca. 1937– 39, St. Servatius, Quedlinburg. Photo courtesy of the Archiv der Bau- und Kunstdenkmalpflege, Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie Sachsen-Anhalt, Halle (Saale) (Dr. Schuster).
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the effigies surely also existed in tension with the contradictions of twelfth-century Quedlinburg, proudly imperial in a time of reform. This tension, however, does not necessarily dictate that politics were the primary factor shaping the effigies, a point that deserves consideration against the internal evidence offered by the three sculptures themselves. Memoria is likewise a useful framework but an insufficient explanation for the precocious date of the sculptures or for the choice to represent three eleventh- century abbesses rather than Quedlinburg’s founders, Henry and Mathilda. This chapter therefore looks first to the highly specific insights offered by the framing Psalm verses on the sculptures themselves before turning to contextual evidence. These texts, surely chosen with great care, have often been noted but never closely examined. The abstracted bodies and plaster materials of the monument have likewise received only marginal attention, with little consideration beyond the initial questions of date and style. The evidence from these texts and images produces a fresh reading of the female body, cast three times in sequence at Quedlinburg, as a site of amplified meaning for its audience of privileged monastic women. I argue that these bodies must be read not only in light of their materials and inscriptions but also in relation to the corpus of related sculptures that survive from the twelfth century.
Arrangement, Placement, and Orientation
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Like most effigies from this period, the Quedlinburg figures were removed from their original location long ago, and nothing is known of their intended installation. Archeological work has yet to produce a clear solution to this question, and the objects offer few internal clues. Their matching heights suggest a serial arrangement, and the slightly greater width of the effigy for Adelheid I makes it likely that she was placed at the center, flanked by the half-sisters Beatrix and Adelheid II. The larger Adelheid effigy is also framed slightly differently from the others, with its decorated palmetto motif occupying a sloped surface that projects the inscribed surface into space and produces a deeper cavity for the rounded body. Placing the widest and thickest slab at the center of the trio creates a pleasingly symmetrical composition with obvious formal appeal. The gesture of Adelheid I also seems to affirm a central position, along with her relative seniority and her prominent role as daughter of Otto II and sister of Otto III. Without further physical evidence, it is not easy to rule out other possible placements—that the figures were set at some distance from one another, for example, or that they formed part of a larger ensemble with additional sculptures that do not survive. Regardless, the overall unified effect of the figures, borders, and inscriptions effectively confirm that this trio of effigies should be interpreted together as a series. No matter what arrangement is accepted for the three effigies, it is difficult to imagine them on the floor of St. Servatius. As with virtually all known effigies from this period, it is clear that they were not meant to be tread upon; their surfaces protrude too dramatically and too unevenly. Even so, the stone examples seem more plausible
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as floor monuments not least because they employ a greater economy of space, setting the figures tightly into relatively compact slabs. The generous proportions of the Quedlinburg slabs, particularly in the case of Adelheid I, suggest that the design was not limited by practical concerns about the size of a floor. Adelheid’s gesture of greeting also seems ill-conceived for horizontal placement. Among the effigies of its generation, her raised hand is most closely echoed in the images of Durand at Moissac, Gottschalk of Diepholz at Bad Iburg, and the enigmatic woman of the Holy Sepulchre in St. Cyriakus in Gernrode. Of these three comparisons, two belong to the scarce group of Romanesque effigies surviving in situ, and it is striking that both are set vertically in contexts that are commemorative but not, strictly speaking, funerary. The third, made for Gottschalk of Diepholz, is carved in low relief and set into a thin, trapezoidal frame that strongly suggests it was used as a sarcophagus lid, like the much earlier Chrodoara monument and the slightly later twelfth-century tomb of Reinhildis of Riesenbeck.24 The Quedlinburg figures, however, are set into rectangular slabs. The shape of their frames, with the thicker, sloping border employed for Adelheid I, are closest to the recumbent figures at Schaffhausen, but they lack the architectural details that reinforce the horizontal placement of the Nellenburg effigies. They might even be compared to the framing borders of the enamel epitaph for Geoffrey of Anjou, which are similarly shaped and appear on an object most likely set upright against a pillar of the cathedral at Le Mans. Given the geographic proximity to Gernrode, along with the use of plaster and the sharing of certain stylistic features, the St. Cyriakus figure is perhaps the most relevant comparison for Quedlinburg, raising the question of whether the St. Servatius women, too, were once mounted against a wall and perhaps also installed separately from the physical remains of their respective subjects. The strongest internal evidence for a mural installation for the St. Servatius effigies comes from the orientation of their inscriptions. Unlike the circling text of the Rudolf effigy, these are oriented to a single vantage point and never inverted in relation to the sculptural body. Personal information is set beneath the feet of each figure and tightly compressed into the available space. The Psalm verses, in contrast, are generously spaced as they run over the borders along the sides and over the heads of the women (fig. 52). Only the verse on the Beatrix figure uses contraction or suspension to shorten the length of the text; this effigy is also the only one in the group to spell out the name of the abbess herself in a clearly legible script. Even so, the Beatrix effigy follows a pattern that is much more starkly present in the two Adelheid effigies: the Psalm verses are presented in large, clear, easily read letters, but the identification of each woman is written in a small, condensed form. Even as readers of the Rudolf effigy in Merseburg are invited to follow the inscription in a course around the effigy, encountering different perspectives as they see the body from different vantage points, readers at St. Servatius are nudged to focus on the clear text of the Psalm verses and pay much less attention to the shortened personal information. The content of the verses, which I will discuss separately below, gives some clues about why the universal message of the Psalms was privileged over the individual
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identifications of the women. At the same time, the formal qualities of the text seem to indicate a vertical presentation in which the words under the feet of the figures and near the feet of observers would attract less attention than the Psalms. Whether the three sculptures were installed continuously as a frieze or set at some distance from one another (perhaps not unlike the Moissac cloister, in which the famous apostle piers are installed individually and yet still understood as members of a group), the inscriptions suggest that these sculptures once engaged audiences from an upright rather than supine position. The thick, columnar bodies are set firmly in their recessed basins. When reconstructed as a series, with the center slab flanked by narrower slabs of equal height at either side, the triple composition seems reminiscent of Romanesque portals or, by extension, Roman triumphal arches. The close visual resonance between the frames of the effigies and the surviving fragments of the choir screen, noted above, offers another hint in favor of mural installation. The sensitivity to architectural form that is suggested by the three-part, portal-like composition could very well have been shaped by the ambitious rebuilding project that reached completion in 1129. An architectural composition, too, is reminiscent of the Holy Sepulchre at Gernrode, where the single female body of the western wall is placed into an architectural frame partitioned into three niches. Only one frontal figure inhabits this space, but it is flanked by columns to the left and right. Its curious installation, set as if emerging from the sacred space of the Holy Sepulchre, mediates between the physical spaces of the viewer and the hidden interior of the tomb. If imagined in a similar upright installation, the Quedlinburg figures and their niches would likewise suggest a liminal space that bridges the worlds of the living and the dead. The repositioning of the three Quedlinburg effigies as wall monuments may seem radical at first, but no more so than the figure at Gernrode nearby or at Moissac more distantly. Such an arrangement would reorient the greeting gesture of Adelheid’s raised hand so that it does not aim skyward toward some heavenly presence but rather horizontally toward the living women of St. Servatius. The presentation of the Quedlinburg effigies as a group, with their patterned gowns and blank faces shared across three bodies, suggests the communal life of Quedlinburg’s canonesses and their humble, selfless ideals. In a manner akin to the “Three Living and the Three Dead” from a later period, they form a permeable façade that invites viewers to look through the surface, confronting the body and its role in the death and resurrection of the individual.25 Even if the effigies’ vertical placement can only be postulated and not proven, the suggestion at once prompts a shift from memoria to memento mori, changing the monuments from a passive remembrance of the past to an active confrontation between past and present.26 Despite its reconsecration, there are signs that St. Servatius was grappling with its own changing fortunes by 1129. The heyday of the abbey, when the emperors attended its Easter masses and leading prelates were expected to show deference to its canonesses, was merely a memory by the time the effigies were made. Perhaps some older members of the community still recalled the glamor of the imperial princess-abbesses,
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Fig. 52 (opposite) Effigy of Abbess Beatrix, detail, St. Servatius, Quedlinburg. Photo courtesy of the Archiv der Bau- und Kunstdenkmalpflege, Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie Sachsen-Anhalt, Halle (Saale).
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but for most of the women, the effigies represented institutional legacy rather than personal acquaintances. The sculptures thus harkened back to better days and represented a reflection of a celebrated past. It is essential, however, to recognize the tensions between this somewhat nostalgic reading, the competing pressure of the reform movement, and the evidence of the Psalm verses. The scriptural texts, prominently highlighted through their position and their epigraphic qualities, insist upon the transient nature of the world. Although the verses may seem at first glance to reinforce a wistful attitude toward the past of St. Servatius, they take on a different character altogether when read in light of one of the key scholarly traditions of the Middle Ages: the patristic interpretation of the Psalter.
The Intellectual Context of the Psalm Verses
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The Psalm verses on the effigies are emphasized by their epigraphic qualities. As discussed above, these texts were given far greater visual prominence than the names and dates of death set below the feet of each abbess. The visual relationship between the biblical and the personal texts on the monuments suggests that the first priority in creating the inscription was to present the Psalm verses in a clear, regular, and beautiful script. Once this was accomplished, the rest of the space was filled with the vital information concerning the individual—her name and date of death, which was allotted the remaining space, compressed as required to fit the frame. The women are identified as abbatissa, but the omission of their lineage or earthly rank is an effective reminder that the tombs do not commemorate their secular status, only their spiritual roles.27 Even the title of abbess, however, is given far less priority than the words of the Psalter. The role of the Psalms is also emphasized by the decorated books held by the effigies. Adelheid is the only figure to raise one hand in greeting, using the other to grasp her codex. Beatrix holds her book high and tight with one hand, as if pressing the volume against her body, while her half-sister holds her book low and forward, as if offering it to the viewer. Reflecting the richness of the treasury and the literacy of the women of St. Servatius, the books have been interpreted as Gospel books or copies of the Benedictine Rule.28 Given the inscriptions, however, it makes more sense to see the books as Psalters, containing the central text of monastic devotion. Though their decoration is somewhat generic, the book covers echo at least one prestigious Psalter represented on a Carolingian ivory.29 The cover of the Dagulf Psalter shows Jerome holding the book, serving to reflect the value of the patristic tradition in general and the contributions of Jerome in particular in shaping Christian understanding of these Jewish poems.30 At Quedlinburg, the Psalter could evoke comparison between the imperial prestige of the princess-abbesses and the distant model of the psalmist David, the ultimate penitent king. Psalters were also fitting in a funerary context, given their frequent invocation of the body and soul in relation to salvation.
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The images reinforce this emphasis on spiritual rather than secular status by representing the individual abbesses with indistinguishable features, their communal visualization becoming a metonym for the communal identity of the viewers at St. Servatius. Installed as an animated frieze, their bodies appeared as literal links between the community and the physical space of the church. Not only the palmetto borders around the effigies but even the rounded lozenges set into the sleeves of the two Salian princesses recalled the architectural ornament of the newly remade abbey. These details have always been read as “jewels” or “pearls,” but given the warning of the Psalms to look away from material possessions, they seem more relevant as links between the garments of the abbesses and the fabric of St. Servatius itself. The bodies of the women, both their physical remains and their plaster representations, have become part of the church. They represent both the past and the future of the community. This integration of perspectives, in which each sculpture becomes a site for mindfulness of the past, present, and future, resonates with medieval prescriptions for singing the Psalms. As urged by John Cassian, the ideal singer “penetrates so deeply into the thinking of the psalms that he sings them not as though they had been composed by the prophet [David] but as if he himself had written them, as if this were his own private prayer uttered amid the deepest compunction of heart. Certainly he thinks of them as having been specially composed for him and he recognizes that what they express was made real not simply once upon a time in the person of the prophet but that now, every day, they are being fulfilled in himself.”31 The glowing language of these ancient poems was central to medieval monastic life. The weekly cycle of liturgical readings incorporated the entire Psalter, and the canonesses would have known the texts intimately, aspiring to the ideal of consuming these texts with the eye, mind, and heart as both personal expression and eternal tradition.32 The sculptures join the abbesses together in one body and suggest a circle that the twelfth-century women of St. Servatius could enter through prayer, singing, and meditation. The books in the effigies are not only held but also offered to the viewers. The effigies used books and texts to invite the women of St. Servatius to complete the passage toward salvation and eventual resurrection within the frame of the living church, informed by a deep understanding of the Psalms. Given the strong education lavished upon women at foundations such as Quedlinburg, there can be little doubt that they would have been instructed not only to read the Psalms but also to grasp their meanings as established by patristic theology. While the extent to which individual women absorbed this tradition might be debated, it is hard to imagine that the selection of the verses inscribed on the effigies would have been made without utmost care and attention to their full and highly specific interpretation within a long, scholarly tradition. This point is reinforced by the fact that, although the Psalter as a whole was widely cited in the twelfth century, these particular verses were never especially famous. They are not singled out in any surviving manuscripts tied to Quedlinburg or emphasized in the known liturgies from St. Servatius. They are not among the “groups” of major
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verses codified by patristic authors, and they are neither especially common nor frequently illustrated. As Kosegarten puts it, “Among the many Psalm citations found in the indices of the pertinent editions and books, it is precisely the Quedlinburg verses that are absent with frustrating regularity.”33 Surprising as this lack of renown may initially seem, it suggests the texts were picked specifically for this monument and not cribbed from a familiar source. The selection of the texts remains anonymous, but even so it may be assumed that the choice was made through the consultation of existing Psalm commentaries. The sculptures date to the eve of scholasticism; they are slightly older than the writings of Gilbert of Poitiers and Bernard of Clairvaux and nearly contemporary with Anselm of Laon’s glossed Bible. Augustine and Cassiodorus were widely read in this period and, as Cahn shows, manuscript production of Augustine’s Psalm commentary in particular spiked in the twelfth century.34 Although Jerome’s commentary was even more popular, it does not comment on these specific verses. The surviving manuscripts from Quedlinburg include a tenth-century copy of Cassiodorus’s Psalm commentary that was heavily annotated at an early date.35 Copies of Augustine’s Letters and Ambrose’s Psalm commentary (which inspired Augustine in turn), also associated with St. Servatius, offer further indication that Quedlinburg’s library had strengths in precisely this field.36 It only follows suit that these texts would shape how the canonesses read these verses. The effigy of Adelheid I is framed by the text of Psalm 143:4, “Man is like to vanity. His days pass away like a shadow.” Discussing this verse, Augustine focuses on vanity, stating that “everything transitory is rightly called vanity.”37 Humans are likened to “times and seasons, which slip away and flow past,” and readers are reminded that “human life on earth is nothing but temptation. . . . [W]e need solace, but whatever God provides for us now when things go well is only a consolation for the wretched, not the joy of the blessed.”38 Vanity, first linked to the idea of the transitory as contrasted to the unchanging state of God, is also tied to original sin, because it was through Adam that humans became mortal and thus ephemeral. Cassiodorus agrees and reinforces the shadow metaphor. This comparison is “justifiable,” according to Cassiodorus, “for a shadow is visible but has no solid permanence, for when the body which forms it departs, the shadow too fades and is lost. Such would be the life of men after Adam’s sin if it had not been restored by the Lord’s kindness.”39 Two points from these commentaries are particularly relevant. First, the link to original sin implicitly celebrates monastic abstinence. Second, both authors connect the vanity of life to its transitory nature. By showing a succession of abbesses rather than a single individual, the sculptures enact Augustine’s metaphor of “times and seasons” in the sense that the tenure of each abbess was a time that had already “slipped away and flowed past.” The sculptures evoke and yet also counter transience by presenting three bodies, three past seasons, as eternally and simultaneously present. Unlike the lost shadow in Cassiodorus, the bodies of the effigies have the “solid permanence” that the mortal body lacks, representing the body after resurrection, “restored by the Lord’s kindness.”40 The visible,
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unchanging effigies that replace and yet invoke the dead were reminders of both the transitory nature of life and the permanent joy of the elect at the end of time. This tension between the future and the past reinforced the monastic calling to set aside the transient world and focus on eschatological aims. The first two commentaries examined here have addressed common theological concepts. The inscription for Adelheid II, taken from Psalm 102:15, seems at first to follow in this vein: “The days of man are like grass. As a flower of the field, so will he flourish.” Through the lens of Augustine, however, this selection can also be seen as a critical turn away from the theme of ephemeral transience, to address instead the danger of pride in secular power. In response to this verse, Augustine warns his readers that “the whole panoply of human glory—honors, sovereignty, wealth, men’s bluster and conceit—all this is no more than a transitory wild flower. A great house flourishes, a family flourishes, many great people flourish, but how many years do they last? It seems like many years to you, but it is a brief span to God. . . . Compared with the duration of long-drawn ages, any great house flourishes as fleetingly as a flower in the field.”41 Cassiodorus omits mention of secular “houses,” but his comments echo Augustine’s warning against worldly prestige and combine this point with the familiar theme of transience: “Our weak humanity has its beauty, and the distinctions and riches of the world are most acceptable, but they do not last very long. So the human condition is justifiably compared with these transient things, because when abandoned by its vigorous strength it invariably hastens with headlong speed to the fate of death.”42 Cassiodorus thus repeats the familiar refrain that human life is short, but Augustine takes the opportunity to critique sovereignty and the pride of powerful families. Given the lineage of the Quedlinburg abbesses, it is striking that their funerary inscriptions not only omit mention of their imperial families but also include a verse glossed by Augustine to warn against the conceit of secular power. This message would have held deep resonance for the twelfth-century women of St. Servatius, who would have grasped the implications of this text on a monument made for women from two successive dynasties, both descending from Henry and Mathilda and both extinct by 1129. Perhaps this verse had seemed especially apt for the tomb of Adelheid II, the daughter of Henry III’s second wife, Agnes of Poitou, whom Henry had married after his first wife, Gunhilda of Denmark, had died without producing a male heir. Adelheid arguably owed her existence to her father’s desire to propagate his dynasty, an endeavor Augustine considered futile in the eyes of God. This verdict would not have been read too harshly, however, because the decision to send both Beatrix, the only child of Henry’s first marriage, and Adelheid, the first child from his second marriage, to live as abbesses rather than entering political marriages represents attention to spiritual concerns. The text is not targeting imperial families but rather celebrating aristocratic women in monastic enclosure. The decision to commemorate these women in the 1120s was itself a comment on such actions, since the line of Henry and Mathilda was under threat by 1125 with the extinction of the Salian dynasty. The rise of Conrad III over the following decade and his election in 1138 brought the new
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Hohenstaufen dynasty to power, and they, too, claimed descent from the Ottonians and Salians through Conrad’s mother. Even so, Quedlinburg never regained its former prestige, and the verses appeared on the effigies during a time of great political uncertainty and change. Finally, it is the verses on the effigy of Beatrix, the only child from Henry III’s first marriage, that are most forcefully inflected by Augustine and Cassiodorus. The verse comes from Psalm 48:18: “For when he dies he will take nothing away, nor shall his glory descend with him.” Augustine emphasizes that the condition of the rich man ends with his life and that not even the materials of the funerary rite will matter in the afterlife: “Someone may say, perhaps, ‘Well, he does take with him the clothes they wrap him in, and the money they lavish on an expensive marble tomb and on setting up a memorial to him. Those at any rate he does take.’ But I tell you, no, not even those; for they are expended on a non-sentient thing.”43 He extends the analogy first to the state of the sleeper, whose bodily adornments will not enter his dreams, and then to the larger point that “insentient flesh” calls nothing its own. The analogy between tombs and houses (likely inspired by the Roman necropolis) is made and dismissed: Only the erstwhile container of the person lies there, the house in which he used to dwell. We call the body a house, and its inhabitant is the spirit. When the spirit is being tormented in hell, what advantage accrues to it if the body is lying amid cinnamon sticks and aromatic herbs, wrapped in precious linen? You might as well decorate the walls of a house whose owner has been sent into exile. He is languishing in a foreign land, subject to penury and hunger, scarcely finding any poky little place to sleep in, and you say, “What a lucky fellow, to have his house decorated like this!”44
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Augustine’s commentary on this verse ends with a reminder that true help for the individual lies in mindfulness of their spirit and not their corpse, suggesting that prayer and memory matter and not the construction of the tomb. Cassiodorus more succinctly alludes to a “house” that could be a sign of family standing or of the tomb, as the house of the dead. He writes of the rich man, “You admire his consummate elegance and costly garb in this world, but how tawdry he will appear in your eyes in the next! He did well to say that dead sinners descend; He means into yawning abysses, into the deepest pit, without their worldly glory, their crowd of clients, their array of jewels. The house which you admired remains in its entirety, but he takes with him the huge burdens which you did not see.”45 The commentaries on Psalm 48:18 give a strange twist to the creation of figural tomb sculpture. The point that earthly riches do not accompany the dead in the afterlife is applied specifically to memorials, grave goods, and funerary garments. The text mocks the tombs themselves, warning against admiration of fine jewels and fancy clothing. Augustine’s “erstwhile container” applies to both the body and the tomb; when linked to a monument in the form of a body, these meanings are collapsed, reflecting the absent soul that defines both corpse and
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sepulchre. Even the elegant robes of the Quedlinburg figures clash with the words of Cassiodorus; their presence can only be explained if the entire ensemble does not show the abbesses in life and reflects their heavenly or eschatological rewards instead. The tension between an apparent display of worldliness and texts condemning worldly things reminded viewers not only of the material riches that they should reject but also of the heavenly rewards that they could expect in return. Beyond their general comments on the shortness of life, these verses were pointed reminders against placing value in secular rank, material goods, and precious tombs. Juxtaposed with images commemorating three powerful, high-born abbesses, the texts warned the community against investing too much meaning in imperial birth, refocusing attention on spiritual rather than earthly rewards. In this light, the effigies emerge as curiously self-conscious. To audiences less invested in the Psalms, it would be easy to mistake the effigies for nostalgic reminders of past power and to read the decorated bodies of the abbesses as celebrations of their former wealth. The women at Quedlinburg, immersed in the Psalter and educated in a tradition that traced back to Augustine and Cassiodorus, were undoubtedly sensitive to the imperial legacy of St. Servatius. Indeed, it was this awareness of history that made the images and texts so meaningful. Seeing the sculptural bodies in prospective rather than retrospective terms, this special audience did not celebrate the “empty houses” of tomb and corpse; they looked instead toward a higher ideal.46 The inscribed Psalm verses paired with a lack of personal information are a departure from other funerary objects at Quedlinburg, most notably the sarcophagus of Queen Mathilda and the lead caskets of the abbesses Mathilda and Adelheid I. The use of scripture to gloss funerary monuments might be compared to the eleventh- century sarcophagus of Bernward of Hildesheim and its text, drawn from the Book of Job to emphasize faith in salvation and resurrection.47 Bernward’s inscription is accompanied by alternating images of angels and holy fire to signal belief in eschatological resurrection.48 At St. Servatius the body itself acts as a sign of salvation, inviting meditation on bodily resurrection. After the death of Adelheid II, each subsequent abbess of St. Servatius came from the aristocracy, but none from the imperial family. Thus the eleventh-century imperial abbesses contrasted with the more humble bloodlines of their twelfth-century successors. By omitting mention of rank, however, the inscriptions hinted that sanctity mattered more than status. In representation (if not in reality), the Quedlinburg canonesses had left their noble birth behind.49 Rather than grasping nostalgically at the imperial past, the women of the convent were encouraged by this almost egalitarian omission to let go of such worldly concerns.
Visual Culture and St. Servatius Canonesses
In contrast to the earlier, nonpictorial tombs at Quedlinburg, the twelfth-century effigies offered access to the past through images framed by text. The immediacy of
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Fig. 53 Row of Beatitudes above the arcade, abbey church of St. Michael’s, Hildesheim. Photo courtesy of the St. Michaelisgemeinde Hildesheim. Fig. 54 Beatitude, abbey church of St. Michael’s, Hildesheim. Photo courtesy of the St. Michaelisgemeinde Hildesheim.
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sculpture—the vivid manner in which it made the eleventh-century abbesses present for the twelfth-century community—may be why Adelheid, Beatrix, and the younger Adelheid were chosen above their predecessors for commemoration. The earliest abbesses, Queen Mathilda and her immediate successor, Abbess Mathilda, seem to have been omitted because they belonged to the distant past of the founding of the abbey. By the twelfth century, Mathilda’s status was approaching sainthood; she inhabited a space that was comparatively opaque. Mathilda’s sarcophagus and the unmarked tomb of her husband, Henry, remained in the crypt-like space of Quedlinburg’s confessio. It was the younger abbesses, more recent in time and more likely to be persisting on the edges of living memory, whose bodies were opened to a different, more accessible form of commemoration. Their visualization bridged the idealized world of the
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frieze and the real space of the abbey church. These complex figures thus became an ambitious lens that focused the eyes of the community on the ephemeral nature of life and the greater appeal of eternal salvation. As emphasized above, the repetition of the bodies constitutes the most striking visual feature of the Quedlinburg group. This systematic repression of the individual in favor of the group has special implications in a society that not only believed in bodily resurrection but understood resurrection as a process that healed the body of flaws and brought it to a state of perfection.50 The Quedlinburg effigies use repetition and abstraction to enact the body after resurrection while effectively erasing memory of the women as they appeared in life. Though this specific use of repetition is unique among surviving Romanesque effigies, the appearance of serial, uniform bodies to represent an idealized state is almost a commonplace in early medieval art. The group at Quedlinburg can be compared to female bodies that personified the Beatitudes, as seen, for example, in the plaster figures of the southern side aisle of St. Michael’s in Hildesheim (figs. 53–54) or the marble versions in Magdeburg Cathedral (fig. 55).51 Both programs appear in cathedrals within a 100-kilometer radius of Quedlinburg and have been dated to the mid-t welfth century on the basis of stylistic qualities that are shared, to some extent, with the St. Servatius effigies. Whether contemporary to or slightly later
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Fig. 55 Beatitudes, Magdeburg Cathedral. Photo: Foto Marburg / Art Resource, New York (Max Hirmer).
