Pygmalion’s Power: Romanesque Sculpture, the Senses, and Religious Experience 9780271085203

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Pygmalion’s Power

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Pygmalion’s Power Romanesque Sculpture, the Senses, and Religious Experience

Thomas E. A. Dale

The Pennsylvania State University Press | University Park, Pennsylvania

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Frontispiece: Portrait reliquary of Saint Baudîme, Abbey of Saint-Nectaire, Auvergne, ca. 1150. Photo © Les Regards de Francis Desbaisieux. Unless otherwise indicated, photographs appear courtesy of the author. Publication of this book has been aided by a grant from the Millard Meiss Publication Fund of CAA.

MM Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Copyright © 2019 The Pennsylvania State University All rights reserved Printed in China 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.

Names: Dale, Thomas E. A., 1961– author. Title: Pygmalion’s power : Romanesque sculpture, the senses, and religious experience / Thomas E. A. Dale. Description: University Park, Pennsylvania : The Pennsylvania State University Press, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Summary: “Explores how the distinctive formal and material qualities of a range of Romanesque sculpture types stimulated multisensory religious experiences. Emphasizes the power of these sculptures to “come alive” in ritual and produce emotional responses for Christians of the time”--Provided by publisher”—Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2019021346 | ISBN 9780271083452 (cloth) Subjects: LCSH: Sculpture, Romanesque. | Christianity and art. Classification: LCC NB175 .D35 2019 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019021346

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Contents List of Illustrations vii Preface xi Introduction 1 1 Living Statues: The Crucifix and Throne of Wisdom 17 2 The Naked and the Nude: From Theological Ideal to Sexual Fantasy 47 3 Sculpted Portraits: Convention and Real Presence 89 4 Beautiful Deformity and Deformed Beauty: The Monstrous and Deformed 125 5 Renewing the Temple: Living Stones and Embodied Theophanies 173 Conclusion 213 Notes 219 Bibliography 237 Index 255

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Illustrations

Color Plates ( following page 172)

1.

Calvary group, Urnes Stave Church, ca. 1150

2. Chariot of Aminadab, “Anagogical Window,” Abbey of Seine-Saint-Denis, ca. 1140 3. Gero Cross, commissioned by Bishop Gero for Cologne Cathedral, ca. 970 4. Charles the Bald praying before the crucifix, Prayerbook of Charles the Bald, 850–860 5. Morgan Madonna Sedes Sapientiae, from Auvergne, ca. 1150–1175 6. Golden Madonna of Essen, ca. 980–990 7. Retable with Sedes Sapientiae, Annunciation, and Baptism of Christ from Carrières-sur-Seine (formerly Carrières-Saint-Denis), ca. 1125–1150 8. Sedes Sapientiae, Annunciation to the Shepherds, and Adoration of the Magi, Duomo, Verona, west tympanum, ca. 1139 9. Crucifix from Catalonia, ca. 1150–1200 10. Renier de Huy (attrib.), Baptism of Christ, baptismal font at Saint-Barthélemy, Liège, ca. 1117–1118 11. Portrait of Frederick I Barbarossa, transformed into reliquary of Saint John the Evangelist, Stiftskirche, Cappenberg, ca. 1160 12. Portrait reliquary of Sainte Foy, Conques, late ninth century, remade ca. 1000

15. Head reliquary of Pope Alexander, from Stavelot Abbey, Belgium, 1145 16. Tomb effigy of Rudolf von Schwaben, detail of bust, Merseburg Cathedral, ca. 1080–1100 17. Retrospective tomb portrait of Duke Widukind of Enger, Stiftskirche Enger, ca. 1130 18. Tomb effigy of Archbishop Friedrich von Wettin, Magdeburg Cathedral, after 1152 19. Last Judgment, Abbey of Sainte-Foy, Conques, detail of Sainte Foy kneeling before the hand of God, ca. 1150 20. General view of hemicycle of choir, Collégiale de Saint-Pierre, Chauvigny, ca. 1150–1200 21. Last Judgment, Sainte-Foy, Conques, ca. 1150 Figures

1.

Doubting Thomas, Santo Domingo de Silos, ca. 1100 4

2. Journey to Emmaus, Santo Domingo de Silos, ca. 1100 5 3. Te igitur initial with Trinity from German sacramentary, twelfth century 12 4. Doubting Thomas, La Daurade, Toulouse, 1120–1130 13 5. Crucifixion with supplicant, Ludwig Psalter, Saint-Bertin, 825–850 20 6. Crucifixion, back cover of Lindau Gospels, ca. 880 21

13. Detail of face of Sainte Foy, Conques, Roman, fourth or fifth century

7. Crucifix from Saint George, Cologne, eleventh century 24

14. Portrait reliquary of Saint Baudîme, Abbey of Saint-Nectaire, Auvergne, ca. 1150

8. Christ de Courajod, corpus of Christ from Deposition group, Burgundy, early twelfth century 29

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Illustrations

viii

9. Deposition group from Santa Eulàlia in Erill la Vall, Catalonia, twelfth century 30

30. Lust attacked by serpent, Saint-Pierre, Saint-Jouin-de-Marnes, ca. 1095–1130 64

10. Sedes Sapientiae, Chartres Cathedral, ca. 1145 36

31. Virtues trampling on vices, Saint-Nicolas, Civray, ca. 1150–1200 65

11. Erfurt Cathedral retable, 1175–1200 39 12. Christ in Majesty, Adoration of the Magi, and Presentation in the Temple, Notre-Dame-du-Port, Clermont-Ferrand, ca. 1160 42 13. Sedes Sapientiae, Notre-Dame-du-Pré at Donzy-le-Pré in Burgundy, ca. 1140–1150 44 14. Crucifixion, Saint-Gilles-du-Gard, ca. 1140s 45 15. Deposition from the Cross, Santo Domingo de Silos, ca. 1100 46 16. Deposition from the Cross, flanked by Ascension and Women at the Empty Tomb, San Isidoro, León, ca. 1120 46 17. Lust and demon, Saint-Pierre, Moissac, ca. 1100–1115 48 18. Eve holding the apple, from former north portal of Saint-Lazare, Autun, ca. 1125 49 19. Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence, Tudela Cathedral, late twelfth century 51 20. Man as microcosm, Hildegard of Bingen’s Book of Divine Works, ca. 1200 54 21. Man as microcosm, Salomo of Constance, Glossaries, Reichenau, 1165 55 22. Quaternity of male nudes, Saint-Pierre de Mozat, Auvergne, ca. 1100–1125 55 23. Wiligelmo, Creation of Eve, Modena Cathedral, 1099 56 24. Expulsion of Adam and Eve from paradise, Notre-Dame-du-Port, Clermont-Ferrand, ca. 1100 56 25. Elevation of the soul and funeral, sarcophagus of Doña Sancha from Jaca Cathedral, ca. 1100 59 26. Death and ascent of the soul, sarcophagus of Queen Blanca of Navarre, Abbey of Santa María Real, Nájera, 1156–1160 59 27. Tomb stele of Bruno Presbyter, Hildesheim Cathedral, after 1194 60 28. Gilabertus, Martyrdom of Saint John the Baptist, Saint-Étienne, Toulouse, ca. 1120–1140 61 29. Gislebertus, Resurrection of the Dead, Saint-Lazare, Autun, early twelfth century 62

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32. Despair and Lust, Sainte-Marie-Madeleine, Vézelay, early twelfth century 66 33. Demon fondling the breasts of naked woman as musician plays pipe, Saint-Marie-Madeleine, Vézelay, early twelfth century 66 34. Avarice, Luxuria, and parable of Dives and Lazarus, Saint-Pierre, Moissac, ca. 1100–1115 67 35. Demons tormenting Dives and his wife and deathbed scene of Dives, Saint-Pierre, Moissac, ca. 1100–1115 68 36. Infancy of Christ, Saint-Pierre, Moissac, ca. 1100–1115 69 37. Christ enthroned on cross, pilgrims, Annunciation, and Luxuria, Saint-Pierre, Saint-Jouin-de-Marnes, ca. 1095–1130 76 38. Spinario, Capitoline Museum, Rome, first century bce 80 39. Tomb effigy of Friedrich von Wettin (d. 1152), with detail of Spinario 81 40. San Martín, Frómista, copy of capital with subject based on Orestes Sarcophagus, ca. 1090 81 41. Orestes and Clytemnestra, Husillos Sarcophagus, Roman, ca. 150 82 42. Fall of Adam and Eve and priest, San Martín, Frómista, ca. 1090 82 43. Avarice and Luxuria attacked by serpents, San Martín, Frómista, ca. 1090 82 44. Sacrifice of Isaac, Jaca Cathedral, ca. 1093 83 45. Drunkenness of Noah with Ham mocking his father, Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe, ca. 1100 83 46. Historiated capital with nudes including satyr, woman, and man, Jaca Cathedral, ca. 1105 84 47. Tomb effigy of Rudolf von Schwaben, Merseburg Cathedral, ca. 1080–1100 104 48. Seal impression of German emperor Henry IV (r. 1084–1105) 105 49. William of Flanders (d. 1109), mosaic from floor tomb in Abbey of Saint-Bertin, Saint-Omer 106

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Illustrations

50. Mosaic tomb portrait of Abbot Gilbert of Maria Laach (d. 1152) 106 51. Tomb portrait of Saint Isarn, from Saint-Victor, Marseilles, ca. 1050 107

72. Last Supper, La Daurade, Toulouse, ca. 1150 142 73. Saint John coming to the empty tomb, La Daurade, Toulouse, ca. 1150 142

52. Abbot/Bishop Durandus, from Saint-Pierre, Moissac, ca. 1100 108

74. Chastity triumphing over Luxuria, Moissac manuscript of Halitgarius’s Treatise on the Eight Vices, eleventh century 144

53. Head reliquary of Saint John the Baptist from Fischbeck, ca. 1160 119

75. Sacred and profane music, in a psalter from Saint Remigius, Reims, early twelfth century 145

54. Grotesque head from Notre-Dame-en-Vaux, Châlons-sur-Marne, ca. 1200–1220 120

76. Profane music, Abbey of Sainte-Marie-Madeleine, Vézelay, early twelfth century 146

55. Tomb effigy of King Childebert (d. 558), made ca. 1163 for Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Paris 122

77. Jongleurs, Gregory the Great’s Moralia in Job, ca. 1111 149

56. General view of cloister, Abbey of Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa 126

78. Initial P, Gregory the Great’s Moralia in Job, ca. 1111 157

57. Double-bodied lion and apes, Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa, ca. 1130–1140 127 58. Double-bodied bears devouring men, Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa, ca. 1130–1140 127 59. Squatting men and apes, Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa, ca. 1130–1140 127 60. Squatting apes and men, Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa, ca. 1130–1140 128

79. Human-headed winged lions, Collégiale de Saint-Pierre, Chauvigny, ca. 1150–1200 160 80. Dragons devouring naked men, Collégiale de Saint-Pierre, Chauvigny, ca. 1150–1200 160 81. Adoration of the Magi and Gofridus inscription, Collégiale de Saint-Pierre, Chauvigny, ca. 1150–1200 161 82. Presentation of Christ in the Temple, Collégiale de Saint-Pierre, Chauvigny, ca. 1150–1200 161

61. Sirens, Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa, ca. 1130–1140 128

83. Great Whore of Babylon, Collégiale de Saint-Pierre, Chauvigny, ca. 1150–1200 161

62. Monstrous mouths devouring human torsos and naked male dancers, Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa, ca. 1130–1140 128

84. Trumeau with intertwined beasts, Abraham and Isaac, Sainte-Marie, Souillac, ca. 1120–1135 165

63. Monstrous mouths devouring naked men, Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa, ca. 1130–1140 128

85. General view of west porch, Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Paul, Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne, ca. 1130–1140 166

64. Bird-sirens, Santo Domingo de Silos, ca. 1100 129

86. Second Coming, Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Paul, Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne, ca. 1130–1140 167

65. Centaurs, Santo Domingo de Silos, ca. 1100 129 66. Apes and sirens, Abbey of Santa Maria de Ripoll, ca. 1140–1160 130 67. Double-bodied dragons joined to a single head, Santa Maria de Ripoll, ca. 1140–1160 130 68. Dragons with human prey, Saint-Pierre, Moissac, ca. 1100 130

87. Daniel in the lions’ den, Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Paul, Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne, ca. 1130–1140 170 88. Temptations of Christ and Christ trampling on the beasts, Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Paul, Beaulieu-surDordogne, ca. 1130–1140 170 89. Harrowing of hell, Lincoln Cathedral, ca. 1100 174

69. Monstrous races, Abbey of Sainte-Marie-Madeleine, Vézelay, ca. 1104–1132 131

90. Saint-Pierre, Moissac, south porch, ca. 1100–1115 175

70. Chimera capital, Canterbury Cathedral crypt, ca. 1100 135

92. Christ flanked by saints within arcades, Saint-Symphorien, Azay-le-Rideau, ca. 1050 177

71. Detail of Last Judgment showing psychostasis with demons and angels, Saint-Lazare, Autun, ca. 1125 138

93. Christ in Majesty with saints, Saint-Genis-des-Fontaines, 1019–1020 178

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ix

91. Basel antependium, 1019 176

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Illustrations

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94. Christ enthroned between angels, seraphs, and saints, Saint-André-de-Sorède, ca. 1020 179

104. Psychostasis, detail of Last Judgment, Cross of Muiredach, Monasterboice, ca. 910 192

95. Ascension of Christ, Saint-Sernin, Toulouse, late eleventh century 179

105. Hell, detail of Last Judgment, Saint-Lazare, Autun, early twelfth century 193

96. Interior of nave toward the east, Sainte-Foy, Conques, late eleventh century 182

106. The blessed in heaven at Christ’s right hand, detail of Last Judgment, Saint-Lazare, Autun, early twelfth century 194

97. Monstrous mouth swallowing column, Saint-Nicolas, Civray, ca. 1100 183 98. Saints Bartholomew and Matthias, Saint-Pierre, Moissac, ca. 1100 184 99. Maiestas Domini, Saint-Pierre, Moissac, ca. 1100–1115 185 100. Vision of Second Coming, Haimo of Auxerre, Commentary on Revelation, German, early twelfth century 187 101. Jeremiah, Saint-Pierre, Moissac, ca. 1100–1115 188 102. Gislebertus, Last Judgment, Saint-Lazare, Autun, ca. 1125 189 103. Christ as Judge with the balance, Stuttgart Psalter, ninth century 192

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107. Presentation in the Temple, Saint-Lazare, Autun, ca. 1125 196 108. Lazarus, Mary, and Martha, Saint-Lazare, Autun, restored 1863 197 109. Heaven, detail of Last Judgment, Sainte-Foy, Conques, ca. 1150 199 110. Hell, detail of Last Judgment, Sainte-Foy, Conques, ca. 1150 200 111. Pentecost and the mission of the Apostles, Abbey of Sainte-Marie-Madeleine, Vézelay, 1104–1132 204 112. Portal of the Incarnation, Abbey of Sainte-Marie-Madeleine, Vézelay, ca. 1104–1132 206 113. Portal of Easter, Abbey of Sainte-Marie-Madeleine, Vézelay, ca. 1104–1132 207

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Preface This book began with an invitation by Mary Shepard over twenty years ago to give a Saturday gallery talk at the Cloisters in New York. I decided to explore the Cuxa Cloister, attempting to answer Bernard of Clairvaux’s question, “What is that ridiculous monstrosity doing there?” Drawing inspiration from my then colleague at Columbia University, Caroline Walker Bynum, I framed the topic in terms of corporeal deformities and monastic spirituality. As I researched the topic further, I envisaged a more ambitious project that would critique the formalist definition of Romanesque while exploring a series of different genres of the body. I am grateful to acknowledge that this research was supported in its initial phases during a sabbatical from Columbia University as Member of the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (1997–98), where I benefited from the research seminars led by Giles Constable and Irving Lavin, and then as a Coleman Fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (2000–2001), where I particularly enjoyed the collegial input of Charles T. Little and the current fellows at the time. My research during the fellowship was supported by the fine collections of the Cloisters Library and the Thomas J. Watson Library. Later, as a Kress Senior Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art (2007–8), I refocused the project to consider the distinctive appeal of Romanesque

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sculpture to multiple senses, offering an alternative view of the rationale for the reinvention of monumental sculpture. I greatly benefited from the input of colleagues there and from the fine library collections of the National Gallery of Art Library, the Library of Congress, and the Byzantine Library of Dumbarton Oaks. In the intervening years, taking on administrative duties as department chair at the University of Wisconsin slowed my progress on the book, but it also gave me more time to rethink the project within the framework of the senses and benefit from a series of symposia organized by Jill H. Casid at the University of Wisconsin, “Visualities Beyond Ocularcentrism,” under the auspices of the Center for Visual Cultures in 2010. As part of this series I invited Éric Palazzo, Cynthia Hahn, and Bissera Pentcheva to campus, and their work has profoundly influenced my conceptualization of the final project. The book would not have come to fruition without the generous support of the University of Wisconsin. Support for research travel was provided by the University of Wisconsin–Madison Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education, with funding from the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, and by a Vilas Associate Award. I also received a travel award from the Center for European Studies in 2009, and a Special Chair’s Fellowship from the Dean of Letters and Science and

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Preface

xii

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sabbatical in 2014 to help finish the writing of the book. Subventions for the publication of the book were awarded from the Millard Meiss Publication Fund of the College Art Association of America, and the University of Wisconsin–Madison Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education, with funding from the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation. I have also benefited from the excellent research libraries on campus: the Memorial Library and the Kohler Art Library. My research and conceptualization were further supported by generous invitations from colleagues in France. In spring 2008, Jérôme Baschet and Jean-Claude Schmitt asked me to serve as professeur invité in the seminar of the Groupe d’Anthropologie Historique de l’Occident Médiéval in the École des Hautes Études in Paris, and my stay was cohosted by the Institut National de l’Histoire de l’Art (INHA) which provided an office and gave me access to its fine library. Éric Palazzo invited me in March 2009 to be a guest lecturer at the Centre de Civilization Médiévale at Poitiers and helped me see some important examples of Romanesque sculpture in the Poitou. I am also grateful to Mme Marie-Pierre Laffitte of the Bibliothèque nationale de France for facilitating access to medieval manuscripts associated with Moissac. Many individuals have helped me in various capacities along the way. I am pleased to thank Kirk Ambrose, Jérôme Baschet, Susan Boynton, Richard Brilliant, Jean-Claude Bonne, Philippe Bordes, Peter Bovenmyer, Elizabeth A. R. Brown, Caroline Walker Bynum, Nicholas D. Cahill, Manuel Castiñeiras, Michael Clanchy, Francis Debaisieux, Henry J. Drewal, Elina Gertsman, Dorothy F. Glass, Jean-Pierre Golay, Hans Hubach, Aden Kumler, Stephen Lamia, Charles T. Little, Peter Low, Gerhard Lutz, Henry Maguire, Nancy R. Marshall, Robert Maxwell, Stephen Murray, Valentino Pace,

Éric Palazzo, Pamela Patton, Jennifer Pruitt, Amy Remensnyder, Jane Rosenthal, Conrad Rudolph, Luisa Saffiotti, Jean-Claude Schmitt, Mark Summers, Elizabeth Valdez del Álamo, and Matthew Westerby. Special thanks go to Marcia Kupfer and Jennie Edes Pierotti, who took time to read carefully and critique a complete draft of the manuscript before I sent it out to the press for review, and to Cynthia Hahn and a second reader who provided critical feedback in their review of the manuscript for Penn State University Press. My understanding of monastic experience was enriched by the generosity of the abbot and monks of Santo Domingo de Silos, who, on the recommendation of Constancio del Álamo and Elizabeth Valdez del Álamo, allowed me to stay in their hospice, attend their liturgies, and explore the cloister at different times of day. Ian Bent, †Bob Barrows, and Susan Hellauer taught me the richness of singing chant at compline, which inspired me, in turn, to think about the imagery of the musical texts in relation to Romanesque sculpture. I also thank my teachers—William S. A. Dale, †Robert Deshman, Herbert L. Kessler, and William Tronzo—as well as past and current students at Columbia University and the University of Wisconsin, who have inspired me with their scholarship and questions. For seeing the manuscript into print I thank Ellie Goodman, Hannah Hebert, John Morris, and Laura Reed-Morrisson of Penn State University Press. Writing a book is an arduous task, and I could not have completed it without the understanding and support of my immediate family, Maria and Francesco, and my parents, William and Jane, who took me to see Romanesque sculpture in France at the beginning of this project in 1997. To them and to all my students I dedicate this magnum opus.

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Introduction

I

n the Life of Saint Godric (ca. 1170) by Reginald of Durham (aka Coldingham), the saint experiences a remarkable vision in which the two most common forms of Romanesque devotional image come alive. While chanting the psalms before a carved wooden crucifix, Godric beholds the crucified Christ, who bends forward and bows down several times in a quasi-liturgical gesture. Then the Christ Child issues from the mouth of the Crucified and moves through the air to the wooden image of the Virgin, which extends her hands to him and kisses him before taking her son in her lap to warm him; several hours later, the child reenters the crucified Christ’s mouth. In narrating this wondrous vision, Reginald affirms that “human faith cannot doubt that the Son of God, who underwent death for us, can instill the breath of life into whatever he chooses. Indeed, he who just now instilled the vital breath into the wood obviously demonstrates through the wonderful mystery of such a great thing that he still lives and that he sees everything.”1 The object of Saint Godric’s devotion may be envisaged in the brightly painted Calvary group still in situ in the Norwegian Stave Church of Urnes on the Sognefjord, dated ca. 1150 (color plate 1). Although to our eyes these figures may

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appear rigid in pose and stylized in anatomy, in contrast to the naturalism of later Gothic statues, Reginald of Durham’s account suggests that they would have acted powerfully on the imaginations of contemporaneous viewers because of their palpable three-dimensional presence as well as their vivid polychrome, set against the dark wood of the church interior.2 At the same time, the belief that medieval religious statues could come alive was predicated on their manipulation within prescribed rituals and their appeal to multiple senses, as well as on a certain predisposition of the devotee’s imagination.3 Recalling the startling awakening of the statue of Hermione in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, Godric’s vision reflects a long-standing desire for sculpted images to come alive, a concept rooted in what Victor Stoichita has termed the “Pygmalion effect.”4 In Ovid’s telling of the myth, which was illustrated for the first time only in late fourteenth-century manuscripts of the Roman de la Rose, Pygmalion was so enamored with the ivory statue of Galatea he had fashioned that he prayed to Venus that it would come alive. When he returned to his workshop, the statue yielded to his touch as he embraced it. Stoichita defines the

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Pygmalion’s Power

2

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story of Pygmalion as the “founding myth” of the simulacrum’s capacity to transgress the boundaries between dead matter and living, animated bodies. A product of the artist’s imagination, the simulacrum replaces the absent, living body in the mind of the beholder precisely because it is “embodied” in space, engaging multiple senses, including the most intimate, the sense of touch. Whereas Stoichita focuses on the power of profane love to activate the image, the present book considers the affectus as it was defined within medieval religious experience as an affection or love for the divine that stirs the fantasy of the living statue. Challenging the ocular-centric theories of images that have long dominated medieval art history, I seek to rethink the rationale for the revival of sculpture in relation to its distinctive qualities as a medium that made it at once so attractive and so potentially dangerous for medieval Christians. I take into account sculpture’s inherent corporeality and thus its specific capacity to engage multiple senses either sequentially or simultaneously, especially within the dynamic contexts of ritual. I argue that the initial revival of large-scale sculptures in the round during the ninth and tenth centuries, including crucifixes and portrait reliquaries, was predicated on an engagement of multiple senses as part of religious experience, and that this, in turn, prepared the way in the eleventh and twelfth centuries for perceiving fixed sculptures such as tomb effigies and architectural reliefs as “coming alive” in ways that were comparable to portable works. Pygmalion’s power is engendered in the interaction between sculpture and spectator, form and content, materiality and aesthetics. Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) affirms more forcefully than any writer before him this distinctive quality of sculpture as mediator of

human experience, accessible to the most intimate medium of touch, which connects the spectator to the hand of the Creator.5 Evoking Pygmalion’s myth, he affirms, “A statue must live: its flesh must come to life, its face and expression must speak. We must believe that we touch it and feel that it warms under our hands. We must see it stand before us and feel that it speaks to us.”6 He concludes that sculpture creates “forms in which the living soul animates the entire body, forms in which art can compete in the task of representing the embodied soul.”7 Although his primary focus is ancient Greek and Roman sculpture, Herder nicely sets up what is at stake in the promotion of sculpture as a medium for religious experience in medieval Christianity. Pygmalion’s myth lived on in the medieval imagination to be included in the medieval Roman de la Rose precisely because the tale of a statue coming alive resonated with medieval spectators.8 Just as the ancient sculptor is moved by profane love to seek the goddess Venus’s intervention to animate his statue of Galatea in response to his embrace, so the medieval spectator who sees and touches or prays before a sculpture such as the Madonna and Child is persuaded that the statue can come alive through the power of divine love. The agency ascribed to Pygmalion’s statue in the Roman de la Rose is anticipated by monastic visions such as the one experienced by Reginald of Durham, described at the outset, but also in more closely related narratives of male suitors who symbolically betroth themselves to statues by giving them rings.9 A pertinent example of the medieval translation of the Pygmalion myth is William of Malmesbury’s celebrated tale (ca. 1125) regarding a statue of Venus. A Roman youth is said to have placed his ring on the finger of a statue of Venus while he was playing ball. This act animated

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Introduction

the statue, which transformed itself into the living Venus and jealously came to interpose herself between the youth and his bride on their wedding night. In a later version of the tale from around 1200, recorded by Gauthier de Coincy, essentially the same story has been transformed by substituting a statue of the Virgin Mary for that of Venus.10 In this case the betrothal to the Virgin Mary was taken as a promise of celibacy. What is significant is that in each case the latent power of the statue is engaged through an act of touch. As Michael Camille and Marian Bleeke point out, the understanding of the power of images shifts in the later Middle Ages, and already in the Roman de la Rose greater emphasis is placed on the artist’s mimetic power to cause the statue to come alive than on the image’s own agency.11 Whereas the more hieratic Romanesque figures were imbued with agency primarily by their novel, robust sculptural form—their very plasticity—and often by their light-reflecting shimmering materials and compelling staring eyes, Gothic statues persuaded the spectator of their potential to come alive through a more naturalistic style and appeal to the emotions. My contention that the “Pygmalion effect” applies equally to architectural sculpture may be substantiated by considering an early Romanesque relief from the cloister of Silos, which depicts the subject most identified with the valorization of the senses in medieval religious experience: the Doubting Thomas (fig. 1).12 The relief dramatizes how Thomas responds to Jesus’s command, using the senses of both sight and touch to verify the Resurrection: “Put thy finger here, and see my hands; and bring hither your hand, put it into my side; do not be faithless, but believing” ( John 20:27–29). Although Jesus also affirms that those who believe without seeing (or touching) are blessed, and a long

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exegetical tradition claims the superiority of spiritual over sensual knowledge, this episode is often used to underline the value of the physical senses for understanding—literally “making sense”—of the created world and its underlying connections to the suprasensory realm of the divine.13 The sculptor of the Silos relief takes advantage of the location at one corner of the cloister walk to draw the spectator into close proximity with the body and side wound of Christ. Moving around the northwest corner of the cloister from the west gallery to the south one, the monk would first have imaginatively accompanied the disciples on the journey to Emmaus with the risen Christ, still not cognizant of who this “stranger” was (fig. 2); then he would have turned southward, walking in the same direction as Thomas, who approaches the body of Christ with right arm outstretched to touch the wounds in Christ’s side as the other disciples crowd around them to witness the encounter (fig. 1). With Christ and Thomas both placed off-center to the left, this composition skillfully uses formal means to capture the attention of the monastic spectator. Christ’s raised right arm frames the wound and Thomas’s head while leading diagonally into the pointing gestures of Christ’s left hand and Thomas’s right hand as he prepares to insert his finger into the wound. Not only is the spectator drawn into the composition by following in the footsteps of Thomas to face Christ as he turns the corner; both Christ and Thomas physically overlap the architectural frame, established by a column with Corinthian capital at left, thus projecting into the actual space of the cloister and suggesting, imaginatively, the possibility of experiencing Christ’s physical body through the eyes and hands of Thomas. Elizabeth Valdez del Álamo has shown that two models of gaining spiritual knowledge of the

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resurrected body of Christ are juxtaposed in the content of the relief: a purely intellectual vision represented by Saint Paul, who, despite not being mentioned in the biblical account, is included in the scene directly opposite Thomas, and a more sensual form of religious experience, represented by Thomas himself, offered to the monks as a more accessible means to know God.14 Whereas Paul claims that “we walk by faith, and not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7), Thomas offers an alternative model of embodied, multisensory experience, a mode that was validated by liturgical texts associated with the commemoration of the event at Silos itself. The antiphons the monks would have sung and heard during the procession of Easter focused on the senses of touching and seeing, repeating the words of Christ to the disciples, “palpete et videte” (Touch and see).15 The very medium of architectural relief sculpture makes this sensory appeal all the more concrete. It offers the spectator the opportunity to touch the physical body of Christ (imaginatively or physically using the relief as surrogate), to see Christ face to face through Thomas’s eyes, to recall the sound of Christ’s voice in the sung antiphons of Easter, and to perform the texts displayed on the relief that name the disciples, and on the scroll held by Paul, which expresses the humility of those granted revelation: “lest the greatness of the revelations should exalt me” (2 Corinthians 12:7).16 The Silos relief is an instructive entry point for a new, multisensory approach to Romanesque sculpture. In short, I propose that architectural sculpture flourished as a medium for monastic art in the eleventh and twelfth centuries precisely because it could appeal to multiple senses and foster a fully embodied religious experience. I thus seek to contribute to the lively conversation among current interpreters

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Fig. 1 (opposite)  Doubting Thomas, Santo

Domingo de Silos, ca. 1100. Stone relief. Photo: C and E. V. del Álamo.

Fig. 2 Journey to Emmaus, Santo Domingo de Silos, ca. 1100. Photo: C. and E. V. del Álamo.

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of historical and contemporary cultures concerning the body and senses as mediators of knowledge. Cultural anthropologist David Howes has recently described this “sensorial turn” in the humanities as a rebellion against the linguistic models of philosophical and social interpretation and the notion of the “world as text” in favor of a “full-bodied understanding of culture and experience” through the mediation of the senses.17 Particularly influential for Howes is the work of French philosopher Michel Serres, whose book The Five Senses (1985) offers a critique of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s classic Phenomenology of Perception (1945). Interrogating the linguistic basis of Merleau-Ponty’s theory, Serres argues for an explicitly corporeal understanding of knowledge, in which body and soul/intellect are intimately connected through the senses.18 More recently, there has also been a reevaluation of the senses that further complicates our understanding of how they function both physiologically and culturally. Fiona Macpherson, for example, has shown that current scientific analysis has blurred the strict boundaries among the senses.19 Vision itself is impacted by the other senses, and the content of vision will differ according to the individual’s life experiences. This might explain why some medieval sources refer to vision in relation to touch, insofar as rays of light grasp or touch the objects of sight. The sense of touch involves what has sometimes been described as quite distinct sensibles, including temperature, pressure and movement on the surfaces of the body, as well as pain.20 It is also well known that one sense may synaesthetically be substituted for another that is absent. While such complications of the five-senses model inherited from antiquity are not ever systematically discussed in medieval sources, there are occasional glimpses of the coordination of

sensory data—especially taste and smell—and the substitution of one sense for another in ways that challenge the supremacy of vision. The shift from the “empire of signs” to the “empire of the senses” has touched cultural historians of all disciplines as well as contemporary artists, for whom objects and installations offer a means of engaging the senses of the spectator. Henry J. Drewal has coined the term “sensiotics” to refer to the multisensory understanding of Yoruba culture, integrating masks, costume, dance, music, and food to encompass not only the traditional five senses, but also movement and synaesthetic and extrasensory perception.21 Writing from a religious studies standpoint, Birgit Meyer goes so far as to suggest that all religious experience is predicated on the mediation of physical objects and images—that is, the “sensational forms” that stimulate multiple senses or the synaesthetic perception, thus “making sense” of the divine by making it “sense-able” or present to the senses.22 Over the past decade, interdisciplinary work in medieval studies has strongly embraced the “sensory turn.” Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht describes a productive tension within medieval thought and religious practice between Platonic idealism, filtered through Saint Paul’s writings, which condemned the body and the senses as portals of sin, and an Aristotelean empiricism, which understood the body and the senses, and the entire creation, as essential mediators of the spiritual and the divine in a material world.23 This view is substantiated in the pathbreaking work of Caroline Walker Bynum. Complementing her earlier work on somatic spirituality, Bynum has recently focused attention on the mediating role of material relics, physical images, and objects in medieval religious practice.24 Art historians such as Herbert Kessler and Jeffrey Hamburger have

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focused for some time on the significance of medieval images in mediating between the physical sense of sight and spiritual seeing or visionary experience, but it is only recently that our discipline has begun to question the primacy of sight.25 David Freedberg already pointed to the distinctive capacity of sculpture to stimulate the religious imagination in his groundbreaking exploration of spectator response in The Power of Images.26 In particular, he showed how, beginning in the Middle Ages, sculptures in the round, including crucifixes and images of the Madonna and Child, inspired visions in which the statue appeared to come alive, a process he associates with the anthropological concept of “animation.” Others have added contextual nuance to Freedberg’s theory in considering medieval religious culture. Éric Palazzo’s research into the texts of mystical visions, beginning in the Carolingian period, demonstrates that early medieval visionaries most often experienced a palpable presence of absent sacred figures while praying intently before sacred images within a liturgical setting; rituals thus complemented the image in activating multiple senses.27 Focusing on later medieval images, Jacqueline Jung has emphasized the tactile quality of sculpture and suggested that the spectator’s experience of devotional images often moves from the distant apprehension of the holy figures through sight and hearing to a more intimate experience involving the sense of touch, and even taste.28 Furthermore, performance has emerged as an important framework for understanding the kinetic aspects of the experience of medieval sculpture in two recent studies. In her recent book on Gothic shrine Madonnas, Elina Gertsman has highlighted the performative aspect of late medieval sculptures that are meant to be manipulated and moved as part of the revelatory,

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ritualized devotional acts of opening the sculpted body of the Virgin.29 Likewise, Manuel Castiñeiras has demonstrated how Romanesque portal sculpture throughout Europe aimed to stimulate kinesthetic performance on the part of viewers within the context of ritual.30 The reinvention of architectural sculpture in western Europe during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the period known as Romanesque, has yet to be considered fully within these frameworks. In what follows, moving from life-sized, movable crucifixes and reliquaries to sculpted capitals in the cloister and immersive, high-relief portals, I will suggest that architectural sculpture was not so much reinvented due to a revivalist impulse but, like its portable counterparts, engaged the senses as part of a dynamic interaction with the sacred in real space and time. Furthermore, when complemented by ritual movements and liturgical texts, it had the potency to produce emotional and spiritual effects in the mind and body of its spectators. In proposing this new explanation for the reinvention of sculpture in the later Middle Ages, it is important to recall that both sculpture in the round and monumental architectural sculpture had fallen out of favor for about five centuries because Christians in the late Roman Empire associated it with the idolatrous practices of emperor worship and the veneration of “pagan” deities in temples. While Constantine adhered to long-standing Roman tradition in erecting colossal sculptural images to himself in the guise of a deity, and simultaneously adapted the tradition of religious sculpture to Christian use in his donation of large silver sculptures of Christ and the apostles to the new cathedral in Rome, San Salvatore in the Lateran,31 both succeeding emperors and the bishops of Rome, who commissioned art in churches, were more circumspect in

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their approaches to sculpted images. A prolonged criticism of Christian images by prominent early Christian bishops, and the closing of temples and banning of pagan worship under an edict of Theodosius I at the end of the fourth century, may have encouraged a complete ban on sculpture, favoring two-dimensional images in painting and mosaic. As Beat Brenk has recently proposed, it was the shimmering gold and multicolored mosaics in the apses of Christian basilicas, beginning around 400, that effectively fulfilled the function of, and substituted for, the former sculpted images of deities and deified emperors in the apses of Roman imperial basilicas and temples.32 Mosaic was an acceptable medium because it could not be confused with sculpted images, which were venerated as “idols”; it was a two-dimensional medium, inaccessible to the intimate sense of touch.33 Thus, image was separated from idolatrous worship, and by the sixth century, when Gregory the Great famously justified painting in churches for its didactic and mnemonic value, showing the unlettered the sacred narratives that they could not otherwise read in books, there was also an active campaign, associated with the same pope, to destroy still-extant sculptures as idols.34 Charges against the dangers of sculpture persist into the twelfth century, but there is a significant shift in opinion that results in the acceptance of sculpture in the round in the late Carolingian period (late ninth century), so that by the twelfth century, with both portable and architectural relief sculpture once again in vogue, vociferous complaints against sculpture are in the minority and represent a distinctly ascetic view within reformed monasticism, championed by Bernard of Clairvaux. The great Cistercian saint complains particularly of the distracting qualities of sculpture in the cloister, of its monsters, apes, and fighting men, and also of

the brightly painted statues of saints, which attract attention and donations from the laity.35 The question of why architectural sculpture was revived after such a long hiatus has often been raised but never adequately answered. Past scholarship has been less concerned with religious motivations than with technical, formal, and geographic origins.36 When the term “Romanesque” was coined in the early nineteenth century, its ultimate roots were traced to a revival of Roman architectural and sculptural forms.37 Nationalistic biases favored various points of origin for the first experiments in architectural sculpture. A certain consensus had emerged early in the twentieth century, however, that Romanesque sculpture originated within a broader cultural proto-Renaissance of the twelfth century in southern European regions where the remains of antiquity were still a palpable presence.38 Erwin Panofsky contextualized this formal and material connection with antiquity by linking the revival to the broader humanistic culture of the “twelfth-century Renaissance” as defined by Charles Homer Haskins, but he also saw in the monumentality of architecture and sculpture an important distinction from earlier Carolingian and Ottonian revivals.39 For Panofsky, the revival of the monumental sculpture and architectural forms, in tandem with the increased monumentality of sculpted crucifixes, tombs of the saints, altar retables, and antependia, was connected with the beginnings of urbanization, the emergence of “more or less secularized regional schools” that began to supersede monastic workshops, and the “determined attempt . . . to extend the influence of art to the “common man.”40 He thus parallels ideas broached by Meyer Schapiro in his 1929 Ph.D. dissertation and developed further in his Norton Lectures of 1967.41 For Schapiro the reemergence of refined stone architecture in the eleventh

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Introduction

century was the chief factor that paved the way for the revival of architectural sculpture, but he also saw secular culture, especially vernacular literature, as playing a significant role in cultivating a taste for antique sculpture and its revival.42 As many Benedictine monasteries faced a town square, where various commercial and legal transactions took place, Schapiro argued that the portal provided a forum for monks to address religious and secular values of the laity in the form of “sermons in stone.” Thus, Schapiro pointed to moralizing imagery of virtues and vices and the parable of Dives and Lazarus in the portals of Saint-Sernin in Toulouse and Saint-Pierre at Moissac as evidence of the “church as an institution . . . confronting the secular world . . . in a homiletic manner.”43 While there is much merit to Schapiro’s consideration of urbanization and a growing secular culture as factors in creating potential audiences for public sculpture, he fails to consider the monks themselves as spectators and users of the sculpted portals he focuses on. Indeed, he assumes an artificial separation between sacred (interior) and profane (exterior) space, despite the fact that ritual actions regularly blurred the boundaries between the two realms. He also neglects the fact that much of the earliest Romanesque figural sculpture is to be found inside the sanctuaries and crypts of monastic churches, as well as in the cloister, which was normally reserved for the monks themselves, even if lay people were occasionally admitted. Of course, it is also true that monastic institutions and the lay aristocracy were highly interdependent. Prosperous monastic orders such as the Cluniacs depended on the support of the lay aristocracy both to fund their building programs and to protect their communities from territorial encroachment and sometimes from bodily harm; by the same token, the laity had

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come to rely upon the prayers and commemorations of monastic communities for their spiritual well-being.44 Robert Maxwell has also shown the degree to which the monumental sculpture of monastic institutions within emerging castle towns such as Parthenay responded to lay aristocratic culture in many of its subjects and helped shape the image and identity of the city.45 Thus, any theory that attempts to explain the reinvigoration of sculpture as a medium for medieval Christianity needs to consider the potential religious functions of sculpture and its value both within the monastic community itself and for its lay audiences and patrons.

9

Medieval Theories of Vision, the Senses, and the Mediation of Sculpture

My own theorization of Romanesque sculpture in relation to the senses and religious experience is based on reading primary sources in theology, literature, and ritual. Although it might be argued that Christianity was engaged from its inception with materiality and the senses, especially in its orchestration of the cult of relics and its particular attention to the physical bodies of the deceased, the gradual acceptance of sculpture in the round from the ninth century onward, and the reinvention of architectural sculpture in the eleventh, may be correlated with a positive view of embodiment in four distinct contexts: first, the identification of the consecrated bread and wine in the Eucharist with the historical body of Christ, defined as “real presence”; second, the intensification of interest in the relationship between body and soul, and notions of outer and inner man; third, the emphasis on the physical body’s role in the afterlife; and fourth, the valorization of vision and the other physical senses as

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essential mediators of spiritual insight. All of these somatic aspects come into play at different points in the book, but what I want to emphasize here is the framework of the senses as it most directly impacts the theorization and functions of sculpture within religious experience and historically grounds the methodology of this book. It will be shown that the period between the ninth and twelfth centuries witnessed a significant shift toward the valorization of the physical senses as primary means of access to the spiritual, sometimes reinforcing, at other times challenging the primacy of vision and ocular centrism in favor of synaesthetic experience or alternative hierarchies of senses placing greater emphasis on the more intimate senses such as taste and touch. Fundamental to later medieval theories of vision and its relationship to material images are the writings of Saint Augustine of Hippo and Pope Gregory the Great. In his Treatise on the Trinity Augustine describes the process of physical vision as Trinitarian in that it comprises three distinct yet united elements: the object, which is seen; the sense of sight using corporeal eyes, which is informed by the presence of the object; and the intention of the mind, which unites the object to the living body’s sense of sight and thus produces the image of the object in the mind. This image or likeness, he argues, remains in the memory even once the object has been removed, much like the impression of a seal once the sealing ring itself has been removed from the wax. For Augustine, this threefold process of physical vision with the eye of the body is but a trace in the outer man of the true Trinity reflected in the mind of the inner man and seen through the “eye of the mind.”46 The inner eye, like the outer eye, sees by virtue of three elements: the visual ray is sent out by the eye of the mind to focus on God as the object of its sight, and vision of the true Trinity

is affected by the process of love, a stronger form of will, which unites the seer to God. Augustine links physical seeing to its spiritual counterpart not only by analogy of process, but also, more directly, as the means of access to the higher form of seeing. The properly trained contemplative eye, he argues, will glimpse in the objects of the sensible world the reflection of the beauty and goodness of the Creator, whom we see now only, in Paul’s words, “through a glass darkly” but, at the end of time, will behold face to face. For Augustine, seeing with the outer eye is also a necessary starting point because, “owing to our condition whereby we are made mortal and fleshly, we handle visible things more easily and with greater familiarity than things intelligible.”47 Pope Gregory the Great’s most influential contribution to image theory was penned in his letters to the iconoclastic bishop of Marseilles. As is well known, he justified the use of images in churches primarily as “books for the unlettered,” designed not so much to be adored in their own right as to teach what one ought to adore.48 But Gregory also contended that seeing an image had a particular impact on the viewer: “From the sight of the event portrayed [viewers] should catch the ardor of compunction.”49 In his Pastoral Care, Gregory further emphasized the capacity for the spectator to engage with images in ways that made a lasting impression on the mind: “It is well said that the images were painted, because, when the images of external things are drawn into consciousness, what is revolved in the mind by thinking in pictured imagery, is as it were portrayed on the heart.”50 Although there are strong continuities in the understanding of vision and the theology of images from the Carolingian period to the twelfth century, and essential distinctions between corporeal and

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spiritual vision are maintained, there are some significant shifts toward the embodiment of vision that can be associated with the acceptance of sculpture and the greater emphasis on the corporeal in Romanesque art. Both theological and literary texts emphasize that vision is an interactive and affective process that links the experiences of the corporeal senses with spiritual understanding.51 For twelfth-century theologians, the capacity to behold God with corporeal eyes was predicated on the Incarnation and the ability to use all of the physical senses to perceive the traces of the invisible Trinity in the sacraments or visible signs of the created world. It is thus in the context of a Treatise on the Sacraments that Hugh of Saint Victor pursues his theory of vision.52 This entire work is devoted to the notion that all of creation is a form of sacrament or visible sign of a deeper truth relating to the threefold nature of the Trinity. In a discussion of “What faith is,” Hugh pursues the theology of vision and the senses as a commentary on 1 Corinthians 2:9: “That eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man.” Setting up a Trinity of body, spirit, and God, Hugh argues that the senses mediate a higher truth, and that the Spirit or mind, which contains within it the image of God, and therefore lies midway between body and God, offers a bridge between the created world, visible to the bodily eyes, and the invisible God, which can only be grasped by the soul. Extrapolating from Saint Paul, he argues that corporeal sight, along with the other senses, is actually necessary for humanity’s comprehension of God in the mind. Hugh counters earlier medieval claims of an opposition between the eye of flesh and the eye of mind, outlining a process of progressively clearer vision of the triune God leading from the eye of the flesh to the eye of reason and finally to the eye of contemplation. In

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Hugh’s scheme, the human soul plays an intermediary role because it participates in both the corporeal vision of the outer world and the spiritual vision of God within itself. Although the eyes of contemplation and of reason were compromised by the Fall in Eden, Hugh argues that they still have the potential to see spiritually, and further that because man has lost his ability to contemplate God directly, God makes himself partially manifest to human consciousness and sight.53 In order to bridge the gap between corporeal and spiritual seeing, Hugh posits three distinctive forms of vision linked to three different eyes: the eye of the flesh, the eye of reason, and the eye of contemplation. The eye of the flesh takes in images from the outside world, the eye of reason allows him to see the reality that is in his soul, and the eye of contemplation, ultimately inaccessible until the end of time, is what grants access to God.54 Hugh’s confidence in being able to perceive the Trinity in fleshly form is reflected in the new visual imagery of the Trinity, known as the Gnadenstuhl or throne of mercy, illustrated in an early twelfth-century Rhenish sacramentary (fig. 3) as counterpart to the canon of the Mass, thus reinforcing the interconnections between eucharistic embodiment and the senses.55 The crucified Christ, depicted as if a sculpted crucifix, is projected forward toward the priestly viewer as he reads aloud the text; blood drips from the wounds of the Crucified into a chalice, thus connecting the historical body of Christ with the eucharistic body. This serves, in turn, as a ladder of images that leads the viewer from the chalice and the sense of taste to the body of Christ held on the cross, evoking touch as well as sight, and thence to behold God the Father, who holds the arms of the cross; the dove of the Holy Spirit hovers midway between the

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Fig. 3 Te igitur initial with Trinity from German sacramentary, twelfth century. The Albertina Museum, Vienna, ms Cod. Vind. 775, fol. 1v. Photo: The Albertina Museum.

Father and the Son to suggest its mediating power in this process of spiritual enlightenment. It is not by chance that this image is also found in the context of the canon of the Mass, prefacing the Te igitur prayer, which is inscribed in the lower border and facing page. In both instances the image brings out the efficacy of the eucharistic elements in making visible the incarnate Christ, whose flesh, in turn, leads to the revelation of the entire Trinity. The descending dove of the Holy Spirit demonstrates how the eucharistic elements are transformed into the body and blood of Christ.56 The connection between this image of the real presence in relation to the Trinity is further

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reinforced by mystical experiences of the eucharistic miracle of transformation. The Life of Elizabeth of Schonau (d. 1155) describes how the nun beheld a vision of the Trinity while she was gazing upon the Eucharist precisely at the moment of the Elevation, marking the change in substance.57 The invisible transformation was made present in the form of a Trinity image with blood dripping from the feet of the crucified Christ into the chalice, much as it is represented in the Rhenish sacramentary leaf.58 The cultivation of this form of embodied religious experience was a goal shared by most scholastic theologians and monastic writers of the eleventh and twelfth centuries.59 Drawing upon Incarnation theology and a growing appreciation for the Song of Songs as a physical metaphor for divine love, exegetes encouraged their readers to engage in a form of mental picturing, engaging multiple senses so that the devotee might grasp more vividly the presence of the fleshly Christ in the biblical narratives, from the infancy to the Passion. This guided meditation was cultivated through the exegesis of scripture in oral and published sermons as well as by monastic praxis, including rigorous fasting, devoting hours to the lectio divina or scriptural reading interspersed with meditation, repetitive chanting of the divine office, and solitary prayer in one’s cell between matins and prime.60 A particularly concrete guide to the multisensory experience of the incarnate Christ is offered in the series of meditations composed by William of Saint-Thierry (1085–1148), a Benedictine monk who was later inspired by Bernard of Clairvaux to become a Cistercian in 1135. William speaks of the inability of his undeveloped soul to dwell upon the majesty of the Godhead directly, and its need to initiate the discovery process through sensory experience.

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For, since I have not yet progressed beyond the elementary stage of sensory imagination, you will allow and be pleased if my still-undeveloped soul dwells naturally on your lowliness by means of some mental picturing. You will allow her, for example, to embrace the manger of the newborn babe, to venerate the sacred infancy, to caress the feet of the Crucified, to hold and kiss those feet, when he is risen, and to put her hand in the print of the nails and cry: “My Lord and my God!” . . . It was not the least of the chief reasons for your incarnation that your babes in the Church, who still needed your milk rather than solid food, who are not strong enough spiritually to think of you in your own way, might find in you a form not unfamiliar to themselves. In offering their prayers they might set this form before themselves, without any hindrance of faith, while they are still unable to gaze into the brightness of the majesty of your divinity.61 In another meditation William again alludes to the apostle Thomas as primary exemplar for this sensory experience of Christ’s body. William describes how, motivated by the love of God and the eagerness to approach him through Christ, “like Thomas, that man of desires, I want to see and touch the whole of him and, what is more, to approach the most holy wound in his side . . . not only to put my finger or my whole hand into it, but wholly enter into Jesus’ very heart, into the holy of holies, the ark of the covenant, the golden urn, the soul of our humanity that holds within itself the manna of the Godhead.”62 As we have seen earlier, this episode was translated into highly tactile relief sculpture in the cloister of Santo Domingo de Silos (fig. 1), an image that, by its very composition, leads the monk into the

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Fig. 4 Doubting Thomas, La Daurade, Toulouse, 1120–1130. Lime-

stone sculpture. Musée des Augustins, Toulouse.

sensory experience of the body of Christ through the touch and gaze of Thomas. The importance of this episode in validating the experience of the senses for monastic devotion is suggested by the appearance of the Doubting Thomas in other cloisters and monastic spaces, including a particularly evocative example from the cloister of La Daurade in Toulouse (fig. 4). In this case, the intimacy of Thomas’s experience of the body of Christ through touch and sight is enhanced by the dramatic pose of Christ bending over him, and also by the incorporation of interior space of the upper room, articulated with a sequence of round-headed arches that allude to the architecture of the monastery itself.63 Similar forms of imaginative visualization, drawing both on the narratives of Christ’s Incarnation and Passion and on the bodily love poetry of the Song of Songs, were fostered in monastic writings,

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including works by the Benedictines Peter the Venerable, Julian of Vézelay, and Rupert of Deutz.64 While the Cistercians generally opposed the use of manufactured images, except for the laity, mainstream Benedictines and secular clergy believed they offered a stimulus to the kind of salutary multisensory meditations that have just been described.65 The theoretical bridge between mental picturing and the use of manufactured images was provided by the Neo-Platonist theology of Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite, a source for the thought of both Hugh of Saint Victor and William of Saint-Thierry. Hugh composed a commentary on Dionysius’s Celestial Hierarchies that expounded upon the idea that the hierarchy of creation itself enabled an anagogical or upward-leading process of vision that allowed one’s mind to rise from the material world and created light to a purer vision of God in the uncreated light.66 The best-known application of this idea to material objects and images is explained in Abbot Suger’s account of his renovation of the Benedictine abbey of Saint-Denis outside Paris in the 1130s and ’40s. For Suger, the light-reflecting metalwork and other precious materials found in liturgical vessels were appropriate, for their outward splendor reflected the consummate pure substance of the Eucharist.67 While acknowledging criticism that “a saintly mind, a pure heart, a faithful intention” should be sufficient to perform the sacred function of consecrating the bread and wine, Suger argues that “we profess that we must do homage also through the outward ornaments of sacred vessels, and to nothing in the world in an equal degree as to the service of the Holy Sacrifice, with all inner purity and with all outward splendor.”68 Furthermore, the splendid materials served for Suger as an anagogical vehicle that allowed one to transcend the material realm. Thus, in a celebrated

passage that leads to his discussion of eucharistic vessels, Suger describes how “the loveliness of the many-colored gems . . . induced me to reflect on the diversity of the sacred virtues, transferring that which is material to that which is immaterial . . . and that, by the grace of God, I can be transported from this inferior to that higher world in an anagogical manner.”69 The anagogical windows, which, in Suger’s own words, urge us “from the material to the immaterial,” were fashioned as intermediaries for spiritual seeing not only through their expanses of mystical sapphire-colored glass, but also through their allegorical iconography, including images such as the chariot of Aminadab (color plate 2).70 This panel reveals for Christian exegetes the true meaning behind the Ark of the Covenant from the Old Testament as anticipation of the new covenant and the more direct vision of the incarnate God, by depicting the Four Evangelist symbols of the New Testament adjacent to the wheels of the chariot and a cross atop the ark. As Suger records succinctly in his inscription for the panel, “on the Ark of the Covenant I established the altar with the Cross of Christ; here Life wishes to die under a greater covenant.”71 It is telling that the Crucifixion is depicted as a sculpted, metalwork crucifix, visually manifesting in human form the Father who holds him in front of the temple veil, which had hitherto concealed the invisible Creator from view.72 The crucifix is one of the most widely disseminated devotional images in Romanesque art. As we will see in chapter 1, this active engagement with the crucifix paralleled the use of other sculpted images. The images of the Madonna and Child as “throne of wisdom” and portrait reliquaries of the saints were brought to life when they were used in religious processions and paraliturgical drama. I will

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Introduction

also explore how both images were orchestrated to complement the new emphasis on corporeal presence in the Eucharist, and further to serve as a simulacrum of the body of Christ that could be seen at close proximity, touched, and even kissed, both in the more public setting of ritual veneration and paraliturgical drama and within private devotional experiences in which sculpted likenesses were imagined to come alive. Chapter 2 explores the theme of the nude against the backdrop of contrasting gender roles rooted in the Genesis narrative: man as microcosm and image of God before the Fall, Eve and female nudes as images of carnality and sexual fantasy, pagan nudes as fallen idols, and finally, the asexual nudes of the baptized and resurrected as restored images of divine likeness. My principal case study here is the nude personification of Lust in the portal of Moissac. While the visualization of female sexuality in the sculpture of predominantly male ecclesiastical institutions during the period of the Gregorian reform is partly founded on an obsession with celibacy for monks and clergy alike as the means of enforcing ritual purity, I also argue that the sculpted nude was substituted for the more conventional clothed personification because it better expressed contemporaneous understanding of the tangible effects of seeing on human behavior. Visualizing corporeal images stirred the monk’s imagination and warned him of fleshly desire, but they also offered the first step for the monk to transform carnal into spiritual desire. Turning to portraiture in chapter 3, I argue that anthropomorphic reliquaries of the saints led the way in justifying later portrait sculpture as a representation of bodily presence and a locus for commemoration. I explore how the reliquary images and tomb effigies represent the individual

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both as the idealized, imprinted image of the institutional matrix and as the glorified body of the Resurrection. My primary examples are the earliest medieval tomb portrait of a layman, that of Rudolf von Schwaben at Merseburg (d. 1080), the reliquary bust of Saint Baudîme from the Abbey of Saint-Nectaire in Auvergne, and the portrait/reliquary of Frederick Barbarossa in Cappenberg. Masking relics or physical remains of the individual, these portraits aim to convey not a naturalistic likeness so much as an ideal portrait that coincides with the ideal “inner self.” Paralleling literary and hagiographic portraits, these images in cast or molded metal express character and virtue both through the process of imprinting an ideal form in soft metal and through the radiance of gilded bronze relief. Furthermore, the presence of an embodied soul—a psychosomatic unity—is conveyed through gestures and animated eyes of differentiated material, suggesting a direct communication with the spectator. A consideration of contemporaneous theories of vision, as well as the visionary literature related to sculpted portraits, suggests that they powerfully impacted the spectator, producing different emotional affects and states of mind related to distinctive physiognomic types. Chapter 4 turns to monsters and phantasms. Here I offer a response to Saint Bernard of Clairvaux’s celebrated critique of monsters in the cloister by examining three case studies within distinctive sacred spaces: the cloister capitals from Saint-Michelde-Cuxa (ca. 1140), the choir capitals of the collegiate church of Chauvigny in Poitou (ca. 1100–1150), and the portal of the Benedictine abbey of SaintPierre-et-Saint-Paul at Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne (ca. 1140). In the case of the cloister, I explore how the raucous images of hybrid beasts, monstrous hellmouths, and deformed human bodies, which imaginatively assaulted multiple senses, appealed

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alternately to laughter and fear to help externalize and ultimately purge the potentially harmful and demonic visions that besieged the monk, particularly during sleep. Turning to the choir as setting for the monstrous, I consider the idea of phantom bodies and transformations in the capitals of Chauvigny in relation to transubstantiation in the Eucharist. The third case study, the portal of Beaulieu-surDordogne, allows us to explore the particular role of monstrosity at the threshold of sacred space, in terms of both its potential apotropaic symbolism and its role as a foil for the revelatory vision of Christ at the end of time. Finally, chapter 5 considers the role of façade and portal sculpture in mediating an embodied multisensory experience of the theophany at the threshold of sacred space. It is argued here that, in certain instances, the replication of portable statuary not only anticipates and publicizes the experience of the sacred through physical images within the church, but also carries with it the potential for multisensory response to sculpture. While the architectural sculptures themselves are fixed in space, they still have the power to suggest movement and to interact with

spectators within the context of ritual prayer and processions. The power and effect of these sculpted images, then, are akin to those of portable sculpted images. This chapter traces the history of theophanic images, looking first at the closely linked representations of the Ascension and Second Coming, then at the representations of the Last Judgment at Conques and Autun in relation to the spoken texts included within the sculpted images, and finally turns to focus on one case study for which sung ritual texts offer instructive evidence of religious experience in relation to sculpture: the Pentecost tympanum at the Abbey of Sainte-Marie-Madeleine at Vézelay in Burgundy. I argue that the theophany (manifestation of the divine) is conveyed with reference to the institutional church and its rituals as intermediary of multisensory religious experience. The physical bodies in stone, projecting out from sacred space in high relief, thus suggest a continuum between the viewer’s body and space and those of the projected images, in anticipation of a higher understanding through the inner senses.

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Chapter 1

Living Statues The Crucifix and Throne of Wisdom

T

he Life of Saint Maura of Troyes, attributed to Prudentius of Troyes in the mid-ninth century (ca. 843/45 to 861), offers a precocious record of the devotional use of sculpted images in the Christian Church and the perception of the power they held in the religious imagination. The Benedictine nun describes visions in which “I heard the child crying on his mother’s knee and the young man moaning on the cross and the king thundering on his throne, but who would extend a gold scepter to me in a friendly way.”1 The visions were stimulated, Prudentius indicates, by continual, solitary prayer before images of the Virgin and Child and the crucifix, as well as what may have been a wall painting of the Maiestas Domini, or possibly an antependium, in the crypt of the Cathedral of Troyes. Although some scholars have suggested that the image of the Virgin and Child was a relief panel,2 Éric Palazzo asserts that both crucifix and Virgin and Child image were independent wooden statues. His evidence comes from the saint’s own testimony, which emphasizes how the inanimate wood comes alive: “It is not to the realm of nature, but to that of the miraculous[,] that one can attribute the fact that a piece of dry

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wood should wail or moan in order to remind to our faith the awe-inspiring sacraments and to strengthen them in the minds of the faithful.”3 Such concrete visionary experiences support David Freedberg’s notion of the “power of images,” documenting how sculpture works on the imagination of its beholders.4 It also challenges us to rethink conventional narratives of the origins and development of Romanesque “monumental sculpture.” In much twentieth-century scholarship, it has been argued that sculpted crucifixes, images of the Madonna and Child (Throne of Wisdom), and reliquary portraits, beginning in the late Carolingian and Ottonian Empires, provided the technical bridge for the development of larger-scale sculpture in the round and the architectural sculpture that is the hallmark of the Romanesque.5 It has also been assumed that these early attempts at larger, independent sculpture were validated by containing relics, thereby overcoming concerns of venerating mere matter—idolatry.6 What Ilene Forsyth was the first to demonstrate is that medieval European sculpted images inherited from the ancient world a potent presence that exercised the imagination

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of the devout Christian even without relics, and further that sculpted images were animated through paraliturgical drama.7 More recently, Martin Büchsel has argued for distinguishing between reliquaries as “cult images,” which were worthy of veneration or adoratio as they contained the substantial remains of the saint, and the crucifix, which normally did not contain relics but was understood instead as a primarily liturgical object made, in the words of the Libri Carolini, “in memory of the Passion of the Lord,” as a complement to the Eucharist.8 Yet the distinction between cult images and liturgical images is not quite as strict as he would have us believe, given that reliquary portraits, images of the Madonna, and images of the crucifix were all engaged within both private and communal worship and exercised a certain fascination on the imagination due to their sculpted forms and ritual functions, which at times involved movement and manipulation or engagement with the physical object as if it were a living being. In citing Saint Maura’s use of images, Palazzo makes the case that all three categories of sculpted image were activated through the ritual process, stimulating visions that appealed to the physical senses.9 I would further emphasize the distinctive place of sculpted images in narratives of sacred images coming alive. A particular potency was ascribed to images that occupied real space and could at times be touched as well as seen, and ultimately might be perceived by other senses of hearing, smell, and taste within the context of visionary experience. It was precisely these qualities of sculpture, along with particular qualities of the material, including the allure of bright colors and light-reflecting materials, that made it so seductive and, at least initially for some Christian writers, susceptible to idolatrous practices. The increasing

manufacture of such images between the tenth and twelfth centuries suggests a gradual acceptance of sculpture as central to religious experience and, I would argue, is predicated on the affirmation of the bodily presence of Christ in the Eucharist and the cult of relics, as well as the parallel development of sculpted images of lay rulers as proxies for their presence. Rooted in biblical narrative, both crucifixes and images of the enthroned Virgin and Child became actors for the absent bodies of Christ and the Virgin in the perpetual reenactments of biblical history in the liturgical cycle of readings and paraliturgical drama, as well as the means of visualizing the hidden but substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist, as it came to be understood beginning in the ninth century. The engagement of the senses and the actual movement of the images for veneration and participation in these paraliturgical rites further inspired the kinds of visionary experiences that became particularly common in the twelfth century. Finally, I propose that the perception of sculpture in the round impacted the perception of architectural sculpture.

Embracing the Body of Christ: The Crucifix

While representations of the Crucifixion narrative begin to appear in small-scale relief sculpture as early as the fifth century, monumental sculpted crucifixes are not reliably documented before the late eighth century.10 The Gero Cross (color plate 3), commissioned by Archbishop Gero for Cologne Cathedral in the 970s, is generally considered to be among the earliest extant examples, but Katharina Schüppel has traced the history of large-scale crucifixes back to the Carolingian period. Among the earliest documented examples are a golden crucifix

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Living Statues

made at the behest of Charlemagne for Strasbourg Cathedral, measuring twelve feet in height; two silver crucifixes commissioned for Saint Peter’s in Rome under Pope Leo III (795–816) and Leo IV (847–55); and a gold crucifix commissioned for the same church by Carolingian emperor Charles the Bald.11 Schüppel makes the case that the substitution of sculpted crucifixes for plain crosses was predicated on two factors: the wider diffusion of the liturgy of the Veneration of the Cross outside of Jerusalem, first recorded in Rome in the eighth century and adapted in Frankish ordines and the Romano-German Pontifical of the tenth century; and the dissemination of the Acts of the Council of Trullo (692), in which the depiction of the Lamb was banned in favor of the crucified body of Christ on the cross.12 With the wider diffusion of the Adoration of the Cross in the Carolingian Empire as part of the Roman-based Frankish liturgy, it was recognized that it was not always possible to use cross reliquaries, as had been the case in Rome and the Middle East. Amalarius of Metz therefore explicitly allows for the substitution of a cross or crucifix for the reliquary cross normally used at the time.13 Celia Chazelle has explored more deeply the connection between the liturgy and the sculpted crucifix in the Carolingian era, referring both to the regular celebration of the Mass and reception of the sacrament and to the more particular commemorations of Holy Week, suggesting that “the awareness of the liturgy’s role in commemorating the cross and crucified savior . . . encouraged a devotional environment in which the provision of crucifixes for churches made increasing sense.”14 Chazelle notes in particular a shift in later Carolingian writings from the 820s to the 840s, including Amalarius’s Liber officialis, Jonas of Orleans’s treatise De cultu

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imaginorum, and Einhard’s De adoranda cruce, which emphasize the efficacy of material images and the acts of devotion undertaken before the crucifix. In the rite of the Adoration of the Cross on Good Friday, Einhard and Amalarius affirm, the worshipper prostrates himself before the cross “as if he saw the Lord hanging there,” thus taking care to distinguish the material image from the one whom the worshipper is inspired to adore inwardly through the sight of the crucifix.15 The qualification quasi(as if) was necessary to fend off vocal opponents of material images in the Carolingian Church, who still saw them as inherently idolatrous. The confidence in the mediating role of the material image of the sculpted crucifix is suggested further by the proliferation of documented examples for use in the liturgy, often at special cross altars in the center of the nave.16 We gain further evidence of devotional practices associated with crucifixes from visual images in illuminated manuscripts. In a late ninth-century leaf added to the Psalter of Louis the German (fig. 5), a lay devotee is shown kneeling before what appears to be a life-sized metalwork crucifix, embracing with one hand its tapered base while simultaneously projecting before the framed space of the larger Crucifixion composition.17 Cynthia Hahn has emphasized that the devotee does not actually look at the image, thereby emphasizing internal, spiritual vision over physical sight,18 but there is a danger of taking this image too literally. The cross itself overlaps the lower frame, seemingly bridging the realms between physical and perceptual space, between viewer and image, perhaps to make a point about the use of sculpted images in mediating between physical and spiritual vision. What is more, the painted image appears opposite the Latin prayer to be said before the cross (“Oratio ante

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Fig. 5 Crucifixion with supplicant, Ludwig Psalter, Saint-Bertin,

825–850. Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin—Preußischer Kulturbesitz, ms theol. lat. 58 (Rose 250), fol. 120r. Photo: bpk Bildagentur / Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin—Preußischer Kulturbesitz / Art Resource, New York.

crucem dicenda”), thus encouraging the connection between seeing or being in close proximity to a physical image and praying to the Crucified.19 Indeed, this image anticipates what Jacqueline Jung has described in relation to Rupert of Deutz’s visionary encounters with a sculpted crucifix as a sequence of sensory perceptions of the Crucified, which move from the more distant senses of sight and sound to the most intimate senses of touch and taste.20 For what the image shows clearly is that the devotee, whose eyes are averted from the crucified Christ, encounters the suffering body primarily through the tactile sense, embracing the foot of

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the cross. One also perceives in this image, as in the vision of Saint Maura, that the ritual action of prayer—which would include the oral recitation of the psalms contained within the book to which this image is appended—and the very presence of the physical image of Christ on the cross complement one another to stimulate the inner vision. In another example, the Prayerbook of Charles the Bald (color plate 4), this connection between the visual image of the crucifix and what might be called “devotional seeing” is enhanced by the complete integration of text and image, seeing and ritual veneration.21 Charles kneels with hands outstretched, complementing the text of the prayer he offers to the Crucified: “O Christ, you who on the cross have absolved the sins of the world, absolve I pray, all [my] wounds for me.”22 In this case, the devout emperor looks directly at the crucifix before him. His confidence in absolution from his sins, represented in the serpent at the base of the cross, derives both from Christ’s human suffering and compassion and from the divinity that has the power to save humanity.23 Less ambiguous than the image in the Psalter of Louis the German, this image is clearly a crucifix, with the cross rendered in gold, and accompanying figures from the standard narrative image are omitted. The space between the devotee and the crucifix, marked by the gutter between two pages, becomes a spiritually charged devotional space, animated by both image and the ritual of prayer performed on the viewer’s behalf by the emperor. As Chazelle has observed, there was a simultaneous emphasis in the later Carolingian Empire on understanding the Mass itself as a performance and commemoration of the Crucifixion, tied in part to the Paschasian identification of real presence in the eucharistic elements with the historical sacrifice of

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Living Statues

the body of Christ.24 She notes that the text of the canon of the Mass, beginning with the Te igitur, was more insistently set apart from the preceding Vere dignum and Sanctus, which proclaim the divinity of Christ, to focus attention on the point of the Mass, in which the focus shifts to the sacrifice on the cross. At the same time, the connection between the sacrament of the Mass and the Crucifixion began to be visually emphasized by the representation of the Crucifixion within the body of the text of the Te igitur, often as a historiated initial. In the sacramentary of Charles the Bald, dated to 869 (Paris, BnF, ms, Latin 1141, fol. 6v), for example, the letter T is transformed into a cross bearing the crucified body of Christ.25 While the interlace patterns of the terminals of the cross/initial stress the connection with scribal tradition, the use of gold to highlight the nail heads within the wounds in hands and feet, as well as the nipples, suggests a possible connection with the ritual kissing of the body of Christ in the rites of the Adoration of the Cross involving sculpted crucifixes. What, then, can we say of Carolingian sculpted crucifixes themselves and their relation to the flourishing tradition of sculpted crucifixes in the Romanesque period? Usually executed in metalwork and containing relics, the Carolingian crucifixes conformed to two distinctive types, including the Volto Santo type, dating back as far as the eighth century, in which Christ is shown in an erect pose fully clad in long-sleeved colobium, and the type shown on the Carolingian Gospel book cover of the Lindau Gospels (fig. 6), in which Christ appears clad only in the perizonium (loincloth).26 In both instances the triumph over death is emphasized by Christ’s fully awake facial expression and his body erect on the cross. The medium of radiant metal also enhanced the association with Christ’s triumph through its shimmering light.27

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21

Fig. 6 Crucifixion, back cover of Lindau Gospels, ca. 880. Gold repoussée with gems and pearls. Photo: J. Pierpont Morgan Library and Museum, New York.

We have seen that the monumental crucifixes were animated through liturgical use as early as the ninth century. They were brought down from their position suspended above the high altar or mounted on the sanctuary beam, or placed behind an altar of the Holy Cross, to be venerated during the ceremony of the Adoration of the Cross on Good Friday. Documentation of these rituals using sculpted crucifixes becomes more frequent between the tenth and twelfth centuries, and, it may be argued, the imaginative engagement is enhanced by the production of life-sized carved wooden figures of the crucified Christ. These monumental

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crucifixes convey in detail the humanity of Christ and the connection with the eucharistic sacrifice by the shift in subject to the dead Christ and by the formal changes to the image, including a more illusionistic posture of the slumped body and an emphasis on the pale flesh and wounds with polychrome. While Carolingian metalwork crucifixes emphasized Christ’s triumph over death and his divinity through radiant light, it was the life-sized polychrome wooden crucifix depicting the dead Christ that had a particularly powerful impact on the monastic imagination and fostered an emotional and multisensory identification with the fleshly body of Christ. The Gero Cross in Cologne Cathedral (color plate 3) is generally considered to be the earliest surviving example of the sculpted image of the dead Christ, though it is anticipated on a smaller scale in a series of four drawings in the Carolingian Utrecht Psalter and in certain Carolingian ivories.28 Life-sized in scale, with the walnut-wood corpus reaching 1.87 m in height,29 the Gero Cross is remarkable for the high degree of illusionism in depicting the corpse on the cross with head slumped on one shoulder and flesh of the arms stretched from the cross arms. It is also unusually well documented in terms of its original patronage and functions. Thietmar of Merseburg records that Archbishop Gero commissioned it and that in his own time, within a few decades of the commission, the cross stood “in the middle of the church, where he himself was buried.”30 The location is not surprising, as it was common to have altars of the Holy Cross at the center of the nave in Carolingian churches, serving as a focal point for the Adoration of the Cross on Good Friday, following the precedent of Old Saint Peter’s.31 Thietmar further describes a miracle

in conjunction with the cross. Upon the completion of the commission, Gero is said to have noticed a fissure in the head, which he healed by bringing together a consecrated host and a relic of the wood of the cross. This led Harald Keller to assume that these relics were preserved within the wooden corpus of Christ and that they therefore served to authorize the reinvention of large-scale sculptural images, including the crucifix.32 Recent technical analysis has failed to locate a repository for relics, however,33 and even if the relics were placed beneath the cross within the altar, it is hard to support the argument that relics were necessary to make the monumental crucifix acceptable, given that only about a third of the crucifixes from the tenth and eleventh centuries actually contain relics.34 Annika Elizabeth Fisher has emphasized instead the connections between the Gero Cross and reenactment of the sacrifice on the cross both in the Good Friday liturgy and in the regular liturgy of the Mass. She specifically draws on the Carolingian writer Amalarius of Metz, who argued that each Mass is a dramatic reenactment or “mimetic renewal” of the Passion, in which the priest performs the role of Christ, the subdeacons represent the women at the base of the cross, and the congregation represents the crowds in Jerusalem watching the spectacle of the Crucifixion.35 The Gero Cross not only participated in the dramatic reenactment of the Passion but also made visible and explained the hidden presence of both the relic of the historical Crucifixion and the consecrated host. It was the host that embodied what Paschasius Radbertus described as the real presence of the historical body of Christ on the cross.36 The sculpted corpus or body of Christ on the Cross is thus a figura that makes palpable the hidden but real presence of each Eucharist, as well as the consecrated matter contained within,

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Living Statues

working on the principle of a real identity between an artificial image and the true body of Christ in the Eucharist. The location of the altar over which the Gero Cross was placed was doubly significant. Set in medio ecclesiae, the cross altar was not only used as the station for the Veneration of the Cross on Good Friday, but also served as the Volksaltar—the place from which the Eucharist was distributed to the laity on high feast days.37 The Gero Cross stands at the beginning of a long series of life-sized sculpted crucifixes in carved wood. In the course of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the earlier, relatively rigid and erect representations of Christ’s body gave way to more illusionistic images in which the arms are shown revealing the muscular tension of sustaining the body, while the body itself is more emaciated and gently curved, with knees bent and head projecting forward to suggest an animate human being in the process of dying—the Christus patiens or suffering Christ. These changes apply both to images of the living Christ (with open eyes) and the fully dead Christ. Thus, we cannot speak of a consistent line of development from the triumphant, wide-awake Christ to the fully dead, wounded Christ. Indeed, it has been argued that two German crucifixes from the second half of the eleventh century, and therefore among the earliest examples considered to be “Romanesque,” are actually more schematically carved than the Gero Cross, which seems to have served as their model.38 This more exaggerated schematicism relates in part to the fact that these wooden figures were originally plastered and painted with polychrome, but it may also be understood as expressively enhancing the pathos of the suffering body of Christ. The crucifix from Saint George in Cologne, for example (fig. 7), now in the Schnütgen Museum, shows the extent to

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which Romanesque artists appealed to the senses in the representation of the emaciated naked torso of Christ and the stretching of flesh and muscles, an effect that would originally have been enhanced by polychrome to highlight blood-emitting wounds. At the same time, the structure of the backs of each of these crosses, incorporating repositoria or cavities for relics, suggests that whatever earlier distinctions may have been maintained in the Carolingian period between crucifix and saint’s reliquary had been greatly diminished, and crucifixes themselves had become objects of veneration both in the context of the Good Friday liturgy, in which the crucified body replaced simple crosses or cross reliquaries, and as a focus for intimate devotional prayer by monks.39 The definitive shift in formal language to emphasize more fully the suffering or dead Christ in life-sized crucifixes in the course of the late eleventh and twelfth centuries presupposes a change in attitude toward the body of Christ that engages more insistently the humanity of Christ through affective piety and further fosters an emotional identification with the body of Christ through material images.40 Rachel Fulton has directly addressed the rationale for the shift in attitudes toward the crucified Christ within the dual contexts of eucharistic theology and the dawn of the millennium of Christ’s death.41 She sees eucharistic theology as initially playing a leading role, starting with Paschasius Radbertus and culminating in the definitive acceptance of “real presence” following the condemnation of Berengar of Tours’s position on the Eucharist in the later eleventh century. The identification of the eucharistic body with the suffering body of Christ in the Passion was complemented by the Gregorian Reform’s insistence on clerical celibacy in the mid-eleventh century. This fostered, in turn, the desire among ascetics such as Peter Damian for a

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complete identification with the suffering body of Christ through ascetic practices including fasting and self-flagellation; in anticipation of being judged, the goal of these practices was to share Christ’s pain and be so “configured to the Crucified in punishment” that the ascetic might “deserve to be the companion of the Arisen in glory.”42 Fulton observes another shift in the twelfth century, exemplified by the meditations of Saint Anselm of Canterbury on the crucified Christ. For Anselm and other monastic writers of the twelfth century, inspired in part by interpretations of the Song of Songs, the goal was not so much to share Christ’s pain as to instill compunction of the heart through prayer and meditation on the crucified Christ, to transform fear into love, and thus gain spiritual union with God through the intermediary of the human Christ.43 While Anselm’s meditations and prayers dwelling on the body and wounds are rooted in a tradition that can be carried back to the Carolingian monastic writers, his first-person orations reveal a new emotional investment. Particularly poignant is his Oratio 2:

Fig. 7 Crucifix from Saint George, Cologne, eleventh century. Wood and polychrome. Photo: Rheinisches Bildarchiv Köln / Wolfgang F. Meier.