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than Quedlinburg, they share a strategy of using serial bodies to personify spiritual qualities that transcend the individual. Further afield and more difficult to date, the Tempietto Longobardo in Cividale offers another interesting example of evocative repetition. Nestled between the southern foothills of the Alps and the Adriatic Sea, Cividale is most closely identified with the early medieval Lombards, and its sculptures have been variously dated to the late eighth or mid-twelfth centuries (figs. 56–57).52 Either way, the attenuated figures echo the elegance of Byzantine style (particularly tenth-century ivories, a comparison that may indicate a later date) and evoke an atmosphere of liturgical drama with their covered hands and mysterious attributes. Despite their geographic and stylistic distance from the groups at Hildesheim, Magdeburg, and Quedlinburg, they too use the female body to enliven ecclesiastical spaces, representing an ideal community and inspiring not only devotion but also emulation from early viewers.53 The repetition of the body can also occur on a much smaller scale, as observed in one especially precious example from the treasury at St. Servatius. The so-called reliquary casket of Otto I, or Servatius reliquary, is almost certainly the same as an ivory reliquary listed in Quedlinburg’s eleventh-century inventory and was thus available as inspiration in the 1120s (fig. 58).54 The ninth-century ivories forming its four sides have been linked to the imperial workshop of Charles the Bald and form a pendant to a second ivory box now in Munich (fig. 59). Given that the Munich box traces its provenance to Bamberg Cathedral and was likely taken there by Emperor Henry II, it might be suggested that the Servatius reliquary ivories were either also brought to Quedlinburg by Henry or else that Quedlinburg had received both ivory boxes from Otto the Great, with Henry subsequently taking one of them to Bamberg.55 Its later metalwork and enamel additions were commissioned by Abbess Agnes II of Meißen (1184–1203), who is included as a donor on its new base. As Eliza Garrison shows, these updates demonstrate the continuing interest in the ivories and their imperial associations long after they were given to the treasury.56 The depiction of Christ and the apostles under architectural frames, holding scrolls and turning in space to address one another, exemplifies the use of sculptural bodies to mediate between the world of
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Fig. 56 (opposite) Tempietto Longobardo, Cividale. Photo © Genevra Kornbluth. Fig. 57 Detail of the Tempietto Longobardo, Cividale. Photo © Genevra Kornbluth.
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the beholder and the hidden, sacred space behind the frieze. Though the masculine bodies and Carolingian style of the reliquary are worlds away from the Quedlinburg effigies, the base added by Agnes reflects the eagerness with which twelfth-century canonesses there looked to their treasury for inspiration. The base follows the ivories in its use of serial representation, showing eighteen saints around Christ and Agnes, with the prioress Oderade in full figure at Christ’s feet. The presentation of Agnes and Oderade invites the canonesses to contemplate their own bodies in dialogue with the saintly figures, encountered in the images on the ivories and the relics held inside the box. The plaster effigies operate in a parallel manner, bridging the living community with the ever-present past not only through the representation of three specific women but also in their serial presentation. Like the sacred ivory bodies, they show an image of syncopated sameness, using gestures to create a rhythmic dialogue and to engage viewers in contemplation. The effigies do not imitate the reliquary directly but rather use a parallel strategy that mediates not only between the living and the dead but also between the canonesses of Quedlinburg and the heavenly community that was their promised destination.
Fig. 58 (opposite top) Reliquary casket of Otto I, or Servatius reliquary. Treasury of St. Servatius, Quedlinburg. Photo: bpk Bildagentur / Treasury of St. Servatius, Quedlinburg / Ann Münchow / Art Resource, New York. Fig. 59 (opposite bottom) Carolingian ivory from a reliquary. Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich, Inv.-Nr. MA 174. Photo © Bayerisches Nationalmuseum München (Bastian Krack, D70109).
The Holy Sepulchre at Gernrode The use of sculpture to tie the living space of an abbey church to the sacred space of promised salvation is perhaps nowhere more evident than in the Holy Sepulchre of Gernrode, located just nine kilometers south of St. Servatius in Quedlinburg (figs. 60–61).57 This complex architectural monument, a unique survival from its time and among the most ambitious of its kind, was added in the early twelfth century to the church of St. Cyriakus. Its walls form a curious, chapel-like rectangle with two square inner cells, each fully occupying one of the basilica’s four southern aisle bays.58 Like related spaces in Fulda, Magdeburg, and Konstanz, it was used from an early date as an architectural representation of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.59 Of this group only Gernrode preserves a twelfth-century sculptural program, which includes a statue of a standing bishop with Christlike attributes, a sculptural group showing the three women meeting the angel at the empty tomb in the interior, and a Noli me tangere scene on the exterior northern wall. Although these sculptures clearly do not survive in their original locations and their precise dates are debatable, their iconographic relationship to a space intended for the ritual commemoration of Christ’s Resurrection is clear. More enigmatic is the exterior sculpture of the western wall, which carries the female figure that Bauch once cited as comparative evidence for the poor quality of the St. Servatius figures. The woman stands in a niche between two columns, gazing outward at the viewer. On all four sides, the rest of the wall around her is filled with a lush, inhabited foliage. Her identity has long been a mystery, given the lack of inscriptions and her unique relationship to the Holy Sepulchre from which she seems to emerge. The likeliest candidates are Mary Magdalene, appearing as a continuation of
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Fig. 60 West wall of the Holy Sepulchre, St. Cyriakus, Gernrode. Photo: Foto Marburg / Art Resource, New York.
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the Noli me tangere narrative, or a standing effigy of the abbess Hathui (ca. 939–1014), daughter-in-law of Gernrode’s tenth-century founder, Margrave Gero, and widow of Gero’s son Siegfried, in whose memory the convent had been established.60 There is not enough evidence at present to fully support or exclude either possibility, but precisely this ambiguity makes the figure an important counterpoint to consider here. Even as most of the identifiable effigies from this era have lost their original installations or other physical contexts, Gernrode offers a striking example of how effigy-type figures may have been integrated into larger sculptural programs. Whether a standing saint or a deceased abbess, the gesture and installation of the Gernrode figure invite viewers to confront a statue as part of their engagement with the liturgical space beyond the wall. In this way the sculpture articulates the liminal passage from present to past that the true effigy type would soon come to embody. The main argument in favor of viewing the figure as the Magdalene lies in its appeal as an extension of the Noli me tangere scene on the north wall, an interpretation that ends the narrative with the Magdalene turning to face the viewer. The catch is that such an arrangement does not find any easy parallels in the narrative sculptural cycles of this time. On the other hand, very few such cycles exist at all and none in the form of a Holy Sepulchre, making it difficult to argue that this monument needs to follow any known set of precedents. Parallels in manuscript illumination, on the other hand, are easier to find. For example, the twelfth-century Passion of Saint Lucy shows a full-page image of Lucy (fol. 61r) as part of a rich pictorial cycle that is largely driven by scenes of the saint in action. Appearing in a full-figure, frontal pose with her
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Fig. 61 Female figure on the west wall of the Holy Sepulchre, St. Cyriakus, Gernrode. Photo: Foto Marburg / Art Resource, New York (Jan Gloc).
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hands in a gesture that is reminiscent of the Gernrode woman (fig. 62), the image complements the narrative cycle with an icon-like gaze that projects outward to engage the viewer.61 Also similar to Gernrode, the figure lacks a halo despite being shown with one in the narrative scenes, which appear both before and after this page (fols. 1r–3r; fols. 66r–67v). Such comparisons offer some weight to the interpretation of the relief in Gernrode as Mary Magdalene, but the reading is still far from conclusive, given that there are neither inscriptions nor clear attributes to support an iconographic argument. The other frequent suggestion for the figure’s identity is as an effigy of an abbess of Gernrode, possibly Hathui. The identification, however, is primarily hindered by the lack of inscriptions and the very early date of the sculpture. The work is generally dated to around 1100, which would make it the earliest effigy of this type, contemporaneous with the clearly marked and carefully contextualized relief of Abbot Durand at Moissac and appearing scarcely fifteen years after the effigy of Rudolf of Swabia in Merseburg. Still, some connection to Hathui’s person seems clear. Kerstin Hengevoss- Dürkop calls attention to the Easter liturgy of Gernrode from 1502, which is thought to preserve some of the earlier medieval text and includes a description of how the women would emerge from the Holy Sepulchre during the performance and process to Hathui’s grave before the altar of the Cross.62 Hengevoss-Dürkop elegantly uses this text to suggest that the Gernrode figure thus represents Hathui not only in a narrow sense but also in the fulfillment of her promised resurrection, while simultaneously recalling the experience of the Magdalene as the first to see Christ risen and proclaim the news to others. Such richly layered interpretations require caution, as the text may reflect a later medieval response to the image rather than its original purpose. Even so, the liturgical drama
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vividly underscores the slippage between the living bodies of the canonesses, Hathui’s body buried inside the church, and the plaster body on the western wall. Though the effigy was not yet a widely familiar format at the time of the sculpture’s initial creation, the same formal strategies are clearly at work here, and much like the figure of Durand of Moissac, they seem to have engendered a very similar response. Parallels between Gernrode and Quedlinburg have long invited comparisons from art historians, as is clear above. But while most studies have positioned the former as a source or a model for the latter (including Hengevoss-Dürkop, who extends the relationship to connect the Quedlinburg figures to the Easter liturgy), I find it more convincing to approach the programs as roughly contemporaneous examples of how such figures could act as literal and metaphorical links between the living and the dead.63 Tensions between individual identity and group identity are central to both monuments. At Quedlinburg this plays out specifically through the inscriptions and their selective choice to give the names and dates of death of the women without reference to their imperial ancestries. It is interesting to note, however, that Hathui was said to be a niece of the same Queen Mathilda who founded Quedlinburg; she married a favored scion of a well-connected family only to find herself widowed at a young age; and the material wealth of her in-laws was committed to the new convent, which she herself then led as abbess.64 This complex biography seems to invite some of the same interplay between dynastic power and monastic withdrawal that characterizes the Quedlinburg group. Without framing inscriptions, however, such connections are conjectural at best. Thus, although it is not an effigy in the usual use of the term, the Gernrode figure similarly asserts the role of sculpture in engaging the living community in a dialogue with the dead. Beyond the frontal presentation of the woman and her open- handed gesture, which seems to greet the viewer, she stands in the niche framed by columns almost as if emerging from within the Holy Sepulchre itself. She notably is located back-to-back with the free-standing, Christlike figure clad in episcopal robes positioned in the main chamber. Since this male figure is usually dated to the first half of the thirteenth century, its addition may have further emphasized the thematic link between the central mystery of Christ’s Resurrection and the promised eschatological redemption of the women’s own bodies.65 With this in mind, it seems possible that the Gernrode figure was as challenging for medieval audiences as she has been for modern ones. She seems to articulate an ambiguous zone that fits uncomfortably with the narrative scenes on the Holy Sepulchre, but she also resists straightforward interpretation as a specific woman from the local past. Her body thus invites a new kind of involvement with monumental sculpture, one that requires a sophisticated engagement with the tomb behind it as a liminal space, set within the collegiate church and yet distinct from it, an area that was surely only entered on rare occasions and yet—like the particular resurrection it commemorates—occupied an outsized portion of the community’s imagination on a daily basis. Though the close association with a Holy Sepulchre seems unique to the Gernrode figure, the overall program is a potent
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Fig. 62 (opposite) Saint Lucy, from the Passio sanctae Luciae. Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett Hs. 78 A 4, fol. 61r. Photo © Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (Dietmar Katz).
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Fig. 63 (opposite) Effigy of a saintly woman (Sisu?), abbey church of Drübeck. Photo courtesy of the Archiv der Bau- und Kunstdenkmalpflege, Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie Sachsen-Anhalt, Halle (Saale).
reminder that the other effigies of this period—particularly the ones in plaster—may once have been integrated into similarly ambitious mural programs. In addition to Gernrode and Quedlinburg, two more effigies from the early twelfth century offer significant evidence for the use of plaster to commemorate the dead. Both are dated between circa 1120 and 1140, and both can be compellingly connected to Quedlinburg. The first is the representation of Widukind of Saxony, discussed in the last chapter, which depicted Mathilda’s Saxon ancestor at Enger in Westphalia. While Widukind’s link to Quedlinburg and Gernrode lies in his role as the progenitor of the Ottonians and subsequent imperial dynasties, the final example in this discussion of early plaster effigies was made for a comparatively modest site, the convent at Drübeck. Though far smaller and simpler than its surviving counterparts, the Drübeck figure echoes many of the same themes and projects them into a very different social sphere.
The Holy Woman of Drübeck
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Nestled in the Harz mountains on the road from Ilsenburg to Wernigerode, thirty- five kilometers west of Quedlinburg, the small abbey church in the town of Drübeck contains a plaster effigy that closely echoes the composition of the three St. Servatius sculptures (fig. 63).66 The original location of the sculpture within the church remains unknown; the figure is currently placed upright in the crypt but no indication of its intended installation survives, as is so often the case. Standing at roughly half life-size and easily the smallest of the effigies that survive from the first half of the twelfth century, the Drübeck woman gives an impression of humility because she lacks the books, decorative lozenges, identifying inscriptions, and palmetto borders that are distinctive features at Quedlinburg. She wears a plain veil and raises her two empty hands, palms outward, in an orant gesture. These suggestions of a spiritual life are underscored by the halo behind her head. Despite these differences, the Drübeck figure offers an important counterpoint to the triple monument at Quedlinburg, having been cast in similarly high relief on a rectangular slab and made to commemorate an individual woman in plaster within the charged space of a convent. The surface of the Drübeck figure is badly weathered, and its lower body and legs are currently missing. Its poor state of preservation, lack of an identifying inscription, and somewhat banal iconography leave it difficult to date, though it is nearly universally recognized as a twelfth-century work.67 Close examination of the figure, particularly the flat treatment of the hands and the use of thin lines to articulate their forms schematically, without modeling the curving surfaces of a human palm, reveals many parallels to the Quedlinburg figures. The face is cast delicately in comparison to the flat hands: the cheeks are softly rounded, the hollows of the temples realized in three dimensions. This style, too, is reminiscent of the figures at St. Servatius, along with the exaggerated, oversized eyes. Though not distinctive enough to assert a shared workshop, these similarities suggest that the Drübeck figure is close in date to the Quedlinburg ensemble
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and almost certainly produced with knowledge of the larger, more prestigious program. Given that St. Servatius was an extremely well-endowed foundation, and Drübeck was always smaller and more modest in its means, it seems reasonable to conclude that the Drübeck effigy was made in response to, and indeed in emulation of, the larger and better-known sculptures at Quedlinburg. A date of between circa 1130 and 1140 is thus likely, though not entirely secure given the weathered state of the figure and the lack of a clear chronology for the site. Even taking this measure of uncertainty into account, the monument clearly belongs to the first half of the twelfth century and represents the art of a small convent that, although lacking the imperial patronage of its grand neighbor Quedlinburg, was still well-heeled enough to acquire a figural effigy at an early date. The sculpture thus adds a valuable facet to our view of the effigy, not only as it was used in women’s spaces but also at relatively modest sites. Unlike the grander abbeys and cathedrals that form the primary foci of this book and contain the overwhelming majority of early effigies, Drübeck was a small site with an obscure history that has largely escaped scholarly attention. It could not boast any especially famous figures among its founders or early residents. Thus, the larger question is how a rather minor abbey church without any clear markers of special status came to possess one of the first figural tomb sculptures found in northern Europe and one of the exceedingly few made of plaster. Some curious evidence to help solve this riddle can be found in the archives. Nine documents dated before the mid-twelfth century survive from Drübeck, and all of them are royal charters that detail the legal rights of the convent, describe gifts of land, and stipulate regulations concerning the offices of the abbess and reeve.68 The first, dated January 877, names a certain lady Adelbrin as the founding abbess and her brothers, Theti and Wikker, as Drübeck’s patrons and protectors. This document has led to a consensus in the few published references that the effigy possibly represents Adelbrin, shown with a halo and orant gesture to reflect local veneration of her memory.69 Although there are no sources that confirm such commemorative patterns at Drübeck, the charter of 877 does refer to Adelbrin as the first of her family to turn toward God; this act of conversion may be some sign of her spiritual distinction.70 Identifying the effigy as a posthumous monument to Adelbrin would also give preliminary justification for the similarity of the Drübeck figure to the triple monument at Quedlinburg. Since the St. Servatius sculptures represent aristocratic abbesses from the convent’s early history, it would seem logical for Drübeck to follow suit. Before this conclusion can be accepted, however, one more point must be addressed: the Drübeck charter of 877 is a forgery. Far from an isolated example of medieval fakery, it is part of a widespread phenomenon of falsified documentation that was far more pervasive in the Middle Ages than has often been assumed.71 This pattern plays out with great clarity at Drübeck. Three of the nine documents that survive from its early history, dated 877, 1004, and 1130, had already been regarded with some suspicion by nineteenth-century scholars; in 1926 Fritz von Reinöhl published a
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dissertation that unmasked them all as medieval forgeries.72 Three simple observations led von Reinöhl to convincingly redate the charter marked 877 to the first quarter of the eleventh century. First, several passages were copied, word for word, from an authentic Carolingian charter of 877 written for the prestigious imperial abbey of Gandersheim. Second, the passages that diverge from the model at Gandersheim use rhyming prose, a feature that is not observed in court documents until the reign of Otto III. Finally, the Drübeck charter makes reference to ownership of the Hornburg, a parcel of local land that did not belong to Drübeck until after the ninth century. Adelbrin, Theti, and Wikker are not known from any other documents from before the eleventh century, and it is uncertain whether the forged charter of 877 represents a translation of local tradition into written form or if it is a freely invented and purely fictional history.73 Either way, the document reveals a desire to lend Drübeck an older pedigree than it actually possessed and to push its foundation from the middle of the tenth century (the date supported by archeological examination of the site) to the last quarter of the ninth in order to enhance its local cachet. The major issues addressed by the documents, which include claims to various parcels of land, royal protections and immunities, and, above all, the right to the free election of its reeves and abbesses, are also backdated in the forgeries, adding a longer history and greater weight to the claims. Perhaps equally unsurprising but significant are repeated invocations of Quedlinburg and Gandersheim as models for the abbey’s rights, which can also be observed in the authentic documents of 995 and 1004 that are not so distant in time from the early eleventh-century date when the charter of 877 is thought to have been forged. This link is underscored by the relationship between the forged charter of 877 and its Gandersheim source. The forgery draws upon not only the language but also the content of its model. The original text also cites two aristocratic brothers as patrons of the institution and their sister as founding abbess. This similarity may well be an even stronger indication that the Theti, Wikker, and Adelbrin mentioned in the Drübeck document are eleventh-century concoctions, designed in emulation of Gandersheim, though the names may also represent half-remembered figures from local history, adapted to fit the framework Gandersheim provided. Whether the eleventh-century forgers invented this parallel family structure from whole cloth or merely capitalized upon it, the community of Drübeck was clearly embellishing its history with Gandersheim as a powerful local model. The unusual name Wikker appears again in another Drübeck forgery, this time spelled “Wiker,” in a charter dated 1004 and most likely written during the first half of the twelfth century. This document is given the same date, 1 August, as the authentic charter of 1004. The fact that the forgery has the same date and much of the same text as the original suggests that it did not act as a “pure” forgery but rather as an amended copy; it was expanded to mention a gift of land from the local duke Wiker and also to assert his right to the hereditary office of reeve. This Wiker is again described as the brother of an abbess; the repetition of the name and the family link to the abbess suggests a powerful local family that was continuing to assert its rights to control of
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the abbey and its property over an extended period of time. Within this context, the eleventh-century creation of a document dated to 877 may well be a sign that it was not only the institution but also the local clan that was seeking to augment its claims to prestige. While the medieval forgeries at Drübeck hint that the abbey and its patrons were actively emulating the institutions at Gandersheim and Quedlinburg, the appearance of the effigy during this period also seems to play a role in its self-promotion. The second forgery, appearing in the mid-twelfth century, coincides roughly in date with the plaster effigy. Without further sources, it cannot be argued that the charter and the sculpture were made at the same time; nevertheless, even if separated by some years, they worked in tandem to solidify and increase the significance of the institution. If the effigy is read as Adelbrin, it becomes a part of this effort to memorialize not only the abbess-founder but also the larger family unit, whether historical, legendary, or outright invented. The possibility that the “real” Adelbrin may never have existed at all is provocative in this context; if this is the case, then the effigy becomes a bold assertion not only of her physical presence but also of the veracity of the potential invention. The sculpture may perhaps function as a forgery in its own right, one that relied upon image rather than text in making its claim. Adelbrin, however, is not the only candidate for figural representation at Drübeck. According to Thietmar of Merseburg, who spent his childhood at Quedlinburg and seems to have known the local history of the Harz region exceedingly well, an anchoress named Sisu was living on the outskirts of Drübeck during “the days of King Henry II,” or around 1002 to 1024.74 This timing suggests her life was roughly contemporary with the chronicler himself, who died in 1018 and recalled a vision he received on the night that Sisu died. Thietmar reports that Sisu lived in seclusion for sixty-four years and emphasizes her chastity, piety, and poverty, even evocatively comparing Sisu’s life to that of Simeon the Stylite. This account speaks directly of the “crowds of people” who came to visit the anchoress, leaving votive gifts that she distributed to the poor. Such words suggest not only that Sisu received much attention during her lifetime but also that Drübeck attracted a substantial number of pilgrims during precisely the period when the document of 877 was forged. The abbey may have desired to capitalize on the influx of visitors and perhaps to take advantage of its newfound prominence as an opportunity to style itself as a peer of its far older and more prestigious neighbors in the Romanesque Harz. Looking broadly at the evidence from other Romanesque effigies, there is no real reason to assume that founders were given automatic representational priority; at Quedlinburg, for example, the effigies show women from the more recent past and not the saintly Queen Mathilda. Founders were indeed represented regularly in early effigies and appear with ever-increasing frequency in the later twelfth century, like the Plectrudis figure at St. Maria im Kapitol, Cologne (fig. 64).75 Still, the pattern is scarcely reflexive; not all early effigies show founders, and not all founders received effigies early on. Plectrudis offers an instructive example: her effigy was only made at the end of
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the twelfth century, when the increasing prominence of saintly relics in Cologne prompted a bid for her canonization.76 If indeed the spiritual desire to lay claim to bodies suspected of sanctity was a greater impetus than the status of founders for the creation of early effigies, the anchoress Sisu would have had a stronger claim in local enthusiasm than the thinly documented abbess Adelbrin. The sculpture’s halo and orant gesture certainly echo Thietmar’s descriptions of Sisu’s piety. More important, Thietmar’s words also provide evidence of pilgrimage to Drübeck and a widespread veneration for the body of the holy woman. Sisu was added at an early date to the tenth-century necrology of a liturgical manuscript in the neighboring diocese of Halberstadt, suggesting that pilgrimages to the site of Sisu’s body would have continued long after her death.77 In this context, the creation of a sculpture at Drübeck could be seen as an active attempt to co-opt this cult, to encourage local veneration of Sisu, and to redirect the attention of pilgrims, along with their donations, to the church itself. Even as Adelbrin and her brothers were invoked to substantiate the legal claims of the church to its landed endowment and its right to self-rule, the holy Sisu was most likely appropriated after her death as a spiritual champion and a potential rallying point for the sacred interests of the community at Drübeck. Perhaps it is not too much to imagine her body translated to the crypt of the abbey and the effigy constructed as a reminder of the integration of her saintly reputation with that of the community of canonesses living there. Two possibilities have been outlined here, though it remains possible that the sculpture represents yet another figure from Drübeck, neither Sisu nor Adelbrin, whose name has been lost. Medieval Christians, however, were preoccupied with ensuring memory and eternal life and did their best to keep the names of the “very
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Fig. 64 Effigy of Plectrudis, St. Maria im Kapitol, Cologne. Photo: Rheinisches Bildarchiv Cologne, rba_c003863.
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special dead” from being forgotten. Only one effigy from the twelfth century identifies a figure in the inscription who is otherwise entirely unknown in historical documents: Reinhildis of Riesenbeck (fig. 65). As I have argued elsewhere, however, the monument itself makes clear that the death of young Reinhildis was exceptional, and the singular iconography of the resulting sculpture is quite clearly drawn from the strange circumstances that it commemorates.78 Other effigies with inscriptions in this period showcase the bodies of individuals who are known from medieval sources and whose effigies were made to respond to the problematic legacies of the people in question. The absence of an inscription on the large mural band framing the Drübeck figure may be a hint that the woman it represented was so familiar to locals that no identifying text was required; alternatively, a framing inscription may well have been painted and subsequently lost. Even without conclusive identification, however, the figure offers tantalizing possibilities for interpretation. The primary sources from Drübeck, textual and sculptural, reflect attempts to refashion the past by adapting models from other abbeys in the Harz. While the texts reinvent the memory of the founding lady Adelbrin by mimicking charters from Gandersheim, the sculpture may revive the holy anchoress Sisu based on the model of Quedlinburg. Whatever function may be assigned to the forged documents, the sculpture is also implicated: these objects share an anachronistic reformulation of the past. It seems likely that the texts, with their specific language about voting rights and tax exemptions, were intended primarily to benefit the convent by asserting the same privileges enjoyed by imperial foundations in the same region. The sculpture was also intended to bring a certain material benefit to the abbey church, serving as a center point around which the community could rally its spiritual and material resources. What the sculpture offered that the texts could not was the body itself, a visual sign that gave visible presence and corporeal form to a series of abstract claims. In this sense, the modestly scaled sculpture functioned much like the far more ambitious programs at Quedlinburg and Gernrode. Its appearance at Drübeck, a site that could not boast the same extensive use of sculpture, attests to the power of this new kind of representational relief to embody a larger set of monastic ideals. Whether or not the individual shown was indeed the anchoress Sisu, her formation in plaster became an essential means of relating the sacred individual to a larger community. Much like its inspiration at Quedlinburg, the monument framed the body not only as a reminder of the past but also as a timeless call urging a female monastic community to focus on its promised eschatological redemption.
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Like virtually all Romanesque effigies, the plaster figures that survive at Quedlinburg, Drübeck, and Enger have been removed from their original contexts, with very little evidence regarding their intended installations. Even so, some slender threads still remain
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Fig. 65 Effigy of Reinhildis, parish church of St. Calixtus, Riesenbeck. Photo © LWL-Denkmalpflege, Landschafts- und Baukultur in Westfalen (Hedwig Nieland).