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I thirst for you, I hunger for you, I desire you, I sigh for you, I covet you. . . . So, as much as I can, though not as much as I ought, I am mindful of your passion, your buffeting, your scourging, your cross, your wounds, how you were slain for me, prepared for burial and buried; and also I remember your glorious Resurrection, and wonderful Ascension. . . . Why, O my soul, were you not there to be pierced by a sword of bitter sorrow when you could not bear the piercing of the side of your Saviour with a lance? Why could you not bear to see the nails violate the hands and feet of your Creator? Why did you not see with horror the blood that poured out of

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the side of your Redeemer? Why were you not drunk with bitter tears when they gave him bitter gall to drink? Why did you not share the sufferings of the most pure virgin, his worthy mother and your gentle lady? . . . Kindest, gentlest, most serene Lord, will you not make it up to me for not seeing the blessed incorruption of your flesh, for not having kissed the place of the wounds where the nails pierced, for not having sprinkled with tears of joy the scars that prove the truth of your body?44 What is striking about Anselm’s meditation is not only the enumeration of visual details of the Passion body—the wounds in hands, feet, and side—but also the allusions to other sensory impressions—the buffeting, scourging, and tearing of the flesh, associated with touch, and the drinking of bitter gall contrasting with the kissing of the wounds, associated with the most intimate sense of taste. Although Fulton refers to ritual texts for the Adoration of the Cross that contain parallel language in words spoken by Christ himself from the cross, she does not consider how Anselm’s meditation could have been activated by contemplating a sculpted crucifix, which would have made such an encounter with the body of Christ all the more vivid. While it is true that Anselm never refers specifically to physical images in his texts, other monastic writers early in the twelfth century do, including William of Saint-Thierry, Rupert of Deutz, and Aelred of Rievaulx. As Tobias Frese has demonstrated, whereas Bernard saw material images as antithetical to monastic devotion and the cultivation of the affectus, the love that brought about union with God, William of Saint-Thierry took a more traditional Benedictine view that found in material objects

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and images, as well as the corporeal senses, useful intermediaries toward spiritual perception, especially for novices.45 He lays out his approach in his Exposition on the Song of Songs, in his Golden Epistle, addressed to the Carthusian Order, and in his meditations. In the commentary on the Song of Songs, William distinguishes three states of prayer: the status animalis, the status rationalis, and the status spiritualis, which coincide with the traditional Augustinian tripartite scheme of vision.46 The status animalis, which engages the sensory imagination (imaginans corporaliter), encompasses the words of prayer without a deeper understanding, but William sees the utility in this stage of devotion in that it helps kindle the affectus of spiritual imagination. The connection between physical and spiritual senses is such that the devotee may ultimately be led from physical images and corporeal vision to the upper two stages of contemplation, beyond the realm of images. In his Golden Epistle, William goes further to emphasize the positive role of visual images and their multisensory engagement in the devotional lives of novices, who are advised to contemplate the Passion of Christ and lives of the saints, drawing on sensory impressions before seeking to cultivate a purely spiritual form of prayer.47 We see the application of these ideas in William’s meditations, designed as guides to monastic devotion. In meditation 10, already referred to in the introduction, William speaks of how his own “undeveloped soul,” as if still in the childlike state of a novice, naturally dwells upon Christ’s Incarnation, embracing the manger of the Christ Child at the Nativity, caressing the feet of the Crucified, holding and kissing the feet of the risen Christ, and putting “her hand” in the print of the nails. After this evocation of the multisensory experience of the humanity of Christ, William refers alternately to images in the

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mind and the physical image of the crucifix raised aloft in the sanctuary. O blessed is that temple of the Holy Spirit, in which the memory of Christ uplifted on the cross is ever green, where his blood flows ever fresh to save the faithful, loving soul, in whom the Prophet’s prayer: “O deliver and be merciful unto me,” is ever being answered! For the effect of our redemption is repeated in us as often as we recall it in affective prayer. And since we cannot do even this as we would, with even greater daring we make a mental picture of your passion of ourselves, so that our bodily eyes may possess something on which to gaze, something to which to cleave, worshiping not the pictured likeness only, but the truth the picture of your passion represents. For when we look more closely at the picture of your passion, although it does not speak, we seem to hear you say: “When I loved you, I loved you to the end. Let death and hell lay hold on me, that I may die their death; eat, friends, and drink abundantly, beloved, unto life eternal. And in this way your cross becomes to us like the linen sheet that was shown to blessed Peter, let down from heaven by four corners . . . and we rejoice that we are lifted up to heaven, where also we, who were unclean are cleansed. For through this picturing of your passion, O Christ, our pondering on the good that you have wrought for us leads us forthwith to love the highest good. May that good you make us see in the work of salvation, not be an understanding arising from human effort, nor by the eyes of our mind, that tremble and shrink from your light, but by the peaceful experience of love, and by the good use of our sight and enjoyment of your sweetness, while your wisdom sweetly orders our affairs.48

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Considering this meditation within a broader overview of theories and practices of vision, Jeffrey Hamburger argues that “in keeping with Cistercian reticence regarding images of all kinds, William refers not to works of art but rather to images conjured in the mind.”49 Yet the persistent references to the cross and “pictured likeness,” as well as to bodily eyes, and the juxtaposition with the preceding passage, which evokes multiple senses in imagining the incarnate body of Christ, suggest that William is referring to the utility of actual sculpted images such as the crucifix as at least an initial focus of devotion to help generate multisensory images within the mind. Since William composed his meditations before he became a Cistercian, it is not surprising that they reflect a fully Benedictine appreciation of the role of visual images and sculpture in devotion. What is more, William makes explicit the connection between crucifix and real presence that we have seen was part of the motivation for the commission of the Gero Cross in Cologne Cathedral—both material manifestations of God’s presence in Christ. Immediately after the passage just quoted, in which he refers to the “picturing of the passion,” William considers the soul’s access to God through both the sacrament of the Eucharist and the cross: In sweet meditation on the wonderful sacrament of your passion she [the soul] muses on the good that you have wrought on our behalf. . . . She seems to herself to see you face to face, when you thus show her in the cross and in the work of your salvation, the face of the ultimate Good. The cross itself becomes for her the face of a mind that is well-disposed toward God. For what better reparation, what happier arrangement could have been made for the man who

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wanted to ascend to his God, to offer gifts and sacrifices . . . than that, instead of going up by steps to the altar, he should walk calmly and smoothly over the level of his own likeness, to a Man like himself. . . . And he is forthwith gathered up to God in love through the Holy Spirit and received God coming to him and making his abode with him, not spiritually only but corporeally too, in the mystery of the holy and life-giving body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.50 In this passage, seeing the cross and partaking of the sacrament are complementary pathways to spiritual seeing, a process in which the corporeal senses play a role. That seeing and meditating on an image through the perception of the physical senses could lead to spiritual seeing and ultimately the desired affectus or love of, and union with, God, is entirely in keeping with William’s broader theory of the senses. Drawing an analogy for the way in which the perceiving soul is transformed by and into God, William describes how the individual devotee perceives the thing or object by taking in multiple sensory impressions, which transform him, in turn, into that which he perceives. “Every bodily sense, in order to be a sense and to perceive at all, must be in some sort changed, by means of a certain sensible impression, into the thing perceived: sight, that is to say, must be changed into that which it sees, hearing into that which is heard, and so with all the rest. Otherwise it does not perceive and it is not a sense.”51 William goes on to describe how the soul’s sense is love, and how the soul is transformed into the object loved by means of its affection.52 Here we see that the reference to the senses is not merely an analogy for the operation of the soul, but, within the larger context of William’s meditation, suggests

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a continuum between the outer and inner senses, or, as William describes it in his Exposition on the Song of Songs, a movement in prayer from the animal state to the rational and spiritual states. A more explicit appeal to the sculpted crucifix is made by Aelred of Rievaulx in a meditation designed to aid his sister in cultivating the “sweet love of Jesus”: “On your altar let it be enough for you to have an image (imago) of the Savior hanging on the cross, that will bring before your mind his passion for you to imitate, his outspread arms will invite you to embrace him, his naked breasts will feed you with the milk of sweetness to console you.”53 In this threefold meditation that guides the devotee through the events of Christ’s Incarnation, Passion, and Resurrection, Aelred casts his sister as a participant in the events she is invited to imagine. The crucifix serves as an initial stimulus to meditation that succeeds when it arouses the affections and thus stirs up the desire for tears that bring the sponsus and sponsa together in spiritual union. Gazing upon the crucifix is thus a prelude to the internal imagination and visionary experience that encompasses the other senses—imagining the touch of his outstretched arms, and the sweet taste of milk from his breasts. It was such guided exercises in meditation on the crucifix, as well as the ritual veneration of the cross, that must have prepared the ground for a deeper engagement with the crucifix as a vehicle for bodily union with Christ. Perhaps the best-known medieval response to the sculpted crucifix is found in two visions recorded by the Benedictine monk Rupert of Deutz during his novitiate in Liège. Rupert describes two highly sensual encounters with a large sculpted crucifix placed on or behind the altar that move from the senses of sight and hearing to the more intimate and earthy senses of touch and

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taste. In his commentary on Matthew, composed in 1127, Rupert explains how the image opened its eyes to look upon him, and then bent its head to speak to him.54 Drawing upon the sensual bridal imagery of the Song of Songs, Rupert explains that he immediately desired to seize Christ in his hands and to kiss and embrace him. Christ himself, desiring this embrace, opened up the altar so that Rupert could reach his image. And then Rupert, in his own words, “seized him whom my soul loves, held him, embraced him, and kissed him for a long while. I sense how joyfully he received this gesture of love, since as he was being kissed he opened his mouth, that I might kiss him more deeply.” At the end of his account, Rupert adds that “an ineffable taste of sweetness lingers in the mouth of my soul,” thus echoing the words of Psalm 33:9, “O taste, and see that the Lord is sweet.”55 This strikingly erotic vision, which evokes the senses of sight, touch, hearing, and even taste, must be understood in the context of the gradual transformation of the sculpted crucifix in the course of the eleventh and twelfth centuries into a highly sensual, life-sized, almost naked image of the dead or suffering Christ subtly modeled and painted to highlight the blood and pale flesh. At the same time, interpretations of the lovers in the erotic poetry of the Song of Songs as an allegory of the love between Christ and his mother, as well as Christ and his devotees, nourished a strong belief in the capacity of sensual experiences, including the prolonged gaze of the eye, as a pathway toward transcendent love of, and union with, Christ. Bernard of Clairvaux, who condemned artistic images as a distraction for his fellow monks, is said to have experienced a similar miraculous embrace of a living crucifix, as well as a vision in which he was suckled by the Virgin Mary.56 He also supported the utility of the laity’s

contemplating the physicality of Christ’s wounded body in the form of a visual image, as a first step toward an inner meditation in the heart. The physicality of these visionary experiences of the crucifix was fostered by more public rituals in which the entire community of religious and laity would potentially have participated. The physical embrace of the corpus in these visions relates to the paraliturgical rites of Holy Week as well as the daily Eucharist. As early as the eleventh century, ritual texts from France refer to washing the crucifix with wine and water in preparation for symbolic burial on Good Friday.57 During this same period, life-sized sculpted crucifixes were produced with arms that could be detached from the cross so that the corpus could be used in the reenactment of Christ’s burial, and a little later, in the twelfth century, complete sculptural groups of the Deposition narrative were produced in northern Spain, Italy, and southern France. One of the earliest surviving examples is an early twelfth-century corpus of Christ now in the Louvre, the so-called Christ de Courajod (fig. 8), which came originally from Burgundy and was produced probably under Catalonian influence.58 A more complete example is offered by the twelfth-century Deposition group from Santa Eulàlia in Erill la Vall in Catalonia (fig. 9).59 In this lively tableau vivant, the body of Christ again becomes the devotional focal point for both sight and touch. Joseph and Nicodemus offer surrogates for the spectator’s imaginary embrace and entombment of the body of Christ, while Mary and John furnish models of an empathetic, emotive response, paralleling liturgical laments. The sculpted crucifix also played a parallel role in the ritual Adoration of the Cross that preceded the reenactment of the Deposition on Good Friday,

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and another ceremony of veneration of the crucifix on Palm Sunday.60 Focused initially on a relic of the Wood of the Cross, the Good Friday ritual was transformed by the mid-eleventh century with the substitution of a fully sculpted crucifix. Among the earliest direct evidence for the use of a sculpted crucifix in this ceremony appears in the customary of Abbot Sigbert of Gorze, dating to around 1030. Rubrics describe the initial preparation for the ritual, in which the cross “that is to be adored” is adorned around its “neck” with a phylactery, and the Gospel Book is placed at the “feet on the right side” of the crucifix.61 By the beginning of the twelfth century, the cross, initially veiled as part of Lenten observance, was unveiled in three phases, accompanied by the chanting of the antiphon “Ecce lignum Crucis.” In some rites, the feet were first unveiled, then the body and face, and finally the entire crucifix; in other cases, one shoulder was unveiled before the rest of the body and face, and then the entire crucifix. Rupert of Deutz describes the unveiling of the crucifix as confirmation that Christ “reveals his face to us, that observing his glory we may be transformed into the same image from the glory of the Law to the Glory of the gospel, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.”62 The unveiling of the crucifix was also associated with the Improperia or Reproaches, which gave the impression of hearing the Crucified speak from the cross: “My people, what have I done to you, or in what have I saddened you? Answer me.”63 The Improperia were gradually expanded between the late ninth and twelfth centuries to include as many as twelve verses. These verses, believed to have been spoken by Jesus to the crowds attending his Crucifixion, enliven the scriptural readings from which they derive, using the crucifix to personify Christ in a dramatic ritual reenactment of the Passion.

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Fig. 8 Christ de Courajod, corpus of Christ from Deposition

group, Burgundy, early twelfth century. Wood and polychrome. Musée du Louvre, Paris. Photo: Jebulon / Wikimedia Commons, reproduced under CC0 1.0.

A third occasion on which the crucifix provided a focus for communal devotion while also serving as an actor in a liturgical drama was Palm Sunday. Although a Palmesel—a polychromed wooden sculpture on wheels, depicting Christ riding the donkey—was used in processions to reenact the Entry into Jerusalem as early as the tenth century

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Fig. 9 Deposition group from Santa Eulàlia in Erill la Vall, Cata-

lonia, twelfth century. Wood and polychrome. Photo © Museu Episcopal de Vic.

at the Benedictine convent of Augsburg, this practice became common only during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; while the earliest extant example dates back to the mid-thirteenth century, most examples date no earlier than ca. 1400.64 As James Monti has shown, the crucifix was another common actor in the Palm Sunday processions.65 In the late tenth-century Romano-Germanic pontifical of Mainz, after the crucifix is processed into the church, a threefold veneration of the cross is prescribed. First the clergy and the people approach the station of the cross bearing palms as the choir sings the antiphon “With shining palms, we prostrate ourselves before the Lord coming,” to which the schola replies, “on behalf of the people” with the antiphon “The Multitudes come to meet the Lord Redeemer with flowers and palms.” Then the clergy cast down their chasubles or copes on the ground and prostrate themselves to adore the crucifix, while the clergy sing the antiphon “The children of the Hebrew cast their garments to the ground.” The

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second prostration before the cross involves the lay members of the choir, who sing “Lord have mercy” as they adore the cross. Then a third prostration is led by the celebrant before the crucifix as the rest of the clergy and people prostrate themselves in unison while singing “Glory Laud and Honor,” the hymn based on the text of Theodulf of Orleans. In this reenactment of the Entry into Jerusalem, then, the cross serves both as actor in a liturgical drama, representing Christ himself, and as focus of devotional prayer. The fact that the crucifix could be substituted for the more realistic Palmesel reinforces the idea that both images owed their agency to the fact that they were three-dimensional painted sculptures that appeared to move and come alive. As Elizabeth Lipsmeyer has observed, the sculpted image, representing Christ with appropriate decorum, had a particularly persuasive authority in the eyes of participants in the liturgy—an impact captured in the words of the scribe of the eleventh-century ritual for Palm Sunday preserved in the Liber Ordinarii of Fruttuaria Monastery: “Because, if it were permitted for us to gaze upon [the image] with corporeal eyes, it would seem that we ourselves have gone to meet the Son of God, which we must without any doubt believe we have done. Although He may not indeed be seen physically, yet the person whose inner eyes He will have opened has the power to see that we have gone forth to meet our Lord Jesus Christ.”66 Both Bernard’s and Rupert’s imaginative visions of palpable contact with the crucified body of Christ again can be related to the ritual handling of the cross on Good Friday. From the late eleventh century onward, there was an increasing emphasis in prayers on kissing and praying to the five wounds of Christ, as part of the Veneration of the Cross. As

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Schüppel has shown, this practice was enhanced by a greater emphasis on the wounds in sculpted crucifixes, sometimes with red gems such as rubies inserted in the wounds as a focal point for kissing.67 The performance of these devotions was enhanced by specific prayers addressed to the different parts of the body that were kissed. In a twelfth-century psalter from the Benedictine abbey of Farfa, one finds a series of twenty-four prayers, divided into sections that correspond to distinct bodily gestures: genuflecting three times, kissing the ground in front of the cross, kissing the feet, limbs, wounds, and head of the sculpted crucifix, and finally rising from the kneeling position. Here an emphasis on touching individual parts of Christ’s body coincides with an insistence in intercessory prayer on the protection of the worshipper’s own body.68 Thus, a prayer composed by Bishop Fulbert of Chartres early in the eleventh century reads, “With the sign of his holy cross, may the Lord protect my throat, my chest, my heart, my stomach, and all my members, interior and exterior, and especially my hands.”69 The emphasis on the hands is of particular interest as it refers to the most intimate of the five senses, that of touch, which responds particularly to the sculpted image.70 By the end of the twelfth century, the regular guided meditation on the Crucifixion was further fostered by illustrated treatises on prayer that encouraged the monk or devotee to deploy specific bodily attitudes while praying before a crucifix, including conforming one’s body to the corpus of Christ on the cross.71 The assimilation of one’s body to that of Christ was another technique of fostering the affectus or affective love of God. The high point of these practices in the Middle Ages was reached in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries with the rise of mendicant devotions to the Passion and the

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cross. Saint Dominic himself developed a detailed treatise on prayer, illustrated with a series of seven prayer gestures before the crucifix, to be undertaken within the privacy of the monk’s cell.72 Ultimately, life-sized crucifixes and Deposition groups in the sanctuary, as well as smaller altar crosses, provided stimuli for imagining the hidden but real presence of the historical body of Christ in the Eucharist. Seeing the elevated host in conjunction with the crucifix was a means of enhancing the multisensory experience of the Eucharist promoted in contemporaneous theology. In communion, one not only beheld the body of Christ in the eucharistic elements; indirectly, one was also inspired to see its invisible identity with the flesh of Christ, to taste and touch it as the means of access to the higher, spiritual senses that unified the body of the believer to Christ. Sculptural images clearly contributed to the stimulation of the senses of sight and touch but, as Rupert’s vision suggests, could also evoke the capacity to taste the sweet mouth of Christ. As Fulton has shown, Rupert’s sense of Christ’s sweetness from kissing Christ also alluded to the sweetness of tasting Christ’s body, the ultimate union with him in the Eucharist.73 Finally, the priest, through his actions and speech, made Christ’s presence manifest to the sense of hearing, voicing the very words of Christ to his disciples as part of the consecration: “Hoc est corpus meum.” It was these words that ultimately inspired the church to define the nature of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist as a literal one: in saying, “This is my body,” Christ suggested the identity of the Eucharist with his own, historical body sacrificed on the cross.74 Thus, according to Odo of Cambrai (d. 1113), when Christ “blessed, he made his body. What before was bread, was made flesh by the benediction.”75 Furthermore, Odo emphasizes, it is the very speaking of Christ’s

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words that effects the transformation.76 The priest, personifying Christ, reasserted the efficacious presence of Christ, creating his flesh in blood through spoken word and gesture. Similarly, the sculpted crucifix made the invisible reality palpably present.

Images in Living Color: The Virgin and Child

Images of the Virgin and Child, often described as the Sedes Sapientiae (Throne of Wisdom), are among the most ubiquitous sculptures in the round in the medieval church, gaining universal currency throughout Europe during the twelfth century. Their history and functions are well documented, and extant examples survive from the tenth century.77 The Morgan Madonna, originally from Auvergne, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, is among the best-preserved examples from the twelfth century, including substantial remains of original polychrome on face and hands as well as some of the polychrome and tin relief ornament on the clothing (color plate 5).78 Typical of Romanesque versions of the theme, it depicts the Virgin Mary and the Christ Child in her lap facing frontally out to the viewer, with the Virgin’s body modeled with deep-contoured draperies rendered in almost absolute symmetry. The Virgin Mary, wearing an ultramarine blue mantle and veil over a long vermilion tunic, holds the Child with both hands and casts her eyes downward as if to meet the glance of onlookers at a lower vantage point. The Christ Child, routinely perceived as adult in demeanor, also casts eyes downward and extends his projecting right arm to acknowledge the viewer—originally in blessing—while holding a book in his left. He wears a bright blue tunic with porphyry-colored mantle and gold trim.

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His receding hairline and rather stern flat mouth contribute to the impression of maturity. This type of sculpture of the Virgin and Child is commonly interpreted in comparison with later Gothic versions of the figure group as relatively abstract in form, a representation of the theological idea of Mary as the Throne of Wisdom, the seat of Christ as the incarnation of divine wisdom at his birth. But this distorts what must have been the striking perception by medieval beholders, for whom these sculptures appeared to come alive. As rigid and lifeless as they may appear to present-day spectators, these figures were for medieval viewers imbued with the potential for enlivenment. The appeal to multiple senses was fostered in various ways: by the formal novelty of sculpture in the round on a large scale—the seated figure of the Virgin reached almost three feet in height; by the gazes and outstretched arms, which interact with the spectator in real space; by their physical movement in processions and liturgical drama; by their function as a backdrop to the Mass and the embodiment of real presence; and finally by their bright polychrome, which emphasized the incarnational rather than the divine. The development of these figures has often been tied to that of reliquary images, such as the early example of Sainte Foy at Conques, whose wooden core shows traces of an earlier layer of revetment and has been connected with the translation of her relics to Conques in 864–75.79 It shares the format, scale, and radiant metal revetment of three early sculptures in the round depicting the Virgin and Child: the Golden Madonna of Essen (color plate 6), dated to around 980–90 under Abbess Mathilde; an even earlier reliquary statue of the Virgin and Child made for Notre-Dame-du-Port at Clermont-Ferrand under

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Bishop Stephen II around 946, which survived up until the French Revolution; and the Great Golden Madonna (Grosse Goldene Madonna) in the Dom-Museum of Hildesheim, dated to ca. 1010/15.80 Forsyth has cautioned against assuming that the presence of relics was necessary to justify the reinvention of sculpture in the round, however. Instead she traces the roots of the acceptance of sculptures in the round to the Carolingian period, citing textual evidence for sculpted figures of rulers that drew ultimately on a Roman tradition of ruler portraiture in which sculpted images served as proxy for imperial presence. Among the earliest examples she cites is a late Carolingian statue in gold sent in 871 by King Salomon of Brittany to Pope Hadrian II in lieu of the ruler’s own promised pilgrimage to Rome.81 The identity of this statue is disputed, however; Beate Fricke has recently argued that it was a figure of Peter rather than a portrait of Salomon himself.82 Other textual evidence for religious sculpture early in the ninth century has been called into question by Jean Wirth. The silver or silver-gilt figures listed as donations to churches in Carolingian Rome in the Liber Pontificalis, for example, may be reliefs or even icons with metal revetment rather than statues. Wirth includes in this group of images the figures of cherubim set atop columns of a ciborium, and an image of the Virgin and Child, offered by Pope Paul I (757–67).83 Thus, it would seem that, in contrast to the crucifix, for which there is firm evidence of the sculpted form in the Carolingian period, the emergence of the Sedes Sapientiae and figures of the Virgin and Child in large-scale sculpture in the round cannot be convincingly documented earlier than the tenth century, and these figures only become more widely accepted in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

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The earliest surviving example, the Golden Madonna of Essen (ca. 970), shares with the reliquary portraits discussed in chapter 3 a shimmering hammered-gold cladding molded over a wooden core, and intense, almond-shaped eyes inset in glass with bright turquoise blue glass irises (color plate 6).84 In contrast to the frontal, hieratic Ottonian images of the Sedes Sapientiae from the early eleventh century and French examples from the twelfth century such as the Morgan Madonna (color plate 5), the Essen Madonna reveals a greater intimacy between Virgin and Christ Child, and overall a greater vivacity in its composition. The legs of the Virgin are arranged in contrapposto, and Christ sits astride the Virgin’s lap, embraced by her left arm as she gestures with her right hand in a variation of the Byzantine Hodegetria type.85 Given that the Ottonian court was directly connected with Byzantium through the marriage of Otto II to the Byzantine princess Theophano, and she is thought to have brought a number of works of religious art with her, including ivory panels, the role of Byzantine metalwork icons as sources of inspiration for image practice is worth considering further.86 Icons of the Virgin Hodegetria on a monumental scale were known to be used at the Byzantine capital, and by the tenth century they were commonly adorned with revetment that facilitated the tactile interaction with the icon through touching and kissing.87 Indeed, these metal-clad sculptures resemble repoussée metal relief icons such as that of Saint Michael in the treasury of San Marco in Venice. The connection, then, was not simply one of iconographic or even stylistic influence; rather, it entailed the appropriation of a specifically large-scale Marian image used for cultic devotion. What is more, these images resembled panel icons in the way they were used in public rituals. Like the icons of Mary in

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Rome and Constantinople, the Essen Madonna was paraded through the streets on major Marian feast days such as the Assumption and Purification, and, like the Byzantine Hodegetria, the Essen Madonna and its later European successors could be used as protectors of the community. Although the festal processions of the Essen Madonna are first documented in the fourteenth-century Liber ordinarius of Essen, they parallel the kinds of liturgical processions and dramatic reenactments of sacred history documented much earlier in other parts of Europe, offering significant insight into the ways in which sculpture came alive for its spectators on specific ritual occasions.88 The most elaborate uses of the Essen Madonna occurred on the feast of the Purification or Candlemas, each February 2.89 Early in the morning the youngest canon brought the Madonna from the treasury of the Essen Münster to the Market Church of Saint Gertrude. Meanwhile, a procession of lights formed at the Münster in the upper choir, moving from there to the entrance to the larger complex, where the canonesses awaited the arrival of the image, carried in procession from the Church of Saint Gertrude and through the town by the canons and scholars. In front of the Essen Münster, the celebrant crowned the statue with its golden wreath, and then it was carried through the Church of Saint John and the atrium of the Münster, known as “Paradise,” and finally into the Münsterkirche, as canons sang antiphons recalling the Presentation of the Christ Child in the Temple and the recognition of Christ by Simeon. The entry of the statue was thus associated with a liturgical reenactment of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple. What is more, the use of the visual, tactile image to embody the relationship union between Christ and his Mother, as well as between Christ and the faithful

individuals of his church, is emphasized in accompanying antiphons. The “Adorna thalamaum,” an antiphon originating in a late eighth-century Byzantine hymn of Saint Cosmas of Jerusalem (d. 781), was sung by the canons on the Feast of the Purification as they processed from their Stiftskirche of Saint John, adjacent to the Münster, to the Church of Saint Gertrude to greet the Virgin Mary and Christ Child in the form of the statue. Alluding to the language of the Song of Songs, it parallels certain antiphons associated with the celebration of the Coronation and Assumption of the Virgin on August 15: “Adorn your bridal chamber, O Sion, and receive Christ the King; welcome Mary, who is the gate of Heaven, for she carries the glorious King of the new light. A virgin she remains, bringing in her hands the Son before the daystar, him whom Simeon, taking into his arms, prophesied to the peoples to be the Lord of Life and death, and the Savior of the world.”90 The Münster, which is to receive back its image of Mary, is thus cast as a bridal chamber for Christ, who is received by the celebrant on behalf of the church. Mary embodies the church and thus also represents the faithful canons and canonesses, who strive for a virginal union with Christ, and she is crowned as Bride of Christ by the celebrant when her image reaches the Münster. The theme of virginal union, embodied in the presentation of the statue at the Münster, is reinforced by another antiphon at the time of the coronation of the statue: “Behold the miracle: the Mother of the Lord conceived, the Virgin not knowing male union. And remaining overwhelmed with a noble burden, Mary, joyful, perceives herself as a mother, who is unacquainted with being a wife.”91 The specific type represented by the Essen Madonna would only rarely be repeated,92 and over

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time the patrons of these figures throughout Europe largely favored frontal images in polychromed wood; even in the cases of those images that retained gold revetment for the robes, the face and hands were now left exposed to reveal the painted flesh. This significant shift in medium as well as pose is paralleled in the development of crucifixes already discussed above, and seems designed to enhance the apprehension of the Incarnation by explicitly representing the flesh of Christ and his human mother. This is in itself a form of justification of the image as confirmation of God made flesh, a material reality that is enhanced both by the medium of sculpture, which asserts its presence in real time and space, and by the application of polychrome, a topic to be addressed below. It is also drawn into relation to the sacrament of the Eucharist and real presence. As has already been discussed, the sculpted crucifix was understood by the late Carolingian Empire as confirming the reenactment of the Passion in each Eucharist, making visible what was often represented in the pages of the sacramentary in the canon of the Mass, for the crucifix was placed in proximity to the altar, either above or behind it, eventually serving as the focal point of the sanctuary screen at the end of the twelfth century.93 While the Essen Madonna was usually kept in the treasury, carried in triumphant processions, and brought to an altar only for special occasions, it became common by the end of the eleventh century for the Sedes Sapientiae to find a permanent position behind the high altar. The lost wooden image from Clermont-Ferrand, the earliest known example of the Sedes Sapientiae type, was placed atop a jasper column behind the high altar, and in some cases this arrangement is preserved, as at Orcival in Auvergne and at Notre-Dame-la-Grande in Poitiers.94 In other cases—Chartres Cathedral, Châtillon-sur-Loire,

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Coutances, Cambrai, Le Puy, and Vézelay—the image was placed on an altar in the crypt. The juxtaposition of the Virgin and Child figures with the altar suggests that these sculpted images, like the sculpted crucifix, were activated in conjunction with the ritual of the Eucharist to represent the hidden but real presence of Christ in the host. As such, they were part of a network of images. In the case of the Sedes Sapientiae, the power of real presence, made so palpable in the sculpted form, was complemented by repetition, by the doubling of flesh in the form of the Christ Child and the form of the host, which from the twelfth century was elevated at the consecration, and sometimes also by the repetition of the theme of the Virgin and Child in an apse composition. Catalonian Romanesque apses, for example, frequently depict the Virgin and Child enthroned, flanked by the three Magi, to represent the Epiphany but also to allude to Mary’s role as tabernacle and to highlight the miracle of eucharistic transformation.95 The apse of San Juan de Tredos, now installed in the Cloisters Museum in New York, depicts the Virgin and Child in Majesty, enthroned within a mandorla and flanked by the three Magi presenting their gifts, as models for the offertory.96 The two archangels, acting as guardian figures on either side, hold petition scrolls that may, as Juan de Lasarte suggests, be connected with the intercessory prayers for individuals recited within the Mass.97 The altar itself, for which the sculpted images served as backdrop, was understood not only as the sepulcher of Christ but also as the manger. In twelfth-century Epiphany plays, the altar is the setting for the reenactment of the Adoration of the Magi, with the sculpture standing in for the Virgin and Child to receive gifts from monks in the guise of the three Magi.98 The image thus offered a proxy for

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Fig. 10 Chartres Cathedral, Portail Royal, detail of right tympa-

num with Sedes Sapientiae, ca. 1145. Limestone relief.

the figures of Christ and his mother for the reenactment. It is precisely these associations that are visualized in the right tympanum of the Portail Royal of Chartres (fig. 10).99 In the upper register, a frontal representation of the Madonna and Child replicates the wooden Sedes Sapientiae and is placed beneath a (now-damaged) ciborium, suggesting the placement of the Madonna on an altar beneath the ciborium. In the lower register, on the central axis, aligned with the Madonna and Child, is an altar as part of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, and in the lintel, also aligned with the central axis, is the crib of the Nativity, which itself becomes an

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altar-like structure. As Adolf Katzenellenbogen observed, the imagery of the central axis is strongly eucharistic, symbolically connecting the Virgin and Child—the embodiment of Incarnation—with the eucharistic sacrifice on the altar, and the idea of Christ in swaddling clothes as the panem mysticum of the Eucharist. Taking into account liturgical texts celebrating Mary used at Chartres in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, Margot Fassler has expanded the eucharistic connotations of the Sedes Sapientiae image to encompass the role of Mary as tabernacle and temple—a symbol of Ecclesia and the body of

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the church, as well as the container of the flesh of Christ.100 Fassler cites the “Clara chorus,” a late eleventh-century sequence hymn for the Feast of Dedication, in which Mary is described as a series of architectural metaphors alluding to the temple—as “blessed courtyard,” as “house about which the ancient history resounded,” as a “throne without blemish,” and as “resting place for all ages.” As Fassler explains, Mary is simultaneously cast as mercy seat within the Temple of Solomon, architectural setting of the Holy of Holies, and precursor for the Christian sanctuary.101 This language is inspired in part by Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews (9:11–14), in which Paul refers to Christ being “made a high priest of the good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle.” A sermon by Arnaud of Bonneval written in the mid-twelfth century in the region of Chartres, De laudibus beatae Mariae virginis, makes this connection more directly: “The flesh of Mary and of Christ is one. . . . Behold the tabernacle of God, having within it the Holy of Holies, the rod of signs, the tablets of the testament, the altar of incense, the twin cherubim gazing at each other, the manna, and the Mercy seat fully exposed without the cloud. The shrine that is the Virgin contained these things in itself, not in figure, but in very truth, revealing . . . the bread of life, a food not completely consumable.”102 Similarly, Bernard of Clairvaux, in a sermon on the Purification, succinctly compares the child in Mary’s womb to the consecrated host offered on the altar: “Offer your son, sacred Virgin, and present the blessed fruit of your womb to God. Offer the blessed host, pleasing to God, for the reconciliation of us all.”103 Visually this theme is conveyed by the architectural juxtaposition of Mary with the ciborium in the Chartres tympanum, as well as the canopy over the stained-glass window of the Sedes Sapientiae at Chartres—the Belle

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Verrière—which, Fassler convincingly proposes, would have served as a form of altarpiece in stained glass, the backdrop to the high altar of the Romanesque cathedral, prior to the fire of 1194. In the context of other churches in which the Sedes Sapientiae was placed on or behind the altar, framed by the ciborium canopy, the connection between Eucharist, Incarnation, and human flesh of Christ, contained within the temple or tabernacle of Mary’s body, was further reinforced in three-dimensional form. Although the altarpiece is often described as an invention of the thirteenth century, following the proclamation of transubstantiation at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, and is particularly associated with panel painting in Italy,104 sculpted altarpieces or reredoses already existed in the twelfth century. Particularly significant due to its early date and its close resemblance to portable sculptures of the Sedes Sapientiae in wood is the limestone relief retable from Carrières-Saint-Denis (color plate 7). Now in the Louvre, it is dated to the second quarter of the twelfth century and was possibly given by Abbot Suger at the time of the parish’s foundation as a dependency of the Abbey of Saint-Denis in 1137.105 Enhancing the comparison with the portable figures, the retable includes substantial remains of polychrome, including traces of vermilion for Mary’s tunic and her lips, ultramarine blue for Christ’s tunic, and flesh color on the faces. Within its central bay is seated the frontal figure group of the Virgin and Child, framed within a vaulted canopy or ciborium supported by two stocky columns adorned with chevron patterns. Mary envelops the figure of Christ with her arms and seems to present him to the viewer much as in the free-standing wooden counterparts. On either side are two narratives: at the left, the theme of

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Incarnation is announced with Gabriel’s appearance to Mary in the Annunciation; at the right, Christ is baptized by John the Baptist as an angel descends from heaven to confirm that this man is also the Son of God. The presence of this episode balances the angelic announcement of the Incarnation with a confirmation of divinity, but it also recalls that baptism is the necessary sacramental preparation for entry into the body of Christ and the reception of the body of Christ in the Eucharist. The enlarged central figures confirm Christ’s humanity and the identity of the human flesh with the eucharistic elements at the moment of consecration. The idea that this work is among the earliest altarpieces has not always been accepted, in part because of its damaged state and the possibility that it formed part of a larger composition, and in part because it does not fit into the conventional narrative of altarpieces being largely inspired by the official proclamation of transubstantiation in 1215.106 But it is hard to see this high-relief panel featuring a central tabernacle framing the Sedes Sapientiae as serving any other purpose, and indeed this has been the prevailing assumption since the work was discovered. Furthermore, the perspective of this work, which tilts the figure of Mary and Christ to face downward, is perfectly in keeping with a placement on or behind the altar, as is the iconographic program. The emphatic architectural framing of the central group and the two side panels seems to allude directly to the idea of Mary as tabernacle, temple, and ecclesia. The Carrières-Saint-Denis retable, though rare in French Romanesque art, is hardly isolated within the broader context of twelfth-century liturgical furnishings. An interesting parallel is offered by the retable to the high altar in Erfurt Cathedral (fig. 11).107 Executed in stucco and dated to the third

quarter of the twelfth century, this retable suggests a further stage in the assimilation of portable sculpture to architectural relief sculpture. In this case, the frontal, enthroned Madonna and Child is part of a larger mural composition framed within a semicircular arc to form a composition resembling a tympanum. The Madonna and Child, almost completely carved in the round, is situated within its own central niche, recessed behind the surface of the wall, which is adorned with a frieze depicting eight virgin martyrs holding palms, and above, the bust of Christ emerging from the clouds, flanked by two local bishop saints, Adelar and Eoban. In this case, the larger program connects martyrdom with the eucharistic sacrifice, as pathways to communion with God in a vision that moves from the incarnational to the celestial. Polychrome and enamel, of which there are surviving traces, would have enhanced the effect of the vision, linking the mural reliefs with portable wood sculpture. While the incorporation of the Sedes Sapientiae into retables and tympana fixed the statue in a permanent position, emphasizing its function as backdrop to eucharistic ritual action, the implication that such brightly colored statues could come alive was fostered by liturgical and paraliturgical uses. Statues of the Virgin and Child became the focal point of the Officium Stellae, a liturgical reenactment of the journey of the Magi and their homage before the Christ Child.108 While monks or clerics played the roles of the three Magi, Joseph, and other witnesses, it was the sculpture that personified the Virgin and the Christ Child, enthroned on the altar, and in certain instances rubrics make reference to the opening of curtains suspended from the ciborium over the altar in order to dramatically reveal the Christ Child to the Magi. That these plays fostered a particular sensory

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Fig. 11 Erfurt Cathedral retable, 1175–1200. Stucco relief.

Photo: © Bildarchiv Foto Marburg / Foto: Hirmer, Albert / Ernstmeier-Hirmer, Irmgard/Art Resource, New York

engagement with the image is clear not only from the dramatic unveiling of the image at strategic points, but from the procession of the image and references to people desiring to touch the image. Forsyth cites the account of the miraculous preservation of the Sedes Sapientiae from a fire at the Abbey of Sainte-Marie-Madeleine in Vézelay. After it was discovered that the statue, though blackened from the fire, remained intact in the crypt, and a cache of relics from within the statue was recovered, the abbot had the statue placed for veneration on the high altar to display to the faithful.

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Thereafter, as the statue was being processed to the crypt, “such a crowd of people gathered, wishing to kiss it, or even touch it, that they were scarcely able to restore it to its original place in the presence of all.”109 The liturgical movements and manipulations of these statues not only appealed to the sense of sight but also allowed for access to the sacred through touch and hearing, as actors in the liturgical dramas gave speech to the statue in response to the Magi in the play and participated in the dialogue of the Song of Songs uniting bride and bridegroom, as sung in the Assumption procession

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to signify the celestial union of Christ and his mother.110

From Portable Images in the Round to Architectural Relief

While it has often been argued in past scholarship that portable sculpture in the round and relief sculpture on liturgical furnishings provided the technical and formal training grounds for the reinvention of architectural sculpture in the eleventh century, my own purpose is to suggest how both portable and high-relief architectural sculpture were implicated in stimulating a multisensory religious experience, and further, how larger-scale, more public compositions intentionally represented or quoted portable cult images to suggest that they could function in a similar way as part of a more public or communal devotion. Both the sculpted Sedes Sapientiae and the crucifix, we have seen, were activated in relation to the liturgy of the Eucharist as well as in paraliturgical dramas. In the Epiphany plays and in the ritual veneration and reenactment of the Crucifixion on Good Friday, they were, at times, physically touched and moved in ways that made them appear alive to the physical senses. This lifelikeness, which, I have argued, ultimately inspired visionary experience of sculpted images that came alive to speak to and embrace their devotees, was further enhanced by polychrome. As we have seen, both image types developed from metalwork images in the Carolingian period to brightly colored wood sculptures in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Although relatively little polychrome remains on most of these early crucifixes and statues of the Sedes Sapientiae, conservation work and careful technical analysis have revealed much of the original palette, allowing

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us to see how much more striking their impact would have been.111 Recent pigment analysis of the Morgan Madonna (color plate 5) has revealed a vibrant color scheme, tonal modeling, and the addition of simulated gilded-tin relief on the garments—all features designed to enhance the illusionistic presence of the sacred figures. Flesh tones were also made more luminous by the use of oil glazes. A second, closely related Sedes Sapientiae figure at the Cloisters, originally from Montvianeix in Auvergne, reveals a similar palette as well as simulated gold-relief adornment to garments and the illusionistic depiction of distinct stones—porphyry and verde antico— on the throne. As Lucretia Kargère and Adriana Rizzo have concluded in a technical analysis of these and other examples of wood sculpture in the Metropolitan Museum’s collection, including the torso of Christ from a crucifix, the conventional narrative about color in Romanesque sculpture working counter to sculpted effects to create two-dimensional or decorative effects is untenable. While they do not specifically consider the potential impact of these sculptures on medieval viewers, they do offer reconstructions that indicate the intensity of the color of these large-scale crucifixes and Sedes Sapientiae figures—a palette dominated by ultramarine blue and vermilion, green and gold, comparable in effect to early stained glass. The luminosity of these figures would surely have captured the attention of the viewer, standing in a relatively dimly lit stone church building, contrasting with the somber garments of monks and lay parishioners. Flickering candlelight catching the deeply carved folds of drapery and relief decorations and passing across the reflective surfaces of the glazed flesh areas would have animated the presence of these figures, even when at rest behind or above the altar.

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When we take into consideration both the affective quality of polychrome sculpted images, occupying real space, and the physical engagements with them in the context of festal processions and paraliturgical reenactments of sacred history, it is little wonder that these figures were increasingly associated with multisensory visionary experience within both communal worship and individual devotional contexts. As the exegesis of the Song of Songs in the twelfth century suggested, the physical love between the bride and bridegroom anticipated the spiritual love of Christ for his mother, and, in turn, the mutual love of Christ and the church, including its individual members. The sensual language of love was but a bridge to a more perfect spiritual affectus or love of and union with God. The material image and the sensory response to these objects could thus be described as a “site of desire” for a spiritual union achieved beyond the realm of the senses.112 Appealing to multiple senses, these statues inspired the same kind of visionary experiences as reliquary portraits did, but, as Jean-Marie Sansterre has emphasized, they worked autonomously without the need for relics.113 We have already seen that Reginald of Durham offers a vivid account of Saint Godric’s vision of the Virgin and Child and the crucifix in which the Christ Child issued from the mouth of the Crucified and was embraced by the arms of the Virgin, who kissed him before taking him into her lap.114 Clearly the choice of material, in this case polychromed wood, and the gesture of outstretched limbs had something to do with the “lifelike” properties ascribed to the statue, but the visionary was also mentally and ritually prepared through his intense devotional activity and through previous experiences of these images as moving and speaking in the contexts of liturgical drama and processions.

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While the body of Christ on the cross was a particular focus of contemplation and concrete religious experience because it was at times taken down to be intimately viewed, manipulated, touched, and even kissed, I would argue that architectural sculpture achieved a comparable status within religious experience, animated by the presence of living bodies engaged in both communal and individual ritual actions. The connection between portable and architectural sculpture, between rituals engaging objects inside the church and the monumental sculptural programs that came increasingly to dominate the exterior façades of monastic churches, is often quite explicit in terms of the subject matter. The portable sculptures of the Sedes Sapientiae, usually displayed in the sanctuary behind the high altar, are advertised, as it were, in numerous sculpted portals, inserted as frontal statues for veneration by the Magi as part of the Epiphany narrative, as already seen in the case of the right tympanum of the Incarnation in the Portail Royal at Chartres (ca. 1145; fig. 10). Other examples include the south tympanum of Sainte-Marie-Madeleine at Vézelay (ca. 1120–25; fig. 112), the north tympanum of Saint-Gilles-du-Gard (ca. 1140), and the west tympanum of Verona Cathedral (ca. 1139; color plate 8). Ilene Forsyth, noting a number of direct, formal, and iconographic parallels between extant wooden statues of the Sedes Sapientiae and the figures represented in architectural sculptures as part of Epiphany narratives, has argued that monumental images are representations of the Epiphany plays, deliberately showing the Madonna and Child as a statue, an image within an image engaged by human actors.115 I would go a step further and propose that the high-relief images of sculpted portals did not merely “represent” the image as if it were participating in an Epiphany play, but also served as a monumental

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Fig. 12 Christ in Majesty, Adoration of the Magi, and Presentation in the Temple, Notre-Dame-du-Port, Clermont-Ferrand, west portal, ca. 1160. Stone relief.

form of devotional image. In each of these examples, the Madonna and Child occupy the central axis or are placed very close to it, and, with the exception of Verona, they are singled out by juxtaposition with a ciborium, a clear allusion to the ciborium over the high altar, where the statues were placed inside the church. In the case of Verona, the Sedes Sapientiae is carved from a distinct block that projects from the center of the tympanum, and the halo of the Virgin overlaps the archivolt, thus giving it the appearance of an independent icon, while two related narratives appear at either side, the Annunciation to the

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Shepherds at left and the Journey and Adoration of the Magi at right. The Virgin appears resolutely frontal in her gaze and pose, while the Christ Child “appears” to move by inclining his head slightly to the right to face the three Magi. The tympanum of Clermont-Ferrand (fig. 12) is more complex and suggests an interesting relationship with the twelfth-century retables of Erfurt and Carrières-Saint-Denis (fig. 11, color plate 7). The Clermont tympanum resembles in structure the Erfurt retable insofar as it comprises two zones in high relief: Christ enthroned in majesty in the

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heavenly zone, flanked by cherubim and the four Evangelists, an abbreviated Maiestas Domini with reference to the vision of Ezekiel in the Temple sanctuary; and below, the Virgin and Child, adjacent to a central altar and ciborium, receives the three Magi at left, while narratives of the Presentation and Baptism are presented at right, thus reinforcing an emphasis on the visible, material sacraments of the church—the Eucharist and baptism. At Clermont, the Virgin and Child, though turned slightly to the left, is clearly shown as an independent image based on the Sedes Sapientiae figures, placed in the vicinity of the altar on the central axis, as its portable counterpart in the church would have originally been placed. The altar also serves as the backdrop for the Presentation of Christ in the Temple in the adjacent scene, an allusion to the eucharistic sacrifice already seen at Chartres. The Clermont tympanum offers an explicit invitation into the sanctuary of the church, where Christ was made materially present in the eucharistic elements consecrated on the altar as well as in the sculpted figure of the Sedes Sapientiae, which once stood behind the high altar. This tympanum also offers a form of anagogical pathway—an upward movement through material images of the incarnate Christ and the sacrifice at the altar to the mystical vision of Christ in majesty amid the living creatures and the cherubim. Like its portable counterpart, the relief sculpture, originally resplendent with polychrome, some of which still survives, would have served as a devotional image in its own right. Spectators, projected into the role of Magi, were invited to see the statue of the Sedes Sapientiae come alive as part of the narrative with the Christ Child turning in the lap of his mother to receive their homage and offerings. One further example removes the Sedes Sapientiae from an explicitly narrative context to heighten

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the role of the tympanum as a focus of multisensory devotion. The tympanum of the ruined abbey of Notre-Dame-du-Pré at Donzy-le-Pré in Burgundy (ca. 1140–50; fig. 13) again depicts the Virgin and Child enthroned beneath a ciborium, as if to locate them in the sanctuary beyond, but in this case the Magi are replaced by a single angel, at left, who evokes the olfactory sense, and a comparison between terrestrial and celestial devotion, by swinging a large censer.116 The censer itself is missing, but the traces of its presence include the outline of the chains, and small holes form a circular pattern to suggest the presence of an actual metalwork censer, which would have enhanced the veracity and palpability of the image and its links to the ongoing liturgy in the abbey church. At right, the prophet Isaiah unravels a scroll, alluding to an oral dimension of devotional sculpture; it would originally have been inscribed, likely in paint in this case, with the text of his prophecy of the Virgin Birth (7:14). The very act of reading the text in conjunction with the images would have been performed orally, thus enhancing the sense of sound to the apprehension of the sculpted tympanum. The Crucifixion appears much less frequently as the subject of a tympanum, so the case is harder to make that sculpted crucifixes were specifically represented in monumental sculpture to allude to more portable images within the church. The earliest known example is found in the tympanum of the southwest entrance of Saint-Gilles-du-Gard (1140s; fig. 14). In this case, the Crucifixion is complemented by representations of Ecclesia and Synagoga, in addition to the traditional figures of Mary and John at the base of the cross. As Carra Ferguson O’Meara has argued, the Passion narratives of the façade refer at various points to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem—for example, depicting the crown of

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Fig. 13 Sedes Sapientiae, Notre-Dame-du-Pré at Donzy-le-Pré in

Burgundy, ca. 1140–1150. Limestone relief. Photo: Pierre Boucaud at bourgognemedievale.com.

the synagogue as the dome of the Templum Domini, thus suggesting a connection with the Second Crusade as well as the Knights Templar, for whom Saint-Gilles had become their European headquarters.117 The fact that the cross and the corpus of Christ are larger in scale and cast in higher relief than the subsidiary figures might also suggest that the tympanum alludes to a large crucifix from the interior of the church, an impression that is also enhanced by the fact that the cross overlaps and is projected forward from the upper frame of the Crucifixion, as if to make it more accessible for

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viewing and devotion. The fact remains, however, that this is an isolated example with very particular historical associations with crusade. A stronger argument for the representation of the cross as a material object in monumental sculpture can be made in connection with images of the sign of the Son of Man in the Last Judgment, and with images of the Deposition from the Cross. In the tympanum of the Last Judgment at Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne (ca. 1130–40; fig. 86), the sign of the Son of Man from Matthew’s vision of the Second Coming is displayed in the form of

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what appears to be a metalwork cross with flared terminals, displayed like a processional cross on a high stand but held aloft as if for veneration by two angels.118 Christ himself is enthroned in front of the cross with arms outstretched to emphasize the wounds suffered on the crucifix, which, we have seen earlier, were given special attention in the Adoration of the Cross-Crucifix in Good Friday liturgies. The rarity of representations of the crucifix or Crucifixion in architectural sculpture may be explained by the emergence of the Deposition from the Cross as an alternative image for the Crucifixion, beginning in the late tenth century in Ottonian manuscript illumination and frequently serving as a substitute for the Crucifixion in monumental narrative cycles beginning in the early twelfth century.119 In the cloister of Santo Domingo de Silos, where, we have already seen, the wounded body of Christ is offered for multisensory devotion in the relief of the Doubting Thomas, the Deposition from the Cross (fig. 15) replaces and very much conforms to the composition of the Crucifixion, except that Mary and John are now joined by Nicodemus, who removes the nails from the hands of Christ, and Joseph, who embraces the body of Christ and begins to remove it from the cross.120 The liturgical resonances of this scene are enhanced by the fact that three angels above the cross swing censers, a reminder of the fumigation of the body on the crucifix in the liturgical Deposition of Christ on Holy Saturday, and also by the veils held in the hands of other angels, which can be linked both to the unveiling of the cross for adoration on Good Friday and the corporals or liturgical cloths used to veil the reserved sacrament. A parallel for this iconography appears in the only example in which the Deposition is depicted in the more public

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Fig. 14 Crucifixion, Saint-Gilles-du-Gard, left tympanum, ca. 1140s. Limestone relief. Photo: Mary Ann Sullivan, Digital Imaging Project, Bluffton University.

setting of a portal—the tympanum of the Puerta del Perdón at San Isidoro in León (fig. 16). In this case, the Deposition from the Cross, carved on a separate block, occupies the central axis of a three-part composition including the Ascension of Christ and the Women at the Empty Tomb. The handling of the physical body of Christ on the cross, and the angels swinging thuribles from above the cross, again suggests a direct reference to the liturgical reenactment of the Deposition and Burial of Christ. This paraliturgical drama, as we have already seen in the introduction, was represented in the form of portable Deposition groups beginning in the late eleventh century in Languedoc and northern Spain. These wooden sculptures often had a detachable body of Christ, which fostered a tactile engagement with the body of Christ in the reenactment of the Deposition

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Fig. 15 Deposition from the Cross, Santo Domingo de Silos, ca. 1100. Photo: C. and E. V. del Álamo.

and stimulated the imagination of viewers of the same composition in architectural sculpture. The translation of portable sculptures into stone suggests not only a desire to advertise or anticipate the experience of sacred images within the church, but also the potential understanding of portable and monumental sculptures in comparable terms, as devotional images designed to engage the senses. Transferred from the realm of independent cult

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Fig. 16 Deposition from the Cross, flanked by Ascension and Women at the Empty Tomb, San Isidoro, León, Puerta del Perdón, tympanum, ca. 1120. Marble relief. Photo: C. and E. del Álamo.

statues into more public narrative images on the exterior façades of churches, these statues are newly vivified both by participating in larger stories and through the liturgical ceremonies for which they serve as the backdrop.121 It is this argument that will be pursued in subsequent chapters.

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Chapter 2

The Naked and the Nude From Theological Ideal to Sexual Fantasy

I

n the compelling narrative of his frankly erotic vision of the living crucifix discussed in chapter 1, Rupert of Deutz sheds light on the affective quality ascribed to the sculpted image of an almost naked body of Christ. It is not some divine abstraction that compels Rupert to embrace the body of Christ on the cross and engage in what Richard Trexler has described as a long “French kiss,”1 but a fleshly, sensitively modeled, life-sized human body in living color, such as the Spanish crucifix from Catalonia shown in color plate 9. At once a model of redemptive suffering and a locus of passionate, sacred love, drawing on the erotic poetry of the Song of Songs, the crucified body elicits the empathy of the devotee with its weighty, sagging body and bent knees, its inclined head and gaze, its vermilion blood streaming from wounds over pallid flesh. No less affecting is the nearly life-sized, high-relief nude body of Lust on the left wall of the portal of Saint-Pierre at Moissac (fig. 17).2 Fully accessible to the human touch by virtue of its position on the lower level of the portal at the top of three stairs, this strikingly sexual figure offers a rare occasion in a sacred setting to view a female

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Romanesque nude. Depicted as a full-length figure with long tresses of hair and firm breasts, the figure is at once attractive yet repulsive, even fearsome, given that this latter-day Venus is shown in the midst of decay as she is attacked at the points of sexual stimulation—the breasts and vagina—by serpents and toads. While the crucifix and the personification of Luxuria have long been the subject of iconographic analysis, relatively little attention has been given to the nude in Romanesque sculpture and its impact on medieval spectators. Complementing recent approaches to the medieval nude, which emphasize how the genre is defined by culturally constructed “visualities,” I situate the Romanesque nude within a broader historiography of the nude in Western art and the affective response to the unclothed body in sculptures that appear to come alive.3 I contend that the nude is a multivalent genre in Romanesque sculpture. It may refer to a positive image of the God-given human body before the Fall, an image of human suffering and the incarnation of God, as well as an image of sexual desire. It is in this last sense that Romanesque art draws upon the form

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Fig. 17 Lust and demon, Saint-Pierre, Moissac, south porch, ca. 1100–1115. Limestone relief.

and spirit of ancient art to revive a genre that was intended to evoke a strong arousal in the eyes of the beholder. The theme of the affectus—affect or love—was discussed in religious terms for the sculpted crucifix in the previous chapter. Here we will explore a parallel aspect of affect that relates to both sacred and profane love.

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The nude, like the portrait, is a category of Western art that is routinely defined in terms of classical convention, and, as such, it is rarely associated with Romanesque art. In his foundational study of the genre, Sir Kenneth Clark describes the nude as an aesthetic form derived from ancient Greek art, in which the artist portrays the idealized beauty of the unclothed female and male figure as an object of desire and even pride.4 For Clark, “no nude, however abstract, should fail to arouse in the spectator some vestige of erotic feeling . . . and if it does not do so, it is bad art and false morals. The desire to grasp and be united with another human body is so fundamental a part of our nature that our judgment of what is known as ‘pure form’ is inevitably influenced by it.”5 This conception of the nude as an ideal form originates not in antiquity itself but, as Niklaus Himmelmann has shown, in the neoclassical definitions of beauty by Winckelmann and his followers.6 To this notion Clark adds the element of eroticism, which he uses to distinguish the nude from a second category of unclothed figure, the “naked.” Measured against the standard of the Knidian Aphrodite by Praxiteles, one of the most celebrated nude sculptures of antiquity, the best-loved nude in Romanesque sculpture, the prostrate figure of Eve from Saint-Lazare at Autun, seems to fail (fig. 18). For Clark, the latter sculpture is naked rather than nude, because it does not evoke an erotic reaction and embodies instead the shame of original sin. While the nude presents itself in Clark’s terms as “a balanced, prosperous, and confident body” or the “body reformed,” the naked implies the embarrassment and shame of someone deprived of clothes. The nude was “buried” as a genre in medieval art, Clark argues, both because of the demonic connotations of naked idols of pagan gods overthrown by

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the early Christians and because of the Neoplatonic devaluation of the corporeal in favor of the spiritual. After the Fall, Clark argues, the unclothed body “ceased to be the mirror of divine perfection and became an object of humiliation and shame.”7 While Clark is certainly correct that the Genesis narrative fostered a negative view of the naked body for most of the Middle Ages, his notion that “Christian dogma . . . eradicated the image of bodily beauty” implies that the body was intrinsically negative in the eyes of medieval viewers. In fact, by the late eleventh century, theologians rarely saw body and soul in the dualist terms often ascribed to the Middle Ages, but emphasized instead the idea of the body as intrinsically good, as a psychosomatic unity in which body and soul were intimately connected; negative associations were attached less to the body (corpus) per se than to the flesh (caro), which was associated with baser, animal appetites.8 What is more, Clark’s interpretation fails to account for a significant gender imbalance in the representation of male and female nudes, which is rooted in antiquity itself. His positive valorization of female nudes such as the Knidian Aphrodite, for example, obscures the fact that even the goddess of love finds herself in a position of shame, as she tries to cover the parts of her anatomy most alluring to the hetero-male gaze—the breasts and the genitalia. The Venus “Pudica” type, Salomon notes, is defined by the shame associated with the pudenda or “shameful” organs.9 By contrast, the male nudes of Greek antiquity demonstrate confident poses and unflinching display of private parts without embarrassment. In effect, the male nude is the standard of beauty by which all nudes are measured, and indeed this normative gendering of the genre is carried over into the Middle Ages, albeit with some modifications.10

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Fig. 18 Eve holding the apple, from former north portal of Saint-Lazare, Autun, ca. 1125. Limestone relief. Now in Musée Ochier, Autun. Photo: Frank R. Horlbeck, Visual Resources Collection, Department of Art History, University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Clark’s assumptions about the “nude” and its presumed absence from medieval art also represent a profound misreading of medieval attitudes, especially in light of the intensely somatic spirituality of the period under consideration. The unclothed state did not automatically bear the negative stigma of “nakedness.” In medieval Latin, nudus refers variously to that which is revealed, exposed, naked, or uncovered, or to the unclothed state of Adam and Eve both before and after the Fall. The Genesis narrative itself justifies the nude as a positive figure in the prelapsarian state of innocence and again in the purified or restored state of baptism and resurrection. Another spiritual sense of nudity as a form of humility and poverty emerges in medieval religious writings focused on the expression “Nudus nudum Christum sequi” (Follow naked the naked Christ). Though often connected with the Franciscan ideal

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of imitating Christ, it can be traced back to Lactantius and Saint Jerome, who influenced the interpretation in monastic writings of the eleventh and twelfth centuries as an expression of ascetic values of poverty and humility and a distancing of monastic life from worldly cares.11 Thus, Raoul Glaber (985–1047) uses the expression in a homily on the monastic virtue of “voluntary poverty” (pauperitas voluntari). Citing Job, Abraham, David, Elijah, and John the Baptist as exemplars, he affirms, “Truly he is poor both in spirit and material things, who having followed not only the commands, but also the counsels, has sold all that he has and given to the poor, and has followed the naked Christ, naked.”12 The seminaked figure of Christ on the Cross, wearing only the perizonium (color plate 9), offers another range of meanings for the naked or the nude. In this case, the unclothed state reveals the wounded flesh of an abject body as model of humility and self-sacrifice, as well as a focus for compassionate devotion by the spectator. In his response to Bishop Julian of Eclanum, a supporter of Pelagius, Augustine explores the meaning of the naked Christ on the cross, including an extensive discussion of whether Christ had genitalia.13 Arguing that Christ was fully human, Augustine affirms that Christ did have male genitalia but was not susceptible to concupiscence as Adam and Eve were, because Christ’s flesh was not at war with his spirit but in perfect harmony. By the twelfth century the emphasis had shifted to the naked body of Christ as exemplar of humility and as sacrificial body, identified with the consecrated host of the sacramental body of Christ. In explaining why the chalice is uncovered from the beginning of the Mass, Valerannus affirms in a letter to Saint Anselm of Canterbury, “The paschal host, being the naked body [of Christ], is sacrificed

on the altar of the cross; he [Christ] wanted to be offered as a naked body, he who has heard all things from the Father, has made his mark.”14 In the later Middle Ages, the abject body of Christ, emitting blood from open wounds, was considered a source of sacramental nourishment, and, in its emphasis on the humanity of Christ, it elevated the physicality of the body as a “means of access to the divine.”15 Mitchell Merback has further shown that the detailed rendition of Christ’s wounded body on the cross, with reference to specific effects of corporeal punishment, had become a spectacle that mirrored judicial punishment in civil society.16 The abject body of Christ was also projected onto the representations of martyrs as imitators of Christ’s sacrifice. In Merback’s view, both categories of the abject, suffering body cultivated compassion as a spiritual virtue within the disciplined practices of meditation.17 Furthermore, the ordinary Christian could identify with the paradigmatic suffering body of Christ and the martyrs through the cultivation of compassion, an affective process of identifying with the suffering body with the potential to transform the lover into the image of the beloved, in the language of commentaries on the Song of Songs.18 As we have seen in chapter 1, the seminude, crucified body of Christ could elicit an erotically charged response, as in the case of Rupert of Deutz’s vision of kissing and being embraced by a crucifix. In this case, the eroticism is sublimated by the sacred language of the Song of Songs and its allegorical interpretation as an expression of the love of Christ for the church. Robert Mills has gone much further, however, to argue that the naked figures of Christ as well as female and male saints in later medieval art mingled pain, suffering, and, for some viewers, a certain masochistic sexual pleasure or attraction, and further, an identification with

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the body of Christ or the martyr.19 But, as Jeffrey Hamburger and Caroline Bynum have cautioned, there is a singular absence of historical evidence for these projected responses to the naked Christ or the naked martyr by medieval male or female viewers.20 What does emerge from medieval sources is the embrace of paradox. Thus, the point of so many representations of prone, naked martyrs, such as Saint Lawrence or Vincent of Saragossa as shown on a late twelfth-century capital in the cloister of Santa Maria La Mayor, Tudela Cathedral (fig. 19), is not to dwell exclusively on an empathy with the martyr’s pain and suffering—let alone a sadistic pleasure— but to see the impassibility of the saint, in which his body becomes an object of admiration for its ultimate triumph over death.21 Medieval commentaries on Genesis also associated the discovery of “nudity” by Adam and Eve with sinfulness. In a commentary on the Rule of Saint Benedict by Smaragdus of Saint Mihiel (ca. 760–ca. 840), a work much read in the twelfth century, corporeal nudity is associated with the soul’s estrangement from virtue: “Just as there is a nudity of the body, so there is a nudity of the soul. The nudity of the body is to be without clothes; truly the nudity of the soul is to be without virtues. Therefore, just as we must dress our body with clothes, so we must dress the soul with virtues. . . . Adam truly, when he sinned in paradise, did not lose the clothes of his body but the clothes of his soul. He lost his innocence, immortality and glory.”22 A more explicit application to the monastic life and the guarding of monastic chastity is given later in Smaragdus’s commentary in the chapter “On the Manner in Which Monks Should Sleep,” where it is explicitly forbidden for the monk to touch his nude members [membra] lest he suffer from sexual desire and pollution during the night.23

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Fig. 19 Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence, cloister capital, Tudela Cathedral, late twelfth century. Photo: Pamela A. Patton.

By the twelfth century, the allegorical interpretation of virtues as clothing for the naked body and soul gives way in Genesis commentaries to a more explicit focus on the discovery of sexuality as a sign of estrangement from God after the sin of disobedience. Thus, Rupert of Deutz associates the passage “and their eyes were opened” with the confusion of sexual awakening and the closing of interior eyes to God, and thus the loss of his protection. And when they recognized that they were nude [nudos] . . . [,] that they were stripped and comparable to a beast of burden, then they realized that they had been denuded [denudatos], without any protection from God. . . . Therefore it is in a twofold sense that it is said, “and their eyes were opened,” but truly both born from the disgrace of mutual confusion, God being angered, the devil carried away with boisterous

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laughter, and struck by the shame of sex, and the accused souls were twisted together, and their eyes were confounded. For right away, the genital part [genitalis pars] of the body, both on account of sin and pride, began to buffet them both with unbidden movements.24 Similarly, William of Saint-Thierry, commenting on Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, speaks of how the original sin of disobedience caused previously unbidden sexual desire. “This is thus the general plague and inevitable contagion born from Adam. He thus did the deed in paradise, against God’s command, and was punished, and he discovered within himself the movement of his pudenda, for their eyes were opened to whatever they had neither previously sensed, nor feared in the movement of their body. Their eyes were opened, not to seeing, but to contemplating, and thus they took care to cover themselves.”25 A more balanced view of the nude in Romanesque art needs to account for a remarkable diffusion of the unclothed body outside the conventional biblical settings. The “twelfth-century renaissance” saw a renewal of interest in pagan nudes not only as idols or objects of censure, but also as more ambivalent objects of aesthetic appreciation and potential desire. In what follows, the nude will be considered within three different iconographic contexts in Romanesque art: first, as an ideal imago or image of the God-given spirit or soul and its reconstitution at the end of time; second, as an abject or suffering body symbolizing both the virtue of poverty and the frailty of the human condition; and finally, as an object of desire. It is on the latter category that I will focus much of my attention, returning to the example of Moissac to document how the medieval viewer would have responded to the nude.

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Here I will also examine the ambivalence toward the ancient nude in sculpture and its impact on the public display of nudity.

In the Likeness of God: Man as Microcosm

In the account of the creation of Adam in Genesis, Adam is described as being “made in God’s image and likeness” (Genesis 1:26–27). Commentaries on Genesis from Augustine onward emphasized not only that Adam’s soul was created in the image and likeness of God, but that his body was considered a likeness of God, untainted by sin before the Fall. Drawing on Augustine’s Literal Commentary on Genesis, Peter Lombard describes the prelapsarian body of Adam as immortal, comparing it to the future body of the Resurrection.26 Furthermore, the affirmation in Genesis that Adam was created in the “image and likeness of God” was interpreted as pertaining both to the soul or mind and to the body. Summarizing the positions of Augustine and Bede, Peter compares the relationship between the human imago of God and the Trinity to the relationship between the portrait likeness of Caesar on a coin and Caesar himself: “an image is so called [as it is] relative to something whose likeness it bears and which it was made to represent. So it was with the image of Caesar, which bore his likeness and in some way represented him.”27 He goes on to confirm that “man was made in the image and likeness of God in respect to his mind, by which he excels irrational creatures. . . . And so image pertains to form, likeness to nature. Hence man was made in respect to his soul, in the image and likeness, not of Father or son or Holy Spirit, but of the whole Trinity.”28 Finally he cites Bede to the effect that “[Adam] may be said to have been made in the likeness of God in

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respect to the body . . . because his stature is erect, so that the body suits the rational soul because it is erect toward heaven.”29 Hugh of Saint Victor, like Peter, argues that Adam was made in “the image and likeness of God, because in the soul, which is the better part of man, or rather was man himself, was the image and likeness of God”; yet he also specifies that the “corporeal nature could not have received likeness of the Godhead, which was far from its excellence and likeness in this very fact, that it was corporeal.”30 Hugh’s ambivalence is suggested elsewhere when he argues that the material body is informed and “quickened” by the presence of the soul, and that the body of the first man “was made immortal . . . because he could not die, and mortal according to something, because he could die.”31 Likewise, Hugh argues that the body joined to the soul was “proposed [by God] as a pattern of the future society which was to be realized between Himself and rational spirit unto its glorification. . . . Therefore, God confirmed His power and showed His grace, first by fashioning man; and this grace He was to show afterwards by glorifying man, that man might know that if God could join such different natures as body and soul in one union and friendship, by no means would it be impossible for Him to elevate the lowness of the rational creature, although far inferior, to participation in His own glory.”32 It was thus that the prelapsarian body/soul of Adam came to be depicted as an idealized male nude to visualize the twelfth-century concept of man as microcosm.33 The theme is represented multiple times in the manuscripts of Hildegard of Bingen, the female mystic, for whom pictorial images aided an intensely somatic theology (fig. 20).34 In an illustration of the Second Vision in Hildegard’s Liber Divinorum Operum, now in Lucca,

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the abbess herself appears at lower left as witness to a Trinitarian universe set against a glimmering gold ground. The bearded creator emerges from the head of the fiery Holy Spirit, who embraces, in turn, the circular firmament surrounding the world. Anticipating by three hundred years Leonardo da Vinci’s drawing of the “Vitruvian man,” an idealized male nude, the image of God incarnate stands at the center of a circular universe that determines the proportions of his body.35 According to Hildegard, “In the middle of this giant wheel appeared the image of a man of whom the top of the head and the bottom of the sole of the feet extend to the perimeter of the circle of dense, white and luminous air. The height of the human figure is equal to its width if arms and hands are evenly stretched out from the chest. This is so because the firmament, too, is as long as it is wide.”36 The view of man as the microcosm is anticipated in Hildegard’s Causes and Cures: “O man, behold the human creature! For man holds heaven and earth and other created things within himself, he is one form, and within him all things are concealed.”37 In the same work she reinforces the connection between microcosm and macrocosm, referring to the senses: “the firmament is like the head of man, the sun, moon, and stars are like his eyes, the air like his sense of hearing, the winds like his sense of smell, the dew like his sense of taste, the sides of the world like his arms and his sense of touch. And the other creatures, which are in the world, are like his belly, the earth moreover is like his heart.”38 In the image found in the Lucca manuscript of the Book of Divine Works, the man’s head, like the universe, is round in shape; intellectual faculties are linked directly by visible rays to the divine creator and the celestial bodies above him. In this way man’s body was seen to emanate the beauty of the God-given soul. Reinforcing visually his

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Fig. 20 Man as microcosm, Hildegard of Bingen’s Book of Divine Works, Mainz, ca. 1200. Lucca, Biblioteca Statale, Cod. 1942, fol. 9r. Photo: Scala / Art Resource, New York.

prelapsarian innocence and his identity with Christ, this ideal male body is shown without the sign of his sexuality. A slightly earlier version of the male nude as microcosm appears in the so-called Solomon Glossaries (fig. 21), a monastic miscellany (ca. 1165) from the Abbey of Saint George at Prüfening that includes the Commentary by Salomo of Constance. This image more explicitly ties the microcosm to the senses. A naked male figure is connected by

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inscription bands to the four elements of which he is composed—earth, air, water, and fire. The sexual organ in this case is concealed by an inscription band. Here we seem to find a clear hierarchy of senses and elements: the most spiritual elements, fire and air, are also connected with two of the senses considered to be most reliable for knowledge of higher things: vision, connected with fire; hearing, with the upper level of air; then smell, with the lower level of air; touch and its close relative taste, by contrast, are associated with the lower, more material elements of earth and water.39 Yet, at the same time, the crucial mediation of the more earthly and intimate senses is also acknowledged in the inscription at the base of the image, which affirms that “earth sustains all” (Terra sustenat omnia). The context in which this image appears is crucial. It was originally the first in a series of images, including the “Fünfbilderseries” of the human anatomy, followed by representations of virtues and vices, thus suggesting a movement from meditation on the physical body to allegorical images as the means of accessing the spiritual.40 This idealized, sexless form of the nude appears quite rarely in Romanesque sculpture, including capitals from the Auvergnat churches of Saint-Pierre de Mozat and Saint-Julien de Brioude.41 The quaternities of squatting male nudes originally found in the sanctuary of Mozat (fig. 22), interlaced with foliate ornament, are inspired by ancient Roman sculptures of atlantes, or, in the variation of a figure sprouting foliage, by ancient tritons. Indeed, they are rendered so sensually in the spirit of antique models that Jean Wirth has suggested that they should be understood as a reflection of a repressed homosexual desire in monastic circles, drawing on an authentically antique predilection for pederasty.42 Given the

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Fig. 21 Man as microcosm, Salomo of Constance, Glossaries, Reichenau, 1165. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cod. lat. 13002, fol. 7v. Photo: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek.

placement of these capitals in the hemicycle of the sanctuary, flanked by Christological subjects, including the Women at the Empty Tomb of Christ, the Four Evangelists, and the Angels of the Apocalypse Holding Back the Four Winds, Jérôme Baschet, Jean-Claude Bonne, and Pierre-Olivier Dittmar have sought, by contrast, to interpret the nudes within a broader ecclesiological program, in which the church building and its sculpted images are viewed as a reflection on God’s creation. They interpret the quaternities of male nudes on capitals at Saint-Pierre de Mozat as the microcosm of creation, showing, in conjunction with foliate ornament, its generative forces.43 Absent the

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Fig. 22 Quaternity of male nudes,

Saint-Pierre de Mozat, Auvergne, ca. 1100–1125. Limestone sculpture.

sexual reference of genitalia, these figures allude to prelapsarian humanity. By contrast, other Mozat capitals representing naked men, displaying genitalia, confronting or riding beasts represent postlapsarian man asserting authority over creation. Reflecting the ambivalence in the textual commentaries on Genesis cited above, it would seem that there is indeed a certain ambivalence in these sculpted figures of the male nude, perhaps even a sublimation of sexual energies that would otherwise be problematic in the context of the monastic sanctuary. Undoubtedly the most common context for the representation of both male and female nudes

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Fig. 23 Wiligelmo, Creation of Eve, Modena Cathedral, 1099.