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to suggest that they were meant to be placed against walls rather than recumbent on the floor. The inscriptions on the Quedlinburg figures certainly position the reader at the feet of the effigies, and the raised hand of Adelheid I—much like the orant gesture of Sisu at Drübeck—reads more convincingly when confronting a viewer from a standing position than if set supine. The framing columns at Enger likewise denote an architectural placement, related perhaps to the mysterious figure at Gernrode, which may well be an abbess effigy still in situ. Of course, parallel evidence also exists for effigies in metalwork and stone: there is archival evidence for the enamel plaque of Geoffrey of Anjou set against a pillar at Le Mans, and the celebrated marble of Durand is still set upright in the cloister at Moissac. On the other hand, however, plaster effigies lack the competing evidence of existing slabs shaped like sarcophagus lids (as with Gottschalk of Diepholz at Bad Iburg) or framed with inscriptions that reflect placement on the floor, as with Rudolf’s effigy at Merseburg, with its sensitive shaping and phrase in hoc tumulo. Thus we arrive at two points: first, Romanesque effigies across the board, in all media, were more flexible in their placement than is generally assumed; and second, plaster effigies in particular were an especially suitable choice for placement on the wall. Where does this leave the study of the material? Reconsideration of the first generation of medieval effigies might begin with a general understanding that effigies were meant to create the tactile presence of the dead but not necessarily to project a close relationship between the corpse and the image. Sometimes, like with Rudolf’s gilded bronze monument, the effigy seems to dramatize the fraught relationship between the image and the proximate corpse. At other moments, however, the effigy may well have functioned to commemorate an absent body—this is nowhere more dramatic than the Widukind effigy, which returned the Saxon hero to his imagined site of patronage in a kind of restitution, pushing against the strong likelihood that the defeated Widukind lived out his days in an almost Napoleonic state of exile, trapped far away on a distant southern island. This flexibility points to questions that are not easily answered from the existing archive: the idea that the form of effigies might well reflect the presence or absence of the biological body cannot be easily tested when so many are lost. It also advises caution in the interpretation of effigies in relation to liturgies for the dead: we cannot lightly assume that the presence of the body in effigiam was an easy indication that the corpse was to be found nearby. This open-endedness is frustrating but also somewhat liberating; it is a reminder that the “genre” of the tomb effigy cannot be assigned a fixed, stable status in the twelfth century. These notes of ambiguity also point to some new possibilities that are as intriguing as they are elusive. The idea that effigies could negate absence and create presence—not only the mournful presence of the supine body but also the active presence of a standing body—is in itself fruitful, since it suggests a kind of agency that had previously been tied to cult statues and reliquaries. In the case of Quedlinburg, it is difficult to overestimate the effect of the three figures, standing in (as it were) for the lost presence of the Ottonian and Salian dynasties. The use of plaster bridged the space
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of the living and the dead, linking the women to the physical fabric of the church in an unexpectedly poetic sense and quite possibly contrasting the durable plaster of the sculpted body with the remains that were kept locked in the visually subdued lead caskets in the crypt. Further, a new kind of dialogue was being maintained at Drübeck and Enger, where smaller institutions used plaster to enliven their spaces, bringing in the image of a revered anchoress and a distant patron where none existed before. Such works move past mere revivals or evocations of the dead: they are effective extensions of the local spiritual community back into the historical past and forward to the eschatological future. In the next chapter, which turns to the sudden expansion of effigy sculpture in the latter half of the twelfth century, the deep appeal of these objects not only to their own local viewers but also to audiences across Europe becomes apparent.
Canonesses 153
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Proliferation
5
In the words of the bishop, indeed I love your body, but I love more your soul; just as I do not love my own body except for the sake of my soul, so too is my love for you. . . . Take away the soul and what is left of the body, except what can be said of every human body: Dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return. —Bernard of Clairvaux
Wavering between affection and ambivalence, these words from the most renowned theologian of the twelfth century offer a keen reflection on the ambiguous position of the body in twelfth-century Christianity. Bernard of Clairvaux tells an anonymous reader that the body is to love and yet not to love. It earns this love not through intrinsic value but through something else: its association with the soul, separate from the body and yet fundamentally linked to it.1 This discourse, in which the body is at once marginalized as a site of decay and yet also celebrated as the focal point of resurrection, is intimately tied to the formulation of the medieval effigy and its northern European rise in the twelfth century.2 Figural tomb sculptures project the bodies of the dead into the physical and tactile space of the living, masking and yet also recalling the lurking corpse and absent soul. Given the fragmented archeological evidence, there is some ambiguity about how frequently the earliest effigies were installed in close physical proximity to the burials they represented, but even so, the sculptures were agents communicating anxiety about both the present separation and the anticipated future reunion of the two aspects of personhood, corporeal and spiritual. For viewers attuned to the writings of Bernard and his contemporaries, initial encounters with the newly conceived effigy format would have recalled key theological debates about resurrection. The unseen corpse represented by the visible effigy, the hidden putrefaction of the former and the evident durability of the latter, anticipated the eschatological promise of reanimation in the juxtaposition of ephemeral and durable bodies. This chapter traces how this powerful formula gained traction in the mid to late twelfth century, almost a hundred years after the first appearance of an effigy in Merseburg, before the sculptural type eventually went on to dominate elite funerary representation through the later Middle Ages and well into early modernity. It is telling that Bernard’s letter, addressed to an unidentified cleric, also warns the reader that “the days of man are like grass,” citing the same passage from Psalm 103
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Romanesque Tomb Effigies 156
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that appears on the contemporaneous effigy of Adelheid II at Quedlinburg. Though the letter and the monument are not linked directly, they show the same anxiety about the status of the body after the departure of the soul. It is the very distance between these two twelfth-century texts that suggests how widely such concerns about the problematic status of the body were shared and how its promise of both death and resurrection was a matter of pressing urgency among the spiritual and political leaders of the time. Not every medieval individual was deeply conversant in such debates, of course, but the monastic sites where most of the early effigies emerged were deeply embedded in a culture of institutionalized memory, and the reforms of the twelfth century highlighted the tensions between spiritual obligations and earthly realities in many of these same communities. It is also striking that some of the first examples made for cathedrals—including Rudolf’s splendid effigy in Merseburg and the ambitious enamel epitaph for Geoffrey of Anjou in Le Mans—were also the most openly political and the most ostentatious. Even so, all of these monuments were rare in their own time, made for sites that were specially invested in their creation and representative of individuals whose bodies were tied not only to the site but also to a particular local crisis. As images of specific individuals rather than generalized representations of broad social categories, tomb effigies relied upon the implied presence of the body to create meaning. For this reason, effigies stood apart from other images of idealized figures, both lay and religious, that were also appearing with increasing frequency in the monumental sculpture of this time, but they appeared in tension with them as well. Jamb figures on portals in the Île-de-France, such as the famous crowned kings and queens of the Royal Portal at Chartres, offer an essential case in point: these figures reflected the rising interest in highly idiosyncratic depictions of bodies, clothing, and faces in the twelfth century and thus blurred boundaries between generic figural types and the illusion of specificity that became a hallmark of portraiture in later centuries.3 To name one prominent (and beautiful) case that led to some confusion in the nineteenth century, a pair of crowned figures carved as jamb statues in the 1150s for the church of Notre-Dame de Corbeil (Essonne) were identified as representations of the Merovingian royal couple Clothar and Clothilde by Alexandre Lenoir (figs. 66–67).4 Though long since dismissed as a wishful designation, the misattribution probably helped save the jambs when the church itself was dismantled and its components sold. The figures were first taken to Lenoir’s Musée des Monuments français before being installed at St-Denis in 1817, as if to join the collection of royal effigies housed at that site, and they were finally sent to the Louvre in 1916, where they are exhibited as likely representations of Solomon and Sheba.5 The desire to see Clothar and Clothilde in the Corbeil figures presents an effective reminder that the distinct genres of figural sculpture were taking shape alongside one another in the Middle Ages. The effigy had a fluid relationship to other forms of monumental sculpture in its first examples and only emerged as a fully distinct category toward the end of the twelfth century. In arguing for the unique role of early effigies
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Fig. 66 Jamb statue from Corbeil (so-called Queen of Sheba). Musée du Louvre, Paris, RF 1617. Photo: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, New York. Fig. 67 Jamb statue from Corbeil (so-called King Solomon). Musée du Louvre, Paris, RF 1616. Photo: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, New York.
and yet also exploring their interplay with other contemporaneous monuments, this book has in many ways highlighted the ambiguity of the early examples. For example, Durand of Moissac and Widukind of Saxony are included despite the likelihood that the monuments marked their legacies but not their actual tombs, and while I have suggested the plaster effigies in Enger, Quedlinburg, and Drübeck may have been intended for installation on walls like the unnamed woman at Gernrode, they are also treated as effigies because of their commemorative functions. To navigate this blurred line, the separation between potential “mural” effigies and jamb figures, like the pair in the Louvre, lies in the use of sculpture to maintain the presence of a specific individual from the local past, rather than to create a fictive or generic presence for a universally
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Proliferation 157
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Fig. 68 (opposite) Effigy of Bishop Roger, detail, Salisbury Cathedral. Photo: Salisbury Cathedral (Ash Mills).
admired figure—whether from biblical, hagiographic, or even literary sources—that could appear at sites unrelated to that person’s biography. The fact that, even as the twelfth century witnessed an extraordinary rise in representations of the human form, the “effigy” type emerged as a distinctive, rectangular format with a thick framing band, and its flat slabs (despite their frequent use of architectural ornament) never seem to have been engaged in structural functions in the manner of jamb or trumeau figures, is itself a sign that the “genre” was steadily and self-consciously emerging. As these figures populated ecclesiastical spaces, they carried pressing questions about the importance of the body and its ability to represent a broad spectrum of needs, from the highly local and individual at the start to eventually encompassing the broadly universal and paradigmatic. By the third quarter of the twelfth century, the steady rise in figural sculpture also opened fresh pathways for effigy production on a larger, even commercial, scale. Effigies began to proliferate and gradually became more widely available as commodities commissioned by individuals rather than as institutional monuments addressing communal concerns. In this way, the effigies outlined below reflect the proliferation of the type in the second half of the twelfth century. Though they share some of the characteristic patterns observed elsewhere in this book, it is in these examples that we first encounter effigies that were shipped great distances. This facet reflects a new “market” for effigies that was not apparent before the middle of the century and that grew to meet the demand for the form as new vehicles of personal salvation.
The Tournai Tombs in England
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The Tournai stone monument for Roger, bishop of Salisbury (1107–1139), is probably the earliest surviving effigy in England (fig. 68, color plate 13).6 Elizabeth Bradford Smith (Schwartzbaum) wrote a foundational analysis of this monument, showing that Roger’s effigy was most likely imported from Tournai together with two other episcopal tomb slabs that marked the graves of his nephews, Alexander, bishop of Lincoln (1123–1148), and Nigel, bishop of Ely (1133–1169).7 I revisit Smith’s specific arguments here, as the three tombs—dated to the middle of the twelfth century—present further examples of early effigies used as palliative agents in a time of particular stress, offering redemption after disgrace. The slabs are addressed in this chapter, however, primarily because Roger’s tomb also offers the first clear example of an effigy produced by artists not working in situ but rather working in a distant location and exporting the work to its intended site. Smith and others situate Roger’s effigy in the broader history of the “industrialized” production of Tournai stone sculpture, a practice that had been established by the ancient Romans (who also routinely shipped monumental figures all over the Mediterranean) during their late antique occupation of the North.8 Tournai stone, a hard and heavy material, was highly desirable because its grayish appearance could be polished to a deep, dark, shiny surface that approximated rare black marble.9 It was
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Romanesque Tomb Effigies 160
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typically carved before export to minimize the weight of the order, and the Tournai workshops had developed a particular style of low-relief carving and deep surface incisions that was especially well-suited to the material and highly practical for shipping.10 Smith positions the three slabs for English bishops carefully within this tradition and shows that while most of the carved Romanesque materials exported from Tournai were architectural elements (colonnettes, bases, and capitals) or fonts, the three slabs in England are closely related to the façade sculpture of Tournai Cathedral (dedicated 1171) and its rich figural imagery.11 While Smith’s analysis centers on locating the slabs in the tradition of Tournai stone sculpture, what I wish to add are a few comments on the place of these monuments in the history of the effigy and specifically the ways in which they signal a significant shift in patterns of production. Mass-produced funerary slabs from Tournai, often with simple crosses on their surface, can be traced back into the ninth century or earlier across northern Europe, including England, but it is only in the twelfth century that examples with more complex motifs begin to appear.12 These include the Gundrada slab (1142–47) with its orderly palmettes, the unusual plaque with obscure animal and architectural designs now at Bridlington priory (ca. 1140–70), and the effigy considered to depict Gilbert Crispin at Westminster Abbey (ca. 1160–1200).13 The slabs associated with Roger, Nigel, and Alexander appear especially ambitious in the quality of their carving, extensively discussed by Smith, and the complexity of their iconography.14 Roger’s heavily abraded effigy, its head replaced in yellow sandstone in the fourteenth century, shows the bishop’s right hand raised in blessing and a twisted serpent under his feet.15 The round arch over his head has been modified to a trefoil to accommodate the replacement head, but its original form echoed the architectural vocabulary of earlier twelfth- century effigies like those of Durand of Moissac and Gottschalk of Diepholz. Roger’s episcopal status is marked by the crozier that crosses his body. The vine scrolls that encircle the image are inhabited by occasional birds that, like the twisting serpent, find parallels in the façade at Tournai.16 The Tournai slabs for Alexander and Nigel lack effigies, but their imagery resonates with their intended function. Alexander’s slab bears a heavily worn Tree of Jesse, and its details recall the vegetal borders of the Roger effigy (fig. 69, color plate 14). Popular in later stained-glass windows, particularly in France, the Tree of Jesse was occasionally used as a sign of the harmony of church and state.17 To the Capetians it may have signified the divine right of kings, but applied to the tomb of a bishop, it conversely suggests that episcopal power, no less than royal, had roots in scriptural systems of authority tracing back to David and Solomon. The Ely monument, in contrast, turns from the lineage of the body to the hopes of the soul (fig. 70, color plate 15). It echoes an effigy format by showing a large-scale figure under an arch, but rather than the body of the commemorated person, this “figure” is a winged angel holding a diminutive soul that grasps a tiny, delicate crozier. Though the slab is badly damaged, with its bottom edge and the face of the angel broken away, many finely carved details are preserved. An elaborate cityscape recalling the Heavenly Jerusalem fills
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Fig. 69 Funerary slab of Bishop Alexander, Lincoln Cathedral. Photo: Michele Vescovi, with permission from Lincoln Cathedral. Fig. 70 Funerary slab of Bishop Nigel, detail, Ely Cathedral. Photo: author, with permission from Ely Cathedral.
the arched canopy over the angel, its turrets reminiscent of the fairytale spires on the enamel epitaph of Geoffrey Plantagenet, likewise signifying salvation. By eschewing representation of the deceased body, however, the sculpture shifts emphasis away from the promise of resurrection to focus instead on the soul, held in a state of grace above the slab while the body rots below. The three effigies, sent to three different cathedrals, thus display radically different forms of imagery but share a single point of origin in Tournai, and they were likely made in a coordinated campaign for three men from a single family. In addition to providing a likely date of circa 1145 to 1165 through comparison to the façade of Tournai Cathedral, Smith outlines the position of the bishops Roger, Alexander, and Nigel in the fraught political landscape of twelfth-century England.18 Roger had enjoyed the favor of King Henry I. He was entrusted with great power, particularly during Henry’s prolonged absences in Normandy, and had used his influence to foster the careers of his two nephews, securing their appointments as bishops of Lincoln and Ely.19 By the time of Henry’s death in 1135, Roger and his nephews had amassed so much power that they raised the suspicions of the new king, Stephen,
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Proliferation 161
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Romanesque Tomb Effigies 162
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and the entire family suffered a dramatic fall from grace in 1139. Their castles were confiscated, and they were imprisoned (with the possible exception of Nigel, whose location at this time is not quite clear).20 The family was soon released, and all three retained their positions as bishops, but the fortunes of the clan remained notably reduced for the remainder of Stephen’s reign. Roger, humiliated, died in December of that year. As Smith notes, it is nearly impossible to imagine the three slabs could have been completed before 1139, as Nigel was only appointed in 1133 and the chaos of the early years of Stephen’s reign after 1135—as he fought against his cousin Empress Mathilda for control of England—hardly presented an opportune moment for a bishop to import lavish funerary monuments from the Continent. With Roger thus effectively eliminated as the possible purchaser of the slabs, Smith turns to a comparison of Alexander of Lincoln, who lived until 1148 and was called “the Magnificent” for his enthusiastic patronage of the arts, and Nigel of Ely, whose longer tenure at Ely was comparatively austere. She concludes that Alexander was the more likely patron of the entire program.21 On this basis, Smith proposes a terminus ante quem of 1148, or Alexander’s death, for the three Tournai slabs. The essential historical argument advanced by Smith, that the monuments were part of a programmatic effort to restore respectability to an important family of the established Anglo-Norman oligarchy after they suffered deep embarrassment in 1139, is a powerful one that can be strongly affirmed here. In this regard, the intent is not at all unlike that of the effigy of Gottschalk of Diepholz, to name but the closest historical parallel. Her assessment of Alexander and Nigel as patrons and the corresponding dating and historical context of the slabs, however, needs reconsideration in light of more recent work on the biographies of the men in question. It is true that the reputation of Alexander and Nigel as lavish and austere patrons, respectively, retains currency. Nigel is known to have sold off many valuable church furnishings from Ely, such as a gemmed Anglo-Saxon cloth that was bought by Alexander, who took it as a gift to Rome.22 The pope rebuked Nigel for having liquidated the marvelous textile and sent it back to Ely. For his part, Alexander had already received a letter from Bernard of Clairvaux in 1129 that chastised his lavish lifestyle.23 Alexander is also often credited with bringing a Tournai font to Lincoln, suggesting his interest in the material and craftsmanship.24 Before linking the tombs closely with the patronage of either bishop, however, we must first revisit how they fit into a slightly broader historical picture. Since the first likely examples of individuals commissioning their own tombs only emerged around 1181 and early evidence suggests a culture of posthumous commissions, a date before 1148 seems too precocious to reflect Alexander’s own patronage.25 Nor is England’s Anarchy from 1135 to 1153 particularly auspicious for importing three large funerary monuments. This civil war, which lasted until King Stephen and Empress Matilda finally agreed that her son with Geoffrey Plantagenet would become King Henry II, was also an especially bad time for commemorating Roger of Salisbury in particular. As Nicholas Karn points out, Roger’s powerful clan—including not only his bishop nephews, but also his son Roger le Poer—was excluded from positions in the secular
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administration of England for the remainder of Stephen’s life.26 This ban surely indicates that they remained politically weakened. It was only after 1154, in the early years of Henry II’s reign, that Nigel—who long outlived Roger and Alexander—was able to begin restoring the family’s position. Perhaps the greatest sign of his success was the appointment of his own son, Richard fitz Nigel (or FitzNeal), as Henry’s royal treasurer in 1158 or 1159.27 By the 1170s, Richard fitz Nigel was on close terms with Henry, as reflected in Richard’s own writings from that time, and in 1189 he was appointed bishop of London. As Karn argues, it was through Richard fitz Nigel’s appointment at court that the entire family of Roger of Salisbury was able to recover the influential position that they had lost in the years just before Roger’s death.28 Thus while Smith’s thesis—that Roger’s effigy aimed to rehabilitate the memory of a major figure whose reputation had been unjustly tarnished—largely holds, the rehabilitation of Roger’s memory is more plausibly associated with the years after 1154 and perhaps as late as 1170, which is to say, after Stephen’s death and during the years when Richard fitz Nigel was an ascendant figure in the sphere of Henry II. Though Nigel lived until 1169, he was in poor health after 1164 and may have engaged in preparations for his own death. Perhaps the awkwardness of commissioning a funerary slab for an individual who was still alive prompted the unique idea of showing the angel and soul in the place of the body. Though the motif of the rising soul is also found on a few other funerary monuments—including the relief of Reinhildis of Riesenbeck (ca. 1170)—every other known use of the image presents this iconography in a narrative context, in which angels are shown as small figures and the soul itself is contrasted with the dead body.29 Perhaps the body is omitted in the Ely slab because, in a very rare occurrence for its time, the individual in question was not dead yet. However, it is not necessary in such a circumstance to attribute the patronage of the Ely slab directly to Nigel: perhaps it was his son who arranged to purchase all three slabs in London, where the guild of Tournai stoneworkers maintained a presence, and had them shipped to the cathedrals in honor of his father, uncle, and great-uncle. Richard fitz Nigel’s close ties to Henry II are especially evocative because the new king must have known the enamel epitaph for his own father, Geoffrey Plantagenet, and may plausibly have been involved in its commission. It is not hard to imagine that the Le Mans plaque, completed soon after Geoffrey’s death in 1151, might have inspired the commission of the Tournai slabs at a date after 1158, during the years when Richard fitz Nigel was actively working to restore his family’s legacy. The resonance between the architectural frames over the Geoffrey and Nigel monuments becomes stronger in light of this connection: the stylistic and material traditions involved are different, but the concept and underlying intent in the two monuments are closely related. The comparison is also a reminder that Tournai marble, while a prestigious and valuable material, represented a kind of restraint and sobriety in relation to the splendid enamel epitaph. Thus the earliest effigy in England seems to fit a pattern of emulation and proliferation that may reflect a path by which the effigy format was gradually disseminated.
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The generational gap between Richard fitz Nigel and Roger is also worth noting here: whether Richard himself was the patron or whether he perhaps facilitated commissions for the cathedral or for other family members, it is striking that the use of an effigy was reserved for the eldest member of the family, whose death was furthest in the past and who had suffered the greatest personal crisis. The distinctive choice of a Tree of Jesse for Alexander may reflect the intersection of political and ecclesiastical interests that was at play in all three monuments, even as Richard and his family worked to revive their reputation while maintaining favor under a new royal dynasty. Finally, the link to Richard fitz Nigel may explain why the Nigel slab carries the only inscription preserved on the set: the sharply angled edge of the canopy over the angel’s head still bears the text s(an)c(tu)s michael oret p(ro) me (May Saint Michael pray for me). The epigraphy is awkward, the letters unevenly distributed and carved with obvious difficulty, suggesting that they are not the work of the original workshop and may reflect the hand of a carver unused to the hardness of Tournai stone. It would be poetic, if a little sentimental, to imagine that the letters were added after the slab arrived in London, sometime in the 1160s, perhaps at the request of Richard fitz Nigel to honor his dying or recently deceased father.
The Bentheim Group
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A little more than two hundred miles north of the Tournai quarries, the high-quality sandstone of Bentheim offered a similar opportunity for stone sculpture to be produced in large quantities and exported widely at an early date.30 While many of the plaques made of this stone are heavily abraded today, the best evidence suggesting that the Bentheim quarry was exporting effigies before the end of the twelfth century is found in a slab from the former imperial foundation at Borghorst, now in Münster (fig. 71).31 The figure is at times identified as Bernhard of Borghorst, husband of the founding abbess, Berta, thanks to an unsubstantiated report that the slab covered Bernhard’s tomb when discovered in 1824.32 While its identification as part of a founder’s tomb is reasonable, evidence from sites like Bad Iburg, Quedlinburg, and Drübeck cautions against automatically accepting this assignment. The figure could also represent Gerhard of Borghorst, named in a document from 1180, or perhaps a reeve.33 The use of Bentheim sandstone fits its stylistic similarity to a series of effigies that seems to have been produced in the last third of the twelfth century and shipped to modest sites, including Beets, Larrelt, Rodkerk, Simonswolde, Suurhusen, and Vollenhove, on or near the northwestern edges of medieval Germany.34 Though little is known about the masons, the survival of a monumental thirteenth-century crucifix known as the Herrgott von Bentheim from the same circle indicates that the workshop was entrusted with important commissions for the local community (fig. 72). Further effigies from the late twelfth century, stylistically distinct from the Bentheim group but similarly anonymous, include a donor figure in the town of Hesse, France, and a priest
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Fig. 71 Effigy from Borghorst. LWL- Museum für Kunst und Kultur (Westfälisches Landesmuseum), Münster, Inv. Nr. J-1151 DK. On loan from the Diocese of Münster. Photo: LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur (Westfälisches Landesmuseum), Münster (Rudolf Wakonigg).
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in Mittelbergheim, Alsace.35 In each example, identification of the individual remains virtually impossible: the effigies are in poor condition, lacking both inscriptions and mentions among relevant archival sources. Whether they commemorate figures from the recent or distant past of their local institutions is equally obscure. The abraded surfaces and bland attributes of the surviving sculptures have effectively frustrated analysis beyond occasional short essays.36 The assertion that the effigies from the Bentheim group in particular share a certain naïve style is useful, however, beyond any desire to relegate them to a “provincial” or peripheral status. Their localization to the northern reaches of Holy Roman territory, removed from the bustling cathedral cities and prestigious ancient monasteries of Saxony, is itself a useful point: it suggests that the popularity of the effigy was spreading beyond the better-known urban centers of artistic activity and that demand was high enough that a workshop operating beyond the shared stylistic currents of the Rhineland, the Harz region, or the other places traditionally linked to imperial patronage could participate in the proliferation of the effigy type. Far from looking at these rough effigies with a dismissive eye, it is essential to approach them with a sense of wonder: it seems that the concept of the effigy in this group, involving a figure with raised hands set into a slab that covered the body of the dead, had spread much further and faster than its stylistic norms by the third quarter of the twelfth century. The most characteristic feature of the Bentheim group, visible even in the most worn examples, is the orant gesture, with hands splayed outward at awkward angles. The effect of this exaggerated gesture is twofold: first, it calls attention to an apparent indifference toward the gentle, flowing contours of the earlier examples at Merseburg or Bad Iburg (to name two effigies that have been cited as “sources” for the Bentheim group); second, it emphasizes the visualization of prayer and salvation. Even if the craftsmanship might be considered clumsy in comparison to the elite examples that occupy the heart of our discussion of Romanesque effigies, the sheer ambition of this northern group remains remarkable: despite their awkward arms and simplified borders, they clearly played a valuable role in commemorating the dead. Beyond reflecting the idiosyncratic style of a given workshop, the heavy, powerful forms of these sculptures and their simplicity and exaggerated gestures offer indications of their intended function. These sculptures are found in locations that were remote by the standards of their time and in communities of modest standing. They are key signs of the appeal of the newly codified format in contexts where local audiences saw little monumental sculpture. The relationship between the Bentheim group and the neighboring example at Bad Iburg is not unlike the comparison of the Quedlinburg effigies and the smaller figure at Drübeck: the later sculptures reflect the success of the effigy type and its adoption at sites that were less heavily invested in expensive sculptural programs. It is important to note, however, that the modified forms taken by such effigies are not automatically signs of “coarse” taste: the flattened forms of the Borghorst effigy and its heavily abraded condition suggest that in its original form the sculpture was cost-effective, given that its flat design reduced the
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Fig. 72 (opposite) Christ on the cross (Herrgott von Bentheim), Katharinenkirche, Bad Bentheim. Photo: author, with permission from Burg Bentheim.
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Fig. 73 Three of the royal effigies, Royal Abbey of Our Lady of Fontevrault. Photo: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, New York.
potential waste of stone implied in a thick relief; it was also easier to transport without fear of damage, and once set into the floor of a small church, it could be walked on without incurring major damage. The abrasion observed today is the result of centuries of wear, and even so it represents only a smoothing and slow polishing of the surface, reflecting the great durability of Bentheim stone.