Limestone relief.

Fig. 24 Expulsion of Adam and Eve from paradise, Notre-Dame-du-Port, Clermont-Ferrand, ca. 1100.

in Romanesque sculpture is the narrative of Adam and Eve (Genesis 2:4–3:24). This biblical text gave Romanesque sculptors an important pretext to copy the nude from antique sources. Among the earliest large-scale nudes in medieval sculpture are Wiligelmo’s figures of Adam and Eve on the west façade of Modena Cathedral, dated by inscription to 1099 (fig. 23).44 These stocky figures are modeled on the figures from late antique sarcophagi that so clearly influenced both the style and iconography of the reliefs of putti with downturned torches placed higher up on the same façade at Modena. The important distinction in the context of the Genesis reliefs is the omission of Adam’s genitals and the downplaying of Eve’s sexuality by rendering the breasts barely more pronounced than Adam’s chest muscles. We see the same convention of sexless male and female bodies in French Romanesque examples, including capitals from Clermont-Ferrand.

On one side, the sculptor depicts Adam and Eve simultaneously partaking of the forbidden fruit and, in the aftermath of the temptation, covering their nakedness in shame as they are confronted by God in Eden.45 On the other side, Adam and Eve are expelled from paradise by an angel (fig. 24). The idea of their fallen state is represented clearly through their postures: Adam, forcefully pushed out of Eden by the hand of the angel, stoops, while Eve, reflecting her primary role in the Temptation, kneels on the ground, tearing at her hair in a gesture of grief. The remarkable gesture of the angel pulling Adam’s beard may also allude to Adam’s fallen and sexualized state, as beard-pulling is frequently depicted in Romanesque sculpture within contexts that confirm its associations with discord, sexuality, and sometimes sodomy.46 The desired affective response to beholding unexpected fleshly bodies of Adam and Eve in the sanctuary, and their explicit gestures and

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emotional states, was likely to foster both internal and external acts of penance. Although there are important regional differences in style among these sculptures, they reinforce the theological distinctions between the prelapsarian and postlapsarian states of Adam and Eve. They also situate the discovery of nakedness and sexuality within the context of salvation history, serving as a backdrop to the eucharistic body of Christ made present in the sanctuary at the high altar. In the case of Clermont-Ferrand, the emphasis on the role of Eve in the Fall meets its response in the focus on Mary as redemptrix and titular saint of Notre-Dame-du-Port.47 Scholastic theologians of the twelfth century, including Peter Lombard, who set the terms of debate for later writers, assumed that sexual intercourse was part of the divine plan before the Fall, given the command to be fruitful and multiply (Gen. 1:28). They also argued that Adam and Eve’s prelapsarian sexual relations would have been experienced without lust or concupiscence.48 Thus, while sexuality was not “invented” after the partaking of the forbidden fruit, sexual arousal, concupiscence, and unreasoned desire were associated with the postlapsarian state and the awareness of their naked bodies. If the original sin itself was defined as disobedience to God, the primary consequence of this sin was the corruption of the flesh by sexual desire. According to Peter Lombard, the serpent influenced the free will of Eve and then Adam, acting through the five senses, which influenced the soul to partake of the apple.49 The original sin, in turn, caused the corruption of the flesh; thus, whereas “before the sin, man and woman could come together without the incentive of desire [libidinis] and the fervor of concupiscence, as it were in an immaculate bed, then after the sin,

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they were unable to make the strong carnal bond without lustful concupiscence, which is always a vice, and also a sin, unless it is excused by a good marriage.”50 This sense of awareness of the corruption of the fleshly body and its sexuality is translated into images that depict Adam and Eve looking at one another and covering their genitalia, whose association with libidinous pleasure they only now recognized. We will return later to the particular role that vision was understood to play in sexual attraction and arousal, and thus the problematic side of the physical senses.

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From Baptism, Resurrection and the Rebirth of the Imago

The asexual image of prelapsarian man is applied to three other points in the narrative of salvation that represent a return to the purity of the body before the Fall: the Baptism of Christ as model for baptism of the faithful, the departure of the soul upon death, and the Resurrection of the dead at the end of time. The baptized body conforms to the prelapsarian body, the microcosm, because the early Christian Church saw the rite of baptism as signaling conversion to Christianity and the purification of the body and soul from sin.51 The emphasis on purification becomes much more prominent in the twelfth century, and this may explain why there is also a shift in the representation of the anatomy of Christ in the Baptism from a fully exposed nude with genitalia revealed beneath the waters in early Christian art to images in Carolingian and Romanesque art that deemphasize the sexual aspect.52 Among the earliest representations of baptism in medieval high-relief sculpture are those found on

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the cast-bronze font commissioned in 1117–18 for Notre-Dame-aux-Fonts (now in the Church of Saint Barthélemy) in Liège by Abbot Hellinus from an accomplished Mosan metalworker usually identified as Renier de Huy (color plate 10).53 The depiction of the Baptism of Christ is typical: Christ appears on the central axis standing naked in the River Jordan, extending his right hand in blessing as John touches the top of his head and the dove descends from the Father in heaven. Christ appears relatively small in scale with respect to John, perhaps intentionally childlike to emphasize the aspect of rebirth through baptismal waters; the waters well up to just below his waist, thereby modestly concealing his genitals. There thus seems a deliberate strategy of concealing or avoiding the depiction of the sexualized body. At the same time, the role of Christ’s own body as model for the transformation of the catechumen through the sacrament is reinforced by the shimmering gilded-bronze medium. Baptism was counted among the principal sacraments in the twelfth century, along with the Eucharist, marriage, confession, and ordination; Hugh of Saint Victor defined the sacrament as “a corporeal or material element set before the senses externally, representing by similitude and signifying by institution and containing by sanctification some invisible and spiritual grace.”54 The sacramental water of baptism was understood to cleanse the physical body and purify the soul, thus restoring the God-made imago of Adam before the fall, the ideal microcosm. According to Hugh, “visible water is the sacrament and invisible grace is the thing or virtue of the sacrament. Now all water has from its natural quality a certain similitude with the grace of the Holy Ghost, since just as the one washes away the stains of the body, so the other cleanses the iniquities of souls. . . . Now the savior came

and instituted visible water through the ablution of bodies to signify the invisible cleansing of souls through spiritual grace.”55 Peter Lombard adds that “a sacrament is properly said to be that which is so great a sign of the grace of God and the form of invisible grace, that it bears its image and exists as its cause.”56 He further suggests that the sacrament of baptism has the potential to restore the image of God before the Fall. Thus, he argues that “original sin is said to be remitted in baptism by a double reason: because through the grace of baptism, the vice of concupiscence is weakened and attenuated, so that it will no longer reign, unless its vigour is restored by our consent; and because the guilt for it is absolved.”57 This restoration of the image of God through baptism is effected through the element of water and the words of the liturgy, which cleanse both body and mind, culminating a process of repentance, the renunciation and exorcism of Satan, and the forgiveness or remission of sin.58 The restoration of the image of God is visualized in the sequence of images adorning the Liège font. Although Christ’s baptism by John the Baptist took place only after John had preached repentance and baptism, it is the model for all other baptismal images on the font and, with Christ placed frontally in the waters, serves as performative model for the catechumen about to enter the font, and as a representation of the ideal body to be restored in the “likeness of Christ,” much as was the case in early Christian baptisteries.59 The medium of cast bronze enhances the significance of the images, embodying a common metaphor in theological literature for the glorified and perfected body of the resurrected, in which melting and recasting are understood in relation to the purification of the body from sin (see chapter 3). Released from the physical body at death, the individual’s soul was likewise assumed to be purged

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from sin through a process experienced as if it were corporeal punishment within a concrete intermediary space between heaven and earth, known as purgatory. The concrete conceptualization of purgatory, as Jacques Le Goff has demonstrated, emerged only in the course of the eleventh and twelfth centuries.60 This development may have something to do with the physical presence given to the soul in representations of the moment of death. Although early medieval art had inherited the ancient iconography of the soul as a winged spirit, by the twelfth century it was common to represent the soul as an unclothed, childlike figure, often set within an aureole or clipeus of light.61 The soul is represented most frequently in the context of funerary images to indicate the exhalation of the spirit—“giving up the ghost.” This is a moment specifically marked in liturgical texts for the Office of the Dead. Among the earliest examples is the depiction of the soul departing the body in the sacramentary of Warmundus of Ivrea: the body is laid out on a mat on the ground while clergy and family members sing psalms to accompany the soul on its journey, and the soul, depicted as a small, naked, sexless body, emerges unaided from the mouth of the deceased, arms outstretched toward heaven.62 By the twelfth century there is an emphasis on a more concrete image in which angels raise the soul aloft in a swath of cloth, foreshadowing its reception into the bosom of Abraham, an image widely diffused in high-relief sculpture, both for tombs of individual rulers and clerics and in narrative images of martyrdom. In two Romanesque sarcophagi of Spanish aristocratic women, that of Doña Sancha from Jaca (fig. 25) and that of Queen Blanca in Nájera (fig. 26), the soul appears as a sexless nude body that is barely distinguished from the physical body, except that there is a return to a

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Fig. 25 Elevation of the soul and funeral,

sarcophagus of Doña Sancha from Jaca Cathedral, ca. 1100. Limestone. Photo: C. and E. V. del Álamo.

Fig. 26 Death and ascent of the soul,

sarcophagus of Queen Blanca of Navarre, Abbey of Santa María Real, Nájera, 1156–1160. Limestone. Photo: E. V. and C. del Álamo.

childlike state.63 In the case of the sarcophagus of Doña Sancha, the soul is isolated in a mandorla, suggesting connections with the iconography of the Assumption of Mary; similar connections to the female’s ascent of the soul are suggested by the entire composition of the deathbed scene of Queen Blanca. In both images, angels guide the soul on its heavenly

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Fig. 27 Tomb stele of Bruno Presbyter, Hildesheim Cathedral,

after 1194.

journey, in keeping with the funerary antiphons. The naked soul, contrasting with the physical body of the deceased, clothed in the appropriate vestments or garments of office, illustrates the notion of the God-given beauty and innocence of the soul, which restores the similitude to God’s image in Genesis. Similarly, in the tomb relief of the priest Bruno of Hildesheim (fl. 1184–94; fig. 27), the soul is raised toward the bust-length image of Christ, whose book is inscribed with the text of Matthew, encouraging the souls of the blessed, while the body itself is

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carefully wrapped in bandages and tended by clergy and the poor, to whom he left his worldly goods upon his death.64 The soul, facing frontally toward the viewer, raises his arms with hands devoutly clasped in prayer, thereby suggesting the efficacy of prayer in aiding the passage of the soul into afterlife and its reunion with the body at the Last Judgment. A second, less centralized composition appears frequently in scenes of martyrdom, which counter the negative impact of death and violent martyrdom with the promise of an immediate resurrection of the soul to participate in the heavenly intercession of the communion of saints on behalf of the living and the dead. The corporeality of the soul is emphasized further in certain images of martyrdom in which the soul, now shown in a more dynamic pose, is physically lifted into heaven by Christ and angels: such is the case with a capital depicting the martyrdom of John the Baptist from the cloister of the Cathedral of St. Étienne at Toulouse, now in the Musée des Augustins (fig. 28). John has already been decapitated as the naked soul clambers up from behind his body, arms extended in a prayer gesture, thereby blurring the distinction between the living body and its soul post mortem. The soul is received not by angels but by Christ himself, who physically embraces him in his arms, enhancing multisensory apprehension of God’s presence to the soul. The idea that one can see and represent the soul after it has left the body reflects the extent to which the soul was understood as acting like a body in time and space. Hugh of Saint Victor puzzles over the status of the soul after it has been breathed out of the body, noting that when “this corporeal breath is exhaled, it goes out of the body and begins essentially and locally outside the body, while before it was essentially and locally contained in the body.”65 Hugh concludes that the soul, after it departs from the

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body, nonetheless has an existence that is “similar to the corporeal.” He bases this view on accounts of evil angels carrying souls to torments or good angels leading them to rest, and on visions or revelations according to which souls were tormented or experienced things similar to the corporeal. He further argues that corporeal senses that impressed the soul while it was in the body continue to affect the souls until they are cleansed and deprived “of the same delights and fantasies of thoughts, and therefore do not feel the punishment and torments in these bodies.”66 The parallels between the embodied soul and the resurrected corpses as purified bodies are confirmed in Romanesque relief sculptures of the Last Judgment. On the lintel of the west portal of Saint-Lazare at Autun (fig. 29), for example, the deceased rise from their tombs, not wrapped in mummy shrouds or bandages as they had been shown in earlier medieval iconography, but as nudes.67 Those on Christ’s right are shown in their purified bodies, restoring the perfection of the prelapsarian bodies of Adam and Eve, unashamed and unaware of their natural state. They reflect the sentiment expressed in the inscription on the lintel to Christ’s right: “Whoever is not seduced by an impious life will rise again in this way, and the light of day will shine on him or her forever.”68 Those on the left hand of Christ show gestures of fear and despair as they rise from their tombs to glimpse the torments of hell, thus complementing a second inscription: “May this fear terrify those whom earthly error binds, for in this way dread moves their minds to a true vision of what will be.”69 These inscriptions, which would have been read aloud, allow the portal to speak, as it were, to the viewer and reinforce, to both sight and hearing, the role of the sculpted image as a “true vision of what is to be” regarding the fates of the souls of the

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Fig. 28 Gilabertus, Martyrdom of Saint John the Baptist, cloister

capital from Saint-Étienne, Toulouse, ca. 1120–1140. Limestone. Collected by Alexandre du Mège. Musée des Augustins, Toulouse.

blessed and the damned at the moment of death, in preparation for purgatory, and at the general Resurrection immediately preceding Judgment. Also explicit is the power of the sculpted relief to modify the viewer’s behavior accordingly. As Aron Gurevich has shown, this separation of the bodies of the blessed and the damned, already visible at the general Resurrection but before the Last Judgment represented in the tympanum above, indicates that these individuals have already been subjected to the particular judgment at death and hence have been prejudged en route to purgatory and the final Judgment.70 Since it is the soul that is judged in the particular judgment and purged in purgatory, it would seem that there is a deliberate conflation in this image not only of the particular judgment and the resurrection of the body at the end of time but

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impressed with his own image, which he redeemed with his own blood, desire you, wait for you, and without you, they cannot be filled with joy, perfected with glory or complete in their beatitude.”73

The Narrative of the Fall and the Discovery of Sexuality

Fig. 29 Gislebertus, Resurrection of the Dead, Saint-Lazare,

Autun, lintel of the Last Judgment portal, early twelfth century. Limestone.

also of the soul and the body, for the soul is only made visible by the nude or unclothed body. That the soul and the resurrected body should be portrayed in nearly identical terms reflects the somatization of the soul in the later eleventh and twelfth centuries, when there was an intense interest in understanding how the soul was manifested in the physical body.71 The soul was understood to be rejoined with the body, such that the physical form and material of the body reflected the beauty of the soul.72 Even theologians such as Bernard of Clairvaux, who might question the incompatibility of the soul with the “miserable flesh,” acknowledged an essential desire and necessity of the soul to be reunited with its body: “But from where does this [body] of yours come, O miserable flesh, O foul and fetid flesh, from where does this [body] of yours come? The souls of the saints, which God himself

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While prelapsarian Adam embodied the ideal imago of the microcosm that was restored through baptism and resurrection, and the abject body offered an object for empathetic, compassionate devotion on the humanity of Christ and the saints and their eventual resurrection, it was the Genesis narrative concerning the invention of sexual awareness that prepared the ground for the representation of the nude as object of sexual desire in the Romanesque sculpture of Moissac (fig. 17). The image of the fallen body of Adam and Eve is visualized quite literally. In the capital from Notre-Dame-du-Port at Clermont-Ferrand, considered above, at the very moment when Eve passes the forbidden fruit to her husband, both recognize their nudity by covering their genitals with fig leaves.74 On the adjacent face to the right (fig. 24), God the Father appears holding a book in which is inscribed “Behold, Adam has become like one of you,” an allusion to Adam’s assimilation of the fleshliness and carnality of Eve and the serpent.75 That the preponderance of blame is ascribed to Eve is made clear by the contrasting poses: Adam, even in his own fallen state, tramples upon Eve, who has been forced to her knees, and pulls her long hair, a symbol of vanity that will later be hidden by a veil. Perhaps the most forceful example of this symbolic representation of fallen humanity is found in the now-fragmentary sculptural program

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from the north portal at Autun (fig. 18). Originally facing a comparable figure of Adam, Eve is laid out horizontally on the lintel, reaching back to take the apple from the serpent to give it to her husband. As Karl Werckmeister has shown, Eve’s pose not only assimilates her body to that of the serpent-tempter, but also provides a model for the penitents who prostrated themselves each year at this portal to receive absolution from the bishop at the end of Lent before being reincorporated into the body of Christ.76 More recently, Horst Bredekamp has suggested that this unusually attractive figure was deliberately designed by the sculptor to focus attention not so much on her regret as on her deceptive appeal.77 The body is turned so that the breasts and face are fully visible; the eyes express a somewhat vacuous indifference to the crime of disobedience that has just been revealed. For Bredekamp, this figure is symptomatic of a broader trend in Romanesque sculpture in which the artist exercises a remarkable freedom to represent the very thing that he is warning against, largely through the emulation of antique models. I would also argue that this figure, simultaneously attractive and reproachful, confirms that the Romanesque nude could be a highly effective means of establishing behavioral norms. It is for this reason that a comparable figure came to replace the conventional personifications of the vice of Luxuria in the twelfth century.

The Female Nude, Lust, and Affective Responses to Romanesque Sculpture

A façade relief from Saint-Jouin-de-Marnes (fig. 30) is among the early examples of a new iconography of Luxuria or Lust as a frontal female nude with long hair and fully developed breasts attacked by

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serpents intertwined around her legs and genitals attacked by toads.78 In this way, the object of feminine allure is physically attacked by the creature associated with the invention of sexuality and temptation. These autonomous nudes mark a striking contrast to the conventional depictions of the vices as prostrate figures trampled by upright virtues, personified as Christian knights, such as those carved into the archivolts around the axial widow of the west façade of Saint-Nicolas at Civray (fig. 31). Paradigmatic pairs of warring virtues and vices such as those of Aulnay may ultimately be traced to the ninth-century Carolingian manuscripts of the fifth-century poem on the Battle of the Soul, the Psychomachia by Prudentius.79 The poem continued to serve as the basis for representations of paired virtues and vices in both illuminated manuscripts and monumental sculpture and painting in the twelfth century. As Jacqueline Leclercq-Kadaner has shown, the alternative iconography of Lust stems instead from the gradual reinterpretation of the ancient earth mother deity, known variously as Gaia, Tellus, and Terra Mater.80 In Carolingian art of the ninth century, the ancient iconography of the maternal deity at far right with breasts bared, two children, and a cornucopia is often repeated verbatim, as in the coronation sacramentary of Charles the Bald (BNF, Paris ms 1141, 20r), where Terra appears at right opposite Ocean to indicate the cosmic rule of Christ.81 By contrast, a contemporaneous ivory book cover adorning the Gospels of Henry II shows Terra with a serpent at her breast.82 It is only a short step from this ambivalent image to the direct representation of Lust herself as an inversion of the nourishing mother, an image of the fleshly person that will ultimately decay upon death. The significance of adapting the ancient earth mother becomes clear when we examine how the

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Fig. 30 Lust attacked by serpent, Saint-Pierre,

Saint-Jouin-de-Marnes, ca. 1095–1130.

figure transcends the role of personification to be deployed within narratives of sexual fantasy. Three examples will suffice. Lust appears in two remarkably frank capitals in the nave of the Benedictine abbey of Vézelay in Burgundy. In the first example (fig. 32), Lust is rendered as a frontal female nude ensnared by a serpent that attacks her genital area while the woman herself nervously tugs at one of her breasts.83 Her diabolical association here is made explicit by juxtaposition with the second figure to the left: a naked demon with flaming hair who

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glances toward the woman, his mouth gaping and his tongue hanging out. Driven to despair by unfettered passion, he personifies the vice of Ira or Anger in the Psychomachia and plunges a sword into his own back. The impact of this violent scene is made all the more striking by the hideous caricature of the demon’s face and an appeal to multiple senses—the wide-open mouth, which appears to scream, the painful tugging of the breasts and sword plunging into the demon’s back, and the potential bite of the snake entwined around the woman’s legs. A second capital presents an even more explicit sexual narrative (fig. 33).84 In this case, the female nude appears not so much as temptress but as victim, bending over to conceal her pubic area as the naked demon fondles her breasts. Here it is the demon that is punished for lust: like his female counterpart at Moissac, he is attacked at his genitals by a serpent that twists around his leg. The demon’s sinfulness is further signaled by his monstrous deformity: his head swollen, his hair wildly inflamed, and his legs metamorphosed into an animal’s cloven hoofs.85 In contrast to the harmony of monastic chant, the profane music of the pipes is shown to inflame the spirit with lust. The most complex and revealing setting in which Lust appears is the portal of Moissac (fig. 17).86 Beneath the otherworldly vision of Christ in the tympanum, the viewer confronts, at eye level, the nearly life-sized figure of Lust on the left jamb. She is carved in high relief in a quite sensual style, as a curvaceous nude with long tresses falling gently over her shoulders, her well-formed breasts attacked by serpents and her genitals by a monstrously large toad. In contrast to the Vézelay figures, Luxuria is more directly associated here with death; she is also positioned where she can be directly beheld and touched. Anticipating the late medieval tradition of

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Fig. 31 Virtues trampling on vices, Saint-Nicolas, Civray, ca. 1150–1200.

memento mori images, Lust decays before our eyes: the ribs of her upper torso are exposed and her fearful eyes are sunk within deep sockets. As she walks toward the symbolic threshold of the actual church, she is stopped in her tracks by a monstrous demon who grabs her by the hand as she prays ineffectually with outstretched arms. The biblical pretext for Lust and the adjacent image of Avarice is found above on the frieze of the left wall, in the parable of Dives and Lazarus (fig. 34).87 At right, the wealthy man feasts in his hall while the pauper Lazarus, his body covered in leprous sores, lies prostrate at his door. Guided

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by an angel, Lazarus is resurrected at left, rid of his leprous deformity and received in the comforting bosom of Abraham. Separated from the space of this comforting vision by grimacing atlantes and shrieking women, Dives appears on the right in a horrific deathbed scene not specifically evoked in the biblical text (fig. 35). His expiring soul is immediately taken hostage by one demon, while another holds his money and his wife laments his passing. To the left, the interior battle of the dying man is echoed by a chaotic scene in which the naked body of Dives is bent backward and trampled by a host of demons. Lust appears here again within the narrative of

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Fig. 32 Despair (demon attacking himself

with sword) and Lust, Sainte-Marie-Madeleine, Vézelay, early twelfth century.

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Fig. 33 Demon fondling the breasts of naked woman as musician plays pipe, Saint-Marie-Madeleine, Vézelay, early twelfth century.

corporeal punishment: a naked woman emerges from the genitals of the central demon hovering over Dives as a reprimand, and on the adjacent capital to the right a male version of Luxuria is attacked by serpents. The role of Lust as embodied fantasy is amplified in the larger program of the portal. As Meyer Schapiro was the first to emphasize, Lust is related in pose and position to her antithesis, the Virgin Mary, in the scenes of the Annunciation and the Visitation on the opposite jamb (figs. 34, 36).88 The meaning of this juxtaposition has been explored within the broader iconographical program by contrasting the monastic virtues of chastity and charity embodied in the figures of the Virgin Mary and the Holy Family on the right jamb and the sins of gluttony, avarice and lust—all sins of the flesh—on the left.89 Eleanor Scheifele and Jochen Zink emphasize the didactic role of the figure of the personification within a strict binary system. According to Scheifele, Lust “functions metaphorically to reveal sensuous pleasure as a carnal perversion” of the rich man Dives, the antitype of monastic chastity. Zink goes further, drawing upon Rupert of Deutz to cast the figures of Luxuria and the demon of the left jamb as the embodiment of concupiscentia and superbia, in contrast to the chaste Incarnation of Christ on the right jamb. While Mary represents the “life-bringing” vessel of God’s will and the bearer of unending kingship, Luxuria is the bearer of death, signified by the figure of the demon at her side. Susan Dixon argues for a more nuanced interpretation, in which Lazarus serves as a model of monastic purity and humility and of mercy and compassion toward the poor and marginalized, but also potentially recalls the traditional negative associations of leprosy with the vices of avarice and lust. Lust, accompanied by the demon, represents those who

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cling to sin and are incapable of repentance and thus the ultimate vision of Christ afforded to Lazarus. It may be added that Lazarus, shown initially outside the doorway of the rich man’s house, and later within paradise in the bosom of Abraham, occupies a similar position to the figure of Mary on the opposite side of the church portal, initially kept outside the temple and forced to journey to Egypt and back, and then finally allowed to enter the temple forty days after childbirth at the time of the Presentation of Christ in the temple, coinciding with the feast of her own Purification. Ilene Forsyth has highlighted the particular potency of the sexual imagery in the portal, including the interlaced bodies of lions and lionesses on the central trumeau.90 For Forsyth the jamb program constitutes more than a simple visual antithesis: rather, it is constructed as a parody or open-ended “visual play.” The chaste monastic life, represented allegorically by the narrative of Mary and Joseph at right, is juxtaposed with the appetites of the flesh, embodied in the narrative of Dives and Lazarus, in which the extrabiblical figure of the rich man’s wife, whom monastic commentaries sometimes identified as the lustful Jezebel, is depicted. Another meaningful rhetorical contrast is highlighted in the use of the bed in the Adoration of the Magi and the death of Dives (figs. 35, 36): the fertile yet chaste locus of the Virgin Birth is parodied by Dives’s bed of fornication and death. At the same time, within the left jamb Forsyth finds meaningful contrasts between the voluptuous yet barren breasts of Dives’s “wife” and Luxuria and the comforting, nurturing breast of Abraham sheltering Lazarus in paradise. The figure of “Dives’s wife” can not only be identified with Eve and Luxuria, in contrast to the Virgin Mary, but also would have been understood on another level by monastic viewers as an

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Fig. 34 Avarice, Luxuria, and parable of Dives and Lazarus, Saint-Pierre, Moissac, ca. 1100–1115. Limestone relief.

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Fig. 35 Demons tormenting Dives and his wife and deathbed

scene of Dives, Saint-Pierre, Moissac, ca. 1100–1115. Limestone relief.

allusion to Jezebel, the great harlot, mentioned in the Apocalypse (2:20–22). The richly laid table of Dives prompts the viewer to distinguish this secular offering from the eucharistic offering on the altar of the temple, alluded to in the Presentation of Christ on the right jamb, or further, the offering of monastic oblates in the sanctuary of the monastery. The sculptural program was quite deliberately constructed to encourage the projection of different identities. Fostering complex visual allusions on

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multiple levels, Forsyth concludes, the sculpture engaged the monk in the same way that the rhetorical contrasts of monastic “blue” poems did. While the content of monastic literature helps us understand the visual structure and overt sexuality of the Moissac portal, we are still left to explain why sexual fantasy was depicted so concretely in stone sculpture and how such images would have affected medieval viewers. That monks were singularly preoccupied with lust is hardly surprising, given the

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restraints imposed on their sexual behavior by the vow of chastity; their ongoing battle against such tempting fantasies is documented from the time of the founding fathers of Western monasticism, including John Cassian in the fifth century.91 But why was it deemed appropriate to manifest these concerns in such provocative figures in the more public art of the monastery in the twelfth century? To answer this question, it is helpful to explore four interrelated developments within medieval Christianity during the late eleventh and twelfth centuries: the Gregorian Reform’s insistence on the purity of the clergy and the curbing of sexual appetites in relation to the handling and reception of the Eucharist; the codification of illicit sexual behavior for both religious and laity in the literature of penitentials; the exploration of the relationship between vision and the other senses and sexual behavior; and the development of theologically informed medical literature on sexuality. The first and most familiar explanation for the emergence of sexually explicit imagery in Romanesque sculpture has to do with the broader agenda of the Gregorian Reform at the end of the eleventh century, which aimed to reassert traditional monastic values and to regulate the sexuality of the clergy, and to a certain extent that of married couples as well, according to the monastic model.92 Women were perceived to pose the greatest threat to chastity because of Eve’s role in the discovery of sexuality, and because of their presumed susceptibility to serving as diabolical agents dedicated to damaging the ritual purity of priests. The issue of sexual abstinence of the clergy came to the fore because, as Dyan Elliott has shown, the confirmation of real presence in the Eucharist necessitated the reinforcement of the purity of the minds and bodies of those privileged to consecrate and handle the eucharistic

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Fig. 36 Infancy of Christ, Saint-Pierre, Moissac, right wall of south

porch, ca. 1100–1115. Limestone relief.

body.93 Not only were clergy forbidden to marry and have intercourse with women, as codified in the First and Second Lateran Councils of 1123 and 1139,94 but increasingly the reformers argued that the clergy needed to physically and visually distance themselves from women so that their minds would not

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be polluted with sexual fantasies. As the legislation of the Second Lateran Council put it, “Since they [the priests] ought to be in fact and in name temples of God, vessels of the Lord and sanctuaries of the Holy Spirit, it is unbecoming that they be enslaved by impure things and bed chambers.”95 Women who married priests or tempted them to engage in sexual acts were cast as aggressors and even prostitutes. Particularly vehement is the language of Peter Damian, who compares women who threaten the priest’s purity to asps and serpents who “suck the blood from wretched and reckless men”; he further claims these women are agents of the devil, who “devours his elect food, while he tears the very holy members of the church with his teeth . . . [and] transposes [the priests] into his own guts.”96 The priest whose purity makes him worthy to touch and hold the body of Christ is endangered by the touch of women; the sacred Eucharist over which the priest presides is inverted as the priest himself becomes food for the devil. The Gregorian Reform’s positions on the sexuality of the clergy were reinforced for Christian society more broadly by the catalogue of prescribed behavioral norms laid out in the penitential manuals for priests as a guide to imposing appropriate penance in the context of confession.97 Although the genre of Libri poenitentiales can be traced back to the sixth century, and later medieval texts continued to cite early medieval sources, the twelfth century marked an important transition from the lists of offenses and tariffs or remedies to the more pastorally oriented Summae confessionis that emerged between the Third and Fourth Lateran Councils of 1179 and 1215, in which greater emphasis was placed on the conversion of sinners through preaching and confession.98 It is within this context that powerfully affective, sensual imagery in sculpture may be

understood. The figure of Luxuria at Moissac is part of a larger composition that alludes to judgment and punishment both in the present and at the end of time, the Second Coming of Christ. As Jérôme Baschet has emphasized in his study of the medieval representation of punishment in hell and the Last Judgment, these images are less about fear of death and punishment, imposed by the church, and more about suggesting a pathway that leads to the conversion of the soul and redemption for clerics and laity alike, projecting concrete images of contemporaneous society and threats to the social order into a future judgment that has not taken place.99 The placement of the figure of Lust at the very threshold of sacred space, opposite the biblical model of Mary presenting the Christ Child in the Temple (figs. 17, 34, 36) after her forty days of purification from menstrual blood, reminds both monk and lay spectators of the various proscriptions against unclean women entering and potentially “polluting” sacred space where the body of Christ was to be consecrated and partaken.100 Juxtaposed with the secular banquet of Dives, and opposite Christ, hovering over the altar of the Temple in anticipation of the eucharistic sacrifice, the figure of Luxuria, placed at the threshold of sacred space on the opposite side of the portal, also highlights the proscriptions against married couples engaging in sexual activity at various times of the church year. In order to partake of the body of Christ in the Eucharist, married couples were expected to refrain from sexual activity immediately before the Mass; in addition, they were to abstain from sexual intercourse throughout the forty days of the season of Lent, during Pentecost and the four weeks of Lent; and certain penitential texts advocated abstinence every Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday throughout the year.101

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The placement of Luxuria at the entrance to the church has another related resonance that complements concerns over the purity of the priesthood in relation to the sacrament of the Eucharist. At risk was not only the purity of the priest’s own body but also the body of the church building itself, which, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, was increasingly understood as the embodiment of a purified Temple, a space identified with the community of believers as well as the body of Christ, consecrated by the priest and partaken of by the faithful in the form of the Eucharist.102 The medieval penitential manuals routinely include a proscription against sexual intercourse within sacred space, but it was not until the period of the Gregorian Reform that penitentials discussed this issue in any detail.103 According to the third Vallicellian penitential, for example, there is . . . nothing more damnable than, on account of the heat of the flesh, that one shamefully consents to fondle some whore even within the walls of the holy church. . . . Those mentioned above in orders or without orders, who committed such things, should be separated from the body and blood of Christ until after penance has been done, by reason of urgent necessity; nor should they participate [in communion], as did Judas who the devil immediately overcame after the morsel taken from the hand of the Lord. And from the ecclesiastical order let him irrevocably fall in every instance. However, in that house, which was contaminated by adultery, exorcised water should be sprinkled and it should be sanctified as formerly. . . . If anyone performed fornication in the church, that person should have penance all the days of his life on bread and water, and should offer compliance to God before the doors of the

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church, and never should communicate, until the time of death.104

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The nude Luxuria, stopped in her tracks as she ineffectually raises arms in prayer and attempts to proceed toward the entrance to the church, would have highlighted this resonance of the pollution of the church building in a particularly compelling way, marking the very space in which acts of penance traditionally took place.105 The lists of offenses and remedies in penitential manuals offered priests a crucial tool at a time when there was an increased emphasis on penitence, and oral confession to a priest came to be recognized as a sacrament, necessary for the remission of sin. In keeping with an interest in self-discovery that emerges in monastic writings by Saint Anselm of Canterbury and others at the end of the eleventh century, theologians of the early twelfth century promoted a deliberative, threefold process of penitence that began with compunction, the recognition of sin and regret, was confirmed through oral confession to a priest, and was remedied through an outward penance that changed or converted one’s behavior toward the original sin.106 Peter Lombard, the first writer to record penitence among the sacraments of the church, writes that true penitence is both an interior and an exterior process.107 As a virtue of the soul, it pertains to the inner man; as a sacrament, to the exterior body. He further asserts that contrition alone is not sufficient for forgiveness of sins but should be accompanied by at least the intent to make an oral confession to a priest and by satisfaction or reparations for the sin; otherwise, Peter argues, the sinner will be barred from entry into paradise. Could the representation of Lust in such an explicit and disturbing fashion at Moissac have

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served as a visual impetus for compunction and as a pictorial equivalent to the oral acknowledgment of sin demanded in the contemporary practice of confession? Although we have no specific evidence of how medieval viewers responded to the sculpted figure of Lust and its punishment, we can certainly gain some significant insights into the power of beholding the sexualized body in nature or art from both monastic writings and secular literature. We will also see below how ancient statuary, especially of the nude, held a particular fascination for the medieval beholder, and thus consider how this impacted the reinvention of the monumental nude in Romanesque sculpture. A particularly graphic account of the punishment of the flesh is found in Bernard of Cluny’s De contemptu mundi (Scorn for the World). Although this text may have been composed after the completion of the portal, Bernard’s work would likely have been known to the monks of Moissac after the abbey was reformed by Cluny, and the text was dedicated to Peter the Venerable (abbot of Cluny 1122–56).108 After contrasting the fortunes of Dives and Lazarus in this world and the next, Bernard describes a vision of bodily punishment and decay that emphasizes the stark opposition between the once-beautiful flesh and that which is decaying and tormented in hell. Hereafter the worst flame of Gehenna, the punishment of pain, will burn those in whom now the flame of lust burns. . . . There the eyes, temples, brow, lips, chest, innards, breasts, mouth, throat, penis and legs are all food for flames. There eyes weep, they weep for sins long past; there is both frightful stench and foul terror, a heavy burden. There is the sight of the devil, and the faces of the Gorgon are turned

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to stone. All shameful or impious deeds are manifest to all. The wicked race is goaded on by undying serpents and tormented by the fire of flaming dragons. . . . Fiery chains bind individual limbs, chains curb wanton bodies and indecent members . . . their heads are plunged downward, their faces and backs reversed. . . . These surely are the punishments in Hell.109 Further on, Bernard parodies the conventional descriptions of beauty, paralleling the simultaneously beautiful and repulsive image of the nude Lust. O shining white [candida] flesh, after a short time stinking and full of filth, now a flower but soon dung, the lowest dung, why are you puffed up? O flesh, you are flesh now, soon dirt, hereafter worms; you are a man [human being] now, tomorrow earth, for that we are. Why are you proud? O weak flesh, O flesh swiftly-perishing, O flesh wickedly soft, why do you seek hiding places, why take iron horns for yourself? . . . O milky flesh, now a rose, hereafter a filthy burden, your blossom will fall and this youth’s rose will droop. Flesh blooming now, tomorrow will be terrifying, I say more, it will be a terror.110 Beyond describing the transformation of the fleshly body, Bernard goes so far as to subvert the systematic head-to-toe descriptions of conventional feminine beauty copied by contemporary romance literature from ancient writers: Your yellow golden hair which you whirled about your ivory neck lies motionless; your heart is still, and your mouth which roared is now silent. Your eyes are deprived of seeing,

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your ears of hearing, your mouth of speech, your nose is deprived of scents, your heart of desires, your bones of warmth. Your foot swift to evil and your eye set on a woman, your milk-white neck and waxen arms have putrefied. A single ditch contains your waxen arms, so special, so splendid, and your wanton limbs. Your teeth once white, your flame-red lips, the former bloom of your face and clear cheeks are now rotten, part of corruption. . . . Where is your softened voice, where is your enticing smile, your wanton speech and frantic glances toward lewd acts? . . . O lovely body, now you are useless and black, You are dissolved in death and you are the shadow [simulacrum] of a corpse.111 What makes Bernard of Cluny’s account of lust’s bodily torments so powerful is his highly visual and sensual descriptions, making reference to textual and visual images from the realm of courtly love, and his contrasting images of punishment, which seem inspired by representations of bodily punishment in contemporaneous sculptural reliefs of the Last Judgment. He also specifically refers to the subversion of the physical senses that were formally so appealing. On one hand, he speaks of the Gorgon being turned to stone, a recollection of ancient apotropaic images; on the other hand, he evokes the contemporaneous language of medieval romance in describing beautiful white or ivory flesh, yellow golden hair, an ivory neck, flame-red cheeks, and waxen limbs. These are all elements of the descriptio personae —the ideal description of the physical body in its individual parts found in medieval romance literature of the twelfth century. Particularly striking is the description of Camilla in the Old French Eneide, which elaborates on the Virgilian model to

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emphasize the face’s role in conveying her beauty and character.

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No mortal woman was her equal in beauty. Her forehead was white and beautifully shaped, her head sat straight on her neck . . . , her eyebrows were black and delicately drawn, her eyes were laughing and very gay; fair was the nose in her face, for it was whiter than snow or ice; her rosy coloring was pleasantly blended with the white. The mouth was very well-shaped, and small rather than large; her teeth were close together, gleaming brighter than silver. What shall I say of her beauty? The longest summer day would not suffice for me to speak of the beauty that was hers, nor concerning her character and her goodness, which are more precious than beauty.112 The strength of this convention of physical beauty is reinforced by comparison with another example in the romance Erec et Enide by Chrétien de Troyes, describing Erec’s encounter with the vavasor’s daughter: Indeed this girl was beautiful; for Nature, who designs us all, had on this favorite project spent her every effort and intent. . . . You should know that Iseult the Fair had not such brilliant, shining hair, such lovely golden hair as she, so full of light and lambency. The lily, the fresh fleur-de-lis, had not her forehead’s clarity, her face and forehead’s rosy pallor, or her cheeks’ fresh and rosy color—a marvel underneath the white—that made her eyes seem full of light. And she had lovely, brilliant eyes, like the stars scattering the skies; never had God made half so well nose, mouth, and eyes so beautiful. Of such great beauty, you say? This girl was made, most

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certainly to be regarded, gazed upon, eagerly, in the way that one might look, and think, in one’s own glass.113 In this case the power of beholding the beautiful woman is explicitly evoked in the expression “she was made to be looked at,” and there is even a comparison with the beauty of the beholder himself in Bernard’s reference to the beautiful woman’s image as that which the beholder sees in the mirror, a typical symbol of love.114 Bernard of Cluny explicitly challenges this conventional description of beauty with his own parody, countering the literary model with the monastic contempt for the flesh and sexuality, contrasted with the appropriate affectus or love of the body of Christ. Bernard’s highly affective language also tells us much about the perception of the power of vision and the senses in both secular and sacred literature, and, given the parallels with both the content and the sensual forms of the Moissac portal and other instances of the female nude in Romanesque sculpture, it would seem to offer a better understanding of how the sculpted female nude, Luxuria, would have acted upon the imagination. To grasp more concretely how such images might have been experienced by medieval spectators, it is instructive to return to the concept of phantasia or imagination. Following Augustine, twelfth-century writers ascribed to phantasia the power both to combine phantom images derived from the senses into new hybrids and to make manifest diabolically inspired images of sexual temptation. Thus, the Cistercian Treatise on the Spirit and the Soul, now attributed to Alcher of Clairvaux, insists that “man’s phantasy can produce innumerable shapes through thought and through dreams, and . . . it can take on with amazing speed forms

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similar to bodies.”115 Turning to sexual fantasies and nocturnal emissions, the author describes how dreamers, who lack the self-control of those who are chaste when awake, are aroused by seeing corporeal images in the imagination as they sleep.116 I would argue that the translation of disturbing visions or dreams into sculpted images, including sexual ones, is predicated on an increasingly somatic conceptualization of vision, in which the beholder and object were linked through the images imprinted in the fabric of memory.117 That seeing or beholding could inflame the viewer’s passions is amply demonstrated in both secular and theological literature of the early twelfth century. In the French romance of Eneas, the heroine, Lavine, is wounded by Love’s penetrating gaze as she herself gazes upon her lover, Eneas, from her window.118 Transfixed by Love’s gaze and by the sight of her lover, Lavine is aroused to the extent that she perspires, shivers, and moans as if in the ecstasy of lovemaking. We find a similar emphasis on the fleshly ramifications of seeing in monastic writings, with the important difference that the blame is placed not on Love but on women and their hapless male viewers.119 The connection between the sensory experiences of the body and its images and sexual behavior is further reinforced by the increasingly detailed exploration of sexual desire and pleasure in medical writings of the twelfth century. Among the most extensive discussions is found in Hildegard of Bingen’s Causae et curae (Causes and Cures), also known as the Liber compositae medicinae (Book of Compound Medicine). According to Hildegard, sexual desire arises from the marrow, by which Joan Cadden assumes Hildegard refers not specifically to bone marrow but rather to the inner core of the person’s being. In men, vessels from the liver to the abdomen meet up with each other in the genitals,

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and it appears that it is through these vessels that the wind of passion descends to the loins and blood is moved toward pleasure. In men, this results in “a highly focused, concentrated wind that fills the testicles, which act as two bellows to cause the erection of the penis.” Of particular interest for our discussion of artificial images and their impact in sexual fantasy is the role that Hildegard ascribes to the senses of sight, hearing, and touch in stimulating sexual union: Their blood burns with great ardor when they have seen or heard a woman or brought her to mind in their thoughts, because upon seeing a woman, their eyes are directed like arrows toward the love of woman and, upon hearing a woman, their speech is like a powerful windstorm and their thoughts are like a hurricane that cannot be restrained from descending upon the earth. . . . On account of the strong fire in their embrace they are like arrows. Whenever they have intercourse with a woman they are healthy and happy. If deprived of it they dry up in themselves and walk about as if moribund unless they can force out the foam of their semen in lustful dreams or thoughts or in some other perverse act. They feel such lustful ardor that they will, on occasion, also have contact with some insentient and lifeless object and torment themselves with it so that exhausted, in defense against and as a relief from this ardor, so to speak, they will ejaculate the foam of their semen with lust and in the torment of this ardent passion that is in them.120 This physiological understanding of sex is coupled to a biblical/theological framework, for Hildegard begins her work with an account of the creation of the world, of the macrocosm and microcosm,

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and then of the fall of Adam and Eve. According to Hildegard, “When the human transgressed God’s command he was transformed both in body and mind. For the pureness of his blood was turned into something different so that he emits the foam of semen instead of pureness. Had the human stayed in Paradise, he would have remained in an immutable and perfect state. But after his transgression he was turned into something different and bitter.”121 Hildegard goes on to connect original sin with mortal progeny, affirming that “with the taste for evil the blood of Adam’s children was changed into the poison of semen from which the humans’ offspring are propagated.”122 Given this biblical framework for the understanding of sexuality and the engagement of the senses in sexual behavior, the display of such figures of Luxuria or other nude figures based on antiquity might be construed in isolation as having an entirely negative, moralizing impact. While one must assume pleasurable reactions from certain spectators, male or female, lay or religious, it is clear that powerfully alluring, sexualized nudes in sculpture would be expected to have a predominantly harmful effect from the standpoint of traditional medieval Christianity. This negative “Pygmalion effect” is alluded to when Hildegard mentions a man’s sexual play with “insentient objects.” What mitigated the pleasurable experience of the sexualized female or male nude was the containment of sculptural presence in relief and its contextualization within broader narrative programs, which included terrifying demons and painful assaults on the body. I will consider the broader program of the Moissac portal at the end of this chapter, using the lens of ritual to suggest the recuperative aspect of the senses in response to their negative aspects. What needs to be underlined here is that the iconographic

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Fig. 37 Christ enthroned on cross, pilgrims, Annunciation, and Luxuria, Saint-Pierre, Saint-Jouin-de-Marnes, upper west façade, ca. 1095–1130.

program at Moissac conforms to a pattern that is found in other instances in which the personification of Luxuria is represented in Romanesque sculpture, balancing the representation of the vice of sexual pleasure with the representation of a model of virginity and redemption. At Moissac (figs. 34–36) the argument is made in part through the parable of Dives and Lazarus, which frames the figure of Luxuria, in part through the contrasting figure of the Virgin Mary in the infancy narratives of the right side of the portal. Similarly at Saint-Jouin-de-Marnes in Poitou (figs. 30, 37), the

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figure of Luxuria appears as part of a larger façade program including Christ enthroned upon the cross, with Mary as co-redemptrix at the base of the cross in the gable of the façade, and the Annunciation adjacent to Luxuria, just to the right of the central window above the main entrance. Although it cannot be definitively proven that medieval spectators would have reacted to the nude personifications of Luxuria or other sexualized nudes in Romanesque sculpture as if they were reacting to real bodies or sexualized fantasies in the imagination, we have already seen, in the case

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of devotional images such as the crucifix and the Sedes Sapientiae (chapter 1), that artificial images were indeed thought to work upon the imagination of the viewer, connecting the physical sensorium with the realm of the inner senses, the intellect, and ultimately the divine. This interaction between the devotee and sculpted images, I have suggested, did not only apply to sculpture in the round. In the case of the more negative images of Luxuria, we have some grounds for gauging their impact on the basis of inscriptions that appear in conjunction with monumental portal sculptures of the Last Judgment. Paralleling the theme of impending punishment outlined in Bernard of Cluny’s Scorn for the World and the striking images of Luxuria and the infernal tortures of the damned in Last Judgment images, the inscriptions reinforce the idea that an assault on the senses with such terrifying visions was intended to shock the reader/viewer into changing his behavior, offering a pathway to conversion, and thus redemption, in ways that parallel the recuperative functions of confession. The Last Judgment of Saint-Lazare at Autun, for example, admonishes the viewer, “May this terror terrify those whom earthly error binds, for the horror of these images here in this manner truly depicts what will be.” And in the same portal Christ himself seems to speak from the image in the words inscribed in the mandorla: “I alone arrange all things and crown the deserving. Punishment, with me as judge, holds in check those whom vice stimulates.” As Calvin Kendall has recently argued, these inscriptions, linked with over-life-sized figures of Christ, “invested the portal with a numinous quality that would have given its ‘voice’ a reality unlike that which any modern viewer is likely to experience.”123 The “speaking sculpture” of the portal thus came to be understood

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in terms analogous to “real presence” in the Eucharist. That this sense of fear was also matched by a certain degree of attraction is suggested by the ways in which Romanesque sculptors and patrons responded to ancient nudes in sculpture, both as potential idols and as objects of sensuous beauty.

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Pagan Nudes and Christianity During the TwelfthCentury Renaissance

The depiction of Luxuria in Romanesque sculpture as an alluring nude naturally raises the question of its links to antiquity. As we have already seen, the figure of the “femme aux serpents” that came to be substituted for the personification of Lust as an armed warrior ultimately derived from figures of Tellus or Terrra Mater in Roman art.124 But this iconographic genealogy fails to take into account the more specific taste for antique statuary of the nude in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Numerous instances have been documented in which Romanesque sculpture emulates Roman sculpted relief, and the architectural orders in Romanesque architecture can frequently be traced to direct borrowings from Gallo-Roman architecture, as seen at Saint-Lazare at Autun, Saint-Trophime at Arles, and the third abbey church of Cluny. Erwin Panofsky also made a forceful case for what he termed the “principle of disjunction”—namely, that whenever an ancient artistic iconography or literary work was revived in the “twelfth-century Renaissance,” it was almost always subjected to either a change of form or a reinterpretation in Christian terms (interpretatio christiana); his examples include Terra transformed into Luxuria, the Venus Pudica into Eve, Hercules into Fortitude or Samson, Mithras slaying the bull into a pagan antithesis of the Christian “bloodless sacrifice” of the

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Mass, and putti representing Eros and Thanatos into images of carnal love in contrast to divine love.125 The affective qualities of the Romanesque figure of Luxuria at Moissac (fig. 17) or the Eve at Autun (fig. 18), however, presuppose a deeper engagement with and appreciation for the sensual and even sexual qualities of ancient sculpture in general, and more particularly the male and female nude. Meyer Schapiro and Jean Adhémar have offered ample documentation of the aesthetic taste for ancient sculpture among clerics during the Romanesque period, ranging from Odilo of Cluny, who had his monks obtain Gallo-Roman architectural ornament in marble to adorn his new cloister, to the bishop of Winchester, Henri of Blois, who brought antiquities back from Rome.126 Particularly striking for what it reveals of the appreciation of antique sculpture in Romanesque France is an anecdote offered by Adhémar about a head of Mars found in the ruins of a Roman temple near Meaux in the diocese of Beauvais in the late eleventh century. Foulcoi, archdeacon of Beauvais, writing to Hugh of Saumur, abbot of Cluny, describes the head with particular interest and attention to its affective impact: “It is a head which does not resemble a human being, nor does it resemble anything that our contemporaries depict. A horrifying head, and yet in this horror is such beauty [decorum], it frightens with its terrifying eyes. His lips are open in a ferocious grimace, which is beautiful even in its expression of ferocity. A deformed form of beauty, which was fitting.”127 Yet, in spite of the clear aesthetic and emotional impact of the image, he feels constrained to assert that although this pagan image had been believed to be a powerful god that struck fear in its viewers, it was only a stone effigy whose “mouth, eye, hand and foot, nose and ears do nothing; art granted a likeness, but not a respectful action.”128 Thus, the

archdeacon of Beauvais discredits the multisensory appeal that otherwise would have been evoked for a work of Christian religious sculpture, even while clearly evoking the powerful impact of the ancient work on the senses. Further examples allow us to see more specifically how the appreciation of ancient nude statuary laid the groundwork for the “Pygmalion effect” in Romanesque sculpture. The figure of Eve at Autun (fig. 18) and the new formulation of Lust at Moissac (fig. 17) and Saint-Jouin-de-Marnes (fig. 30) clearly emulate figures of Venus in ancient art, both in pose and modeling. Within the framework of the church portal, they thus reinforce the simultaneous attraction and danger of the well-modeled nude, admonishing the viewer through the addition of serpents and the specter of decaying flesh at death. It cannot be denied, however, that even in these moralizing figures of vice, the aesthetic motivation is strong. One of our best sources for gauging medieval reactions to ancient nude statuary is the Narracio de mirabilibus urbis Romae, a twelfth-century account of the marvels of ancient antiquity in the city of Rome described by the English schoolmaster Magister Gregorius (Master Gregory).129 Of all the marvels of the ancient city that caught his attention, it was a marble nude of Venus that especially impressed him. Following ancient literary convention, he tells us how it was fashioned “with such wonderful art that it seemed to be more a living creature than a statue.”130 But, as Berthold Hinz has remarked, this medieval Pygmalion reveals his own genuine passion when he when he describes how he felt compelled, “perhaps [by] some magic spell,” to return to see the statue no fewer than three times, even though it was far from his lodgings.131 Master Gregory also takes particular interest in the collection of ancient bronzes displayed outside

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the Lateran Palace. While he describes the lifelike quality of the bronze horse of the figure he identifies as Constantine (now known to be Marcus Aurelius) and the she-wolf in fairly conventional terms, he pays particular attention to the male nude—the youthful figure of the Spinario (fig. 38). Since it was raised on a column, the naked genitalia may have seemed more prominent than they would appear to spectators in the current museum setting, but even so, Master Gregory’s reaction is unusually strong: he describes the bronze youth as a “ridiculous statue of Priapus” and remarks that “if you lean forward and look up to see what he’s doing, you discover genitals of extraordinary size”—an impression enhanced by the display of the Spinario atop a column.132 His reaction would seem to be predicated on the relative paucity of representations of the male nude in earlier medieval art, and therefore the astonishment at seeing a fully naked male figure. Appreciation of the sexualized nude in terms already associated with the nude personification of Lust may have been due in part to the wide diffusion of copies of the Roman Spinario.133 An early example from the mid-eleventh century appears in the Glazier Gospel Lectionary from Salzburg (Morgan Library and Museum, ms G. 44, fol. 2r) within the context of the narrative of the Presentation in the Temple, where the figure appears clearly as an “idol” atop a column. The figure appears again in the mid-twelfth-century cast-bronze tomb relief of Bishop Friedrich von Wettin (d. 1152) in Magdeburg Cathedral (fig. 39): in this case the naked Spinario, shown on a diminutive scale, is transfixed by the bishop’s crozier, suggesting to some scholars a specific allusion to the bishop’s triumph over the paganism of the Slavs.134 But more than simply representing an idol of pagan religion, the nudity of the figures suggests a specific allusion

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to Luxuria and fornication—the sins of the flesh that the bishop was particularly concerned to keep in check among the clergy of his diocese. That this interpretation has some merit would seem to be demonstrated by a series of carved corbels of the Spinario and other naked male figures, which, unlike the figure of Adam in religious narratives, are shown fully naked and displaying their genitals. Placed on the exterior of monastic and parish churches as well as cathedrals, usually in conjunction with female figures displaying their vulvas, or figures of dancers and musicians, these figures evoke the worldly pleasures of the secular world outside the church, in contrast to the devout worshippers inside the church.135 They also make concrete reference to the taboo against sexual intercourse within sacred space and the proscriptions against even married couples engaging in intercourse immediately prior to taking communion. The appreciation of the affective qualities of ancient sculpted nudes in both positive and negative senses can also be measured in close copies of nudes found in Romanesque capitals in northern Spain. Horst Bredekamp has highlighted what he sees as the unprecedented freedom and power with which Romanesque sculpture at Frómista and Jaca renews the spirit of late antique Bildphantasie, explicitly representing the very temptations of the flesh that were so vehemently condemned by the church at the time. Following Schapiro, he connects this in part with the rise of vernacular romance literature and the culture of the court.136 A capital originally made for San Martín at Frómista (fig. 40), now in the Palencia Museum, features an unusually sensual pair of male and female nudes on the main face, flanked by harpies brandishing serpents from behind cascades of drapery suspended from beast heads. The nudes were badly damaged as the result

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Fig. 38 Spinario, Capitoline Museum, Rome, first century bce.

Cast bronze. Photo: Jean-Pol Grandmont / Wikimedia Commons, reproduced under CC BY-SA 3.0.

of vandalism early in the twentieth century when the church was being restored, but a photograph and a copy carved before the original was damaged preserve the original iconographic scheme. Serafín Moralejo determined the direct source to be a late antique sarcophagus relief of Orestes and Clytemnestra now in Madrid (fig. 41), but originally from the nearby Abbey of Santa María de Husillos, just twenty-five kilometers from Frómista.137 While the prestige of the ancient work as a model and its

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appropriation for a count’s sarcophagus may have recommended it to be copied by the sculptor at Frómista, Bredekamp points out that not only is the prone figure of Clytemnestra omitted from the composition, but the nudes are made even more striking by the elimination of drapery in the antique model. Bredekamp suggests an allusion to Adam and Eve threatened by the serpent, but, as Francisco Prado-Vilar has recently noted, the left-hand figure in the reproduction of the capital now in situ in the church transformed what was originally an ambiguous or more likely a masculine figure into a female nude with clearly articulated vulva.138 He proposes instead that the capital represents Cain slaying his younger brother, Abel. Prado-Vilar further evokes Warburg’s concept of the “pathos formula,” suggesting that the Romanesque “copy” is imbued with the formal and psychological spirit of the antique model, dwelling upon the dramatic lamentation of murder within the family. Within the original context of the transept and sanctuary at Frómista, the capital would thus offer both a sequel to the narrative of the Fall on other capitals in the nave (fig. 42) and a complement to the vices of anger, lust, and pride, shown on an adjacent capital (fig. 43), and an anticipation of the redemptive sacrifice of the Mass alluded to in capitals depicting grapevines. Beyond the iconographic rationale for the capital in biblical terms, I would argue that the Frómista capital alludes to the attraction of the nude and the taboo of unbridled sexual pleasure ascribed to antiquity. Unlike the figures of Adam and Eve shown with relatively androgynous bodies on an adjacent capital at Frómista, these copies of antique statuary fully reveal their genitalia without any sense of shame. They are displayed in part to be admired, as ancient nudes were in the twelfth century, but also in juxtaposition with other figures inside and outside the

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Fig. 39 Tomb effigy of Friedrich von Wettin (d. 1152), with detail

Fig. 40 San Martín, Frómista, copy of capital with subject based

of Spinario. Cast bronze. Magdeburg Cathedral. Photo © Kerstin Riekehr, www.geschichtstouren.de.

on Orestes Sarcophagus, ca. 1090. Limestone. Photo: C. and E. V. del Álamo.

church, to be purged from the imagination lest they foster overtly sexual thought and actions in sacred space. The capital with Luxuria attacked by serpents at her breast, paired, as at Moissac, with Avarice, underlines the connection with the appetites of the flesh (fig. 42). Sculpture at the Cathedral of San Pedro in Jaca, long connected with the more refined, classicizing works at Frómista, indicates a similar ambivalence in the reinterpretation of the antique nude. The capital of Abraham about to sacrifice Isaac (fig. 44) from the south portal of Jaca Cathedral features Isaac in full frontal nudity, showing a well-modeled torso and revealing the phallus in the manner of the figures copied from the Orestes sarcophagus.139 This reinterpretation of the antique model might, at first glance, be simply seen in Panofsky’s terms as an example of interpretatio christiana—taking a male nude from ancient sculpture to represent Isaac in heroic nudity as model of fortitude and sacrifice,

anticipating Christ himself. Kirk Ambrose goes so far as to suggest that the nudity of Isaac, which is not otherwise called for in the biblical text, might be construed as “an attempt to imagine a rapprochement between earthly and divine: Abraham and Isaac hypostasize the virtue of faith and obedience to God’s will.”140 Yet there is also a certain ideological message implied by the revelation of the genitalia, the pudenda, for this is clearly a sign of the postlapsarian state of Adam and his descendants, and thus implies a critique of the Jewish patriarchs before and under the law, who will ultimately only be redeemed by Christ as new Adam. There may even be a more specific allusion to contemporaneous Christian critiques of Jewish circumcision.141 This interpretation is reinforced by comparison with another rare biblical pretext for the depiction of the male nude, the drunkenness of Noah. Although this subject is not depicted in sculpture prior to the mid-thirteenth century,

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clockwise from top left Fig. 41 Orestes and Clytemnestra, Husillos Sarcophagus, Roman,

ca. 150. Marble. National Archaeological Museum of Spain, Madrid. Photo: C. and E. V. del Álamo.

Fig. 42 Fall of Adam and Eve and priest, San Martín, Frómista, ca. 1090. Limestone. Photo: A. Garcia Omedes, Romanico Aragones Fig. 43 Avarice and Luxuria attacked by serpents, San Martín, Frómista, nave capital, ca. 1090. Limestone. Photo: C. and E. V. del Álamo.

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Fig. 44 Sacrifice of Isaac, Jaca Cathedral, capital from south

Fig. 45 Drunkenness of Noah with Ham mocking his father, nave vault, Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe, ca. 1100. Mural painting.

and there is a tendency to focus on the covering up of Noah’s nakedness due to what Madeline Caviness has described as “viriliphobia,” there are a number of representations in both illuminated manuscripts and monumental painting that depict the exposed male member of Noah as Ham gazes upon his father.142 One prominent example from a monastic church is the fresco on the nave vault of Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe (fig. 45). Usually interpreted allegorically as a type for the wine of the Mass, this late eleventh-century image lays bare a highly visible phallus, framed by thighs spread wide apart and a conspicuous V-shaped rise of the hem of Noah’s tunic. As Ham, gesticulating at his father, gazes upon his father’s body, the older brothers prepare to cover their father from behind the bed.

The narrative then poignantly turns away from the sanctuary with the episode of Noah cursing his youngest son. Following Augustine, medieval commentators associated Noah’s unveiling before Ham as anticipating the humiliation of Christ on the cross.143 Still another line of commentary specifically associated Ham’s gaze upon his father’s genitalia with the sin against nature, homosexuality, thus prompting Caviness to suggest simultaneously a link to contemporaneous polemical literature against sodomy and an allowance for subversive enjoyment of the homoerotic gaze.144 By contrast with these biblical subjects, a capital originally intended for the cloister of Jaca Cathedral (fig. 46), now supporting an altar within the church, is remarkably faithful to the sensual spirit

portal, ca. 1093. Limestone. Photo: A. García Omedes, Romanico Aragonés.

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Fig. 46 Historiated capital with nudes including satyr, woman, and man, Jaca Cathedral, ca. 1105. Now supporting altar. Limestone. Photo: A. García Omedes, Romanico Aragonés.

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of an antique model: it depicts well-modeled male and female nudes at the corners of the capital, flanking a nude satyr shown in profile touching its own buttocks in an erotic gesture that faithfully follows its antique mode.145 Within the sacred space of the church, we thus find a similar ambivalence to the one witnessed in the representation of Lust in exterior portal sculpture—a simultaneous attraction to sensually modeled nudes based on antique models and anxiety about their sexual content and allure in light of contemporaneous views of sexuality among the clergy, monks, and married laity.

The Romanesque Nude and the Bridling of Desire

Returning to the case study of Luxuria at Moissac (fig. 17), I would like to suggest how viewing, touching, and imaginatively engaging the senses with such figures in high relief were thought to impact viewers in positive ways. We have already seen how sexual practices stimulated by the senses were countered by the church’s call to confession and penitence, and how portal sculpture might speak to viewers in images and inscriptions. What I want to explore here is the role of the senses in penitential practices and how the sculpted images might imaginatively come alive in the minds of the beholders, both the laity of the town and the monks themselves, in conjunction with sung ritual texts. The portal as a liminal space, a threshold between the public space of the town and the consecrated space of the monastic enclosure, offered the potential for repentance and conversion. The redemptive powers of seeing are highlighted by Bernard of Clairvaux in his sermons On Conversion, addressed to clerics whom he hoped to join the Cistercian Order.146 According to Bernard,

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images from the sensual world enter into memory through the eyes to be left as “certain bitter marks” imprinted or stamped in the memory, long after the “evil pleasure” has passed.147 The novice begins the process of conversion to the monastic life by beholding God’s inner voice as a “beam of light, both informing men of their transgressions and bringing to light things hidden in darkness.”148 Bernard affirms that by this beam of light, “reason is enlightened and what is in the memory is unfolded as though set out before each man’s eyes.”149 Then the monk is called to enter into a period of physical enclosure within the monastery, so that, deprived of outward vision, the eyes might cast their gaze inward. It is finally at this point that the convert is able to repent, and according to Bernard, “his sight will become keen so he will be able to turn his gaze towards the brightness of glistening light.” To complete the conversion, the novice must purify his memory. Bernard likens memory to a sheet of parchment that has soaked up the ink with which the scribe has written on it.150 Like parchment, memory can be blanched but not completely purged, because the scribe’s quill leaves an indelible mark. But Bernard argues that even if it were possible to erase memory completely, this would not be desirable, since without the memory of sin, there would be no awareness of its remission and thus no humility or gratitude. What is distinctive in the case of Luxuria and most other female nudes in Romanesque sculpture is the insistence on a prolonged viewing or meditative gaze as the means to sublimate sexual, fleshly desire in favor of its spiritual counterpart. Mary Carruthers has anticipated, in part, my argument that the nude in Romanesque relief sculpture could stimulate the transformation of memory. The act of moving through the porch at Moissac, she

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suggests, constitutes a “sequence of conversion.”151 The punishment of Lust evokes the emotion of fear, which is central to the monastic practices of meditation; the Incarnation narratives present model journeys to one’s distant goal as represented in the heavenly vision of the tympanum above. Such a journey of conversion could have been prompted any time the lay or monastic beholder entered into the monastic church through its principal entrance, pausing to ponder the sculpted narratives. But the portal, with its emphasis on sexuality, would have held a particular message for the novices, who, like the future abbot Hugh of Cluny, were often received in the monastery at the age of puberty. A more precise context for the viewing and contemplation of the imagery is offered by the liturgy at Moissac. In a twelfth-century processional from Moissac, now in the Bibliothèque nationale (ms lat. 2819), the words accompanying the antiphons for the feast of the Presentation cast the Christ Child’s reception in the Temple by Simeon as the anticipation of the participant’s entry through the church portal and ultimately his entry through the heavenly gateway (celestis porta). At the same time, as the feast also refers to Mary’s Purification, the liturgy emphasizes the Virgin’s particular role as chaste yet fecund mother, which is so prominently represented on the right jamb of the portal (fig. 36).152 The Advent procession also evokes much of the imagery found in the sculpture, including the ultimate vision of Christ’s majesty, the journey to the altar, and the preparation for the mortal’s journey into the afterlife by Christ’s own journey in the flesh, “proceeding” from the chaste yet fecund womb of the Virgin Mary. The sung text begins by comparing the entrance into the temple/church with Christ’s entrance into the Virgin’s womb:

Come all ye people, let us rejoice in the presence of the Lord, for it is precisely on this day that we celebrate his nativity and on this day that we come before the altar of the Lord with clean hearts. For the son of the Virgin has been promised by the visitation of the Holy Spirit. O blessed infant through whom the life of our race has been prepared. For just as Christ, the bridegroom of the chamber of Mary, proceeded from the womb, O Virgin, blessed above all virgins, so appears your son so that your virginity suffers no harm.153 Then the mood shifts to judgment, reflecting the traditional association of Advent with the Second Coming as well as the first: “Behold, dearest ones, that great and terrible day of judgment is near. Our days are passing by. And the bright advent of the Lord is fast approaching. Now repeatedly the din exhorts us and says, before the gate of paradise is closed, each one of yours should hurry so that entering into eternity he may reign with the Lord.”154 The theme of judgment and contrasting behavioral norms appears again in the processional chants for the season of Septuagesima, in this case with an explicit appeal to penance, which is one of the primary means of the conversion process described above.155 The opening antiphon, “Cum sederit filius hominis in sede majestatis su[a]e,” evokes the figure of Christ in Majesty portrayed in the tympanum and then the division of the blessed and damned. Thereafter follows a petition to the Judge that he might lead sinners to penance and absolve them of their sins so that they might enter into the light. Here a plea is made for conversion and cleansing the eyes with tears: “Convert us, God, and put aside our tears in thy sight, and heal our wounds with the medicine of penitence so that we might not

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perish.”156 Finally, the vision of the majesty of God, surrounded by patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and virgins, celebrates the reception of the blessed into the kingdom.157 A further liturgical context for which the portal sculpture would have had a particular resonance is the Office of the Dead. The presence of burials within the porch and continual funerary processions through the portal may have encouraged the selection of the narrative of Dives and Lazarus on the left wall of the porch (fig. 34).158 Lazarus is featured in antiphons for the Office of the Dead, the “Suscipiat te Christus,” followed by the “Chorus angelorum.”159 The portal was also a fitting setting for burial because of its association with the threshold between two realms—the earthly and the heavenly.160 Returning to the impact of the female nude in Romanesque sculpture, it would appear that these figures of Lust were designed to affect the beholder in ways that reflect the powers ascribed to vision. Much like the protagonists of romance literature, the viewer of Lust at Moissac was intended to be captivated by the gazes of these beautiful yet fallen

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women, and thus cast in the role of voyeur. Following Bernard of Clairvaux’s lead, we might also see these compressed sculptural reliefs as the images imprinted in memory—past phantasms that still aroused the monk sexually, but also evoked the terror of corporeal punishment and decay. Here, the very form and medium might contribute meaning. Carved in relief and set within orderly compartments, these sculptural images suggest the phantasmata (fantasies) of the imagination that were projected onto architecture as a locational device in medieval practices of memory. At the same time, the fact that these sculptural images are both palpable yet “one step removed from the real” makes them a little less dangerous than free-standing nudes, such as the ancient Venus that aroused Master Gregory. Like the once-threatening gorgons evoked by Bernard of Cluny, they are quite literally imprisoned in stone. By neutralizing the fantasies of memory in this way, the nude figures of Lust in Romanesque sculpture thus prepared the mind to behold the more spiritual vision of the Almighty with the inner eye of the cloistered monk.

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Chapter 3

Sculpted Portraits Convention and Real Presence

A

mong the most compelling Romanesque sculpted portraits is the gilt-bronze head of Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa in the Premonstratensian monastery of Saint John the Evangelist at Cappenberg, Westphalia (color plate 11). Resembling a Roman portrait bust, the shimmering metalwork head casts a powerful gaze through large eyes distinguished by incised irises, a long, sloping nose, curly hair and beard, and fleshy upturned lips forming a small, slightly open mouth, as if about to speak. Despite its contrived presentation as a disembodied head held aloft by angels, or even because of its focused format, this work communicates powerfully the presence of a significant historical character, one who lived over eight centuries ago. Thus, the Cappenberg head appears to participate in a transhistorical phenomenon within Western traditions of empathetic response to the sight of another human face, either real or artificial.1 At the same time, the choice of sculpture as the medium of this portrait, its later transformation into reliquary, and the addition of an inscription all suggest how presence was communicated through the other senses.

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In his groundbreaking study of the “discovery of the individual” during the long twelfth century, Colin Morris highlights the Barbarossa head as an example of the “personalization of the portrait.”2 While Morris admits that “the elements of the face, considered from the naturalistic standpoint, are imperfect,” he also believes that the general impression is naturalistic, and that the “man who designed this portrait certainly liked to depict individual traits of character.” Morris’s revisionist history of portraiture engages a broader current of historical scholarship that has sought to substantiate the notion of a twelfth-century “renascence” of antiquity and a protohumanistic concern with the individual and self. Previously, it had been argued that true portraiture flourished during the Roman Republic and the early Empire but declined as an art in late antiquity, only to be revived at the end of the Middle Ages, during a period of resurgent naturalism.3 Yet Morris leaves unchallenged the conventional definitions of portraiture, which, following Jacob Burckhardt’s lead, have focused on physiognomic likeness and the personality of

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the individual.4 While acknowledging that there is an inherent duality between likeness and type in all portraits, even more recent authors continue to affirm that the reconquest of illusionism was crucial to the revival of the genre.5 Viewed within these parameters, the Cappenberg head of Barbarossa would seem to fail as a portrait. Indeed, it resembles much more closely a long series of reliquary portraits of long-dead saints than its supposed models in more veristic forms of Roman portrait sculpture.6 However skillfully modeled individual features such as the hair and mouth may be, these heads display a restricted repertory of mask-like types—bearded kings and prophets, clean-shaven priests and monks, smooth-skinned, long-haired queens and virgin saints—with a narrow range of emotions and highly stylized facial features that give particular emphasis to the eyes. This typecasting is not confined to sacred images but extends to likenesses of the living or recently deceased rulers or prelates represented with increasing frequency in tomb effigies beginning in the eleventh century. In this chapter I will argue that these striking sculpted images were appreciated as portraits of individuals in their own time. Indeed, it will be shown that the boundaries between portraits of living persons and the holy images of long-dead saints were deliberately blurred as the individual’s ideal likeness was cast in spiritual terms. Furthermore, the distinctive materiality of these images, which favored light-reflecting polished surfaces and illusionistic eyes, and sometimes powerful gestures, served to animate the individual presence, especially in their ritual and commemorative contexts. In what follows, I begin by considering the terminology and conceptualization of portraiture in medieval sources as a means of gauging

the expectations of likeness at the time that the sculpted portraits reappeared in Europe. Then I will explore the development of anthropomorphic reliquaries as a form of portraiture that complements the presence of relics within by appealing to the senses through material radiance, formal projection, gesture, and ritual animation. I will further suggest how these portraits conditioned the form and conceptualization of tomb effigies beginning in the eleventh century. I will show how these fixed sculpted images, like their portable counterparts, came alive in the imaginations of their spectators, their high relief and polished surfaces inviting touch, while their inscriptions prompted oral performance. Finally, I will return to the case of the Cappenberg head to consider the meaning of physiognomic conventions in sculpted and literary likenesses of the twelfth century.

Simulacrum to Imago

The modern term “portrait” derives from the old French terms pourtrait and pourtraiture, already in use by the late twelfth century.7 As Stephen Perkinson has demonstrated, pourtraiture did not initially imply verisimilitude of physical likeness, but was understood to refer more generally to images or figures that represent or symbolize concepts and qualities.8 In the context of visual images, the term applies more specifically to the accurate representation of ineffable qualities or virtues; Villard de Honnecourt thus labels as pourtraiture the drawings of figures upon which geometric figures have been imposed, suggesting the revelation of an underlying divine pattern to creation. Contrefaire (counterfeit), by contrast, has the negative overtones of an imitation of surface appearances. According to Perkinson,

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Villard used the expression contrefais al vif in connection with his drawing of a lion to underline the claim that he had seen the actual beast himself, thus validating the mimetic powers of artifice to record surface realities. The modern concept of the portrait as corresponding to the physiognomic likeness of an actual person produced in that person’s lifetime was not broadly accepted until the sixteenth century.9 Latin terminology for portraiture helps measure significant changes in the conceptualization of portrait sculpture over a period of a millennium. In early Christian and medieval texts, the term simulacrum (related to similitudo, likeness) tends to be used for statues of pagan deities as well as imperial and ruler portraits, usually in a negative sense, in tandem with idols. It appears frequently in the same context as the term effigies to describe pagan religious statuary. This is the case in a polemical treatise defending Christianity against traditional Roman religion composed by Arnobius Afrus at the end of the third century. Alluding to his own recent conversion, he confesses that “[in] blindness, I worshipped likenesses [simulacra] produced from the furnace, gods made on anvils and by hammers, the bones of elephants, paintings, wreaths on aged trees.”10 Elsewhere he refers to effigies and simulacrum interchangeably to describe images of the pagan gods.11 A third term, signum, which is used to describe portrait images and statues of individuals in Roman Latin, is also used in conjunction with simulacrum.12 What is particularly interesting about the association of simulacrum and signum is that the latter term implies that all Roman portraits, whether idealized or veristic, represent the physical likeness as a symbolic set of conventions designed to convey certain messages.13 In the case of Arnobius, his introduction of the term signum precedes a discussion

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of the challenges of determining an appropriate likeness of the gods. He focuses in particular on the idea that a true likeness of the face of the deity in the image should correspond to the actual face of the deity in heaven.