The Plantagenets at Fontevrault
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By the end of the twelfth century, the tradition of effigies that show the dead as if they were still alive had been firmly established. These objects reflect a certain theological confidence that their subjects will be resurrected in the flesh as they appeared at age thirty-three, the ideal age of Christ at the time of his Passion. The presentation of the dead as truly dead does not appear regularly in tomb sculpture until the fourteenth century, when the gisant formula (depicting the dead as supine and lifeless) is intensified to become the true transi (cadaver monument), showing not only death but putrefaction. Appearing some 150 years before this phenomenon took root in northern Europe, the effigies at Fontevrault offered an unusual challenge to the convention of showing the dead in neutral animation. As Alain Erlande-Brandenburg and others note, the Fontevrault effigies appear in the years around 1200 as the earliest known examples using beds that are draped as if for funerals (figs. 73–74).37 The face of Eleanor of Aquitaine in particular has been likened to a death mask, pushing her effigy even further from the timeless body of resurrection and toward the ephemeral
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Fig. 74 Group of royal effigies, Royal Abbey of Our Lady of Fontevrault. Photo: Manuel Cohen / Art Resource, New York. Fig. 75 Entombment of Saint Guthlac, in the Guthlac Roll. London, BL, Harley Roll Y 6, roundel 16. Photo © The British Library Board.
corpse (color plate 16). The Fontevrault effigies thus reject the expected iconography of tomb sculpture at the end of the twelfth century, emphasizing the historical moment of the funeral rather than eschatological resurrection. The representation of the dead on funerary beds had precedents in earlier medieval art; a particularly vivid example is found in the Warmundus Sacramentary (ca. 1000), which shows a body being prepared for burial on a draped funerary bed while a distraught mourner tears wildly at her hair. 38 Nearly two centuries later, a more sedate version appears in the Guthlac Roll, where mourners gather quietly around Guthlac’s curiously blank shroud (fig. 75).39 In the early twelfth century,
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an extraordinary image in a manuscript from St-Bertin in Saint Omer shows the dead abbot Lambert (fig. 76). His soul has just been taken by angels, who bear it aloft, in an iconography similar to the Nigel slab in Ely. The body left behind is curiously similar to a tomb effigy in its recumbent position over a rectangular slab, but here the body is shown with closed eyes, slumped in an attitude of death that is almost unparalleled in this period. In a brief discussion in Tomb Sculpture, Erwin Panofsky draws some structural parallels between the manuscript page and the funerary monument of Bruno of Hildesheim (ca. 1200), but these similarities are inexact at best (fig. 77).40 Bruno’s tomb is shown in an explicitly narrative and liturgical context; its haunting image of the corpse presents the body wrapped and shrouded, more like the extraordinary body of Mary in the Ingeborg Psalter (ca. 1195) than anything else from this era. 41 As, for example, Patrick Geary and Frederick Paxton show, rituals tied to death had an essential function, facilitating the process of grieving and allowing the living to return to daily life.42 It is essential, however, to recognize the core distinction between images of the dead that appear in depictions of commemorations and rituals, and the iconic form of the effigy type that exists outside these narrative contexts. The early representation of the royal figures at Fontevrault as if in repose on funereal beds is thus quite odd and requires some rethinking here. The modern fame of the Fontevrault gisants, however, is tied less to this iconographic innovation than to the renown of the Plantagenet dynasty, particularly to the glamorous Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine (1122–1204). Her effigy is shown at Fontevrault alongside two kings: her husband, Henry II (1133–1189), and her son Richard the Lionheart (ca. 1186–1246), both apparently carved somewhat earlier than Eleanor’s effigy. The other effigy of a queen most likely represents Isabelle of Angoulême (ca. 1186–1246), the wife of John Lackland, and was likely added later, as discussed below.
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Fig. 76 (opposite) Death of Saint Lambert, in manuscript from St-Bertin in Saint Omer. Boulogne-sur- Mer, Bibliothèque municipale, Ms. 46, fol. 1v. Photo: CNRS– IRHT (Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes), with permission from the Bibliothèque municipale de Boulogne-sur-Mer. Fig. 77 Epitaph of Presbyter Bruno of Hildesheim, Hildesheim Cathedral. Photo courtesy of Dommuseum Hildesheim (Gerhard Lutz [Hildesheim]).
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Eleanor’s career as the rowdy and astonishing duchess of Aquitaine, who had been queen of France before becoming queen of England, is so celebrated, both in academia and in Hollywood, that it has, with good reason, dominated discussion of these effigies. Eleanor is usually identified as the patron of her own effigy, as well as those of her husband and son.43 This association is tied to the popular consensus that the effigies were carved before the fall of Château Gaillard in 1204, which signaled the loss of Normandy for the English and the decline of Plantagenet power in France.44 Eleanor had retired to Fontevrault by 1200 and apparently died there in 1204, which suggests to historians that, since Henry had already died in 1189 and Richard in 1199, Eleanor would have been left to commission the first three tomb sculptures. In turn, the unique draperies on the beds, the odd juxtaposition of funerary mask and prayer book on Eleanor’s own effigy, and the suggestion that the style of the effigies is a better fit for the years around 1230 than 1204 have all been chalked up to Eleanor’s audacious and avant-garde taste as a great patron of the arts.45 The effigies have thus been seen as self-conscious and self-confident assertions of Plantagenet power, and their extraordinary features have been normalized because they have been equated with the extraordinary life of an iconic medieval queen. This interpretation requires some healthy skepticism, not least due to its debt to Eleanor’s personal glamor and historical charisma. Scholarship on literary and textual sources from this period has introduced a strong note of caution to the fascination that permeates many discussions of her life and particularly her patterns of patronage.46 Despite a historical tendency to credit Eleanor as a fan of the troubadours, for example, the textual evidence for her direct patronage of specific poets is thin, at best, and contested.47 There is a certain poetic irony in the fact that the book currently held in Eleanor’s hands, which has often been read as a reflection of her literary proclivities, may not be original to the figure: the drawings published by Charles Alfred Stothard in the early nineteenth century show her broken hands as they existed before the 1846 restoration.48 At least one late seventeenth-century drawing and multiple eighteenth- century prints do show her holding an open book, suggesting the later restoration had a basis in an earlier state of the sculpture, but given that these reproductions often ignore traces of damage or incorporate early modern restorations, it is difficult to state with certainty that the original disposition of the hands precisely matched their interpretation in antiquarian images.49 Thus the charming presence of the book—together with its inviting suggestion that, even in death, the queen enjoyed her reading time—is a much less certain attribute than has often been assumed. This evocative detail is an apt metaphor not only for the persistent view of Eleanor as an avid consumer of French literature but also for the enduring desire to define her as a great patron of the arts: the evidence is much thinner than the reputation. The first problem is a lack of documentation linking Eleanor with the commission of her Fontevrault effigy or, for that matter, any other object except for the rock crystal vase from St-Denis, now at the Louvre.50 This dearth of evidence is compounded by a second, even more pervasive issue: even if a document dated circa 1200 associated Eleanor with the creation of her
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effigy, what exactly would such a text indicate? At most, it would signal her participation in an elaborate structure of cultural expectations and the patronage of memorials as part of that system. Her personal agency in shaping the tombs, however, would remain opaque. In a similar vein, though stories about Eleanor’s triumphs and her scandals are perennially seductive for general audiences, it remains difficult to sift through the partisan politics and malicious gossip that inevitably color the earliest records. Looking to Fontevrault, it may well be that a certain intensive focus on Eleanor’s personality, though understandable, raises the serious risk of forgetting how little is actually known about the degree of control she exercised over her money and power. Though she remains a plausible candidate for the patron of the effigies, there is little cause to accept this link as airtight, much less to see her individual tastes and preferences reflected in their iconographic innovations. The act of commissioning effigies for one’s own self was still rare in Eleanor’s generation; one document recording a sale is known from 1181, but this practice still seems to have been an exception rather than a rule.51 As demonstrated throughout this book, the twelfth century offers far more evidence for effigies that were designed posthumously, responding to the needs of communities to celebrate figures from the past rather than the needs of individuals or families to mark their own graves. This pattern is especially strong among aristocratic burials in monastic centers, which are often the products of a spiritual economy in which donations were exchanged for prayer. Effigies could act as public seals on these social contracts, appealing to the laity to continue patronage even as they called upon the living to remember the dead. With this system in mind, caution is required in identifying patrons for tomb sculptures: the ways in which the effigy was shaped by the needs of the communities it served, lay and monastic, deserves priority. Given the absence of sources to clarify whether or not Eleanor commissioned the first effigies herself, it seems prudent to pay close attention to the stylistic evidence that points for a date closer to 1230 than to 1200. The wonderful draperies, which correspond to trends in northern metalwork from the 1220s, also find parallels in French wood sculpture during this decade. These early Gothic effigies, like so many tomb sculptures from the Romanesque period, could plausibly be dated years or even decades after the individuals they represent had died. To borrow terms from Panofsky’s Tomb Sculpture, the Fontevrault effigies are deeply retrospective, looking back to the funeral and not forward to the prospect of resurrection. Compared to other effigies from this period, this emphasis on the funerary ritual creates an atmosphere of permanent mourning and unforgotten loss. It is hard to read these effigies as reflections of Plantagenet pride; they come across much more as nostalgic reminders of the Plantagenet past. In other words, they are more convincingly viewed as products of the decades after Eleanor had died and Château Gaillard had fallen—which is to say, as memorials to power that has faded, not to power that still exists. A date in the 1220s would not preclude a key observation advanced by Erlande-Brandenburg: the idea that these effigies correspond to textual accounts of
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the burial of Henry the Young King, who was Eleanor and Henry’s eldest son and the older brother of Richard the Lionheart. Henry had been crowned in 1170 but died in 1183; therefore, while he was recognized as king during his lifetime, he predeceased his father and never reigned alone. At his funeral his body was laid out in a deliberate echo of his coronation regalia; the description of his crown, sword, and spurs is a match for the attributes observed on the effigies for Henry and Richard. This conflation of coronation and funeral is wonderful and provocative, of course; it is the sort of evidence that lies at the heart of Kantorowicz’s classic thesis concerning the king’s two bodies. Nevertheless, we must remember that no other royal effigies from the thirteenth century present the body as if at a funeral: we do not find it in the Plantagenet effigies of Rouen Cathedral, for example, or in the Capetian necropolis at St-Denis. The apparent translation of the ephemeral funerary regalia associated with the Young King into the permanent medium of funerary sculpture is thus by no means self-explanatory. It only underscores the provocative suggestion that the Fontevrault effigies effectively block the completion of the ritual, forcing an atmosphere of ongoing burial in the very place where we would expect an atmosphere of resurrection. I argue that it is difficult, if not impossible, to associate all this with the personal desires of Eleanor of Aquitaine. The draped beds and their explicit reference to funerary rituals create the strange paradox of the Fontevrault tombs: they endanger the timeless presentation of the ageless body with the fluid drapery of the funerary shroud and the stark, featureless burial mask. This iconography makes sense not as the commission of Eleanor of Aquitaine but rather as objects created for the community at Fontevrault during the early years of the reign of Henry III. Henry was crowned in 1216 at the tender age of 9; the first decades of his reign were marked by deep political uncertainty and the near-constant struggle between the Plantagenets and the Capetians. By the 1220s, the Plantagenet claim to French territories—territories inherited through the body of Eleanor of Aquitaine and held by the English during the reigns of Henry II and Richard the Lionheart—had been weakened to the point of collapse. Within this context, the effigies of the Plantagenets in funerary attire anchored Fontevrault firmly in the past and highlighted the all-important links between the abbey church and the English crown. It is precisely in the 1220s, when the fortunes of the abbey were in decline, that this connection would have been of the utmost importance for the local community. Placed in this context, the heightened luxury of the Fontevrault effigies combined with their insistence on the temporality of death—on seeing the bodies laid out for commemoration on draped funerary beds—pushes the viewer into a certain proximity with the Plantagenets and creates a space in which the monastic role of praying for the dead still holds urgency. Rather than allowing the deaths of Henry, Eleanor, and Richard to slip into the distant past, the monument forces the viewer to hold both the wealth of royal patronage and the obligation of their own prayers in their immediate thoughts. The relevant comparison for this formulation is not simply other works of art associated with Eleanor and her circle but also the mass-produced effigies of the
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Bentheim group. Those heavy, workman- like forms, not just coarsely made but also inherently practical, are built so that they may be walked upon and slowly effaced as time and wear assimilates them into the fabric of the church floor. They invite a certain casual closeness to the dead that is emphatically and proudly denied at Fontevrault. The Plantagenet effigies insist upon their own importance; they invent a new pomp and circumstance during the very generation when effigies were suddenly becoming commonplace. With this in mind, we can turn once more to the fourth and final sculpture of the Plantagenet group at Fontevrault, the effigy of Isabelle of Angoulême (fig. 78). The second wife of John Lackland and the mother of Henry III (who reigned from 1216 until his death in 1272), Isabelle was a controversial figure at the time of her death in 1246. After the death of her first husband, she had a complicated and largely unsuccessful political career as the wife of the count of Lusignan, which culminated in a failed rebellion against King Louis IX of France and Isabelle’s retirement to Fontevrault in 1243.52 Upon her death she was buried in the cemetery of the abbey church, and it was only upon the intervention of her son Henry III during a visit in 1254 that Isabelle was reburied in the church.53 This story has been used to assign a fairly precise date of 1254 for the effigy, despite the fact that it is stylistically very close to the others. This similarity has been linked, in turn, to the presumed patronage of Henry III and the appealing assertion that the king decided his mother’s grave should match those of his paternal ancestors.54 Here, for a second time, it is wise to be cautious in interpretations of patronage. In the vivid account of the contemporary Chronica majora, Matthew Paris describes Henry praying before the tombs of his ancestors, ordering his mother’s body transferred from the cemetery to the inside of the church, erecting a mausoleum over it, and donating precious textiles to the site, but the text does not specify that Henry indicated an effigy should be made for his mother, much less that her “mausoleum” should match those of her royal predecessors.55 Though the Chronica majora offers no further clarifications about Isabelle’s tomb, it marks the mention of her death in 1246 with an inverted crown; similar heraldic signs occur throughout the manuscript to indicate deaths of notable individuals.56 Tantalizingly, Matthew Paris illustrated a miracle from 1244 in which Blanche of Castile heals her son Louis IX using a sacred relic. The French king, eyes closed and mouth drooping open, lies on a bed draped in much the same manner as the Fontevrault tombs (fig. 79).57 The text describes the sick king in a “deathlike trance” (in exstasim letalem raptus) and “stiffening in death” (mortuus obriguisset) for days before
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Fig. 78 Effigy of Isabelle of Angoulême, Royal Abbey of Our Lady of Fontevrault. Photo: Manuel Cohen / Art Resource, New York.
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Fig. 79 King Louis IX of France, ill in bed, in the Chronica majora of Matthew Paris. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, Ms. 16, fol. 183r. Photo © The Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.
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the queen’s prayers—which include the promise of a pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem—prove effective. The king awakens claiming that Christ “called me back from the dead” (a mortuis revocavit) and soon takes up the cross as a crusader, completing the analogy between the king’s near-death experience and Christ’s own Resurrection.58 In the manuscript, the text describing the king “revived as if from the tomb” (quasi ex sepulchro resuscitatus) falls at the bottom of folio 183r, directly above the effigy-like illustration of the king on a draped bed. It could scarcely be imagined that Matthew Paris had seen the Fontevrault effigies or intended to reference them. Nevertheless, the image itself neatly demonstrates an association of the draped bed with rituals tied to death, display, and resurrection, illustrated amid the same pages that provide our most important textual source for Isabelle’s burial. The use of a similar draped bed for Isabelle’s effigy hardly needed direct involvement from her son, as it followed a type that already existed at Fontevrault and elsewhere. Henry’s patronage seems particularly doubtful here because Isabelle’s effigy is made of wood, which was unusual for its time. No matter how finely carved, the material itself seems unlikely for a thirteenth-century royal commission. Further, the effigy format is a poor match for the “mausoleum” mentioned by Matthew Paris, which may refer instead to an architectural framework or canopy that does not survive. These tensions may help resolve the stylistic problems of the effigy, which Alain Erlande- Brandenburg and Willibald Sauerländer both considered a better fit for 1220s than the 1250s.59 The former resolved this chronological mismatch by suggesting that Henry III requested an effigy that deliberately echoed the rest of the group; the latter rejected the association with Isabelle entirely, even though there is no one else to suggest in her place. Perhaps the figure was indeed carved somewhat earlier than the 1250s, closer to the date of Isabelle’s death in 1246. Its wooden material could reflect the queen’s
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own fraught political situation, maybe even intended as a sign of humility or penance to match her original burial in the cemetery; alternatively, the declining fortunes of Fontevrault itself could account for this unusual choice.60 Either way, a date in the 1240s would offer a somewhat closer fit for the stylistic evidence; it would also suggest that the use of the effigy type to emulate her Plantagenet in-laws had already been enacted before her son’s intervention. We could then imagine the mausoleum and silken cloths donated by Henry III as a means of not only honoring his mother’s new resting place but also ritually and materially integrating an existing effigy into its new context. In the end, the translation of beds and bodies into durable sculpture produces a very different effect from the ephemeral funeral itself. It is telling that the majority of medieval effigies display a reluctance to exhibit the funeral or to highlight the body as truly dead, at least until the fourteenth-century rise of the macabre. Instead, they present their subjects in an ideal, timeless, and ultimately eschatological form. This choice likely reflected their essential function: as Philippe Ariès so dramatically argues, commemoration allowed the living to say goodbye to the dead and thus to return to the important business of living. The Plantagenet effigies at Fontevrault show a deliberate inversion of that closure: they produce the paradox of a ritual that does not end, inviting their viewers to focus on the legacy of the past rather than the eternal promise of the future. At this juncture, the effigy seems to have crossed firmly into new territory. Evidence for effigies as personal commodities increases steadily after 1200, as documents increasingly show patrons planning their own effigies, and the monuments themselves are increasingly made for recently deceased rather than long-dead individuals.61 With this transition, the effigies’ function broadens from the amelioration of trauma toward the far more personal role of soliciting prayers for those who could afford them. Beyond shifts in style and patronage, the role of sculpture itself changed dramatically, and the effigy was adapted to fit the new requirements of Europeans in the later Middle Ages.
Conclusion It was not until the end of the thirteenth century and the death of Rudolf I of Habsburg in 1291 that an effigy emerged for a Holy Roman Emperor. By then more than two hundred years had passed since a different Rudolf had met a shocking end in the Great Saxon Revolt, prompting the first known effigy in medieval Europe. Entering the thirteenth century, the format shifted from a collective, social monument to a personal commodity; its links to crisis and loss had likewise faded. Even so, as Martin Büchsel has shown, the effigy of the first Habsburg emperor in Speyer Cathedral was still linked to traces of an anxious tradition, its forehead creased by wrinkles meant to evoke the emperor’s apprehension before the judgment of his soul.62 The patterns that marked the first generation of effigy production were thus not entirely lost in the Gothic age; a sense of humility before death and concerns about
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Fig. 80 Fragment of an effigy for the Widow Mathilda, Hildesheim Cathedral. Photo courtesy of the Dommuseum Hildesheim.
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salvation would remain omnipresent. Nevertheless, after 1160 a sea change took place not only for tomb sculpture but across the field of monumental art encompassing a variety of media. While the chapters of this book have addressed the known effigies produced in the first half of the twelfth century, attempting similarly thorough “coverage” of the effigies from its latter half could easily have doubled its length. Notably absent are the magnificent mosaic effigies produced for William of Flanders at St-Bertin (d. 1109), Abbot Gilbert of Maria Laach (d. 1152), or Bishop Frumauld of Arras (d. 1183), which are surely related to the monuments at hand but nevertheless beyond the scope of the present book.63 There is likewise no room to include the effigy of Guido, abbot of Chaumoucey (d. 1182), along with the dozens of additional effigies that appeared in the last quarter of the twelfth century, particularly in France.64 As even the brief survey in this final chapter has shown, however, some patterns seem clear: as the use of effigies became more accessible for more patrons and more subjects, the objects took on new meanings and addressed a broader spectrum of personal concerns. Even as death and resurrection continued to preoccupy medieval artists and audiences, the sense of
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heightened calamity that had defined the Romanesque effigy gradually gave way to a more generalized interest in death, resurrection, and salvation. A fitting epilogue, therefore, might be found in the fragmentary effigy for a woman now installed in the cloister of Hildesheim Cathedral, identified by the inscription over her head as the “Widow Mathilda” (fig. 80).65 A widow named Mathilda is listed under 29 January in the cathedral’s two surviving necrologies; it is not hard to imagine that she was a wealthy local donor who was honored with an effigy at the end of the twelfth century. It is striking, however, that her status as “widow” was not erased in the monument or the manuscripts, as if the time lived without her husband on earth was more fundamental to her identity than her anticipated reunion with him in death. Even more curiously, the words corporis hospes (guest of the body) are all that remain of an inscription that once framed the effigy. They were presumably part of a poem referencing the departure of the soul, drawn from a literary tradition with roots in late antiquity.66 Their appearance here, however, seems to reflect the ambiguity of the effigy format itself: its reintegration of the fragmented self, signifying the uneasy distance between the present time of the body and the anticipated eschatological future. In this way the Mathilda fragment operates in a mode distinct from the Bruno epitaph made contemporaneously for a canon of the same cathedral (see fig. 77): rather than depicting the dramatic split of the soul from the body in a bold narrative image, the effigy seems to have relied on the text alone to reflect this separation. By the years around 1200, the format had become standard enough that the Mathilda effigy could be used to commemorate a little-known patron; meanwhile, something far more ambitious was created for Bruno, perhaps to signify not only his personal salvation but also the expectations of the communities, both lay and religious, that he and his successors served. This divide between the relatively “conservative” effigy and its more daring counterpart articulated a subtle boundary at the end of the Romanesque era, when effigies had become a familiar and fully established genre within an ever-expanding repertoire of sculptural forms.
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Notes
Introduction 1. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cloisters Collection 25.120.201, ca. 1248– 67. Whether the figure represents Jean or another family member is now considered unclear. See Boehm and Holcomb, Jerusalem, 211, and Nickel, “Crusader’s Sword,” 123–28. 2. De Certeau, Mystic Fable, 2. 3. For medieval attitudes toward resurrection, see Bynum, Resurrection of the Body; toward death more generally, see especially Ariès, Hour of Our Death, and Geary, Living with the Dead. It has been suggested that medieval audiences encountered death more regularly than modern ones, but circumstances varied wildly depending on context and individual experience, then and now. 4. For example, Blough, “Abbatial Effigies at Quedlinburg,” 147–69; Dale, “The Individual, the Resurrected Body, and Romanesque Portraiture,” 707–43; Habig, “Das Grabmal des Isarnus,” 89–95; Hengevoss-Dürkop, “Äbtissinnengrabmäler als Repräsentationsbilder,” 45–88; Herrmann, Röckelein, and Hummel, “Widukinds Fingerzeig?,” 177–87; Hinz, Das Grabdenkmal Rudolfs von Schwaben; Kosegarten, “ ‘Die häßlichen Äbtissinnen,’ ” 9–47; Krueger, “Das Grabmosaik des Abtes Gilbert,” 349–68; Nolan, “Queen’s Body and Institutional Memory,” 249–67; Reinle, “Das Schaffhauser Stiftergrab als Denkmal,” 7–15; Thümmler, “Die Grabplatte des Osnabrücker Bischofs,” 25–42. 5. Forsyth, Throne of Wisdom; Cahn, Romanesque Bible Illumination; Mende, Die Bronzetüren des Mittelalters; Williams, Illustrated Beatus.
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6. Porter, Romanesque Sculpture of the Pilgrimage Roads; Schapiro, Romanesque Architectural Sculpture. 7. Swarzenski, Monuments of Romanesque Art; Hearn, Romanesque Sculpture; Seidel, Songs of Glory. 8. Demus, Romanesque Mural Painting; Kupfer, Romanesque Wall Painting; Grodecki, Vitrail roman. 9. Götzmann, Römische Grabmäler der Hochrenaissance; Dressler, Of Armor and Men; Morganstern, Gothic Tombs of Kinship; Bock, Foletti, and Tomasi, L’évêque, l’image, et la mort; Valdez del Àlamo, Memory and the Medieval Tomb; Maier, Schmid, and Schwarz, Grabmäler. 10. Saul, English Church Monuments; Böhm, Mittelalterliche figürliche Grabmäler; Erlande-Brandenburg, Le roi est mort. Similar in scope to Böhm is Magirius’s Figürliche Grabmäler in Sachsen und Thüringen. 11. See also Dectot, Pierres tombales médiévales; Wischermann, Grabmal, Grabdenkmal und Memoria. 12. On Panofsky, see Fozi, “From the ‘Pictorial’ to the ‘Statuesque,’ ” 30–48. 13. See, for example, the comparison between the Widukind effigy (Enger) and the Firmus stele (now in Bonn) in Körner, Grabmonumente des Mittelalters, 102–3. 14. Noteworthy Romanesque sarcophagi include the mid-eleventh-century tomb of Pope Clement II (Bamberg) and the twelfth-century tomb of Doña Blanca (Nájera). See Baumgärtel-Fleischmann, “Das Papstgrab im Bamberger Dom,” 31–44, and Valdez del Àlamo, “Lament for a Lost Queen,” 311–33. 15. See Körner, Grabmonumente des Mittelalters, 103; Fuchß, “Das Grab des heiligen Gebhard,” 273–300.
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16. The uneasy relationships between textual sources and surviving monuments—and the problems associated with analyzing lost objects—are reflected poignantly in the case of the absent sarcophagus of Henry the Fowler in Quedlinburg. See Drechsler, “Zur Grablege Heinrichs,” 155–80. 17. An important example of such an approach is Handle and Kosch, “Standortbestimmungen,” 529–41. 18. See especially Dectot, “Et lux perpetua,” 132–37. A liturgical function has been suggested for Gernrode, but the manuscript evidence postdates the figure considerably; see Hengevoss-Dürkop, “Äbtissinnengrabmäler als Repräsentationsbilder,” 81–84. 19. To name one poignant example, the effigy of Rudolf of Habsburg at Speyer Cathedral has been read in highly personal terms; see Büchsel, “Nur der Tyrann hat sein eigenes Gesicht,” 123–40. 20. Key studies include Morris, Discovery of the Individual; Bynum and Kramer, “Revisiting the Twelfth-Century Individual,” 57–85; Bynum, “Did the Twelfth Century Discover the Individual,” 82–109. Dale revisits this concept usefully in relation to Rudolf of Swabia (“The Individual, the Resurrected Body, and Romanesque Portraiture,” 707). 21. See Sauer, Fundatio und Memoria; Horch, Der Memorialgedanke und das Spektrum; Carruthers, Book of Memory. 22. Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis. 23. Bynum, Resurrection of the Body.
Chapter 1
Notes to Pages 8–15 182
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1. Panofsky, Tomb Sculpture, 39–66. 2. On links between medieval Europe and the ancient Mediterranean, see especially MacNeill and Plant, Romanesque and the Past. 3. On breaks between traditions of tomb sculpture in the ancient Mediterranean and northern Europe, see Fozi, “From the ‘Pictorial’ to the ‘Statuesque,’ ” 30–48; for critical discussion of the term “Romanesque,” see Fernie, “Concept of the Romanesque,” 283–90, and Bleeke, “Romanesque,” 257–67. 4. For portraiture on early Christian sarcophagi, see Studer-Karlen, Verstorbenendarstellungen auf frühchristlichen Sarkophagen.
5. For example, the bronze doors and columns associated with Bernward of Hildesheim are often cited as examples of the “Roman” inspiration of late Ottonian art, yet his tomb (discussed below) shows little interest in antiquity. On Bernward and antiquity, see Reudenbach, “Bernwards Bronzesäule,” 159–69, and Nees, “Aspects of Antiquarianism,” 153–70. For examples of the selective reuse of ancient forms elsewhere, see also Kahn, “Uses of the Past,” 181–92, and Stalley, “Edge of the World,” 157–70. 6. Extended studies on epitaphs and funerary inscriptions include Bernt, Das lateinische Epigramm; Clarke, Writing Power in Anglo- Saxon England, 46–56; Dresken-Weiland, Angerstorfer, and Merkt, Himmel, Paradies, Schalom; Kajanto, Classical and Christian. 7. On this rich topic, see especially Binski, Medieval Death, and Bynum, Resurrection of the Body. 8. See Scholz, “Totengedenken in mittelalterlichen Grabinschriften,” 37–59. 9. Story et al., “Charlemagne’s Black Marble,” 157–90; Story, Carolingian Connections, 104–10; Wallach, “Alcuin’s Epitaph of Hadrian,” 128–44. 10. Story et al., “Charlemagne’s Black Marble,” 157. 11. Though the technique of burnished bronze lettering was known to the Carolingians, the incisions on this slab are too shallow to accommodate the requisite lead surround (Story, Carolingian Connections, 106). 12. True “black porphyry” from Mons Porphyrites was prized even above its purple counterpart from the same site among ancient emperors (Story et al., “Charlemagne’s Black Marble,” 187). 13. For the full text of the Hadrian epitaph with English translation and notes, see Howlett, “Two Latin Epitaphs,” 235–47. On the school at Tours, see Wallach, “Alcuin’s Epitaph of Hadrian,” 128–44; Wallach, “Epitaph of Alcuin,” 367–73. 14. Howlett, “Two Latin Epitaphs,” 241–43. My translation differs only slightly from Howlett’s. 15. My thinking here owes much to Nees, Tainted Mantle, and McKitterick, Carolingian Culture. 16. For similar motifs, see Nees, “ ‘Foundation Reliquary’ of Hildesheim,” 55–66. 17. Nelson, “Carolingian Royal Funerals,” 131–84.
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18. Einhard’s biography of Charlemagne does mention, however, that the emperor was buried beneath a golden arch that bore his image; see Nelson, “Carolingian Royal Funerals,” 151–50; Exner, “Arcusque supra tumulum,” 30–35; and further discussion in chapter 2. 19. Exner, “Arcusque supra tumulum,” 33–39. 20. See, for example, the classicizing reliefs on the sarcophagus of Doña Blanca in Nájera (Valdez del Àlamo, “Lament for a Lost Queen,” 311–33). 21. Effros, Caring for Body and Soul, 122–23; Dierkens, “Quelques réflexions,” 265–302; Stiennon, “Sarcophage de Sancta Chrodoara,” 10–31. 22. Unless indicated otherwise, Latin translations are my own. For pictures of this inscription, see Stiennon, “Sarcophage de Sancta Chrodoara,” 13–14. 23. On the Hornhausen stone in Halle, see Andert, “Der Reiterstein von Hornhausen,” and Böhner, “Die Reliefplatten von Hornhausen,” 89–138. On the Niederdollendorf stone in Bonn, see Giesler, “Der Griff nach der Ewigkeit,” 81–91; Giesler, “Landelinus ficit numen,” 1–13. 24. A thirteenth-century reliquary at Amay contains the relics of Saint Oda. The sarcophagus may have been opened then, or perhaps it was still visible and only covered after the relics were translated. Without direct documentation, however, the timing remains in question. The sarcophagus itself was likely visible very early on, perhaps installed near the altar, but probably also buried at a somewhat early date given its pristine condition; see Dierkens, “Quelques réflexions,” 270–75. 25. Schubert, “Zwei ottonische Sarkophage,” 83–86. 26. Widukind of Corvey, Res gestae Saxonicae 3:74, ed. Hirsch and Lohmann, 151; translation from Gilsdorf, Queenship and Sanctity, 146. 27. The inscription on Halberstadt sarcophagus reads: iii. non(as) febr(varii) / obiit ep(iscopv)s / bernhard(vs) / qvi hic re / qviescit; see Leopold and Schubert, Der Dom zu Halberstadt, 80, and Fuhrmann, Die Inschriften des Doms zu Halberstadt, cat. 3. The Quedlinburg sarcophagus reads: ii. idvs mar(tii) / obiit regina / mahtild(is) / qve et hic / reqviescit / cvi(vs) anima / eterna(m) op / tineat reqvie(m); see Schubert, “Zwei ottonische Sarkophage,” 83, but note that Schubert gives optineat as obtineat.
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28. For examples of such lead tablets and other grave goods, see Weidemann, Das Reich der Salier, 288–300. 29. On Bernward’s patronage, see Kingsley, Bernward Gospels; Binding, Die Michaeliskirche in Hildesheim; Lutz and Weyer, 1000 Jahre St. Michael; Barnet, Brandt, and Lutz, Medieval Treasures from Hildesheim. 30. On Bernward’s tomb, see Frese, “Gegensätze, Grenzen und Übergänge,” 97–110; Kahsnitz, “Bischof Bernwards Grab,” 383–96; Lasko, “Tomb of St. Bernward,” 147–52. 31. Thangmar, Vita Bernwardi episcopi Hildesheimensis, 754–82. Key studies include Giese, Die Textfassungen der Lebensbeschreibung Bischof Bernwards; Stumpf, “Zum Quellenwert von Thangmars Vita Bernwardi,” 461–96; Nolte, “Tercii Ottonis imperatoris,” 131–49; Görich and Kortüm, “Otto III, Thangmar und die Vita Bernwardi,” 1–57; Drögereit, “Die Vita Bernwardi und Thangmar,” 2–46. For Bernward’s burial as discussed in the Vita Bernwardi, see Wirth (“Die Nachrichten über Begräbnis,” 305–23), though his claim that the entire biography was completed by Thangmar in the eleventh century is no longer current. 32. The earliest manuscript is Hannover, Niedersächsisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Ms. F 5; the dossier or “Hildesheimer Denkschrift” is Dresden, Sächsische Landesbibliothek (Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek), J 206. Both were likely produced in Hildesheim; see Giese, Die Textfassungen der Lebensbeschreibung Bischof Bernwards. On the dispute over Gandersheim, see Hehl, “Einträchtige und streitende Bischöfe,” 85–89; Cohen and Derbes, “Bernward and Eve at Hildesheim,” 19–38. 33. Wirth, “Die Nachrichten über Begräbnis,” 305–6. 34. For the lost inscription along with the other two, see ibid., 306; for detailed discussion, see also Wulf, Die Inschriften der Stadt Hildesheim, cat. 19†. 35. An early sixteenth-century tradition suggests the lost epitaph was composed by Bishop Benno of Meißen (1010–1106), which would perhaps help determine a date, but the tradition only emerged as part of efforts to advocate for Benno’s own canonization (which took place in 1523) and is not a reliable indication of authorship; see Wulf, Die Inschriften der Stadt Hildesheim, cat. 19†.
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36. For an English translation of the section of the Vita Bernwardi describing Bernward as an artist, see Davis-Weyer, Early Medieval Art, 122–23; for Latin, see Thangmar, Vita Bernwardi, 758. 37. Lutz, “Memorializing Bernward of Hildesheim,” 25–36. 38. An attribution to Bernward on the basis of the sarcophagus’s perceived low carving quality appears in Wirth, “Die Nachrichten über Begräbnis,” 308; see also Jantzen, Ottonische Kunst, 168 n. 77. 39. Frese, “Gegensätze, Grenzen und Übergänge,” 100; see also Rädle, “Calcidius und Paulus begründen eine Tradition,” 328–49. On Bernward’s intellectual background, see Schneider, Bernward von Hildesheim. 40. Lasko suggests such touching may have occurred early on, perhaps before the primary relics were removed and set into reliquaries, but his analysis centers on dating the slab to the mid-twelfth century (“Tomb of St. Bernward,” 152). 41. Ibid., 148. 42. Ibid. 43. Ibid. 44. Job 19:25–27. (Unless noted otherwise, biblical translations are from Douay- Rheims). 45. The F instead of an E in Bernwardus is plainly visible but has no clear explanation; see Wulf, Die Inschriften der Stadt Hildesheim, cat. 11. 46. See ibid., cat. 11–12. 47. On the slab and its date in relation to Thangmar’s text, see most recently Frese, “Gegensätze, Grenzen und Übergänge,” 98. 48. On the Salian presence at Speyer, see Schmid, “Die Sorge der Salier,” 666–726. 49. My translation is closely informed by Wulf, Die Inschriften der Stadt Hildesheim, cat. 12. 50. On the manuscripts associated with Bernward, see Kingsley, Bernward Gospels. 51. Dectot, “Et lux perpetua,” 134; Habig, “Das Grabmal des Isarnus,” 89–95; Favreau, Michaud, and Mora, Corpus des inscriptions de la France médiévale, 14:99–102; Amargier, Moine pour notre temps; Erlande-Brandenburg, Le roi est mort, 110–11; Deschamps, “Étude sur la paléographie,” 29. 52. Erlande-Brandenburg, Le roi est mort, 110. 53. Panofsky accepts this model (Tomb Sculpture, 51); see also Adhémar, Influences
antique dans l’art, 236; Bousquet, “Tombe de l’Abbé Isarn,” 111, 125. 54. Meyer Schapiro’s questioning of the connection between the Isarn monument and its Gallo-Roman comparison was published posthumously (Romanesque Architectural Sculpture, 31). Schapiro also remarked on Isarn’s interest in ancient monuments in a letter to Arthur Kingsley Porter (ibid., xix–xx). 55. The word dulce appears in small but epigraphically consistent lettering above gregem, likely to amend an accidental omission. 56. This text reads: obiit anno mxlviii indict(ione). i. epacta. iiii. (He died in the year 1048, in the first indiction, third epact). The word virga (rod), appearing on the staff in the abbot’s right hand, may also have been added slightly later. 57. Erlande-Brandenburg, Le roi est mort, 110–11. 58. Selected publications on Moissac include Straub, Die singenden Steine von Moissac; Forsyth, “Word-play in the Cloister at Moissac,” 154–78; Rutchick, “Reliquary Capital at Moissac,” 129–50; Cazes, Cloître de Moissac; Droste, Die Skulpturen von Moissac; Schapiro, Romanesque Sculpture of Moissac; Rupin, L’Abbaye et les Cloîtres. 59. For cloister decoration and medieval discourse, see Meyvaert, “Medieval Monastic Claustrum,” 53–59; Klein, Der Mittelalterliche Kreuzgang. 60. Periera, “Images-piliers,” 1–13. 61. An epitaph in leonine hexameters was recorded around 1400 but does not survive; for the text, see de la Haye, Aymeric de Peyrac, 84–85; on Aymeric, see also Mironneau, “Langage de l’art,” 709–23. On the burial before the high altar that may well be Durand’s, see de la Haye, Aymeric de Peyrac, 85 n. 6, and Salvagnac, “Fouilles de l’église Saint-Pierre,” 63–67. It is worth noting that the saintly Domingo was said to have been buried in the cloister of Silos after his death in 1073, offering an interesting parallel; see Valdez del Àlamo, Palace of the Mind, chapter 3. The reliquary capital at Moissac also opens a door for dialogues between saintly remains and cloister sculpture; see Rutchick, “Reliquary Capital at Moissac,” 129–50. 62. See, for example, suggestions that the Bruno epitaph in Hildesheim was
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originally laid flat over a grave (Schuffels, Das Brunograbmal im Dom zu Hildesheim, 98–102). 63. Another effigy-like figure set prominently upright on a wall appears at Gernrode, which I will discuss in chapter 4. 64. Rupin, Abbaye et les cloîtres, 107, 354. 65. The main exception to the overall coherence of the pier reliefs seems to come from the removal of the cloister fountain at a later date and the rearrangement of a few figures; see Rutchick, “Sculpture Programs in the Moissac Cloister,” 65–90. This rearrangement does not seem, however, to have affected the Durand and Anquêtil plaques. 66. Rutchick, “Sculpture Programs in the Moissac Cloister,” 326. Rupin suggested multiple possible readings of the riddle but does not seem to have known Estiennot’s solution; none of his proposals account for the repeated letters. For example, Rupin suggests Venerabiles Monachi Domus Retigiosi Fratres by reducing the letters to V.M.D.R.F. (L’Abbaye et les Cloîtres, 313–16). Omitting the letters makes this interpretation unconvincing. 67. Schapiro, review of Étude sur la paléographie des inscriptions lapidaires by Deschamps, 108; Forsyth, “Word-Play in the Cloister at Moissac,” 166. 68. Forsyth, “Word-Play in the Cloister at Moissac,” 157. 69. Ibid., 154–78; Rutchick, “Visual Memory and Historiated Sculpture,” 190–211. 70. On the placement of the Rudolf effigy, see Handle and Kosch, “Standortbestimmungen,” 529–41.
Chapter 2 1. A possible twelfth-century date has been expressed to me by colleagues in recent, unpublished discussions, prompting debate about whether the sculpture may have been part of a later attempt to glorify Rudolf’s memory. I still favor a date close to Rudolf’s death but avoid arguments that hinge too closely on this point. To my knowledge, technical study remains a pressing desideratum. The chronicle of Petershausen (1156) provides a clear terminus ante quem (Chronik des Klosters Petershausen, 38, 114). 2. Hinz, Das Grabdenkmal Rudolfs von Schwaben; Hinz, “König Rudolfs
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Grabdenkmal,” 515–31; Dale, “The Individual, the Resurrected Body, and Romanesque Portraiture,” 707–43. 3. The chronicle of Petershausen describes him as honorifice sepultus (buried with honor) (Chronik des Klosters Petershausen, 114). 4. My present translation favors maintaining the sense of each half-line to emphasize the distribution of the lines in relation to the body. For a rendering in smoother and more idiomatic prose, see Dale, “The Individual, the Resurrected Body, and Romanesque Portraiture,” 715–16. 5. Some of the inscriptions may be twelfth- century additions; see Bauch, Das mittelalterliche Grabbild, 305 n. 36. 6. Notable Salian grave goods from Speyer, found during the excavations of 1900, include an inscribed lead plaque, a crown of sheet copper with gold leaf applied sparingly, fragments of a simple silk mantle and leggings, leather shoes, and a wool shroud for Conrad II (d. 1039); an inscribed lead plaque, a simple sheet- copper circlet, and fragments of clothing and shoes for Gisela (d. 1043); a plain sheet-copper crown, an orb made of wood that is encased in leather, a shroud of thin silk, silk leggings, and fragments of silk gloves for Henry III (d. 1056); and a gilded copper hoop crown, gilded copper cross with engraved crucifix (7.8 cm tall), a large gold ring set with a sapphire and three pearls (22 grams, which is large for its early eleventh-century date), fragments of a silk mantle set with stars and a pseudo- Kufic inscriptions, a reliquary cross, fragments of a shroud, and remnants of leather shoes for Henry IV (d. 1104). See Schramm and Mütherich, Die deutschen Kaiser und Könige, 171–77; Weidemann, Das Reich der Salier. 7. The inscriptions are: for Conrad II, an inscribed lead plaque and the phrase Pacis Arator et Urbis Benefactor on his crown; for Gisela, a lead plaque and the phrase Gisle Imperatrix on her crown; for Henry III and IV, no inscriptions except for the name Adalbero Eps on the sapphire ring, which may indicate that could have been a gift from a previous owner, possibly Adalbert III of Metz (d. 1072). 8. For the marble slab of Otto I, which was possibly spolia from an Italian altar, see Heidenreich, “Die Marmorplatte auf dem Sarkophag Ottos,” 265–68.
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Notes to Pages 43–51 186
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9. See, for example, the tombstone of Louis II of Italy (d. 875), still preserved in Sant’Ambrogio in Milan; Schramm and Mütherich, Denkmale der deutschen Könige und Kaiser, 128. 10. Thomas Meier has suggested Henry IV may well have been responding to Rudolf’s tomb in his patronage at Speyer (“Zwischen Stiftern und Heiligen,” 45). 11. Grumt, “Rudolf von Rheinfelden,” 213–22; Schubert, “Epigraphik und Kunstgeschichte,” 87–100. 12. Hinz, Das Grabdenkmal Rudolfs von Schwaben. 13. Rudolf first married Mathilda, sister of Henry IV (m. 1059; she died in 1060), and later Adelaide of Savoy, sister of Henry’s wife, Bertha of Savoy (m. 1066). 14. Blumenthal, Investiture Controversy, 30. 15. Pope Gregory VII, Gregorii VII Registrum 1.1.24, ed. Caspar, 41; see also ibid. 1.2.45, ed. Caspar, 183. Note that Gregory VII cites Gregory I, Moralia in Job 2.16; see also Robinson, “ ‘Periculosus Homo,’ ” 103–31. 16. Dale, “The Individual, the Resurrected Body, and Romanesque Portraiture,” 714; Hinz, Das Grabdenkmal Rudolfs von Schwaben, 29; Pope Gregory VII, Gregorii VII Registrum 2.7.14a, ed. Caspar, 487. 17. Jütte and Schmitz-Esser, Handgebrauch; Schmitz-Esser, “Die abgetrennte Hand Rudolfs,” 23–38. 18. See, especially, Blumenthal, Investiture Controversy, and Morrison, Investiture Controversy. For the situation after Rudolf’s death, see Schmidt, “Die Wahl Hermanns von Salm,” 477–91. 19. Schmidt, “Die Wahl Hermanns von Salm,” 480–81; Bruno of Magdeburg, Brunos Buch vom Sachsenkrieg 125, ed. Lohmann, 118. See also Meyer von Knonau, Jahrbücher des Deutschen Reiches, 3:345, and Boshof, “Das Reich in der Krise,” 265–80. 20. Schmidt, “Die Wahl Hermanns von Salm,” 481; on the role of Otto von Northeim, see also Lange, “Die Stellung der Grafen von Northeim,” 71–79. 21. Schmidt, “Die Wahl Hermanns von Salm,” 481; Pope Gregory VII, Gregorii VII Registrum 2.9.3, ed. Caspar, 573–77, esp. 574. 22. For relevant primary sources, see Böhme, Die deutsche Königserhebung, 1:75–78; see also Heinecke, “Die Regierungszeit des Gegenkönigs Hermann.” 23. Schmidt, “Die Wahl Hermanns von Salm,” 480; see also Höss, Die deutschen
Stämme; Jordan, “Investiturstreit und frühe Stauferzeit,” 344. 24. Schmidt, “Die Wahl Hermanns von Salm,” 480. 25. Dale, “The Individual, the Resurrected Body, and Romanesque Portraiture,” 715. 26. For comparisons to reliquaries, see ibid., 728–39; Hinz, Das Grabdenkmal Rudolfs von Schwaben. 27. See, for example, the discussion in Schramm and Mütherich, Denkmale der deutschen Könige und Kaiser, 176, cat. no. 162, and Schramm and Mütherich, Die deutschen Kaiser und Könige, 117–18. 28. Bauch, Das mittelalterliche Grabbild, 305 n. 39. 29. Struve, “Das Bild des Gegenkönigs,” 459–75; Sigebert of Gembloux, Chronica 1077, ed. Bethmann, 364; Otto of Freising, Gesta Friderici I. Imperatoris 1:7, ed. Waitz and Simpson, 23; Helmold of Bosau, Cronica slavorum 1:28, ed. Schmeidler, 56. See also Meyer von Knonau, Jahrbücher des Deutschen Reiches, 3:630–31. 30. Struve, “Bild des Gegenkönigs,” 463 n. 25. The source is a letter from Gottschalk of Aachen to Henry IV, dated 1082 (quoted in Vogel, “Gottschalk von Aachen,” 59). On crowns, see Ott, Krone und Krönung. 31. Bauch, Das mittelalterliche Grabbild, 305 n. 40. Bauch’s note refers to Twining’s European Regalia, though Twining does not address this form of scepter directly. 32. Dale, “The Individual, the Resurrected Body, and Romanesque Portraiture,” 722–27, 736–38. 33. Panofsky, Tomb Sculpture, 52; Fozi, “From the ‘Pictorial’ to the ‘Statuesque,’ ” 38. 34. Exner, “Arcusque supra tumulum,” 29–64. 35. Munich, BSB, Clm 4456, fol. 11r. 36. For the epigraphy, see Schubert, “Epigraphik und Kunstgeschichte,” 87–100. 37. On a related discourse of opposites in twelfth-century France, see Bouchard, “Every Valley Shall Be Exalted.” 38. Such reversals are apparent in narratives that contrast the saints’ aristocratic births with their later ascetic lifestyles; see, for example, the Life of Saints Kilian and Margaret (ca. 975), Hannover, Niedersächsische Landesbibliothek, Ms. 189, published in facsimile as the Passio sanctorum Kyliani; the Life of St. Radegund of Poitiers (ca. 1100), Poitiers, Bibliothèque Municipale, Ms. 250; Carrasco, “Spirituality in Context,” 414–35.
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39. Gottfried, Tristan 237–40; ed. Ranke and Krohn, 1:24–25, trans. Hatto, 6. 40. It remains unclear whether multiple versions circulated in the eleventh century or just one; see Taylor, “Was There a Song of Roland,” 28–65. Taylor emphasizes the overlap of clerical and chivalric spheres, an apt comparison for Rudolf’s multifaceted appeal. 41. Meyer-Landrut, Fortuna; Kitzinger, “World Map and Fortune’s Wheel,” 327–56. 42. Monte Cassino, Archivio dell’Abbazia, Ms. 189, containing Boethius, De arithmetica (pp. 1–132); Gerbert of Aurillac, De numerorum divisione (pp. 132–44); the page with two depictions of the Wheel of Fortune (pp. 145–46); poems (p. 147); excerpts from Isidore, Etymologiae (pp. 147–51), and from Bede, De temporum ratione (pp. 150–54). See Kitzinger, “World Map and Fortune’s Wheel,” 345–46; Newton, Scriptorium and Library, 366; Courcelle, Consolation de philosophie, 2:103–58; Inguanez, Codicum casinensium manuscriptorum catalogus, 1:272; Bibliotheca Casinensis, 4:82–83. 43. Kitzinger, “World Map and Fortune’s Wheel,” 345. 44. Manchester, Rylands Library, Ms. Lat. 83. 45. Nelson, “Mechanical Wheels of Fortune,” 228. 46. Handle and Kosch, “Standortbestimmungen,” 529–41. 47. See also the twelfth-century floor mosaic of San Salvatore, Turin (now in the Museo Civico); Kitzinger, “World Map and Fortune’s Wheel,” 347–56. 48. On medieval bronze, see Weinryb, Bronze Object in the Middle Ages. 49. Hinz, Das Grabdenkmal Rudolfs von Schwaben, 40. 50. Fozi, “Reinhildis Has Died,” 174–88. 51. On the term “speaking reliquary,” see Hahn, “Voices of the Saints,” 20–31; on reliquaries broadly, see especially Chaganti, Medieval Poetics of the Reliquary; Fricke, Fallen Idols, Risen Saints. 52. See, for example, Hahn, Strange Beauty; Reudenbach and Toussaint, Reliquiare im Mittelalter. 53. See Fozi, “Reinhildis Has Died,” 172–73; Fricke, Fallen Idols, Risen Saints, 149–212; Ganz and Neuner, Mobile Eyes; Biernoff, Sight and Embodiment in the Middle Ages. 54. Brandl and Forster, Der Dom zu Magdeburg, and Puhle, Erzbischof Wichmann (1152–1192) und Magdeburg.
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55. On the Fulda kings, see Fozi, “Herrscher und Heilige,” 393–404, with discussion of the Bad Reichenhall king at 394–95, 400; on the latter figure, see also Görich, “Das Barbarossarelief im Kreuzgang,” 222–37. 56. The Müstair king likely dates to the twelfth century, though earlier dates have been proposed; see Beutler, Bildwerke zwischen Antike und Mittelalter, 117–42; Beutler, Statua, 212–30; Goll, “Karl der Große unter den Heiligen,” 109–26. For the Milan ciborium, see Foletti, “Ciborio di Sant’Ambrogio,” 81–110, and Homburger, “Über eine Federzeichnung,” 209–15. 57. Indeed, the lack of names on the antependium leaves their identities open; for arguments that they may represent Henry III and Agnes, see Fillitz, “Die Basler Altartafel,” 9–23. 58. The Basel Antependium also features a brief verse, Quis sicut hel fortis medicus soter benedictus—prospice terrigenas clemens mediator usias. See ibid., 12. 59. For English translation and commentary, see Einhard, Charlemagne’s Courtier. For the medieval dissemination of the text, see Tischler, Einharts “Vita Karoli,” on Saxony and Swabia specifically, 1:283–305. 60. Tischler, Einharts “Vita Karoli,” 1:808–48. 61. Among the most important sources to describe the episode is Thietmar of Merseburg, writing fewer than twenty years later (Ottonian Germany, 22, 185–86). 62. Einhard, Vita Karoli 31, Charlemagne’s Courtier, trans. Dutton, 36; ed. Pertz and Waitz, 35. 63. According to Einhard, this inscription read: “Sub hoc conditorio situm est corpus Karoli Magni atque orthodoxi imperatoris, qui regnum Francorum nobiliter ampliavit et per annos XLVII feliciter rexit. Decessit septuagenarius anno domini DCCCXIIII, indictione VII, v. Kal. Febr.” (Under this tomb lies the body of Charles, the great and Catholic emperor, who gloriously increased the kingdom of the Franks and reigned with great success for forty-seven years. He died in his seventies, in the seventh indiction, on the twenty-eighth day of January in the year of the Lord 814). See Einhard, Vita Karoli 31, Charlemagne’s Courtier, trans. Dutton, 36; ed. Pertz and Waitz, 35. 64. For the evidence concerning Charlemagne’s tomb, see Exner, “Arcusque supra tumulum,” 29–64.