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For it is not right to call or name that an image which does not derive from the face of the original features like it; which can be recognized to be clear and certain from things which are manifest. For while all we men see that the sun is perfectly round by our eyesight, which cannot be doubted, you have given to him the features of a man, and of mortal bodies. . . . If all these images are likenesses of the gods above, there must then be said to dwell in heaven also a god such as the image which has been made to represent his form and appearance. . . . But if, indeed, this is not the case, as we all think that it is not, what, pray, is the meaning of so great audacity to fashion to yourself whatever form you please, and to say that it is an image of a god whom you cannot prove to exist at all?14 Thus Arnobius uses a lack of consistency in physical likeness to question the existence of pagan gods. Arnobius’s understanding of sculpted images of the pagan deities—simulacra, effigies, and signa—as idols is shared by patristic writings between the third and seventh centuries, including Lactantius, Ambrose, and Tertullian. Lactantius even goes so far as to cast the simulacra and effigies of the pagan gods fashioned by such great sculptors as Polykleitos and Pheidias as “nothing more than large dolls” for playing with (“nihil aliud esse quam grandes pupas”).15 Isidore of Seville parts from earlier medieval writers in his explanation of the connection between funerary portraits and images of the pagan

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gods, thus laying the ground for understanding later Christian images of Christ and the saints as a form of portraiture. In a chapter on pagan deities in the Etymologies, Isidore recounts, There were certain powerful men, or founders of cities, for whom, after they had died, the people who had been fond of them made likenesses [simulacra], so that they might have some solace from contemplating these images [imagines]. However, at the urging of demons, this error gradually crept into later generations in such a way that those, whom people had honored only for the memory of their name, their successors deemed as gods and worshipped these images. The use of likenesses [simulacrorum] arose when, out of grief for the dead, images [imagines] or effigies [effigies] were set up, as if in place of those who had been received into heaven demons substituted themselves to be worshipped on earth, and persuaded deceived and lost people to make sacrifices to themselves.16 The term simulacrum is specifically connected to portrait likeness, when Isidore traces the etymology of the term, but he also associates simulacra with the artificial nature of manufactured images, and by extension with idols, whereas imago and effigies are used interchangeably for a more general notion of manufactured images: “‘likenesses’ (simulacra) are named from ‘similarity’ (similitudo), because, through the hand of an artisan, the faces of those in whose honor the likenesses are constructed are imitated in stone or some other material. Therefore they are called likenesses either because they are similar (similis), or because they are feigned (simulare) or invented, whence they are false.”17 Although

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Isidore does not mention Pygmalion, he does cite the myth of another Greek sculptor, Prometheus, credited as the first artisan who made a likeness of a human form in clay, and inventor of the art of statues. He also mentions a Hebrew account of Ishmael making the first likeness from clay. Finally, Isidore establishes that an idol (idolum) is more specifically a “likeness made in the form of a human and consecrated” and to which worship is offered. Elsewhere, Isidore distinguishes the sculpted images of pagan deities and funerary portraits, which he casts as simulacra and idols, from painted images or mental images of the saints that can offer models for imitatio. In his Sentences, he affirms that “many imitate the life of the saints, and they constitute from the character of the other an ‘effigy’ [effigiem] of virtue, just as if an image [imago] is intended in this way, and a form of painted likeness is fashioned of it; so he makes himself similar to the image, who lives in the likeness of the image.”18 The Carolingian sources, though initially ambivalent, mark a turning point in Christian attitudes toward sacred portrait sculpture. In responding to a misleading Latin translation of the Acts of the Seventh Ecumenical Council of Nicaea, the Opus Caroli regis contra synodum (Libri Carolini), authored by Theodulf of Orléans, took a hard line against what were interpreted as idolatrous practices of the Byzantine Church, including reverent proskynesis before, and adoration of, material images. Theodulf ’s text draws on Isidore of Seville’s account of the origins of image worship in pagan religion, referring to the veneration of funerary images in antiquity through diabolical influence.19 He also acknowledges that images had a place in the Jewish Temple and that painted images could be legitimately used for the adornment of Christian churches as well as the edification of the faithful by

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recalling to memory biblical histories and narratives of the saints. Nonetheless, he is critical of the adoption of the pagan customs setting up sculpted likenesses (simulacra), even while acknowledging the place of imperial portraits in civic basilicas.20 As we have seen in chapter 1, the crucifix alone was considered acceptable as a sculpted image in that it served as a memorial of the Passion of Christ. Pope Hadrian I’s response to positions on images in the Opus Caroli regis and those of the Byzantine Orthodox Church defending image veneration offers a contrasting view of images that paved the way for accepting sculpted portrait reliquaries as well as ruler portraiture, and eventually, I would suggest, the promotion of funerary portraits and effigies. Following iconophile arguments of the Byzantine Church, Hadrian distinguishes between the material of the image and the persons it represents, thus justifying certain practices of veneration that the Opus Caroli regis had condemned. Drawing on earlier Byzantine apologists of images, Basil the Great and John Chrysostom, he highlights the analogy between sacred images in the church and portrait images of the emperor, and the honor due to the image, citing the Roman practice of paying homage to portrait panels of the emperor when they are brought into cities.21 Hadrian goes on to restate the Byzantine Orthodox position that adoration and honor are directed not to the material of the image but to the person represented by the image: “Every image, then, that is made in the name of the Lord, as well as angels, prophets, apostles, as well as of the righteous, is holy. Therefore it is not the wood that is adored, but that which is contemplated and remembered, that is honored. Why, then, should we not adore the saints as servants of God, and constitute images of them in their memory, lest they be given up to oblivion?”22 In another context,

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Pope Hadrian explicitly allows a role for sculpture, citing the cherubim and seraphim in the sanctuary of the Temple of Solomon and the embodiment of God himself in human form.

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How much we must worship and adore with a pure heart and soul the sculpted image [sculptam] of Christ our God, the holy and ever Virgin, his mother Mary, and also the apostles and all the saints of God through their sacred effigies and images [effigies atque imagines], and entreat them and admit our sins in propitiation. We do not make and adore images in any other name, except on account of the Word of God incarnate for us. If then all manufactured images were rejected, neither the ark of the covenant, nor its golden and heavenly cherubim, should have been allowed.23 As Herbert Kessler has observed, in keeping with Pope Hadrian’s viewpoint, the text of the Opus Caroli regis was quietly shelved, and later on in the ninth century, Carolingian writers evinced more favorable opinions of the role of visual images in worship. These include the texts of Jonas of Orléans, already cited in conjunction with sculpted crucifixes, Angilbert of Saint-Riquier, and Walafrid Strabo.24 Another significant change by the later Carolingian period is witnessed both in primary sources and in the visual images themselves, namely, that an accurate physical likeness was something associated with the distant Roman past. The chronicler of the Church of Ravenna, Agnellus (fl. ca. 830–50), comments that his descriptions of physical likenesses of the early pontiffs of Ravenna in the Liber pontificalis are based on accurate portraits from their own time. For those readers who might question his descriptions, he confirms that “pictures

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taught me, since in those days they always made images in their likenesses.”25 Among the most significant sources for understanding the conceptualization of medieval sculpted images is the Liber miraculorum sancte fidis, composed by Bernard of Angers at the very beginning of the eleventh century. By this time, the terminology had been broadened to include not only simulacrum and effigies but also statua to refer to sculpted images. Within the narrative of miracles specifically involving the portrait reliquary of Sainte Foy (color plates 12, 13), an interesting transition takes place. Initially, Bernard of Angers refers to the reliquary portraits he has encountered en route to Conques mainly as “statues” (statua) comparable to pagan idols of Jupiter or Mars, thus emphasizing the particular problem of sculpted or “graven images,” which are explicitly condemned in the second commandment. Bernard exclaims to his companion during his encounter with a reliquary image of Saint Gerald of Aurillac, “Brother, what do you think of this idol [idolo]? Would Jupiter or Mars consider himself unworthy of such a statue [statua]?”26 And he goes on to complain that “it seems an impious crime and an absurdity that a plaster or wooden and bronze statue [statuam] is made, unless it is the crucifix of Our Lord.”27 When initially referring to the reliquary of Sainte Foy, a still skeptical Bernard critically calls it a simulacrum that contains part of the saint’s body and is prayed to by pilgrims and rustics.28 Once he has been won over by the evident agency of the reliquary as medium of the saint’s power, he refers to it as an imago or holy image or as a capsa or reliquary. Thus Bernard confirms that “it is a deeply rooted practice and firmly established custom that, if land given to Sainte-Foy is unjustly appropriated by a usurper for any reason, the reliquary of the holy virgin [sacre virginis capsa]

is carried out to that land as a witness in regaining the right to her property.”29 He also explicitly distinguishes the “holy image” (sacram imaginem) of Sainte Foy, which is dedicated to the “memory of the venerated martyr” from “an idol which requires sacrifices” and a mere “likeness” (simulachrum). Bernard regrets that “in truth, my empty talk and small-mindedness at this time did not arise from a good heart, when I despicably called the holy image, which is consulted not as an idol that requires sacrifices, but is held in memory of a revered martyr of the highest God, a likeness [simulachrum] as if it were [a statue of] Venus or Diana.”30 Similarly, when recalling his own skeptical attitude to the reliquary of Sainte Foy, he records how he stood before the image (imaginem), but addressed it mockingly as Sainte Foy, of whom part of the body resides within the present simulacrum, which he describes initially as a mute and insensate object (rem mutam insensatamque).31 By the twelfth century, the most common term used for portraits is imago, which is derived from the usage in Genesis for the creation of the first human beings in the “image and likeness of God.” Imago, in this context, is tied to identity and spiritual likeness. We have already seen that imago and its cognates are deployed by Bernard to describe Sainte Foy as a sacred image portraying the saint. But the same term applies to representations of secular rulers. In other words, likenesses of the saints that might be regarded as icons or holy images and representations of lay figures, which we would normally describe as portraits, are both understood to be “images” and thus bear the conceptual meaning of Genesis as well as Plato’s concept of an image as a physical manifestation or likeness of the actual being. In keeping with the shift just traced in the terminology and conceptualization of portraiture, it will

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be shown that the roots of Romanesque sculpted portraits can be found in the late Carolingian Empire, when reliquary images and secular portraits of rulers drew on ancient Roman image practices to convey a powerful proxy presence for the individual represented.

From Ruler Portrait to Portrait Reliquary: Imago and Presence

The portrait head of Frederick Barbarossa in Cappenberg (color plate 11) highlights the formal and functional sources of inspiration for Romanesque portrait sculpture, which can be traced to the late Carolingian Empire. First, it draws upon a long tradition of ruler portraiture in precious metal focusing on the head or bust of the individual, a Roman tradition that was revived in Western Europe during the Carolingian Empire after a roughly three-hundred-year hiatus. Such ruler images, focused primarily on the physiognomic likeness, served as proxies for the absent ruler both at home and abroad, as they were portable tokens of the ruler’s authority in diplomatic missions.32 Second, the fact that the Barbarossa portrait was transformed into a reliquary shortly after its gift to Cappenberg confirms the significant functional, material, and formal connections between portraits of the saints and portraits of lay individuals of the ruling elites. Among the earliest large-scale or life-sized medieval portrait sculptures of a secular ruler recorded in written sources is a statue (statuam) of Duke Solomon of Brittany commissioned as a gift to the pope in 871.33 Made of gold and gems “of our size, both in height and breadth,” Solomon’s metalwork portrait was likely fashioned over a wooden core, as in the case of contemporaneous reliquary portraits.34 It

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had to have been reasonably portable, as it was sent by the duke to Pope Hadrian II in Rome on the back of a mule on an arduous journey across the Alps. Solomon offered his own portrait as a proxy; he had promised to undertake a pilgrimage to Rome as a penitent but was forced to stay home in order defend his kingdom against Norman raids. The image must have suitably impressed the pope, who acceded to Solomon’s request that he send back relics for an abbey he had recently founded. The exchange of relics for a statue suggests an interesting correspondence in value and perceived power, identifying the precious sacred substance with the metalwork likeness of the absent ruler. To imagine what the lost Carolingian forerunners of Romanesque portrait sculpture looked like, we can turn to the reliquary portraits to which they have often been connected in the past. The image of Sainte Foy of Conques (color plate 12) is the earliest extant example and also the best-documented one.35 It depicts a dazzling vision of the crowned saint, executed in hammered gold over a wooden core, adorned with Carolingian and Roman gems, carved rock crystals, and intaglios. Seated on a throne, casting a powerful gaze upon the viewer through enlarged almond-shaped eyes with the whites in opaque white glass, and the irises in dark blue translucent glass (color plate 13), the saint reaches out to the viewer with projecting arms that once received gifts to the shrine. Though certainly not life-sized in scale, reaching about three feet in height, the work gives an impression of monumentality in its hieratic presentation and would have commanded the central axis of the pilgrimage church and monastery of Sainte-Foy when it was placed behind the high altar or in the axial chapel of the ambulatory. The history and dating of the figure are complicated by the evidence of historical accounts and

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numerous physical alterations. Beata Fricke, who offers the most comprehensive study of the figure, has concluded that the present image includes much of the original reliquary described by Bernard as “de antiquo fabricata,” assumed to have been created shortly after the translation of the relics of the saint from Agen to Conques after 883.36 Fricke assumes that the present image preserves from the original statue the main part of the wooden core from the chest upward, the hammered golden revetment with Roman and Carolingian gems, the Gallo-Roman mask used for the face, and the tubular arms. She comes to this conclusion, in part, due to Jean Taralon’s discovery that the wooden figure comprises two separate pieces; the upper section includes not only the bust but also the lap and upper parts of the legs, projecting at a 90-degree angle from the torso, and the lower section, in addition to the legs, includes remnants of the support for a wooden throne that was later replaced with the present metalwork throne.37 Thus, Taralon and Dominique Taralon-Carlini confirm that the original wooden statue must have taken the form it has today, that of an enthroned wooden figure reveted in gold. By the time of Bernard of Angers’s first visit to Conques in 1013, the statue had been restored or renovated—“de integro reformata,” as Bernard puts it in the Liber miraculorum—in response to the surge of pilgrims after the miraculous restoration of sight to Guibert “the Illuminated” in 985. It was during this phase that the gold revetment was reworked, a new metalwork throne was created to replace the old one in wood, and Carolingian rock crystals and ancient intaglios—perhaps, as Fricke argues, reused from the earlier revetment—were added. During a third phase in the late fourteenth or fifteenth century the figure was modified again by

the introduction of a small doorway with quatrefoil tracery giving access to the interior of the statue. By conventional definitions, this work would hardly qualify as a portrait, for a number of reasons. The face itself (color plate 13) can bear little resemblance to the third-century martyr, as there was no pictorial record of her face five hundred years later. The makers of the image chose to appropriate a Gallo-Roman head dating from the late second or third century, thus giving the young girl a mature male visage. That an antique male portrait could serve as the face of the saint’s reliquary suggests that other criteria were important to the makers and spectators of the reliquary. For those who could not behold the saint in the flesh, the Roman face may have recommended itself as an appropriate portrait for the saint precisely because of its antiquity and its association with the Roman Empire, under which the saint was martyred. Certainly by the late eleventh century we have textual documentation that medieval beholders did have a particular appreciation for the qualities of physiognomy expressed in Roman sculpture. As discussed in chapter 2, Foulcoi, archdeacon of Beauvais, offers a particularly compelling description of a Roman head of the god Mars. Emphasizing its lively facial expression, he characterizes it as “a frightening head . . . which frightens the viewer who looks at his terrible eyes.”38 Noting the memorial function of Roman portraits of emperors and patricians, as well as the common practice of using portraits as substitutes for the deceased in funerary rituals, Fricke has further suggested that the Roman mask of Sainte Foy carried with it some of its functional significance as a death mask that ritually represented the deceased, giving him or her new life or apotheosis symbolized by the radiant material.39

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Beyond any resonances of the original function of the Gallo-Roman mask, the reliquary image and the mask serve as a portrait likeness of the saint insofar as the form and material communicate an ideal or idealized likeness of the saint and the presence of relics within. Radiance itself is a quality ascribed to the saints. Gold and precious pearls incorporated into the reliquary can be associated not only with the dwelling of her soul in the heavenly Jerusalem, a city described in the book of Revelation as having walls of gold studded with gems, but also with her virtues.40 Bernard of Angers calls the “great martyr” a “more precious treasure than the ark of the covenant once held” and “one of the outstanding pearls of the heavenly Jerusalem.”41 He also explicitly connects the radiance of the material of her image with her character, describing how the “golden radiance of her clothing figures overtly the illumination of spiritual grace” and the “four gems [on her crown] . . . the quadrivium of the cardinal virtues: prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance”; Bernard goes on to affirm that “Sainte Foy, because she had an understanding of these and perfection in them, and because she was deeply inspired by the Holy Spirit, also cultivated most perfectly in her heart the remaining virtues that are derived from these.”42 Likewise, Bernard emphasizes the “brightness” or “whiteness” (candorem) of her face as signifying her virtue: “I perceive that the whiteness of her face signifies charity. As a matter of fact, it is appropriate that through whiteness, which conquers other colors by its own radiance, charity [karitas], the most perfect of virtues, is understood.”43 Perhaps the most crucial aspects of Sainte Foy’s reliquary for the present discussion are the ways in which the sculpted form acts upon multiple senses

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to convey the presence of the individual saint. The enthroned figure impinges on the space of the spectator, both within the context of its regular display in the sanctuary, where it was the focus of regular prayers and devotions, and through processional movement within and beyond the abbey and its territories.44 Bernard of Angers records how the image was regularly carried in procession during times of need. Furthermore, in numerous instances, the saint appears in visions with the same golden, radiant appearance of her reliquary image to defend the honor of the abbey, and her own image more specifically. Whereas the polychrome of Romanesque crucifixes and images of the Madonna and Child (chapter 1) enhances their potential to appear alive to viewers, a potential already supported by the sculptural medium, the metalwork figure of Sainte Foy is animated through its gold cladding and inserted gems and rock crystals, which reflect both the natural light and candlelight and generate a kinetic, shimmering effect within the dimly lit church interior.45 Sainte Foy is the earliest surviving example of a long series of medieval portrait reliquaries of varying formats. Classified by Joseph Braun as “redende Reliquiare” or “speaking reliquaries,” these figural reliquaries generally contain just the skull of the saint or a fragment thereof, but also occasionally a mixture of relics.46 Past scholarship has emphasized how an anthropomorphic reliquary of this type draws on ancient Roman portrait sculpture, offering an important link between antiquity and the revival of “monumental” sculpture in the Middle Ages.47 Besides such formal considerations, however, much attention has been focused on how the “portrait” or Bildnisreliquiar makes the person whose relics

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are contained within a more tangible focus for veneration.48 Expanding on this concept, I want to consider how the portrait conveys an ideal likeness of an individual from the past, making present not only the physical relics but also the character and virtues of the saint through bodily form, radiant materials, gestures, the distinctive gaze of the saint, and its specific ritual uses.49 Büchsel has distinguished reliquaries from sculpted crucifixes and statues of the Madonna and Child in their function, arguing that these portraits are a form of cult image destined for individual veneration or adoratio, as opposed to participating in communal liturgy focused on the Eucharist. By contrast, I would argue that these reliquary portraits fulfill both individual and communal functions (as do sculpted crucifixes), serving as a focus for individual veneration outside the liturgy as well as communal veneration on the saint’s feast day (including public processions and Masses) or at other regular Masses when the sculpted reliquary was present on or behind the altar as an intercessor on behalf of the entire community. I also suggest that the goal of making the saint present to the senses through a powerfully sculpted and radiant image was enhanced by changes in format and scale that focused much more attention on the bust or face, as the full-length enthroned figure, the majesty, came to be used for the Madonna and Child. Indeed, even the bust or half-length reliquaries were referred to as caput in Latin texts and inscriptions, signaling that they contained what was deemed to be the most important relic, that of the skull or head itself.50 Three remarkable half-length reliquaries from the Massif Central in France are generally dated to the twelfth century: Saint Baudîme, likely made around the mid-twelfth century for the Abbey

of Saint-Nectaire in Auvergne (color plate 14); Saint Césaire, made for the eponymous abbey in Maurs, attributed to the third quarter of the twelfth century; and Saint Chaffre, from the Loire Abbey of Le Monastier.51 All three of these reliquaries are considerably larger in scale than Sainte Foy, each reaching a height of between two and a half to three feet from the waist to the top of the head, thus making them appear as life-sized men standing between five and six feet tall.52 As I have argued elsewhere, in each of these cases the male saint is dressed for Mass and occupies the position of the celebrant at the altar.53 The saint is present in multiple ways: in the relics contained within; in the sculpted likeness, which visually embodies the saint; and in the human successor to the saint, who celebrates the Mass of the local community and leads the daily intercession with the saint on its behalf. Perhaps the most significant way in which the reliquary of Sainte Foy and later Romanesque reliquary portraits communicated with the beholder was through their pronounced eyes, distinctively executed in enamel (Saint Vitalis, Düsseldorf); glass (Sainte Foy, color plate 13), horn and ivory (Saint Baudîme, color plate 14), gemstones (Saint Oswald, Hildesheim; Saint Paul, Münster), or in incised metal, inlaid with niello (Saint Chaffre; Pope Alexander, Stavelot, color plate 15).54 A belief in the power of the eyes and seeing had an impact on the perception of both living beings and inanimate images. The eyes were the means by which sensory information of all kinds was communicated to memory and the sensus communis (common sense) but were also understood to serve as windows of the soul, mediating between the human and the divine, the physical and spiritual worlds. Thus, in his Etymologies, Isidore of Seville writes that “among all the sensory organs,

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they are closest to the soul. Indeed, every indication of mental state is in the eyes, whence both distress and happiness show in the eyes. The eyes are also called lights because light emanates from them.”55 Early in the same book, Isidore characterizes the connection between body and soul through the senses. In speaking of the body’s five senses, Isidore traces the etymology of presence (praesentia) to the senses: “Because they are ‘before the senses’ [prae sensibus] just as we call things that are present to our eyes ‘before our eyes’ [prae oculis].”56 Vision is given precedence over the other senses “because it is more vivid than the rest of the senses, and also more important and faster, and endowed with greater liveliness (vigere), like memory among the rest of the faculties of the mind. Moreover, it is closer to the brain, from which everything emanates; this makes it so that we say ‘See!’ even for those stimuli that pertain to the other senses.”57 Writing shortly before the first portrait reliquaries were created, Hrabanus Maurus (ca. 780–856) expands on Isidore’s ideas about the mediating role of the eyes and the face in his De Universo. “These [eyes] reside closest among all of the sensory organs to the soul. In the eyes then, there is every discernment of the mind. And from this both the perturbation of the soul and its happiness appear in the eyes. Eyes, then, are the same as lights [lumina]: and these said lights, from which light emanates, and also which from the beginning [when] closed, hold/ grasp the light, and pour back in putting before them that which is received externally by vision. The eye is thus not only corporeal vision, but also demonstrates the intuition of the heart.”58 As such, the eyes are integral to the concept of the face as the means by which the “entire figure of the man and the knowledge of each and every thing of a person” and the countenance (vultus) as the means by which

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the face demonstrates “the will of the soul” and “signifies the quality of the soul.”59 Furthermore, in keeping with the distinction of material and treatment of the eyes in Carolingian and Romanesque reliquary portraits, Hrabanus Maurus attributes particular significance to the pupils in mediating between body and soul, the physical and spiritual senses: “The pupil is the middle point of the eye, in which is located the force of seeing: for wherever our very small images are seen, on that account they are called pupillae. . . . In a mystical sense the pupil of the eye signifies the intention of a pure heart, through which one discerns justice, and distinguishes truth from falsehood. Thence the Prophet preaches in the psalm, saying: Guard me, O Lord, as the pupil of your eye (Psalm 16).”60 This connection between the eyes, as organ of the physical sense of sight and mediator of the other physical senses, as well as a form of inner seeing or understanding, is strengthened in the theological writings of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. According to an anonymous twelfth-century sermon on the members of the human body (“De membris humanis”), “eyes designate contemplation. For it is this way that we distinguish visible things of the exterior world through corporeal eyes, just as we observe invisible things through the rays of contemplation.”61 Similarly, Hugh of Saint Victor (see the introduction) makes explicit the idea that the sense of sight is intimately connected with, and can lead to higher levels of, spiritual and intellectual vision. The eyes not only bring in sensory impressions from the outside world; the sensory data that they convey to the mind also work on the imagination and ultimately foster an image-less contemplation. The eyes are thus crucial “windows on the soul,” both receiving and radiating rays of light that have the capacity to affect and transform the beholder.

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The power of the eyes of living individuals is clearly expressed in contemporaneous biographies of the saints. In Jotsald’s Life of Odilo of Cluny, composed in the mid-eleventh century, we learn that the abbot’s eyes “radiat[ed] as it were some sort of splendor [and] were for the beholder both a source of terror and admiration.”62 Likewise, the Life of Saint Stephen of Obazine describes how “when [the saint] fixed the ray of his eyes on you, you felt entirely penetrated so that the very secret of the heart seemed revealed, nothing could escape his gaze.”63 The belief in the power of the saint’s piercing gaze seems to have affected how people responded to sculptural images, many of which were distinguished by the insertion of lifelike eyes made of glass, enamel, ivory, horn, or precious gemstones. Not only do these materials distinguish the eyes from the radiant metal of the faces, imparting a certain lifelike quality in their relief, color, and luminosity; as Markus Späth has recently suggested, the materials themselves symbolically reinforce the efficacy of the saint’s gaze in mediating divine light.64 Two compelling examples are the images of Sainte Foy in Conques (color plate 13) and Saint Baudîme (color plate 14). The male saint, shown in a glittering copper-gilt clad bust with polished ivory eyes inlaid with black horn irises, must have been perceived very much like the figure of Saint Gerald of Aurillac as described in the eleventh century by Bernard of Angers. Saint Gerald’s bust reliquary portrait was “made with such precision to the face of the human form that it seemed to see with its attentive, observant gaze the great many peasants seeing it and to gently grant with its reflecting eyes the prayers of those praying before it.”65 As Bissera Pentcheva has recently emphasized, the wording of this text ties the gaze of the saint both to vision and to hearing, as the saint’s “reflecting eyes” are the medium by

which the saint appears to grant their prayers with a “reverberating gaze,” and the materials themselves reinforce the connection between visual shimmer or glitter and aural reverberation.66 In the case of Saint Baudîme, it may be added that the tactile sense is also suggested, amplifying the theory of extramission by which rays from the eyes grasp or touch the objects and persons they behold, for the saint’s eyeballs are carved from the tactile medium of ivory and were equipped to be manipulated from behind so that they could move like real eyes in their sockets. Sainte Foy’s eyes (color plate 13) are enlivened by their material in a different way: both the whites of the eyes and the irises are made from glass—an opaque white glass for the whites and a translucent blue glass, surrounded by a raised gold frame, to separate the iris from the white.67 The translucence and blue color of the iris serve to animate the eyes even more than enamel or opaque glass when the light of a flickering lamp or candle passes before the eyes, for then the light appears to pass through the iris rather than simply reflect off its surface. This effect is lost in many photographs, which give the impression of dark, even black, irises, but Ivan Foletti has beautifully demonstrated this effect by filming the image as a moving candle passes in front of the face.68 The impact of Sainte Foy, also described by Bernard of Angers, is much more menacing: she appears in dreams and visions in the form of her golden image and acts with vengeance against those who infringe upon the privileges of her abbey or fail to bestow adequate affection and gifts upon her image.69 To understand the impact of the sculpted portrait of the saint on its viewers, it is useful to explore how it would have been displayed. Although we do not know precisely where these

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figures were placed, Bernard makes it clear that Sainte Foy’s reliquary was in close proximity to the principal altar of the Savior in the Choir. In his account of the miracle of Gerbert (1.1), he describes how Sainte Foy herself appeared to the man in a vision, demanding that, on the vigil of her martyrdom, he should “purchase two candles, and place one in front of the altar of the Holy Savior and the other in front of the altar where the clay of my body is enshrined.”70 This might be taken to mean that, prior to the construction of the current church, the reliquary was placed in the axial chapel, behind the high altar. After the construction of the new pilgrimage church in the second half of the eleventh century, some fifty to seventy years after Bernard wrote, it was likely placed immediately behind the altar, perhaps elevated on a column, as was the case for the Sedes Sapientiae at Clermont-Ferrand, or perhaps again in the axial chapel, making it directly accessible to the pilgrims walking along the ambulatory.71 Set within the dimly lit church, it would have appeared as a radiant vision of sparkling metal, catching the flickering light of candles. Apart from visualizing in material the saint’s virtue and her heavenly dwelling, the shimmering light generated by the gold revetment, constantly changing in response to flickering candlelight and the shifting position of the spectator, also animated the figure’s fully embodied presence.72 Reaching out to the viewer in physical space with outstretched arms and a powerful gaze through eyes that were illusionistically distinguished by their material, the images of Sainte Foy and Saint Baudîme would also have struck the medieval viewer with particularly powerful haptic force, complemented by the sonic dimension of chant and prayer in an alive acoustic space and by the olfactory presence of incense, a fragrance of sanctity.

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The powerful saint’s presence was further enhanced by the proliferation of life-sized head and face reliquaries. Although textual evidence refers to the preservation of head relics as early as the beginning of the fifth century, when a head relic presumed to be that of John the Baptist was brought to Constantinople, and a century later Gregory of Tours (d. 549) describes the discovery of Saint Ferreolus holding the skull of Saint Julian, the earliest surviving head-shaped reliquaries are documented from the late ninth century, the same period in which we find evidence for sculpted ruler portraits.73 Among the best-preserved and most complex examples is the head reliquary of Pope Alexander I commissioned by Abbot Wibald for Stavelot Abbey (color plate 15).74 This work combines a sensitively modeled head of the pope with a form of portable altar in gilded bronze, adorned with enamel plaques depicting saints and virtues. The pope is depicted with a clean-shaven visage in silver with fleshy lips and long straight nose and sensitive eyes picked out in gold beneath arched brows, under a crown of symmetrically disposed, stylized curls of hair. The compelling physical likeness has prompted scholars, for both formal and ideological reasons, to focus much of their attention on the origins of the head and its presumed emulation of antique portrait heads.75 In the present context, it is important to emphasize the multiple ways in which this sophisticated work conveys physical presence. In addition to giving presence to the relics of the pope’s skull in the form of a life-sized, radiant, and idealized human face with eyes that both gaze upon and are the object of the spectator’s gaze, the reliquary also represents character through the program of saints and virtues depicted on its base. The sculpted head is doubled

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and explicated by an enamel portrait on the central axis of the front of the reliquary, which gives a more conventional medieval likeness, relying upon the visible signs of the pope’s office to suggest the virtues of the officeholder—the chasuble with white papal pallium, the miter with infulae, and the crozier or pastoral staff. As I will suggest below, when we consider tomb portraits in conjunction with sealing images, these are all elements that invest the individual with both authority and virtue as embodiment of the office. The virtues of the pope as martyr are conveyed by association with the two local martyrs Eventius and Theodolus, one of whom is also inscribed and attired as a fellow bishop, the other as a deacon. In this way, they complement the central portrait of the pope in the representation of the three primary clerical offices.76 More explicitly, the enamels on the three other sides depict personifications of virtues and associated beatitudes. On the right side, humility is paired with knowledge (scientia), and on the left side, intelligence with perfection. Finally, the back side depicts wisdom (sapientia) flanked by fortitude and right judgment (consilium). The virtues are connected in turn, through inscriptions, to the beatitudes: “Blessed are the poor in Spirit” (humility); “Blessed are they that mourn” (knowledge); “Blessed are they that hunger and thirst for justice” (fortitude); “for the fruit of good labors is glorious” (wisdom); “Blessed are the merciful” (right judgment); “Blessed are the pure of heart” (intelligence/understanding); “Blessed are the peacemakers” (wisdom); “Blessed are they that suffer” (perfection). Viewed as a whole, the enamel plaques thus present a program of spiritual perfection particularly appropriate for the clerics and monks associated with Stavelot, including Abbot Wibald himself.77

The Alexander reliquary makes explicit in form, materials, and iconography the association of physical appearance with inner character and virtue that, as Stephen Jaeger has shown, was being promoted in contemporaneous biographies of the saints as well as living clerics.78 Bernard of Clairvaux articulates clearly this connection in his commentary on a line from Psalm 92, “The lord desireth your beauty”: What then is beauty of the soul? . . . [T]o understand this quality we must observe a man’s outward bearing. . . . The beauty of actions is visible testimony of the conscience. . . . But when the luminosity of this beauty fills the inner depths of the heart, it overflows and surges outwards. Then the body, the very image [simulacrum] of the mind, catches up this light glowing and bursting forth like the rays of the sun. All of its senses and all its members are suffused with it, until its glow is seen in every act, in speech, in appearance, in the way of walking and laughing.79 What is striking in this passage is not only the consonance of literary language with the formal and material aspects of reliquary portraits, but also an explicit appeal to all the senses that are “suffused” with the radiance of virtue; in the case of the reliquary portrait of Saint Alexander, the inscriptions appeal explicitly to speech as the means of reflecting on the virtues of the individual portrayed. Cynthia Hahn has called attention to another verbal portrait that highlights the complementary relationship between literary and sculpted portraits of the saints and holy men as exemplars, charismatic models to follow. Writing in 1149, the patron of the Alexander reliquary, Abbot Wibald of Stavelot, described to his fellow monk and friend Manegold,

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canon and master of the School of Paderborn, the exemplary role of his contemporary Saint Bernard of Clairvaux in the following terms: “For that good man, worn down by the ruggedness of the desert and pale from fasting, reduced to the meager form of a spiritual being, persuaded by sight before hearing. He was given by God the best of natures, the highest learning, . . . clear pronunciation, and bodily gestures perfectly suited to every mode of expression. . . . Merely to see him is to be taught; to hear him is to be instructed; to follow him is to be perfected.”80 Just as the man himself offered a model of virtue to imitate, through his well-composed body and gestures, the spiritual qualities of his face, and his clear speech, so too the Alexander portrait characterizes virtue in both visual forms—the well-composed face and material radiance—and oral ones, conveyed in the inscriptions. Far from being confined to the saints as exemplary Christians and the very special dead, we will see how this model applies equally to portrayals of living individuals such as Frederick Barbarossa and the recently deceased. Just as the portrait reliquary offers a recognizable human face to the relics contained within, so the tomb effigy helps visualize the mortal remains of the deceased individual within the tomb chest. There is thus a close relationship between the appearance and function of portrait reliquaries and tomb effigies.

From Portrait Reliquary to Tomb Effigy: Imprinted Identities and Resurrection Bodies

Among the earliest preserved tomb effigies in medieval Europe is the splendid cast-bronze monument dedicated to Rudolph von Schwaben in Merseburg Cathedral (fig. 47, color plate 16), created shortly

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before 1100.81 Like the Cappenberg head of Frederick Barbarossa (color plate 11), this work offers an impressive record of a historical individual: Count Rudolf von Schwaben championed the causes of the Saxon nobility and the reform papacy of Gregory VII, in direct opposition to the German emperor Henry IV, and died for the cause at the battle of the Elster in October 1080.82 As the Chronicle of Petershausen (ca. 1156) records, Rudolf was carried from the battlefield to nearby Merseburg and there “was buried in the choir of the basilica, and his image [imago], made of gilded cast bronze, was put over his tomb.”83 Mounted atop a paneled sandstone tomb chest, the highly polished, originally gilded bronze relief depicts the champion of the Saxon nobility in a life-sized, full-length portrait, presenting the body in a rather rigid, frontal pose, feet dangling diagonally as if a standing figure has been adapted for a recumbent effigy. While the body is modeled in a very compressed low relief, the head is given special attention by its bold projection. Even allowing for considerable wear, his face is summarily modeled with highly stylized features, including a long, straight nose, enlarged almond-shaped eyes originally distinguished by glass pupils, volute-like ears, and a full beard and mustache, lacking any definition of individual hairs. By contrast, his costume and regalia are rendered in meticulous detail. Dressed in a long tunic and chlamys, as well as pointed shoes with a knight’s spurs, the Gegenkönig displays all the regalia of a legitimate German king. His arched crown, originally inlaid with precious stones and gems, conforms to the type displayed on the seals of Henry IV (fig. 48), and its form can be traced back to the late Carolingians.84 In his right hand he holds a double, lily-shaped scepter, and in his left an orb surmounted by a cross.85 Of all the

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Fig. 47 Tomb effigy of Rudolf von Schwaben, Merseburg Cathedral, ca. 1080–1100. Cast bronze.

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royal regalia, these were the most significant; at the king’s coronation they were conferred by the archbishop of Mainz to symbolize the temporal authority vested in the monarch by the church. Rudolf ’s effigy is complemented by a brief literary portrait, an epitaph inscribed in Latin script around the border of the tomb plaque: “Here King Rudolf, [who] is rightly to be lamented because he died for the Law of the Fathers, lies in the tomb. As king, if only he had lived in a time of peace, he would have had no equal since the time of Charlemagne in his prudence and in his use of the sword. Where his men triumphed, he fell as war’s sacred victim. His death meant life; he died for the church.”86 The inscription thus casts Rudolf as an ideal ruler in the mold of Charlemagne, and further as a champion of the church. It also allows the portrait to come alive for the sense of hearing, as the spectator would be expected to proclaim aloud the text, giving both the image and text some agency in activating memory through the senses. In his influential history of tomb sculpture, Erwin Panofsky places the Merseburg monument at a crucial threshold in the history of funerary portraiture, marking a shift from two-dimensional images in mosaic pavements, which he traces back to paleo-Christian tomb portraits from North African churches in the fifth century, to low-relief portraits that presaged the development of ever-moreillusionistic tomb effigies in high relief, executed either in stone or cast metal.87 He sees Rudolf ’s portrait as conforming to pictorial conventions, describing it as “a Late Ottonian painting or book illumination converted (including the frame) into a life-sized bronze plaque.”88 As such, the Merseburg tomb effigy resembles full-length, late antique funerary portraits. Although he cannot trace a continuous history of earlier effigies in funerary

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Fig. 48 Seal impression of German emperor Henry IV (r. 1084– 1105). Photo: Foto Marburg / Art Resource, New York.

mosaics—the earliest European example being a fifth-century mosaic tomb portrait from Tarragona—he points to a series of examples ranging in date from the early twelfth century to the fourteenth century, including that of William of Flanders (d. 1109) at the Abbey of Saint-Bertin in Saint-Omer (fig. 49); Abbot Gilbert of Maria Laach (d. 1152), now in the Rheinisches Landesmuseum in Bonn (fig. 50); and Bishop Frumold of Arras (d. 1184). Of these three twelfth-century examples, however, only that of Bishop Frumold coincides in pose with Rudolf von Schwaben, and it is the latest in the series. The earlier examples actually demonstrate the extent to which Rudolf ’s tomb is innovative in conception, for they suggest a connection with much earlier Roman funerary images that depict the deceased lying in state prior to burial. In the case of William of Flanders, the count is depicted already

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Fig. 49 William of Flanders (d. 1109), mosaic from floor tomb in Saint-Bertin, Saint-Omer. Now in Musée de l’hôtel Sandelin, inv. 1624.1. Photo © Musées de Saint-Omer. Fig. 50 Mosaic tomb portrait of Abbot Gilbert of Maria Laach (d. 1152). Now in LVR-Landesmuseum, Bonn.

dead, with eyes fully closed and a pillow beneath his head, and with a now-fragmentary inscription around the edges that records the year of his death, 1108.89 In the case of Abbot Gilbert, by contrast, the abbot is shown with eyes open and holding a crozier in his right hand while raising the open palm of his left, but his lower body is covered by the epitaph. Both works can be traced in their different aspects to Roman funerary monuments such as the Gallo-Roman example from Saulieu, which, as Panofsky has shown, inspired the tomb slab of Saint Isarn from the Abbey of Saint-Victor at Marseilles (fig. 51); like its Gallo-Roman predecessor, Saint Isarn’s tomb depicts the deceased with eyes closed,

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laid out for burial beneath an inscribed epitaph.90 Although the tomb of Saint Isarn is among the earliest medieval tomb effigies, it is fundamentally different in form from Rudolf ’s tomb, given that the figure is recessed beneath the surface of the slab and most of the body is concealed by the epitaph, leaving only the head and shoulders and the feet exposed at either end. It also is recarved from and conforms to the shape of the Roman sarcophagus with its curved ends.91 Rudolph’s tomb, by contrast, is raised above the pavement on a stone base, is cast in higher relief in bronze, and presents the deceased as fully alive. One important point of contact between the two funerary monuments, to which we

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shall return, is the representation of the character and biography of the deceased through an inscription as complement to the sculpted portrait. A more apt formal comparison for the tomb effigy of Rudolf von Schwaben is found in the retrospective portrait relief of Abbot Durandus of Saint-Pierre at Moissac (fig. 52), dated to the end of the eleventh century.92 In this case, the abbot, shown within the series of portrait reliefs of the apostles in the cloister, appears in an upright relief—a standing portrait of the abbot, fully vested for Mass in dalmatic and chasuble, holding the crozier in his left hand and blessing with his right. The effect of the carving in low relief, the fall of the drapery over the body, and the stance of the figure, with pointed shoes on tiptoes, offer direct parallels for Rudolf ’s effigy. And just as the inscription accompanying Rudolf ’s effigy likens him to Charlemagne as a model king, so Durandus is associated with the other relief panels of the apostles to emphasize the idea of the monastic life emulating the “vita apostolica.”93 Panofsky also sees Rudolf ’s tomb as the first in a series of effigies in the twelfth century that progress from the “pictorial” to the “statuesque.” This process is illustrated by the enhanced projection of the figure in high relief in a series of twelfth-century examples, including the stucco tomb effigy of Duke Widukind at Enger (ca. 1130; color plate 17) and two cast-bronze effigies at Magdeburg Cathedral commemorating Archbishop Friedrich von Wettin (d. 1152; color plate 18) and Archbishop Wichman (d. 1191), in which the portraits are executed in such high relief that they are conceived almost as sculpture in the round. What Panofsky and other scholars’ accounts of the formal development of tomb sculpture fail to explain is the shift from two-dimensional mosaic portraits to

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Fig. 51 Tomb portrait of Saint Isarn, from Saint-Victor, Marseilles, ca. 1050. Marble low relief. Now in Musée Borély, Marseilles. Photo: JosepBC / Wikimedia Commons, reproduced under CC BY-SA 4.0 International.

three-dimensional sculptural tomb portraits and the choice of cast-bronze relief as the medium of the earliest tomb effigies. Panofsky’s formal schema also conveys the false impression of a continuous development from two-dimensional to three-dimensional tomb effigies, even though Rudolf ’s tomb effigy actually antedates the earliest known medieval mosaic portraits, and the two media continue to coexist well into the fourteenth century. By situating the Merseburg tomb effigy within the early phase of a formal development, Panofsky sidesteps key questions concerning how the effigy could be said to function as a portrait and how the sculpted form and its materiality affected the interactions between viewer and image. A crucial clue to understanding how these Romanesque tomb effigies functioned as portraits is furnished by comparison with the reliquary

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Fig. 52 Abbot/Bishop Durandus, cloister relief from Saint-Pierre,

Moissac, ca. 1100. Limestone relief.

portraits discussed at the beginning of this chapter. Just as the sculpted reliquary reveals and animates the presence of relics hidden within in a palpable, anthropomorphic form, so too these portraits of recently deceased prelates and kings allow the spectator to behold the individual whose mortal remains are buried in the tomb chest beneath the effigy. Although the tomb monuments are fixed in place and therefore cannot be animated in the same ways as the portable portrait reliquaries are through ritual processions, they provide a concrete focus for commemorative rituals that bind the living and the dead, the present mortal body and its promised, glorified body at the time of the general

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Resurrection. The very form of a high-relief statue may be said to evoke the notion of the resurrected body as a cast-metal statue, suggesting the role of artifice in offering a perfected image of the mortal body. Also crucial is the aspect of radiance. Just as the shimmering metal and gems of portrait reliquaries have been associated with the dwelling place of the saint in the heavenly Jerusalem or with the radiance of the soul and character of the individual saint, so here we can see that the recently deceased king or prelate’s portrait was connected with aspects of inner likeness as well as the promised glorification of the resurrection body. These material significations of the portrait are particularly evident in the cast-bronze monuments of Merseburg and Magdeburg but would also apply to the carved-sandstone portrait of Widukind at Enger (color plate 17), which was originally inset with precious, light-reflecting stones, possibly including rock crystal and precious gems.94 What the tomb portraits reveal perhaps more clearly than the portrait reliquaries is how the concept of the individual is translated into a portrait likeness through certain conventions of physiognomy and the attributes of office, as well as the symbolically potent technique of producing the image by means of imprinting and casting. The stereotyped portrait type and the ramifications of its material and method of production will be explored primarily within two interrelated frameworks: first, the living individual as imago, imprinted with the virtues of an ideal model, and second, the resurrected body of the deceased as recast statue, assimilated to the glorified bodies of the saints. As theological and liturgical texts will show, the individual, fully embodied in both physical remains and portrait, was simultaneously tied to the conventional and to the transcendent.

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While it might be expected that portraits of early Christian saints, such as Sainte Foy (color plate 12) or Saint Baudîme (color plate 14), would be represented with generic features, it has long been assumed that the effigies of recently deceased, historical figures at least aspired to represent a particularized likeness.95 Challenging this conventional wisdom, Caroline Walker Bynum has demonstrated that the concepts of the “individual” and “self-discovery” in the twelfth-century “renaissance” were very different from those in the fifteenth century.96 Redefining the “individual” from the standpoint of the medieval spectator, Bynum affirms that “twelfth-century religion did not emphasize the individual personality at the expense of corporate awareness. . . . Rather twelfth-century religious writing and behavior show a great concern with how groups are formed and differentiated from each other, how roles are defined and evaluated, how behavior is conformed to models.”97 Crucial to her argument is the recognition that self-discovery pertained not so much to a particular personality or a particular self as to the discovery of “human nature made in the image of God—an imago Dei that is the same for all human beings.”98 The operative principle for Bernard, which applies more broadly to the period of the Romanesque, is that of imitatio and its cognate, imago.99 The body of Christ was the ultimate imago or likeness of God and thus the principal model to be imitated. Giles Constable has clearly shown that the earthly life and physical body of Christ, which manifested both human suffering and divine perfection, were understood as the tangible means of access to eternal life for holy men and the saints.100 For lesser mortals, however, the process of self-examination and perfection of the inner self could also be achieved by conforming one’s own life to a model

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appropriate to one’s own order within society. Between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, religious writers increasingly suggested that there were many different social roles to which religious significance could be given and that there were thus many different models of perfection for distinct groups.101 Writers from the late eleventh century on frequently expressed this notion of group conformity using the metaphor of the seal (fig. 48). Hugh of Saint Victor advised the novices of his order of canons to acquire the likeness of God by imitating the model of the saints:

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Why do you think, brothers, that we are instructed to imitate the life and conduct of good men, unless so that through imitation of them we may be re-formed to the likeness of a new life? In fact in them the form of the likeness of God is clear and therefore when we are imprinted by these things through imitation, we are also shaped in the image of the same similitude. But it should be known that unless wax is first softened, it does not receive the form, so indeed a man is not bent to the form of virtue through the power of another’s action unless first through humility he is softened away from the hardness of all pride and contradiction. . . . Therefore what else is indicated for us in this, except that we, who desire to be re-formed through the example of the good as if by a certain seal that is very well sculpted, discover in them certain lofty vestiges of works like projections and certain humble ones like depressions. . . . Therefore what in them projects, in us ought to be impressed within; and what in them is depressed, is to be erected in us, because we when we take their deeds for imitation ought to make the lofty things hidden and the humble ones manifest.102

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While Hugh deploys the seal as a metaphor for the reformation of the inner man, Gerhoch of Reichersberg makes the connection to the outer body much more explicit. In his commentary on Psalm 66, he proclaims that the image of God was imprinted on man, then effaced by sin, and finally salvaged, reformed by the grace of the Savior “just as the image was made in his own body.” He goes on to state that this mystery was accomplished in the body assumed through the Virgin Mary, but also in the body of the members of the church.103 This theological metaphor gained particular currency in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, at a time when the seal became the primary expression of individual identity. Combining an inscription naming the individual and rank with a simplified portrait, the seal impression, like most Romanesque sculpted portraits we have already seen, including that of Frederick Barbarossa (color plate 11), represented the individual as an ideal type according to his/her social rank. It also provides a model of how the sculpted portraits of Romanesque art might be perceived as a proxy for individual presence. By the beginning of the twelfth century the seal became the primary proxy for the individuals of the elites— monarchs, bishops, abbots, and knights alike—in financial and legal transactions.104 Ceremonial gestures came to be replaced with the act of sealing, and the seal itself came to embody quite literally the individual in the traces of his flesh pressed into the soft wax. Presence was thus conveyed both to vision and to touch. The seal was also a particularly useful metaphor for understanding the relationship between the individual’s inner, spiritual man and his physically embodied self, because it routinely represented the individual both through inscription and portrait likeness. Brigitte Bedos-Rezak has recently argued

that sealing practice and the theological metaphors of sealing and imprinting likeness are evidence of “a more general and unprecedented shift toward mediation, representation, and the formulation of personal identity in the medieval West.”105 She argues that the seal was the perfect model for medieval notions of identity, because it operated on the assumption of sameness and likeness rather than modern concepts of personality and individual differentiation. Because each seal impression contains a trace of its original model, it also embodies a “radical presence” within its very material, akin to the real presence of Christ in the eucharistic elements. The seal furnishes a felicitous analogy for Romanesque portraits in other media, including the cast-bronze tomb effigies of Rudolph von Schwaben and the bishops of Magdeburg (fig. 47, color plate 18). In the “cire-perdu” casting process, the matrix for the image is produced by modeling soft wax over a clay core; this sculpted form is imprinted in turn in the outer clay mold, into which the molten metal is poured. The end result appears, like the seal image, as a positive impression of the mold. At the same time, the emphasis on costume and attributes of power rather than a specific likeness of an individual personality coincides with the stereotypical images of power expressed in actual seals, which gained a much broader currency by the end of the eleventh century.106 In order to fulfill its purpose in asserting the owner’s authority and authenticating documents in his name, it necessarily depicted precisely those attributes that were most representative of his power and status within society—the costume and insignia of office, which we see emphasized in the portrait of Rudolf. Direct pictorial models for Rudolf ’s effigy are found in the unbroken series of German rulers whose images were typically impressed with as little

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variation as possible into coins and seals since the Ottonian period. Rudolf ’s own seal was modeled directly on that of his rival Henry IV (fig. 48). From the standpoint of iconography, it differs from the tomb effigy in that it shows Rudolf enthroned rather than standing, and he holds an eagle scepter. Yet the low-relief technique of the impression, the frontal mode of presentation, and the prominence of the attributes of authority—the crown scepter, orb, and chlamys—all coincide with what we see in the bronze effigy. That the outward body and accoutrements of office could be seen as projecting externally the individual’s inner life is made clear by numerous religious writers of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. In the Acts of the Synod of Mainz in 1049, for example, Pope Leo IX confirmed the election and investiture of Archbishop Hugh of Besançon with the following formula: “we concede and confirm the archiepiscopal insignia to Archbishop Hugh . . . so that he who displays laudable dignity of merits, in the knowledge of virtue as in the uprightness of manners, may display also beauty of ornaments in all plentitude of his high office. May he always be mindful to maintain inward beauty along with the splendor of his outward trappings.”107 Bruno of Segni (1078/9–1123) went even further to interpret each element of the episcopal regalia, from his sandals to his miter, as sacramenta: the outward signs of the virtues of the episcopal office and of the moral restraints imposed upon the individual officeholder.108 Commenting on the bishop’s rationale, he draws on the familiar seal metaphor to argue that a bishop who lacks wisdom, reason, and knowledge should not wear its outward sign, the rationale. “Therefore, where these [virtues] are not present in the breast and heart [of the bishop], there one should not bestow the rationale. For if it is bestowed

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[upon such a man], it is useless and like a seal which protects nothing.”109 In other words, the regalia that impress upon the bishop his outward image of authority are meaningless unless they truly reflect and/or impose virtues upon the inner man of the officeholder.110 The emphasis here on the outward signs of episcopal office is paralleled in a long line of nearly identical episcopal tomb portraits. We find instructive comparisons in the cast-bronze effigy of Archbishop Friedrich von Wettin of Magdeburg, dating from the mid-twelfth century (color plate 18).111 The Magdeburg effigy is more boldly modeled and projects a more frank, even harsh likeness of the subject than the Merseburg tomb, but it has precisely the same emphasis on an uprightness of manners in the stiff frontal pose of the archbishop. It also conveys the plenitude of office through the regalia: the episcopal miter, crozier, pallium, and ring. In the case of Friedrich von Wettin, the authority and power of his office, symbolized in particular by the crozier, are emphasized further by the inclusion of the naked Spinario figure (fig. 39) as a symbol of his defeat of paganism and the “enemies” of the institutional church (see chapter 2). In theory and representation we see what Ernst Kantorowicz has shown was most eloquently expressed around 1100 by the Norman Anonymous: the concept of a king or bishop’s gemina persona, the one personal and perishable, the other institutional, transcendent.112 In applying this theory to the Rudolf portrait, Berthold Hinz has emphasized the political aspects. What gives the theory of the gemina persona its authority, however, is a religious concept: both kings and pontiffs acquire the imago Christi in their consecration. Like him, they have two natures, one human, the other partaking of the divine and the transcendent.

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The notion that the German king, like the bishop, acquires the virtues of his office and takes on the image of Christ through the outward vesting of insignia is made abundantly clear in the prayers of the coronation ritual of Mainz. Originating in 961, this rite was still in use in the eleventh century and was likely used for Rudolf von Schwaben’s coronation at Mainz in 1077.113 As Ian Robinson has emphasized, it also continued to inspire the theocratic concept of kingship promoted by the partisans of both sides of the German schism under Henry IV.114 A leitmotif in this ordo is that the bishops confer upon the king quasi-sacerdotal as well as regal powers through anointing, in accordance with the Old Testament models, David and Solomon. The new king is admonished not only to defend the church from its enemies but also to foster the Christian faith of his people. The scepter imposes upon the king the desire to “delight in justice and hate iniquity,” following the model of the anointed king David and Christ himself.115 The crown, in the words of the prayer recited by the archbishop, “expressly signifies the glory and honor of sanctity and the work of fortitude,” signifying that the king is to “serve as the true cultivator [cultor] of God and as the vigorous defender of the Church of Christ against all adversities in exterior matters.”116 In the case of the cast-bronze portraits like that of Rudolf von Schwaben (fig. 47, color plate 16), it would seem that the idea of a Christ-like divinity is conferred on the individual not only by a particular symbol such as the cruciform orb—the German Reichsapfel held in Rudolf ’s left hand—but also by the very process of fashioning the image. As I suggested above, the casting process furnishes a visual metaphor for how the virtues of office—his institutional and Christ-like body—are imposed upon the individual and his character at the time

he is consecrated and invested with the outward symbols of his office. For anyone familiar with the German coronation rite, the material itself—in its original gilded state—would have further conveyed the dignity of kingship through the symbolism of light. In the same Mainz ordo, after the king has been anointed and thus cast in the role of an alter Christus, the archbishop prays that God may find it propitious to grant “that during his reign, he may be the health of the bodies in the fatherland [sanitas corporum in patria], . . . and that the glorious dignity of his royal palace may shine forth upon the eyes of all people with the utmost splendor of royal power, and may illuminate with the brightest light, and also may he be seen to be radiating splendor, as if he were a most splendid lightning, flashing with the greatest light.”117 Thus, Rudolf ’s gilded effigy conveys more than the political notion of an institutional body that lives on after the death of the individual officeholder; it also embodies the quasi-divine, Christ-like radiance bestowed upon the ruler at his consecration and coronation. It is precisely the same metaphor of radiant light, however, that we will see applied to another aspect of the king’s identity—the projection of his glorified body, assimilated to the resplendent ranks of the saints in heaven at the Resurrection. Up to this point we have seen how the individual officeholder assimilates the ideal character and authority associated with the regalia of his office. But the presence of historical individuals can also be conveyed with greater particularity through accompanying inscriptions, meant to be read aloud, even if these descriptions still rely in part on certain formulae. Among the more verbose epitaphs is the one accompanying Abbot Isarn of Marseilles (fig. 51).118 Here lie the sacred remains of the illustrious father Isarnus, glorified by his zeal, so full of

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piety. His happy soul is raised up to heaven, on account of his exceptional character and peaceful spirit, for he was accomplished in all forms of virtue. Thanks to these [virtues] this man of God is joyous. Pious and blessed, the abbot put into practice what he taught. And he has compelled his disciples to be pious. Thus, in living his life he has held to the rule; but he was compelled to cross the threshold of life. Have great mercy upon him. He ruled faithfully and kindly, two times ten plus seven years, the flock of the Lord, which had been entrusted to him. He renounced earthly things on the eighth of the Kalends of October [September 24] and began to ascend to the realm of the luminous heavens. [above his head] Beware, I beg you, O reader, how the law borne of the fault of the first man weighs down upon me, a miserable corpse. [at his feet] And thus, in trembling from the bottom of your heart, say and repeat, “May God have mercy upon him. Amen.”119 Here the abbot, much like the matrix of the seal, is cast as model for his monks or “disciples” whom he has compelled to be godly; his soul has been raised to heaven on account of the “splendor” of his virtues and his adherence to the monastic rule. The splendor of his polished marble tomb effigy, a rarity for its time, is thus a mirror of his character, while at the same time masking the “miserable remains” of the deceased. The inscription is further a call to action for the community to lament and remember the godly abbot, and presumably to incorporate his name into the regular cycle of intercessory prayer for the deceased on the date of his death. It is thus, like certain inscriptions on Romanesque portals, a “performative utterance” that gives voice to the deceased and orally activates the spectator’s own reflections on mortality and active prayers.120

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What finally distinguishes these high-relief portraits of prelates and monarchs from the portable reliquary portraits of the saints is that they serve as permanent focal points for ongoing rituals intended not only to perpetuate their presence in the memories of the living but also to offer prospective aid to the soul of the deceased in anticipation of its reunification with the glorified physical body, resurrected at the end of time. Although they could not come alive in quite the same way that portable reliquaries or crucifixes did, these dazzling, life-sized effigies did convey a liminal presence of the body of the deceased still resting among the living in anticipation of future animation, a body given agency through the tomb effigy and its surrounding rituals that fully engaged the living. Rather than being placed outdoors in a distant, extramural cemetery, all of these works, symptomatic of the privileged status of the individuals— abbots, bishops, kings, counts—were originally placed within the sacred space of the church, and often within close proximity to the choir. This reflects the growing sense that intercessory prayer and private Masses were essential means of relieving the soul from the punishments of purgatory, a concept that came into its own by the beginning of the twelfth century.121 Thus, the tomb of Rudolf von Schwaben (fig. 47) is placed at the west end of the choir of the present Cathedral of Merseburg, with the head facing toward and within sight of the celebrant standing at the high altar; although the present Gothic hall church replaced the eleventh-century church on the site, this arrangement appears to approximate the original setting of the tomb under a new crossing tower built under Bishop Werner (d. 1093), possibly designed to highlight the new tomb.122 Similarly, the tombs of the Magdeburg bishops were arranged around

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the choir, where liturgies were presided over by their successors, and currently line the ambulatory of the Gothic choir, thus facilitating access to the laity. Comparable arrangements of tombs in dynastic series were common for abbots, bishops, and royal families throughout Europe, reinforcing institutional and sometimes family lineage and stability.123 These privileged burial locations made it possible for the tomb effigy to engage the senses of a range of spectators and actors within liturgical space, as visual prompts to the commemoration of the deceased, as locus of texts to be read and performed orally, and even as a focus of a tangible engagement with the deceased by the touching of the effigy of the deceased and his or her face.124 Indeed, as Panofsky observed, the sculpted tomb effigy, in contrast to mosaic floor tombs, demands attention as it obstructs one’s path, rising high above the floor.125 The inscriptions, which, we have already seen, often placed an emphasis on the virtues and character of the deceased as complement to the physical likeness, were also a primary means of reminding the viewer, as a lay individual or as a member of the clergy or monastic community, to remember the deceased in intercessory prayer. Funerary inscriptions in the eleventh and twelfth centuries did not simply serve to identify the body buried beneath; rather, they established an ongoing performative relationship between the body of the spectator and the body of the deceased, for whom they advocated.126 In the case of the inscription on Rudolf von Schwaben’s tomb, the reading of the inscription requires the spectator not only to embody the presence of the deceased by reading aloud the inscription, but also to circumambulate the tomb, thus measuring and circumscribing through his or her own movements the body of the deceased.

As for the content of the inscriptions, Vincent Debiais has emphasized the often direct evocation of the spectator to pray for the deceased. The inscription directly above the head of Saint Isarn specifically calls upon the “lector” or reader of the inscription on behalf of the corpse: “Beware, I beg you, O reader, how the law borne of the fault of the first man weighs down upon me, a miserable corpse.”127 Later in the epitaph it asks the reader to lament the deceased, saying, “May God have mercy upon him.” More specific is an epitaph on the tomb of the recluse Milon at Saint-Hilaire-le-Grand in Poitiers that tells the reader the particular prayers to recite: “You who read this inscription, say the Requiescat, Amen, Paternoster [Lord’s Prayer], and De profundis [Psalm 130].”128 The requiescat is an abbreviation of “Requiescat in pace” or “May he rest in peace,” and “De profundis” is one of the penitential psalms typically sung as part of the office of the dead. The efficacy of funerary ritual and individual prayer on behalf of the deceased is suggested in the form and material of the effigy. As we have already seen, the effigies of the twelfth century most frequently depict not the corpse prepared for burial, as is the case for Saint Isarn of Marseilles, but a figure such as that of Rudolf von Schwaben, which betrays a formal paradox in that it is placed horizontally atop the tomb chest as if lying in state, yet is rendered in a standing pose with eyes fully awake. Rather than interpreting this as a purely formal problem that reflects the translation of two-dimensional standing portraits into fully sculpted recumbent effigies, as Panofsky proposed, it makes more sense to interpret these effigies as simultaneously retrospective, preserving the likeness of the deceased with all the accoutrements of earthly station masking inevitable bodily decay, and

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prospective, foreshadowing the eventual resurrection of the physical body that will be rejoined with the soul in heaven at the time of the Last Judgment. Caroline Bynum has shown how theologians of the eleventh and twelfth centuries took up Augustine’s materialist notion of resurrection to argue that the individual body would be reformed and perfected in the likeness and age of Christ at the time of his death, and that not one particle of the original earthly body would be destroyed.129 Of particular interest in the present context is the frequent use of a cast-metal sculpture as a metaphor to describe the perfected body. Early in the twelfth century, Hugh of Saint Victor elaborates on this idea in his De sacramentis: Earthly material from which the flesh of mortals is created does not perish before God, but . . . into whatever substance of other things or elements themselves it is converted, it will return at the moment of time to that human soul which animated it in the beginning. . . . For if a man, an artist, can produce a statue, which for some reason he had made deformed, and render it very beautiful, so that nothing of the substance but only the deformity perish . . . , what must we think about the Omnipotent [Creator]?”130 A little later in the same century, Peter Lombard takes up the metaphor in his Sentences: But if a statue of some soluble metal were either liquefied or ground into dust . . . and a sculptor wished to restore it from its same matter and quality, it would make no difference to it as a whole what particle was restored to which limb of the statue, as long as it contained all the

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material of which it was originally constituted. In the same way, God, the artificer, with wondrous speed shall wondrously and ineffably restore to our flesh all of which it originally consisted. . . . and assuredly nothing unseemly shall be there.131

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Ultimately the individual, once joined to the ranks of the blessed, regardless of office, was conformed to the likeness of the saints and of Christ himself. In texts of the funerary liturgies found in both the Roman and Romano-German pontificals between the tenth and twelfth centuries, this is a constant refrain.132 In the Officium sepulturae, one of the opening prayers beseeches God “to resurrect this body of our beloved . . . [so] that his [physical] body may be joined to the order of the saints and his spirit may be joined to the saints and the faithful, with whom he may worthily enjoy ineffable glory and perennial happiness.”133 More explicit about assuming a new image of Christ and the saints is a second prayer. “Omnipotent and everlasting God, who has deemed it worthy to breathe into the human body a soul in your likeness, when it is your will that dust should return to dust, we pray that you may hasten to unite [the soul of the deceased who is] your image with the saints and the elect on the eternal thrones.”134 The same theme was reiterated at the Masses celebrated in commemoration of the anniversary of death.135 In this light, the Romanesque tomb effigies considered here should be understood as representing not so much the deceased lying in state as the potential body, perfected in the likeness of the saints at the general Resurrection. What is more, he is materially assimilated to the outward appearance of the saints as represented in contemporaneous texts and reliquary portraits. The dazzling luminosity projected by the tomb effigy in its original polished

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and gilded state, complete with precious stones in the crown and enamel eyes, must have coincided well with the experience of the reliquaries of Sainte Foy and Saint Baudîme (color plates 12, 15). While the effigies are the focus of the moving bodies of the spectator but cannot be moved themselves, the potential animation of the resurrected body conveyed by the poses of so many of these tomb effigies, the increasingly illusionistic technique of high relief, and the shimmering effect of natural and and artificial light from candles or lamps would have produced the Pygmalion effect in the imagination of medieval spectators. The impression of potential enlivenment would also have been enhanced by contemporaneous accounts of automata that appeared to come to life under the appropriate astrological conditions. Examples include a prophesying head, described by William of Malmesbury, that had been fashioned by Gerbert, the future Pope Sylvester II.136 Particularly significant in the present context is the increasing frequency with which automata are described in the funerary context. As Elly Truitt has shown, medieval French literature of the twelfth century developed a fascination with funerary effigies that came alive and thus appeared to blur the distinction between the living and the dead.137 The Old French Roman de Troie, for example, recounts how King Priam embalmed the richly dressed body of his son Hector, paraded it through Troy on a litter, and had three artists build a mausoleum in the shape of a tabernacle adorned with sculptures in gold, including a dynamic figure of Hector at the top of the canopy brandishing a sword. Although it was not claimed that this statue came to life, the lively effigy was complemented by Hector’s embalmed corpse, which was preserved in such a way as to blur the distinctions between the corpse and the

living body. Set beneath the canopy, the enthroned corpse was placed with feet in a basin filled with balm and fragrant substances, and two gold tubes caused the fluids to circulate up through to nose, so that the body appeared to continue to live, emanating a sweet essence of perfume. This anticipates by two centuries the use of wooden funerary effigies as substitutes for the deceased kings of France and England, ensuring a smooth transition to the coronation of a successor.138 In later French funerary custom, the deceased king’s embalmed body also served to keep the king “alive” to be served meals in his bedchamber until such time as he was buried and the new king installed. The idea of the living royal corpse on parade described in the Roman de Troie may also have inspired accounts of funerary statues coming alive in other literary accounts. In Le Conte de Floire et Blancheflor, for example, lifelike marble statues portraying the two young lovers were animated by the power of the wind: “when wind touched the children they kissed and embraced one another and they would speak by magic [ingremance] of all their love and their childhood memories.”139 These funerary statues that appear to speak and embrace as if living beings, even though carved from marble, offer a significant parallel from profane literature to the apparent animation of religious statuary in visionary experience already described. And this is perhaps not surprising, as a desire for union—union with Christ on the cross as mystical lover, or with the object of one’s romantic or filial love—is instilled in each case by contemplating a likeness that occupies real space and makes such a telling impression through multiple sensory data that the sculpture appears to move, to respond to touch, and to speak. With the tale of the two lovers coming alive through their statues, we return to the Pygmalion effect,

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the seeming power of the artist to deceive himself and others that his artifice has produced a living likeness.

The Cappenberg Head of Frederick Barbarossa: Physiognomy and Convention

Although the likenesses of the individuals already considered do not meet modern expectations of physiognomic identity, we have seen, nonetheless, that for medieval viewers, sculpted portraits did have the capacity to convey a palpable presence of the absent individual as an object of commemoration and even devotion, and to at least some viewers, they appeared to come alive. Returning to the Cappenberg head of Frederick I Barbarossa (color plate 11), I want to focus more specifically on the conceptualization of physiognomy in medieval portrait sculpture, its parallels in literary portraits, and finally how the careful orchestration of likeness led to the perception of seemingly generic portraits as powerful living likenesses. The gilded bronze head of Frederick Barbarossa, dated variously between 1155, the year of Frederick’s coronation, and 1171, the year of Otto von Cappenberg’s death, is still held in the treasury of the Premonstratensian monastery of Saint John the Evangelist at Cappenberg, near Dortmund, having been donated by Count Otto von Cappenberg, the godfather of Frederick Barbarossa, after he became provost of the institution he cofounded with his older brother Gerhard in 1121.140 The Cappenberg family, in turn, had probably received the head from Barbarossa himself, given their close family ties, and Edeltraud Balzer has recently made a strong case for the portrait being presented together with the silver baptismal basin to mark

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the coronation of Barbarossa in 1155 and his new self-conception.141 Mounted on a crenellated base representing the heavenly Jerusalem held aloft by angels, Barbarossa’s head is less than half life-size and appears not so much as a Roman portrait bust as a disembodied head, rising from a tall columnar neck. This format, like that of the head reliquaries considered earlier in this chapter, focuses the viewer’s attention on the face, which stares out through large, staring almond-shaped eyes framed by pronounced eyebrows, the pupils originally picked out in enamel, set against a silver-inlaid eyeball, which stands out, in turn, from the gilded surface of the face.142 The emperor’s face is framed by tight volute-shaped curls of hair and beard, his hair parted at the center of the forehead, falling gently over his ears and tied at the back with a ribbon. He is depicted with a long, slender nose and small, straight mouth with fleshy lips, slightly frowning at the edges. A band constraining his locks of hair around the top of his head marks the position of a lost diadem. The gift of this head by the monastery’s founder, Count Otto von Cappenberg, is confirmed by an inscription divided into two parts, on two raised bands encircling the neck. The first part records the gift of relics of the hair of John the Evangelist, patron saint of the monastery; the second part refers to the donor, Otto’s, wish that the author of the Apocalypse might intercede on his behalf.143 While Frederick’s own name is not inscribed on the head, the testament of Count Otto specifies that an effigy of the emperor was included among his gifts to the abbey together with a silver basin, now in the Kunstgewerbe Museum in Berlin, and a long-lost gold reliquary cross.144 The basin itself connects the imperial effigy with Frederick, because its inscription records that Frederick gave it to Otto, his godfather, and an

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image at the center of the basin represents the count participating in the future emperor’s baptism.145 The fact that the inscription on the basin refers to itself as one of the “gifts” (munera) from the emperor that were regifted, in turn, by Otto “to God” and the abbey has led Herbert Grundmann to the plausible conclusion that the imperial effigy itself was given with the basin by Frederick to his godfather before it was donated as a reliquary of Saint John the Evangelist to the monastery.146 In transforming the identity of an imperial head into a reliquary of the abbey’s titular saint, the count promoted his own memory both visually and orally in the minds of the monks, as the head reliquary/portrait was displayed on the abbey’s patronal festival together each year with the other objects he had donated.147 This is a meaningful shift in function and identity to which we will return toward the end of this chapter. Although the identity of the portrait with Frederick has recently been questioned, it has long been observed that the effigy in question bears quite a strong resemblance to a contemporaneous literary description of Barbarossa penned by the chronicler Rahewin: “He had blond hair, curled a little way back from the forehead. His ears were barely covered by the hair over them, because (out of reverence for the Empire) the barber kept short the hair of his head and face with regular cutting. He had sharp and penetrating eyes; a fine nose, reddish beard, a small mouth with well-shaped lips, and his whole [facial] expression was happy and gay.”148 Colin Morris has argued that the Cappenberg head is sufficiently close to the literary description, especially in details of the short, curly hair and beard and the penetrating eyes, that “it is impossible to doubt that both are personal descriptions of the same individual.”149 In his reliance upon a comparison with literary portraiture, Morris’s assessment is

in keeping with over a century of German scholarship. Already in 1886, Friedrich Philippi saw in the head and face such “highly individual features” that he believed one could not deny that it was a portrait, even in the modern sense of the term.150 The most specific elements of the likeness, as we have already seen, relate to the literary portrait of the emperor composed by Rahewin—the short, curly hair, the small mouth, and the penetrating eyes. But Frederick’s portrait head, no less than the portrait reliquaries and tomb sculptures we have already explored, once again ties the individual to an ideal imago that represents inner character and virtue through conventional forms and materials.151 It is notable that Frederick was portrayed wearing not a traditional crown of his day but a diadem based on Roman imperial portraiture, and his short, curly hair, tied in a knot at the back, appears to evoke the conventions seen in portraits of Augustus, such as the cameo incorporated into the Ottonian Lothar cross.152 Barbarossa’s emulation of Augustus served, in turn, as a model for Frederick II, as revealed by a series of copies of ancient cameo portraits produced by Hohenstaufen court workshops early in the thirteenth century.153 While the beard and mustache worn by Frederick reflect the fashion for kings and rulers of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, including Rudolf von Schwaben (fig. 47), a more generic level of likeness allows us to see more clearly the coincidence of certain physiognomic types transcending traditional boundaries between individual portraits and holy images. A striking parallel may be drawn with the head reliquary of Saint John the Baptist from Fischbeck, now in the Kestner-Museum in Hannover (fig. 53).154 Dating from the mid-twelfth century, this work may have inspired the conversion of the Barbarossa head into a reliquary of Saint John the

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Evangelist at Cappenberg, as the Premonstratensians of Cappenberg took over the convent of Fischbeck in 1158.155 Executed in gilded bronze, the Fischbeck reliquary offers a close parallel for the format of the Barbarossa portrait as disembodied head, in this case as an attribute of martyrdom.156 John the Baptist conforms to a circular geometry, with repeated, projecting, volute-like curls of hair; large almond-shaped eyes set on either side of a straight nose beneath boldly arched brows, with irises inlaid in silver and niello; and a relatively small, slightly pouting mouth. Apart from a generic stylistic and technical resemblance, the two works share the radiant gilded material of the face and the prominent wide-open eyes. The fact that the face of a living emperor could share the same basic physiognomy as a saint confirms what we have already seen was the case for portraits of the long-dead saints, as well as exemplary living monks: that sameness and conformity were desirable and that the individual’s identity was tied to conventions for distinctive social roles and ideal, even sacred models. Just as verbal portraits of the saints from hagiographic literature and letters offer an interpretive gloss for sacred portraiture, so historical chronicles and romances, reviving ancient rhetorical conventions, offer a systematic description of the physical appearance of lay individuals, known as the descriptio personae. Later twelfth-century manuals on writing and rhetoric, such as those compiled by Geoffrey of Vinsauf and Matthew of Vendôme, provided models for both structure and even specific phraseology appropriate to individual men and women occupying distinctive social roles.157 In his Documentum de arte versificandi (Example for the art of writing verse), Geoffrey of Vinsauf also advised writers that they should follow conventions of late antique literature, modeling

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Fig. 53 Head reliquary of Saint John the Baptist from Fischbeck,

ca. 1160, Kestner-Museum, Hannover. Gilded cast bronze. Photo: Foto Marburg / Art Resource, New York.

their literary portraits of contemporary rulers, for example, on Sidonius Apollinaris’s account of King Theoderic II of the Ostrogoths.158 Rahewin’s portrait of Frederick adapts both the broader format and certain individual phrases from Sidonius but also appropriates elements from other royal biographies, such as Einhard’s account of Charlemagne, to create a composite image of the ideal ruler.159 Echoing a phrase from Sidonius, Rahewin affirms that Frederick’s character and

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Fig. 54 Grotesque head from Notre-Dame-en-Vaux, Châlons-surMarne, ca. 1200–1220. Rogers Fund, 1913, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, acc. no. 13.152.2. Photo: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

bearing are so great that Envy herself could find nothing to diminish the praise for him. The body is described as “exact” in its form and of average height in both cases. Rahewin describes Frederick’s facial expression, using a phrase from Einhard’s life of Charlemagne, as “happy and gay” (totaque facies laeta et hilaris). For the eyes, Rahewin again follows Sidonius in defining them as “globes” (orbes), but he adds that they are “sharp and penetrating” (acuti et perspicaces). Both Theoderic and Frederick have curly hair with locks falling over the forehead, but whereas the Ostrogothic ruler’s hair falls thick over the ears, Rahewin specifies that Frederick’s hardly reaches the ears and is red-blond in color. Grundmann concludes from such comparisons that Rahewin, like other authors of the period, was

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simply customizing a series of well-known phrases and descriptive words to convey the likeness of his own particular subject. Looking at a broader range of literature, one also finds an emphasis on the nobility and brightness of the physical body, with particular emphasis on the eyes. This parallels the primary features of sculpted portraits of recently deceased lay individuals and clerics as well as images of the saints. Thus, in the Old French poem Ipomédon, Hue de Rotelande (active 1170–90) describes the eponymous hero as “illuminated by his beauty.” When he walks into the room he, in turn, illuminates the entire room, like the sun dispelling clouds. In a typical head-to-toe description, the author writes that “he has bright blond hair, and so beautiful an appearance, neither too simple nor too proud. Full and broad is his brow. . . . The eyes are bright, beautiful and gay. And the nose so well proportioned. . . . And the mouth also well formed. . . . His neck was long and white as stone, even more so than his ermine. . . . I don’t think that nature could have created a more beautiful creature.”160 This physical beauty, in turn, coincides with his good character—his honesty, good sense, and good service as a knight.161 Less detailed but similar in spirit are the descriptions of Charlemagne and the French knight Ganelon in the Chanson de Roland, composed earlier in the twelfth century; in this case, however, befitting the focus on warriors, a fierce quality of appearance is constantly noted. The poet describes Charlemagne’s body as “well proportioned, robust, and good-looking,” with a face that is “bright” (cler) and of “noble countenance.”162 In describing Ganelon, the poet emphasizes his flashing eyes and that his “body befitted a nobleman and his chest was broad,” concluding that “he was so handsome [that] all his peers stared at him with wonder.”163

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The well-composed body, the serene facial expression, the radiance of the face and flesh, and the shining eyes are aspects of these verbal descriptions that are paralleled in concrete form in Romanesque portraits, both of individual rulers such as Barbarossa and Rudolf von Schwaben (color plate 11, fig. 47) and of long-dead saints such as Saint Baudîme (color plate 14), Pope Alexander I (color plate 15), and the Kestner-Museum’s John the Baptist (fig. 53). These faces further reflect the general consensus of the time that it was inappropriate, at least for the noble and virtuous, to express the emotions or passions either in life or in artistic representation.164 By contrast, the emotions were given freer rein in the corbel sculptures of villains and lower-class entertainers, or in images of demons and vices, precisely because they were understood as deformations of the ideal imago.165 A particularly striking example is the early thirteenth-century “head of a grotesque” thought to have come from an exterior corbel frieze of the Church of Notre-Dame-en-Vaux at Châlons-surMarne, now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (fig. 54).166 Originally staring down at the viewer through disproportionately large eyes, the face also has a pronounced nose and sticks out its tongue through an open, pouting mouth that suggests both visual and oral disruption. We will see in chapter 5 how these aspects of caricature came to be understood under the broader rubric of monstrosity as representations of spiritual deformity. The representation of such powerful monstrosities alongside the idealized faces of the saints in the intrinsically palpable medium of sculpture suggests that the spectator of the time was expected not only to “read” the faces for signs of character but also to be “touched” by them.

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Romanesque Portraiture, the Senses, and Real Presence

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The notion of reading bodies and faces for signs of inner virtue is one manifestation of the high value attributed to the sense of sight, which has a particular bearing on the perception and practices of portraiture. Another index of the centrality of the senses is the prominence of the eyes and their radiance in both literary portraits and in sculpted faces of lay individuals as well as long-dead saints, such as those of Frederick Barbarossa (color plate 11) and the reliquary portraits of Sainte Foy (color plate 13), Saint Baudîme (color plate 14), and Saint John the Baptist (fig. 53) discussed earlier. But we have also seen that sculpted portraits, however schematic or conventional in form they may appear to modern viewers, often struck the imagination of medieval viewers so powerfully that they appeared to come alive. Portable reliquary portraits such as Sainte Foy (color plate 13) came to be so intimately identified with the saint that she seemed to act through her image and appeared to the faithful in visions and dreams in the form of visions. Offending the portrait reliquary was tantamount to offending the saint herself. It is not surprising, then, that the twelfth-century tympanum of the Last Judgment at Conques represents Sainte Foy in a form comparable to that of her reliquary image, quite literally stepping from her jeweled throne in the sanctuary to pray on behalf of the individuals rising from their tombs (color plate 19). Even funerary effigies, despite being fixed in one place, could appear to come alive, either through their erect poses anticipating resurrection or, in the case of certain tomb effigies described in literary sources of the twelfth century, by speaking and apparently moving—thus offering interesting

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Fig. 55 Tomb effigy of King Childebert (d. 558), made ca. 1163 for Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Paris. Limestone relief. Now Abbey of Saint-Denis.

counterparts to religious images, such as the crucifix, coming alive. This “Pygmalion effect,” which applies specifically to sculpture, is predicated not only on powerful visual contact through the exchange of gazes between the portrait and the spectator or through the allure of shimmering metal or polished marble, but also on the portrait’s displacement of space, projecting a three-dimensional body in changing natural and artificial light, in changing acoustics, and even in changing olfactory environments. Incense would have played a crucial role in conveying an olfactory presence.167 It was a topos in hagiographic literature that the saints, both in life and death, were redolent with the sweet fragrance of sanctity, and this olfactory sign of their presence would have been animated when incense was burned at the festal Masses in their honor and in the processions, which involved portable reliquary portraits.168 It was also associated with funerary contexts: not only was incense burned to fumigate the corpse during the

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Requiem Mass and at the grave, but it was also used to cense tombs on anniversaries, and clay vessels containing incense were also frequently included in burials.169 The agency of the tombs of high-placed prelates and rulers could be enhanced in numerous ways by special commemorations on the anniversary of death. A well-documented case is the twelfth-century tomb of the Merovingian king Childebert (d. 558), the founding donor of the Abbey of Saint-Germain in Paris. The effigy, made just before 1163 for the new choir of Saint-Germain-des-Prés (fig. 55), was moved from Saint-Germain to the Abbey of Saint-Denis in 1816 as part of efforts to consolidate the royal pantheon during the restoration of the monarchy under Louis XVIII (r. 1814–24).170 On the anniversary of Childebert’s death, all of the bells of the monastery were rung, and the tomb itself was honored with a textile covering and the lighting of a candle. When the Placebo was chanted, the sacristan was to light candles in the candelabra, and four candles were lit before the tomb and another seven before the “corpora Sanctorum” in the choir. Then the prior and subprior vested themselves with albs, received purple caps with thuribles, and accepted the blessing of the incense by the abbot, if he was in the choir. After this, they censed the high altar, the matutinal altar, and the tomb of the king. This ritual was repeated at the Benedictus. A similar ritual was dictated for the commemoration of the anniversary of King Dagobert, presumed founder of the Abbey of Saint-Denis.171 The ringing of bells and the use of special lighting and incense again focused attention on the king’s tomb, thus appealing to hearing and smell as well as the sense of sight. The tomb of Rudolf von Schwaben (fig. 47), situated in the choir of Merseburg Cathedral, was

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likely accorded similar honors, given his status as a local hero for the church reformers and the Saxon nobility. Bishop Werner listed Rudolf immediately after Henry II in his list of benefactions for annual commemorative Masses: clearly the gift of Rudolf ’s body to Merseburg put the Gegenkönig on equal footing with the royal founder and patron of the cathedral.172 Herbert Cowdrey has suggested that the interruption of the dedicatory inscription at the four cardinal points may well have permitted the placement of candles there as part of his commemoration.173 Patterns of wear also indicate that the effigy has been frequently touched over the centuries, suggesting a natural impulse on the part of “pilgrims” to the tomb to have a palpable contact with this figure of great historical importance. We have also seen that sculpted portraits speak to their viewers through their inscriptions as encomia to their subject’s accomplishments and virtues (e.g., the Alexander reliquary, color plate 15; tomb effigies of Rudolf von Schwaben, fig. 47, and Isarn of Marseilles, fig. 51) and admonitions to the living to pray for the deceased (e.g., Saint Isarn) through imagined dialogues and actual ritual prayers. They further assert their agency by casting shadows and reaching out into the viewer’s space with extended limbs, and they project a visible presence for hidden relics and bodies awaiting resurrection. They are thus sites of desire for the reanimation of the deceased saint or individual, whose high-relief images assert a concrete presence that appeals not only to sight but also to touch, hearing, and smell, when set within specific ritual contexts. While relics and the remains of the recently deceased offer a primary rationale for the acceptance of sculpted portraits of the saints in the late tenth century and the innovation of tomb effigies in the eleventh century, the assumption of individual

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presence in other forms of portraiture was related more to Roman ideas of proxy. Portrait images of emperors in both sculpture and painted panels were set up in imperial basilicas or in distant provinces to assert the exercise of authority on the ruler’s behalf.174 It was apparently this tradition that eventually inspired the revival of sculpted portrait busts of rulers in precious metal alongside saints in the late Carolingian period. Returning to our primary case study, the portrait of Frederick Barbarossa (color plate 11), we can now see that this object, in many ways, offers a synthesis of all the meanings that portraiture potentially conveyed in Romanesque art. His portrait in gilded, cast bronze was clearly designed to emulate the Roman tradition of portraiture in its specific iconography and its medium and appearance. As a personal gift from Barbarossa to his godfather, it also fulfilled the old function of ruler portraits as proxies for his presence. In keeping with the expectations of the original audiences of Romanesque portraits, however, it represents the individual emperor through stylized conventions that deliberately cast him in a stereotyped mold to represent outwardly his inner virtue. As in the case of the reliquary portraits, Frederick’s large, staring eyes, distinguished by their silver material and incised pupils, would have struck the medieval beholder as embodying a palpable presence in the same way they did for portrait reliquaries of the saints. The extent to which a living person could be assimilated to a saint in portraiture goes beyond the generic features of luminosity and conventional physiognomy in this case. In a curious turn of events, Frederick Barbarossa’s head was transformed into a reliquary to contain relics of the hair of Saint John the Evangelist, the patron saint of Otto of Cappenberg. Fitted with a new base in the form of

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a walled city, the disembodied head appears much like the image of the emperor on his golden bull, in that the image of the emperor’s bust hovers over the towered walls representing the city of Rome.175 That image, in turn, must have played on the conventions of images of the Holy Face and the form of head reliquaries diffused throughout western Europe.176 In the case of the Cappenberg head, by contrast, the emperor is now lifted aloft by angels into the celestial Jerusalem to suggest his ultimate apotheosis amongst the ranks of the saints.177 That the emperor’s face could serve as the mask for John the Evangelist’s relics reveals just how anachronistic our own modern distinctions between images of the saints and “secular” portraits are. A similar lack of concern for physiognomic precision made it acceptable to reuse a Gallo-Roman imperial mask for a teenage girl in the reliquary portrait of Sainte Foy at

Conques (color plate 13). Rather than insisting on a detailed physical likeness, the medieval viewers of Romanesque portraits understood that the conventionalized image and its radiant material conveyed the essence of the individual’s spiritual likeness. Even if contemporary viewers may find these works abstract or generic, there is still a strong desire to connect with these faces of the distant past; like the medieval viewers of these seemingly generic faces, we are drawn by the powerful impulse to establish a social connection by the encounter with another human face.178 What I have suggested, in addition, is that for medieval beholders, the still-novel sculpted portrait had a particular power to convey presence to multiple senses, such that viewers could imagine the mute image coming alive.

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Chapter 4

Beautiful Deformity and Deformed Beauty The Monstrous and Deformed

I

n his well-known complaint about monastic art, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux offers what for its time is an unusually detailed description of monsters, beasts, and other subjects that proliferated in Romanesque sculpture in the eleventh and twelfth centuries: In the Cloisters, before the eyes of the brothers while they read—what is that ridiculous monstrosity doing, an amazing kind of deformed beauty and yet a beautiful deformity? What are the filthy apes doing there? The fierce lions? The monstrous centaurs? The hunters blowing horns? You may see many bodies under one head, and conversely many heads on one body. On one side the tail of a serpent is seen on a quadruped, on the other side, the head of a quadruped is on the body of a fish. Over there an animal has a horse for the front half and a goat for the back; here a creature which is horned in front is equine behind. In short, everywhere so plentiful and astonishing a variety

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of contradictory forms is seen that one would rather read in the marble than in books, and spend the whole day wondering at every single one of them than in meditating on the law of God.1 Bernard aptly characterizes the repertoire of images found in numerous twelfth-century Benedictine cloisters of southern France and northern Spain, including the capitals made in the 1130s for Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa, on the French side of the Pyrenees, near Prades. Now divided between the original site in France (fig. 56) and a reconstruction of the cloister, comprising approximately half of the original sculpted elements, at the Cloisters at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, these capitals display an unusually varied array of monsters and hybrid beasts, paralleling those described in Bernard’s contemporary text. Here we find heraldically repeated double-bodied lions and bears joined to a single head (figs. 57, 58), “filthy apes” seated side by side with naked men (figs.

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Fig. 56 General view of cloister, Abbey of Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa.

59, 60), monsters from antiquity such as the siren (fig. 61), as well as naked dancers interspersed with monstrous mouths either surmounting or devouring human torsos (figs. 62, 63). If the Cuxa cloister is unusual for its almost exclusive focus on monsters and beasts, it is not uncommon for monsters to be a significant presence in other European cloisters of the twelfth century. Santo Domingo de Silos near Burgos includes a series of capitals with monsters: harpies or bird-sirens (fig. 64), long-necked dragons,

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griffins, centaurs (fig. 65), inventive hybrid demons with cloven hooves, and numerous capitals of birds of prey and lions.2 The Benedictine abbey of Santa Maria de Ripoll in Catalonia offers a comparable concentration of monsters, in this case without any sacred narratives: it includes sirens and apes (fig. 66), griffins and dragons (fig. 67).3 Finally, the cloister of Saint-Pierre at Moissac, the Benedictine abbey reformed by Cluny at the end of the eleventh century, offers a more varied program, including pier reliefs of the apostles and reforming abbot and historiated capitals with extensive narratives from the life of Christ and lives of the saints, while monsters appear on the abaci of many sacred narratives as well as in independent capitals (fig. 68).4 What is striking is the repetition of certain monstrous or deformed creatures—double-bodied lions, ape-like men, sirens, griffins, dragons. There is also a pronounced corporeality and a heightened sensory appeal, enhanced by intense gazes, tactile actions of gripping and holding, allusions to taste in chewing or devouring mouths, and also to sound in their gaping mouths. Yet these bodily images carved in stone are frequently assimilated to symmetrical patterns or heraldic designs that seem derived, at least in some cases, from eastern Mediterranean textiles. Henri Focillon, while noting sources of inspiration in textiles, found a distinctive Romanesque mentality in the carved capitals that dispose human figures and monsters alike to highlight the hidden armature of the Corinthian-based capitals, thus imposing a certain order on the intrinsically chaotic compositions and wild beasts and monsters, as well as fighting men and apes.5 Thus, for Focillon, drawing on Bernard’s analysis, the monstrous capitals served a positive function by finding beauty in the deformed.6 While it might thus be easy to dismiss the monstrous sculptures in the cloister as “wholly

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clockwise from top left Fig. 57 Double-bodied lion and apes, cloister capital from

Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa, ca. 1130–1140. Marble. The Cloisters Collection, 1925, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, acc. no. 25.120.582.

Fig. 58 Double-bodied bears devouring men, cloister capital from Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa, ca. 1130–1140. Marble. The Cloisters Collection, 1925, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, acc. no. 25.120.843. Fig. 59 Squatting men and apes, cloister capital from

Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa, ca. 1130–1140. Marble. The Cloisters Collection, 1925, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, acc. no. 25.120.617. Photo: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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Fig. 60 Squatting apes and men, cloister capital, Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa, ca. 1130–1140. Marble. Fig. 61 Sirens, cloister capital, Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa, ca. 1130– 1140. Marble. The Cloisters Collection, 1925, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, acc. no. 25.120.837.

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Fig. 62 Monstrous mouths devouring human torsos and naked

male dancers, cloister capital from Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa, ca. 1130–1140. Marble. The Cloisters Collection, 1925, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, acc. no. 25.120.635.

Fig. 63 Monstrous mouths devouring naked men, cloister capital

from Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa, ca. 1130–1140.

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aniconic” on the basis of their apparent ornamentality and an absence of discernible textual references, the “salient physicality” and ubiquitous presence of monsters in Romanesque sculptural programs, including prominent locations within the sanctuary and at the portal, prompt us to probe more deeply Bernard’s burning question: “what is that ridiculous monstrosity doing?”7 An important clue to understanding the larger genre of monstrosity in Romanesque sculpture is the Plinian races, who appear in compartments around the margins of the Pentecost tympanum at Vézelay (fig. 69).8 Cynocephali, pygmies, panotii, and other races are clearly shown as targets of the apostles’ mission, babbling a diversity of incomprehensible languages that the miracle of Pentecost momentarily reverses as the apostles speak in tongues; they further represent, through their monstrous and hybrid bodies and confused speech, the “deformed” humanity of the non-Christian other as ripe for conversion.9 It will be argued here, however, that the entire range of monstrosity in Romanesque sculpture may be understood in terms of degrees of deformity, and this allows us to understand the extent to which monsters defined human nature and the slippery boundaries between the human and the animal, the human and the diabolical. It will also be shown that the monstrous was intimately connected with the imagination, in terms of both its positive, creative power and its potentially dangerous connection with diabolical possession. The powerful appeal of sculpture to the senses, as we have seen in other contexts, works in cloisters and portals alike to affect the thought and behavior of spectators. These monstrous sculptures fostered deep emotional responses, comparable to the affectus of beholding and embracing a sculpted crucifix or reliquary. In

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Fig. 64 Bird-sirens, Santo Domingo de Silos, capital from lower cloister, west gallery, ca. 1100. Fig. 65 Centaurs, Santo Domingo de Silos, capital from lower

cloister, south gallery, ca. 1100.

what follows, I will begin with a discussion of the definition and conceptualization of monsters and monstrosity in medieval sources before turning to specific case studies that demonstrate the distinctive functions of monsters in different settings: the cloister, the sanctuary, and the portal.

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clockwise from top left Fig. 66 Apes and sirens, Abbey of Santa Maria de Ripoll, cloister

capital, ca. 1140–1160.

Fig. 67 Double-bodied dragons joined to a single head, Santa Maria de Ripoll, cloister capital, ca. 1140–1160. Fig. 68 Dragons with human prey, Saint-Pierre, Moissac, cloister

capital, ca. 1100.

Reading in the Marble: Monstrous Historiography

Most scholars of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries assumed from Bernard’s critical attitude that images of the monstrous had no specific meaning, but were purely decorative.10 Jurgis Baltrušaitis went so far as to propose that the monstrous forms on Romanesque capitals were generated by an inherent geometric formalism of the period.11 This understanding of the aesthetic value of monsters and beasts in the cloister is also at the heart of Meyer Schapiro’s provocative

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essay “On the Aesthetic Attitude in Romanesque Art,” originally published in 1947. Schapiro saw in Bernard’s cloister capitals the expression of an emerging secular culture that was condemned by the Cistercian “precisely because it is unreligious and an example of a pagan life-attitude which will ultimately compete with the Christian, an attitude of spontaneous enjoyment and curiosity about the world, expressed through images that stir the senses and the profane imagination.”12 Schapiro also characterized the monsters in Bernard’s cloister as “a world of projected emotions, psychologically

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significant images of force, play, aggressiveness, anxiety, self-torment and fear.”13 While Schapiro referred in passing to psychological dimensions of monstrous images in the cloister, focusing on violence and fear, Ernst Gombrich explored their recuperative potential. He argued that Bernard’s cloister capitals exemplify a universal genre of the “grotesque,” which, contrary to Bernard’s protests, was deployed in Romanesque art as in that of other periods to master instinctual urges by “giving them an outlet of an acceptable shape.”14 He further emphasized that monsters exemplify a certain ambivalence that upsets our sense of order: on the one hand, they inspire fear of the unknown or the demonic; on the other, seen as playful inventions, they may elicit laughter and further serve an apotropaic function, warding off or neutralizing what is initially feared. Gombrich laid the foundation for understanding the apotropaic or recuperative aspects of monsters in the cloisters.15 More recent discussions of the monstrous and monstrosity have insisted on their indeterminacy and multivalence, as well as their capacity to provoke productive thought and serve distinctive functions according to their physical contexts. Michael Camille interprets the monstrous in cloister capitals and marginalia of manuscripts within the anthropological framework of liminality as deliberately ironic or even subversive glosses on the sacred.16 He draws on Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of the “carnivalesque” to suggest that monsters and animals taking on human roles in ecclesiastical sculpture and marginalia offer an acceptable means of venting social oppression through temporary inversion of religious and societal norms. Camille specifically counters Bernard’s fear that “reading in the marble” was a distraction from the monk’s reading of scripture with the suggestion that one particular group of monsters—those

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Fig. 69 Monstrous races, detail of tympanum of the Pentecost,

Abbey of Sainte-Marie-Madeleine, Vézelay, ca. 1104–1132.

engaged in devouring—might serve as a visual metaphor for the monk’s exegetical process of ruminatio or mastication.17 Ultimately, however, he returns to Schapiro’s explanation of the monstrous as representing the imagination. The Romanesque artist, Camille believes, took “obvious delight . . . in the space of the imagination” and deliberately transgressed the norms of religious iconography in order to establish its limits. A further form of anti-iconography is

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suggested by David Williams, who proposes that the monsters Bernard complains about are paradoxical images.18 Drawing on the apophatic or negative theology of Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite, Williams suggests that these disturbing hybrids are specifically designed to evoke the ineffability of God by depicting that which he is not. A further strand of interpretation of the monstrous in medieval art, though never explicitly tied to the monstrous images of the cloister decried by Bernard, offers a significant cultural framework linked to ideology, race, and gender. John Block Friedman pioneered the analysis of monstrous races in relation to Edward Said’s concept of orientalism.19 He demonstrated how medieval commentaries used the Plinian races to “other” the non-Christian and non-European, associating monstrosity with geography (especially the East) and climate, visually placing the monstrous races on the margins of world maps and sacred theophanies, such as the tympanum of the Pentecost at Vézelay (fig. 69). Expanding on Friedman’s work, Debra Strickland has shown that during the period of the Crusades, when conflicts between European Christians and foreign non-Christians escalated, Saracens, Mongols, black Africans or “Ethiopians,” Muslims, and Jews were often cast as monstrous hybrids, befitting their status as morally suspect or diabolical opponents of Christendom.20 She also extends her analysis to include aspects of physiognomic deformity or caricature of the racial other, drawing in part on the earlier scholarship of Ruth Mellinkoff.21 Furthermore, in clerical and monastic circles, as Margaret Miles, Dyan Elliott, and others have emphasized, women were sometimes described as monstrous agents of the devil, especially in the aftermath of the Gregorian Reform, in which emphasis was placed on the purity of the mind of the clergy and on

celibacy, following the example of monastic vows of chastity, designed to reinforce the ideal ascetic body.22 Asa Mittman has recently questioned the association of Plinian monsters of the kind represented in the Anglo-Saxon manuscripts of the Wonders of the East with “race,” emphasizing the relatively recent invention of the term.23 Contrasting the apparent fixity of “races,” Mittman points to the changeability of the monstrous peoples depicted in medieval manuscripts and also to the variable aspects that serve to classify them as monstrous. This point is amplified in the recent study of the Beowulf manuscript, which contains The Wonders of the East. Here it is argued that the images and textual descriptions of monsters in the Anglo-Saxon manuscript allow one to imagine creatures that are otherwise ungefraegelicu or “inconceivable.”24 Texts and images are equally ambiguous and unstable, designed to engage the viewer and reader in the complexities of the monstrous. As we will see in surveying the primary source literature below, monsters were at times considered portents of impending doom or admonishments against depravity and thus evoked fear, but they also had the positive capacity to evoke wonder and pleasure.25 While Bernard was concerned that his monks would be distracted from meditation and reading by “wondering” at the curious carved monsters in cloister capitals, a positive function of wonder for many of Bernard’s monastic contemporaries was the stimulation of thought. As Caroline Bynum demonstrates, wonder “was not only a physiological response, wonder was a recognition of the singularity and significance of the thing encountered.”26 Thus it was the singular, the unknown, paradoxical, or hybrid, as in the case of sirens, centaurs, or double-bodied lions in Bernard’s hypothetical

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cloister, that triggered a search for understanding— or “making sense”—and this process could evoke a mixture of fear and pleasure. Though critical of the distracting quality of monsters and other subjects carved in cloister capitals, Bernard himself was seduced by what he described as the “wonderful, deformed beauty” (mira quaedam deformis formositas) of the monsters. What is crucial in the context of our exploration of Romanesque sculpture and religious experience is that Bernard also distinguished between admiratio, or wonder, and imitatio, or imitation. In contrast to the ideal of imitating an ideal imago, as is suggested in the form of the nude figure of man as microcosm or radiant funerary portraits, wonder is elicited by that “which we cannot in any sense incorporate, consume, or encompass in our mental categories”: that which is mysterious, paradoxical, or hybrid.27 Furthermore, in the context of travel and entertainment literature for the lay elites, monsters could evoke both astonishment and playful delight. Gerald of Wales, in his Topography of Wales, describes a bearded woman as one of “nature’s pranks” and a figure that “makes people laugh,” and, writing around 1200, Jacques de Vitry describes how the “Cyclopses, who all have one eye, marvel as much at those who have two eyes as we marvel at them,” thus reinforcing the deeply perspectival aspect of wonder in relation to that which is perceived to be other.28 One of the most recent attempts to come to terms with the aesthetic values of monsters within the monastic context, Kirk Ambrose’s wide-ranging study of the marvelous and the monstrous in Romanesque sculpture seeks to recover a multiplicity of potential meanings of the monstrous, both positive and negative. In addressing Bernard’s account of carved monsters in the cloister, Ambrose

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highlights the abbot’s evocation of classical language to buttress a broader argument about the quotation and appreciation of ancient monsters in monastic culture. Focusing on the centaur (fig. 65), he suggests that it was a vehicle for conveying a noble ideal of the male nude, and that, far from being exclusively an image of shame or lust, it could be understood as conveying a “heroic or somatic brand of spirituality.”29 He further suggests that the physicality of the medium of sculpture was an important aspect of ennobled monsters, drawing inspiration from ancient sculpture.30 Beyond the repurposing and adaptation of medieval types, Ambrose emphasizes, Romanesque sculpture also reveals a wide range of creative, “monstrous mixtures”—new combinations of stock elements from different species, like the creatures seen in the capitals of Cuxa, Silos, and Chauvigny. Ambrose suggests in this case that we need to think of a “poetics of the monstrous.”31 Both the elaborate formal aspects of monstrous carvings and their protean content, combining different species, can be seen as embodying a representational strategy comparable to that of contemporaneous poetry. The monstrous mixtures in stone, like the rhymed verses of poems, engaged the viewers’ attention and enticed them to ponder their form and meaning, perhaps in comparison with other hybrid species found elsewhere in the same space. In the medium of sculpture, they also specifically drew the viewers around the capital to trace the transmogrification from one species to another, moving beyond established types to suggest the limits of human understanding. One further interpretive framework that has particular relevance to the themes of the present book focuses on the senses and the imagination. Michael Camille has explained the proliferation of hybrid monsters in medieval art through the

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mechanics of vision.32 The imagination, or phantasia, was understood by the later Middle Ages, drawing in part on Augustine and Aristotle, as a force that could generate fantastic images by combining creatures perceived by the senses, such as a man with two heads or a hybrid combining a human body with a lion’s head and the tail of a horse. The images generated by the imagination were also, as Mary Carruthers has shown, retained in the fabric of memory and thus had the potential to continually stimulate the process of thought.33 As early as the eleventh century, drawings of hybrid monsters appeared alongside verbal descriptions in pedagogical texts known as the versus rapportati, which were elementary exercises designed to practice cognitive pattern formation. The parts that make up the hybrid creatures provided visual cues to the division of verses into smaller sections, which were to be recombined in order to make sense of them. Such monstrous exercises thus facilitated the process of invention. A concrete application of this process of invention to Romanesque sculpture is offered by Sandy Heslop’s study of the “chimera” capital in the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral (ca. 1100; fig. 70).34 Drawing on the writing of Saint Anselm of Canterbury, the very patron who oversaw the building of the crypt and adornment of its capitals, Heslop proposes that the sculptor placed the most inventive chimeras on the capital adjacent the altar, as if to highlight a comparison between the artist’s invention and that of the divine Creator. Anselm had argued that whereas the Creator conceived of all creatures ex nihilo before physically creating them, artists, even when they produced hybrids that never existed, could only combine parts of creatures that already existed in memory. The chimera-hybrid, which had no natural antecedent, was as close as the artist could come to divine invention.

Shifting focus from the invention of the artist to the affective response to the monstrous in the specific setting of the cloister, Carruthers echoes Bynum’s association of monsters with the response of wonder but insists on the formal or aesthetic value of the striking images listed by Bernard.35 Exploring the role of varietas (variety) in monastic culture, Carruthers argues that the carved monsters did not have a particular pedagogical or didactic role for the monks but were designed to distract him from taedium (boredom), one of the chief monastic vices, which might lead him to succumb to the wiles of the noonday devil.36 Carruthers’s theory of variety complements Ilene Forsyth’s analysis of wordplay in the cloister of Moissac.37 She points to the various ways in which inscriptions are manipulated, through reverse or backwards sequencing, through distribution of letters and words in seemingly decorative fashion across the surface of a given capital, or through complex abbreviations that require careful decoding. For Forsyth, the disruptions, fractures, and inversions of the “vagrant” inscriptions on the cloister capitals prompted an active viewing on the part of the monks, who would have been expected to puzzle over and decipher the playful and capricious displays of letters, thereby avoiding acedia, or sloth associated with “intellectual or spiritual torpor.” She thus sees inscriptions working in ways that complement the variety of ornamentation and visual imagery. What is particularly attractive about Carruthers’s argument regarding monsters is that it recognizes the strong impact this striking imagery must have had on the monks—the shock value of the range of monsters, roaring beasts, and demons carved in cloister capitals, an impression, I would argue, that was enhanced by the novelty of carving in high relief, which had a particular power to stimulate the

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imagination through multiple senses. Furthermore, instead of dismissing the imagery as unreligious, she firmly grounds the function of the visual images within monastic culture. Like Schapiro, however, Carruthers discounts any more specific analysis of individual subjects and what inspired them within the context of religious culture. Given that other forms of sculpted images in cloisters, drawn from biblical and hagiographic narratives, and inscriptions were clearly designed with meditation and even pedagogy in mind, it seems reasonable to search for a comparable range of uses for the monstrous and deformed creatures of the cloister, even while acknowledging that the variety of monstrous forms in the larger program could also have functioned more generically to refresh or keep alert the minds of the monks studying and meditating there. As I will argue below in the case of the Cuxa cloister, the compelling carved images of deformed humans, beasts, and monsters worked on more than one level. If, for some monks, they served primarily to relieve boredom through their striking variety and intensity, for others, no doubt, they also served to externalize their psychomachian struggle toward spiritual perfection, their anxieties about diabolical visions and sexuality, and the conceptualization of the imaginative process within monastic frameworks. Far from mere “figments of the imagination,” monsters were fully embodied presences in high-relief sculpture.38 An essential clue to understanding the monstrous images of the cloister is offered by the frequent juxtaposition of monstrous and human bodies in the Cuxa capitals. In some instances, naked men displaying the cropped hair and tonsure of monks squat in the poses of apes on adjacent corners of the same capital, thus assimilating monk to beast (figs. 59, 60); yet, on the same capitals,

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Fig. 70 Chimera capital, Canterbury Cathedral crypt, ca. 1100. Photo: Conway Library, Courtauld Institute of Art, London.

the center of each face is marked by more athletic figures who stand in erect poses and attempt to raise their squatting brothers by the arms. Understood within the context of medieval religious psychology, such juxtapositions suggest a fundamental preoccupation with the boundaries between the human and the animal or the monstrous and, as we have seen in previous chapters, between the ideal imago and its deformed counterparts. These images manifest theological and religious concepts of spiritual disorder or deformity to multiple senses, embodying that which is focused in the inner life of the mind in strikingly concrete and memorable images— monsters that roar (hearing), chew or devour (taste

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and touch), transfix their prey with powerful gazes (sight), and imaginatively emit the poisonous stench of their breath (smell). The notion of the monstrous and deformed bodies defining the boundaries of humanity and modes of behavior is suggested in the very terminology, for the English term “monster” derives from the Latin verb monstro/monstrare, to show or demonstrate. Among the first Christian writers to comment on monsters at any length, Saint Augustine, in City of God, sees monsters not so much as contrary to nature but as part of God’s limitless, creative capacity.39 Elsewhere in City of God, Augustine addresses the question of monstrous races, specifically referring to a number of the Plinian examples, including cyclops, hermaphrodites, pygmies, and cynocephali. Considering visual, sonic, and kinetic aspects of these monsters, Augustine argues that those who descended from Noah’s sons, and thus ultimately from Adam, must, by definition, be considered rational beings that are capable of redemption and resurrection along with other human beings: “we are not bound to believe in the existence of all the types of men which are described. But no faithful Christian should doubt that anyone who is anywhere born a man—that is, a rational and mortal being—derives from that one first-created human being. And this is true, however extraordinary such a creature may appear to our senses in bodily shape, in colour, or motion, or utterance, or in any natural endowment, or part, or quality. However, it is clear what constitutes the persistent norm of nature in the majority and what, by its very rarity, constitutes a marvel.”40 By extension of this principle, Augustine grants that even the bodies of the monstrous races of rational beings will be resurrected at the end of time freed from all deformity,

as will be the case with other human beings, for all will be granted perfected, beautiful bodies in the Resurrection.41 Isidore of Seville discusses monsters in book XI of his Etymologies, “On the Human Being and Portents,” thus placing monstrosity squarely within the context of defining the boundaries of humanity. He uses the terms portentum and monstrum interchangeably for his discussion of omens, portents, and monstrosities. Countering the Roman author Varro, Isidore, like Augustine, rejects the idea that portents or monsters are “beings that seem to have been born contrary to nature,” because, he argues, “they are created by divine will, since the nature of everything is the will of the Creator.”42 He goes on to argue that portents are “called signs, omens, and prodigies, because they are seen to portend and display, indicate and predict future events.”43 He further states that monsters (monstra) “derive their name from admonition (monitus), because in giving a sign they indicate (demonstrare) something, or else because they instantly show (monstrare) what may appear.”44 Isidore describes the deformities of unnatural beings in three broader categories: unnaturally large or small size of bodies or body parts, as in the cases of dwarfs, pygmies, and giants; the superfluity and absence of body parts, as in the case of two-headed individuals; hybrid beings combining human and animal features (e.g., Pasiphaë’s son, the Minotaur, who was part bull, part man) or mixing sexes (as in hermaphrodites or androgynes); and hybrid monsters among the “irrational living creatures,” such as Cerberus, the three-headed dog that serves as guardian of the realm of Hades and is said to devour flesh, or the nine-headed serpent known as the Hydra. Drawing on Pliny, Isidore also refers to “nations” of monsters or “monstrous races,” including giants, cynocephali (dog-headed peoples),

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cyclops, blemmyae (having no head but a face in the chest), panotii (large-eared), artabatitans (who walk on all fours), fauns, satyrs, sciopods (who have one enlarged leg that provides shade), and pygmies. All these monstrous peoples are believed to exist, albeit in the Far East (especially India) or Africa (including Ethiopia and Libya)—in other words, on the margins of the Christian world and the former territories of the Roman Empire. It is in this sense that monstrosity is associated with race and religion, as well as with geographical location, and thus provides a starting point for much recent discussion of monstrosity, race, and ethnicity.45 Isidore also refers to other monsters of the ancient world that, he says, do not exist but are concocted to interpret the cause of things. He includes sirens, gorgons, the Hydra, the chimera (“combining the face of a lion, the rear of a dragon, and a she-goat in the middle”), and centaurs in this group. Significantly, many of these creatures are the very examples that are found so frequently in Romanesque cloister sculpture, and sometimes even in sanctuaries and portals. As for the causes or origins of these monstrous deformities of nature, Isidore suggests that some portents were created as defects in newborns or as dreams and oracles because God “wants to indicate what is to come” and to “indicate a future calamity for certain peoples or individuals.”46 As for the monstrous peoples, Isidore rejects the notion that giants, for example, were born of an unnatural union between apostate or fallen angels and the daughters of humans before the Flood. He seems to ascribe their origins simply to geographical conditions, without casting any particular moral judgment. While Isidore’s text was quoted almost verbatim by Hrabanus Maurus in De universo,47 his generally neutral view with regard to monsters

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and monstrosity was challenged in later medieval writings. The Vienna Genesis, a series of three anonymous Middle High German poems composed between 1060 and 1170, explicitly rejects Augustine’s and Isidore’s view that the monstrous peoples were born to the progeny of Adam and their bodies do not necessarily reflect the quality of their souls. Rather, the author argues that Adam’s children corrupted humanity by their acts of disobedience and thus “displayed on their bodies what the forebears had earned by their misdeeds.”48 Cain’s murder of his younger brother Abel prompted God to curse him and banish him on the plain. A Jewish tradition that Cain was marked on his head with two horns was known in Christian literature by the beginning of the twelfth century, when Rupert of Deutz observed that “God set a sign on Cain . . . that he bore a horn on his forehead,” and the monstrous deformity of Cain is represented in a capital in the nave of Saint-Lazare at Autun.49 Besides serving as external moral signs on the body, monstrosity was also particularly associated with phantasms in the imagination and dreams. Augustine had already pointed to the combinatory power of the imagination in his Treatise on the Trinity. In book XI Augustine observes that the mind has the capacity to form images of things that do not exist in reality by “enlarging, diminishing, changing, or arranging at its pleasure those things” that do exist in another form, impressed upon the memory.50 Later in the same book, he gives examples of the kind of “phantasms” that one might imagine through such manipulations of reality— black swans or four-footed birds.51 In these cases, Augustine argues, the mind must exercise its will properly in order to avoid being harmed by the potentially shameful “fantasies of the imagination (phantasmata).”

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Fig. 71 Detail of Last Judgment showing psychostasis with demons and angels, Saint-Lazare, Autun, ca. 1125.

By the twelfth century, Augustine’s monsters in the imagination were associated more specifically with diabolical interventions, especially during dreams or nightmares. Herbert of Clairvaux, for example, describes demons as hybrids of unshapely human bodies and animal natures. “Demons have the habit of appearing in different forms, but there is a form, or more accurately a deformity, under which guise one sees them most often. In terms of the general contour of their bodies, they resemble monstrous men, gigantic in stature, black like Ethiopians in skin color, agile like serpents, ferocious like lions. Marked by large heads and prominent inflated bellies . . . they have a very frail and long neck, and also arms and legs of disproportionate length.”52 Herbert’s description matches well the representation of demons in French Romanesque sculpture. In the tympanum of the Last Judgment at Saint-Lazare at Autun (fig. 71), for example, the demons pre-

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siding over hell may be characterized as hybrid creatures, comprising a leonine head with flaming mane and large, snarling, tooth-lined mouth; slender humanoid bodies with elongated limbs and claw feet, with tails extending from the back; and in one case a serpent’s coil terminating in a large claw. One of the most extensive discussions of diabolical monsters in the imagination is found in Bernard of Clairvaux’s sermons on Psalm 91 (Vulgate Psalm 90, Qui habitat), a psalm regularly sung at compline, in preparation for the monk’s going to sleep.53 The theme of the psalm is that those who put their trust in the Lord need fear no peril. The Lord will deliver the faithful from the snare of the hunter, from the pestilence that stalks in darkness, and he will trample upon the threatening beasts: the asp and the basilisk, the lion and the dragon. In Sermon 3, Bernard explicitly touches on the problem of the senses in connection with the third verse, “For he has delivered me from the snare of the Hunters. . . .” He describes how men have become “senseless beasts” by falling prey to the hunters, who are “the leaders of this present darkness, so extraordinarily cunning in their laziness and wicked in their devilish deceit that in comparison to them, even the most astute man is like a beast before hunters.”54 He urges the young monks: “You have senses not yet trained to distinguish good from evil, do not follow the judgment of your heart, do not luxuriate in your senses, lest the wily hunter deceive you, as yet inexperienced.”55 In sermons 13 and 14, focusing on verse 13 (“You will walk on the asp and the basilisk: You will trample underfoot the lion and the dragon”), Bernard emphasizes the connection between the beasts and monstrous phantasms of the devil that have entered into the imagination. For Bernard, the asp, basilisk, lion, and dragon of verse 13 are “horribilia monstra”

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and “spiritual abominations,” among whom are distributed “works of malice” and “ministers of iniquity.”56 They show the different ways in which the devil does harm to the soul through the senses—the asp through its bite (touch), the basilisk through its glance (sight), the lion through its growl (hearing), and the dragon through its poison breath (smell). Hugh of Saint Victor extends the concept of monstrosity to consider gestures and movements that deform the well-composed body and harmonious facial expressions. Casting the external body and its movements as a mirror of the soul and a means of appropriately governing its conduct, he affirms that “just as inconstancy of mind brings forth irregular motions of the body, so also the mind is strengthened and made constant when the body is restrained through the process of discipline. . . . The perfection of virtue is attained when the members of the body are governed and ordered through the inner custody of the mind.”57 Later in the same text he refers to deformities of facial expression and immoderate movements of the body as “monstrous,” citing the hybrids described by Horace as analogies. There are a thousand masks [larvae], and a thousand ridiculous wrinklings of the nose, and a thousand outward turned contortions of the lips, which deform the beauty of the face and the decorum of its discipline. . . . What is this monster, I ask, which simultaneously feigns in itself the gait of a man, and the rowing movement of a boat and the flight of a bird. It is appropriate in this to proclaim with that ridiculous poetic elegy: “If a painter had chosen to set a human head on a horse’s neck, covered a melding of limbs, everywhere, with multicolored plumage, so that what was a lovely

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woman, at the top, ended repulsively in the tail of a black fish. . . . Believe me, a book would be like such a picture . . . if its idle fancies were so conceived that neither its head nor foot could be related to a unified form. But we are seen to divulge that satire is not more powerful than teaching of modesty (with many other things enumerated above) and of this we should not be forgetful. . . . The human body, then is like a certain republic, in which its individual offices are distributed to individual members. . . . That is, so that the eyes see, the ears hear, the nose smells, the mouth speaks, the hand operates, the feet walk, seeing that neither the offices of the members are changed, nor are they permitted to be disordered.58

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For our purposes it is noteworthy that Hugh specifically addresses the orderly disposition of the senses in contrast to a monstrous misappropriation of their natural functions. The ease with which a twelfth-century monk might associate corporeal monstrosity with spiritual or behavioral deformity is witnessed in a letter of Peter the Venerable, who served as abbot of Cluny (1122–56) during the period in which the Cuxa cloister was built. Peter describes as monstrous (monstruosus) the dishonest man who “unites to a human head a horse’s neck and the feathers of a bird.”59 Here the degeneration of human character is graphically conveyed by the contradictory form of a hybrid. As Bynum has shown, Bernard likewise used such paradoxical rhetorical structures in his writings to show the essential hybridity (mixtura) or duality of the human being and his contradictory natures and social roles.60 In a passage from his De consideratione, much quoted by later twelfth-century authors, Bernard decries secular rulers, calling

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monstruosa the coincidence of “highest rank and the lowest soul, the first seat with the lowest life, a loquacious tongue with a hateful hand, grand talk with no fruit, a heavy countenance with light action, enormous authority and wavering stability.”61 Addressed to Eugene III, Bernard’s text was also an implicit warning to the pope himself and his need to overcome the duality of his own hybrid role as a professed monk and leader of the church in the world. So pervasive was the physical and metaphorical understanding of the monstrous that Bernard described his own conflicted personality as a “chimera.”62 Thus, when he complains of ridiculous monstrosity and of “deformed beauty and beautiful deformity” in the cloister capitals, he is concerned less with the issues of artistic freedom than with the disturbing propagation of images that make tangible the contradiction of the natural order in the ideal body of Christ and the microcosm. It was one thing to evoke such images of hybrid monsters as revelatory metaphors for human behavior; for Bernard, it was apparently unacceptable to represent the same in concrete, pictorial form. For here deformity distracts attention from the sacred models that the monk is expected to imitate and impress upon his inner being. Monsters and deformed bodies are ubiquitous in Romanesque sculpture, appearing in exterior portals as part of visions of hell and judgment or as exterior corbels, and sculpted in historiated capitals inside the sacred space of nave and sanctuary as well as the monastic cloister. Given the multiple meanings and functions of monstrosity in high medieval culture, it would not be surprising that monsters and deformed bodies should perform distinctive roles according to the context in which they appear. To test this hypothesis, I begin with the cloister,

which is arguably the most clearly delimited space in terms of audience and functions, and then turn to two other ecclesiastical spaces with more mixed audiences and interactions between sacred space and civic space—the sanctuary and the portal. In order to provide specific historical, institutional, and ritual contexts for interpretation, I will focus primarily on three case studies: the cloister of Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa in the French Pyrenees, the choir capitals of the collegiate church of Saint-Pierre at Chauvigny in the Poitou, and the south portal of the Abbey of Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Paul at Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne.

Monstrous and Deformed Bodies in the Cloister

The cloister offers a distinctive functional framework for the display of monstrous bodies in stone. It is an architectural symbol of the common life of the monastic body (fig. 56).63 At the heart of the physical structure, it communicates between church, refectory, dormitory, and chapter. At the same time, its walkways shelter the symbolic monastic garden, which serves as a microcosm of the physical world and of the restored paradise of Eden.64 The monk’s individual body is inscribed within this microcosm at the center of the monastic plan, much as the ideal body is inscribed diagrammatically within the diagram of the world in Hildegard’s Liber Divinorum Operum (fig. 20). The rectangular geometry of the plan and the rhythmic arcades of the galleries on four sides convey an image of order and concord, mirroring the ideal life of the monk as regulated by the Benedictine Rule. Yet the claustrum is also a place of transition for the monk in terms of both his spiritual life and his physical movements around the monastery. Peter of Celle (1118–1182) writes in

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his School of the Cloister that “the cloister lies on the border of angelic purity and earthly contamination.”65 He emphasizes that the cloister is a place of spiritual struggle to cleanse the monk from the sins of the fleshly body. He likens the monastic claustrum to a stadium, “where those who run the race . . . abstain from fornication, adultery, and all uncleanness” and where the monk “has begun to tread upon the world and his own body.”66 Peter also calls upon the monk, through the discipline of the Benedictine Rule, to make reparation for the Fall and to “crucify his whole self with his vices and lusts.”67 The ambivalent nature of the cloister extends to the diverse activities sheltered within its galleries. While it was the primary place for quiet reading, it was also used by the pueri (the young boys in training to be monks), who read aloud, and at other times of the day it served liturgical processions and more mundane tasks such as washing.68 It regularly served as a point of transition between the life of prayer in the oratory and the more mundane actions of eating, sleeping, and administration organized around its perimeter. In certain Cluniac establishments, the cloister had even been invaded by the laity to the extent that Peter the Venerable felt the need to impose severe restrictions on lay access.69 The capitals themselves echo this ambivalence. Before our eyes we see a process of transformation from the regular, classical harmony of the Corinthian order, which serves as the template for all the capitals, to the more abstract geometric forms or human figures, beasts, and monsters. Although the Cuxa capitals place unusual emphasis on monsters and animals as well as ludic themes, most Romanesque monastic cloisters, including those at Silos and Moissac, offer a range of subjects, so that the monk would have encountered both models of spiritual seeing in hagiographical and biblical images

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as well as more ambivalent subjects, including the monsters that may be understood both to engage the monk with their creative variety and also to visualize the phantasms that impaired the monk’s vision and understanding. We see examples of cloister capitals that offer positive models of the apostolic life for monks and concrete guides to spiritual seeing through the intermediary of the senses in the cloister capitals from the Benedictine abbey of La Daurade at Toulouse, now in the Musée des Augustins. Here the very forms and compositions of the sculpted capitals help the monks palpably experience the events of the Passion of Christ, as if through the eyes, ears, hands, and mouths of the disciples.70 In the capital depicting the Last Supper (fig. 72), the sculptor presents the meal within a concrete architectural space, beneath a canopy supported by columns and surmounted by the towered battlements of Jerusalem. The table projects into the viewer’s space, as does the figure of the traitor Judas, who reaches from the foreground left to partake of the bread. Meanwhile John the Evangelist, the most beloved disciple, leans his head on Christ’s breast in a gesture of affection for Christ. Symbolically, this tender gesture also alludes to John’s exemplary role as spiritual son and lover of Christ. Medieval commentaries on the Song of Songs singled out John as the Sponsa or bride of Christ, a model of the contemplative life for monks as well as nuns, who were to sublimate physical love into a spiritual union with Christ.71 The apostle John was also understood as an exemplary mystic and visionary.72 A sermon on Saint John the Evangelist attributed to Bernard of Clairvaux suggests how John’s physical contact with Christ, involving all the senses, allows him to transcend the purely sensual experience:

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Today the apostle whom our Lord Jesus Christ loved and held dear is caressed with the hugs and embraces of his beloved. Today he enjoys his company, and because he saw and beheld and also heard and because he came in contact with his hands and touched the Word of Life that he beheld so much more clearly and directly, just as he now is higher by that same Word. . . . Today the wonderful eagle . . . has surpassed all creatures and with the apex of his soul [he] comes into contact with a place no living prophet nor patriarch nor man since the beginning of the world ever penetrated.73 (emphasis added)

Fig. 72 Last Supper, La Daurade, Toulouse, cloister capital, ca.

1150. Musée des Augustins, Toulouse.

Fig. 73 Saint John coming to the empty tomb, La Daurade,

Toulouse, cloister capital, ca. 1150. Musée des Augustin, Toulouse.

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It is thus appropriate that he is depicted as the model for the monk’s multisensory experience of the Resurrection (fig. 73). Here the senses of both touch and sight, and perhaps hearing, are evoked. The disciple eagerly strides forward to see the tomb with his own eyes, leaning forward and touching it as he dramatically gesticulates with one hand—perhaps to suggest an oral exclamation of surprise—and steadies himself by holding the central column with the other. As this action moves across three faces of the capital from right to left and around the corner to the tomb itself, the viewer within the cloister walk would have been drawn into the narrative in a very palpable way, following the movement around the capital with his eyes and even his hands. Perhaps the monk would have understood the arcades supported by columns in these capitals as the concrete image of his own monastic cloister, from which he participated vicariously in a pilgrimage to the tomb of Christ.74 It is precisely this multisensory witness of the life of Christ that monks were being trained for in their own devotional exercises, as they masticated or chewed on the biblical texts, enunciating the

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scriptural words as part of their regular reading in the cloister.75 Contrasting with this biblical model of multisensory access to the spiritual are the monstrous and ostensibly profane images found in the cloister capitals from Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa.76 These powerfully sculpted images, which parallel so closely Bernard’s repertory of themes, suggest the role of the monstrous and deformed in articulating the tension between the world and the cloister, and the struggle to repress the natural inclinations of the body. They also evoke both the dangerous potential of the physical senses and the attraction of the “contradictory forms” Bernard highlights. One capital from Cuxa, now in the Cloisters (fig. 62), is representative of a broader category of sensual, ludic themes that evoke most directly the concerns expressed in contemporaneous monastic literature on bodily and sensual behaviors.77 It displays on three of its faces a single naked male dancer, whose head is positioned on the central axis, midway between volutes, as if to form a console supporting the abacus; the corners of the same capital are filled with monstrous mouths devouring naked torsos. The central of three figural faces depicts in profile a naked man with long, unruly locks of hair and a bulging belly. Holding a large blast horn in one hand, he rests the other on his hip as he dances with legs bent and feet lifted high. Perhaps derived from Dionysian figures on late antique sarcophagi, these hedonistic characters find their closest medieval parallels in figures of naked and half-naked vices such as those illustrated in an eleventh-century manuscript from Moissac (fig. 74), containing, among other texts, extensive excerpts from the Treatise on the Eight Vices by Halitgarius of Cambrai (d. 830) and Battle Between the Virtues and Vices by Ambrose Autpertus (d. 784).78 In the

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illustration of the Battle Between Lust and Chastity, the richly clad vice appears at left, assaulted by a monstrous hybrid grasping her feet and a naked demonic figure with flaming hair who tugs at her clothes from behind; meanwhile Lust loosens her belt to disrobe as she casts her gaze at a man who lifts his tunic to reveal his private parts. Chastity appears at right as a more modestly clad woman carrying a palm of victory as she tramples upon a second naked figure with flaming hair to indicate her triumph over Luxuria. In both cases, nakedness and unruly locks of hair are used as attributes of evil and vice; perhaps in deference to the exclusively monastic audience, however, the male phallus is decorously omitted. While the Cuxa figures certainly evoke a general connection with the theme of Luxuria, they do not illustrate the psychomachian struggle in a literal way. They convey, instead, the unrestrained movements and discordant music of jongleurs, contrasting with the ideals of comportment advocated in verbal and sculpted portraits, discussed in chapter 3. The large horns held by the dancers reinforce this identification. Similar instruments are depicted in the exterior corbels of Romanesque churches and in the sculptural decoration of the cloister.79 In the cloister of Santo Domingo de Silos, for example, the upper zone of the Doubting Thomas relief (fig. 1) features long-haired men and women in secular garb blowing horns and beating drums. Schapiro identifies these figures as the tromperos and tamboreros (horn-blowers and tambourine players) mentioned in medieval Spanish documents.80 Associated by occupation with the broader class of entertainers or jongleurs, such performers could appear in either sacred or secular settings—at paraliturgical celebrations of the church or banquets.81 Jongleurs were the primary practitioners of instrumental music, and even though

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Fig. 74 Chastity triumphing over Luxuria, Moissac manuscript of Halitgarius’s Treatise on the Eight Vices, eleventh century. Paris, Bibl. Nat. lat. 2077, 173r. Photo: Bibliothèque nationale de France.

church officials consistently censured their behavior, they could still be called upon to perform paraliturgical music within the church on major festivals.82 A second comparison demonstrates how the horn-blowing jongleurs of Cuxa might have evoked more explicitly a contrast between the sacred music practiced by the monks themselves and profane music brought in from outside (fig. 75). A page from the early twelfth-century psalter from Saint

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Remigius in Reims illustrates how sacred music was equated with the harmony of psalmody, the staple of monastic life; this is embodied in the upper register by David playing the lyre in the company of other instrumentalists.83 Frugoni has convincingly argued that David appears here not only as the author of the psalms but also as the “Beatus vir” of the first psalm that it prefaces, and as creator of sacred music. Around him we see other practitioners of sacred music for the liturgy, including a singer holding an open psalter and instrumentalists playing flutes, bells, and organ. Profane music appears below in the guise of a bear beating a drum. This demonic counterpart of David may, as Frugoni suggests, actually be a man transformed by the beast’s costume to represent the animal power of profane music. Instead of the sweet-sounding lyre, he beats a drum, an instrument particularly associated with carnality and sin because it is formed from the skin of dead animals.84 In this more chaotic composition, the protagonist is flanked by tumbling figures of acrobats or jongleurs, dancers, and two musicians producing dissonant sounds on a viol and a loud blast-horn like the ones held by our figures at Cuxa. Here, then, we find an explicitly negative gloss on the loud cacophony of profane music and its accompanying spectacle of entertainer figures: dancers and acrobats, both figures of those who would deform the ideal body image through profane music and gestures. Just as the corporeal contortions of actors and dancers were associated with prostitution, so profane music was frequently associated in monastic art with lust. An unusually direct example is illustrated here by a capital in the nave of the Abbey of Sainte-Marie-Madeleine at Vézelay (fig. 76).85 At left, a musician blows into a loud horn, while a naked, open-mouthed (shouting?) demon

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with wild, flaming hair twists around to fondle the breasts of a naked woman on the opposite side. The explicitly sexual content of this image is also revealing. The Vézelay capital is situated high up in the public space of the nave and would have been seen much less frequently by the monks themselves. By contrast, the Cuxa capital, evocative without being sexually explicit, lay immediately above the monk’s head, where he was reading every day. The metaphor of the dancers was also more readily applicable to the twelfth-century monk’s preoccupations with the comportment and carriage of the physical body. The connection between music, bodily movement, and the workings of the soul is spelled out in the Gloss on Timaeus by Bernard of Chartres (fl. 1114–19). Drawing on Augustine and Boethius, Bernard argues that harmonious music, like the disciplined movement of the outer body, can fashion a harmonious soul within. “Upon hearing the harmonies of music, we ought to be reformed in our conduct according to the harmony of virtues. For although the soul is constructed according to consonances, yet those consonances turn dissonant when joined to the body, and they must be reformed outwardly through music. And this means: music as a whole is given to man not for his delight but for the composition of his manners.”86 This theme has recently been explored further by Bruce Holsinger, who argues that music was understood to exist “within the human body as an internal materia actualized when the body experiences extreme forms of pain, desire, or religious ecstasy.”87 Despite the Platonist-Pythagorean tradition on which medieval Christianity based its theories of the internal music of the human person, it was also accepted that the human body shaped or tempered the production of music. Thus, each individual body was a musical instrument that had

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Fig. 75 Sacred and profane music, in a psalter from Saint Remi-

gius, Reims, early twelfth century. St. John’s College, Cambridge, ms B.18, fol.1 r. Photo by permission of the Master and Fellows of St. John’s College, Cambridge.

the potential to produce different forms of music— sacred and devotional, profane and erotic. Furthermore, the production of harmonious music for the harmonization of the soul had to be inculcated in the physical body. Thus, the young oblates were not only specifically trained to comport themselves for the good of their souls but were formed as monks by learning the texts and music of the liturgy, the order and hierarchy of movement and ritual gestures.88 Besides evoking this powerful connection between music and the body, the naked dancers and horn-blowers represented on the Cuxa

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Fig. 76 Profane music, Abbey of Sainte-Marie-Madeleine, Vézelay,

nave capital, early twelfth century.

capital allude to the broader class of entertainers—jongleurs, histriones (ystriones), and mimi. These men and women were condemned by both monastic authorities and secular clergy because they failed to fit within the orderly class structure of society.89 Whereas the monk’s life was marked by stabilitas within the confines of the monastic garden, the entertainers were vagrants who traveled from one city to another in search of work and alms. The monks who engage in such activities, the gyrovagi, are explicitly censured in the Benedictine Rule.90

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Already excluded from the body politic by their unstable employment, the jongleurs were made monstrous by the deformation and misuse of their bodies, by disrobing and by masking.91 Solo dancing, which is represented on the Cuxa capitals, had been condemned continuously by church officials from the fifth century up to the late Middle Ages.92 According to Pierre Riché, church officials saw in dance a pagan survival that needed to be uprooted in order to preserve Christian morals.93 The movements and gestures of the body in dance were

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considered incitements to lust to which even priests and monks were susceptible. With typical irony, Bernard of Clairvaux used the sensual movements of acrobats and dancers as a contrast to the intellectual acrobatics of the mind performed by monks as a “spectacle to the angels.”94 Jongleurs were also associated with the Feast of the Fools and performed with masks to take on various roles, animal and monstrous, in the performance of a mock liturgy, a form of social inversion that Bakhtin characterized as the “carnivalesque.”95 In the mystery plays they took on the role of the devil, sporting a fearsome “Devyls Hede” mask.96 The monks may have been reminded of this mask by the association of the naked dancers with monstrous hellmouths at the corners of the same capital. A second aspect of corporeal deformity is illustrated by the assimilation of man to ape on three capitals now in New York and another reinstalled at Cuxa. In two of the examples in New York (figs. 59, 60), single apes and men squat in identical poses in alternation beneath the Corinthian volutes of the capital. Placed in such close proximity, the two creatures seem barely distinguishable. On one corner, the ape squats with bent legs spread wide apart and arms resting squarely on its knees and looks down at the viewer through large, bulging eyes. On an adjacent corner of the same capital, a naked man squats in the identical pose and is only distinguished from the beast by his humanoid facial features and feet. Both of these figures are contrasted with erect, athletic-looking men who mark the central axis of each capital and seemingly attempt to raise their animal counterparts by the arms. These positive exemplars would seem to represent in concrete terms Peter of Celle’s metaphor for the monk as an athlete struggling to win the race against vice in the monastic stadium.

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The “filthy ape,” which figures prominently amongst the cloister capitals of the Apologia and is found so frequently in actual Romanesque capitals, seems to have had particular resonance as an example of “deformed beauty” described by Bernard of Clairvaux.97 Augustine anticipated Bernard’s paradoxical phrase in his De natura boni when he affirmed, “there is a beauty of form in all creatures, but in comparison with the beauty of man, the beauty of the ape is called deformity.”98 Horst Janson has recognized that the ape’s almost exclusive appearance on capitals emphasizes visually the creature’s deformity through its apparent oppression under the heavy load of the architrave.99 Noting that the apes have assumed poses commonly associated with human figures, and especially for personifications of lust, he sees these caryatid beasts primarily as emblems for man’s fallen nature.100 By juxtaposing man and ape in identical squatting poses, the Cuxa capitals explicitly evoke the simian trait of mimicry. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the ape’s association with imitation came to be emphasized; indeed, the expressions “ars simia naturae” and “simius humanae naturae simia” were then common currency.101 The ape had long been associated with the devil’s own attempt to imitate God, but in the twelfth century greater emphasis was placed on the ape’s assimilation of human characteristics. The Cambridge Bestiary, for example, affirms that “they are called monkeys [Simia] in the Latin language because people notice a great similitude to human reason in them.”102 The depiction of a monk’s “deformed body” squatting in imitation of the ape could also evoke a more humorous response, as a historiated initial from an early twelfth-century Cistercian manuscript of Pope Gregory the Great’s Moralia in Job suggests (fig. 77). Here the initial H is formed by

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two performers sporting long tunics and distinctive pointed shoes. One stands in profile at right with hands outstretched in what Jean-Claude Schmitt describes as a gesture of elocution but could also be construed as a gesture of prayer. Either way, the gesture evokes speech, and if indeed it is intended to depict a prayer gesture, it also highlights, somewhat ironically, the liturgical training of monks through repetition and imitation of music and words as well as gestures. The other, shorter figure at left is surmounted by an ape and stretches his arms to the right to hold out a hare, which overlaps the gesturing figure at right.103 The ape, standing in profile with arms outstretched in the same gesture, turns his head to watch his human model at right. As Schmitt observes, the lively gestures and exchange of glances transform the rigid framework of the letter into an animated scene of jongleurie. The fact that the right-hand figure appears to look upward at the ape suggests a certain ambiguity as to who is following whom. That this humorous image focused on imitation appears in a monastic manuscript suggests that the artist was offering an ironic commentary on monastic practice, and perhaps, as Carruthers has argued for the cloister capitals, a deliberate attempt at refreshing the monk from the potential tedium of his serious reading by evoking laughter.104 A fear of succumbing to animal forces both within and without the body is more explicit in the monstrous forms of a third group of capitals. In these examples, minute human figures are seemingly overwhelmed by enormous wild beasts, double-bodied creatures joined to single heads, and hybrids combining animal and human elements. Among the capitals in this group we find one traditional hybrid from antiquity, the siren (fig. 61), represented not in the Homeric form of a bird-siren, but in the alternative form of a mermaid

siren bequeathed to the later Middle Ages by the Liber monstrorum.105 Repeated on all four corners of a single capital, the Cuxa siren displays a beautiful female head with almond-shaped eyes and long locks of braided hair falling over gently sloping shoulders. The grace of the face is greatly enhanced by the otherwise rare use of the drill for hair and eyes. Although breasts are articulated, the flesh gives way to scaly skin and the lower body divides into a double serpentine tail. The siren owes its prominence in cloister capitals to Jerome’s translation of Isaiah 13:21–22 in the Vulgate: “But wild beasts shall rest there, and their houses shall be filled with serpents, and ostriches shall dwell there, and the hairy ones [satyrs] shall dance there: And owls shall answer one another there, in the houses thereof, and sirens in the temples of pleasure.”106 Jerome’s commentary popularized the idea of the siren as courtesan, the symbol of carnal pleasure (voluptas) and lust (luxuria).107 In keeping with what was said above regarding monstrosity as an outward symbol of conflicting natures and behaviors, the siren is also described in moralized natural histories as a creature of deception because of her careful concealment of her monstrous tail beneath an attractive female upper body.108 More specifically, the siren appears frequently in monastic writings of the late eleventh and twelfth centuries as a symbol of those vices that tempted the monks away from the virtuous life prescribed by the Benedictine Rule.109 The frequent representation of feminine temptation in the guise of sirens in Romanesque cloister sculpture reflects the renewed enforcement of chastity for monks and secular clergy alike during the monastic revival and Gregorian Reform of the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries.110 Like the fathers of the early Church, the reformers

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emphasized the propensity of women toward lust, based not only on their association with Eve but also on their physiology and gender identification with carnality.111 The Benedictine abbot Geoffrey of Vendôme (d. 1135), affirming the rule of chastity for his monks, described the female sex as the root of all sin, and ultimately the reason for which Christ would have to die.112 It is hardly surprising, then, that both Cistercians and Benedictines greatly restricted contact between monks and women, either secular or conventual, and deployed lay brothers to conduct practical business both within and outside the monastery.113 A second group of monstrous beasts is shown as posing a more direct physical threat to humanity. Bernard’s double-bodied creatures joined to a single head prepare to devour dwarflike human figures on two Cuxa capitals now in the Cloisters. On one capital (fig. 57), double-bodied lions maul diminutive male figures clad only in loincloths. On a second capital (fig. 58), double-bodied, rampant bears display a similar heraldic composition repeated on four corners with tiny male figures variously threatened by and already disappearing into gaping jaws. The bears’ toothy mouths, perhaps intended to intimidate the spectator who identified with the diminutive figures beneath them, evoke not only sight but also sound and painful touch—alluding perhaps to the “roaring lions” in Psalm 21/22:14 that “have opened their mouths against me, as a lion ravening and roaring.” More inventive are the monstrous heads mounted upon human legs. The Cuxa capital already considered for its dancers (fig. 62) appears to represent at its corners a hybrid of man and beast. Below appear the naked legs and buttocks of a human figure, while above we find a monstrous, inflated feline head with pointed ears, large

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Fig. 77 Jongleurs, Gregory the Great’s Moralia in Job, Cîteaux,

ca. 1111. Bibliothèque municipale de Dijon, ms 173, fol. 66r. Photo: Bibliothèque municipale de Dijon.

almond-shaped eyes flanking a narrow nose with flared nostrils, and a gaping jaw, which, like the brow, is lined with warts. In this instance we might question whether the sculptor intended to depict a true hybrid—a man with a beast-head mounted on his torso—or a naked human being shown in the process of being devoured. A second example in the Cloisters (fig. 63) unambiguously shows a human body being devoured: in this case, a more precise leonine form is shown with human arms and hands emerging from a toothy jaw. Although some of these creatures could be construed as hybrids, there is little doubt that they are primarily images of devouring mouths. As Camille has argued in his consideration of the Souillac trumeau (fig. 84), such monstrous mouths could

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evoke a multiplicity of meanings for the monastic audience.114 They simultaneously suggested the monk’s very real fear of wild animals in the countryside surrounding the monastery, and, more metaphorically, the monk’s active “digestion” of, or ruminatio on, the sacred texts that were the focus of his meditation.115 For the monk who knew the psalter inside out, they might also evoke the enemies in Psalm 21/22 referred to earlier. Ultimately, however, the most compelling visual resonance of the Cuxa creatures is that of the monstrous maw of hell represented so frequently in contemporaneous scenes of the Last Judgment.116 In the west portal of Sainte-Foy in Conques, for example (chapter 5, fig. 110), the disembodied mouth serves both as the devouring agent and as the portal of hell, within which Satan appears again to torment the bodies of the damned.117 The hellmouth itself is not so much a direct illustration of a single text as an evocation of any number of threatening, demonic forces associated with hell and the fate of the bodies of the damned. The hellmouth appears nowhere in the biblical accounts of the Last Judgment but emerges in the course of tenth-century exegesis. As Gary Schmidt and Joyce Galpern have shown, hell was first represented in Anglo-Saxon England in literature and art as a great disembodied, monstrous mouth.118 At a time of reform, the image adapted a pre-Christian northern European tradition to envisage in concrete terms the place of hell and the fearful punishment of the damned. The appropriation of monstrous maws from a pagan context was facilitated by biblical texts. Isaiah 5:14 describes how “hell enlarged her soul, and opened her mouth without any bounds,” and similar images of the open or swallowing mouths are used to describe Sheol in Numbers (16:30–32) and the Psalms

(106:17), as well as the Leviathan in Job 41:14 and the Behemoth in Job 40:15–24. The leonine aspect of the hellmouth probably originates in the Psalms.119 The monks would have been familiar with the oft-repeated petition of Psalm 21/22:22, “Save me from the lion’s mouth,” and at compline each day they sang of the Lord’s triumphant trampling of the lion together with the asp, basilisk, and dragon in Psalm 90/91:13. As Jérôme Baschet points out, this imagery is already clearly associated with the judgment and punishment of the damned in the offertory of the Requiem Mass, the text of which goes back to the eighth or ninth centuries: “Save the souls of all the faithful deceased from the infernal punishments and the deep pit, save them from the mouth of the lion.”120 Baschet sees the devouring hellmouth more as metaphor than as description: the monstrous mouth signifies what cannot be described or represented, the horrors of damnation, “without revealing anything about the fate of the damned.”121 Yet the hellmouth does reveal the fundamental role of the physical body and its punishment at the Last Judgment. Here the devouring jaw is a symbol of corporeal disintegration; it reverses the process of reintegrating the perfected body and soul at the time of the Resurrection.122 As Bynum has demonstrated, twelfth-century writers drew upon Saint Augustine to present resurrection as a process in which the physical body, both flesh and bone, was reassembled in an ideal state, free of all physical deformity.123 After the Last Judgment, by contrast, the damned were to be eternally punished in their physical bodies, reversing the process of regurgitation and resurrection.124 Amplifying the principal biblical accounts of the Last Judgment in Matthew 25 and Revelation, Augustine and Gregory the Great bequeathed to the later Middle Ages the concept

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of an eternal punishment of the damned.125 While these early church fathers cited fire as the sole agent of punishment, the twelfth century saw the gradual diversification of the corporeal punishments expected, especially in visions of hell, so that the punishment might be deemed appropriate to the crime. The monstrous mouths at Cuxa represent the more general punishment of the body in hell: naked bodies are devoured whole to suggest their continual pain in the realm of the damned. Juxtaposed with the naked jongleurs discussed earlier, they also suggest a dramatic warning against the most dangerous of all sins in the monastic life, luxuria or lust. Luxuria stands not only for unbridled sexual appetite but also for another appetite of the flesh, associated with the intimate sense of taste. These vices that “consume” one’s spirit in life anticipate the ravenous mouths of hell that will ultimately devour the physical body at the end of time. Thus, Gregory the Great’s commentary on Job 40:11 describes how both sexes, following in the footsteps of Adam and Eve, are overcome by the power of the devil in the present world in terms that suggest the punishment of the damned in the hellmouth. “This Behemoth therefore, who rages insatiably, and seeks to devour the whole man at once, simultaneously exalts his mind to pride and corrupts his flesh with the pleasure of lust. . . . His strength is in his own loins and his force is in the navel of his own belly; because those who are deceived by his blandishments and submit to him through the looseness of lust, they also doubtless become specially his body.”126 The sins of the flesh—lust and gluttony—thus “devour the whole man” like a monstrous mouth, so that the sinner’s body is assimilated to that of the monstrous Behemoth. In the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, these were precisely the sins that the

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reformers condemned, and, not surprisingly, these metaphors for vices took on tangible, corporeal form in the demonic creatures that invaded the monastic imagination. The human bodies that are devoured and the monstrous mouths evoke taste; the leonine features also allude to the sound of the lions’ roar and the stench of the hellish pit; and the jaws that so painfully bite into human flesh foreground the intimate sense of touch. It is this multisensory appeal that makes these images so effective in capturing the imagination of the beholder.