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Notes to Pages 63–71 188
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65. Struve, “Das Bild des Gegenkönigs,” 462. Rudolf’s election is mentioned in the same letter from Gregory VII that prophesied Henry’s death (Gregorii VII Registrum 2.7.14a, ed. Caspar, 484; Berthold of Carinthia, Annals 1077, 292). 66. Frutolf of Michelsberg, Frutolfs Chronik, 74, 76, and Chronicon Ebersheimense, 444. 67. For bronze, see Weinryb, Bronze Object in the Middle Ages; on Willigis’s patronage, see Beuckers, “Bernward und Willigis,” 142–52. 68. Latowsky, Emperor of the World, 99–138. 69. Ibid., 105. 70. On Salian burials, see Ehlers, Metropolis Germaniae, 73–130. 71. Balzer, “Neues zum Cappenberger Barbarossakopf,” 5–36; Dethlefs, “Der Cappenberger Barbarossakopf und sein Reliquienkreuz,” 37–46; Horch, “Der Cappenberger Barbarossakopf als Idealtypus,” 306–19. 72. Rehm, “Der Cappenberger Barbarossakopf und die Geschichte,” 117–53. 73. Kantorowicz, King’s Two Bodies. 74. Christophe, “Plaque de Geoffroy Plantagenêt,” 74–80; Taburet-Delahaye, “Effigy of Geoffrey Plantagenet,” 98–101; Gauthier, Émaux méridionaux, nos. 108, 109–14. Christophe suggests the enamel may have accompanied a recumbent stone effigy, arguing on the basis of thirteenth- century comparisons like Raymond VII at Fontevrault (78). Taburet-Delahaye notes resonance with wall paintings that served as aristocratic effigies in this region in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries (100). 75. “ad altare illud quod est ante sepulchrum patris mei.” Taburet-Delahaye, “Effigy of Geoffrey Plantagenet,” 98. The original charter, now lost, is known through two eighteenth-century transcripts (Le Mans, Bibliothèque de la Ville du Mans, Ms. 259; Gaignières, Paris, BnF, lat. 5211 B, p. 2). The original was most likely produced at Winchester between 1155 and 1158; see Recueil des Actes de Henri II, 1:172–73. 76. Taburet-Delahaye, “Effigy of Geoffrey Plantagenet,” 100. 77. Ibid., 98; Nolan, Queens in Stone and Silver, 59. 78. Among the best-known enamel effigies of the thirteenth century are the small ones made for the children of Louis IX, originally at Royaumont Abbey but now in St-Denis. On burials of royal infants at Royaumont, see Erlande-Brandenburg, Le roi est mort, 93; on enamel tombs, see ibid., 110–14.
79. Taburet-Delahaye, “Effigy of Geoffrey Plantagenet,” 98. 80. Jean de Marmoutier, Historia Gaufredi, 224. The text has been variously dated to between 1170 and 1180 (Taburet-Delahaye, “Effigy of Geoffrey Plantagenet,” 98) or 1164 to 1173 (Gauthier, Émaux méridionaux, 113). 81. Twelfth-century authors who use the seal metaphor include Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153), Hugh of St-Victor (1096–1141), and Gerhoch of Reichersberg (1093–1169); see Dale, “The Individual, the Resurrected Body, and Romanesque Portraiture,” 719–21. The metaphor could apply to Geoffrey’s plaque and belongs to theological discourse of its time, as reflected in Jean de Marmoutier. 82. Taburet-Delahaye, “Effigy of Geoffrey Plantagenet,” 98. 83. On technical issues, see especially ibid., 100–101. 84. On the Otto-Mathilda cross, see Beuckers, “Überlegungen zum Zitat,” 59–82. The plaque with Henry of Blois is now in the British Museum (1852,0327.1); see Althoff and Siart, Goldene Pracht, 386–87. 85. Taburet-Delahaye, “Effigy of Geoffrey Plantagenet,” 100–101. 86. For model churches as attributes, see Lipsmeyer, “Donor and His Church Model,” and Luther, “Gifts and Giving in Architectural Sculpture.” 87. This copy of Jean du Tillet’s Recueil des rois de France is now Paris, BnF, fr. 2848; the tombs are on fol. 24r; the Gaignières drawing is now Oxford, Ms. Gough Drawings Gaignières 2, fol. 1. The Fredegund tomb also appears among Claude Fabri de Peiresc’s papers, now Paris, BnF, fr. 9530, fol. 187r. See Kramp, Kirche, Kunst und Königsbild, 202–27. More effigies appear in the drawings produced by François-Roger de Gaignières (1642–1715), now divided between the BnF, Paris, and the Bodleian Library, Oxford. While some recourse to this evidence is inevitable, it must be interpreted with caution because Gaignières deliberately harmonized monuments, and distinctions between twelfth-century effigies and their Gothic counterparts are easily obscured. From the vast literature, see especially Ritz, Collection Gaignières; Ritz, “Collection Gaignières,” 315–38; Brown, Oxford Collection of the Drawings; Erlande-Brandenburg, “Initiative mal récompensée,” 33–34; Adhémar, “Tombeaux de la collection
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Gaignières”; Guibert, Dessins d’archéologie; Bouchot, Inventaire des dessins exécutés. 88. Ms. Gough Drawings Gaignières 2, fol. 4. 89. On the postmedieval fate of the monuments, see Cleaver, “Hunting for Goths,” 21–37. 90. Adding to the confusion is a late sixteenth-century account by Nicolas Bonfons describing a related image of Chilperic, possibly a wall painting. See ibid., 32. 91. Erlande-Brandenburg, Le roi est mort, 135–40. 92. Kantorowicz, King’s Two Bodies. 93. Suger, On the Abbey Church of St-Denis; Inglis, “Remembering and Forgetting Suger,” 219–43; Speer, “Is There a Theology,” 65–83. 94. On the circulation of Suger’s text, see Norton, “Bernard, Suger, and Henry I’s Crown Jewels,” 1–14. 95. Kramp touts Paris as the “Aachen of the Merovingians” (Kirche, Kunst und Königsbild, 217). 96. On seventeenth-century viewers seeing jambs as portraits, see Cleaver, “Hunting for Goths,” 25–26. 97. This suggestion requires identifying the lost figure in Gaignières as contemporary to the Childebert effigy, which is uncertain. 98. Kramp, Kirche, Kunst und Königsbild, 215; Plagnieux “Tombeau de la reine Adélaïde de Maurienne,” 143–52, 278 (for the Childebert effigy and the Porte de Valois, see p. 151). 99. Plagnieux, “Tombeau de la reine Adélaïde de Maurienne,” 146. 100. Einhard, Vita Karoli 26, Charlemagne’s Courtier, trans. Dutton, 32; ed. Pertz and Waitz, 31. Thietmar, Ottonian Germany 2:17, trans. Warner, 104; ed. Holtzmann, 58. 101. Bauch, Das mittelalterliche Grabbild, 32–34; Kramp, Kirche, Kunst und Königsbild, 215. 102. The surviving examples are catalogued in Antoine, Gaborit-Chopin, and Gauthier, Émaux méridionaux.
Chapter 3 1. Another example, found at Gernrode, is discussed in chapter 4. 2. For model churches as attributes, see Klinkenberg, Compressed Meanings, and Lipsmeyer, “Donor and His Church Model.”
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3. For medieval Schaffhausen, see Szkiet, Reichenauer Codices in Schaffhausen; Bänteli, Gamper, and Lehmann, Das Kloster Allerheiligen in Schaffhausen; Seeliger, “Die Grabplatten der Grafen von Nellenburg,” 9–52; Frauenfelder, “Das Nachleben des Schaffhausener Stadt- und Klostergründers,” 113–17. 4. Reinle, “Das Schaffhauser Stiftergrab als Denkmal,” 7–15. The effigies were found, with human bones, in the sixth bay from the west of the main transept aisle, around 10 meters from the crossing. For a thorough review of the excavation history and state of knowledge regarding archeological evidence at the site, see Bänteli, Gamper, and Lehmann, Das Kloster Allerheiligen in Schaffhausen, 13–108; on the excavation of the effigies specifically, see ibid., 58–59. 5. Rüeger, Chronik der Stadt und Landschaft Schaffhausen. I thank the state archive in Schaffhausen for opportunities to examine Rüeger’s autograph manuscript, dated 1606, preserved as Staatsarchiv Schaffhausen, Hs A 1. The manuscript has suffered significantly from attempted conservation in the early 1900s, but it preserves a worn drawing of the Eberhard effigy on p. 24, indicating the tombs were still visible around 1600. For sources, see Baumann and Meyer von Knonau, Die ältesten Urkunden von Allerheiligen. 6. Allerheiligen underwent significant structural changes at the time of the Hirsau reform, inspired to some extent by contact with Cluny and Cluniac reform in France. For an excellent recent study of twelfth-century reform in the Lake Constance region, in which Allerheiligen plays a significant role, see Beach, Trauma of Monastic Reform. 7. For sources and bibliography, Seeliger, “Die Grabplatten der Grafen von Nellenburg,” 9–52. 8. Like all illustrations in the manuscript, the drawing is attributable to Hans Caspar Lang (1571–1645). 9. Fozi, “Reconstructing Ita at Schaffhausen,” forthcoming. 10. Luther, “Gifts and Giving in Architectural Sculpture,” 41; see also Lipsmeyer, “Donor and His Church Model.” 11. Potential French comparisons in the 1150s are the enamel of Geoffrey of Anjou and the effigies of St-Germain-des-Près, but the “spousal” monuments do not survive, and the related documentation is difficult to interpret with clarity; the Angevin
Notes to Pages 71–84 189
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Notes to Pages 84–92 190
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tombs at Fontevrault, discussed in chapter 5, are early survivals from this tradition. 12. See Bauch, Das mittelalterlich Grabbild, 106–19. 13. Gallman, Das Stifterbuch des Klosters Allerheiligen. 14. Ibid., 1–5. 15. Lieb, “Die frühen Inschriften des Klosters Allerheiligen,” 156–57, and Lieb and Jenny, “Das Stifterdenkmal zum Münster zu Schaffhausen,” 121–27. 16. For a recent summary, see Holladay, Genealogy, 203–06, with references to earlier scholarship. 17. Seeliger, “Die Grabplatten der Grafen von Nellenburg,” 10–11, and Reinle, “Das Schaffhauser Stiftergrab als Denkmal,” 7–15. For the inscriptions, from which only a few letters remain, see Lieb, “Die frühen Inschriften des Klosters Allerheiligen,” 156–57, and Lieb and Jenny, “Das Stifterdenkmal zum Münster zu Schaffhausen,” 121–27. 18. I am grateful to Stephanie Luther for discussing this topic with me; see also Seeliger, “Die Grabplatten der Grafen von Nellenburg,” 18–20. 19. See Gallman, Das Stifterbuch des Klosters Allerheiligen, 43. 20. See especially Kläui, Hochmittelalterliche Adelsherrschaften, 58–63; see also Gallman, Das Stifterbuch des Klosters Allerheiligen, 111–12. 21. See most recently Beach, Trauma of Monastic Reform, 96. 22. Holladay, Genealogy, 203. 23. To my knowledge the most convincing arguments for a date are presented in Seeliger, “Die Grabplatten der Grafen von Nellenburg,” 26–34 and 44–46. 24. Kläui, Hochmittelalterliche Adelsherrschaften, 58–61. 25. Holladay, Genealogy, 210. 26. Schlüter, “Die Bischofs- und Abtsgräber in der ehemaligen Klosterkirche,” 155–204; Böhm, Mittelalterliche figürliche Grabmäler, 25–31; Thümmler, “Die Grabplatte des Osnabrücker Bischofs,” 25–42; Jänecke, “Die Klosterkirche in Iburg,” 106–19; Bode, Geschichte der deutschen Plastik, 51; Mithoff, Kunstdenkmale und Alterthümer im Hannoverschen, 6:69, plate V. Primary sources from medieval Osnabrück include Bär and Philippi, Osnabrücker Urkundenbuch; Erhard, Regesta historiae Westfaliae; for Bad Iburg (or Iburg), see Urkundenbuch des Klosters Iburg; Schnöckelborg, Iburg; Rost, Manuale monasterii Iburgensis;
Rost, Annales monasterii S. Clementis in Iburg. Maurus Rost (1633–1706) was abbot of Iburg and likely had access to documents that have since been lost. 27. Other trapezoidal slabs include the monuments of Chrodoara in Amay and Reinhildis in Riesenbeck. The Iburg effigy was likely displaced by fire in 1349; see Mithoff, Kunstdenkmale und Alterthümer im Hannoverschen, 6:69. It was installed in the north transept arm after renovations and excavations in 1980 and later set upright near the high altar. 28. The effigy of Adelheid I of Quedlinburg shows a similar gesture; see chapter 4. 29. Böhm, Mittelalterliche figürliche Grabmäler, 28–30; Thümmler, “Die Grabplatte des Osnabrücker Bischofs,” 30–31. 30. Gottschalk’s death was alternately recorded as 1119 in a mid-fourteenth century engraved plaque inscribed anno d(omi)ni millesimo decimo nono obit / godescalcus d’dypholt presul osnabrugensis (In the year of the Lord 1119 died Gottschalk of Diepholz, bishop of Osnabrück). It may have been installed to replace the original effigy after the 1349 fire; see Böhm, Mittelalterliche figürliche Grabmäler, 25–26; Thümmler, “Die Grabplatte des Osnabrücker Bischofs,” 29–30; Mithoff, Kunstdenkmale und Alterthümer im Hannoverschen, 6:69. 31. Böhm, Mittelalterliche figürliche Grabmäler, 28; Moormeyer, Die Grafschaft Diepholz, 29. 32. Erhard, Regesta historiae Westfaliae, 227 n. 1441. 33. On the end of the conflict, see ibid.; on date, see especially Böhm, Mittelalterliche figürliche Grabmäler, 28–30. 34. Miller, Clothing the Clergy; Stolleis, Messgewänder aus deutschen Kirchenschätzen; Braun, Tracht und Attribute der Heiligen; Braun, Die liturgische Gewandung im Occident und Orient; Braun, Der pontificalen Gewänder des Abendlandes; Braun, Die priesterlichen Gewänder des Abendlandes; Bock, Geschichte der liturgischen Gewänder des Mittelalters. 35. On sumptuous vestments and their use in this era, see Miller, Clothing the Clergy, esp. 115–40. 36. This page is sometimes called the Gregory Leaf, Trier, Stadtbibliothek, Ms. 171/1626. 37. This page was later bound as part of a gradual from the abbey of Echternach, today Paris, BnF, lat 10510, fol. 20v.
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38. On episcopal narratives in text and image, respectively, see Haarländer, Vitae episcoporum, and Palazzo, Évêque et son image. 39. Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek, Msc. Hist. 161 (E.III.1), fol. 11v. Leitschuh and Fischer, Katalog der Handschriften der Königlichen Bibliothek, 1, part 2:264–69. 40. Peter, “Neue Fragen und alte Probleme,” 80–96; Brandt, “Roger von Helmarshausen,” 97–111. 41. Böhm, Mittelalterliche figürliche Grabmäler, 29. 42. Parma, Biblioteca Palatina di Parma, Ms. Parm. 1650. See Stiegemann and Wemhoff, Canossa 1077, 89–90; Avril, “Saint Ildefonse de Tolède,” 226–27; Zanichelli, “Strutture narrative a Cluny,” 237–52; Farinelli and Calzolari, Cum picturis ystoriatum, 169–73, no. 26 (Giuseppa Zanichelli); Schapiro, Parma Ildefonsus; Nordenfalk, “Miniature ottonienne et ateliers capétiens,” 55–59. 43. Schapiro, Parma Ildefonsus, 9. 44. Cividale, Municipal museum, Ms. CXXXVI, fols. 16v–19r; Labusiak, “Legitimation durch Tradition,” 187–200; Labusiak, Die Ruodprechtgruppe der ottonischen Reichenauer Buchmalerei, 52–60, 231–34; Psalterium Egberti: Facsimile. 45. See, for example, Gaborit-Chopin, “Plaque de reliure,” 309. 46. On the fire, see Mithoff, Kunstdenkmale und Alterthümer im Hannoverschen, 6:68–70. 47. On the early history of the abbey, see Schnöckelborg, Iburg. 48. Norbert’s vita of Benno has been published twice by the Monumenta Germaniae Historica and in a German translation by Tangl. See also Scior, “Die Vita Bennos von Osnabrück,” 33–55; Heimann, “Die Ausbildung hochmittelalterlicher Bischöfe,” 137–51; Binding, Der früh- und hochmittelalterliche Bauherr, 93–100; Schmid, “Der Stifter und sein Gedenken,” 297–322; Kallfelz, Lebensbeschreibungen einiger Bischöfe, 363–441. 49. See Sporbeck, “Kasel Bischof Bennos II. von Osnabrück,” 79; Schnackenburg, “Die Ornamenta des Osnabrücker Doms,” 95–97; Borchers, Der Osnabrücker Domschatz; Braun, Die priesterlichen Gewänder des Abendlandes, 154; Jaeger, Origins of Courtliness, 88. 50. Körner, Grabmonumente des Mittelalters, 100; Poppe, “Das Grab und die Gedächtnisstätten Bennos II.,” 247–54. 51. Norbert, Vita Bennonis 28, ed. Bresslau, 892.
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52. Körner, Grabmonumente des Mittelalters, 100. 53. Scholz, “Totengedenken in mittelalterlichen Grabinschriften,” 41, fig. 2. 54. On effigies for founders, see especially Horch, Der Memorialgedanke und das Spektrum; Sauer, Fundatio und Memoria. 55. “Domina Gysla nobilis femina, cum consensu et conlaudatione juste heredis sue Oderade scilicet filie fratris sui Godescalci.” See Moormeyer, Die Grafschaft Diepholz, 28. 56. Ibid., 29. 57. Ebeling, Die deutsche Bischöfe, 2:337. 58. On aristocratic bishops, see Zielinski, Der Reichsepiskopat in spätottonischer und salischer Zeit, 28–66; on Gottschalk specifically, see p. 62. See also Brühl, “Die Sozialstruktur des deutschen Episkopats,” 48; Guillemain, “Origines des évêques en France,” 384–85. 59. Zielinski, Der Reichsepiskopat in spätottonischer und salischer Zeit, 32. 60. Ibid. 61. Zielinski notes that both men were named “Gottschalk” and that the name was popular in the Diepholz family, but he omits that the father of the Osnabrück bishop was also named Gottschalk; see ibid., 62; Moormeyer, Die Grafschaft Diepholz; Pelster, Stand und Herkunft der Bischöfe der Kölner Kirchenprovinz, 81, 92; Schölkopf, “Die sächsischen Grafen,” 167. 62. Ortmanns, Das Bistum Minden in seinen Beziehungen; Löffler, Die westfälischen Bischöfe im Investiturstreit. 63. Goslar was technically a Pfalzstift but comparable in prestige to a cathedral. 64. Twenty-two bishops were trained in smaller Saxon cathedral schools in this period but only five held office outside the diocese where they were educated. These five include Gottschalk of Diepholz; Unwan of Bremen (1013–1029), trained at Paderborn and Hildesheim; Suitger of Bamberg (1040–1047), later Pope Clemens II, trained at Hamburg-Bremen; Altmann of Passau (1065–1091), trained at Paderborn; and Thiedo of Brandenburg (1069–1085), trained at Hamburg- Bremen. See Zielinski, Der Reichsepiskopat in spätottonischer und salischer Zeit, 144–45. Gottschalk of Minden, absent from Zielinski’s tables, was likely a canon at Minden. 65. Others include the Minden bishops Alberich (r. 1022), Sigebert (r. 1022–36), Reinward (r. 1080–89), and Sigeward (r. 1120–40); Zielinski, Der Reichsepiskopat
Notes to Pages 92–99 191
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Notes to Pages 99–111 192
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in spätottonischer und salischer Zeit, 144 n. 445. 66. For Minden, see Schieffer, Die Entstehung von Domkapiteln in Deutschland, 219–21; Ortmanns, Das Bistum Minden in seinen Beziehungen; Pelster, “Ein Schulbücherverzeichnis aus der Mindener Dombibliothek,” 534–53. 67. The ivory was reused in the binding of the prayer book of Mary of Guelders, Berlin, SBB, Ms. germ. quart. 42. 68. Böhm, Mittelalterliche figürliche Grabmäler, 28–30. 69. Pierce, “Sigebert ‘the Beloved,’ ” 249–73, and Honselmann, “Das Rationale der Bischöfe von Minden,” 71–83. I am very grateful to Evan Gatti for generously sharing her work-in-progress on Sigebert with me. 70. For the evangelistary of Sigebert of Minden (Berlin, SBB, Ms. theol. lat. qu. 3, fragment), see Fingernagel, Illuminierten lateinischen Handschriften deutscher Provenienz, 1:63–64. The full group of manuscripts linked to Sigebert of Minden are discussed in the catalogue of a 2009 exhibition, in which most of the books were shown together (Stiegemann and Kroker, Für Königtum und Himmelreich, 465–75, cats. 190–97 [Matthias Becher]; von Euw, “Die Bischöfe und die heiligen Bücher,” 184–91). 71. For the Minden Sacramentary (Berlin, SBB, Ms. theol. lat. fol. 2) see Fingernagel, Illuminierten lateinischen Handschriften süd-, west- und nord-europäischer Provenienz, 1:141–45 (for fol. 9r specifically, see pp. 142–43), and Gatti, “Building the Body of the Church,” 98, 100. 72. havri perpetuae sigeberte charismata vitae. For the full text and translation, see Pierce, “Sigebert ‘the Beloved,’ ” 255. 73. Hildesheim, Dom Museum, Ms. 18; Munich, BSB, Clm 13601. 74. See especially Kingsley, Bernward Gospels. 75. Pfändtner and Gullath, Der Uta-Codex; Cohen, Uta Codex. 76. For early sources, see Schirmeister and Specht-Kreusel, Widukind und Enger; Althoff, “Der Sachsenherzog Widukind,” 251–79; Schmid, “Die Nachfahren Widukinds,” 1–47. On Widukind’s modern reception, see most recently Spannhoff, “Widukind,” 37–42. 77. For a clear summary of the early texts, which begin with the vitae of Mathilda, see Gilsdorf, Queenship and Sanctity, 147–53. 78. Mozer-Petković, “Widukind-Grabmal,” 90–111; Böhm, Mittelalterliche figürliche Grabmäler, 31–40; Schirmeister and
Specht-Kreusel, Widukind und Enger; Wesenberg, Frühe mittelalterliche Bildwerke, no. 50; Angermann, “Das Wittekindrelief in der Kirche zu Enger,” 173–215. 79. Panofsky, Die deutsche Plastik, 13–15, and Panofsky, Tomb Sculpture, 52. 80. Panofsky, Tomb Sculpture, 52. 81. For early sources, see Schirmeister and Specht-Kreusel, Widukind und Enger; Althoff, “Der Sachsenherzog Widukind,” 251–79; Schmid, “Die Nachfahren Widukinds,” 1–47. 82. Walbert’s father was identified as Wigbert, Widukind’s “pious and powerful” son. See Schirmeister and Specht-Kreusel, Widukind und Enger, and Schmid, “Die Nachfahren Widukinds,” 2–10. 83. Althoff, “Der Sachsenherzog Widukind,” 251–79. 84. On the difficulties of conclusive identification see Hummel, Ancient DNA Typing, 193–97. 85. Böhm, Mittelalterliche figürliche Grabmäler, 32–33; Eickermann, “Über die Grabschrift Widukinds,” 48–68. 86. Fozi, “From the ‘Pictorial’ to the ‘Statuesque,’ ” 30–48. 87. Mozer-Petković, “Widukind-Grabmal,” 95. 88. Herrmann, Röckelein, and Hummel, “Widukinds Fingerzeig?,” 177–87; Hummel, Ancient DNA Typing, 193–97. 89. Böhm, Mittelalterliche figürliche Grabmäler, 32. 90. The most compelling parallel, from a manuscript of Honorius Augustodunensis, shows a king flanked by personified virtues; Ratio (Reason) holds her hand similarly. Paris, BnF, lat. 6734; see Herrmann, Röckelein, and Hummel, “Widukinds Fingerzeig?,” 182. 91. For example, the Carolingian Gospel book from Prüm (attributed to the scriptorium at Tours), dated after 846, now Berlin, SBB, Ms. theol. lat. fol. 733, fol. 17v. See Böhner and Elbern, Das erste Jahrtausend, plates volume, 56, plate 244. 92. Engelberg, Switzerland, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. 3, fol. 189v, dated 1143–78. 93. Jeremiah 1:6, “Et dixi a a a Domine Deus ecce nescio loqui quia puer ego sum.” 94. Engelberg, Switzerland, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. 3, fol. 108v. 95. On the ciborium, see Peroni, “Frühmittel alterlicher Stuck in Oberitalien,” 25–36; Schramm and Mütherich, Die deutschen Kaiser und Könige, 189–90, 336–39. 96. It is tempting to see the figure as a flat design projected awkwardly into sculpture,
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as its sensitive contours belie its puffy, sugar-cookie shape. See Fozi, “From the ‘Pictorial’ to the ‘Statuesque,’ ” 43. 97. Elbern, “Das sogennante ‘Szepter Karls des Grossen,’ ” 514–53; Focke, “Szepter und Krummstab,” 337–87.
Chapter 4 1. See especially Blough, Companion to the Abbey of Quedlinburg, forthcoming, and Voigtländer, Die Stiftskirche St. Servatii zu Quedlinburg. 2. The small church that stood on the site before Henry’s burial had been rebuilt and enlarged at least twice before the fire of 1070. For Quedlinburg’s first settlements and early history, see Ludowici, “Quedlinburg vor den Ottonen,” 91–104. 3. Kosegarten, “ ‘Die häßlichen Äbtissinnen,’ ” 9–47. 4. For manuscript images, see Blough, “Abbatial Effigies at Quedlinburg,” 147– 69. Similar draperies appear in the Berlin Passio sanctae Luciae, discussed below. 5. Bauch, Das mittelalterliche Grabbild, 23: “Die Haltung der Hände weicht ab, doch alles andere is kopiert. Dabei ist das bedeutend angelegte Gernroder Bildwerk grob vereinfacht und mißverstanden worden, nicht eigentlich von Bildhauern, eher von Steinmetzen. . . . So kann man hier wohl nicht von einem ‘Stilwandel’ sprechen, sondern nur von der handwerklichen Vergröberung eines überragenden Vorbildes.” 6. Corgnati, Arte dello stucco in Europa, 41–88, 89–132. For the Harz, see Rüber, “Ottonische Stuckplastik in Sachsen- Anhalt,” 151–72. 7. See the essays in Poeschke, Sinopien und Stuck im Westwerk der Karolingischen Klosterkirche, especially Peroni, “Stucco, pittura e sinopie in S. Salvatore di Brescia,” 59–69. For Cividale, see Quendolo, Villa, and Badan, Tempietto Longobardo a Cividale del Friuli. 8. For Müstair, see Goll, Exner, and Hirsch, Müstair; Böhmer, “Die Stuckfigur Karls des Grossen,” 62–65, with bibliography. 9. Meier, “Ton, Stein und Stuck,” 35–52; Hoernes, Hoch- und spätmittelalterlicher Stuck; Exner, Stuck des frühen und hohen Mittelalters; Grzimek, Deutsche Stuckplastik. On Quedlinburg, see Berndt, Stuckplastik im frühmittelalterlichen Sachsen, and Limmer, “Mittelalterlicher Stuckguß,” 62–67.