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Up to this point I have interpreted three distinct groups of monstrosity and corporeal deformity as warnings against the consequences of inner impulses that the monk must learn to control. Rather than seeing these capitals simply as isolated didactic symbols, though, I would like to explore how their subjects might have been imprinted upon the monastic imagination and why it was deemed appropriate to represent these jarring images in the space of monastic meditation. Schapiro recognized in Bernard’s monsters “a world of projected emotions, psychologically significant images of force, play, aggressiveness, anxiety, self-torment and fear, embodied in the powerful forms of instinct-driven creatures, twisted, struggling, entangled, confronted and superposed.”127 Because he was searching for a precursor of the modern secular artist, however, he dismissed any meaningful connection with the monastic culture that produced the cloister capitals, arguing that “unlike the religious symbols, they are submitted to no fixed teaching or body of doctrine.”128 Émile Mâle pointed the way to a more accurate

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understanding of the monstrous within the monastic imagination.129 Although he dismissed sirens and double-bodied beasts as purely decorative, when he turned to demons, Mâle related their monstrous appearance to the monk’s frequent experience of visions and dreams. In texts of Benedictines and Cistercians alike, including De miraculis by Peter the Venerable, the Liber miraculorum (ca. 1178) by Herbert of Clairvaux, the Exordium magnum cisterciense by Konrad of Eberbach, and the Dialogus miraculorum by Caesarius of Heisterbach (ca. 1180–1240), demons appear with great frequency in a series of human and monstrous guises.130 Whereas Mâle saw such texts principally as iconographic sources for images of the demonic, I would like to explore how dreams, the imagination, and pictorial images functioned both as a creative “imaginative force” and as a distorting mirror of the monk’s own body that could be used to externalize and purge the demons within. The foundations for medieval conceptions of dreams and the imagination were laid by Macrobius, Augustine, and Gregory the Great. Already in late antiquity, Macrobius had argued that while man’s mind was created in the likeness of God, his soul was susceptible to corporeal imagination— that is, images imprinted on the mind through the senses.131 In his influential Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, Macrobius warns that during the drowsy state between wakefulness and slumber, “the dreamer . . . imagines he sees specters rushing at him or wandering vaguely about, differing from natural creatures in size and shape, and hosts of diverse things, either delightful and disturbing.”132 As discussed above, Augustine likewise describes in his treatise On the Trinity (book XI) how the imagination (phantasia) has the capacity to transform what has been communicated to the mind by the senses,

combining or distorting impressions from the senses to form images of things that do not exist. In these cases, Augustine argues, the mind must exercise its will in order to avoid being harmed by the potentially shameful “fantasies of the imagination (phantasmata).”133 By the twelfth century, such fantasies were most often ascribed to diabolical intervention in the imagination, particularly through the vehicle of dreams. The Cistercian Treatise on the Spirit and the Soul explains a common belief that men can be turned into wolves and beasts by demons and return to their own selves without losing their human faculty of reason in the following way: Since demons cannot create natures . . . they do something which makes certain things seem to be what they are not. The intellectual soul and the body could not possibly be truly turned into the form and shape of a beast by any art or power. But man’s imaginative faculty [phantasticum] can take innumerable shapes through thought and through dreams, and although this faculty is not itself a body it can take on with amazing speed forms similar to bodies. When man’s bodily senses are in a state of slumber or of suppression, the imagination can be diverted to the corporeal shapes of other perceptions. Thus the living body of a man can be lying somewhere, with its sense more intensely suppressed than occurs during sleep. In such a case that imaginative faculty, formed as if in the shape of some animal, may appear to the senses of others.134 In addition to theoretical discussions of “fantasies” within dreams and the imagination, the demonic apparitions were frequently recorded in

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the lives of the founding fathers of monasticism. In his Life of Saint Anthony the Hermit, Athanasius records a host of bodily forms by which the devil tries to deceive the senses of the third-century monk, including naked women, serpents, scorpions, dragons, wild beasts, and even monks.135 Likewise, Pope Gregory the Great recounts in his Dialogues how the founder of Western monasticism, Saint Benedict, and his monks were frequently confronted with demonic interference within the claustrum. The tangible, monstrous form that the devil could take in the imagination of the monks is revealed in book 2, chapter 25.136 A monk who constantly requested to abandon his vocation was finally released from his vow by Benedict. As soon as he had left the monastery grounds, he was frightened by a dragon with gaping jaws blocking his way. Crying out for help, the monk was rescued by his brethren, but they could see no dragon. Once safely within the monastic precinct, the monk vowed never to leave again, and through the help of Benedict’s prayers was able to recognize the “invisible dragon” that was leading him astray. Both Athanasius’s and Gregory’s texts continued to be widely read in the twelfth century and served as models for a proliferation of demonic apparitions in contemporaneous monastic literature. One collection of diabolical visions that was widely circulated among Benedictine monasteries at the very time the Cuxa cloister was being built is a treatise on miracles, De miraculis, composed by abbot Peter the Venerable of Cluny. For Peter, the monks of Cluny were constantly under attack from demons, and these attacks of the spirit were visualized in physical terms.137 Following the model of Athanasius’s account of the temptations of Saint Anthony, Peter has the devil exercise power on the monks in a wide range of different guises. The

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monks’ anxieties over physical harm from demons are made tangible by menacing bears, vultures, and other creatures in dreams, parallels for which are found in the Cuxa cloister. The threatening leonine forms so prevalent in the Cuxa capitals (figs. 57, 62, 63) are evoked by Peter’s account of a priest at Lusignan.138 After living a dissolute, ungodly life, the priest, who was nearing death, came to seek solace at a Cluniac priory. There he was besieged by a series of horrific visions, including one in which he found himself flanked by two lions with wide-open jaws ready to devour him. The allusions to lust in the Cuxa cloisters, both in the siren capital (fig. 61) and more directly in the capital with naked dancers (fig. 62), may also be explained in reference to dreams. Saint Anthony the Hermit, we have already noted, was constantly afflicted with visions of naked women tempting him away from chastity,139 and this preoccupation in later fourth- and fifth-century monastic communities of Egypt was transmitted to the West by John Cassian (ca. 360–ca. 405).140 His two guides to the monastic life, The Institutes and The Conferences, were required reading according to the Benedictine Rule and acquired canonical status by the twelfth century. In book 6 of The Institutes, “The Spirit of Fornication,” Cassian emphasizes that images or “fantasies” in the mind constitute the primary threat to the monk’s purity, and he warns that the very sight of a woman is potentially dangerous because it will continue to work upon the mind “by the devil’s subtle and clever insinuation” through the remembrance of the woman’s image (even of one’s own mother or sister).141 He admonishes the monk that he will never perfect his chastity until the mind is no longer deluded by the sight of such images during sleep.142 The same concerns are manifested in more explicitly corporeal terms in twelfth-century

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accounts of sexual fantasies. To take but one example, the anonymous Cistercian treatise Treatise on the Spirit and the Soul, already cited, describes how dreamers see things and act upon them as if they were awake: “Against their intention and the norms of right behavior they take positions proper to sexual intercourse, and the fluid which nature collects in their bodies is emitted through the genital passages. Waking persons who are chaste can control such movement of the flesh. Sleeping persons, however, cannot because they have no power over the expression of corporeal images, which are the natural source of the flesh’s movements.”143 The palpable, corporeal experience of demonic visions is symptomatic of what Steven Kruger has observed is a more general tendency in the twelfth century to somatize dreams.144 Dreams were not only understood to have tangible effects on the physical body; they were also believed to have their origins in the very physiology of the body.145 While the monastic literature on dreams helps explain the role of monstrous and deformed creatures in the collective imagination and provides direct parallels for specific subjects, it still does not answer Bernard’s question directly. Returning to the functional context of the Cuxa capitals, we are prompted to ask why such thoroughly negative images should appear in the heart of the monastic paradise. A partial answer is suggested in the passage already quoted from Peter the Venerable’s treatise De miraculis. The monk’s life of prayer and meditation, Peter asserts, was constantly under attack from the devil and his legions. To represent the monstrous and deformed bodies in the cloister in such striking sculpted forms that, at times, not only addressed the sense of sight, but also evoked discordant sounds and painful aspects of touch,

reminded the monk of the ongoing battle with the enemy. In this sense, the images in the cloister capitals performed a role parallel to that of the monastic liturgy. As Barbara Rosenwein has aptly described it, the elaborate and expansive form of Benedictine liturgy developed at Cluny in the course of the eleventh century constituted “a kind of battle.”146 In many of Peter’s miracula, it is meditation and the chanting of psalms that help expel the demons. Thus, both the senses of vision and hearing were involved in counteracting negative sensory impressions from other quarters. The psalms composed the monk from without, giving him the internal harmony to dispel the fear and doubt of phantasms from his imagination. At the same time, the psalms, which are full of pleas for refuge from inimical forces, form the foundation of regular ritual prescribed in the Benedictine Rule.147 Chapter 18 mandates that the entire psalter should be rehearsed during the course of the week, but the Abbey of Cluny, in the course of the tenth and eleventh centuries, dramatically expanded ritual to the extent that 170 psalms were sung each day.148 In addition, certain psalms were repeated on a daily basis for a particular hour or for a specific liturgical feast. Because they were so crucial to regular monastic ritual, each novice was required to memorize and fully digest the material of the psalter.149 Thus, particular forms in the cloister capitals, such as the leonine hellmouths—which, as we have already seen, are related to images found in Psalms 7/8:2; 21/22:21, and 56/57:4—would have evoked a host of associations for the monk who was readily familiar with the scriptural texts. Furthermore, the mechanism by which the monstrous imagery of the Cuxa capitals might be associated with the monastic imagination is suggested by the content of one of the psalms that was chanted at the end of each day during the office of compline: Psalm 90/91 (“Qui habitat”).

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The theme of Psalm 90/91 is that those who put their trust in the Lord need fear no peril. The Lord will deliver the faithful from the snare of the hunter, from the pestilence that stalks in darkness, and he will trample upon the threatening beasts: the asp and the basilisk, the lion and the dragon. Given such sentiments, it is appropriate that Psalm 90/91 was sung during the office that ended the day. Compline was designed to prepare the monks for sleep and thus protect them from the demonic forces that might assail their imaginations with disturbing phantasms and seek to influence their behavior.150 This is reflected in the choice of prayers, psalms, versicles, and antiphons. In addition to Psalm 90/91, the Rule prescribes Psalms 4 and 133/134. Psalm 4 opens with a plea for God’s mercy (v. 1: “Have mercy upon me, and hear my prayer” [KJV]), and then advocates self-examination and repentance (v. 4: “Do not sin: speak within your hearts and have compunction upon your beds” [author’s translation]). It concludes in the hope of a peaceful sleep: “In peace I lie down and at once fall asleep, for you alone, Lord, make me secure in hope” (author’s translation). After the battles with monsters in Psalm 90/91, the last of the psalms, 133/ 134, calmly reaffirms God’s blessings and protection during the night. Perhaps the most explicit reference to the dangers of the night comes in the hymn sung immediately after the psalms throughout Advent, the summer, and the weeks after Epiphany: Te lucis ante terminum. While the first verse seeks again the protection of the Lord “before the end of the light,” the second verse prays, “May the bad dreams [somnia] and phantasms [phantasmata] of the night subside; may the enemy be repulsed, and may our bodies not be polluted” (author’s translation).151 It was as if the demonic forces had to be properly purged before sleep to stave off the disturbing

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dreams by which the demons might take possession of the animal part of the soul and overcome the monk’s chastity with sexual dreams. The depiction of phantasms in cloister capitals was surely not accidental. It was here that the monk spent much of the day reading and meditating upon Scripture and other edifying texts. As Carruthers has emphasized, it was thus also a primary “rememorative” structure—a mnemonic architectural frame upon which a series of allegorical images could be erected.152 The rectangular claustral garden with its surrounding colonnades on four sides might evoke for Honorius the “portico of Solomon, constructed next to the temple in Jerusalem as the cloister is joined to the monks’ church,” or the Edenic paradise with its flowering trees.153 If, for Bernard, the plain, unadorned surfaces of the uncarved capitals in a Cistercian cloister were necessary to allow the monk to form his own mental images, it seems that the Cluniacs and other traditional Benedictines such as those of Cuxa regarded sculptural decoration as beneficial visual stimuli to the memory. Leah Rutchick has convincingly argued that the carved capitals of Moissac and their inscriptions were not merely based on scriptural passages and commentaries with which the monk would be familiar but were also expressly designed, in their formal presentation. to stimulate the monk’s active exercise of memory during his regular meditations.154 Following the mnemonic architecture described in the influential treatise Ad Herennium, Rutchick sees the four independent facets of the carved capitals at Moissac as “hooks” to which the monk can attach a longer narrative, often juxtaposed with disparate episodes on adjacent sides of the same capital to aid the monk in his own exegesis during his active meditation. The cloister arcades, which are associated with distinctive

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ritual functions, further provide the “background” within which the monk can locate and interpret the individual images within his memory. Understood within such a framework, the apparent absence of a clear diachronic sequence for the narratives becomes a virtue. The cloister as a whole becomes a visual florilegium with a wide range of subjects, allowing the monk to take his meditations in a different direction depending upon where he was seated or moving within the larger cloister. Although the Cuxa cloister lacks the complexity of references contained in the Moissac cloister—there are no inscriptions and no explicit links to scriptural and hagiographic narratives—it may be assumed that, on a general level, the Cuxa capitals functioned in a similar way as stimuli to the active process of meditation. Seated upon one of the benches within the colonnades, the monk would certainly be aware of the chaotic imagery of the capitals just above his head. There, if he were distracted from reading in books as Bernard feared, he would find a concrete visualization of the phantasms, which drew in part on the monstrous creatures described in the psalms but also more generally evoked the psychomachian struggle against the devil that he regularly confronted both in communal, liturgical prayer and psalmody and in private meditations. The very texts that the monks were reading in the cloister were often decorated with a related repertoire of disturbing creatures. The late eleventh-century Moissac manuscript, already considered in conjunction with the naked dancers on one of the Cuxa capitals (fig. 74), graphically illustrates the battle of virtues and vices described in the texts with naked humanoids and monstrous hybrids. A more inventive response to illustrating a text is found in the historiated initials of an early

twelfth-century Cistercian manuscript of Pope Gregory the Great’s Moralia in Job, discussed above. Here the text itself cannot be read or “digested” fully without puzzling momentarily over the tangled compositions of human, semihuman, and monstrous creatures in the decorated initials that mark the major divisions of the text. The initial P, which heads the commentary on book 28 (fig. 78), for example, depicts a mass of monstrous hybrids intertwined in violent struggle. In the upper portion of the letter a satyr-like creature with a beast’s head transfixes a goat-headed man with a lance, but even as the satyr holds out a shield in self-defense, another hybrid creature attacks its belly from below. In the midst of these creatures a bearded, human-headed pig is devoured by a winged dragon. Beneath the satyr on the upright of the letter, an eagle or vulture attacks two lions in combat, and at the very base a dwarf harnesses and rides a naked man crawling on all fours. According to Conrad Rudolph, these beasts and part-human creatures narrate the struggle against irrationality and sin that is the overriding theme of Gregory’s commentary.155 Throughout the Moralia, beasts represent for Gregory the “desires of the flesh that rise up against the spiritual person,” while semi-hominal figures suggest a creature whose nature lies between good and evil, reason and irrationality. Set apart from the conflict above, the dwarf riding a naked man suggests a more positive message—the bridling of temptations referred to by Gregory in the text of the same chapter. Rudolph further shows that these “fantastic” narratives, set against a dark night sky, evoke the world of dreams. As disturbing as they might initially seem, these “corporeal fantasies” (imaginationes corporeae), as Gregory calls them, might ultimately serve a positive function for the monastic

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audience of the Moralia.156 Commenting on Job 7:13–14 (“If I say: My bed shall comfort me, and I shall be relieved speaking with myself on my couch: Thou wilt frighten me with dreams and terrify me with visions”), Gregory writes initially that dreams are generally to be mistrusted because they so often derive from the suggestions of the devil (the “Evil Spirit”).157 The devil attacks holy men, who resist his “delusive phantasy” during the day, with particular vehemence while they sleep. Gregory goes on to affirm, however, that it is God alone who allows the devil to tempt the holy man, and he permits it only insofar as it serves as a beneficial trial. This he permits in order that holy men may have a foretaste of the “last searching judgment” when the judge “will bring back every sin before our eyes.” It must have been felt that the tangible visualization of diabolical phantasms in sculpted capitals such as those of Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa served a similar function both to the recitation of the psalms at compline and to the meditation upon images found in the texts the monks were reading. Clearly, these images not only distracted or momentarily entertained and stimulated the monk with a variety of “contradictory forms” but also allowed the monk to purge over time the demonic spirits from his soul so that it could be restored by the harmony of his meditation. By externalizing the threats to the monk’s spiritual life in this way, the capitals could further be seen as a means of establishing the boundaries of and coming to terms with his own behavior and imagination.158 The “demons” that possess the body and imagination of the monk are less threatening when they are thus exposed to light and allow the monk to reform his inner and outer self. As Carruthers points out, monastic writers including Saint Anselm of Canterbury and Saint Bernard of Clairvaux himself believed that one

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Fig. 78 Gregory the Great’s Moralia in Job, book 28, initial P, ca.

1111. Bibliothèque municipale de Dijon, ms 173, fol. 103v. Photo: Bibliothèque municipale de Dijon.

needed to call to mind one’s vices and sins from the past in order to effect a true conversion toward a more spiritually enlightened future life.159 Since one could never really eradicate sins completely from the memory, it was necessary to seek God’s forgiveness and then change one’s “intention” or attitude toward them, transforming them from producers of guilt or fear into productive agents of conversion. The process of transforming memory parallels a broader monastic strategy of sublimation.160

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Realizing that monks were only human and would naturally be prone to the same temptations of the flesh as men in the secular world, monastic writers tried to control sexual desires and other proclivities by channeling those energies elsewhere. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux himself composed a series of sermons on the Song of Songs, which dwell at great length on sensual and multisensory aspects of human love. As Jean Leclercq has shown, however, Bernard introduced accessible, even erotic passages dwelling upon the kiss and the breasts of the bride in order to engage the monk and help him to transcend human desire on the path to a completely spiritual love of God.161 In the first nine sermons, Bernard carries us from the kiss on human lips exchanged between two human lovers to the sublime, divine kiss exchanged between God the Father and the Son, and ultimately between the monk himself and his Creator. Carnal love necessarily plays a role because, for Bernard, it is only through the incarnate or fleshly image that love of God is at first accessible to his human creatures.162 As Leclercq explains, “there are symbols which can arouse sexual echoes but which an author— and the readers he had in mind—can sufficiently ‘sublimate,’ and use without any complexes.”163 Step by step, the monk turns away from the images of carnal love concretely grounded in the sensual imagination, literally to be converted to a purely spiritual love of God. It may be argued that at least one function of the sculpted images of the cloister was to effect a similar form of sublimation and conversion. These monstrous and deformed creatures carved in stone made tangible the malevolent spirits that caused the monk to misbehave and served as a starting point for the cleansing of the memory and spiritual reform. Exposed to the light, the monks’ inner

demons and phantasms of his dreams would no longer seem quite as frightening or threatening. Viewed daily in the company of other monks, the sculpted capitals, much like words and harmonious music of the liturgy, could help the individual renew his own personal struggle with the support of the community.164

Monsters in the Sanctuary at Chauvigny

While the cloister offers the best-documented setting for the interpretation of monsters in Romanesque sculpture, monsters are frequently depicted in other settings, including nave and sanctuary, exterior corbels and portal sculpture. In what follows, I consider briefly how monsters function in the sacred space of the sanctuary and the liminal zone of the portal. The collegiate church of Saint-Pierre at Chauvigny in the Poitou, like the cloister of Cuxa, offers an unusually high concentration of inventive monsters, but in this case the focus is on the choir, and the primary audiences and users are collegiate canons and lay parishioners rather than monks (color plate 20).165 Dated on the basis of style to the second half of the twelfth century, the series of eight capitals of the ambulatory includes only two biblical narratives; the remaining capitals are focused on monsters and diabolical themes. The series is framed by engaged capitals, one depicting a demon, or perhaps Satan himself, flanked by goat-headed demons confronting men on either side, and another with vultures looming over prone naked men. The free-standing capitals are primarily devoted to fantastic monsters: sphinxes (color plate 20, far left); bird-sirens or harpies with masculine, bearded faces; adossed lions flanking

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double-bodied men joined to a single head; hybrid quadrupeds combining leonine clawed feet, a man’s bearded head with pointed ears and a lion’s mane, and a bird’s wings and a long tail terminated by an enlarged human hand (fig. 79); and winged dragons in profile devouring naked men (fig. 80). The presence of biblical themes on other capitals, and the distinctive setting of the sanctuary where the miracle of eucharistic transformation takes place, provide potential clues to the meaning of the monsters. The fifth capital, just to the right of center, displays the Epiphany on its most visible, westward face (fig. 81). Placed on the central axis of the capital, rendered in a frontal pose, the seated figure of the Virgin Mary with the Christ Child in her lap resembles a Sedes Sapientiae figure, even as she receives the arriving Magi from the left. The inscription above her head—gofridus me fecit—may record the name of the artist or, what is more likely, the name of the lay patron, for which the Magi are models of gift-giving.166 On the opposite (right) side of the capital as viewed from the sanctuary, one sees the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary and, facing north, the Presentation in the Temple (fig. 82). Mary, inscribed sancta maria, strides in from the right to offer the Christ Child to Simeon, who appears on the opposite side of the altar, a roughly square block altar adorned with an embroidered textile in an X pattern, as seen in the first capital of the series. By placing the Christ Child above the altar, the sculptor has emphasized the eucharistic sacrifice in the sanctuary of Saint-Pierre, for which this biblical image is a type, just as the gifts of the Magi serve as a type of the offertory. Finally, the fourth side, facing the ambulatory and thus away from the sanctuary, depicts Satan attempting to tempt Christ into turning stones into bread. Juxtaposed with the Presentation in the

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Temple, this scene presents the Temptation in direct contrast to the eucharistic miracle. This thematic contrast is further reinforced on another capital representing a female personification of Babylon (inscribed magna babilonia meretrix) based on Revelation 17:4 (fig. 83). In contrast to the Virgin Mary, she has long hair without a veil, is richly dressed, and holds a drinking vessel—the “Cup of Abomination”—in one hand and a small perfume or ointment jar in the other, thus evoking the attractions of the senses of taste and smell, in addition to vision, which is related to the unveiled hair and obscene squatting pose. The Chauvigny hemicycle is striking for its concentration of fantastic monsters juxtaposed with naked bodies, and, in some instances, quite clear references to the senses. Certainly one could interpret many of these monsters in relation to the moralized imagery of the bestiary. There are dragons, lions, harpies, and demons, all understood as symbols of evil. One might further see many of these fantastic creatures as embodying the diabolical interventions in the imagination and dreams, as was the case in the Cuxa cloister. It also has to be admitted that the variety of monstrous creatures within a repetitive structure of double-bodied creatures joined to a single head evokes the kind of playful poetic structure that Kirk Ambrose has proposed.167 There was clearly a delight in the visual creativity of these hybrid creatures alongside the warning against diabolical fantasies, and some of the creatures evoke the heraldic designs of textiles used for vestments and altar frontals in the same space. Yet what seems particularly important in the setting of the sanctuary of a collegiate church is the tension between the realm of the body and the senses on the one hand and that of spirits and phantoms on the other.

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Fig. 79 Human-headed winged lions, Collégiale de Saint-Pierre,

Chauvigny, hemicycle capital, ca. 1150–1200.

Fig. 80 Dragons devouring naked men, Collégiale de Saint-Pierre, Chauvigny, hemicycle capital, ca. 1150–1200.

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The revelation of the flesh of God incarnate in the Eucharist is indicated just to the right of the central axis by the biblical scenes of one capital, showing the Annunciation, the Epiphany, and the Presentation in the Temple (figs. 81, 82). In the same capital there is also a clear allusion to the senses, which lead the spectator into communion with the mystical body of Christ in the Eucharist. The Annunciation of the Birth of Christ to Mary refers to the sense of hearing—the Word made Flesh. The Presentation in the Temple (fig. 82), which features the handing of the Christ Child from Mary to the priest Simeon, alludes to the sense of touch. It also indirectly prefigures the experience of taste in the eucharistic reenactment of Christ’s presentation in the sanctuary. The gifts of the Magi are related to the Eucharist as prototypes for the offertory of the Mass, but they have more specific associations with the senses: gold is associated with the splendor of light and thus the sense of sight, frankincense with incense offered as prayer in conjunction with the sacrifice of the liturgy, and myrrh with both smell, as it was often mixed with incense for liturgical use, and taste, as it was mixed with alcohol or wine for medicinal purposes. An extended interpretation of the gifts of the Magi in terms of the senses is offered by Godfrey of Admont in his sermon on the Epiphany. He connects gold with the brightness of spiritual intelligence and the circumspection of the eye, and frankincense with good actions and the “sweetest fragrance of a good aroma,” by which the homo conversus “delights God . . . [and] refreshes many men in laudable and virtuous conversations.”168 These gifts of the Magi, both represented visually in the capital and enlivened in quotidian liturgies and liturgical objects, thus highlight the multisensory pathways to the supersensory union with the “divine majesty,” complementing the multisensory

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Fig. 81 (top left) Adoration of the Magi and Gofridus inscription,

Collégiale de Saint-Pierre, Chauvigny, hemicycle capital, ca. 1150–1200.

Fig. 82 (bottom left) Presentation of Christ in the Temple, Collégiale de Saint-Pierre, Chauvigny, hemicycle capital, ca. 1150–1200. Fig. 83 (above) Great Whore of Babylon, Collégiale de Saint-Pierre, Chauvigny, hemicycle capital, ca. 1150–1200.

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experience of the Eucharist itself. They also signify the real bodily presence and the resulting transformation of matter into the body of Christ, the transubstantiation effected by the priests’ actions that remains invisible to the eye. While the monsters in the cloister of Cuxa have a range of meanings related to the monastic life, the training of the monastic body, and the purification of the imagination from distressing nightmares of diabolical possession, the monsters and demons that devour or threaten naked souls and bodies in the sanctuary may be understood as a foil to eucharistic transformation. Bynum has shown that writers of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were preoccupied with questions of bodily metamorphoses—above all with transmutations of species that threatened to transgress the natural boundaries between humans and animals, humans and monsters, and also to interrogate the very concept of the human as a psychosomatic unity.169 In contrast with the perception of monstrous races described by Pliny the Younger as deformed but real races of living human beings who were capable of salvation, theologians regarded the more fanciful semi-hominal hybrid creatures as phantoms of bodies that presented the illusion of hybridity and metamorphosis rather than an actual, substantial change. These phantoms contrasted with the body of Christ, which was understood as a truly hybrid body combining two natures, and with the eucharistic miracle, which was effected by the priest and understood as a singular example of a bodily metamorphosis, that is, transubstantiation. The monsters of the sanctuary capitals at Chauvigny thus cast in relief the problem of the ambiguity of monsters—images that seem to be corporeal and are endowed with the same apparent materiality as sacred beings, but are truly phantoms

of the imagination, mediated through the physical senses during sleep as well as during daydreams. In contrast to the power of the senses as means of spiritual intelligence in relation to sacred images, these creatures suggest the means by which false or diabolical images might deceive the senses. They stick out their tongues or devour naked bodies, in contrast to the faithful, who consume and enjoy the sweetness of the eucharistic body; the enlarged, exaggerated hands may be associated with the false sense of touch associated with lust (fig. 79); the heads of women who cry out through clenched teeth evoke the false sense of hearing, competing with the words and chant of the canon priests who recite the Mass and the offices in the presence of the lay congregation. And all of the monsters who stare intensely at the viewer through enlarged eyes, including sphinxes, dragons (fig. 80), and lions, evoke the potentially negative side of the sense of vision, coupled to phantasms of the imagination. For the canon priests of the collegiate church as well as for the predominantly lay members of the parish, these monsters would recall all of the carnal appetites that threatened the purity of body and soul necessary for the consecration and reception of the body and blood of Christ. As we have seen in chapter 2, it was precisely during the period of the Romanesque, starting with the Gregorian Reform in the late eleventh century, that the church began to insist on the celibacy of the clergy and the purity of the priest’s mind as prerequisites for his role in consecrating and handling the true body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist.170 This process culminated in the proclamation of clerical celibacy at the Second Lateran Council in 1139. It was the acceptance of the concept of real presence in the Eucharist, an identification of the consecrated bread and wine with the historical body of Christ sacrificed on

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the cross, that made this change in attitude toward the priestly office necessary.171 We have seen that Gregorian reformers in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries, such as Peter Damian, cast women and their sexuality as the means by which the devil sought to “devour the priesthood.”172 Similarly, the carved capitals embody the diabolical interventions in the priestly imagination through their acts of consumption and devouring and through the suggestive images of lust in the form of the Whore of Babylon (fig. 83). These images are contrasted with the chaste model of the Virgin Mary and the infant Christ presented in the temple as his mother is purified forty days after childbirth; these models for the celibate priesthood are further complemented by chaste shepherds who learn of the Incarnation. One further ramification of this shift toward the emphasis on real presence in the Eucharist and the purity of the clergy has to do with what Dominique Iogna-Prat has recognized as the increasing sanctification of the church building itself and its identification with the ecclesia or body of believers.173 Although this process of sanctification can be traced to the Carolingian period, Iogna-Prat sees a significant shift in emphasis in the later eleventh and twelfth centuries as a result of the Gregorian Reform. What is more, it is also around this time that the identification of the building as a living body of the faithful is recognized in the proliferation of rites for the dedication of churches. In their recent research on the Romanesque churches in Auvergne, Baschet, Jean-Claude Bonne, and Pierre-Olivier Dittmar have emphasized the impact of this new understanding of the church building on decorative programs carved in capitals of the sanctuaries of these churches.174 Through its consecration, they suggest, the church building was

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understood to be ritually activated and transformed in nature, much as the bread and wine were understood to be transformed in substance through the Eucharist, and its material stone transformed into “living stones” complementing the community of the faithful. The idea of living stones was expressed concretely in the abundance of foliate and animal motifs, as well as human figures, which suggest the animating force of creation. By contrast, they suggest that images of beasts of prey, dragons, and serpents, often devouring other creatures, represent the uncontrollable, negative forces within creation and suggest a potential apotropaic meaning. In the case of Chauvigny, the message is more explicit. Dedication rites that transformed the inanimate stone building into sacred space were a form of exorcism of evil spirits, of demons. It may be argued, then, that these explicit images of lust (the Whore of Babylon and images of demons fornicating) are included in the sanctuary to represent concretely the temptations and diabolical illusions of transformation that are expelled from sacred space through the rites of consecration, thereby making the space efficacious for the sacraments, especially the sacrament of the Eucharist. The body of the church fixes these diabolical visions in stone, much as the cloister neutralizes the power of the monstrous visions on capitals at the heart of the monastic garden. Recalling Focillon’s formal analysis of the way monsters are often fashioned in symmetrical compositions in accordance with the structure of the capital, thus manifesting beauty in deformity, we could see in the Chauvigny capitals an imposition of order on the monstrous and diabolical, seeking to cleanse the church body in preparation for the sacramental action and specifically reminding the priest of his duty to expel the diabolical and sexual phantasms from his imagination as he prepares to

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consecrate and handle the most sacred body and blood of Christ.

Monsters in Liminal Space: The Portal of Beaulieusur-Dordogne

The Romanesque sculpted portal is a quintessentially liminal space.175 It mediates between sacred and secular spaces, the heavenly and the terrestrial, the present and the hereafter, and, most fundamentally, interior and exterior—by which may be understood both the physical/corporeal and spiritual or psychological senses. Monsters, which are themselves understood as liminal beings, crossing boundaries of different species as well as blurring distinctions between the human and nonhuman, naturally occupy a prominent place in portal sculpture. In the south porch of Saint-Pierre at Moissac, for example (fig. 34), monstrous creatures, together with screaming female heads with distorted or “monstrous” facial expressions, separate the realm of heavenly paradise, the bosom of Abraham, from the fiery landscape of hell, in which demons torment Dives and his wife as representatives of the lustful, avaricious, and gluttonous. Meanwhile, monstrous demons, depicted with leonine maws, flaming hair, emaciated torsos, and claw-like feet, grab personifications of Lust and Avarice as if to escort them from the threshold of sacred space into the infernal fires. The celebrated trumeau at Souillac (fig. 84), marking the very center of an unfinished portal composition, features intertwined monsters devouring or threatening human figures on the front face, marking a striking contrast with the biblical theme of Abraham and Isaac and pairs of older and younger men embracing or wrestling on the sides.176 In contrast to the Moissac trumeau, with

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its interlaced male lions and lionesses, the Souillac trumeau shows lions confronting monstrous hybrids combining a lion’s body with an eagle’s head and beak; at the top an almost naked male figure, mounted on the back of one of the hybrids, screams as it is devoured by both creatures. While Schapiro went so far as to argue that the Souillac trumeau is symptomatic of a secularizing trend, by which “sculpture has begun to emerge as an independent spectacle on the margins of religious art,” more recent studies have emphasized its central position in the doorway, as originally envisaged, like Moissac, with a large tympanum above it.177 Baschet forcefully argues for the interdependence of the three sides of the trumeau, each of which concerns the hierarchical relations of being. Whereas the left side is dominated by Abraham and his son Isaac and the subjection of humanity to God, as well as the animal (the sacrifice of the ram) to the human, the right side appears to represent the intergenerational struggles of older and younger monks. Finally, the central trumeau, with its equally matched beasts and monsters, threatens the natural order of things by showing a naked male figure as food for beasts at the top of the trumeau. Baschet interprets this figure, with mouth open wide, as a cry for help from the victim, a “call for conversion and a desperate prayer in the face of death.”178 Furthermore, the plea for help is answered in an adjacent relief of the Theophilus legend: after renouncing Christ and the Virgin and accepting the devil as his lord, Theophilus regains his freedom from the devil after repenting and praying to the Virgin Mary.179 The monstrous imagery thus functions in a fashion that parallels the figural imagery and inscriptions deployed in the tympana of the Last Judgment at Autun and Conques with pleas for conversion and warnings of condemnation for the damned (see chapter 5).

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The barrel-vaulted porch of the Cluniac monastery of Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Paul at Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne offers a particularly rich case study, as monsters and demons feature prominently both in the lower narratives of the portal and in the lintel immediately beneath the tympanum (fig. 85).180 The principal theme of the tympanum is the Second Coming of Christ according to Matthew 14:30, but elements of the Last Judgment are included (fig. 86). Christ is enthroned amidst the twelve apostles with arms outstretched in the form of a cross, echoing the sign of the Son of Man that appears in the sky behind him supported by angels. At his feet, angels blow trumpets to awaken the dead in anticipation of judgment (Revelation 20:12–13). Beneath the Resurrection of the Dead, displayed on a double lintel, is an array of monsters and beasts, some devouring or regurgitating naked human figures. On the side walls of the porch below, Daniel is saved from the lions’ den at left, and the temptations of Christ by the devil appear at right. In addition, the personifications of three vices, Gluttony, Avarice, and Luxuria, appear on the façade to the left of the portal; and pairs of atlantes, one mounted on the shoulders of another, support the impost block of the trumeau while trampling on monsters. Similarly, the figures of Peter and Paul, joint patrons of the abbey, appear on the jambs of the doorway, while Christ reappears to the right of the three temptations to trample on monstrous beasts, evoking verse 13 of Psalm 90/ 91, already discussed earlier in conjunction with monsters in the cloister. Michele Luigi Vescovi has recently provided a compelling interpretation of the entire program in relation to the Cluniac liturgical readings of Lent and Easter, suggesting the role of the portal as backdrop to liturgical performance, but he says very

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Fig. 84 Trumeau with intertwined beasts, Abraham and Isaac, Sainte-Marie, Souillac, ca. 1120–1135.

little about the significance of the monsters within this framework.181 Jochen Zink has suggested that the lintels and tympanum form a unified program based on the book of Revelation and the vision of four monstrous creatures in the book of Daniel.182 According to this view, the seven monsters on the lintels represent the infernal realm as well as an allegory of the apocalyptic threats against the seven churches by seven heathen nations, whereas the tympanum proper shows the triumph of Christ and the church over evil, or more specifically the

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Fig. 85 General view of south porch, Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Paul, Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne, ca. 1130–1140.

Antichrist, in the guise of the apocalyptic monsters. As attractive as this interpretation is, the Beaulieu portal presents a more complex range of bodily deformities. On the lower lintel beneath the clouds accompanying the celestial vision, the focus is on land creatures or underworld monsters. At far left one sees a stout animal with a long snout and pointed ears; although it has been described as a bear by most scholars, it more closely resembles images of wild boar in medieval bestiaries. While no horns are visible, its cloven hooves, low-slung body with arched back, long snout, and pointed ears all seem

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to indicate a boar, a creature associated with the first hermits and monks of Egypt.183 According to Athanasius, Anthony was constantly tempted by demons and beset by “four-footed beasts and creeping things.”184 The wild boar was among those beasts he was able to tame and domesticate. In a sermon “On the Solitary and Contemplative Life,” attributed to Augustine, the “boar from the forest” (aper de silva) is further associated with the pastors of the heretics and Sarabitic princes who threatened the vine of the ascetic paradise “during the time of those great monks and hermits, Paul as well as Anthony.”185 Of particular interest is Peter of Celle’s

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Fig. 86 Second Coming, Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Paul, Beaulieu-

sur-Dordogne, south porch tympanum, ca. 1130–40.

sermon on the Second Coming, as it associates the wild boar with other inimical creatures, in contrast with the Agnus Dei and the vision of the Second Coming. Commenting on Isaiah 16:1, Peter affirms that the Lord “sends an angel and he sends a Lamb, not a boar, a unicorn, a bull, an ox, an ass, a camel, a lion, a basilisk, a scorpion [or] a serpent; the boar devours with its teeth, the unicorn attacks with its horns, the bull brandishes in the air [its horns] with stubbornness, the ox attacks with its horn, . . . the lion devours, the basilisk kills with its gaze, the scorpion stings with its tail, the serpent deceives. These are vices to be warding off.”186 The association

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of the boar with lions and basilisks, among other beasts and monsters, and with acts of devouring, offers particular parallels to the Beaulieu sculpture. Lest the boar be understood only in negative terms, it should be noted that this creature was considered capable of redemption. Thus, in a homily of Augustine, the boar from the wood represents the “uncleanness of the Gentiles,” in contrast with the Jews, but “when the Gentiles believed,” the boar would be exalted by all the trees of the woods.187 It may be significant, then, that the boar is at the favored right hand of Christ, while the Jews, who reveal their circumcised genitalia, stand at the left

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hand of Christ within the tympanum, pointing to the glorified body of Christ, whom they initially did not believe to be the Son of God.188 The boar confronts a quadruped with clawed feet and a total of seven heads with horns and open mouths: five heads sprouting from the neck, one of which is humanoid, and another two from the tail. Zink has identified this creature with the seven-headed monster described in Revelation 13:5– 6,189 but the match is not precise, as that creature has a “coronet on each of its ten horns” and combines the features of a leopard, the paws of a bear, and the mouth of a lion. Zink also suggests a connection with the fourth monster in the vision of Daniel (7:7– 8, 7:23–25), but again the details cannot confirm the association, since the creature is said to have ten horns, including one with human eyes on a single head; the one detail that might be said to match is the clawed feet, for the beast in Daniel is described as having “bronze claws” that it uses to crush and trample upon its victims (Daniel 7:19). To the right of the central axis, confronting the seven-headed monster, is a chimera with bearded head; it has two legs and a long, curling tail with a head emerging from the end. Two reptilian demons with toad-like heads appear from behind the serpent to engage in battle with clubs. This creature might be considered a form of sea serpent, given its resemblance to representations of sea monsters, including, in early Christian art, the great sea monster that devoured Jonah.190 The descriptions of Leviathan in Job 41 also come to mind. The second lintel is separated from the first by clouds, suggesting that these monsters occupy the heavens. Indeed, three of them have wings. A pair of griffins flank the central axis, while leonine creatures appear to devour or disgorge naked human figures. The chaotic movement and fantastic hybridity of many of these monstrous creatures, together with

their frightening acts of devouring or regurgitating human flesh, stand out against the orderly composition of Christ’s Second Coming in preparation for the judgment to come. Within the broader context of the tympanum, they could be viewed as part of an infernal landscape, anticipating the punishment of the damned in hell, a theme that is signposted by the hellmouth positioned at the far left of the upper lintel. This would suggest a parallel with the sculptural program of the south porch of Moissac, in which the tympanum focuses on the Second Coming, but the left wall is largely devoted to the punishment of Dives and his wife in the fires of hell and to representations of demons with personifications of vices, while Abraham provides refreshment for the soul of Lazarus above (see chapter 2). Yet both parts of the larger tympanum program at Beaulieu also refer more specifically to mortality and resurrection. The dead rise naked from their tombs at the base of the tympanum in response to the last trumpets blown by angels. Christ’s own body bears the marks of his Passion but is presented as his resurrected body in triumph, and the naked bodies emerging from or being devoured by beasts could also refer to the process of fragmentation and reconstitution of the physical body in preparation for the general resurrection and judgment. Bynum has shown that images of wild beasts and monsters regurgitating bodies allude to resurrection as a process of regurgitation and reassemblage of the fragmented physical body. A particularly close visual comparison for this composition at Beaulieu is found in drawings of the Last Judgment from the late twelfth-century Hortus deliciarum, authored by Herrad of Hohenbourg.191 The meaning of the scene of regurgitated bodies is clarified by an inscription on the folio immediately above the image: “The bodies and members

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of people once devoured by beasts, birds and fish are brought forth by God’s command, because the members of the saints will rise incorrupt as if of whole humanity, and not only via beasts as is depicted here, and they will be presented at God’s command.”192 An alternative interpretation takes us to the very heart of monastic understanding of images and the visionary process. The true vision of Christ as God at the Second Coming may be contrasted with the phantasms of the imagination, the chimeras and griffins and Cerberus-like creatures that combine real sensory data to create monstrous hybrids, diabolical images that possess the mind and compete for the monk’s attention. In this way the monsters on the exterior of the monastic church reflect the concept of spiritual struggle that is central to the imagery of the cloister. We see an extension of this aspect of the program on the side walls of the porch (figs. 87, 88). The struggle against diabolical forces that threaten body and soul is represented both in the form of personifications of vices of the flesh, to the left of the portal—Gluttony, Lust, and Avarice—and in the two narrative compositions of the porch walls. In both cases the message is primarily one of redemption, of vanquishing the dark forces.193 At left, Daniel appears in the lions’ den surrounded by ravening beasts but survives through divine intervention, as recounted in Daniel 6. In addition, to the left of the lions’ den we see the prophet Habakkuk, who is transported by an angel to bring Daniel food, an episode that appears in the apocryphal addition to the book of Daniel. At right (fig. 88), the devil appears to tempt Christ three times. Within the left intercolumniation, standing adjacent a Romanesque tower with transepts depicting the Temple, a winged devil with clawed feet and a monstrous snarling face

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tempts Christ to turn stone into bread to assuage his hunger in the desert,194 and above, Christ rebukes him, quoting scripture: “It is written: ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.’”195 Given the prominence of the Word of God in this utterance, it is significant that this text is inscribed on a long scroll between Christ and Satan, suggesting the power of the Word Incarnate—that is, the ideal body of Christ—over the monstrous, evanescent phantasms of the devil. It also facilitates the oral performance of Christ’s words, giving the potential to animate the sculpted image’s presence for the spectator. Within the right intercolumniation, the devil tempts Christ to jump from the pinnacle of the Temple and have the angels save him from his fall. Christ, facing the devil, who hovers above the central tower or pinnacle of the Temple, resists temptation a second time, saying, quoting scripture, “Again it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test’” (Matt. 4:7 [ESV]). The third temptation, in which the devil offers Christ dominion over all the kingdoms of the world if he will fall down and worship him, is illustrated by the figure of the devil, spurned by Christ, angrily departing to the left, a single figure of Christ standing in for both encounters. Bernard of Clairvaux, in his sermon 14 on Psalm 90/91, referred to earlier in this chapter, considers the temptations of Christ by the devil in relation to the monstrous beasts of verse 13 and the corresponding senses. The first temptation, to turn stone into bread, evokes for Bernard the ways in which the asp “disturbs the mind with physical needs.” Like the tempter, the asp, associated with both touch and hearing, “injures people somehow with its bite and stops up its ear so as not to hear the voice of the charmer,” that is, the voice of God affirming, “Not

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Fig. 87 Daniel in the lions’ den, Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Paul,

Fig. 88 Temptations of Christ and Christ trampling on the beasts (Psalm 91), Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Paul, Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne, right wall of south porch, ca. 1130–1140.

in bread alone doth man live, but in every word that proceedeth from the mouth of God.”196 The third temptation of avarice, to acquire all the wealth of the kingdoms of the world in exchange for worshipping the devil, evokes for Bernard a comparison with the “persuasive hissing of the insidious dragon” and the senses of smell and hearing. According to Bernard, “They say it lies hidden in the sand and attracts even birds with its poisonous breath. How dead this breath is: ‘All these things I will give you if you will fall down and worship me.’ But Christ was no

ordinary bird: the dragon’s breath could do nothing to him.”197 Bernard associates the second temptation of Christ, to throw himself down from the pinnacle of the temple, with the basilisk and the sense of sight.

Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne, left wall of west portal, ca. 1130–1140.

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It is said that he infects and kills people even more monstrously, simply by a glance. Unless I am mistaken, this is vainglory. . . . But whom do they say the basilisk harms? The person who does not see the basilisk. . . . I do not think it is

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necessary to go into the way in which vainglory is involved when it was said: ‘If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down.’ What other reason could there be except that to be praised would be to be spied by the basilisk?198 Christ’s endurance of the Passion constitutes a fourth temptation, and this Bernard associates with the lion. The devil, Bernard affirms, “having been confounded three times, employs snake-like craftiness no longer but leonine cruelty against the Lord: insults, whippings, blows, death, even the death on the cross.”199 The four monsters trampled underfoot in Psalm 90/91 are represented more directly elsewhere in the portal sculpture. Multiple lions figure prominently, pacified within the lions’ den, where Daniel is held captive, but also in a heraldically interlaced pair beneath the feet of the seated saint to the left of the Daniel narrative. The basilisk, which Bernard associates with the dangers of the sense of sight, is represented outside the lions’ den to the right—a hybrid combining a serpentine body with a cock’s head. A lion, serpent, and dragon also seem to be trampled underfoot by Christ on the right jamb next to the temptations of Christ, thus reinforcing the connection with Psalm 90/91. Bernard plays on the contrast between true vision and understanding on one hand and false illusions and diabolical sensory data on the other, just as the portal uses the monstrous creatures as diabolical phantasms—a form of possession of the mind by vice—in contrast to the timeless, heavenly vision of Christ’s Second Coming. Having vanquished the monstrous demons and their attendant vices—the asp and the basilisk, the dragon and the lion—the monks are promised by Bernard that they will experience an eternal vision of God. Bernard contrasts

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this light-filled vision of the glory of God and of Christ as salvation with the darkness of evil embodied in the monstrous beasts by evoking the image of the Lamb as the lamp in Revelation 21.200 Bernard’s sermon provides a fitting commentary for the portal and its contrasting images of diabolical monsters devouring bodies and purified bodies rejoined to souls beholding the salvation of God in the form of the human Christ, who like his human followers was tempted by demons and died a human death, but was also resurrected in the body. The spectator who traverses this threshold of sacred space as part of a physical journey is invited to see his or her own spiritual journey in this highly palpable and startling imagery. The monastic and lay viewers were encouraged to identify with the human Christ who resisted the temptations of Satan, or with the righteous prophet Daniel, whose faith was rewarded by being saved from the lions and was regularly evoked in the Libera prayer as a model for resurrection. The spectator was also presented with the monstrous underside of his or her own character in the personifications of vices lurking around the edges of these scenes, as well as the allegorical imagery offered by the monsters of Psalm 90/91. Finally, in looking up to the tympanum, the spectator faced a concrete image of the glorified body of Christ at the Second Coming, a vision potentially impeded by the phantasms of chimeras that threatened metaphorically to consume the minds and bodies of those who were unprepared. This theme will be explored further in the last chapter as we turn to the ways in which church portals offer immersive spaces for the multisensory apprehension of the divine as embodied in Christ and the sacraments of the church in present time, as well as a foretaste of the purely spiritual vision of God at the end of time.

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Plate 1 Calvary group, Urnes Stave Church, ca. 1150.

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Plate 2 Chariot of Aminadab, “Anagogical Window,” Abbey of

Seine-Saint-Denis, ca. 1140. Stained glass.

Plate 3 Gero Cross, commissioned by Bishop Gero for Cologne

Cathedral, ca. 970. Walnut wood and polychrome. Photo: Elke Wetzig (elya) / Wikimedia Commons, reproduced under CC BY-SA 3.0.

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Plate 4 Charles the Bald praying before the crucifix, Prayerbook of Charles the Bald, 850–860. Munich, Residenz, Schatzkammer, ms B 63, fols. 38v–39r. Photo © Bayerische Schlösserverwaltung, Maria Scherf / Rainer Hermann, München.

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Plate 5 Morgan Madonna Sedes Sapientiae,

from Auvergne, ca. 1150–1175. Walnut wood and polychrome. Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, 1916, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, acc. no. 16.32.194a, b. Photo: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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Plate 6 Golden Madonna of Essen, ca.

980–990. Hammered gold over wooden core with enamel eyes. Photo: Anne Gold (Aachen), © Domschatz Essen.

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Plate 7 Retable with Sedes Sapientiae, Annunciation,

and Baptism of Christ from Carrières-sur-Seine (formerly Carrières-Saint-Denis), ca. 1125–1150. Limestone relief with polychrome. Musée du Louvre, Paris. Photo: Pierre Philibert. © RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, New York.

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Plate 8 Sedes Sapientiae, Annunciation to the Shepherds, and Adoration of the Magi, Duomo, Verona, west tympanum, ca. 1139. Verona marble relief with polychrome. Photo: Jakub Hałun / Wikimedia Commons, reproduced under CC BY-SA 4.0.

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Plate 9 Crucifix from Catalonia, ca. 1150–1200. Wood and poly-

chrome, gold leaf. Samuel D. Lee Fund, 1935, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, acc. no. 35.36a, b. Photo: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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Plate 10 Renier de Huy (attributed), Baptism of Christ,

baptismal font from Notre-Dame-aux-Fonts, Liège (now at Saint-Barthélemy, Liège), ca. 1117–1118. Cast bronze relief. Photo: Jean-Pol Grandmont / Wikimedia Commons, reproduced under CC BY 2.5.

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Plate 11 Portrait of Frederick I Barbarossa, trans-

formed into reliquary of Saint John the Evangelist, Stiftskirche, Cappenberg, ca. 1160. Gilded cast bronze and silver. Photo: Kath. Kirchengemeinde St. Johannes Selm-Cappenberg.

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Plate 12 Portrait reliquary of Sainte Foy, Conques, late ninth

century, remade ca. 1000. Gold repoussée over wooden core. Photo © Les Regards de Francis Desbaisieux.

Plate 13 Detail of face of Sainte Foy, Conques, Roman, fourth or fifth century. Photo: Holly Hayes / Flickr, reproduced under CC BY-NC 2.0. Plate 14 (opposite) Portrait reliquary of Saint Baudîme, Abbey

of Saint-Nectaire, Auvergne, ca. 1150. Silver and silver gilt over a wooden core. Photo © Les Regards de Francis Desbaisieux.

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Plate 15 Head reliquary of Pope Alexander, from Stavelot Abbey,

Belgium, 1145. Photo © Genevra Kornbluth.

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clockwise from top left Plate 16 Tomb effigy of Rudolf von Schwaben, detail of bust,

Merseburg Cathedral, ca. 1080–1100.

Plate 17 Retrospective tomb portrait of Duke Widukind of

Enger, Stiftskirche Enger, ca. 1130. Stucco relief (gypsum) with polychrome.

Plate 18 Tomb effigy of Archbishop Friedrich von Wettin, Magde-

burg Cathedral, after 1152. Cast bronze.

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Plate 19 Last Judgment, Abbey of Sainte-Foy, Conques, detail of

Sainte Foy kneeling before the hand of God, ca. 1150.

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Plate 20 General view of hemicycle of choir, Collégiale de

Saint-Pierre, Chauvigny, ca. 1150–1200.

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Plate 21 Last Judgment, tympanum of Sainte-Foy, Conques, ca. 1150.

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Chapter 5

Renewing the Temple Living Stones and Embodied Theophanies

T

he Life of Saint Hugh of Lincoln (1225) offers a rare record of a medieval response to Romanesque sculpture in the public sphere. Specifically, the author describes Bishop Hugh (1140–200) taking King John by the hand as they entered the porch of Fontevraud Abbey, pointing to high-relief sculptures depicting the punishments of the damned in the hellmouth: The bishop pointed to the left hand of the Judge, where kings in their regalia were being consigned to damnation. . . . The bishop turned to his companion and said, “A man’s conscience ought continually to remind him of the lamentations and interminable torments of these wretches. One should keep the thought of these eternal pains before one’s mind at all times.” . . . He said that images like this were very rightly placed at the entrance of churches. For thus the people going inside to pray for their needs were reminded of this greatest need of all. . . . If only the king could be warned in time of the wrath so soon to come. That even so late he might endeavor to escape eternal punishment

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and remove himself from the left hand to the right of that Eternal Judge.1 Although sculpture of this description does not survive at Fontevraud, the Norman sculpted frieze still extant from the west façade of Hugh’s own cathedral at Lincoln includes an extended Last Judgment with Christ enthroned amidst the apostles, the parable of Dives and Lazarus, and graphic images of the damned being taunted by demons and processed into the hellmouth (fig. 89). The representation of hell as a monstrous mouth and a physical place is particularly striking, drawing on a tradition that originates in Anglo-Saxon art.2 Also significant is the explicit representation of individuals from different ranks in society, including kings. As the text makes clear, the sculpture is understood as a mnemonic device, a powerful reminder of the fate of the damned, and ultimately as having the potential effect of modifying the laity’s behavior. Furthermore, it is understood that the placement of this imagery above the entrance to the church reminds the spectator of the efficacy of ritual prayer within sacred space.

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Fig. 89 Harrowing of hell, Lincoln Cathedral, Norman frieze, west

façade, ca. 1100.

We have explored the powerful effect sculpture in the round had, coming alive to the senses as a devotional focus within the church, and we have seen how images of monstrous or nude bodies had a certain shock value when rendered in sculpture. But when we turn to the grand portal compositions of France and northern Spain, such as the south porch of Moissac, considered above (fig. 90), we see how sculpture in the public sphere is used to create immersive environments that project the theophany—literally, the appearance or apparition of God—in highly palpable human form, ideally leading the viewer to experience the vision with multiple senses in conjunction with the words and music of ritual processions and prayer. Set at the threshold of sacred space, a liminal bridge between the civic or public sphere and the sacred space of cathedral and monastery, these grand sculpted visions, originally resplendent with polychrome, offered sites of desire for an effective religious experience that used the

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senses to transcend the bounds of time and space and anticipate union with the divine—the ultimate effect of contemplating artificial images in sculpture. This emphasis on the experience of theophany at the threshold between public space and inner sacred space was predicated, I would argue, on the identification of the church building itself with the living stones of the body of Christ and with the efficacy of sacramental rites performed within its walls.3 The sculpted images on the exterior of the church contributed to both private devotion and communal liturgical performance, complementing the words and music of ritual texts as what Susan Boynton has aptly referred to as the “hermeneutics of liturgical performance.”4 Portal sculpture is central to the historiography of the Romanesque, offering evidence of the revival of the public art of sculpture in the Roman Empire. This connection is made explicit in the numerous examples that imitate the forms and structures of Roman triumphal arches, especially in southern France—the Porte de Miègeville of Saint-Sernin in Toulouse, Saint-Trophîme in Arles, Saint-Gilles-du-Gard, Saint-Pierre at Moissac (fig. 90), and Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Paul at Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne (fig. 85). In Erwin Panofsky’s analysis, the strength of the revival of Roman forms was connected to the “proto-humanism” of the “twelfth-century renaissance,” which was nurtured by the standing remains of Roman antiquity still visible in the south of France.5 Yet the development of monumental sculpture was more generally thought to have been prepared by the techniques and compositions used for metalwork relief. Thus, the large-scale Basel antependium, donated to the cathedral by Henry II and Kunigunde in 1019 (fig. 91), has been cited as prototype for early Romanesque bas-reliefs

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Fig. 90 Saint-Pierre, Moissac, south porch, ca. 1100–1115.

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Fig. 91 Basel antependium, 1019. Gold repoussée. Musée de Cluny, Paris, Musée national du Moyen Age—Thermes de Cluny. Photo: Hervé Lewandowski. © RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, New York.

depicting Christ and the apostles within arcades, placed over doorways or higher up on the façade, beginning around the second quarter of the eleventh century.6 The key incunabula of the sculpted portal are the relief panels from the west façade of the parish church of Saint-Symphorien at Azay-le-Rideau in the Loire Valley and the carved lintels of Saint-Genis-des-Fontaines and Saint-André-de-Sorède in the eastern Pyrenees region.7 In the case of Azay-le-Rideau (fig. 92),

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figures of Christ and the saints appear within a round-arched arcade, comparable to the scheme of the Basel antependium, with Christ shown frontally on the central axis and flanking figures turned toward him. Displayed in two registers above and flanking the central lancet of the façade, high above the principal west doorway, the scheme anticipates later schemes of Romanesque sculpture spread across entire façades. The large group of arcaded façades in Aquitaine, Linda Seidel suggests, drew

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Fig. 92 Christ flanked by saints within arcades, Saint-Symphorien,

Azay-le-Rideau, west façade, ca. 1050. Photo: Jacques Mossot, www.structurae.de / https://structurae.net.

explicitly on the arcaded form of metalwork reliquaries to allude to the triumph of the saints whose relics were brought back from the Holy Land in the wake of the Crusades, offering “songs of glory” to God and the noble patrons.8 The two carved lintels from Roussillon, by contrast, have been placed within the conventional genealogy of carved tympana. In each of these cases, it is the theophany with Christ raised aloft by angels on the central axis and flanked by apostles within arcades. Saint-Genis-des-Fontaines (fig. 93) presents the earlier of the two examples, dated by inscription to the “twenty-fourth year of the Reign of Robert the Pious, on the order of Abbot

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William,” that is, between October 24, 1019, and October 24, 1020. Placed beneath a blank tympanum, it depicts Christ enthroned within a mandorla, holding the Book of Life in his left hand and blessing with the right, and on either side three apostles or saints, set beneath horseshoe-shaped arches. The lintel at Saint-André-de-Sorède (fig. 94), dated to the 1040s, has a closely related composition in which Christ appears enthroned within a mandorla held aloft by angels, but in this case the flanking arcades are occupied by two cherubim (the inner pair), three half-length saints, and one seated saint, possibly one of the evangelists. The theophany is extended to the reliefs that frame the window above,

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Fig. 93 Christ in Majesty with saints, Saint-Genis-des-Fontaines,

lintel, 1019–1020.

where cherubim appear amid medallions with the four evangelist symbols and with angels blowing the trumpets to awake the dead in preparation for the Last Judgment (Matt. 24:31). In both cases the relief is compressed, the carving schematic, the heads disproportionately large in scale, thus recalling earlier Visigothic sculpture from northern Spain. By contrast, the new architectural sculpture fashioned within the tympana of French churches beginning at the end of the eleventh century, as exemplified by Saint-Sernin at Toulouse (fig. 95), projects rounded figures in higher relief within a notional space defined by the archivolts, thus beginning a formal

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development toward higher-relief compositions, such as the tympanum of Moissac (figs. 90, 99), dated to the second decade of the twelfth century. Placing this stylistic change in historical context, Meyer Schapiro proposes that public sculpture emerged at a time when Europe was rapidly urbanizing, and Benedictine monasteries, such as Moissac, needed to address a broader lay audience at their doorstep.9 He argues that the programs of twelfth-century portals developed messages that addressed lay culture, offering moralizing lessons, such as the theme of virtues and vices or the Last Judgment. In addition, he sees reflections of lay

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Fig. 94 Christ enthroned between angels, seraphs, and saints, Saint-André-de-Sorède, lintel, ca. 1020. Photo: Palauenc05 / Wikimedia Commons, reproduced under CC BY-SA 4.0 International.

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Fig. 95 Ascension of Christ, Saint-Sernin, Toulouse, Porte

Miègeville, tympanum, late eleventh century. Photo: KimonBerlin / Wikimedia Commons, reproduced under CC BY-SA 2.0.

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court culture in Romanesque sculpture such as the tympanum of Moissac: in the splendor of dress worn by the crowned elders and their musical instruments. What Schapiro fails to take into account is the multiple functions and audiences of the portal, which would have included both monks and lay members of the congregation from the town and benefactors of the monastery. What is more, he tends to separate too rigorously the interior of the church from the more public space of the portal and town square. These sacred and profane spaces were regularly bridged by processional rituals on festal occasions, and the portal is often a focal point for imagery that rehearses civic history through the lens of the local liturgy.10 Robert A. Maxwell’s more recent study of the Romanesque town of Parthenay, though building on Schapiro’s engagement of lay audiences for Romanesque sculpture and the growing importance of towns, offers a more subtle argument that places a series of extant Romanesque monuments, primarily churches, firmly within the larger urban context.11 He ties architectural style and the content of public sculpture on the façades of Romanesque churches in the town to a new sense of urban identity that is linked to the authority of the local counts as well as that of the religious institutions. Following this mode of analysis, it is problematic to separate lay from religious audiences, who were united by a common allegiance to the emerging civis. My own approach is to consider how the public sculpture of church façades lays out the claims of the institutional church as mediator and cultivator of the spiritual senses and understanding. Dominique Iogna-Prat has shown that the church building itself was understood during the Romanesque period as having an inherent sacrality confirmed by

means of elaborate dedication rites that involved a form of exorcism of the material building before it was consecrated by the collocatio of relics and celebration of the Eucharist.12 The church building thus came to embody the ecclesia as a community and all the sacramental rites celebrated within. It was, in effect, the “body of Christ” in material form, complementing the individual faithful as “living stones” of that body. As a body in its own right, the church building also had a hierarchy of spaces, with the choir and sanctuary serving as the caput or head, where the sacrament of the Eucharist was celebrated by the clergy, the transept as the arms, and the nave as the body of the church, housing the lay congregation.13 Iogna-Prat further argues that during the Gregorian Reform era the church building was understood as a “person” with its own biography, customized by founders and patron saints documented in chronicles and in the visual imagery associated with the building. Complementing these ideas, Éric Palazzo has shown that the church building, with its multisensory rituals, was also understood as a model for the body of the participant in the liturgy in the image of the “temple of God.”14 The rite of consecration was, in the words of Didier Méhu, a “multi-sensorial spectacle” that prepared for the role of the church building in the ongoing stimulation of the senses through the sacraments administered within its walls.15 The rite included specific visual spectacles—the gestures of the celebrant, the illumination of the interior with lamps and candles, the procession of the clergy and of the assembly; certain sounds, including the words of consecration and prayers as well as the music of liturgical chants and bells; the distinct smell of incense, which filled the new church building with a sweet odor associated with God’s presence; and reference to taste in the blessing of salt and the celebration of

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the first Eucharist.16 And it was through touch, sound, and smell that the priest exercised his sacramental authority in the consecration ceremonies, including exorcising the building with holy water and salt; knocking on the door three times before entering the new church; anointing its four corners with oil; painting, anointing, and censing consecration crosses on the perimeter walls; depositing relics within the altar; and marking the floor with the alphabet. Once these various rites were completed, the sacred space was spoken into being with the proclamation of the name of God, and the church building was cast as a new tabernacle, a new Temple of Jerusalem, the house of God and the gate to heaven.17 There were, however, countervailing arguments about the status of the church building, just as there were about religious images, especially in monastic quarters. Bernard of Clairvaux, for example, complains in his Apologia to William of Saint-Thierry of the “immense heights of the places of prayer, their immoderate lengths, their superfluous widths, the costly refinements, and painstaking representations which deflect the attention . . . of those who pray and thus hinder their devotion.”18 This negative attitude toward the physical architecture of sacred space, at least of material ostentation in church architecture, was rooted in Scripture. In Genesis 11:4–9, the Tower of Babel is held out as an example of human arrogance and hubris that eventually was punished by divine destruction. Even the Temple of Solomon was only reluctantly given divine approval, and that too would perish within a few generations. Similarly, in the last book of the Christian Bible, the heavenly Jerusalem is characterized by the absence of a physical temple building (Revelation 21:22). According to John Onians, these ascetic attitudes against the material setting of worship strengthened in the course of the twelfth

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century and led to the creation of a more ethereal, seemingly dematerialized form of Gothic architecture that sought to justify itself as an anticipation of heavenly vision.19 By contrast, the most innovative Romanesque architecture in Burgundy, Languedoc, and northern Spain represented a confidence in the embodiment of the architectural metaphors of scriptural texts. If we accept Iogna-Prat’s thesis regarding the new sacrality of the physical fabric as sacred locus for the presence of God, then we can begin to see how the new architectural form and its sculpture complement this new conception of a physically embodied ecclesia.20 Romanesque monastic churches such as Sainte-Foy in Conques (fig. 96) configured that reality in part through a preference for the cruciform plan, which inscribed Christ’s living body of the faithful within the cross. What was new in the eleventh century, however, was the sculptural articulation of curved volumes, including cylindrical chapels, semicolumns, and responds marking the elevation, which contributed to a certain anthropomorphic appearance of the building, an appearance that was often enhanced by historiated capitals, or even monstrous mouths that appear to swallow the body of the column, as in the case of Civray (fig. 97).21 The anthropomorphic language of the church building was also visualized by the representation of saints in low-relief carvings in the position of columns or supports. Although there is a tendency in older literature, going back to Wilhelm Vöge, to emphasize the statue-colonne as an “early Gothic” invention that experiments in a new form of autonomous, “architectonic” figure on the jambs of the Portail Royal at Chartres and the west portal of Saint-Denis, the animation of columnar support is already well developed by the second decade of the twelfth century, as witnessed in the cloister reliefs

181

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Fig. 96 Interior of nave toward the east, Sainte-Foy, Conques,

late eleventh century. Photo: Frank R. Horlbeck, Visual Resources Collection, Department of Art History, University of Wisconsin–Madison.

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of the apostles at Moissac (1090s), the jamb figures of Cremona Cathedral (ca. 1112–15), and the column figures of the Puerta de las Platerias at Santiago de Compostela (ca. 1110).22 At Moissac, for example, the late eleventhcentury reliefs on the corner piers of the cloister depict the twelve apostles in conjunction with a commemorative portrait of the reforming Abbot Durandus, on the pier opposite the chapter house (figs. 52, 98).23 This particular disposition of full-length figures of the apostles on the principal supports at the corners of the cloister visualizes in concrete form a metaphorical understanding of columns and supports in Christian thought that goes back to the age of Constantine. According to Onians, Constantine was instrumental in developing architectural metaphors for early Christian architecture, drawing on Saint Paul’s architectural metaphors in Galatians 2:9 and Ephesians 2:20; at the Council of Nicaea, for example, Constantine described the institutional church as a “façade of twelve marble columns bearing a pediment.”24 Eusebius further identified groups of twelve columns in various Constantinian buildings with the twelve apostles, including the columns around Christ’s tomb in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and the twelve stelae around the tomb of Constantine at the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople.25 The most influential exegesis of anthropomorphic architecture was formulated in the mid-ninth century by Hrabanus Maurus in De universo. Giving a mystical interpretation of columns put up in front of the Temple of Solomon by Hiram, Hrabanus refers to them as prefigurations of the columns of Christian faith, which are the “apostles and teachers of the Gospel.” Elaborating on Galatians 2, Hrabanus argues that, by these words, Paul “seems to expound the mystery of the material columns, both

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what they apparently represented and why there were two. For they stand for the apostles and all the spiritual doctors, raised up toward the heavens and strong in faith and works and meditation.”26 Given that the monastic cloister was frequently compared to the “portico of [the Temple of] Solomon,” the application of this exegesis to the pillars of the Moissac cloister seems particularly apt.27 The placement of life-sized figures suggests that the very fabric of the monastic claustrum is synonymous with the institutional claustrum, as a community of monks under the leadership of the abbot, cast in the model of the apostolic ecclesia. Each day the monks circumambulated the cloister they would have the occasion to look the apostles in the eye and consider how these model bodies might ideally be imprinted upon their own bodies and actions. The church building’s new role as embodiment of the “living stones” of the ecclesia was highlighted even more visibly by the public sculpture placed over the principal entrances to the church. The tympanum was articulated as a field for the presentation of theophanies—the vision of God as a revelation of “real presence” in the form of the body of Christ. As such, the tympanum anticipated and reiterated the theophanies often represented in mural painting in the apse, or in antependia.28 In contrast to the more portable sculptures in the round, the crucifix, the Madonna, and the reliquary portrait, these images appealed less to individual contemplation and more to public veneration as a backdrop to communal rituals and processions. It is significant that among the earliest sculpted doorways, the sensory apprehension of God is thematized in a series of representations of the Ascension, sometimes conflated with the Second Coming, including Cluny III, the Cluniac priory of Charlieu, and the tympanum of an abbey reformed

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Fig. 97 Monstrous mouth swallowing column, Saint-Nicolas, Civray, west façade, ca. 1100.

by Cluny, Saint-Sernin in Toulouse (fig. 95).29 The Ascension offers a point of tension in which Christ’s dual nature as God and man is visualized: Christ rises in human form from earth to heaven, where he is received by angels and reveals his divinity. As the text of Acts makes clear, the Ascension also presages the Second Coming of Christ as Judge at the end of time.30 In the earliest examples from Cluny III, as reconstructed by Conant, and the Cluniac priory of Charlieu, Christ’s divinity is made manifest in the almond-shaped mandorla of light surrounding him as he ascends, enthroned, raised aloft by angels, while the apostles are seated or stand below.31 This frontal hieratic composition is based on an eastern Mediterranean tradition going back as far as the sixth century, including examples in the pilgrims’ ampullae from the Holy Land and in wall painting from Coptic Egypt.32 A variation on the theme is presented in the Porte de Miègeville at Toulouse (fig. 95), in which Christ is shown in an active striding

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Fig. 98 Saints Bartholomew and Matthias, Saint-Pierre, Moissac,

cloister reliefs, ca. 1100.

pose with arms outstretched heavenward as angels lift him and apostles stand craning their necks to behold the ascent from the lintel below. The emphasis on beholding Christ in this version is in keeping with a long-standing exegetical tradition that extends back to Augustine. In his Fourth Sermon on the Ascension, a work read in Cluniac monasteries on the feast day in question, Augustine emphasizes that the Ascension confirms the reality of the Resurrection of Christ, who is both fully human and fully divine and accessible to the senses of the apostles. “He showed Himself to His Disciples: that they might see him with their eyes, and touch Him with their hands;

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showing them what He had become, and that He had not put off what He always was. . . . On this day therefore, that is, the fortieth after His Resurrection, the Lord ascended into heaven. We have not seen, but we believe. They who beheld Him proclaimed what they saw, and they have filled the whole earth.”33 The emphasis on the bodily experience of Christ and the continuum between physical and spiritual seeing is strengthened in late eleventh- and twelfth-century sermons on the Ascension. Ivo of Chartres places particular emphasis on how Christ’s fleshly body offers the via nova into heaven, a theme particularly important for the entrance into the church building: “Today that flesh which was raised from the earth is placed at the right hand of the Father . . . since through the flesh of Christ, the gateway of heaven through which nothing in the flesh previously traveled, has been unlocked’ as the Apostle says, ‘for by means of the same the way is prepared for the entry of the members of Christ in their time.’”34 He also suggests how the physical senses enable, but are ultimately surpassed by, the spiritual senses: The entire dispensation of the humanity of Christ, then, has no other purpose, does nothing else, unless it leads our intention to heavenly things, and after the time of our mortality has expired, leads to a manifest vision of him and satisfies those who are led to his face in eternal glory, for as the Apostle [Paul] testified, “we shall see him as he is (I John 3),” and thus the Psalmist: “I shall be satisfied when your glory is manifested (Ps. 16).” These are the good things in Jerusalem, which the eye does not see, and neither have the ears heard, nor have they arisen in the heart of man, those things that God has prepared for those who love him (I Cor. 2).35

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Fig. 99 Maiestas Domini, Saint-Pierre, Moissac, south porch,

tympanum, ca. 1100–1115.

The continuum between the physical and spiritual senses, demonstrated in the texts and images of the Ascension, is more explicit in later twelfth-century portal sculpture, as it incorporates high relief and the physical space of the spectator into the sacred vision. The south porch of Saint-Pierre at Moissac offers a particularly instructive case study (figs. 90, 99).36 With boldly projecting figures surrounding the spectator on three sides, the Moissac portal creates an immersive

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environment that fosters both positive and negative multisensory experiences at the symbolic threshold to sacred space and the perception of the ultimate sacred space of the heavenly Jerusalem. The startling figure of Lust on the left wall has already been considered in the context of the discussion of the Romanesque nude in chapter 2. Here I focus on the tympanum in its broader context. Based mainly on Revelation 4, the high-relief sculpture of the tympanum (fig. 99) translates the biblical

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text into a hierarchy of being, descending from the central, larger-than-life figure of Christ, crowned and enthroned at center, to the angelic beings on either side—the cherubim and seraphim and four winged beasts—to the much smaller seated figures of the twenty-four elders offering incense and music. Henri Focillon emphasized the attention to the surface of the relief in the elaborate carving of the embroidered hems of garments and in the ornamental bands, suggesting a parallel with the formalism of modern painting, while Émile Mâle focused on the iconographic sources in manuscript illumination. Yet the composition is striking for its bold projection of forms and vigorous poses that emphasize corporeality and appeal to the senses.37 In contrast to the compressed relief of the Ascension at Toulouse, here Christ is projected into the space of the beholder by his downcast eyes and by the inclination of his entire body. One can follow an anagogical or upward-leading path that leads the eyes from the high-relief figures of the elders, whose energetic bodily movements and gazes catch the viewer’s attention and direct it to the more ethereal winged beings in compressed relief above, and finally to Christ himself within the aureole of divine light. The emphasis on the elders beholding God with their own eyes is also predicated on the belief in the resurrection of the physical body preceding the Judgment, when the individual will confront his maker face to face. As Jeffrey Hamburger has shown, what made theologians more confident in corporeal vision by the twelfth century was the belief that Saint John the Evangelist had achieved a higher form of intellectual vision than previous prophets by virtue of the deification process, which granted him a temporary state of raptured vision to behold God face to face before the end of time.38 In the commentaries on the Apocalypse from the

mid-eleventh to twelfth centuries, one can also find an increasing emphasis on corporeal seeing.39 For Richard of Saint Victor, for example, the vision of Revelation is an example of the concrete revelations of the divine, “which the Greeks call theophanies, that is divine apparitions, by which invisible things are shown forth through signs like things perceived by the senses.”40 Commenting on Revelation 1, he asserts that “the corporeal eye of all will see him as true man. The spiritual eye will see him as true God. . . . The corporeal eye will see him [and] wonder at his brightness.”41 In a second commentary, Benjamin Major (1158–62), Richard holds out the possibility of using the corporeal senses to behold Christ before the end of time. Elaborating on the text of Revelation 3:20, Richard describes how the mind, following John’s revelation, may be prepared to receive the vision of Christ: “Behold,” he says, “I knock at the door; and whoever opens it to me, I shall go in to him and sup with him, and he with me.” We truly eat with the Lord in our own house when we freely use those things at his good pleasure. . . . Through that [multiplication of faith] whereby we wonder at the known light of divinity, we are raised above ourselves to higher things, and we accompany the Lord’s passing by the footprints [vestigiis] left by his unveiling grace. But to stand with the standing Lord after his departure is to remain still longer in that state of heavenly, revealed light through contemplation. . . . Fixed on that light of eternity, he draws into himself the likeness of the image he perceives.42 This shift in the understanding of Revelation is manifested both in illustrated commentaries on the Revelation and in sculptural images such

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as the Moissac tympanum. In a twelfth-century manuscript of Haimo of Auxerre’s commentary on the Apocalypse (fig. 100), the visual images go far beyond the original ninth-century commentary to emphasize a concrete process of seeing, in which John is surrogate and model for the reader and viewer of the page.43 Here, John touches his physical eye—a gesture that Cynthia Hahn claims was intended to “signify interior contemplation in contrast to corporeal sight.”44 Yet placing John adjacent the “door into heaven” and giving the content of his vision such tangible form, including reference to the illumination of the seven lampstands of the seven churches, forges a concrete link between the physical sense of sight and the spiritual insight or internal vision of John the Divine, and perhaps even evokes directly Augustine’s haptic notion of sight as a form of “grasping” at objects. As he stands at the door of heaven, John beholds Christ amidst the twenty-four elders, set within a tangible stage-like space paralleling the concrete spaces that Richard of Saint Victor and William of Saint-Thierry advised their readers to create within the imagination. In the tympanum of Moissac (fig. 99), by contrast, it is the twenty-four elders who represent this process of seeing and thus stand in for the viewer in the doorway below as they enter into the physical space of vision. Already assumed into heaven, each elder struggles to behold more perfectly the image of God. Bulging eyes, grasping gestures, vessels of incense, and musical instruments evoke the senses of sight, touch, smell, and hearing as means of access to the divine vision. Entry into the temple/church is a crucial theme of the Moissac portal sculpture, and the tympanum, I suggest, culminates an imaginative journey, an iter or ductus, that begins with the sculpture in the lower level of the portal (figs. 90, 101).45 Here, as we

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Fig. 100 Vision of Second Coming, Haimo of Auxerre, Commentary on Revelation, German, early twelfth century. Oxford, Bodleian Library ms Bodley 352, fol. 5v. Photo courtesy the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford.