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10. Among the more recent studies is Arnold, Arnold, and Rüber-Schütte, “Plaster Decoration of the Choir Screens,” 369–83. 11. See, for example, Crusius, Studien zum Kanonissenstift, 9–38. On art and female monasticism, see Frings and Gerchow, Krone und Schleier, and Hamburger and Jäggi, Frauen—Kloster—Kunst. 12. The term “Princess-Abbess of Quedlinburg” appears in English-language publications; German sources maintain “Äbtissin” but distinguish Quedlinburg as a reichsunmittelbare und freiweltliche Stift, or free imperial foundation. 13. For the treasury, see Labusiak, Kostbarer als Gold. 14. Hase and Quast, Die Gräber in der Schlosskirche zu Quedlinburg; Vorbrodt, Die Stiftskirche zu Quedlinburg; Schubert, “Inschrift und Darstellung auf Quedlinburger Äbtissinnengrabsteinen,” 131–51; Berger, “Die Stiftskirche in Quedlinburg und die Denkmalpflege,” 92–98; Voigtländer, Die Stiftskirche St. Servatii zu Quedlinburg; Leopold, “Die erste Damenstiftskirche auf dem Quedlinburger Burgberg,” 7–20; Reuling, “Quedlinburg,” 184–247; Hengevoss- Dürkop, “Äbtissinnengrabmäler als Repräsentationsbilder,” 45–88; Kosegarten, “Die häßlichen Äbtissinnen,” 9–47. 15. The complete set is illustrated in Hengevoss-Dürkop, “Äbtissinnengrabmäler als Repräsentationsbilder,” 46–47. 16. Adelheid was a daughter of Otto II, son of Otto I and grandson of Henry and Mathilda. Beatrix and Adelheid II were the daughters of Henry III and thus descended from Liutgarde, daughter of Otto I and grandmother of Conrad. 17. The Adelheid plaque measures 1.07 m in width, while Beatrix and the second Adelheid plaques are 0.83 m and 0.84 m, respectively; see Kosegarten, “Die häßlichen Äbtissinnen,” 15. All three measure 2.14 m in height and range from 0.08–0.10 m in thickness. The figures have been cast, not carved, and attached to the plaques. The depth of the figural relief is slightly greater for the first Adelheid; they measure 0.15 m (Adelheid), 0.11 m (Beatrix), and 0.09 m (the second Adelheid), in addition to the 0.08–0.10 m thickness of the plaque. This difference of 0.15 m reinforces the impression that Adelheid belongs at the center, her frame augmented like the center arch of a portal. 18. For historiography, see Kosegarten, “Die häßlichen Äbtissinnen,” 9–11.
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19. Bauch, Das mittelalterliche Grabbild, 23; see Kosegarten (“Die häßlichen Äbtissinnen,” 9–11) for a detailed summary of how the style and date of the figures has been gauged, beginning with Adolph Goldschmidt’s opinion from 1900 that the sculptures could be dated around 1129, despite their “deepest decay” (tiefste Verfall) in style. 20. Kosegarten, “Die häßlichen Äbtissinnen,” 29–34. 21. Sauer, Fundatio und Memoria, 89–213. 22. Schubert, “Quedlinburg, Stadt und Stätte deutscher Geschichte,” 3–19. 23. Blough, “Abbatial Effigies at Quedlinburg,” 160–63. 24. For Chrodoara, see chapter 1; for Reinhildis, see Fozi, “Reinhildis Has Died,” 161. 25. For discussion of the Three Living and the Three Dead in later medieval art, see Binski, Medieval Death, 134–45. 26. For Memento mori in eleventh- and twelfth-century texts, see Williams, Vision of Death. 27. See also Blough, “Abbatial Effigies at Quedlinburg,” 155. 28. Ibid., 154; Kosegarten, “Die häßlichen Äbtissinnen,” 17; Sauer, Fundatio und Memoria, 96–97; Hengevoss-Dürkop, “Äbtissinnengrabmäler als Repräsentationsbilder,” 71–72. 29. The ivory, attributed to the Ada Group, is from the back cover of the Dagulf Psalter (Paris, Musée du Louvre, Dép. des objets d’art, MR 371); Steenbock, “Psalterien mit kostbaren Einbänden,” 435–36. 30. Steenbock, “Psalterien mit kostbaren Einbänden,” 436. 31. Cassian, Conlationes 10.11, ed. Petschenig, 304; trans. Luibheid, 137, quoted in Dyer, “Psalms in Monastic Prayer,” 64. 32. On the high levels of education attained by elite Ottonian canonesses, see especially Bodarwé, Sanctimoniales litteratae, 60–71. 33. Kosegarten, “Die häßlichen Äbtissinnen,” 38. 34. Cahn, “Illuminated Psalter Commentaries,” 241–64; van Deusen, Place of the Psalms; Stansbury, “Early Medieval Biblical Commentaries,” 49–82; Colish, “Psalterium scholasticorum,” 531–48; Häring, “Commentary and Hermeneutics,” 173–200; Flint, “Some Notes on the Early Twelfth-Century Commentaries,” 80–88; Eynde, “Literary Notes on the Earliest Scholastic Commentarii,” 121–54.
35. Bodarwé, Sanctimoniales litteratae, 295–96; Halle, Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek, Qu.Cod. 76. 36. Bodarwé, Sancitmoniales litteratae, 293; Halle, Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek, Qu.Cod. 74 (Augustine) and Munich, BSB, Clm 4535 (Ambrose). 37. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms 143:4, trans. Boulding, 6:370. 38. Ibid., 6:370–71. 39. Cassiodorus, Explanation of the Psalms 143:4, trans. Walsh, 3:416. 40. Ibid. 41. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms 143:4, trans. Boulding, 5:102. 42. Cassiodorus, Explanation of the Psalms 143:4, trans. Walsh, 3:24–25. 43. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms 143:4, trans. Boulding, 2:374. 44. Ibid., 2:375. 45. Cassiodorus, Explanation of the Psalms 143:4, trans. Walsh, 1:477–78. 46. See also Psalm 48 in the Utrecht Psalter (Universiteitsbibliotheek Utrecht, Hs. 32, fol. 28r) illustrated with a king holding scales before a treasure house, observing burials in sarcophagi to emphasize that the dead abandon all their riches. Psalm 102 (fol. 59r) shows “flowers” and “grass” on a hillock up above the Psalmist. The remarkably literal illustrations invite speculation that the flowered bands surrounding the Quedlinburg figures also refer to the “flowers of the field.” On the Utrecht Psalter, see Kemp, “Über Illustrationen,” 297–307; Chazelle, “Archbishops Ebo and Hincmar of Reims,” 97–119. 47. For this sarcophagus, see chapter 1. 48. Kahsnitz, “Bischof Bernwards Grab,” 383–96. 49. On Thietmar’s portrayal of the elder Adelheid and the respect that was usually given to her, see Althoff, “Gandersheim und Quedlinburg,” 135–37, 142–44. 50. Bynum, Resurrection of the Body, 117–55. 51. On the Hildesheim Beatitidues, see Turek and Schirlitz, “Die ‘Seligpreisungen’ im südlichen Seitenschiff,” 191–96. For the Magdeburg set, detached from an earlier monument (possibly an ambo) and now in the Marian chapel, see Gosebruch, “Die Magdeburger Seligpreisungen,” 97–126. 52. Quendolo, Villa, and Badan, Tempietto Longobardo a Cividale del Friuli; Beutler, Statua, 191–211. 53. Further examples include the plaster reliefs at Clus, Werden, and Gernrode.
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54. On the reliquary itself, see Gatti, “Reviving the Relic,” 7–15, and Peter, “Das karolingische Elfenbeinkästchen,” 53–92. 55. On Henry II and the political redistribution of treasury objects, see Garrison, Ottonian Imperial Art and Portraiture; for the Munich and Quedlinburg ivories specifically, see ibid., 114. 56. Garrison, “Curious Commission,” 17–29. 57. Kahsnitz, Krause, and Voß, Das Heilige Grab in Gernrode; Müller, Das Heilige Grab in der Stiftskirche St. Cyriakus; Erdmann, “Neue Untersuchungen an der Stiftskirche,” 245–85; Voigtländer, Die Stiftskirche St. Servatii zu Quedlinburg; Vorbrodt, “Zur Bedeutung der Mittelfigur der Westwand,” 129–34; Meyer, “Zwei neuaufgefundene Köpfe vom Heiligen Grab,” 34–47; Beenken, “Der Skulpturenschmuck des Heiligen Grabes,” 1–25. On the history of the site, see Warnke, “Das Kanonissenstift St. Cyriakus zu Gernrode,” 201–74. 58. For a clear floor plan, see Schröter, Das Heilige Grab von St. Cyriacus, plate 3. 59. On Gernrode’s relation to this complex group, see, most recently, ibid., 11–30, with extensive citations of the older literature. 60. On the historiography of this debate, see Hengevoss-Dürkop, “Äbtissinnengrabmäler als Repräsentationsbilder,” 78–81, with citations. 61. Passio sanctae Luciae, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Kupferstichkabinett, Hs. 78 A4. See Hahn, Portrayed on the Heart, 90–128; Hahn, “Icon and Narrative in the Berlin Life,” 72–90. 62. Hengevoss-Dürkop, “Äbtissinnengrabmäler als Repräsentationsbilder,” 81–84, and Lipphardt, “Die Visitatio sepulchri,” 1–15. 63. Hengevoss-Dürkop, “Äbtissinnengrabmäler als Repräsentationsbilder,” 85–87. 64. For a helpful summary with further citations see Schröter, Das Heilige Grab von St. Cyriacus, 57–59. 65. Ibid. 66. On the Drübeck figure, see Rüber-Schütte, “Zum mittelalterlichen Stuck in Sachsen- Anhalt,” 94–106, and Grzimek, Deutsche Stuckplastik, 43. On the architecture and history of the site, see Pötschke, Herrschaft, Glaube und Kunst; Brülls, Die Klosterkirche zu Drübeck; Duntze, “Die ehemalige Klosterkirche in Drübeck”; Kühn and Felix, Klosterkirche Drübeck; Seebach, “Kloster Drübeck,” 43–64; Feldtkeller, “Neue Forschungen zur Baugeschichte,” 105–24; Zeller, Frühromanische Kirchenbauten und Klosteranlagen; Bergner and
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Jacobs, Beschreibende Darstellung der älteren Bau- und Kunstdenkmäler, 34–58 (with illustration); Jacobs, Das Kloster Drübeck; Hase, Die mittelalterlichen Baudenkmäler Niedersachsens. 67. Grzimek suggests a date in the tenth century to coincide with the dates for Adelbrin (discussed below), but he does not acknowledge that effigies could be made centuries after the death of the individual; see Deutsche Stuckplastik, 43. 68. Akten Kloster Drübeck, Archiv des Landesamts für Denkmalpflege Sachsen- Anhalt, Halle; see Urkundenbuch des in der Grafschaft Wernigerode belegenen Klosters Drübeck. 69. Grzimek, Deutsche Stuckplastik, 43; Rüber- Schütte, “Zum mittelalterlichen Stuck in Sachsen-Anhalt,” 94; Sauer, Fundatio und Memoria, 184–85. 70. Adelbrin is named as “domna Adelbrin, soror eorum, prima in genere suo ad deum conuersa” in the charter of 877; see Urkundenbuch des in der Grafschaft Wernigerode belegenen Klosters Drübeck, 1. 71. See, for example, Fälschungen im Mittelalter. 72. Reinöhl, “Die gefälschten Königsurkunden des Klosters Drübeck,” 123–40, and Grosse, “Vom Ursprung Drübecks,” 2–7. 73. For example, Brown, “Falsitas pia sive reprehensibilis,” 101–20. 74. Thietmar, Ottonian Germany 8:8–9, trans. Warner, 367–68. 75. Mühlberg, “Grab und Grabdenkmal der Plektrudis,” 38–48. 76. Ibid., 84–86. 77. Sacramentary, Halberstadt, Domschatz, inv.-nr. 469, fol. 4r. The manuscript dates to the 970s and the entry “Sisu ancilla domini” (handmaid of the Lord) appears on February 17 in a hand of the late tenth or early eleventh century. See Carmassi, “Liturgie und Buch in der Tradition,” 162. At least one nineteenth-century author suggests that Sisu is also listed in the Liber memorialis of Saint Michael’s in Hildesheim (Jacobs, Das Kloster Drübeck, 73) but I examined the manuscript in 2008 and did not find her name. A certain “Sisu” also appears in the Annals of Quedlinburg (Die Annales Quedlinburgenses, 555). 78. Fozi, “Reinhildis Has Died,” 158–94. Notes to Pages Chapter 5 Epigraph: Bernard of Clairvaux, letter 459, Letters of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, 516–17.
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1. Ibid. 2. On twelfth-century attitudes toward resurrection, see Bynum, Resurrection of the Body, 115–225. 3. See Dale, “Romanesque Sculpted Portraits,” 101–19; Little, Set in Stone; on later medieval portraits, see Perkinson, Likeness of the King, and Büchsel and Schmidt, Das Porträt vor der Erfindung. 4. Paris, Musée du Louvre, Une reine (la reine de Saba?), R.F. 1617, and Un roi (Salomon?), R.F. 1616. See Baron, Moyen Âge, 74; see also the related jamb statue of a queen at Glencairn (Ward, “Statue Column of a Queen”). The Louvre sculptures may be as late as 1180 on stylistic grounds, though the history of Corbeil supports a date of ca. 1150–60. 5. Salet, “Notre-Dame de Corbeil,” 86–87. 6. Another candidate for the oldest English effigy is an abbot figure now at Bathampton, likely from Bath Abbey, probably from the twelfth century. As Nigel Saul notes, however, its lunette format is atypical, and it may well represent a saint instead (English Church Monuments, 29). 7. Schwartzbaum, “Three Tournai Tombslabs.” 8. Ibid., 89; Rolland, “Expansion tournaisienne au XIe et XIIe siècle.” For English effigies generally, see Saul, English Church Monuments, 13–35, and Gardner, English Medieval Sculpture, 152–54. 9. This attribute accounts for the somewhat inaccurate term “Tournai marble”; see Badham, “Use of Sedimentary ‘Marbles,’ ” 1–3, and Schwartzbaum, “Three Tournai Tombslabs,” 89. 10. Schwartzbaum, “Three Tournai Tombslabs,” 89–90. On Tournai fonts, see Drake, Romanesque Fonts of Northern Europe; Cloquet, “Fonts de baptême romans de Tournai,” 308–20. 11. Schwartzbaum, “Three Tournai Tombslabs,” 91–92. 12. Saul, English Church Monuments, 13–35. 13. For Gundrada, see Zarnecki, Holt, and Holland, English Romanesque Art, 181–82, and Saul, English Church Monuments, 34–35. Whether this example was carved in Tournai or in England remains an open question. A similar slab linked to Matilda of Flanders, wife of William the Conqueror, is in the Abbaye-aux-Dames, Caen. For Bridlington priory, see Earnshaw, “Medieval Grave Slabs,” 333–34, and Trevelyan, “Account of a Curious Slab at Bridlington Church,” 168. For “Gilbert
Crispin” in Westminster, see Saul, English Church Monuments, 30–32. Saul favors a date of ca. 1160 but relates the slab to other examples from ca. 1180, suggesting an alternative identification as abbot Gervase. I am also inclined to date it to ca. 1160 or later, particularly because of the manner in which the figure holds the crozier. A twelfth-century Tournai slab is in Saint-Memmie, Coole (Champagne- Ardenne, France) and may represent Saint Memmie (Schwartzbaum, “Three Tournai Tombslabs,” 97 n. 17, and Shortt, Three Bishops’ Tombs). 14. Schwartzbaum, “Three Tournai Tombslabs,” 90–92. 15. Ibid., 91. 16. Ibid., 92. 17. Ibid., 95. The Tree of Jesse is unusual in tombs; for examples, see Watson, Early Iconography of the Tree of Jesse, and Williams, “Earliest Dated Tree of Jesse,” 17–23. This slab is among the earliest sculptures of the motif and among the first in the vertical format that soon became dominant. 18. Schwartzbaum, “Three Tournai Tombslabs,” 94–96. For Roger’s biography and patronage, see Kealey, Roger of Salisbury, and Thurlby, “Sarum Cathedral as Rebuilt by Roger,” 130–40. On the political career of the long-lived Nigel, see Karn, “Nigel, Bishop of Ely,” 299–314. 19. Schwartzbaum, “Three Tournai Tombslabs,” 94. 20. Ibid., 95; Karn, “Nigel, Bishop of Ely,” 300. 21. Schwartznaum, “Three Tournai Tombslabs,” 95–96. 22. Dodwell, Anglo-Saxon Art, 220–21; the source for this tale is the Liber Eliensis 3.122, ed. Blake, 371–72; for the translation by Fairweather, see Liber Eliensis: A History, 461. 23. Bernard of Clairvaux, letter 67, Letters of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, 90–91. 24. Schwartzbaum mentions this acquisition but accepts a date of circa 1150 for the font, which would indicate it came to Lincoln after Alexander’s death in 1148 (“Three Tournai Tombslabs,” 95). The chronology of these fonts remains imprecise, however, and a date in the 1140s is also possible. 25. The tomb of Henry, count of Champagne (d. 1181), was commissioned before his death and seems to be a very early example of this pattern; see Dectot, “Tombeaux des comtes,” 3–62.
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26. Karn, “Nigel, Bishop of Ely,” 300. 27. Ibid., 310–11. 28. Ibid., 313. 29. On the rising soul, see Fozi, “Reinhildis Has Died,” 174–88. 30. On Bentheim sandstone, see Voort, Abbau, Absatz und Verwendung; Schneider and Herzogenrath, 3. Internationales Bildhauer-Symposion. 31. LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur, Münster. Böhm, Mittelalterliche figürliche Grabmäler, 51–55; Luckhardt, “Eine Grabplatte aus Borghorst,” 4–6. 32. Luckhardt, “Eine Grabplatte aus Borghorst,” 4. 33. Ibid., 4. 34. Böhm, Mittelalterliche figürliche Grabmäler, 52. The example from the St. Nicolaaskerk in Vollenhove was only discovered in 1991 and does not appear in Böhm. 35. Both examples appear in Bauch, Das mittelalterliche Grabbild, 24–26. 36. See Böhm, Mittelalterliche figürliche Grabmäler, 51–55, fig. 9; Greiselmayer, “Ostkirchliche Voraussetzungen für Entstehung,” 145; Luckhardt, “Das Kunstwerk des Monats”; Meining, Das freiweltlich-adelige Fräuleinsstift Borchorst; Bauch, Das mittelalterliche Grabbild, 18–19, fig. 12; Greenhill, Incised Effigial Slabs; Mosel, “Die Anfänge des plastischen Figurengrabmals,” 42, 70–74; Eickel, “Alte Werke der Plastik,” 60, fig. 33; Weckwerth, “Tumba und Tischgrab,” 282 n. 22; 291 n. 52; 306; Martin, Vroeg- middeleeuwse zandstenen sarcophagen; Stracke, “Romanische Bildnisgrabsteine in Ostfriesland,” 79; Creutz, Die Anfänge des monumentalen Stiles, 55; Ludorff, Kreis Steinfurt, plate 4, fig. 1; Quast, “Mittelrheinische Sarkophage und deren Ausbreitung,” 108–45. 37. On the Plantagenet tombs, see Spicer, “Jeanne-Baptiste de Bourbon,” 268–81; Erlande-Brandenburg, “Gisant d’Aliénor,” 174–79; Mallet, “Fontevraud dans l’art roman,” 60–71; Erlande-Brandenburg and Landais, Rois à Fontevrault; Erlande- Brandenburg, “Sculpture funéraire,” 561–77. The epitaph of Henry II, only known from textual sources and made well before the effigies, is not discussed here; see Favreau, “Épitaphe d’Henri II,” 3–10. 38. Winterer, “Ut reddat rursum,” 311–45. 39. On the Guthlac Roll (London, BL, Harley Roll Y 6), see Kelly, “Factors Behind the Production,” 1–13.
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40. Panofsky, Tomb Sculpture, 70; on Bruno, see Schuffels, Das Brunograbmal im Dom zu Hildesheim. 41. For the Ingeborg Psalter (Chantilly, Musée Condé, Ms. 9 olim 1695), see Der Ingeborg Psalter (facsimile edition). 42. Geary, Living with the Dead; Paxton, Christianizing Death. 43. A recent example is Nolan, “Queen’s Choice,” 377–405. 44. Erlande-Brandenburg, “Gisant d’Aliénor,” 177. 45. See, for example, ibid., 174–79. 46. For a critique of Eleanor’s patronage, see notably Broadhurst, “Henry II of England,” 53–84; for a helpful review of the scholarship on this debate, see Flori, Eleanor of Aquitaine, 273–93. 47. Broadhurst, “Henry II of England,” 70–83. 48. Stothard, Monumental Effigies of Great Britain, 7, frontispiece and plates 6–7, and Blaser-Meier, Hic iacet regina, 12, 208. I thank Alexandra Gajewski for drawing my attention to this damage. 49. See, for example, Montfaucon, Monumens de la monarchie françoise, 2:114, plate 15; Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, Ms. Gough Drawings Gaignières 14, fol. 158, illustrated in Spicer, “Jeanne- Baptiste de Bourbon,” plate 6; Erlande- Brandenburg, “Gisant d’Aliénor,” 174–75. 50. On provenance, see Beech, “Eleanor of Aquitaine Vase,” 3–10; Norton, “Bernard, Suger, and Henry I’s Crown Jewels,” 1–14. 51. Dectot, “Tombeaux des comtes,” 3–62. 52. Her biography is compellingly recounted in Jordan, “Isabelle d’Angoulême,” 821–52. 53. Erlande-Brandenburg, “Sculpture funéraire,” 561; Paris, Chronica majora, 5:475. 54. Erlande-Brandenburg, “Sculpture funéraire,” 561. 55. See Paris, Chronica majora, 5:475; Paris, Matthew Paris’s English History, 3:104; London, BL, Royal 14 C VII, fol. 168r. 56. Cambridge, Corpus Christi, Ms. 016II, fol. 205v; for the corresponding text, see Paris, Chronica majora, 4:563; Paris, Matthew Paris’s English History, 2:177. 57. Cambridge, Corpus Christi, Ms. 016II, fol. 183r; Lewis, Art of Matthew Paris, 308. 58. Paris, Chronica majora, 4:397; Paris, Matthew Paris’s English History, 2:37–38. 59. Erlande-Brandenburg suggests a date in the 1220s (“Sculpture funéraire,” 561); see also Sauerländer, Gotische Skulptur, 130–31. 60. On the queen’s political downfall and final years, see Jordan, “Isabelle d’Angoulême,” 849–51.
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61. The pivotal monument for this shift may well be the tomb of Henri I, count of Champagne (1127–1181), as discussed in Dectot, “Tombeaux des comtes,” 19–22. Note that Henri’s gisant is known through an engraving from 1837; as is often the case, this situation makes it difficult to be certain the effigy was not a Gothic or later addition, though Dectot makes a convincing argument for an early date.
62. Büchsel, “Nur der Tyrann hat sein eigenes Gesicht,” 123–40. 63. On mosaic effigies, see Cahn, “Pictorial Epitaph of Lambert of Saint-Bertin,” 37–50. 64. On Guido, see Thümmler, “Die Grabplatte des Osnabrücker Bischofs,” 34, 37. 65. Wulf, Die Inschriften der Stadt Hildesheim, cat. 27. 66. Ibid.
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Index
Page numbers in italics indicate figures. References in bold indicate numbered color plates. abstraction, 116–17, 135–39 Adalbert of Metzingen, 88, 89 Adalbert of Mörsberg, 88, 89 Adalbert of Nellenburg, 85, 88 Adam of Bremen, 62 Adelaide of Maurienne, 69, 76, 76–77, 80 Adelaide of Savoy, 186n13 Adelbrin of Drübeck, 146, 147, 148 Adelheid I of Quedlinburg, 121, 133, 193n16 See also Quedlinburg effigies Adelheid II of Quedlinburg, 121, 131, 193n16 See also Quedlinburg effigies Adelheid of Nellenburg, 88 Agnes, Saint, 81, 85, 87 Agnes II of Meißen, 137 Agnes of Waiblingen, 106 Alberich of Minden, 191n65 Alcuin, 14–15 Alexander III (pope), 72 Alexander of Lincoln, 14, 158, 160, 161, 161–62, 164 Allerheiligen Abbey, 81–82, 85, 88, 89, 189n6 See also Nellenburg family Althoff, Gerd, 104–6 Altmann of Passau, 191n64 Ambrose of Milan, 109–10, 110, 130 ancient sarcophagi, 6–7, 13, 15, 26–28, 29 angel designs, 22–24, 26, 55, 160–61, 163, 170 Anquêtil of Moissac, 30, 31, 33, 34–37 Anselm of Laon, 130 apostles, 30, 34, 36, 137 apotheosis, 53–54 apotropaic designs, 18, 26 Ariès, Philippe, 177 Assmann, Jan, 11–12 Augustine of Hippo, 130–33
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Bad Iburg Abbey, 38, 90, 95–97, 102–3 See also Gottschalk of Diepholz, Bishop of Osnabrück Bad Reichenhall Abbey sculpture, 60 Balderic of Dol, 52 Barbarossakopf. See Cappenberg reliquary Basel Antependium, 60, 61, 187nn57–58 Bauch, Kurt, 5–6, 48, 49, 117, 118, 122, 186n31, 193n5 Bayeux Tapestry, 49 Beatitudes, 134, 135–37, 145 Beatrix of Quedlinburg, 121, 131, 193n16 See also Quedlinburg effigies Benedict of Nursia, 36 Benno of Meißen, 183n35 Benno II of Osnabrück, 38, 90, 96–97, 102 Bentheim stone sculptures, 164–68, 165, 166, 175 Benzo of Alba, 63 Bernard of Clairvaux, 130, 155–56, 162, 188n81 Bernhard of Borghorst, 164 Bernhard of Halberstadt, 17–18, 19, 183n27 Bernward of Hildesheim, 20–26 as artist, 21 biography, 20–21 Quedlinburg effigies comparison, 133 and Roman inspiration, 182n5 sarcophagus lid and hidden inscription, 21, 22, 22–24, 23, 26 and spiritual hierarchy, 101–2, 103 tomb slab, 23, 24–26 Berthold of Carinthia, 44, 58 bishops, iconography, 92–95, 93, 94, 95, 96, 99–102, 100, 101, 103 black porphyry, 14, 182n12 Blanche of Castile, 175–76, 176 body, the abstraction and repetition of, 116–17, 135–39 deformity, 49, 108–9 healed, 49, 135
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body, the (continued) institutional space linked to, 79–80, 82, 123, 129, 142–43 presence and absence of, 26, 31, 37, 56, 106, 107, 152 soul separated from, 25–26, 55, 132–33, 155, 160–61, 163, 170 spiritual vs. corporeal ambiguity, 28–29, 155 as transient, 130–31 See also individual, the Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy, 52 Böhm, Gabriele, 5, 93–94, 108 Bonfons, Nicolas, 189n90 Borghorst effigy, 164, 165 Bridlington priory sculptures, 160 bronze, 39, 40, 41, 47, 49, 54, 56, 63 Brun of Cologne, 98 Brunhilda of Austrasia, 77 Bruno of Hildesheim, 170, 171, 179 Büchsel, Martin, 177 Burckhardt, Jacob, 37 Burkhard of Nellenburg, 81–84, 82, 83, 84, 85–88 Bynum, Caroline Walker, 11–12, 61
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Cahn, Walter, 5, 130 Calcidius, Timaeus commentary, 21 Capetian dynasty, 57–58, 160, 174 Cappenberg reliquary, 2, 64–65, 65 Carolingian period epitaphs, 14–15 imperial bishops, 98 sarcophagi characteristics, 15, 43, 63 See also Charlemagne Carruthers, Mary, 11 Cassian, John, 29, 129 Cassiodorus, 130–33 cathedral schools, 99, 191n64 Certeau, Michel de, 2 champlevé technique, 69 Charlemagne and Bad Reichenhall sculpture, 60 episcopal appointments, 98 Hadrian’s epitaph commissioned by, 14–15 as model, 63, 65, 69 tomb, 62–63, 183n18, 187n63 and Widukind, 63, 103–4 charter forgeries, 146–48, 150 Chartres Cathedral, Royal Portal, 156 Childebert I, 4, 6, 7, 69–72, 70, 74–76, 80 Chilperic, 71–72, 73, 189n90 Christ as model for abbots, 34, 36 orb of the world motif, 109 Passion motif, 51 Resurrection motif, 139, 143, 176
Christophe, Delphine, 188n74 Chrodoara of Amay, 15–16, 16, 17, 125, 183n24, 190n27 Chronicle of Petershausen, 185n1, 185n3 church model designs, 69, 72, 79, 80, 81, 84, 110 Clemens II (pope), 191n64 Clothar I, 156, 157 Clothilde, 156, 157 Cluniac reform, 30, 34, 35, 38, 189n6 Conrad I, King of Germany, 44 Conrad II, Holy Roman Emperor, 185nn6–7 Conrad II, King of Germany and Italy, 45 Conrad III, King of Germany, 106, 132 crown designs, 48, 60, 63, 107, 111, 174 Crusades, 74 cult of saints, 149 cultural memory, as concept, 11 See also memory Cunigunde. See Kunigunde of Luxemburg Dagulf Psalter, 128, 194n29 Dale, Thomas E. A., 42, 49, 54, 55, 182n20 death body and soul separation, 25–26, 55, 132–33, 155, 160–61, 163, 170 and disease, 84–85 and dynastic succession, 57 funerary bed iconography, 168–70, 173–74, 176 and liminal space, 127, 134–35, 137–39, 143, 152–53 spiritual vs. corporeal ambiguity, 28–29, 155 as transformative, 51, 52, 54–55 and transience of life, 26, 130–31 Dectot, Xavier, 198n61 deformity, 49, 108–9 Demus, Otto, 5 Deschamps, Paul, 35 Diepholz family, 98–99, 102–3, 191n61 disease, 84–85 See also Gottschalk of Diepholz, Bishop of Osnabrück Dom Tragaltar, Paderborn, 93–94, 94, 95, 96 donation imagery, 84, 87 Drogo of Metz, 98 Drübeck effigy, 144–50, 145, 195n67 Durand of Bredon, 30–37 and Anquêtil plaque, 30, 31, 33, 34–37 monument, 30–31, 32, 34, 36–37, 38, 92, 152 Osnabrück conflict comparison, 90–92 Quedlinburg effigies comparison, 125 Eberhard of Nellenburg, 81–84, 82, 83, 85–89 Eberhard of Nellenburg, son of Eberhard and Ita, 85–88
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Edward the Confessor, 49 Egbert Psalter, 95 Einhard, Vita Karoli, 15, 62–63, 183n18, 187n63 Ekkehard of Reichenau, 85–88 Eleanor of Aquitaine, 16, 74, 170–73, 174 enamels, 3, 65–68, 68, 77, 188n78 Enger, 106, 108 See also Widukind of Saxony episcopal iconography, 92–95, 93, 94, 95, 96, 99–102, 100, 101, 103 epitaphs and commemorative plaques, 13–38 Anquêtil plaque, 30, 31, 33, 34–37 Benno II of Osnabrück, 97 Bernward of Hildesheim, 23, 24–26 Charlemagne, 187n63 and early medieval sarcophagi tradition, 16, 16–19, 17, 18, 19 Geoffrey Plantagenet, 3, 66–67 Gottschalk of Diepholz, 90, 98 Hadrian, 14–15 Isarn of Marseille, 26–30, 27, 36 Quedlinburg effigies, 121–22, 128–33 Rudolf of Swabia, 42–43, 50–52 Erlande-Brandenburg, Alain, 5, 168, 173, 176 eschatological expectations and resurrection ambiguous status of, 54–56, 82, 108, 111–12, 155–56, 179 and apotropaic designs, 18, 26 and disease, 85 vs. funerary iconography, 169 and humility, 25–26 and liminal space, 127, 134–35, 137–39, 143, 152–53 vs. pitiable life, 28–29 in reliquary imagery, 54–55 and transience, 130–31 vs. worldliness, 132–33 Estiennot (Claude Estiennot de la Serre), 35, 36 Exner, Matthias, 15, 49 Fontevrault. See Plantagenet effigies (Fontevrault) forgeries, 146–48, 150 Forsyth, Ilene, 5, 35–36 Fredegund, 5, 6, 7, 69–72, 71, 72, 74–77, 80 Frederick Barbarossa, 44, 58, 60, 64–65 Frederick of Wettin, 56, 57 Frese, Tobias, 21 Frumauld of Arras, 178 Frutolf of Michelsberg, 62 funerary bed iconography, 168–70, 173–74, 176 Gaignières, Roger de, 66, 71, 188n87 Gallman, Heinz, 84 Gandersheim Abbey, 20, 115, 147, 148, 150, 183n32 charters, 147
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Garrison, Eliza, 137 Geary, Patrick, 170 Gebhard of Constance, 7–8 Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou, 3, 65–69, 77, 125, 152, 163, 188n74, 189n11 Gerhard of Borghorst, 164 Gerhoch of Reichersberg, 188n81 Germain, Saint, 72 Gernrode sculpture, 125, 139–44, 140, 141 Gilbert Crispin of Westminster Abbey, 160 Gilbert of Maria Laach, 178 Gilbert of Poitiers, 130 gilding, 14, 39, 49, 62, 67 Gisela of Swabia, 185nn6–7 glass tesserae, 5, 7, 69, 71, 72, 77 Godescalc of Le Puy, 94–95 Goldschmidt, Adolph, 194n19 Gomez, scribe, 94–95 Gottfried von Strassburg, Tristan and Isolde, 51 Gottschalk of Diepholz, Bishop of Minden, 99 Gottschalk of Diepholz, Bishop of Osnabrück, 90–103 aristocratic family, 98–99, 102–3 Benno II as notable predecessor, 38, 96–97, 102 comparison to effigies in England, 160, 162 engraved plaque, 190n30 and episcopal iconography, 92–95, 93, 94, 95, 96, 99–102, 100, 101, 103 location and condition of effigy, 8, 90, 91, 95–96, 190n27 prestige of effigy, 97–98 Quedlinburg effigies comparison, 125, 152 Great Saxon Revolt, 39, 44–47, 48 Gregory the Great, 92 Life of St. Benedict, 36 Gregory V (pope), 98 Gregory VII (pope), 39, 44–46, 48, 96, 188n65 Grodecki, Louis, 5 Gröningen Abbey sculptures, 118 Grzimek, Waldemar, 118, 195n67 Guido of Chaumoucey, 178 Guillaume de Passavant, 67 Gundrada slab, 160 Guthlac, Saint, 169, 169 Hadrian (pope), 14–15 Halberstadt Cathedral and diocese, 17, 99 Hamburg-Bremen diocese, 99 hand gestures, 49, 90, 108–11, 125, 167, 192n90 Hase, Conrad Wilhelm, 120 Hathui of Gernrode, 140, 142 Hearn, M. F., 5 Hedwig, wife of Burkhard of Nellenburg, 81, 88
Index 223
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Heinrich of Nellenburg, 85–88 Helmold of Bosau, 48 Hengevoss-Dürkop, Kerstin, 142 Henri I, Count of Champagne, 196n25, 198n61 Henry I, King of England, 161 Henry II, Holy Roman Emperor, 50, 50, 60, 60, 137 Henry II, King of England, 16, 66, 67–68, 74, 163, 170, 174 Henry II of Werl, 94, 96, 97 Henry III, Holy Roman Emperor, 131, 185nn6–7 Henry III, King of England, 174, 175, 177 Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor burial, 185nn6–7 Charlemagne comparison, 63 episcopal support, 96 Nellenburg family support, 88 Rudolf of Swabia conflict, 39, 43–46, 58, 62, 186n10 Henry V, Holy Roman Emperor, 68, 69, 90 Henry of Blois, 68, 68–69 Henry the Fowler, King, 17, 18, 104, 120, 134, 182n16 Henry the Young King, 174 Hermann of Luxemburg (or Salm), 46–47, 48 Herrgott von Bentheim, 164, 166 Herrmann, Bernd, 108–9 hierarchies, spiritual, 94–95, 97, 100–102, 103 Hildesheim Cathedral and diocese, 20, 47, 99 Hinz, Berthold, 42, 54 Hirsau reform, 38 Hohenstaufen dynasty, 106, 132 Holladay, Joan, 89 Holy Sepulchre of Gernrode, 125, 139–44, 140, 141 Hugh of St-Victor, 188n81 humility and kingship, 63 monastic, 127, 133, 144 vs. self-promotion, 24–26 and spiritual hierarchy, 94–95, 97, 100–102 Hummel, Susanne, 108–9 Hunaud, Abbot of Moissac, 35
Index 224
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Ildefonsus of Toledo, 94–95 imperial sword (Reichsschwert), 1, 59, 59–60 individual, the vs. communal identity, 35–36, 89, 123, 129, 150 fragmentation and alienation of, 25–26 and kingship, 60–61 and memorial culture, 11 praise vs. pity of, 28–29 vs. sanctity and monastic office, 120–21, 128, 129, 133, 143 See also body, the
Ingeborg Psalter, 170 Investiture Controversy Gottschalk of Diepholz effigy context, 90, 96, 102–3 Nellenburg effigies context, 88 Rudolf of Swabia effigy context, 39, 44–45, 56–57 Irmentrud, cousin of Nellenburg family (Irmentrud of Mörsberg?), 81, 84–85, 89 Irmgard of Nellenburg, 88 Isabelle of Angoulême, 170, 175, 175–77 Isarn of Marseille, 26–30, 27, 36 Ita, wife of Eberhard of Nellenburg, 81, 82, 85–88 ivory, 99, 100, 137–39, 138 jamb statues, 156–57, 157, 196n4 Jean d’Aluye, 1, 181n1 Jean de Marmoutier, 67, 188n81 Jean du Tillet, Recueil des rois de France, 6, 71 Jeremiah, Prophet, 109 Jerome, Saint, 128, 130 Job, Book of, 24 John the Baptist (saint), 64 Kantorowicz, Ernst, 56–57, 58, 61, 64, 72, 174 Karn, Nicholas, 162–63 Kilian, Saint, 94 kingship iconography, 48–49, 107, 111 and the individual, 60–61 models of, 63 sacred, 49, 54–58, 65, 106, 111 and Wheel of Fortune motif, 52–54 Körner, Hans, 6, 7, 16 Kosegarten, Antje Middeldorf, 122–23, 130 Kramer, Susan, 61 Kunigunde of Luxemburg, 60, 60 Kupfer, Marcia, 5 Lambert, Saint, 170, 170 Lang, Hans Caspar, 189n8 Lasko, Peter, 24, 184n40 Lenoir, Alexandre, 156 leprosy, 84–85 Liborius, Saint, 94 Liebfrauenkirche, Halberstadt, sculptures, 118 limestone, 69, 76, 90 Limoges enamel, 68, 77 Liobakirche, Fulda, sculptures, 60 Lothair III, Holy Roman Emperor, 106 Louis VI, King of France, 76 Louis VII, King of France, 74, 76 Louis IX, King of France, 175–76, 176 Lucy, Saint, 140–42, 142 Luitgarde of Saxony, 106, 121 Luther, Stephanie, 84
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Magdeburg Cathedral and diocese, 99, 135, 135 Mainz Cathedral doors, 63 marble, 14, 30, 34, 158, 196n9 Mary, Virgin, 95, 100–102, 101, 170 Mary Magdalene, 139–40 Mathilda, Empress, 66, 67–69, 162 Mathilda (queen and saint) St. Servatius foundation, 38, 120 sarcophagus and burial place, 17–19, 18, 120, 133, 134, 183n27 Widukind ancestry, 103, 104, 106 Mathilda, widow (Hildesheim), 178, 179 Mathilda of Quedlinburg, 120, 133, 134 Mathilda of Swabia, 186n13 Matilda of Flanders, 196n13 Meier, Thomas, 186n10 Meinwerk of Paderborn, 94, 96, 97 Memmie, Saint, 196n13 memory cultural, as concept, 11 and dynastic succession, 57 and humility, 24 present linked to past, 35–36, 90–92, 97, 123–24, 127–28, 139, 140 and Widukind’s rehabilitation, 108, 112 Mende, Ursula, 5 Merovingian period Romanesque effigies of royalty from, 4, 5, 7, 70, 71, 72, 73 69–77, 80 sarcophagi characteristics, 15–16, 16, 17 Merseburg Cathedral effigies. See Rudolf of Swabia metalwork Cappenberg reliquary, 2, 64–65, 65 epitaphs, 97 Geoffrey Plantagenet plaque, 3, 65–68 Reichsschwert, 1, 59, 59–60 vs. stone effigies, 56, 80 See also Rudolf of Swabia microarchitecture, 82 Milan ciborium, 109–10, 110, 119 Miller, Maureen, 92 Minden diocese, 99 Moissac Abbey, 30 See also Durand of Bredon Morris, Colin, 61 mosaics, 5, 7, 69, 71, 72, 76, 77, 178 Mozer-Petković, Sibille, 108 Müstair sculpture, 60, 187n56 Nellenburg family, 81–89 decline in prestige, 82, 88–89 effigies, 81–85, 82, 83, 84, 89 memorial plaque, 85–89, 86, 87 methods of analysis, 8 Quedlinburg effigies comparison, 125 Nelson, Janet, 15 Nigel of Ely, 15, 158, 160–63, 161
00i-228 Fozi 5p.indb 225
Nolan, Kathleen, 76 Norbert of Iburg, 62, 96–97, 191n48 Notre-Dame de Corbeil sculptures, 156 Oda, Saint (Chrodoara of Amay), 15–16, 16, 17, 125, 183n24, 190n27 Oexle, Otto Gerhard, 11 orb designs, 48–49, 109, 111 Osnabrück diocese, 90, 96, 97–98, 102–3 Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor, 18, 60, 98, 104 Otto II, Holy Roman Emperor, 60 Otto III, Holy Roman Emperor, 98, 124, 147 Otto of Carinthia, 98 Otto of Freising, Deeds of the Emperor Frederick, 43–44, 48, 58–59, 64–65 Otto-Mathilda cross, 68 Ottonian period imperial bishops, 98 and rise of Saxon nobility, 104 sarcophagi characteristics, 15, 16–19, 18, 19, 43, 63 Paderborn diocese, 99 Panofsky, Erwin, 5–6, 13, 49, 54, 66, 68, 82, 104, 170, 173 papal authority, 44–45, 48 Paris, Matthew, Chronica majora, 175–76, 176 Parma Ildefonsus, 94–95 Passion of Saint Lucy, 140–42, 142 patrons and patronage and anonymity, 60–61 and artistic agency, 21 of Gottschalk of Diepholz effigy, 102–3 Nellenburg family, 81–84, 85, 87–88, 89 of Plantagenet effigies, 172–73, 174, 175, 176 and representational priority, 148–49 royal, 14–15, 60, 80 of Rudolf of Swabia effigy, 47, 54 and self-commissioned effigies, 3, 21, 67, 76, 158, 162, 173, 177 of Tournai tombs in England, 162–64 Paul, Saint, 34, 38 Paxton, Frederick, 170 Peiresc, Claude Fabri de, 188n87 Persephone sarcophagus, 15, 62 Peter, Saint, 31, 34, 38, 95 Petershausen Chronicle, 185n1, 185n3 pilgrimages, 148, 149 Plantagenet dynasty, 66, 67, 74, 172 Plantagenet effigies (Fontevrault), 168–77 Eleanor of Aquitaine, 16, 170–73 and funerary bed iconography, 168–70, 169, 170, 173–74, 176 Isabelle of Angoulême, 170, 175, 175–77 See also Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou plaster as material, 117–19
Index 225
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plaster (continued) Milan ciborium, 109–10, 110, 119 and upright installations, 152 See also Quedlinburg effigies; Widukind of Saxony Plectrudis, Saint, 148–49, 149 political theology, 56–58, 64, 72 polychromy, 80, 93, 107 porphyry, 14, 77, 182n12 Porte des Valois, St-Denis, 74, 75 Porter, Arthur Kingsley, 5, 184n54 Psalms, 128–33, 155–56, 194n46 Quast, Ferdinand von, 120 Quedlinburg aristocratic prestige of, 17, 119–20, 131–32 as model for monastic rights, 147 reconsecration of, 115, 119, 122 Servatius reliquary, 137–39, 138 spiritual promotion of, 18–19 effigies, 119–39 abstraction and repetition in style, 10, 11, 12, 116–17, 126, 135–39 dating, 122–23, 194n19 decorative program and installation, 119, 122, 122–23, 123, 124–28, 194n46 Drübeck effigy comparison, 144–46 hand gestures, 121, 125, 190n28 historiography, 123–24 identities, 120–21, 128, 133, 143 inscriptions, 121–22, 128–33 sizes, 193n17
Index 226
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Rahewin, 65 Rainald of Dassel, 65 Ramwold of St. Emmeram, 97 redemption. See eschatological expectations and resurrection Rehm, Ulrich, 64 Reichsschwert (imperial sword), 1, 59, 59–60, 111 Reinhildis of Riesenbeck, 125, 150, 151, 163, 190n27 Reinöhl, Fritz von, 146–47 Reinward of Minden, 191n65 Reiterstein von Hornhausen, 16 reliquaries Cappenberg reliquary, 2, 64–65, 65 Enger reliquary, 106, 107 Rudolf of Swabia effigy contrasted with, 49, 55–56 Servatius reliquary, 137–39, 138 Remaclus of Stavelot, 93 repetition, 134, 135, 135–39, 136, 138 resurrection. See eschatological expectations and resurrection Richard I, King of England, 170, 174 Richard fitz Nigel, 163–64
Röckelein, Hedwig, 108–9 Roger of Helmarshausen, 93 Roger of Salisbury, 13, 158, 159, 160, 161–64 Roman sarcophagi, 6–7, 13, 15, 26–28, 29 Romanesque tomb effigies “effigy” term, 31 emergence as distinct genre, 157–58 vs. Gothic, 2–3 historiography, 4–7 methods of analysis, 7–10 purpose, 10–12 See also epitaphs; patrons and patronage; royal effigies; sarcophagi Romanitas, 13, 182n5 Rost, Maurus, 190n26 Rota fortunae (Wheel of Fortune), 52–54, 53 Roudbrecht, scribe, 95 royal effigies, 39–78 and Cappenberg reliquary, 2, 64–65, 65 conventional designs, 43, 48 Geoffrey Plantagenet, 3, 65–69, 188n74 (see also Plantagenet effigies [Fontevrault]) Merovingians, 4, 5, 7, 70, 71, 72, 73 69–77, 80 See also Rudolf of Swabia Rudolf of Habsburg, 182n19 Rudolf of Swabia, 39–61 death and legacy, 45–46 election, 63, 188n65 Investiture Controversy and Saxon Rebellion, role in, 44–45 marriage ties, 186n13 effigy Cappenberg reliquary comparison, 65 Charlemagne tomb comparison, 62–63 dating, 46–47, 185n1 design, overview, 39–41, 40, 41 Geoffrey Plantagenet plaque comparison, 66–67 heroic framing, 46, 47, 49, 51 image-text arrangement, 50–54 inscription, 42–43, 50–52 location in situ, 31, 37, 54 material, 39, 54, 56 novelty, 43–44, 47–48, 51 Otto of Freising’s interpretation, 43–44, 48, 58–59, 65 and rarity of royal monumental representations, 60–61 recumbent position, 49–50, 55–56, 152 Reichsschwert comparison, 59–60 royal iconography, 48–49, 107 sacred vs. secular dimensions, 54–58 Widukind effigy comparison, 104, 107–8, 111 Rüeger, Johann Jakob, Rüergerschen Chronicle, 81–82, 84, 85, 189n5
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Rupin, Ernest, 185n66 Rutchick, Leah, 35, 36 Ruth, Book of, 109 St. Cyriakus, Gernrode, sculpture, 125, 139–44, 140, 141 St-Denis royal effigies, 57, 73, 74, 75 St-Germain-des-Prés royal effigies, 4, 5, 7, 69–77, 70, 71, 72, 80, 189n11 St. Johann Abbey, Müstair, sculptures, 118 St. Michael’s Abbey, Hildesheim, sculptures, 20, 24, 118, 134, 135 See also Bernward of Hildesheim St-Pierre Abbey, Moissac, 30 See also Durand of Bredon St-Pierre de Montmartre royal effigies, 69, 76, 76–77, 80 St. Servatius Abbey. See Quedlinburg St-Victor Abbey, Marseille, 29 See also Isarn of Marseille saints, cult of, 149 Salian dynasty, 43, 44, 106, 121, 131 salvation. See eschatological expectations and resurrection sanctity and saintliness corpse as sacred, 28–29 cult of saints, 149 kingship, 49, 54–58, 65, 106, 111 vs. secular status, 120–21, 128, 129, 133, 143 sandstone, 164 Sant’Ambrogio, Milan, sculpture, 60, 110 sarcophagi Bernward of Hildesheim, 21, 22, 22–24, 23, 26 Chrodoara of Amay, 15–16, 16, 17, 125, 183n24, 190n27 figural Merovingian, 15–16, 16, 17 plain Carolingian and Ottonian, 15, 16–19, 18, 19, 43, 63 reused, 15, 26, 29–30, 34, 63 Roman, 6–7, 13, 15, 26–28, 29 trapezoidal framing, 79, 90, 125, 190n27 Sauerländer, Willibald, 176 Saul, Nigel, 5, 196n6, 196n13 Saxon nobility, 104 Saxon Rebellion, 39, 44–47, 48 Saxon stelae, 16 scepter designs, 48–49, 111 Schaffhausen, 81 See also Nellenburg family Schaffhausen Stifterbuch, 84, 89 Schapiro, Meyer, 5, 35, 95, 184n54 Schmid, Karl, 11 Schmidt, Ulrich, 46 Schramm, Percy Ernst, 48–49 Schubert, Ernst, 17 seal metaphor, 67, 188n81 Seeliger, Hans, 87
00i-228 Fozi 5p.indb 227
Seidel, Linda, 5 Servatius reliquary, 137–39, 138 Sigebert of Gembloux, 48 Sigebert of Minden, 99–101, 100, 101, 102, 191n65 Sigeward of Minden, 191n65 Sisu, anchoress, 148–49, 195n77 Smith, Elizabeth Bradford (Schwartzbaum), 158, 160–62, 163, 196n24 Song of Roland, 51, 187n40 soul, the, 25–26, 55, 132–33, 155, 160–61, 163, 170 space bodies linked to institutional, 79–80, 82, 123, 129, 142–43 sacred and liminal, 102, 127, 134–35, 137–39, 140, 143, 152–53 Spanish sarcophagi, 15 Speyer Cathedral tombs, 38, 43, 177, 185n6 stelae, Saxon, 16 Stephen of Blois, King of England, 68, 69, 161–63 stone sculptures Bentheim stone, 164–68, 165, 166, 175 Isarn of Marseille plaque, 26–30, 27, 36 vs. metal effigies, 56, 80 Tournai stone, 158–64, 159, 161, 196n9 See also Bernward of Hildesheim; Durand of Bredon; Gottschalk of Diepholz, Bishop of Osnabrück; Nellenburg family; plaster; sarcophagi Stothard, Charles Alfred, 172 stucco. See plaster Suger, De administratione, 73 Suitger of Bamberg (Clemens II [pope]), 191n64 Swarzenski, Hanns, 5 Taburet-Delahaye, Elisabeth, 188n74 Taylor, Andrew, 187n40 Tempietto Longobardo, Cividale, 136, 137, 137 Thangmar, Vita Bernwardi, 20–21, 25, 183n31 Theodulf of Orléans, 14 theology, political, 56–58, 64, 72 Theti (Drübeck forgery), 146, 147 Thiedo of Brandenburg, 191n64 Thiethard of Osnabrück, 90 Thietmar of Merseburg, 148, 187n61 Third Crusade, 74 Tournai tombs in England, 158–64 designs, 13, 14, 15, 159, 160–61, 161 material, 158–60, 196n9 political and family context, 161–64 trapezoidal slabs, 79, 90, 125, 190n27 Tree of Jesse, 160, 164, 196n17 Twining, Edward Francis, 186n31
Index 227
Udo, Archbishop of Trier, 85–88 Ulger of Angers, 66, 67
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Unwan of Bremen, 191n64 upright installations Durand of Bredon effigy, 30–31, 37 Geoffrey Plantagenet plaque, 66, 68, 125 Gernrode sculpture, 139 Quedlinburg effigies, 127, 152 and upright pictorial planes, 82 Widukind effigy, 107 Uta Codex, 101–2 Utrecht Psalter, 194n46 “vassal” term, 74 Virgin Mary, 95, 100–102, 101, 170 Vita Bernwardi, 20–21, 25, 183n31 Walbert, grandson of Widukind of Saxony, 104 Warmundus Sacramentary, 169 Welf of Bavaria, 44 Werner of Merseburg, 54 Westminster Abbey sculptures, 160 Wheel of Fortune (Rota fortunae), 52–54, 53 Wichmann of Seeburg, 56, 57 Widukind of Corvey, 17
Widukind of Saxony, 103–12 bodily absence, 106, 107, 152 Charlemagne’s defeat of, 63, 103 Enger connection, 106 hand gesture on effigy, 108–9, 111 lineage and legacy, 104, 111–12 location and condition of effigy, 9, 103–4, 105, 106–7 Milan ciborium comparison, 109–10 monastic exile, 104–6 Quedlinburg effigies comparison, 119 Rudolf of Swabia effigy comparison, 104, 107–8, 111 Wigbert, son of Widukind of Saxony, 192n82 Wikker (Drübeck forgery), 146, 147–48 Wilhelm of Mainz, 98 William of Flanders, 178 Williams, John, 5 Willibrord, Saint, 92, 93 Willigis, Archbishop of Mainz, 63 Wirth, Karl-August, 183n31 Zielinski, Herbert, 98, 99, 191n61
Index 228
00i-228 Fozi 5p.indb 228
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