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Fig. 101 Jeremiah, Saint-Pierre, Moissac, ca. 1100–1115.

have already seen in chapter 2, the viewer confronts life-sized figures, including the female nude, that remind him of past or present appetites of the flesh that blur his vision of God—visions of lust and carnal beauty, of avarice and gluttony, as well as their punishment in a fiery hell where Dives and his wife are tormented amongst the demons (figs. 34, 35). By contrast, the prophet Jeremiah (fig. 101), caught in a conflicted, chiastic pose on the central trumeau, turns back into the darkness of the portal, granted only a veiled vision of what is fulfilled with the first coming of Christ on the right side of the portal (fig. 36). Here the very possibility of seeing and touching God in the flesh is represented by the

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narratives of the incarnation: below, the promise of the virgin birth is announced to Mary by Gabriel, and the news shared with her cousin Elizabeth; in the middle zone, God incarnate is revealed to the three Magi, who advance with lively steps toward the enthroned Madonna and Child, foreshadowing the journey to the altar inside the church, where the portable sculpture of the Virgin and Child customarily was placed in Romanesque churches. On the frieze above the Adoration of the Magi; Christ’s divinity is recognized in the toppling of idols in Egypt at left, and in his acceptance in the Temple by the priest Simeon, who calls him “a light to the revelation of the Gentiles, and the Glory of thy people Israel” (Luke 2:32).46 Having seen the light, Simeon tightly embraces the Christ Child, fulfilling the desire of monks such as William of Saint-Thierry (see introduction) to touch the flesh of the infant Christ in their most intimate visions. The Christ Child here offers a foretaste of the sweetness of the eucharistic meal, in contrast to the gluttonous feast of Dives on the opposite side. The complementary narratives of the two sides of the Moissac portal, demonstrating both the positive role of the senses in the Incarnation and the negative role in stimulating the appetites of the flesh in the narrative of Dives and Lazarus, parallel the more explicit language of contemporaneous Last Judgment compositions such as that of Autun (fig. 102). Here the graphic visualization of bodily punishment of the damned on Christ’s left or sinister side is accompanied by inscriptions that give voice to the fears of the spectator: “May this terror terrify those whom earthly error binds, for the horror of these images here in this manner truly depicts what will be.”47 At Moissac the contrasting representations of depraved sensory images and positive incarnational

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Fig. 102 Gislebertus, Last Judgment, Saint-Lazare, Autun, tympa-

num, ca. 1125.

images offer a moral choice in highly sensual and even shockingly vivid forms. It is finally in the tympanum that the pilgrimage of the senses is completed (figs. 90, 99); the viewer meets the gaze of the divine yet human Christ, led into the composition by the gazes, the aroma of incense, and the sound of the music played by twenty-four elders. Such a journey was part of the monastic practice of meditation—a “pilgrimage of the mind”—but it was also made more accessible through the texts

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of the public liturgy. As we have seen in chapter 2, Moissac offers us a rare opportunity to establish such a concrete connection, because the abbey’s processional antiphons are preserved in a contemporaneous manuscript, and in at least one instance we know that the antiphons were sung while processing through the space of the portal, presumably the present south porch of Moissac. In the Advent antiphons, Christ’s first coming through the chaste Virgin Mary is described as preparation

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for his Second Coming, his journey in the flesh as anticipation of the faithful’s journey into the afterlife. The text compares the entrance into the temple or church with Christ’s entrance into the Virgin’s womb, evoking the concrete imagery again of the Song of Songs as the antithesis of carnal love on the opposite side of the portal.48 Later the mood shifts to judgment, evoking both sights and sounds—the “bright Advent” of the “immortal Bridegroom” and the din exhorting the faithful to hurry, like the wise virgins, to greet the Bridegroom—at the church entrance as a symbolic “gate of paradise.”49 For the participant in the liturgy, hearing and/or chanting these texts, the sculptures of the portal offered concrete paradigms of the physical journey they themselves were making through the portal, as well the spiritual journey through the senses—the sights, sounds, and smells of the liturgical procession, leading imaginatively from the womb-like portal of the Incarnation into the heavenly Jerusalem above and beyond. Simultaneously, as they passed the beds of Dives and Lazarus, Christ and the Virgin, they were offered the model of spiritual union with God, by ascending from the fleshly bed of the bride and bridegroom to the throne of Christ.

The Speaking Portal: The Present and Future Church

The Ascension and Second Coming—or a blend of those two subjects—were the most common theophanies in Romanesque portal sculpture, but, as we have already seen, elements of the Last Judgment are also present in the sculptural representations of the Second Coming at Beaulieu (fig. 86) and Moissac (fig. 90). The Last Judgment is of particular significance because, of all the theophanies represented in sculpture, it appeals most

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concretely to the senses as a means of not only revealing God’s presence but also projecting the role of the institutional church and its physical manifestation in the church building and its sacraments in modifying behavior in this world in anticipation of the next. The west tympana of Saint-Lazare at Autun and Sainte-Foy at Conques are two of only three French Romanesque examples of the theophany that would come to dominate Gothic sculptural programs in the thirteenth century: the Last Judgment.50 Viewed through the lenses of the sacraments and liturgy of the church, the sculpted portal presents a future vision in highly material and even practical terms. Perhaps more than any other theophany in Romanesque sculpture, the Last Judgment reinforces an appeal to the senses within the framework of the embodied church—as physical place for the enactment of the sacramental life of the body of Christ in anticipation of the eschaton. Both examples place particular emphasis on the sense of sound through their inscriptions, reinforcing synergies between word and image, vision and sound. The celebrated west tympanum of Saint-Lazare at Autun (fig. 102), usually attributed, based on the inscription at the feet of Christ, to a sculptor named Gislebertus, features the larger-than-life frontal figure of Christ enthroned, set within a vast concave mandorla held aloft by four svelte angels.51 The narrative begins beneath his feet in the lintel with the Resurrection of the Dead in response to the blowing of the last trumpets by four angels at the edges of the tympanum. This precursor to judgment derives from Matthew 24:31: “And he shall send his angels with a trumpet, and a great voice: and they shall gather his elect from the four winds, from the farthest parts of the heavens to the utmost bounds of them.” The last trumpet is further commented on by Saint Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:51–52: “Behold,

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I tell you a mystery. We shall all indeed rise again: but we shall not all be changed. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet: for the trumpet will sound, and the dead shall rise again incorruptible: and we shall be changed.” The dead rise naked from their tombs, which are depicted as sarcophagi, including some resembling early Christian strigillated designs. Immediately beneath the feet of Christ, an angel, mimicking the action of the angel expelling Adam and Eve from paradise, is shown with sword raised, blocking those figures on Christ’s left or sinister side from entering the heavenly mansion. As the already damned rise from their tombs, their bodies are bent and they express gestures of despair, holding hands to their cheeks and bowing their heads. A lustful woman, resembling the personification at Moissac, is attacked by serpents at her breasts as grimacing demons approach. Meanwhile a pair of monstrously large, claw-like hands grasps the head of a frontal figure beneath the scene of the psychostasis. The blessed, by contrast, stand erect once they have emerged from their tombs, with naked figures raising arms heavenward, while other figures, newly clothed, process in an orderly fashion toward the central axis aided by angels. Among the clothed figures are pilgrims with satchels bearing the shell of Santiago, an abbot and a bishop, thus singling out the virtuous laity and the religious. Because the deceased rise from their tombs already distinguished as the blessed or the damned, Aron Gurevich has argued that the Autun lintel depicts the particular judgment and the concrete conceptualization of purgatory as an intermediate place to which the deceased were sent prior to the Last Judgment.52 Those who were judged to be blameless, the saints and the already blessed, were thought to have their souls rise directly to heaven in

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anticipation of the Last Judgment, while those who were judged to be wanting were to be sent immediately after death to purgatory so that their sins could be purged in the purgatorial fire. Monastic congregations, especially those associated with Cluny, promoted the belief that their intercessory prayers on behalf of the deceased would ease the burdens of purgatory and ensure a successful final judgment in heaven. Given the presence of a healing shrine of Saint Lazarus, this connection with commemoration and intercession was strengthened, balancing a concern for the spiritual health of the souls, both living and dead, with a care for the physical body of the living and its eventual fate in the afterlife at the Last Judgment.53 The final judgment is manifested by the figure of Christ, who separates the blessed and damned at his right and left hands. The inscription gives voice to Christ: “All things, I alone dispose of and I crown the just; those who follow crime I judge and punish.”54 A second representation of judgment is represented in the form of the psychostasis, or weighing of souls (fig. 71). The pictorial convention of the psychostasis, which is inherited ultimately from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, is not strictly speaking part of the Last Judgment, as it is recounted in Matthew, but is alluded to in other scriptural texts and in the funerary liturgy. One scriptural source, Psalm 62/63:9, refers to the hand of God bearing or receiving the soul (“My soul hath stuck close to thee; thy right hand hath received me”), and has been cited by Jochen Zink as a source for the motif of the right hand holding the balance.55 Three other scriptural texts refer more specifically to the weighing of souls: Job 31:6 (“Let him weigh me in a just balance, and let God know my simplicity”); Daniel 5:27 (“thou art weighed in the balance, and art found wanting”); and the apocryphal text from 2

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Fig. 103 Christ as Judge with the balance, Stuttgart Psalter, ninth

century. Stuttgart, Würtembergische Landesbibliothek, Cod.bibl. fol.23, fol. 9v. Photo: Würtembergische Landesbibliothek.

Fig. 104 Psychostasis, detail of Last Judgment, Cross of Muiredach, Monasterboice, ca. 910.

Esdras 3:34 (“Now therefore weigh in a balance our iniquities and those of the inhabitants of the world; and it will be found which way the turn of the scale will incline” [NRSV]). The late ninth-century Stuttgart Psalter features three of the earliest images of the psychostasis: the first, on fol. 9v (fig. 103), illustrates Psalm 9/10:5 (“For thou has maintained my judgment and my cause; thou hast sat on the throne, who judgest justice”). In this example, Christ holds the balance as vehicle of judgment, while the archangel Michael appears behind Christ, holding and pointing at a scroll that might be construed as the book of life, or even a petition scroll on behalf of those who are to be judged. One of the earliest

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images of Michael performing the role of weighing the souls is found beneath the crucifix on the Cross of Muiredach at Monasterboice from the early tenth century, a work that likely draws on connections with Coptic monasticism (fig. 104).56 It speaks to the need to represent judgment as a material or physical process, evoking the sense of touch as the archangel Michael places and weighs the naked souls in one side of the balance, again, symbolically, the favored right side of the right hand of God holding the balance. By contrast, horrific hybrid demons attempt to shift the balance, physically weighing it down as they grasp naked souls.

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Fig. 105 Hell, detail of Last Judgment, Saint-Lazare, Autun, early twelfth century.

The result of the judgment at Autun is also shown in very physical, material terms. Those who are condemned to be damned are thrown off-balance in a topsy-turvy world, hurled from a Babel-like tower (fig. 105) into a cauldron that leads to the jaws of the hellmouth emerging behind the closed doors of hell.57 One of the damned covers her eyes in fright as a demon with mouth wide open snarls or screams. Further down, one of the condemned is bitten and devoured as food by the hellmouth. The right side (Christ’s left) of the inscription band, placed between the

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lintel and tympanum, gives voice to the future hell but also admonishes the spectator before the portal: “May this terror terrify those whom earthly error binds [terreus alligat error], for the horror of these images [specierum] truly depicts what will be.”58 The Latin of the inscription is displayed such that variations of the word “terror” appear no less than four times, thus complementing the depictions of the damned both in the lintel and in the scene of hell above. The initial phrase, terreat hic terror, coincides with the frowning mouths and gestures of fear—wringing hands, clasping

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Fig. 106 The blessed in heaven at Christ’s right hand, detail of Last

Judgment, Saint-Lazare, Autun, early twelfth century.

hands in prayer, and holding the head—among the dead rising from their tombs to the right of the central axis. Further along, the inscription is punctuated by the word terrevs (earthly), which visually and orally resembles the verb terreat just below the archangel weighing the souls, and by virtue of the close spacing of letters in the adjacent words (alligat and error) the inattentive reader will see the word terror again in the phrase qvos terrevs alligat error. The inscription concludes with a direct reference to the scene

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before the spectator with the phrase sic verum notat hic horror speciervm. If hell is represented as a disorganized and chaotic space, combining the confusion of Babel with the bodily destruction of the devouring mouth, heaven (fig. 106), by contrast, is revealed as an orderly space, architecturally configured as a Romanesque church building, even including the up-to-date detailing of the triforium and barrel vaults on the interior of the actual church building of Saint-Lazare. Heaven is presided over by the tall

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and elongated figure of Saint Peter, holding the keys to the heavenly gates in one hand and raising up the blessed in the other to join the ranks of the saints adjacent Christ. Among the saints one sees Mary, enthroned and crowned in the uppermost register, and the bearded, long-haired figure of John the Baptist leading the saints to intercede before Christ. Whereas the damned are shown dejected, with eyes cast downward and hands either holding their faces or clasped in prayer, the blessed, as they rise naked from their tombs, are brought into the ranks of their former social selves, joining clothed figures of monks, clergy, and lay pilgrims, who look upward to heaven and the angels, some pointing toward Christ in heaven in expectation. Further up, the blessed enter the heavenly mansion as ecclesia coming into the heavenly court of the saints before Christ, thus actualizing the words of the funerary antiphons then in circulation as part of the office of the dead. The antiphon “In paradisum” makes the plea “May the angels lead you into Paradise; may the martyrs support you in your advent, and lead you into the holy city of Jerusalem.”59 A second antiphon, “Subvenite Dei,” seeks the intercession of the saints for the soul’s passage into heaven: “Come to her assistance, O you saints of God, go forth to meet her, O you Angels of the Lord; receive her soul and present it in the sight of the Most High.”60 This antiphon has particular relevance for the portal sculpture, as it was sung as the corpse was processed into church for the funeral. It also reinforces the connection between the church building itself as anticipation of the heavenly Jerusalem and its sacramental efficacy in constituting the living church, including the rites that reincorporate the deceased into the community of the living. The tympanum aptly embodies these themes as the primary threshold into that sacred space.

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The dual theme of entering into the heavenly Jerusalem and into the church is reinforced in the lower zone of the portal by themes of the capitals and the trumeau. As at Moissac, the Presentation of Christ in the Temple (fig. 107), here complemented by an additional emphasis on the Purification of the Virgin herself, appropriately marks the entry into the church as successor to the Temple, while also emphasizing the theme of Christ’s two advents. The senses are explicitly evoked by the Presentation scene as pathways to the suprasensory vision of the tympanum above. The prophet Simeon is shown receiving the Christ Child from Joseph in the temple, which alludes to the church and the eucharistic reenactment of Christ’s presence by depicting an altar with a chalice. Simeon both sees and physically touches the body of Christ, which is to be mediated by the sacrament of the Eucharist in the future church. The antiphons sung at Saint-Lazare on the feast of the Presentation/Purification in conjunction with the blessing of the candles emphasize the theme of vision and light, drawing on Simeon’s proclamation that Christ is the “Light to illuminate the Gentiles” to signal the mediation of the purified physical senses in facilitating spiritual seeing and entry into the heavenly Jerusalem:

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May the [faithful people] rejoice not only on account of the exterior light, but also the expulsion of blindness from the heart. Just as the light illuminates that which it grasps in the shadows, may it by no means stray from the pathway of truth. . . . May you [God] thus fill us with the light of your brightness so that the shadows of all infidelities may be repelled from us. And just as today, you sent away your servant, thus may you find us worthy to manage in the peace of your holy church, so that we might be worthy to enter

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the early ninth century, the rite for the sick and the dying included an anointing of the body specifically focused on the senses.62 The description in the sacramentary of Sens directs that

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Fig. 107 Presentation in the Temple, Saint-Lazare, Autun, west portal, historiated capital, ca. 1125.

the portal of repose. In the day of the judgment of the just, may we be worthy [to enter] in the place where the rays of true light with the hymns of the chorus of angels are poured out, [and] to see the face of the invincible Sun, the same Jesus Christ our Lord.61 Here the sounds of angelic singing and the vision of bright light both lead to the vision of the Judge, who emanates light, an image translated into the figure of Christ in the Last Judgment at Autun, set within the mandorla of radiant light. It is understood that a precondition for entry into this pure vision of the “face of the invincible sun, the same Jesus Christ our Lord,” is a process of conversion that entails the purification of the senses. As Frederick Paxton has shown, going back to the reformed sacramentary of Benedict of Aniane in

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the priests should each anoint the sick person with the blessed oil, making the sign of the cross on the neck, and throat, and chest, and between the shoulders, and on the five corporeal senses, on the eyebrows, on the ears inside and out, on the end of or within the nostrils, on the outside of the lips, and similarly on the outside of the hands, so that the stains that have in any way adhered through the five senses of the mind and body by the fragility of the flesh of the body, these may be cast out by the spiritual medicine and the mercy of the Lord.63 Situated within a rite for the sick and dying, this elaborate anointing was about both physical and spiritual healing in preparation for death. This understanding of the anointing of the senses was strengthened by the late eleventh century, when Ulrich of Zell composed his customary for the abbey of Cluny.64 The description of the office of the dead encompasses a much more elaborate anointing ritual in book III of the customary, comprising three distinct parts for each of the senses: a prayer for the anointing of the body part associated with each of the five canonical senses, an antiphon, and a psalm. It begins with the anointing of the eyes: “the priest does the anointing in this way: he dips his finger in the oil, and impresses the sign of the cross over each eye, saying, ‘Through this anointing and his most pious mercy, may the Lord be compassionate over everything you have sinned through vision.’” Then follow the antiphon and psalm, and the same pattern is repeated for the

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anointing of the ear (hearing), the lips (taste), the nose (smell), and the hands (touch). In addition to purifying the canonical five senses, the formula is repeated for the anointing of the feet (to purify sins of bearing—incessum) and the sexual organs (to purify sins of libido), thus completing the cycle of seven penitential psalms. It is interesting that sins of bearing and libido are singled out for special attention beyond the canonical five senses. As we have already seen, the comportment of one’s physical body, including posture and gestures, was understood to be intimately connected with one’s inner, spiritual life, and one can see clear distinctions made in the sculpture of Autun regarding the gestures and postures of the blessed and the damned—the blessed with upright, striving poses, arms outstretched to heaven, the damned with bent poses, heads down, exhibiting gestures of despair and fear. We have also considered how libido was given particular attention in the representation of the damned. What the portal sculpture reinforces is that a clear vision of God at the end of time requires a cleansing of all the senses, allowing positive corporeal or incarnational models to be vehicles for spiritual seeing. The role of the local church, comprising the physical church building, with its shrine and sacraments, in mediating incorporation into the ranks of the blessed was emphasized not only in the placement of the Last Judgment at the principal entrance to the church and the visual reference to the interior architecture in the representation of the “heavenly mansion” but also, finally, in the image of the patron Saint Lazarus, positioned immediately beneath Christ. Whereas the image of Lazarus on the lost north transept portal depicted his resurrection by Christ as a visual advertisement of the powerful relics of his shrine in the sanctuary, which

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Fig. 108 Lazarus, Mary, and Martha, Saint-Lazare, Autun, west portal, trumeau, restored 1863.

included a sculpted reenactment of the event within a facsimile of his tomb, the trumeau of the Last Judgment portal shows Lazarus vested as a bishop (fig. 108).65 This recostuming of Lazarus, usually shown wrapped in his bandages, alludes both to the medieval legend that he had served as bishop of Marseilles and to the role of the episcopate of Autun, who presided over the shrine of Saint-Lazare as well as the neighboring Cathedral of Saint Nazaire, and the sacramental life of the community. Lazarus was understood both as a model of penitence and, in his guise as bishop, as a facilitator of forgiveness through the sacrament of penance—an

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appropriate reference given the emphasis on the repentance of sin in the composition of the Last Judgment, especially in the depiction of the punishment of various sins in hell. He is also accompanied by his sisters Mary and Martha, who offer models for the contemplative and active lives respectively, the contemplative associated with monastic vocations, the active life with the regular clergy and the laity.66 These distinctive models are represented in the lintel with images of lay pilgrims, regular clergy (bishops), and monks (abbots) on the side of the blessed. “Bishop” Lazarus is placed on an axis with Christ in the tympanum above. He thus embodies the local church as an extension and mediator of the visionary body of Christ above. The figure of Lazarus from the reliquary shrine within the church has stepped outside to reveal its greatest treasure and demonstrate the intersection of the horizontal axis of local history with the universal, transcendent story of salvation, a process Stephen Nichols has described as “theosis,” a sacralization of the local church through the intervention of universal history.67 The tympanum of the Last Judgment at Sainte-Foy in Conques works in a similar fashion, but in this case the narrative is encompassed entirely within the orderly three horizontal registers of the tympanum (color plate 21). The partially surviving polychrome makes this sculpture particularly vivid. Christ, dressed in a blue tunic and mantel with gold embroidered designs, again dominates the composition, enthroned on the central axis, spanning the height of the tallest central register, with the cross held aloft above him by angels to represent the sign of the Son of Man, described in Matthew as preceding judgment. Divine light emanates from Christ in the form of a deep blue mandorla studded

with golden stars, a clear reference to Christ’s role in John’s Gospel as the light of the world, illuminating the darkness. As Willibald Sauerländer has observed, this iconographic sign of light would also have been enhanced by glass inlays set within small openings between the banks of clouds and the stars, thus suggesting the “flames of fire” emanating from the throne described in Daniel 7:9.68 At once less ethereal and more corporeal than his counterpart at Autun, the Conques Christ reveals the wounds in hands, side, and feet to emphasize his full humanity in his pale-colored flesh, and angels descend from above with the nails. The narrative of the Resurrection and Last Judgment begins with the angels blowing the last trumpets, appearing on either side of the cross. In response, the dead rise from their tombs in the lower zone at the feet of Christ. As at Autun, the deceased have already been “prejudged” in the particular judgment at the time of death, and we see the blessed joined by angels at Christ’s right hand while the damned are already being seized by demons. The judgment proper is performed by Christ, who lowers his left hand to condemn the damned to the realm of hell at left and below, and raises his right to receive the blessed. While the damned appear at left in chaotic, crammed quarters, taunted and tortured by demons, the blessed are calmly led in procession by the Virgin Mary as chief intercessor before her human son. Mary is followed by Saint Peter with the keys; the hermit Dadon, who founded the community; an abbot holding a crozier—possibly Bégon (1087–1107), who rebuilt the abbey in its present form—a king, who may be identified with legendary lay patron of the abbey, Charlemagne, or with Louis the Pious; a monk holding tablets—perhaps representing the necrology including those names to be commemorated

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Fig. 109 Heaven, detail of Last Judgment, Sainte-Foy, Conques,

tympanum, ca. 1150.

by the abbey—another monk holding a reliquary wrapped in cloth; and finally four other nimbed saints.69 Heaven and hell (figs. 109, 110) are depicted in very concrete terms in the lower register, accentuating the identification of the physical fabric with the two communities in the afterlife. The two realms appear at first glance to be mirror images: interior structures with gabled roofs entered by clearly recognizable medieval wooden doors from the central axis beneath Christ, but, as at Autun, the blessed inhabit an orderly realm, while chaos reigns in hell. As Jérôme Baschet has shown, hell is given

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an unusually expansive and concrete treatment, and despite the chaotic nature of the compositions, there are distinct groups of sinners, and their punishment is defined by the three primary social categories of the nobility, clergy, and laborers.70 Situated to Christ’s left hand, to the right of the central axis beneath Christ, hell’s doorway is filled by the voracious hellmouth. Beyond the hellmouth, the interior is dominated by the seated figure of Satan on the central axis, presiding over a series of bodily tortures for specific sins. The pride or vainglory of the knight, a typical sin of nobility, is punished by demons who toss him from his high horse with a

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Fig. 110 Hell, detail of Last Judgment, Sainte-Foy, Conques,

ca. 1150.

laborer’s pitchfork, thus imposing a double punishment involving social inversion.71 An adulterous naked couple is yoked together by ropes around their necks and punished with public exposure. Trampled beneath the feet of Satan and engulfed by fire, a handsome nude wearing a dignified beard, which is also often a symbol of power, may represent, as Baschet proposes, pride, but he also suggests that the figure’s pose, reclining in a metaphorical “bed of fire,” might evoke laziness or otium. At right, a miser or usurer is punished by hanging with his heavy money bag suspended from his neck. Below him, a seated figure engulfed by flames, whose

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tongue is being pulled by a demon, is identified by Baschet as scandal-mongering (médisant). In the upper right corner above the gable a glutton is roasted on a spit to become food for two demons. This section of hell is completed by the image of a woman mounting the shoulders of a naked man. Baschet associates this figure more generally with an inversion of marital authority, but perhaps also as a more specific allusion to anger, associated with a striking breach of conventional gender roles.72 The upper section of hell on Christ’s level is devoted to sins associated with all three divisions of the social order. The religious—those who pray

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(oratores)—are represented by a group of monks at the upper left. Three monks are captured by a demon using a form of fishing net, thus reversing the biblical image of “fishers of men” as metaphor for conversion. Beneath them an abbot holding a crozier is pushed down by another demon to punish his pride. Further along to the right, a man carrying a sack over his shoulders might be a simoniac guilty of selling ecclesiastical offices, while the prostrate figure carrying a codex could be identified as representing a sin against faith or doctrine, perhaps a heretic. In the upper right corner a coin forger appears with the tools of his trade: the anvil, the small bowl filled with coins, and the matrix to strike coins. The lower left compartment is filled by a king with his knights (bellatores), assailed by demons bearing shields and various weapons, including a ball and chain and a pickax. Finally, in the lower right compartment, devoted to laborers, a man wrapped in cloth unraveled by a demon may be identified with a merchant or artisan who has committed fraud; a man suspended by ropes upside down, associated with a purse strung with a double cord and a knife that touches his lips, is interpreted by Baschet as representing a corrupt judge who has pronounced judgment for financial gain—thus another example of fraud. These figures are made compelling to the viewer by their high-relief carving and the descriptive quality of costume and implements, originally much more brightly rendered in polychrome. Despite their mimetic specificity, however, the damned display a remarkable absence of emotions and stillness of their bodies. It is the demons, by contrast, who appear to be shouting and who express themselves with distorted facial expressions and gesticulations. Kirk Ambrose explains this lack of expression on the part of the damned at Conques,

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in part, in relation to the Book of Miracles of Sainte Foy, which refers to paralysis as a divine punishment for malefactors in the community.73 He goes further to suggest that the images, like the voice of the inscriptions, were deliberately passive. This was in keeping with the conception of a suffering that was impressed within the soul rather than expressed outwardly on the body. The bodies in hell, in their paralyzed state, would not be able to move in response to torture and pain. Nonetheless, the viewer would have been attuned to the pain and suffering of the damned through both the inscriptions and the visual context of the figures within the larger composition of the Last Judgment. At Christ’s right hand, by contrast, the heavenly mansion (fig. 109) is represented as an orderly congregation, set within the cross-section of a clearly delineated Romanesque basilica, five aisles wide. Although Conques has only three aisles, its larger counterparts at Santiago de Compostela and Saint-Sernin in Toulouse follow precisely this configuration. The twin towers are in keeping with the west façades of Santiago and Conques itself. Occupying the central aisle is Abraham, whose bosom is the place of refuge for the blessed, including the poor man Lazarus. Flanking this central group are four apostles at right and two crowned priests (Moses and Aaron) and four virgins at left. Most explicit in its reference to the local church fabric is the depiction of the sanctuary of the abbey above the heavenly mansion to the far left. Here Romanesque arcades frame the high altar, surmounted by a chalice and the cult image of Sainte Foy, which was routinely displayed there (color plate 19). The reliquary figure of Sainte Foy has quite literally come alive, dismounting her throne and kneeling in prayer before the hand of God, who acknowledges her intercession and, by

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extension, the intercession of the community of monks of Conques on behalf of the living and the dead. Concrete reference to her powers of intercession is made in the form of the hand of God intervening from on high and the chains of prisoners suspended from a rail spanning the colonnades— Sainte Foy was known to have a particular efficacy in releasing prisoners.74 The links between the celestial, transcendent vision and the sensorium of the church are emphasized in a number of ways. Unlike the Autun Christ, who stares forward and is modeled in relatively shallow relief, this Christ looks down at an angle to make eye contact with the viewer below, and his entire body projects forward from the heavenly mandorla, his arms overlapping its perimeter. There are also allusions to the terrestrial liturgy in the heavenly one: two angels hold large candlesticks at Christ’s feet, and at his left hand a third angel holds a thurible, and a fourth, a codex containing the book of life—a reference not only to the text of Revelation 20:12, but also to the Liber vitae of the abbey, recording the names of its deceased monks, lay patrons, and participants in the confraternities of prayer in which the abbey’s monks played a role. The angel holding the censer has been identified by Anne-Marie Bouché as the solitary angel of Revelation 8:3–4 who “stood before the altar, having a golden censer”; she also argues that this angel could be identified with the archangel Michael, given his role in the Last Judgment.75 Another angel performs Michael’s traditional role of psychostasis immediately beneath Christ, where angelic and diabolical powers confront one another in separating the blessed and the damned. The reference to incense in the book of Revelation surely evokes the fragrance of incense in the regular liturgy, which is integral to sacred presence within the church. The angels

bearing candlesticks add to the broader typology linking the earthly and terrestrial sanctuaries, temple and church, with Christ himself occupying the place of the altar in the sanctuary, beneath the cross. Thus, sight and smell complement each other in the evocation of the divine presence in human form. Like the Last Judgment at Autun, the Conques tympanum also addresses hearing through the spoken word and its evocation of sung texts from the liturgy. The inscription on the lowest band of the lintel admonishes the viewer in the first person, as if speaking with the voice of God: “O sinners, unless you reform your character, know that a harsh judgment awaits you in the future.”76 The inscriptions on scrolls held by angels at Christ’s head are likewise composed in the first person, drawing from Matthew 25:34 and 41, offering fragments that evoke the complete verse. At Christ’s right hand the inscription reads, “[venite benecit]i patris mei p[ossi]dete [paratvm] vo[bis regnvm a constitutione mvndi]” ([Come you blessed] of my father and p[ossess the kingdom prepared] for you [from the beginning of the world]); at his left the inscription reads, “discedite a me [maledicti in ignem aeternum qvi paratus est diabolo et angelis eivs]” (Depart from me [you cursed people into the eternal fire which is prepared by the devil and his angels]).77 Both these inscriptions and the lintel inscription are composed as what James Austin terms a “performative utterance,” and Calvin Kendall has used this concept to interpret the inscriptions as potential performances in oral delivery.78 Other inscriptions are more descriptive, but they were likewise intended to be sounded out orally and thus strongly impact the viewer. The inscription running across the lower register of heaven and hell sets up a direct contrast in states of mind and

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being. On the gable of the heavenly mansion of the blessed, the titulus reads, “thus is given to the elect, who have been borne to the joys of heaven, glory, peace, eternal rest and days.”79 Further up, adjacent to the procession toward Christ the inscription reads, “The assembly of saints stands joyfully before Christ the Judge.”80 Continuing above the realm of the damned, the inscription reads, “The unjust, burned in fires, are tormented by punishments, and they tremble at the [sight of] demons and groan endlessly.”81 Opposite the assembly of saints, the infernal counterpart’s inscription is “Wicked men are plunged thus into hell.”82 Three other inscriptions in the middle zone around Christ refer to the narrative of the Last Judgment in Matthew and the book of Revelation. The shield, held by the angel at far right facing hell, is inscribed, “exibvnt angeli et separa[bvnt malos de medio ivstorum]” (Matt. 13:49). A series of shorter inscriptions appears on scrolls, a book, and a shield held by angels in the middle register. Above the heads of the blessed, their virtues, now only partially preserved, were originally enumerated from left to right as faith, hope, charity, constancy, and humility.83 Read aloud, these virtues were spoken into being, forming the blessed faithful with words and images, much as the eulogistic epitaphs on tombs we have already considered gave voice to the character of the deceased so that he might be counted among the blessed. The inscription of the book held by the angel to the right of Christ refers to Revelation: “signatvr liber [vi]t[a]e (The book of life is sealed [with the names of the just]). On the upright of the golden cross is inscribed “iesus rex ivdeorum” ( Jesus, King of the Jews); on the horizontal bar above Christ a series of titiuli identify the sun the lance, nails, and the moon; lower down on the

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same horizontal bar a partial inscription, as Bouché has shown, draws from an antiphon used for the feasts of the Invention and Exaltation of the Holy Cross.84 It reads in Latin, “[h]oc signvm crvcis erit in celo cvm,” a truncation of the antiphon “Hoc signum crucis erit in caelo cum Dominus ad iudicandum venerit” (This sign of the cross will be in heaven when the Lord comes to judge). Jean-Claude Bonne has interpreted the truncation of inscriptions—both the “Hoc signum crucis” and the inscriptions referring to the separation of the blessed and the damned from Matthew—as signifiers of things yet to come, as in both instances they refer to the Second Coming and Last Judgment at the end of time.85 Bouché has further demonstrated the extent to which the short, fragmentary inscription would have evoked not only the words and music of the liturgical antiphon associated with the cult of the cross, but also the series of biblical passages from Matthew 24:27–33, Matthew 25:31–34, 41, and 46; and Matthew 21:20, 25–26, all related to the Second Coming and Last Judgment. She notes that the enigmatic truncation of the inscription in awkward places highlights the contrast of revelation and concealment in Christ’s discussions of the kingdom of God in Mark 4:21–23 and Luke 12:2–3. In the context of the multisensory appeals made by the portal, it may be added that the portal’s incomplete sentences are filled in both by visual recognition of what is missing in the inscriptions and by the sound memory of the spectator, who had participated in the liturgy and recalled the complete text and music from that context. These musical texts would have enlivened the experience of the sculpted images on the feast days—in Advent, when the Second Coming was celebrated, and on the feasts of the Holy Cross—when the liturgical chants containing these inscription fragments would have been sung

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Fig. 111 Pentecost and the mission of the Apostles, Abbey of Sainte-Marie-Madeleine, Vézelay, central doorway, 1104–1132. Photo: Peter Low.

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in procession through the principal entrance to the monastic church. Bouché’s approach to the inscriptions and sculpture of Conques complements the synaesthetic approach to music and liturgical texts espoused by Boynton and Sullivan, drawing heavily on remembered liturgical texts highlighted in visible inscriptions within the tympanum. In my final example, I want to explore how the form and content of the sculpted theophany allude to the other senses as explored in the musical texts of the liturgy without the benefit of textual cues in the form of inscriptions.

Inspiriting Matter: Pentecost at Vézelay

The central tympanum of the narthex of Sainte-Marie-Madeleine at Vézelay (fig. 111) offers a compelling demonstration of the power of Romanesque sculpture to translate the vision of the divine nature and the workings of the Holy Spirit into concrete forms that stimulate multisensory religious experience. Completed between 1104 and 1132/33, the Vézelay tympanum substitutes for the conventional theophanies of the Ascension, Last Judgment, and Maiestas Domini a theme rarely shown in sculpture: the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, interpreted, as Peter Low has shown, through the exegetical lens of Paul’s Epistle (2:11–22).86 The composition is dominated on its central axis by the larger-than-life figure of Christ enthroned within a mandorla of light, his lower body actively turned to one side as he stretches out his arms to transmit the power of the Holy Spirit in the form of what appear to be rays of light that strike the heads of each of the twelve apostles, seated on either side, whose bodies twist and turn

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in animated response to the imparting of the spirit. The position of Christ bridges heaven and earth, his lower body in the midst of the apostles in Jerusalem, his upper body within the clouds of heaven. The targets of apostolic mission appear in the form of Greeks, Romans, and other peoples, including monstrous peoples assembled in the compartments and lintel framing the tympanum. The composition is expanded into the doorway itself with figures of John the Baptist holding the Paschal Lamb on the central trumeau and apostles on the jambs and sides of the trumeau. Finally, the cosmic significance of the event is suggested by the inclusion of the zodiac calendar and labors of the months in the outer archivolt. Although there is now a strong consensus that the tympanum alludes to the Pentecost, it is also acknowledged that the iconography represents a unique translation of the principal biblical account in Acts 2. The substitution of Christ for the dove of the Holy Spirit at the center of the composition has been explained in part by the role ascribed to Christ in the Pentecost liturgy, which has both Christ and God the Father send down the Holy Spirit upon the disciples, and includes the text of John 15:26, in which Christ grants his disciples the tongues of fire. The same substitution is made in the Cluniac Lectionary of ca. 1110, and, as Michael Taylor has demonstrated, both images and liturgy express the Western Church’s position on the filioque in the Creed that the Holy Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son.87 But the Vézelay image departs from this convention in another significant way by showing Christ seated amid the apostles, even as his upper body and head reach into the heavenly realm. As Marcello Angheben has suggested, this alludes to the Second Coming as a fulfillment of Pentecost, a train of thought

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Fig. 112 Portal of the Incarnation, Abbey of Sainte-Marie-

Madeleine, Vézelay, 1104–1132.

suggested again by the readings for the Pentecost season.88 A second element of the tympanum requiring some explanation is the inclusion of monstrous races in compartments around the tympanum. Although the monstrous races do figure in certain Byzantine Pentecost scenes, Low has shown that the specific configuration here, in which Christ’s head projects within a square central frame and images of Jews and Gentiles appear on the lintel, received

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by Peter and Paul, reflects the vision of the universal church described in Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians, in which Jews are joined to Gentiles and Christ is the head and cornerstone.89 As in the tympana of Conques and Autun, then, architectural metaphors for ecclesia are made concrete through reference to the physical fabric of the building. Conceptually and temporally, the Pentecost tympanum complements the themes of the two side portals.90 At right, the basis for the apprehension

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Fig. 113 Portal of Easter, Abbey of Sainte-Marie-Madeleine,

Vézelay, ca. 1104–1132. Photo: Peter Low.

of God in human form, captured by the senses, is demonstrated in the narratives of the Incarnation (fig. 112). The lintel depicts the Annunciation and the Nativity, emphasizing a connection with the fabric of the church by setting the crèche in an apse-like structure; this also anticipates the presence of the eucharistic body of Christ on the altar within the church. The tympanum represents the Sedes Sapientiae on the central axis as focal point of the Epiphany, the three Magi approaching from the flanks with their gifts. Like the Nativity scene, it alludes to the church interior, which once displayed a wooden Sedes Sapientiae figure in the crypt.

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To the left, Christ’s bodily presence is reasserted with the cycle of Easter and the Ascension (fig. 113). On the lintel, Christ journeys to Emmaus with the two apostles and then dines with them at Emmaus, where he blesses the bread in a way that reminds them of Christ’s blessing of the bread at the Last Supper. Balancing the composition of the Nativity, it depicts the supper within an apse, thus reinforcing again the connection with the church building as the “living stones” of ecclesia and place of the communion with the eucharistic body of Christ. Finally, in the tympanum proper, Christ appears flanked by his apostles, whose garments appear

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to be blowing in the wind. This scene is variously interpreted as the Commission of the Apostles in the upper room or as the moment of the Ascension from the midst of the apostles, thus bridging the terrestrial realm of the senses with the suprasensory. Pentecost marks a third manifestation of God in the form of the descent of the Holy Spirit, ushering in the human institution of the church by commissioning the apostles to spread the Gospel through the world. What has not previously been considered is that the actions or movements of the breath of the Holy Spirit are conveyed in ways that appeal more palpably to the corporeal senses, particularly to sight and hearing but also to touch—through straight lines resembling rays of light emanating from the hands of Christ, and through the unusually dramatic poses and gestures of figures, suggesting the visible impact as well as the sound and touch of the blowing spirit and the ecstatic speech of the disciples. These material aspects of the composition are related to, but also go beyond, the concept of animated bodies that Wilhelm Koehler perceptively observed as demonstrating how important the medium of high-relief sculpture is in twelfth-century France in mediating between body, soul, and spirit.91 Cluniac liturgical texts for Pentecost, used at affiliated abbeys such as Vézelay, and sermons for the festival highlight the connection between body and soul and the animation or inspiriting of matter that is so evident in the sculpted image of Pentecost.92 Light, which features prominently in the form of straight rays extending from the tips of the fingers of Christ to the heads of his disciples, is evoked frequently. In the Pentecost hymn “Veni Creator Spiritus,”93 attributed to Hrabanus Maurus and first introduced into the Pentecost liturgy by Abbot Hugh of Cluny at the end of the eleventh century, the fourth stanza bids the Holy Spirit to

“ignite the light in our senses and to pour love into our hearts, firming up with virtue the infirmity of our bodies.”94 The phrase “Accende lumen sensibus” refers both to making sense of the Holy Spirit—that is “understanding”—and quite literally to illuminating or igniting the senses with the fire/light of the Holy Spirit. The haptic nature of this light of the Spirit is conveyed by the ways in which the bodies of the disciples seem to react in response to the powerful light that touches and enters into their bodies, and thence into their minds and spirits via the senses. That light touches the bodies as well as the minds of the apostles reflects a long-held view in Christian theology that seeing involves rays of light grasping or touching objects and returning through the eye to physically imprint the image in memory.95 The powerful touch of God is also highlighted in another stanza of the “Veni Creator” that describes the Holy Spirit as the “finger of the Father’s right hand,” which bestows the gifts of the Holy Spirit.96 Light is again the focus in the collect for the vigil of Pentecost: “Grant, we beseech you, Almighty God, that the splendor of your brightness may shine upon us, and that the light of your light may, through the illumination the Holy Spirit, strengthen the hearts of those who are reborn through your grace.”97 The sound of the inspiratio—literally the breathing in of the Holy Spirit—is highlighted in the antiphon “Factus est repente de caelo sonus”: “Suddenly there came a sound from heaven like a violent wind coming,” based on the text of Acts 2:2.98 It is the comparison of the Holy Spirit to the sound of the wind, which is captured visually in the tympanum by the windswept hems of the draperies over the figures and by the whirling highlights over knees, hips, and elbows. Further, the breathing out of the Spirit in the ecstatic speech of the apostles is emphasized in the repeated antiphon

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for Pentecost Sunday, the hymn “Repleti sunt.”99 Based on Acts 2:4, 6, it affirms that the disciples were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, thus tying charismatic speech with the very breath of the Holy Spirit that animates their bodies. As Ambrose has shown, the speech act is visually communicated in the Vézelay sculpture both by the animated gestures of the apostles speaking in tongues and in a negative sense by the hand gestures of the monstrous races, which derive from monastic sign language.100 Thus, one of the cynocephali or dog-headed creatures signals hearing by touching his ear, but the speech he listens to is deformed as barking, thus contrasting with the inspired speech of the Holy Spirit. The idea that the physical senses have the capacity to apprehend the invisible inspiration of the Holy Spirit is suggested in the sermon literature on the Pentecost. According to Raoul Glaber, the advent of the Holy Spirit is demonstrated by two signs. The sound of the wind, like the Holy Spirit, is invisible, and invisibly brings the sound to the ears of the individual apostles and also penetrates their hearts and incites them to knowledge of the Spirit.101 He further notes that the word Spiritus (spirit) is equivalent to spiritum (breath), as to ventum (wind) and to cantum (song or chant), as well as to the Greek term pneuma.102 The Holy Spirit makes itself manifest to touch, sight, and sound by a second sign, the tongues of fire that melt the cold, hard hearts, illuminate the shadows within, and finally inspire or breathe into the apostles the speech of various tongues. The appeal to the senses through high-relief sculpture, which also provides the physical backdrop for the performance of and experience of the liturgical reenactment of sacred history, seems to offer a tangible application of the theological

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explorations of body and soul during the late eleventh and twelfth centuries, beginning with Saint Anselm of Canterbury. Sermons for the feast of Pentecost emphasize how the Holy Spirit is made present to the corporeal senses on Pentecost: Odilo of Cluny interprets the “inspiriting” of the bodies of the apostles at Pentecost by analogy with the material Incarnation of God. According to Odilo, just as Christ assumed the appearance of a man by means of the Holy Spirit, which entered into the body of the Virgin Mary, so the Holy Spirit descended upon the apostles, and the universal church congregates in the same spirit to receive it in the present with great and devout veneration.103 In his sermon on Pentecost, Peter Abelard emphasizes the importance of sound in conveying the presence of the spirit, commenting on the antiphon “Et repleti sunt omnes Spiritu Sancto,” based on Acts 2:2: “The coming of the Holy Spirit is declared in the sound of the wind; the blowing of the wind, even though it is invisible, is thus audible. And likewise the breathing of the spirit into the hearts of the disciples’ hearts cannot be seen within, but is heard externally through the diversity of languages that have been considered by the gift of spiritual grace. This sound was unexpected, since the grace of this breathing in grew in its power beyond human apprehension.”104 He further emphasizes that the sound is not itself the Holy Spirit but rather “a likeness of the true sound was expressed as a corporeal sound of the wind,” and similarly, “the voice of internal speech in their hearts, suggested internally by the Holy Spirit, was made manifest when they spoke externally.”105 The multisensory aspects of the descent of the Holy Spirit emphasized in the commentaries and liturgical texts were manifested concretely in the rituals of Pentecost, for which the portal would

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have served as backdrop. We get a good idea of what would have happened at Vézelay by looking at the customaries of other Cluniac foundations. The customary of Farfa indicates a special appeal to the senses for this major feast. On the vigil of Pentecost, “before prime, they decorate the monastery, and for all things it is as on Holy Saturday.”106 The themes of light and fire are emphasized by the colors of vestments worn on the occasion. “The deacon puts on stoles embroidered in silver and a golden dalmatic; the subdeacon a tunic bordered in gold.”107 At vespers twelve candles are lit before the altar, presumably in reference to the apostles, and ten behind the altar. During the singing of the hymn “Veni Creator Spiritus,” the priests don their caps and two by two bring incense down to the other altars of the church. After the Kyrie eleison, seven candelabra are lit in front of the altar. On Pentecost itself, all of the lamps of the hanging crowns are to be lit and three candelabra placed before the high altar at first and second nocturns.108 At terce, the priest censes the altar and the monks, and as the canticle is sung, fifteen candles are lit on a long staff. The customary of Ulrich of Cluny offers further details of the choreography of processions and what was sung where.109 A response associated with Easter is sung in procession up to the point that it stops in the vestibulum of the church, that is, the space of the narthex where the Vézelay tympanum of the Pentecost is displayed (fig. 111). The procession holds a station there, singing the antiphon “Hodie completi sunt”: “Today are completed the days of Pentecost. Alleluia. Today the Holy Spirit appears in fire to the disciples and, inspiring them with the gift of charisma, sends them into the whole world to preach and testify that he who is baptized will be saved, alleluia.”110 This imagery is in keeping with the visualization of Pentecost in the tympanum. Upon

entering the church (ad introitum ecclesiae) and at the altar of the Holy Cross, they sing the responsory “Apparuerunt apostlis”: “There appeared upon the apostles disparate tongues in the form of fire and the holy spirit sat upon each of them”—a text that complements the representation of light descending from Christ’s hands to touch the heads of the apostles in the tympanum.111 According to E. G. Cuthbert F. Atchley, the “medieval dramatic impulse” led to an elaboration of the censing of the altar during the singing of the “Veni Creator Spiritus.”112 Alluding to the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, the ritual called for the engagement of seven deacons or priests to perform the censing of the altar while flowers of various hues were showered upon the congregation, thus conveying the tradition that the Holy Spirit was manifested through a divine and unearthly perfume. There was also an important visual dimension to this in that the smoke of incense, according to certain monastic rites (as witnessed at Dijon, Saint-Denis, Corbie, and Compiègne), was supposed to fill the whole church (“ut tota fumo odorifero repleatur ecclesia”) with clouds of smoke to represent the presence of the Holy Spirit not only through smell but also sight. The descent of the dove was also frequently visualized in the form of actual doves, or as an artificial dove drawn through the air from the high altar into the congregation and back to the high altar. The sound of rushing wind was also simulated using a form of catapult or ballistra to produce a thundering noise. Finally, in a rather dangerous piece of theater, the Abbey of Corbie called for the projecting of fire with water from the campanile to help visualize and hear the tongues of fire.113 These animated sculpted images in high relief that explicitly simulate a multisensory response complement a newly intensified interest in the

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relationship between body and soul beginning in the late eleventh century. For Saint Anselm, the intrinsically spiritual nature of humanity is rooted in the Incarnation. In his Meditations he draws on John 15:4 to describe a “glorious interchange” in which the Creator condescends to dwell in all his creatures and at the same time permits them to dwell within him. He draws an analogy between the relationship of body and soul in the human body, on one hand, to the relationship between Creator and creature on the other: “Doubt not, therefore, that wherever there are holy souls, there He is within them. For if you yourself dwell in all your limbs which you bring to life, wholly and in all their parts, how much more is God, who created you and your body, wholly present in you through and through?”114 Far from being a prison of the soul, the body and its members are filled by the intrinsically good soul, but the soul must grow into its likeness with Christ by properly disciplining its impulses and its senses. In William of Saint-Thierry’s On the Nature of the Body and Soul, the senses themselves, though tied to specific parts of the physical body, are activated by and manifest the power of the soul.115 They thus offer a means of communicating between body and soul and ultimately provide a pathway to knowledge of the divine through the so-called spiritual senses. Likewise, within the Cluniac ambient to which Vézelay belonged, Abbot Peter the Venerable expressed the view that seeing and hearing, and to a lesser extent taste and touch, were essential means of arousing the love of and union with God, compensating for the weakness of human memory.116 Although he admits that the written record mediates between past and future and commends the things recorded in a useful and lasting way, he insists on the sacrament’s sensory dimensions as the means of fixing it in memory and further arousing love

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for and union with the body of Christ. Sight, taste, and touch stir or excite the faithful to admiration and love of God in ways that go beyond hearing: “The mind is much more vehemently roused by the reception of the body of the Lord than it could be by hearing the admonition of his word to the love of him whom the communicant not merely hears but indeed sees and receives. The communicant burns inside and, seeing the Word made flesh so that he might dwell in us . . . by no means could he forget the one he believes in faith, embraces in love, grasps by hand, receives by mouth.”117 Peter speaks of unity of material and spiritual in the sacrament of communion, but his incarnational interpretation of the eucharistic image complements a broader understanding of the role of architecture, physical images, and visualization in religious experience within twelfth-century monastic thought and practice. Analysis of the Vézelay Pentecost reveals that, contrary to the ambivalence expressed by Bernard of Clairvaux in the Apologia, visual images, sculpted or imaginary, could shape religious experience for monks and lay worshippers alike, projecting a mystical union with the depicted body of Christ, leading from the realm of the senses to the spiritual and intellectual vision of the divine. As Palazzo has emphasized, it was particularly in the context of the liturgy—both communal liturgy and private prayer and meditation—that pictorial images served to mediate sacred presence to the senses, seemingly coming alive in the mind of the spectator. Although written sources refer primarily to smaller-scale sculpture in the round, I would argue that relief sculptures such as those of Vézelay similarly held the potential to stimulate the sensory imagination of the individual believer, and the concept of an animated body would have been particularly enhanced through the experience of the

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liturgy. Liturgy is not only a source for iconography, but its performance before the image activates the depicted scene, stirring memory and breathing life into hard stone figures, viewed through a veil of incense and flickering natural sunlight and candlelight in the darkened narthex. The vibrant Romanesque figural sculpture at the threshold of sacred space served to animate the church building as the setting for communal liturgy and embodiment

of the living church. Hearing and voicing these texts; beholding and embracing the sculptures of the portal; tasting, touching, and seeing Christ in the host or in the imaginative experience of the crucifix—all of these phenomena contributed to an embodied, multisensory religious life of western Europe during the eleventh and twelfth centuries in which the sculpted image appeared to come alive.

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Conclusion

I

n his review of David Freedberg’s Power of Images, Ernst Gombrich makes a salient point that applies well to the sculpted images explored in the present book: “The power of images is ultimately nothing else but the power of the imagination.”1 This book has considered how Romanesque sculpture responded to the desire for a fully embodied, multisensory religious experience. I have proposed that architectural sculpture, no less than its portable counterparts, including reliquary portraits, crucifixes, and Madonnas, was imbued with an affective potency by its spectators, prompting the kind of emotional and physical investment that is described in the ancient myth of Pygmalion. At least in the intense imaginations of monks and certain privileged, pious lay men and women, normally static images could come alive. Crucifixes spoke aloud and embraced their devotees, reliquary images—such as at Sainte-Foy—appeared in dreams and visions to heal supporters and punish detractors, and the portraits on medieval tombs seemed, like Shakespeare’s Hermione, to stand up again. It was the incarnational and eucharistic theological emphasis, in combination with the enhanced value attached to materiality and the senses, that supported a significant shift in the status of sculpture from dangerous idol or simulacrum to salutary imago within medieval Christianity.2

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The way was paved for the acceptance of large-scale sculpted images of the crucifix and the Madonna and Child by the emerging consensus about the eucharistic theology of real presence, as well as by the ritual reenactment of the Passion, focused on the adoration of the body of Christ on the cross. One could say that Paschasian theology validated the idea that matter could be “inspirited” or animated with the divine presence—bread and wine could become identical with the historical body and blood of Christ on the cross—in response to not only the spoken words of the eucharistic institution repeated by the priest but also the touch of the hand of God through the priest’s blessing and consecration. Likewise, sculpted images were enlivened by liturgical action involving the animating touch and movement of human actors. It was particularly in the eleventh and twelfth centuries that the sculpted body of Christ on the cross or in his mother’s lap was understood as a focus of desire for multisensorial experience, provoking sensual visions in which the sculpted image acted so strongly upon the imagination that it appeared to come alive, especially to touch, mimicking not only Pygmalion’s statue but also the liturgical rites in which religious sculptures, including the Madonna, Crucifixion, and Palmesel, were manipulated and physically moved so that they appeared to come alive.

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By the time architectural sculpture was reinvented on a significant scale throughout Europe in the eleventh century, the habits of mind associated with sculpture in the round within the ritual spaces of churches and public processions nurtured a similar reception of sculpted church portals, funerary monuments, and historiated capitals in cloisters and church interiors. For the genres of the nude and portraiture, as well as for depictions of monsters, surviving statues from antiquity and ancient literary texts had a tremendous impact on the striving of Romanesque sculptors to compete with the affective power attached to illusionistic sculpted images of the past, now repurposed within a Christian framework. This was especially true in the case of the nude, which was reworked within the framework of Genesis as an allegory of sexuality and lust. Like the Knidian Aphrodite as recounted by Lucian, or Pygmalion’s own ivory figure of a maiden, the figures of Luxuria at Moissac and Vézelay or Eve at Autun appeared to come alive in the sexual fantasies of the spectator but also projected the opposite and repellent image of monstrosity and diabolical punishment. Seeing, even touching, these sculptures, I argue, nonetheless had a redemptive function, concretely reminding the spectator of powerful sexual emotions in confronting the sensual female nude while at the same time seeking to sublimate and convert them into more salutary affects of divine love represented within the larger programs in which these images appear. Romanesque portrait sculpture likewise drew on the theory, material forms, and functions of Roman portraiture. Reliquary portraits and images of certain rulers, such as Frederick Barbarossa, evoked through their format and media both the prestige of Roman antiquity and the idea of the portrait as powerful proxy for the absent person represented.

The innovation of large-scale metalwork portrait reliquaries in the ninth century laid the ground for the creation of tomb effigies for princes and prelates in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Placed within the privileged space of the church, these sculpted reliefs appealed to the senses through orally recited inscriptions, the palpable quality of high relief, as well as their animating, light-reflecting materials. As the focal point of commemorative rituals, these figures gave the deceased body within the tomb chest a concrete presence, masking decay while also foreshadowing, through medium and standing pose, the resurrection of the physical body of the individual in heaven at the end of time—a glorified body that was often envisaged as a “recast statue” free of deformity. The signs of wear produced by repeated touching are testimony to the desire in the minds of the spectators for Pygmalion’s animating embrace. The monsters and hybrid creatures found so frequently in Romanesque sculpture reveal a continuing fascination with the boundaries between the human and the animal, highlighted by centaurs and sirens, as well as by the monstrous races. Drawing on the texts of psalms and hymns from the liturgy of compline, as well as monastic writings about monstrosity in the context of dreams and diabolical visions, I have suggested that the monstrous images were given a new purpose as they came to express in concrete form what were believed to be illusions and imaginary beings that troubled the monastic imagination. Sculpting such images in stone was intended to startle the spectator into dealing with these inner demons, purifying the imagination in preparation for a higher form of imageless vision of the divine. It was also a way of making concrete the idea that seeing both physical images and the fantastic images of dreams and visions had physical as well as psychological

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impacts—metaphorically touching, moving the viewer, changing behavior in response to the rays of light extending from real or imagined objects, including monsters, that were thought to physically touch or imprint themselves onto the fabric of the mind. Physically embodying monstrous or diabolical presence in the very place in which the monk was enjoined to meditate on a higher, imageless vision while contemplating sacred texts was a means of mastering and combatting fantasies that the monk knew would challenge him, particularly during the night. The monstrous sculptures in the sanctuary of Chauvigny, for example, highlighted the contrast between the fantasy of bodily transformation and hybridity and the true metamorphosis of material eucharistic elements into the mystical body and blood of Christ through transubstantiation. Finally, the monsters at the door, placed beneath the apocalyptic vision of Christ in Majesty at the end of time, convey the perpetual struggle to cleanse the imagination, to fight the demons and monstrous fantasies that impeded entrance into the heavenly vision. A confidence in sculpture and the senses as the means to achieving a purely spiritual religious experience is confirmed by the representation of the ultimate vision of God in heaven at the symbolic threshold to sacred space in high-relief portal sculpture. The classic Romanesque portals of Autun, Conques, Moissac, and Vézelay were animated through the liturgical processions, incense, musical texts, and inscriptions read aloud, some evoking the spoken and sung parts of the liturgy itself, thus bridging the rituals of the church and with the angelic liturgy in heaven. The power that the sculpted image exercised on the religious imagination of European Christianity was not seriously challenged until the end of

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the fifteenth century. The lifelike qualities of religious sculpture were steadily enhanced by greater illusionism or sometimes dramatic expressionism in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and by the fifteenth century, architectural sculpture incorporated life-sized figures within the actual space of the surrounding architecture to suggest a form of tableau vivant.3 Claus Sluter’s portal for the Carthusian monastery of Champmol in Dijon, Burgundy, exemplifies this late medieval trend, fostering a highly kinetic experience on the part of the spectator.4 New kinds of devotional images on a smaller scale, including the Vierge ouvrante, tabernacle images, figures of Christ for the Easter sepulcher, and carved altarpieces, also added to the verisimilitude of the experience of the sculpted image by deliberately incorporating movement into liturgical and paraliturgical performances. The Vierge ouvrante, as Elina Gertsman has recently emphasized, offered a focus for the performance of the Incarnation theology by allowing the opening of the body of the Virgin Mary as fruitful womb and tabernacle for the incarnate Christ.5 The moving image literally came alive and emotionally affected the viewer in ways that bonded the faithful with the subject represented through the mediation of multiple senses. The Protestant Reformation in the early sixteenth century marked a significant watershed in the history of sculpture, as sculpted images were “deposed”: destroyed and removed from churches throughout northern Europe. Entire categories of sculpted images were essentially banned from the new Protestant churches, including images of the crucifix with sculpted corpus, the Madonna and Child, reliquary portraits and tomb effigies, and sculpted altarpieces. Yet, as Amy Powell has observed, the deliberate process of removal and

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deposition of sculpted images like crucifixes, Madonnas, or statues of the saints actually reinforced the latent power of Catholic images, which were treated as sentient beings, worthy of being put on trial, punished, and destroyed.6 Though challenged as idolatrous by the Reformers, the sculpted image continued to enjoy prominence in the Catholic Church, and, spurred on by the Counter-Reformation, artists such as Gian Lorenzo Bernini perfected the illusion of the “moving statue” in the medium of marble, and even the impression of malleable flesh, within larger immersive environments, culminating in highly sensual and affective sculptural compositions such as the Ecstasy of Saint Teresa in the Cornaro Chapel in Rome (ca. 1652).7 A more lasting challenge to Christian statuary was posed by the modernization of Catholic sacred spaces in the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council. Coinciding with the complete transformation of all spheres of architecture by modernist ideals during the first half of the twentieth century, the Acts of the Council advocated a less hierarchical, more accessible participatory space of worship.8 In the case of older churches, this meant the replacement of old carved altars, tabernacles, and reredoses set against the liturgical east wall by simpler, often wooden altars more centrally placed so that the priest could celebrate versus populum, facing the people. New churches, which replaced older buildings with modernist structures, rarely featured architectural sculpture. The status of both religious sculpture and other traditional forms of public ruler sculpture has come to the fore in recent clashes between the Euro-American West and certain self-styled jihadist groups of the Middle East, principally in the form of highly public acts of iconoclasm. The Taliban led the way in March 2001 when, on

grounds of confronting idolatry, they destroyed the world’s two largest standing Buddhas—the seventeen-hundred-year-old sandstone figures of the Bamiyan culture, situated at the foot of the Hindu Kush mountains of central Afghanistan.9 In the aftermath of the Iraq war, one of the most remarkable symbols of the defeat of Saddam Hussein was the theatrically staged deposition of his image in Firdos Square in the center of Bagdad. On April 9, 2003, with the help and encouragement of American forces, a crowd of Iraqi citizens toppled a traditional larger-than-life bronze portrait of the dictator, and later dragged it in the street and stamped on its detached head.10 What had been a ubiquitous symbol of his power and authority in cities and towns throughout Iraq was literally deprived of power by being deposed in a highly visible way, recorded in photographs and video online, and then exploited by Donald Rumsfeld and the US government to confirm the success of the invasion. This was a clear example of the age-old practice of damnatio memoriae—the damning of memory of a deposed ruler by destruction and removal of his sculpted images—a practice that implicitly accepts the latent power of the portrait in relation to its prototype.11 Another example of the enduring power of sculpted images in the Middle East is the more recent iconoclastic acts of the Islamic State.12 Having taken significant territories in Iraq, this jihadist group made a point of broadcasting the likely staged destruction of ancient statuary in the Archaeological Museum of Mosul, including a celebrated Assyrian lamassu figure. Transmitted online to provoke Western sentiments of outrage, these iconoclastic performances superficially recall the acts of Protestant reformers, making a spectacle of those supposedly inanimate objects they claimed to be empty and impotent

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idols. Of course, such generalizations connecting acts of destruction in the medieval past with contemporary ones risk misunderstanding the distinct motivations in each context. In the case of the Bamiyan Buddhas, Barry Flood has cautioned against the assumption of a reversion to timeless, medieval iconoclastic practices of Islam as a motivation for the Taliban’s actions.13 Flood convincingly argues that the public destruction of these ancient religious sculptures was aimed not so much at Buddhist idolatry as at the hypocrisy of Western “materialism” and the fetishization of comparable works in art museums, placing greater value on aesthetic values of works of art than on the lives of the Afghan people. Similarly, Ömür Harmanşah has argued that, in the case of the destruction of ancient Mesopotamian sculptures by the Islamic State, the iconoclastic acts had less to do with religious conviction than with a form of “place-based violence that aims to annihilate the local sense of belonging and the collective sense of memory among local communities to whom the heritage belongs.”14 Furthermore, these acts of violence against antique statues, some of which turned out to be plaster casts, were deliberately staged by the Islamic State as political propaganda against the West and mistakenly consumed as “documentary evidence” of the destruction of the archaeological heritage of the Western world. According to Harmanşah, the ISIS videos present a “re-enactment and historicized archaic celebration of late antique and medieval idol-breaking rituals in varying degrees of success.” The role of digital media and the internet in transmitting these performances globally raises the question of whether sculpture can ever again have the same impact it did when sculpture in the round and architectural sculpture were reinvented

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in Europe after centuries of neglect and mistrust. Certainly the desire to engage the senses with physical objects is still an essential part of human experience, starting from the infant’s first attempts to understand the world—an analogy stated forcefully in the twelfth century by William of Saint-Thierry (chapter 1). And it may be argued that the recent “sensory turn” in humanistic studies and artistic practice heralds a broader return to the concrete object in reaction to the ephemeral presences of virtual reality and digital media. Michael Parasko has gone so far as to advocate sculpture’s role in counteracting virtual reality “to maintain the well-being of human consciousness.”15 This hope may be answered in the recent resurgence of interest in and creation of installations in the genre of the Wunderkammern or cabinets of curiosities, which bring together wonders of natural science with objects of artifice to create a larger work of art constituted by a collection.16 And though sculpture no longer focuses consistently on illusionistic representations of the human figure, the capacity of sculpture to affect and move the senses has increasingly been explored as part of multisensory installations in which the object or objects are enhanced by sound and moving digital images, and sometimes even by the engagement of the spectators’ senses of smell and taste.17 In these secular displays within commercial galleries and museums, and occasionally public spaces, we see perhaps an equivalent to the multisensory ritual settings that enhanced the agency of sculpture in medieval European churches. As for the belief in Pygmalion’s power, though contemporary perceptions of medieval statuary, conditioned by new technologies of virtual reality and robotics, may make it difficult to believe that sculpted crucifixes and statues of the Madonna

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could come alive, the belief in the capacity for sculpted images to respond to human touch is still strong in the popular imagination, as witnessed by the sculpted figures that come alive in the Museum of Natural History in New York and the British Museum in London in the Night at the Museum series of movies starring Ben Stiller and Robin Williams (2006–14).18 An understanding of sculpture’s power for good or ill, past and present, seems all the more imperative as long-silent statues of the Confederacy have

quite suddenly become the object of fervent devotion as well as acts of iconoclastic destruction or calls for removal of statues that still embody a significant power of oppression for many spectators.19 As communities across the United States grapple with what these statues stand for and how to respond to pleas for removal, we would do well to recognize Pygmalion’s enduring power over the imagination.

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Notes Biblical citations are from Douay-Rheims unless otherwise noted. Abbreviations MGH PG PL

Monumenta Germaniae historica, Scriptores Migne, Jean-Paul, ed. Patrologiae cursus completus, Series Graeca. 161 vols. in 166. Paris, 1857–65 Migne, Jean-Paul, ed. Patrologiae cursus completus, Series Latina. 221 vols. Paris, 1844–55

Introduction 1. Cited in Palazzo, “Visions and Liturgical Experience,” esp. 20. 2. Blindheim, Painted Wooden Sculpture, 47–48. 3. See Palazzo, Invention chrétienne des cinq sens, chap. 9. 4. Stoichita, Pygmalion Effect. 5. Herder, Plastik. The following discussion of Herder is informed by Jason Gaiger’s introduction to the translation, and by Benjamin, “To Touch.” 6. Herder, Plastik, trans. Gaiger, 25. 7. Ibid., 45. 8. On interest in Ovid’s Metamorphosis in medieval schools between the ninth and twelfth centuries, see Clark, Coulson, and McKinley, Ovid in the Middle Ages, 1–25, esp. 7–12. 9. Camille, Gothic Idol, 220–41. 10. Ibid., 237–39. 11. Ibid., 224 and 316–36; Bleeke, “Versions of Pygmalion,” esp. 33–35. 12. Schapiro, “From Mozarabic to Romanesque”; Valdez del Álamo, Palace of the Mind, 118–27. 13. See Most, Doubting Thomas. 14. Valdez del Álamo, Palace of the Mind, 120–21. 15. Ibid., 121. 16. “ne magnitudo revelationum extolat me”; Valdez del Álamo, Palace of the Mind, 121. 17. Howes, Empire of the Senses, 1. See Howes and Classen, Ways of Sensing; and Newhauser, Cultural History of the Senses.

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18. Serres, Five Senses, 26. 19. Macpherson, Senses, 3–43. 20. Ibid., 19–20. 21. Drewal, “Material, Sensorial Religion.” 22. Meyer, “Media and the Senses.” This concept of “material religion” is further developed by Morgan, “Material Culture.” 23. Gumbrecht, “Erudite Fascinations.” 24. Bynum, Christian Materiality; Bynum, Wonderful Blood. 25. Kessler, Spiritual Seeing; Hamburger, St. John the Divine, esp. 185–202; Hamburger, Visual and the Visionary; and Hamburger, Rothschild Canticles. 26. Freedberg, Power of Images. 27. Palazzo, Invention chrétienne des cinq sens. 28. Jung, “Tactile and the Visionary.” Classen, Deepest Sense, 126–32, also documents the desire of medieval religious to touch painted icons and images in books, but when it comes to sculpture, she focuses on ambivalent attitudes to the medium and tactility in the wake of the Reformation. 29. Gerstman, Worlds Within. 30. Castiñeiras, “Romanesque Portal as Performance.” 31. On the Lateran fastigium, see Teasdale Smith, “Lateran Fastigium”; Hughes, “Illusive Idols and the Constantinian Aesthetic.” For a dissenting attribution of the fastigium figures to Emperor Valentinian III, see Grigg, “Constantine the Great.” 32. Brenk, The Apse, the Image. 33. See the account of Julian of Atramytion in Kitzinger, “Cult of Images,” 94–95. 34. Kessler, “Gregory the Great and Image Theory”; Buddensieg, “Gregory the Great.” 35. See Rudolph, Things of Greater Importance, 280–85. 36. Maxwell, “Modern Origins.” On the symbiotic relationship between early twentieth-century art historians and artists in forging nationalist agendas around Romanesque art, see Caviness, “Politics of Taste.” 37. Bizzarro, Romanesque Architectural Criticism. 38. Hamann–Mac Lean, Südfranzösische Proto-Renaissance; Horn, “Altchristliches in der südfranzösichen Protorenaissance.”

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39. Panofsky, Renaissance and Renascences, 55–68. 40. Ibid., 56. 41. Schapiro, “Romanesque Sculpture of Moissac”; Schapiro, Romanesque Architectural Sculpture. 42. Schapiro, “Romanesque Sculpture of Moissac,” 188–90. 43. Schapiro, Romanesque Architectural Sculpture, 24–31, 108–13. 44. See, e.g., Rosenwein, “Views from Afar” and To Be the Neighbor. 45. Maxwell, Art of Medieval Urbanism. 46. Miles, “Vision.” 47. Augustine, De trinitate 11.1.1 (PL 42.983–85), trans. Haddan, 144. 48. For a historiographic overview of the Gregorian dictum, see Kessler, “Gregory the Great.” 49. Hahn, Portrayed on the Heart, 48. 50. Ibid., 49. 51. See Biernoff, Sight and Embodiment, 87–88, 114–19. 52. Hugh of Saint Victor, De sacramentis 1.10.2, “Quid sit fides” (PL 176.327C–331B), trans. Deferrari, 165–67. Seidel, “Medieval Cloister Carving,” draws on this text in her interpretation of the La Daurade cloister capitals. 53. Hugh of Saint Victor, De sacramentis 1.3.2, “Quare Deus nec totus sciri, nec totus ignorari potest” (PL 176.217B), trans. Deferrari, 41–42. 54. Ibid., 1.10.2, “Quid sit fides” (PL 176.327C–331B), trans. Deferrari, 165–69. 55. On the iconography of the Trinity, see Buchheim, Gnadenstuhl, 16–18; and Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, 2:122. 56. Buchheim, Gnadenstuhl, 19–22; Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, 2:122. 57. For the emphasis on the materiality of the host itself and imprinted images that reinforced real presence, see Kumler, “Multiplication of the Species.” 58. Eckbert of Schonau, Vita S. Elisabeth (PL 195.147D), cited in Grant, “Elevation of the Host,” 238. 59. For useful introductions to this material, see Hamburger, Saint John the Divine, 185–201; and Schleusener-Eicholz, Auge im Mittelalter, 2:953–1005. For Bernard’s opposition to the use of visual images in mediation, see Rudolph, Things of Greater Importance; and Frese, Bildkritik des Bernhard von Clairvaux. 60. Newman, “What Did It Mean?” 61. William of Saint-Thierry, Orationes meditativae 10.4, “Incarnationis et passionis Christi consideratio” (PL 180.235D–236A), trans. Lawson, 152–53. 62. William of Saint-Thierry, De contemplando dei 3.3 (PL 184.368B–C), trans. Lawson, 38–39. 63. For La Daurade, see Horste, Cloister Design and Monastic Reform, 130, 131, figs. 119–21.

64. On Aelred and Bernard, see Newman, “What Did It Mean?,” 15, 26–27. On Peter the Venerable, see Appleby, “Priority of Sight.” On Julian, see Forsyth, “Permutations of Cluny-Paradigms,” 341, 343–44; and Ambrose, Nave Sculpture of Vézelay, 34–37. For the shift in interpretations of the Song of Songs to more evocative readings of physical love as types for the marriage of Mary and the believer to Christ, see Fulton, From Judgment to Passion; and Astell, Song of Songs in the Middle Ages. 65. See Seidel, “Salome and the Canons”; Forsyth, “Permutations of Cluny-Paradigms,” 341; Valdez del Álamo, Palace of the Mind. 66. Hugh of Saint Victor, Expositio in hierarchiam coelestem S. Dionysii Areopagitae (PL 175.929). For Hugh’s impact on Suger, see Rudolph, Artistic Change at Saint-Denis, 38–47. 67. For Suger’s aesthetics, see Panofsky, Abbot Suger, 13–26. 68. Suger, De administratione 33, in Panofsky, Abbot Suger, 66–67. 69. Ibid., 62–65. 70. See Kessler, Spiritual Seeing, 190–201, esp. 192–95; Panofsky, Abbot Suger, 74–75. 71. “Foederis ex arca Christi cruce sistitur ara; Foedere majori vult ibi vita mori.” Suger, De administratione 34, in Panofsky, Abbot Suger, 74–75. 72. Kessler, Spiritual Seeing, 194. Chapter 1 1. Sermo de vita et morte gloriosae virginis Maurae (PL 115.1367–76, esp. 1372), cited and translated in Palazzo, “Visions and Liturgical Experience,” 18. 2. Wirth, Datation, 224–25. 3. Palazzo, “Visions and Liturgical Experience,” 18. 4. Freedberg, Power of Images. 5. Bréhier, “Les Origines de la sculpture romane”; Deschamps, “Étude sur la renaissance de la sculpture”; Durliat, “Les Débuts de la sculpture romane”; Hearn, Romanesque Sculpture. 6. Keller, “Die Entstehung der sakralen Vollskulptur.” 7. Forsyth, Throne of Wisdom, esp. 32–37, 49–60. 8. Büchsel, “Status of Sculpture.” 9. Palazzo, “Visions and Liturgical Experience.” 10. Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, 2:140–49; Sepière, Image d’un Dieu souffrant, 85–125. 11. Schüppel, Silberne und Goldene Monumentalkruzifixe, 13–15, 195–201. 12. Ibid., 219. 13. Amalarius von Metz, De ecclesiasticis officiis (PL 105.1029C–D). See Schüppel, Silberne und Goldene Monumentalkruzifixe, 14; Fricke, Ecce Fidis, 132. 14. Chazelle, “Crucifixes and the Liturgy,” 67–93.

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Notes to Pages 19–31 15. Ibid., 82–83. 16. Chazelle, “Crucifixes and the Liturgy.” 17. Sepière, “L’Image d’un Dieu souffrant,” 142 and plate XIII. 18. Hahn, “Vision,” esp. 51–52, fig. 2.1. 19. The full text of the prayer reads, “Redemptor mundi et inluminator veniendi in hunc mundum, d[omi]ne i[e]hs[u] x[ris] te, respice me prostratum coram te.” See Rose, Verzeichniss der lateinischen Handschriften, vol. 2, pt. 1, 23. 20. Jung, “Tactile and the Visionary.” 21. See Deshman, “Exalted Servant.” 22. “In cruce qui mundi solvisti crimina Christe / Orando mihimet tu vulnera cuncta resolve”; trans. Kessler, Neither God nor Man, 114. 23. Kessler, Neither God nor Man, 115. 24. Chazelle, “Crucifixes and the Liturgy,” 86. 25. Suntrup, “Te igitur-Initialen.” 26. Maetzke, Volto Santo di Sansepolcro, redates the Volto Santo, on the basis of carbon dating, to the eighth or ninth century. See Musto, “John Scottus Eriugena.” 27. Schüppel, Silberne und Goldene Monumentalkruzifixe, 213–18. 28. On the Gero Cross, see Hausherr, “Tote Christus am Kreuz”; and Fisher, “Cross Altar and Crucifix in Ottonian Cologne.” 29. Hausherr, “Tote Christus am Kreuz,” 14. 30. Ibid., 35. 31. See Heitz, Architecture religieuse carolingienne, 51–62; and Tronzo, “Prestige of Saint Peter’s,” 98–104. 32. Keller, “Zur Entstehung der sakralen Vollskulptur,” 86. 33. Schulze-Senger et al., “Das Gerokreuz im Kölner Dom.” 34. Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, 2:141n104; Hausherr, “Tote Christus am Kreuz,” 94n9. 35. Fisher, “Cross Altar and Crucifix,” 49–50. 36. On Paschasius Radbertus’s formulation of real presence, see Fulton, From Judgment to Passion, 12–16. 37. Fisher, “Cross Altar and Crucifix,” 43. 38. Legner, Romanische Kunst in Deutschland, 4–56, 174–75, pls. 254–56. 39. See ibid., figs. 22–23. The Ottonian Ringelheim Cross, now in the Dom-Museum at Hildesheim, contained within a cavity in the head relics of stones from the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem and relics of Saints Cosmas and Damian. See Barnet, Brandt, and Lutz, Medieval Treasures from Hildesheim, no. 8, 44–45. 40. For a survey of devotional texts in relation to sculpted crucifixes of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in Saxony and Westphalia, see Lutz, Bild des Gekreuzigten im Wandel, 30–49. 41. Fulton, From Judgment to Passion, part 1, 9–192. 42. Ibid., 143. 43. Ibid., 142–92.

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44. Anselm of Canterbury, Oratio 2, in Anselm, S. Anselmi Cantuariensis archiepiscopi opera omnia, 3:6. Cited and trans. Fulton, From Judgment to Passion, 142, 187–88. 45. Frese, Bildkritik des Bernhard von Clairvaux, 82–93. 46. William of Saint-Thierry, Expositio altera super Cantica Canticorum (PL 180.473–546), trans. Hart. See Frese, Bildkritik des Bernhard von Clairvaux, 87–88. 47. William of Saint-Thierry, Epistola aurea ad fratres de Monte-Dei 5 (“Triplex status vitae religiosae”) (PL 184.307–54, esp. 315C– 317D); Frese, Bildkritik des Bernhard von Clairvaux, 88–89. 48. Orationes meditativae 10.5–7 (PL 180.236B–D), trans. Lawson, 153–54. 49. Hamburger, St. John the Divine, 191. 50. Orationes meditativae 10.7–8 (PL 180.237A–B), trans. Lawson, 154–55. 51. Ibid., 3.7 (PL 180.213B), trans. Lawson, 107–8. 52. Ibid., 3.8 (PL 180.213C), trans. Lawson, 106. 53. Aelred of Rievaulx, De institutis inclusarum, trans. Macpherson, Works of Aelred of Rievaulx, 79–80. Cited in Fulton, From Judgment to Passion, 420. 54. Fulton, From Judgment to Passion, 309–11; Palazzo, “Visions and Liturgical Experience,” 25–26; Jung, “Tactile and the Visionary,” 218–20. 55. Fulton, “Taste and See.” 56. Posset, “Crucified Embraces Saint Bernard”; Maguire, “Bernard and Mary’s Milk.” 57. Parker, Descent from the Cross. 58. Gaborit, Art roman au Louvre, 111–14. 59. Camps i Sòria and Dectot, Catalogne romane, 82–85. 60. Monti, Sense of the Sacred, chaps. 12 and 14. 61. Ibid., 14. 62. Rupert of Deutz, De divinis officiis, cap. 20, “Quid significet quod crux hactenus operta nunc discooperitur” (PL 170.164D–165A). 63. Fulton, From Judgment to Passion, 144; Schüppel, Silberne und Goldene Monumentalkruzifixe, 253–54. 64. For the history of the Palmesel, see Lipsmeyer, “Devotion and Decorum”; and Harris, “Interpreting the Role.” 65. Monti, Sense of the Sacred, chap. 12. 66. Spätling and Dinter, Consuetudines Fructuarienses—Sanblasianae, 150; cited in Lipsmeyer, “Devotion and Decorum,” 22, whose English translation I have modified slightly. 67. Schüppel, Silberne und Goldene Monumentalkruzifixe, 271–72. 68. Boynton, “Prayer as Liturgical Performance.” 69. Fulton, From Judgment to Passion, 219–20. 70. Compare Jung, “Tactile and the Visionary”; and Classen, Deepest Sense, 27–43.

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71. Trexler, Christian at Prayer; Fulton, “Praying with Saint Anselm.” 72. Schmitt, “Between Text and Image.” 73. Fulton, “Taste and See.” 74. Kobialka, This Is My Body, 147–55. 75. Odo of Cambrai, Expositio in canonem missae (PL 160.1061D), cited and trans. Schaefer, “Twelfth-Century Latin Commentaries,” 36. 76. Ibid. (PL 160.1063D), cited and trans. Schaefer, “Twelfth-Century Latin Commentaries,” 45. 77. Forsyth, Throne of Wisdom. 78. Ibid., 137–38. On its polychrome decoration, see Kargère and Rizzo, “Twelfth-Century French Polychrome Sculpture.” 79. The most comprehensive study of Sainte Foy is Fricke, Ecce Fides. For the dating, see Hubert, “La Statue de Sainte Foi de Conques”; Taralon, “La Majesté d’or de Sainte-Foy”; Wirth, Datation, 220–23. 80. On the Essen Madonna, see Fehrenbach, Goldene Madonna; Forsyth, Throne of Wisdom, 112–21. For the lost image from Clermont-Ferrand, see Forsyth, Throne of Wisdom, 95–99. For the Hildesheim Grosse Goldene Madonna, see Lambacher, Schätze des Glaubens, 42–43; Forsyth, Throne of Wisdom, 121–24. 81. Forsyth, Throne of Wisdom, 70. 82. Fricke, Ecce Fides, 45n36. 83. Wirth, Datation, 227. 84. See Fehrenbach, Goldene Madonna; Dahl, “Heavenly Images.” 85. Fehrenbach, Goldene Madonna, 32–33, has suggested iconographic but not functional connections with both the Hodegetria and the Nikopoia icons. On the Hodegetria processions, see Pentcheva, Icons and Power, 109–43; Lidov, “Flying Hodegetria.” 86. See Voordeckers, “Imperial Art in Byzantium,” 241–43; and Westermann-Angerhausen, “Did Theophano Leave Her Mark?” 87. See Pentcheva, Sensual Icon, 57–96. 88. See Forsyth, Throne of Wisdom, 43; Fehrenbach, Goldene Madonna, 47–50. Monti, Sense of the Sacred, chap. 10, refers to a comparable rite involving the procession of a silver statue of the Virgin in Cologne, dating to the eleventh century. 89. Arens, Liber ordinarius, 32–35. 90. Ibid., 33–34, trans. in Monti, Sense of the Sacred, 287–88. 91. Arens, Liber ordinarius, 34, trans. Monti, Sense of the Sacred, 288. 92. E.g., the Ottonian Imad Madonna in Paderborn Cathedral, ca. 1051–58. See Legner, Romanische Kunst in Deutschland, 63, 174, fig. 253. 93. For the role of the crucifix on the screen and its engagement with the beholder, see Jung, Gothic Screen, 47–55.

94. Forsyth, Throne of Wisdom, 39–40. 95. See Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, 2:106–7. 96. Sureda, Pintura romànica a Catalunya, no. 15, 284–85; Rorimer, “XII Century Fresco.” 97. De Lasarte, Catalan Painting, 20. 98. Forsyth, Throne of Wisdom, 49–59. 99. Katzenellenbogen, Sculptural Programs of Chartres, 7–36. 100. Fassler, Virgin of Chartres, 205–41. 101. Ibid., 205. 102. Ibid., 231. 103. Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermon 3, “On the Purification of Mary” (PL 183.370C), cited in Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast, 268, 409n41. 104. See Belting, Likeness and Presence, 398–408. 105. Le Pogam, “Le Retable de Carrières”; Gaborit, Art roman au Louvre, 189–207, esp. 190–92. 106. Sauerländer, Sculpture gothique en France, 68–69. 107. Legner, Romanische Kunst in Deutschland, 52, 64, 172, fig. 237. 108. Forsyth, Throne of Wisdom, 49–60. 109. Ibid., 34. 110. Fulton, From Judgment to Passion, 268–72; Tronzo, “Apse Decoration.” 111. See Kargère and Rizzo, “Twelfth-Century French Polychrome Sculpture.” 112. Compare Barber, “From Transformation to Desire.” 113. Sansterre, “Omnes qui coram,” 94. 114. Reginald of Durham, Libellus de Vita et miraculis S. Godrici, 99–101, cited and trans. in Sansterre, “Omnes qui coram,” esp. 280–81; and Palazzo, “Visions and Liturgical Experience,” 20. 115. Forsyth, “Magi and Majesty,” 218–19. 116. Lobrichon, Borgogne romane. 117. Ferguson O’Meara, Iconography, 135–52. 118. The flared terminals of the cross are particularly common on altar crosses and processional crosses of the twelfth century: e.g., the Spitzer Cross, a Limoges crucifix in the Cleveland Museum of Art (Klein, Sacred Gifts and Worldly Treasures, 156–57), and a Champlevé enamel cross possibly from Silos, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (41.100.154): http:// www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online /search/467727?rpp=30&pg=1&ft=Medieval+Crucifix&pos=7. 119. See Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, 2:164–68, esp. figs. 556–58, and Parker, Descent from the Cross. 120. Valdez del Álamo, Palace of the Mind, 97–101. 121. I thank Marcia Kupfer for pointing out this significant shift from isolated cult image to narrative composition.

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Notes to Pages 47–58 Chapter 2 1. Cf. Trexler, “Gendering Jesus Crucified,”108. 2. This chapter greatly expands my essay “Nude at Moissac.” 3. Lindquist, Meanings of Nudity. 4. Clark, Nude, 3–29. 5. Ibid., 8. 6. Himmelmann, “Nudità ideale,” 202–8. See also Lindquist, Meanings of Nudity, 1. 7. Clark, Nude, 309. 8. Bynum, “Why All the Fuss About the Body?,” 12–19. 9. Salomon, “Venus Pudica.” 10. Cadden, Meanings of Sex Difference. 11. See Constable, “Nudus nudum Christum sequi”; and Ambrose, “Male Nudes and Embodied Spirituality,” 73–74. 12. Radulfus Ardens, Homiliae (PL 155.1476D–1478A, esp. 1477D): “Pauper vero et spiritu et rebus est, qui non solum mandata, sed etiam consilia secutus, vendit omnia quae habet et dat pauperibus, et nudus nudum Christum sequitur.” 13. Augustine, Opus imperfectum contra secundam responsionem Juliani (PL 45.1370–71). 14. Valerannus, Epistola 4 (PL 158.550B–550C): “Paschalis hostia nudato corpore in ara crucis immolata est, nudato corpore offerri voluit, qui omnia quae audivit a Patre, suis nota fecit ( Joan. XV).” 15. Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption, 162–63. 16. Merback, Thief, the Cross, and the Wheel. 17. Ibid., 102–4. 18. Ibid., 151–57. 19. Mills, Suspended Animation. 20. Bynum, review of Mills, Suspended Animation; Hamburger, “Overkill.” 21. Hamburger, “Overkill,” 410. For Tudela, see Patton, Pictorial Narrative, 112. 22. Smaragdus S. Michaelis, Commentaria in regulam Sancti Benedicti (PL 102.758C–D). 23. Ibid., cap. 22, “Quomodo dormiant monachi” (PL 102.844D–845A). 24. Rupert of Deutz, Commentarium in Genesim (PL 167.96C–296D). 25. William of Saint-Thierry, Expositio in epistolam ad Romanos (PL 180.602A–B). 26. Peter Lombard, Sentences 2.19.6.1–3, p. 85. 27. Ibid., 2.16.3.1, p. 69. 28. Ibid., 2.16.3.5, p. 70. 29. Ibid., 2.16.4.2, p. 71. 30. Hugh of Saint Victor, De Sacramentis 2.6.2, trans. Deferrari, 95.

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31. Ibid., 1.6.18, trans. Deferrari, 107. 32. Ibid., 1.6.1, trans. Deferrari, 94. 33. Chenu, Nature, Man, and Society, 1–48, esp. 29–39. 34. Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption, 181–238. 35. On the images, see Calderoni Masetti and Dalli Regoli, Sanctae Hildegardis Revelationes, 16–17, 28–32, and pls. II and III. Although this manuscript was produced some thirty years after Hildegard’s death, Caviness, in “Hildegard as Designer,” argues that the illustrations are based on Hildegard’s designs. 36. Hildegard of Bingen, Liber divinorum operum 1, Visio Secunda, cap. 1, ll. 40–46, 60–61. 37. Hildegard of Bingen, Causae et curae 2, trans. Glaze, “Medical Writer,” 134. 38. Ibid., 1.8b, trans. Berger, Hildegard of Bingen, 30. 39. The inscriptions for the five senses read as follows: “ex igne visum”; “ex aere superiori auditum. Ex inferiori olfactum”; “ex aquam gustus”; “ex terra tactum.” Additional inscriptions around the border elaborate on the role of the elements vis-àvis the senses: “Ignis visum dat mobilitatem” (Fire gives vision its mobility); “Aer huic donat quod flat. Sonat, Audit, Odorat” (Air gives those things which blow: it makes sounds, hears and smells”); “Munus aquae gustus humor tum sanguinis usus” (The gift of water is taste; the humor then for the use of blood); “Ex terra carnem, tactum trahit et gravitatem” (Touch draws flesh and gravity out of earth). 40. See Cohen, “Making Memories,” 135–37; Bovenmyer, “Alternative Anatomies.” 41. Baschet, Bonne, and Dittmar, Monde roman, 152–61; Wirth, Image á l’époque romane, 154–72. 42. Wirth, Image á l’époque romane, 166–69. 43. Baschet, Bonne, and Dittmar, Monde roman, “’Iter’ et ‘locus,’” 43–98. 44. Frugoni, “La facciata”; Glass, Sculpture of Reform, 163–99. 45. Wirth, Image à l’époque romane, 324; Baschet, Bonne, and Dittmar, Monde roman, “’Iter’ et ‘locus,’” 153–65. 46. On beard-pullers in Romanesque sculpture, see Olson, “Sex and the Romanesque,” 349–53. 47. See Baschet, Bonne, and Dittmar, Monde roman, “’Iter’ et ‘locus,’” esp. 171–78. 48. Payer, Bridling of Desire, 24–25. 49. Peter Lombard, Sentences 2.24.12, p. 115. 50. Ibid., 2.31.4, p. 154. 51. Sonne de Torrens and Torrens, Visual Culture of Baptism. 52. Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, 1:127–40. 53. Lafontaine-Dosogne, “Tradition byzantine des baptistères”; George, “Fonts de Liège et Renier de Huy.” Lafontaine-Dosogne affirms the traditional dating but not the

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attribution to Rainer de Huy, which is not firmly documented. George accepts both the traditional dating and attribution. 54. Hugh of Saint Victor, De sacramentis 1.9.2, trans. Deferrari, 155, cited in Spinks, Early and Medieval Rituals, 135. 55. Ibid., trans. Deferrari, 155, cited in Spinks, Early and Medieval Rituals, 140. 56. Peter Lombard, Sentences 4.1.4, p. 6, cited in Spinks, Early and Medieval Rituals, 142. 57. Ibid., 2.32.1.1, p. 158. 58. Ibid., 4.3.1.1–2, p. 11; 4.3.9.1, p. 18. For the baptismal rite, see Spinks, Early and Medieval Rituals, 136. 59. E.g., Wharton, “Ritual and Reconstructed Meaning.” 60. Le Goff, Birth of Purgatory. 61. Sheingorn, “And Flights of Angels”; Barasch, “Departing Soul”; Fozi, “‘Reinhildis Has Died,’” 174–88. 62. See Geary, Phantoms of Remembrance, 53–60; Mackie, “Warmundus of Ivrea.” 63. On the Jaca sarcophagus, see Simon, “Le Sarcophage de doña Sancha.” On the Nájera sarcophagus, see Valdez del Álamo, “Lament for a Lost Queen.” 64. Fozi, “‘Reinhildis Has Died,’” 186–87. The inscription on Christ’s book reads, “venite bened[icti] patris mei” (Come, you blessed of my father; Matt. 25:34). The inscriptions around the images read, below Christ, “q[vo]d. vni. ex, mi[nimis]. m[e]i[s]. fe[cisti]. m[ihi]. f.[ecistis] (What you have done to the least of my people, you have done to me; Matt. 25:40); framing the entire stela, “brvnoni.cvivs. speciem. monstrat. lapis iste qui. sva pavperibus.tribvit. da gavdia christe (To Bruno, whose face this stone shows, who left his possessions to the poor, may Christ give joy). 65. Hugh of Saint Victor, De sacramentis 2.16.2, trans. Deferrari, 434. 66. Ibid., 2.16.2, trans. Deferrari, 438. 67. Werckmeister, “Die Auferstehung der Toten.” 68. Kendall, Allegory of the Church, 90. 69. Ibid. 70. Gurevich, “West Portal.” 71. Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption, 239–97. 72. Bynum, Resurrection of the Body. 73. Bernard of Clairvaux, “Third Sermon for All Saints,” in Sancti Bernardi opera, 5:350, cited in Bynum, Resurrection of the Body, 164–65n31. 74. Wirth, Image à l’époque romane, 321–27. 75. Swiechowski, Sculpture romane d’Auvergne, 124: “ecce/adam/ cas/i vn/vs e/x vo/bis [fa]ctus.” 76. Werckmeister, “Lintel Fragment Representing Eve.” 77. Bredekamp, “Die nordspanische Hofskulptur,” 270–71.

78. Mâle, Art religieux du XIIe siècle, 373–76; Leclercq-Kadaner, “De la Terre-Mère à la Luxure”; Weir and Jerman, Images of Lust, 58–79. 79. See Katzenellenbogen, Allegories of the Virtues and Vices. 80. Leclercq-Kadaner, “De la Terre-Mère à la Luxure.” 81. For image, see http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b53019391x /f21.image. 82. See Sepiere, Image d’un Dieu Souffrant, 180–84, pls. XXIa–b; Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, 2:109–10, fig. 365. 83. Ambrose, Nave Sculpture of Vézelay, 42, 92, no. 15. 84. Ibid., 89, no. 6. 85. For further discussion of the significance of monstrous hybridity, see chapter 4. 86. Dale, “The Nude at Mossiac,” with previous bibliography. 87. On the iconography and meaning of the parable of Dives and Lazarus in medieval art, see Baschet, Les Justices de l’au-delà, 243–55; Wolf, Parabel vom reichen Prasser. 88. Schapiro, “Romanesque Sculpture of Moissac II,” 236. 89. Scheifele, “Path to Salvation,” 43–67; Dixon, “Power of the Gate”; Zink, “Moissac, Beaulieu, Charlieu,” 93–104. A more general contrast of good and evil is offered by Droste, Skulpturen von Moissac, 201. 90. Forsyth, “Narrative at Moissac.” 91. Elliott, Fallen Bodies, 15–34. 92. Wirth, Image à l’époque romane, 259–327, esp. 286–90, 308–9; Saugnieux, “Culture religieuse et culture profane.” 93. Elliott, Fallen Bodies, esp. 81–126. 94. Ibid., 116–17; Brundage, “Sex and Canon Law,” 36–37. 95. Elliott, Fallen Bodies, 11. 96. Cited and translated in ibid., 102. 97. Payer, Sex and the Penitentials; Payer, Bridling of Desire; Payer, Sex and the New Medieval; Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society. 98. Payer, Sex and the New Medieval, 12–18. 99. Baschet, Les Justices de l’au-delà, 533–80, esp. 574–76. 100. Elliott, Fallen Bodies, 115–16. 101. Brundage, “Sex and Canon Law,” 15–16. 102. Iogna-Prat, Maison Dieu. 103. Payer, Sex and the Penitentials, 39, 57, 97, 105. 104. Elliott, Fallen Bodies, 65–66. 105. See, for example, Werckmeister, “Lintel Fragment Representing Eve.” 106. On threefold confession, see Peter Lombard, Sentences 4.16.1, p. 88. 107. Ibid., 4.14.3.1, pp. 71–72; 3.2.2.1, 134–35.

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Notes to Pages 72–87 108. For the dating of De contemptu mundi ca. 1140, see Bernard of Cluny, De contemptu mundi. The portal has been redated to ca. 1100–15 by Forsyth, “Date of the Moissac Portal.” 109. Bernard of Cluny, De contemptu mundi 1, ll. 487–90, 529–36, 543–48, pp. 40–44. 110. Ibid., 1, ll. 737–42, 751–54, pp. 54–57. 111. Ibid., 1, ll. 799–808, 811–18, pp. 59–61. 112. Eneide, ll. 3987–4109, cited and trans. in Auerbach, Literary Language, 187–89. See also Pastré, “Esthéthique médiévale et portrait littéraire,” 164–65. 113. Chrétien de Troyes, Erec et Enide, vv. 411–58, trans. Gilbert, 53–54. 114. See Smith, “Gothic Mirror”; and L’Estrange, “Gazing at Gawain.” 115. Liber de spiritu et anima 26, “Spectrorum ratio” (PL 40.798), trans. McGinn, Three Treatises on Man, 222. 116. Ibid., 28, “Somnia lasciva” (PL 40:796), trans. McGinn, Three Treatises on Man, 216. 117. Biernoff, Sight and Embodiment, 41–57, 87–88. 118. Eneas, ll. 8047–100, pp. 215–16; Biernoff, Sight and Embodiment, 48–49. 119. Biernoff, Sight and Embodiment, 47; Caviness, Visualizing Women, 20–21. 120. Hildegard of Bingen, Causae et curae 6.1, trans. Berger, On Natural Philosophy and Medicine, 58. 121. Ibid., 3.1, trans. Berger, On Natural Philosophy and Medicine, 39. 122. Ibid. 123. Kendall, Allegory of the Church, 88. 124. Adhémar, Influences antiques, 197–200. 125. Panofsky, Renaissance and Renascences, 82–100. 126. Adhémar, Influences antiques; Schapiro, “On the Aesthetic Attitude.” 127. Adhémar, Influences antiques, appendix II, 311. 128. Ibid., appendix II, 312: “Nil agit os, oculus, manus et pes, naris et auris; / Ars dedit effigiem, non dedit officium.” 129. Magister Gregorius, Narracio de mirabilibus urbis Romae. 130. Ibid., chap. 12, trans. Osborne, 26. 131. Hinz, “Knidia,” esp. 49–53. 132. Narratio de mirabilibus urbis Romae, chap. 7, trans. Osborne, 23. 133. Panofsky, Renaissance and Renascences, 89; Heckscher, “Dornauszieher,” 290–91; Adhémar, Influences Antiques, 189–92. 134. Panofsky, Tomb Sculpture, 62; Legner, Romanische Skulptur in Deutschland, 68–69. 135. Kenaan-Kedar, Marginal Sculpture, 25, 59–62; Weir and Jerman, Images of Lust, 91–99; Camille, Image on the Edge, 73–74. 136. Bredekamp, “Die nordspanische Hofskulptur.” 137. Moralejo, “Capitel inspirado en un sarcófago.”

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138. Prado-Vilar, “Tragedy’s Forgotten Beauty,” 99–104. 139. Prado-Vilar, “Saevum facinus,” esp. 185–86. 140. Ambrose, “Male Nudes and Embodied Spirituality,” 70. 141. For an overview of the issue, see Abramson and Hannon, “Depicting the Ambiguous Wound.” I thank Marcia Kupfer for raising this question. 142. Caviness, “Son’s Gaze on Noah.” 143. Ibid., 131–32. 144. Ibid., 129–30. 145. See Simon, “Art for a New Monarchy,” 380–81. 146. See Biernoff, Sight and Embodiment, 34–37, 114–20; and Carruthers, Craft of Thought, 94–99. 147. Bernard of Clairvaux, Ad clericos de conversione, 3.4, in Sancti Bernardi opera, 4:69–116, trans. Saïd, Sermons on Conversion, 35. 148. Ibid., 2.3, trans. Saïd, Sermons on Conversion, 34. 149. Ibid., trans. Saïd, Sermons on Conversion, 34. 150. Ibid., 15.28, trans. Saïd, Sermons on Conversion, 64. 151. Carruthers, Craft of Thought, 264–66. 152. Paris BN ms lat. 2819, fol. 79r: “O quam casta mater et virgo fecunda Maria. Que nullam novit maculam deum portare meruit. O quam casta mater que sine ulla contaminatione concepit et sine dolore genuit Salvatorem.” 153. Ibid., fol. 98r: “Venite omnes exsultemus in conspectu domini quia prope est dies in quo natale eius celebremus et in illa die mundo corde ad altare domini perveniamus quia promittitur filius virgini per visitationem spiritus sancti. O beata infancia per quam generis nostri vita est reparata quia tanquam sponsus de talamo Mariae Christus processit ex utero. O Virgo super virgines benedicta sic paries filium ut in virginitate non pacieris detrimentum.” For the first part of the chant (up to spiritus sancti), see Cantus: A Database for Latin Ecclesiastical Chant, http://bach.music.uwo.ca/cantus/search .asp?submitType=details&cantusID=188951. 154. Ibid.: “Ecce carissimi dies illa judicii magna et terribilis instat praetereunt dies nostri et velociter advenit praeclarus adventus domini jam crebro sono nos hortatur et dicit priusquam ostium paradisi claudatur unusquisque vostrum cito properet ut introiens in aeternum cum domino regnat.” See Cantus, http://bach.music.uwo.ca/cantus/search.asp?submitType =details&cantusID=188985. 155. Ibid., “De septuagesima,” fol. 80r–80v. Immediately preceding this section is an explicit reference to the procession through the portal: “Cum introierint pro portam monasteri[um] incipiat a[ntifonam] Cum induceres.” 156. Ibid.: “Converte nos Deus et pone lacrimas nostras in conspectu tuo et sana vulnera nostra medicamentum penitentiae ne pereamus.”

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157. Ibid.: “O quam felices erunt illi qui nocem illam domini meruerit audire, Venite Benedicti patris mei. Percipite regnum.” 158. Forsyth, “Narrative at Moissac,” 89n14; Fraïsse, “Les Bâtiments conventuels.” 159. “V./Suscipiate te christus qui creavit te et in sinum abrahae angeli deducant te. Ant. Chorus angelorum te suscipiat et cum lazaro quendam paupere aeternam habeas requiem.” See Paxton, Christianizing Death, 39–40; Sicard, Liturgie de la mort, 66–70. For the Cluniac funerary rites, see Paxton, “Death by Customary.” 160. See Schiefele, “Path to Salvation”; and Dixon, “Power of the Gate.” Chapter 3 1. Brilliant, “Faces Demanding Attention.” 2. Morris, Discovery of the Individual, 86–95, esp. 92–95. 3. Keller, “Entstehung des Bildnisses”; Pope-Hennessy, Portrait in the Renaissance. For a reevaluation of the connection between portraiture and naturalism in the later Middle Ages, see Perkinson, “Rethinking the Origins of Portraiture.” 4. Burckhardt, “Porträt”; Burckhardt, Civilization of the Renaissance, 81–87. 5. On the balance between physiognomic likeness and type in portraiture, see Brilliant, Portraiture, 1–21; and West, Portraiture, 21–41. 6. For a range of examples, see Little, Set in Stone, nos. 1–5, 13, 20, 26–32, 39–42, 72. 7. Pommier, Théories du portrait, 15–18. 8. See Perkinson, “Portraits and Counterfeits.” 9. Pommier, Théories du portrait; Perkinson, “From an ‘Art de Memoire.’” 10. Arnobius Afrus, Disputationum adversus Gentes 1.38 (PL 5.767A–B), trans. Bryce and Campbell, Fathers of the Third Century, 77; translation modified by author. 11. E.g., ibid., 3.3 (PL 5.940A). 12. Ibid., 6.8.2–4 (PL 5.1179A–1180A), trans. Bryce and Campbell, Fathers of the Third Century, 885–86. 13. Nodelman, “How to Read a Roman Portrait.” 14. Arnobius Afrus, Disputationum adversus Gentes 6.10.1–6 (PL 5.1181C–1184A), trans. Bryce and Campbell, Fathers of the Third Century, 887–88. 15. Lactantius, Divinarum institutionum 5.3 (PL 6.271D–272A). 16. Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae 8.11.4–5 (PL 82.314C–315A), trans. Barney et al., 183–84. 17. Ibid., 8.11.6, trans. Barney et al., 184.

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18. Isidore of Seville, Sententiae 9 (PL 83.612BC): “Multi vitam sanctorum imitantur, et de moribus alterius effigiem virtutis sumunt, tanquam si imago quaelibet intendatur, et de ejus similitudine species picta formetur; sicque fit ad imaginem similis ille qui ad similitudinem vivit imaginis.” 19. Theodulf of Orleans (attributed to Charlemagne), De imaginibus (PL 98.1222B–1222C). 20. Ibid., 98.1222D. 21. Pope Hadrian I, Epistolae (PL 96.1229A–C). 22. Ibid., 1232A–B. 23. MGH Epistolae Karolini aevi III. Epistolae Hadriani I Papae, cap. 12, p. 19. 24. Kessler, Spiritual Seeing, 124–25. 25. Cited by Perkinson, “Sculpting Identity,” 120. 26. Bernard of Angers, Liber miraculorum 1:13, p. 46, trans. Sheingorn, Book of Sainte Foy, 77. 27. Ibid., 1.13, p. 47, trans. Sheingorn, Book of Sainte Foy, 77–78. 28. “Sancta Fides, cuius pars corporis in presenti simulachro requiesci. . . .” Ibid., 1.13, p. 48, trans. Sheingorn, Book of Sainte Foy, 78. 29. Ibid., 2.4, pp. 100–103, trans. Sheingorn, Book of Sainte Foy, 120–21. 30. Ibid., 1.13, p. 48: “Verum istud vaniloquium sive parva conceptio non adeo ex bono corde procedebat, quando sacram imaginem quae non ut idolum sacrificando consulitur, sed ob memoriam reverendae martyris in summi Dei habetur despective tamquam Veneris vel Diane appellaverim simulachrum.” 31. Ibid., 1.13, pp. 47–48, trans. Sheingorn, Book of Sainte Foy, 77–78. 32. See Kantorowicz, Laudes Regiae, 72n25; and Forsyth, Throne of Wisdom, 85–85. 33. See Forsyth, Throne of Wisdom, 74–75. 34. Cited ibid., 75n79. 35. For Sainte-Foy, see Taralon with Taralon-Carlini, “La Majesté d’or de Sainte Foy”; Dahl, “Heavenly Images”; Fricke, Ecce Fides. 36. Fricke, Ecce Fides, 45–56, 321, pl. III. 37. Taralon with Taralon-Carlini, “La Majesté d’or de Sainte-Foy,” 19–21. 38. Adhémar, Influences antiques, 105, 311: “Horrendum caput, et tamen hoc horrore decorum; Lumine terrifico, terror et ipse decet.” 39. Fricke, Ecce Fides, 165–74. 40. Dahl, “Heavenly Images”; Fricke, Ecce Fides, 206–27. 41. Bernard of Angers, Liber miraculorum 1.13, trans. Sheingorn, Book of Sainte Foy, 79. 42. Ibid., 1.1, p. 10, trans. Sheingorn, Book of Sainte Foy, 46.

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Notes to Pages 97–107 43. Ibid., 1.1, p. 10, trans. Sheingorn, Book of Sainte Foy, 47. 44. See Ashley and Sheingorn, “Ste. Foy on the Loose”; Hahn, Strange Beauty, 145–60. 45. Fricke, Ecce Fides, 214–18. Cf. Pentcheva, Sensual Icon, 57–96. 46. Braun, Reliquiare, chap. 7, “Redende reliquiare”; for the “figurale reliquiare” (face, head, and bust reliquaries), 380–458. 47. Falk, “Bildnisreliquaire,” 116–21. 48. Ibid., 99–100. 49. Cf. Jaeger, Envy of Angels; Hahn, Strange Beauty, 117–33. 50. Braun, Reliquiare, 64–65, 413; Boehm, “Medieval Head Reliquaries,” esp. 99, 101. 51. For Saint Theofridus at Saint-Chaffre, see Falk, “Bildnisreliquiar,” no. 5, 146–47; and Boehm, “Medieval Head Reliquaries,” 231–39. For Saint Baudîme, see Falk, “Bildnisreliquiar,” no. 7, 149; Bagnoli et al., Treasures of Heaven, 191–93, no. 105 (Barbara Boehm); Gaborit-Chopin, France romane, 380–81, no. 292; Boehm, “Medieval Head Reliquaries,” 288–91. For Saint Césaire, see Falk, “Bildnisreliquiar,” no. 6, 148; Bagnoli et al., Treasures of Heaven, 193, no. 106 (Boehm). 52. The dimensions are as follows: Saint Chaffres, 59 cm in height; Saint Baudîme, 73 cm; Saint Césaire, 91 cm. 53. See Dale, “Romanesque Sculpted Portraits,” esp. 112. 54. On the significance of these distinct materials, see Späth, “Die Blicke der Heiligen.” 55. Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae 11.1.36, trans. Barney et al., 233. 56. Ibid., 232. 57. Ibid. 58. Hrabanus Maurus, De universo 1, “De homine et partibus ejus” (PL 111.148D–149A). 59. Ibid., 147B. 60. Ibid., 1149D–150B. 61. Sermo 31, “De membris humanis” (PL 177.937B). 62. Jotsald, Vita Odilonis, chap. 5 (PL 142.900D–901A), trans. Jaeger, Envy of Angels, 109. 63. Vita S. Stephani Obazinensis 2.50, cited in Dahl, “Heavenly Images,” 187. 64. Späth, “Die Blicke der Heiligen.” 65. Bernard of Angers, Liber miraculorum 1.13, p. 47, trans. Sheingorn, Book of Sainte Foy, 77. 66. Pentcheva, “Glittering Eyes,” esp. 231. 67. The material of the eyes was first precisely described by Taralon and Carlini-Taralon in “La Majesté d’or de Sainte-Foy,” 26–28. 68. For Ivan Foletti’s short film Sainte Foy Révélée, see https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvUcROMWF5g. 69. Sheingorn and Ashley, “Unsentimental View.” 70. Bernard of Angers, Liber miraculorum 1.1, p. 11, trans. Sheingorn, Book of Sainte Foy, 47.

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71. Fricke, Ecce Fidis, 48–52, 55–56; Bernard of Angers, Liber miraculorum 1.13, p. 47, trans. Sheingorn, Book of Sainte Foy, 77; Forsyth, Throne of Wisdom, 39. 72. Fricke, Ecce Fidis, 207–27; Pentcheva, “Glittering Eyes,” esp. 226–32. 73. Boehm, “Medieval Head Reliquaries,” 47. 74. See Falk, “Bildnisreliquiar,” no. 28, 165–68; Wittekind, Altar– Reliquiar–Retabel, 173–224; Hahn, Strange Beauty, 127–32. 75. See, e.g., Falk, “Bildnisreliquiar,” 121–23; and Hahn, Strange Beauty, 129, with earlier literature. 76. Wittekind, Altar–Reliquiar–Retabel, 178–86; Wittekind, “Caput et Corpus.” 77. Hahn, Strange Beauty, 130–31; Wittekind, Altar–Reliquiar–Retabel, 178–86. 78. Jaeger, Envy of Angels. 79. Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermones Super Canticum Canticorum, Sermo 85.10–11, cited and trans. Jaeger, Envy of Angels, 110–11. 80. Wibald of Stavelot, Epistola 147 [ad Manegoldum scholae magistrum] (PL 189.1255BC), cited and trans. Hahn, Strange Beauty, 130. 81. Dale, “Individual”; and Hinz, Grabdenkmal Rudolfs von Schwaben, with earlier bibliography. 82. Jakobs, “Rudolf von Rheinfelden und die Kirchenreform.” 83. Feger, Die Chronik des Klosters Petershausen, 114, chap. 38: “ibique honorifice sepultus est in ipso choro basilicae, et imago ipsius ex ere fusa atque deaurata super tumulatum eius transposita est.” 84. Schramm and Mütherich, Denkmale, 1:38–39. 85. Schramm, Sphaira, Globus, Reichsapfel, 60–63. 86. Transcribed by Hinz, “König Rudolfs Grabdenkmal,” 520–21: “rex hoc rodvlf[vs] patru[m] p[ro] lege p[er]e[m]ptus plorandus merito conditur in tumulo. rex illi similis, si regnet tempore pacis, consilio gladio non fuit a karolo. qva vicere sui, rvit hic sacra victima belli. mores sibi uita fvit, ecclesiae cecidit.” 87. Panofsky, Tomb Sculpture, 51–53. 88. Ibid., 52. 89. The inscription reads, “+ ann[o] d[omi]ni m[illesim]o c[entisim]o. viii ind. i.iii kal[ends] . . . . . . i comtisse.” 90. On Saint Isarn’s tomb, see Caby et al., Vie d’Isarn, 103–9; Bousquet, “La Tombe de l’abbé Isarn”; Panofsky, Tomb Sculpture, 51. Adhémar, Influences Antiques, 236, first compared it with the Gallo-Roman tomb at Saulieu. 91. Saint Victor de Marseille, no. 62. 92. Schapiro, “Romanesque Sculpture of Moissac,” 142–43, 149–50; Droste, Skulpturen von Moissac, 143–44.

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93. See Hearn, Romanesque Sculpture, 125–26; Forsyth, “Vita Apostolica.” 94. On Widukind’s tomb, see Böhm, Mittelalterliche figurliche Grabmaler, I.1, 31–40. 95. Morris, Discovery of the Individual, 91–92. 96. Bynum, Jesus as Mother, 82–109. 97. Ibid., 85. 98. Ibid., 87. 99. See ibid., 101–2; Javelet, Image et ressemblance. 100. Constable, Three Studies, 192–94. 101. Bynum, Jesus as Mother, 90–95; Constable, Reformation of the Twelfth Century; and Congar, “Laïcs et l’écclésiologie.” 102. Hugh of Saint Victor, De institutione novitiorum 7, “De exemplis sanctorum imitandis” (PL 176.932D–933C), trans. Bynum, Jesus as Mother, 97–98; translation modified by author. 103. Gerhoh of Reichersberg, Commentarium in Psalmos 7, Ps. 66 (PL 194.155D–156A, esp. 156A), cited in Javelet, Image et ressemblance, 2:236. 104. Pastoureau, “Les Sceaux.” 105. Bedos-Rezak, “Medieval Identity,” 1490. 106. Bedos-Rezak, “Medieval Identity”; Bedos-Rezak, “Signes d’identité”; Bedos-Rezak, “Replica,” esp. 51–56. 107. Jaeger, Envy of Angels, 107. 108. North, “In the Shadows,” 349–68; Bruno of Segni, Tractatus de sacramentis ecclesiae: De vestibus episcopalibus (PL 165.1103–10). 109. Bruno of Segni, Tractatus de sacramentis ecclesiae (PL 165.1106B). 110. For further discussion of the rationale of the bishop and the relationship between outward ornamentation and the virtues of the officeholder, see Hahn, “Portable Altars.” 111. On these tombs, see Legner, Romanische Kunst, 178, pls. 292–93; and Panofsky, Tomb Sculpture, 52. 112. Kantorowicz, King’s Two Bodies, 46–59. 113. See Hehl, “Erzbischöfe von Mainz.” 114. Robinson, Authority and Resistance, 115–24. 115. Schramm, Kaiser, Könige und Päpste, 3:100. 116. Ibid. 117. Ibid., 98: “ut, illo regnante, sit sanitas corporum in patria, et pax inviolata sit in regno, et dignitas gloriosa regalis palatii maximo splendore regiae potestatis oculis omnium fulgeat, luce clarissima clarescat atque splendere, quasi splendidissima fulgura, maximo perfusa lumine videatur.” 118. Caby et al., Vie d’Isarn, 106, notes that the date of 1048 given in the inscription is contradicted by other sources recording his death in September 1047; it is possible that 1048 refers to the year in which the tomb was erected.

119. The inscription plaque reads as follows: “obiit anno mxlviii. ind[ictione i epacta] iii. sacra viri clari /svnt hic sita patris isarni / me[m]bra svis studiis / glorificata piis. qvae felix vegetans / anima provexit ad alta. morib[vs] egregiis pacificisq[ue] animis. na[m] redimitus erat /hic virtutis speciebus. vir d[omin]i cunctis p[ro] qvib[vs] est hilaris; quae fecit docuit / abbas pius atq[ve] beatus; discipvlosq[ve] svos / compvlit esse pios; sic vivens tenvit / regim[en] sed clavdere lim[en]. compvlsvs vite est / acriter misere; rexit bis denisqve / septemq[ve] fidelit[er] annis. comissvmq[ve] sibi/dulce gregem d[omi]ni; respuit octobris / t[e]r[r]as octavo kalendas. et cepit rutili / regna subire poli.” The inscription above his head reads, “cerne, precor, que lex hominis noxa protoplasti in me defuncto lector inest misero.” At the feet of the effigy the inscription reads, “sicque gemens corde + dic deus huic miserere amen.” For the transcription and interpretation, see Favreau, Epigraphie, 71–74; and Caby et al., Vie d’Isarn, 104–5. 120. Kendall, Allegory of the Church, 92–98. 121. Le Goff, Birth of Purgatory. 122. See Hinz, Grabdenkmal, 34; and Ramm, Merseburger Dom, 55–60. 123. In general, see Binski, Medieval Death; and essays in Valdez del Álamo and Pendergast, Memory and the Medieval Tomb. 124. For the role of later medieval tomb chests as prompts to chantry priests, see Morganstern, “Tomb as Prompter.” 125. Panofsky, Tomb Sculpture, 53. 126. Debiais, “Inscription funéraire.” 127. Ibid., 342: “Cerne, precor, que lex hominis noxa protoplasti in me defuncto lector inest misero.” 128. “Qui legis hunc titulum dic requiescat amen, pater noster et de profundis”; cited ibid., 360. 129. Bynum, Resurrection of the Body, 115–226. 130. Hugh of Saint Victor, De sacramentis 2.17.13 (PL 266.602–4), trans. Bynum, Resurrection of the Body, 130; translation modified by author. 131. Peter Lombard, Sentences 4.44.2.3, p. 240. 132. Vogel and Elze, Pontifical romano-germanique, 281–317; Andrieu, Pontificals romains, 277–85. 133. Ordo LIA, no. 14; Andrieu, Pontificals romains, 279. 134. Andrieu, Pontificals romains, 280–81, no. 6; and Vogel and Elze, Pontifical roman-germanique, 320. Translation modified from translation by author in Dale, “Individual,” 730. 135. Missa in anniversario, in Vogel and Elze, Pontifical roman-germanique, 162.2, p. 318.

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Notes to Pages 116–123 136. Truitt, Medieval Robots, 72–80. 137. Ibid., 96–110. 138. See Kantorowicz, King’s Two Bodies, 387–450; and Brown, “Royal Bodies.” Brown complicates Kantorowicz’s thesis, showing the multiple “bodies” of the king represented in the royal funerary rituals. 139. Truitt, Medieval Robots, 99. 140. Grundmann, Cappenberger Barbarossakopf; Appuhn, “Beobachtungen.” 141. Balzer, “Der Cappenberger Barbarossakopf.” 142. On this detail and further questions concerning the current state of preservation of the object, I follow Appuhn, “Beobachtungen,” esp. 139–45. 143. The inscriptions transcribed by Grundmann, Cappenberger Barbarossakopf, 6, read as follows: “Hic quod servetur, / de crine Johannis habetur. Te prece pulsantes / exaudi sancte Johannes [upper band:] Apocalista, datum/tibi mu[nus] sus[cipe gr]atum [lower band:] “[E]t p[i]lus Ottoni/succurre precando datori.” 144. Grundmann, ibid., 7, offers a transcription of the pertinent passage from the parchment document of the abbey’s foundation: “Ita etiam crucem auream, quam sancti Johannis appellare solebam, cum gemmis et catenulis aureis, quin et capud argenteum ad imperatoris formatum effigiem cum sua pelvi nichilominus argentea, necnon et calicem, quem mihi Trekacensis misit episcopus . . . ad perpetuum ornatum memorate ecclesie tota devotione inviolabiliter dedicavi.” 145. Grundmann, ibid.: “Cesar et augustus / hec Ottoni Fridericus Munera patrino / contuli, ille deo. Quem lavat unda foris, / hominis memor interioris / Ut sis, quod no es, / ablue, terge, quod es.” 146. Ibid., 8. 147. This is made clear from the context in which the head is listed in the document of the gift. See ibid.; and Appuhn, “Beobachtungen,” 186. 148. Rahewin, in Gesta Frederici 4.86, cited in Grundmann, Cappenberger Barbarossakopf, 104–5, trans. Morris, Discovery of the Individual, 94. Görich, Friedrich Barbarossa, 642–48, questions the identity of the head because the document of Otto’s donation mentions a silver head, and also because there is no inscription specifically naming Frederick as the focus of the community’s prayers. But these are rather weak arguments compared with the strong circumstantial evidence and the details of the portrait itself. Nilgen, “Herrscherbild,” 358–60, connects the head with Charlemagne, whose sainthood was promoted by Barbarossa. 149. Morris, Discovery of the Individual, 94.

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150. Philippi, “Die Cappenberger Porträtbüste Kaiser Friedrichs I.,” 155, 159. For German scholarship reflecting this viewpoint, see Grundmann, Cappenberger Barbarossakopf, 46–67. 151. Falk, “Bildnisreliquiar,” 175, sees this as an ideal image of the ruler, following a long tradition of imperial portraiture. 152. Cf. Appuhn, “Beobachtungen,” 145–46. 153. See Kahsnitz, “Staufische Kameen,” esp. 484 and pl. 360. 154. Falk, “Bildnisreliquiar,” no. 29, 168–71; Legner, Romanische Kunst, 77, 182, no. 335. 155. Falk, “Bildnisreliquiar,” 171. 156. On the representation of John the Baptist’s disembodied head, see Weyl-Carr, “Face Relics of John the Baptist.” 157. Kallaur, “Une réconsidération du portrait”; Faral, Arts poétiques, 75–80. 158. Documentum 2.2.10, in Faral, Arts poétiques, 273. 159. Grundmann, Cappenberger Barbarossakopf, 52–53. 160. Hue de Rotelande, Ipomédon, 79–81, ll. 391–433. 161. Ibid., 82, lines 437–38. 162. Brault, Chanson de Roland, 1:8–9, stanza 8, lines 116–18; 1:190– 91, stanza 226, lines 3115–16; translation modified by author. 163. Ibid., 1:18–19, stanza 20, lines 283–85. 164. Sauerländer, “Fate of the Face,” 4. 165. Kenaan-Kedar, Marginal Sculpture; and Sauerländer, “Über Physiognomik,” 103–12. 166. Little, Set in Stone, 108–9, no. 41. 167. Atchley, History of the Use of Incense, 97–116; King, Liturgy of the Roman Church, 163–74; Gauthier, “L’Encens dans la liturgie chrétienne.” 168. On the “odor of sanctity,” see Albert, “Odeurs de Sainteté.” 169. In the Sarum rite, the corpse was censed three times during the Requiem Mass, starting at the head and moving to the sides; three times during the burial service and again at the grave. The tomb was also censed on anniversaries of the death of clerics. See Atchley, History of the Use of Incense, 114–15. For the archaeological evidence of incense pots in use at funerals, see Baeten et al., “Holy Smoke.” 170. On the tomb effigy and its later vicissitudes, see Erlande-Brandenburg, Royal Tombs, no. 2; and Brown, “Burying and Unburying.” For the ritual text, see Martène, De antiquis monachorum ritibus, vol. 1, bk. 3, chap. 24, sec. 8, pp. 504–5. 171. Martène, De antiquis monachorum ritibus, vol. 1, bk. 3, chap. 24, sec. 9. 172. Bishop Werner provided for Rudolf ’s commemoration after that of Henry II in his will, as recorded in the Chronica episcoporum Merseburgensium 11, p. 185, line 34. 173. Cowdrey, Pope Gregory VII, 207.

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174. See Kantorowicz, Laudes Regiae, 72n25; and Forsyth, Throne of Wisdom, 84–85. 175. See Hausherr and Väterlein, Die Zeit der Staufer, vol. 1, nos. 29 and 31; vol. 3, figs. 2 and 5. 176. See Falk, “Bildnisreliquiare,” esp. 141–217 for catalogue. 177. For links to Roman apotheosis images, see L’Orange, Studies, 90–102. 178. Brilliant, “Faces Demanding Attention.” Chapter 4 1. Bernard of Clairvaux, Apologia ad Guillelmum abbatem, trans. Rudolph, “Things of Greater Importance,” 282–83. This chapter revises and expands Dale, “Monsters.” 2. On the Silos capitals, see Valdez del Álamo, Palace of the Mind, 65–89. 3. On the cloister capitals of Ripoll, see Lorés Otzet, “Decoración escultórica,” esp. 179–84, redating the Romanesque capitals from the north branch of the lower cloister to ca. 1160; and Westerby, “Religious Experience and Monastic Identity” 154–95. 4. Cazes and Scelles, Cloître de Moissac. 5. Focillon, Art des sculpteurs romans, 185–87. 6. Ibid., 161–62. 7. Cahn, “Romanesque Art,” 38n23, offers this skeptical characterization of attempts to interpret the Cuxa capitals. Ambrose, Marvellous and the Monstrous, 5–6, observes the “salient physicality” of the monstrous in Romanesque sculpture. 8. Friedman, Monstrous Races, 59–86. 9. On the visualization of garbled speech and sign language among the monstrous races, see Ambrose, Nave Sculptures of Vézelay, 28–33. 10. Viollet-le-Duc, “Sculpture,” esp. 244–45; Mâle, Art religieux du XIIe siècle, 340–63. 11. Baltrušaitis, Stylistique ornementale, 95–162, 273–97. 12. Schapiro, “On the Aesthetic Attitude,” esp. 6–7. 13. Ibid., 10. 14. Gombrich, Sense of Order, 276. 15. Valdez del Álamo, Palace of the Mind, 60–65; Rudolph, Violence and Daily Life. 16. Camille, Image on the Edge, 61–65. 17. Ibid., 92–93. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, only became widely known after its translation from Russian into English in 1984. 18. Williams, Deformed Discourse. 19. Friedman, Monstrous Races, foreword. The theme of monstrous races in cartography is taken up by Van Duzer, “Hic sunt dracones.”

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20. Strickland, Saracens, Demons, Jews; Strickland, “Monstrosity and Race,” 365–86. 21. Mellinkoff, Outcasts. 22. Miles, Carnal Knowing; Elliot, Fallen Bodies. 23. Mittman, “Are the ‘Monstrous Races’ Races?” 24. Mittman and Kim, Inconceivable Beasts, 10–15. 25. Bynum, Metamorphosis and Identity, 37–75. 26. Ibid., 43. 27. Ibid., 52–53. 28. Ibid., 55. 29. Ambrose, Marvellous and the Monstrous, esp. 44. 30. Ibid., 40–63. 31. Ibid., 109–22. 32. Camille, “Before the Gaze,” 212–14. 33. Carruthers, Craft of Thought, esp. 140–42. 34. Heslop, “Contemplating Chimera.” 35. Carruthers, “Varietas.” 36. Ibid., 39. 37. Forsyth, “Word-Play in the Cloister.” 38. Cohen, “Promise of Monsters,” 454; Mittman, “Impact of Monsters,” esp. 6–7. 39. Augustine, De civitate Dei 21.8.5 (PL 41.722–23). 40. Ibid., 16.8.1 (PL 41.486), trans. Bettenson, 662. 41. Ibid., 22.19.1 (PL 41.781). 42. Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae 11.3.2 (PL 43.419B–C), trans. Barney et al., 243. 43. Ibid., trans. Barney et al., 243–44. 44. Ibid., 11.3.3 (PL 43: 419D), trans. Barney et al., 244. 45. See Muenkler, “Experiencing Strangeness”; Strickland, “Monstrosity and Race”; Van Duzer, “Hic sunt dracones.” 46. Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae 11.3.4 (PL 43.419C–D), trans. Barney et al., 244. 47. Hrabanus Maurus, De universo (PL 111.195C–198D). 48. Friedman, Monstrous Races, 93. 49. Rupert of Deutz, De trinitate 4.9 (PL 167.335B–C). Cited together with the visual parallel by Friedman, Monstrous Races, 96–97. 50. Augustine, De trinitate 11.5.8 (PL 42:990–92), trans. McKenna, 326. 51. Ibid., 11.10.17 (PL 42:997), trans. McKenna, 338–39. 52. Herbert of Clairvaux, Tres libri de miraculis, 1.3 (PL 185.1294C), cited in Torrell and Bouthillier, Pierre le Vénérable, 288–89. 53. Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermones in quadragesima de psalmo “Qui habitat,” trans. Saïd, Sermons on Conversion, 83–261. 54. Ibid., 3.1, trans. Saïd, Sermons on Conversion, 129. 55. Ibid., trans. Saïd, Sermons on Conversion, 130. 56. Ibid., 13.3, trans. Saïd, Sermons on Conversion, 224.

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Notes to Pages 139–148 57. Hugh of St. Victor, De institutione novitiorum 10 (PL1 76.935B– C), trans. Jaeger, Envy of Angels, 260. 58. Ibid., 12, “De disciplina servanda in gestu” (PL 176.942A–943B). 59. Peter the Venerable, Epistulae 111, ed. Constable, 2:297, l. 23. 60. Bynum, Metamorphosis and Identity, 115, 117–27. 61. Bernard of Clairvaux, De consideratione libri v, 2.14, in Sancti Bernardi opera, 3:422, l. 3. 62. Bernard of Clairvaux, Epistulae 250, pt. 4, in Sancti Bernardi opera, 8:147, l. 1. 63. On the functional aspects of the cloister and its symbolism, see Meyvaert, “Medieval Monastic Claustrum”; and Dynes, “Cloister as Portico of Solomon.” 64. On the paradisiacal associations of the cloister, see also Meyvaert, “Medieval Monastic Garden,” esp. 51; Constable, Reformation of the Twelfth Century, 138–40. 65. Peter of Celle, Selected Works, 79, cited in Camille, Image on the Edge, 56. 66. Peter of Celle, Selected Works, 89–90. 67. Ibid., 81. 68. For a survey of all the activities in the cloister, see Meyvaert, “Medieval Monastic Claustrum,” 53–59; and Boynton and Cochelin, From Dead of Night to End of Day. 69. Peter the Venerable, Statutes 23, 53, ed. Constable, 60 and 83; Werckmeister, “Emmaus and Thomas Pillar,” 160. 70. Horste, Cloister Design and Monastic Reform, 158–59, 166–68; Seidel, “Medieval Cloister Carving.” 71. Hamburger, St. John the Divine, 95–164, esp. 95–98, 130–36. 72. Ibid., 18–19, 185–201; Seidel, “Medieval Cloister Carving.” 73. Hamburger, St. John the Divine, 130. 74. Valdez del Álamo, Palace of the Mind, 116–17. 75. Leclercq, Love of Learning, 72–73. 76. For previous bibliography on the sculpture of Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa, see Dale, “Monsters.” 77. On the attribution of this capital to the cloister, see ibid., 433n72. 78. Schapiro, Romanesque Art, 70n21, 77n48; Frugoni, “L’Iconographie de la femme,” esp. 182; and Fraïsse, “Un Traité des vertus et des vices,” 234–35. 79. Kenaan-Kedar, Marginal Sculpture, 25 and fig. 1.36. 80. Schapiro, Romanesque Art, 45. 81. Werckmeister, “Emmaus and Thomas Pillar,” argued that in this particular case, the jongleurs actually depict religious celebrations in the portico of the temple, as described in the Old Testament narrative recited during the liturgy of the Easter octave. See also Valdez del Álamo, Palace of the Mind, 122–27. 82. Werckmeister, “Emmaus and Thomas Pillar.”

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83. See Frugoni, “L’Iconographie de la femme,” 119–21; Steger, David Rex, Dkm. 38; Robertson, Preface to Chaucer, 130, fig. 29; Schmitt, Raison des gestes, 263–65. 84. Frugoni, “L’Iconographie de la femme,” 116nn18–20, 117. 85. See Ambrose, Nave Sculptures of Vézelay, 89, with earlier bibliography. For the interpretation of this capital as the “lyre de Satan,” see Mâle, Art religieux du XIIe siècle, 374. 86. Bernard of Chartres, Glossae super Platonem, trans. Jaeger, Envy of Angels, 168. 87. Holsinger, Music, Body, and Desire, 12. 88. See Boynton, “Training for the Liturgy”; Cochelin, “Besides the Book.” 89. On the image of the jongleur in twelfth- and thirteenth-century society, see Faral, Les Jongleurs; Leclercq, “Ioculator et saltator”; and Baldwin, “Image of the Jongleur.” 90. Délatte, Rule of Saint Benedict, 33–34; Leclercq, “Ioculator et saltator,” 126. 91. Nicoll, Masks, Mimes and Miracles, 150–75; Arden, Fools’ Plays, 17–20 92. For an overview of the ideology of dance in later medieval art, see Alexander, “Dancing in the Streets.” 93. Riché, “Danses profanes et religieuses.” 94. Bernard of Clairvaux, Epistola LXXXVII ad Ogerium (PL 182.217B). See especially Leclercq, “Ioculator et saltator,” 124–48. 95. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 196–276. 96. Nicoll, Masks, Mimes, and Miracles, 190. 97. Janson, Apes and Ape Lore, 45–46. 98. Augustine, De natura boni 14 (PL 42.555); Schapiro, “On the Aesthetic Attitude,” 8. 99. Janson, Apes and Ape Lore, 46–47. 100. For other French examples at Notre-Dame at Cunault (Maine-et-Loire) and Saint-Pierre at Oloron Sainte-Marie, see Rupprecht, Romanische Skulptur in Frankreich, pls. 208 and 218. 101. Janson, Apes and Ape Lore, 19–20. 102. Cambridge University Library, ms II.4.26; White, Book of Beasts, 34–35. 103. Schmitt, Raison des gestes, 137. 104. Carruthers, “Varietas.” 105. Liber monstrorum 6 (PL 41.485–87). See Faral, “La Queue de Poisson.” On the attribution of this capital, see Dale, “Monsters,” 434n107. 106. The Vulgate, in contrast to modern translations, mentions the sirens: “Sed requiescent ibi bestiae, et replebuntur domus eorum draconibus, et habitabunt ibi struthiones, et pilosi saltabunt ibi; et respondebunt ibi ululae in aedibus ejus, et sirenes in delubris voluptatis.” 107. Courcelle, “L’Interprétation evhémériste.”

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108. See Hassig, Medieval Bestiaries, 104–15. 109. As discussed in Dale, “Monsters,” 419–20. 110. For a general survey of sirens in Romanesque sculpture, see Weir and Jerman, Images of Lust, 48–57. 111. See Saugnieux, “Culture religieuse et culture profane”; Dalarun, “Clerical Gaze,” 17–21; and Thomasset, “Nature of Woman,” 43–69. 112. Geoffrey of Vendôme, Epistolae 24 (PL 157.168), trans. Dalarun, “Clerical Gaze,” 19. 113. Gold, Lady and the Virgin, 76–93; King, Western Monasticism, 164, 181–82. 114. Camille, Image on the Edge, esp. 47–51. 115. For the concept of ruminatio, see Leclercq, Love of Learning, 90. 116. Baschet, Justices de l’au-delà, 233–43. 117. Rupprecht, Romanische Skulptur, 197–100, pls. 114–19. 118. Schmidt, Iconography of the Mouth; Sheingorn, “Who Can Open?” 119. Schmidt, Iconography of the Mouth, 41–45. 120. Baschet, Justices de l’au-delà, 239. 121. On this theme in art, see Bynum, Resurrection of the Body, 192–99; and Debidour, Bestiaire sculpté, pls. 204, 216–17. 122. Bynum, Resurrection of the Body, 117–57; and Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption, 280–91. 123. For Augustine’s key statements on the subject, see De civitate Dei 22.19, trans. Bettenson, 1060–61. 124. On this theme in art, see Bynum, Resurrection of the Body, 192–99, and Debidour, Bestiaire sculpté, pls. 204, 216–17. 125. Baschet, Les Justices de l’au-delà, 17–83, 85–134. 126. Gregory the Great, Moralia in Job 32.21, trans. J. Bliss, Morals on the Book of Job, 3(2):526. 127. Schapiro, Romanesque Art, 10. 128. Ibid. See Camille, “How New York Stole.” 129. Mâle, Art religieux du XIIe siècle, 365–76. 130. For Peter the Venerable’s De miraculis libri duo as well as the Cistercian sources, see Torrell and Bouthillier, Pierre le Vénérable, 220–28. 131. See Kruger, Dreaming in the Middle Ages, 20–34. 132. Macrobii Ambrosii Theodosii Commentari in Ciceronis Somnium Scipionis 1, cited and trans. Kruger, Dreaming in the Middle Ages, 22. 133. Augustine, De trinitate 11.5.8 (PL 42.990–92), trans. McKenna, 326. 134. Liber de spiritu et anima 26, “Spectrorum ratio” (PL 40.798), trans. McGinn, Three Treatises on Man, 222. 135. Athanasius, Vita Antonii (PG 26.835–978). 136. Dialogorum libri IV 2.25, in Gregory the Great, Life and Miracles of St. Benedict, trans. Zimmermann and Avery, 94–95.

137. Peter the Venerable, De miraculis libri duo I.12, in Livre des merveilles de Dieu, 43. 138. De miraculis libri duo I.25, pp., 75–79. 139. Athanasius, Vita Antonii (PG 26.835–978). 140. On Cassian’s preoccupation with the preservation of chastity and the monk’s constant battle against lust and nocturnal pollutions, see Foucault, “Le Combat de la chasteté”; and Brown, Body and Society, 420–23. 141. Cassian, De institutis 6.10 (PL 49.278–79), 6.12–13 (PL 49.281B– 285A), trans. Ramsey, 158–59. 142. Ibid., 6.22 (PL 49.291A), trans. Ramsey, 162. 143. De spiritu et anima 23, “Percipiendi in anima quot vires. Somnia lasciva” (PL 40.796), adapted from McGinn, Three Treatises on Man, 216. 144. Kruger, Dreaming in the Middle Ages, 70–78. 145. Ibid., 70. 146. Rosenwein, “Feudal War and Monastic Peace,” 145; Rosenwein and Little, “Social Meaning,” esp. 7–10. 147. S. Benedicti Regula 18, “Quo ordine ipsi psalmi dicendi sunt,” and 19, “De disciplina psallendi.” On the place of the psalms in the monastic liturgy and their role in monastic education, see also Dyer, “Singing of the Psalms”; and Gehl, “Mystical Language Models,” esp. 220–26. 148. See Rosenwein and Little, “Social Meaning,” esp. 7. 149. Riché, Education and Culture, 115–17, 463–66; Gehl, “Mystical Language Models.” 150. The following discussion of compline is based on the Rule of Saint Benedict, chaps. 17 and 18; Hughes, Medieval Manuscripts, 74–75; and Martimort, Church at Prayer, 3:173, 245, 271–72. The most accessible outline of all components of the service is found in Harper, Forms and Orders, 102–5. 151. See Le Goff, Medieval Imagination, 255. The full text, which can be traced back in monastic sources as early as the ninth century, appears in Walpole, Early Latin Hymns, 298–99: “Procul recedant somnia; Et noxia phantasmata; Hostemque nostrum comprime; Ne polluantur corpora.” 152. Carruthers, Craft of Thought, 272–76. 153. Ibid., 274–75. 154. Rutchick, “Sculpture Programs,” 2:173–263. 155. Rudolph, Violence and Daily Life, 56–61. 156. Ibid., 36. For the following discussion of the theme of temptations and their conception by God as a means of trial and purgation in the Moralia, I draw upon Gillet, Grégoire le grand, 54–64. 157. Gregory the Great, Moralia in Job 8.41–43, ed. Adriaen, 411–15. 158. In a passing remark, Michael Clanchy has already suggested such a function for Bernard’s cloister capitals: “Representing

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Notes to Pages 157–173 these images three-dimensionally in sculpture was one way of coming to terms with them.” Clanchy, Abelard, 58. 159. Carruthers, Craft of Thought, 94–107. 160. I thank Professor Michael Clanchy for suggesting this line of inquiry to me. 161. Leclercq, Second Look, 103–27. 162. Sommerfeldt, Spiritual Teachings, 95–101; Van Hecke, Désir dans l’expérience religieusem, 119–200; Burton, “‘Le Verbe est même.’” I thank Father John of Taizé via Luisa Saffiotti for the last two references here. 163. Leclercq, Second Look, 111. 164. On the power of music itself to combat demons, especially in the Cistercian context, see Page, Owl and the Nightingale, 165–69. 165. On the Chauvigny capitals, see Labande-Mailfert, Poitou roman, 95–123; Barbier, “La Collégiale Saint-Pierre de Chauvigny”; Wirth, Image à l’époque romane, 113–14, 120–21, 243–45. 166. Wirth, Image à l’époque romane, 113–14. 167. Ambrose, Marvellous and the Monstrous, 109–21. 168. Godefridus Admontensis, Homiliae festivales, Homilia 15, “In Epiphaniam Domini secunda” (PL 174.685A–B). 169. Bynum, Metamorphosis and Identity. 170. Elliott, Fallen Bodies, 81–106. 171. Ibid., 116–17. 172. Peter Damian, Epistola 112, cited and trans. Elliott, Fallen Bodies, 102. 173. Iogna-Prat, Maison Dieu. 174. Baschet, Bonne, and Dittmar, Monde roman, 38–41, 43–93. 175. See, e.g., Seidel, “Moissac Portal?” 176. Schapiro, “Sculptures of Souillac,” esp. 114–19; Knicely, “Food for Thought”; and Baschet, “Iconography Beyond Iconography.” 177. Schapiro, “Sculptures of Moissac,” 119. 178. Baschet, “Iconography Beyond Iconography,” 32. 179. Schapiro, “Sculptures of Moissac,” 119. 180. For the iconographic program of the sculpture of Beaulieu, see Zink, “Moissac, Beaulieu, Charlieu”; Klein, “Tympon von Beaulieu”; Klein, “Programmes eschatologiques”; and Vescovi, “Eschatological Mirror.” 181. Vescovi, “Eschatological Mirror.” 182. Zink, “Moissac, Beaulieu, Charlieu,” 140–44. 183. For comparisons from the early thirteenth century, see British Library, ms Arundel 157, fol. 18v, illustrated at http://www.bl .uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/ILLUMIN.ASP ?Size=mid&IllID=13324; Oxford, Bodleian Library, ms Bodley 764, fol. 38v, illustrated at http://bestiary.ca/beasts/beastgal lery197.htm# and in De Hamel, Book of Beasts.

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184. Athanasius, Life of Saint Antony, 51. 185. Augustine, attributed, Sermo 39, “De Vita Solitaria et Contemplativa, Ad fratres in eremo commorantes” (PL 40.1307C–D). 186. Peter of Celle, Sermo 3, “In Adventu Domini III” (PL 202.644B–C). 187. Augustine, Ennarrationes in Psalmos 49.11 (PL 36.1024). 188. On the more positive role of this image of the Jews in the tympanum in relation to a sermon by Gregory the Great included in the Cluniac lectionary for Easter, see Vescovi, “Eschatological Mirror,” 67–68. 189. Zink, “Moissac, Beaulieu, Charlieu,” 140–41. 190. See examples in Jensen, Understanding Early Christian Art, 10–11, 19–25, 65–71. 191. For the nineteenth-century facsimile of the Hortus deliciarum that is the primary source of knowledge of the Hortus deliciarum and commentary, see Green et al., Hortus deliciarum, 422–35 on Last Judgment. 192. For the inscription, see ibid., 267, pl. 93. For translation and commentary, see Bynum, Resurrection of the Body, 118–19, 130. 193. This theme is also highlighted in the liturgical readings for Lent and Easter discussed by Vescovi, “Eschatological Mirror,” 66–68, in relation to the portal sculpture. 194. “si fili[vs] dei es/dic ut lapi/de[s] isi/panes fi/ant” (If you are the Son of God, command that these stones be made into bread; Matt. 4:3). Transcribed by Vescovi, “Eschatological Mirror,” 62. 195. “si fili[vs] d[e]i es/mit[t]e te/deorsvm” (If you are the Son of God, cast yourself down; Matt. 4:6). Transcribed by Vescovi, “Eschatological Mirror,” 62. 196. Bernard of Clairvaux, In Psalmum XC, Qui Habitat, Sermones XVII 14.6 (PL183.241C–D), trans. Saïd, Sermons on Conversion, 234–35. 197. Ibid. (PL183.241D), trans. Saïd, Sermons on Conversion, 235. 198. Ibid., 14.7 (PL 183.241D–242A), trans. Saïd, Sermons on Conversion, 235–36. 199. Ibid., 14.8 (PL 183.242C–D), trans. Saïd, Sermons on Conversion, 236–37. 200. Ibid., 17.7 (PL 183.254B), trans. Saïd, Sermons on Conversion, 260.

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Chapter 5 1. On Hugh of Lincoln’s text, see Life of Saint Hugh, 444–45; Sheingorn, “‘For God Is Such a Doomsman,’” 39; Sheingorn, “‘Who Can Open,’” 1–19. 2. See Schmidt, Iconography of the Mouth of Hell.

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Notes to Pages 174–190

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3. Palazzo, Invention chrétienne des cinq sens, chap. 4, focuses on the idea of the portal anticipating the Eucharist and the restoration of cosmic harmony through the liturgy’s multisensory rituals. 4. Boynton, Shaping a Liturgy, 64. See also Sullivan, “Sound and Senses,” who espouses a synaesthetic approach to the senses and interpretation; and Castineiras, “Romanesque Portal as Performance.” 5. Panofsky, Renaissances and Renascences, 56–57. 6. See Hearn, Romanesque Sculpture, 26–34. 7. Vergnolle, Art Roman en France, 118–19, 123–26. 8. Seidel, Songs of Glory. 9. Schapiro, Romanesque Architectural Sculpture, 3–33. 10. Cf. Fassler, Virgin of Chartres, 282–322; Abel, Open Access, 91–120. 11. Maxwell, Art of Medieval Urbanism. 12. Iogna-Prat, Maison Dieu. 13. See Hayes, Body and Sacred Place, 54. 14. Palazzo, Invention chrétienne des cinq sens, chap. 3. 15. Méhu, “Historiae et imagines”; Iogna-Prat, Maison Dieu, 266. See also Palazzo, Invention chrétienne des cinq sens, chap. 3. 16. For the rites of consecration, see Iogna-Prat, Masion Dieu, 259–315. 17. Ibid., 273–75. 18. Bernard of Clairvaux, Apologia, trans. Rudolph, “Things of Greater Importance,” 278–79. 19. Onians, Bearers of Meaning, 112–29. 20. Compare Baschet, Bonne, and Dittmar, Monde roman, 19–42. 21. For other examples of the “column swallowers,” see http:// www.beyond-the-pale.org.uk/column.htm. 22. Vöge, Anfänge des monumentalen Stiles, 4–8, 49–66; Panofsky, Renaissance and Renascences, 60–64. On the reproduction of contemporaneous fabrics in the column figures, see Snyder, Early Gothic Column Figures, esp. 163–95. On the Romanesque statue columns, see Hearn, Romanesque Sculpture, 145–47, fig. 106, 155–58, figs. 114–16. 23. Forsyth, “Vita Apostolica”; Hearn, Romanesque Sculpture, 119–26. 24. Onians, Bearers of Meaning, 70–71. 25. On the configuration of the commemorative stelae of the apostles surrounding Constantine’s tomb, see Mango, “Constantine’s Mausoleum.” 26. Hrabanus Maurus, De universo (PL 111.404A–B), cited and translated in Onians, Bearers of Meaning, 75. 27. Dynes, “Cloister as Portico of Solomon.” 28. Hearn, Romanesque Sculpture, 169–91; Demus, Romanesque Mural Painting, 14–19.

29. On the conflation of the Ascension with the Second Coming, see Schiller, Ikonographie, 3:160–63. 30. The two men dressed in white garments foretell Christ’s Second Coming when they inform the apostles, “Hic Iesus qui adsumptus est a vobis in caelum sic veniet quemadmodum vidistis eum euntem in caelum” (Acts 1:11). 31. Conant, “Theophany”; Hearn, Romanesque Sculpture, 132–39; Rupprecht, Romanische Skulptur in Frankreich, 105; Vergnolle, Art roman en France, 237–40. 32. See Schiller, Ikonographie, 3:144–52, figs. 459–61. 33. Augustine, Sermo 262 (PL 38.1207–9), trans. M. F. Toale. 34. Ivo of Chartres, Sermo XIX, “In Ascensione Domini” (PL 162.591B–C). 35. Ibid., 591D–592A. 36. Klein, “Programmes eschatologiques”; Zink, “Moissac, Beaulieu, Charlieu,” 91–128; Drost, Skulpturen von Moissac, 153–220; Forsyth, “Narrative at Moissac.” 37. Focillon, Art d’Occident, 95–136, esp. 117; Mâle, Art religieux du douzième siècle, iii, 4–9. 38. Hamburger, St. John the Divine. 39. For an instructive overview, see Nolan, Gothic Visionary Perspective. 40. Richard of Saint Victor, In Apocalypsim Joannis (Commentary on the Apocalypse) 1 (PL 196.687A–B): “Notat autem hic duplicem modum revelationis divinae, quae theologorum et prophetarum mentibus infusa est per visiones et demonstrationes, quas Graeci vocant theophanias, id est divinas apparitiones, quae aliquando per signa sensibilibus similia invisibilia demonstrata sunt.” 41. Ibid., 699B–699C: “Videbit eum corporalis oculus hominem verum. Spiritualis oculus Deum verum. . . . Videbit eum oculus corporalis ejus claritatem admirando.” 42. Richard of Saint Victor, Benjamin Major (PL 196.147A–D), cited and trans. Nolan, Gothic Visionary Perspective, 33–34. 43. Nolan, Gothic Visionary Perspective, 66. 44. Hahn, “Vision,” 56–57. 45. For the notion of iter in the sacred space in the Romanesque church, see Baschet, Bonne, and Dittmar, Monde roman, 35–37, 183–242. For the concept of ductus, see Carruthers, Craft of Thought, 260–62, 266–69. 46. On the Presentation, see Schiller, Iconography, 1:90–94. 47. Kendall, Allegory of the Church, 90. 48. Dale, “Nude at Moissac,” 74. 49. Ibid., 75. 50. The third example, as discussed by Vergnolle, Art roman en France, 248, is the damaged portal of the former cathedral of Saint-Vincent at Macon.

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Notes to Pages 190–208 51. Seidel, Legends in Limestone, 63–78, argues that Gislebertus is a tenth-century patron of the church. 52. Gurevich, “West Portal,” 91–99. 53. On the shrine of Lazarus at Autun, see Bleeke, “Eve Fragment”; and Seidel, Legends in Limestone, 33–62. On the connection between spiritual and physical healing at shrines of the saints, see Kupfer, Art of Healing. 54. “omnia dispono solvs meritos[qve?] corono qvos scelvs exercet me ivdice poena coercet.” Cited in Zink, “Zur Ikonographie,” 87. 55. Zink, “Zur Ikonographie” 97. 56. Porter, Crosses and Culture of Ireland, 72. 57. Cf. Zink, “Zur Ikonographie,” 97. 58. “terreat hic terror qvos terrevs alligat error nam fore sic verum notat hic horror speciervm.” Kendall, Allegory of the Church, 90. 59. “In paradisum deducant te angeli; in tuo adventu suscipiant te martyres, et perducant te in civitatem sanctam Ierusalem.” It is accompanied by the response: Chorus angelorum: Chorus angelorum te suscipiat, et cum Lazaro quondam paupere æternam habeas requiem.” See Ottosen, Responsories and Versicles, 398, R113; Paxton, Christianizing Death, 39–40; Sicard, Liturgie de la mort, 66–70. 60. “Subvenite sancti dei occurrite angeli domini suscipientes animam ejus offerrentes eam in conspectu altissimi.” See Paxton, Christianizing Death, 176; and Ottosen, Responsories and Versicles, 401, R90. 61. Cited in Zink, “Zur Ikonographie,” 53–55. 62. Paxton, Christianizing Death, 180–85. 63. Ibid., 181 and 184n51. 64. Ulrich of Zell, Antiquiores consuetudines cluniacensis monasterii collectore S. Udalrico monacho benedictino (PL 149.636–778). For a complete reconstruction of the Office of the Dead at Cluny, see Paxton, “Death by Customary,” 297–318; and Paxton, Cluniac Death Ritual. 65. Zink, “Zur Ikonographie,” 66–69. The present trumeau is a reconstruction made in 1863 by Michel Pascal of the original figures destroyed in 1763, but it coincides in subject with what was documented in the fifteenth century as part of the original program. 66. Constable, Three Studies, 1–142. 67. Nichols, Romanesque Signs, 15–65. 68. Sauerländer, “Omnes perversi,” 40. 69. For the identification of key figures in the procession and their links to the legendary foundation of the abbey, see Bonne, Art roman de face et de profil, 233–35; Remensnyder, Remembering Kings Past, 160–62; Baschet, Les Justices de l’au-delà, 160–61.

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Bonne and Baschet assume a more generic image of lay and ecclesiastical authority, while Remensnyder identifies the king as Charlemagne due to his role as legendary lay founder/ patron of the abbey. 70. Baschet, Les Justices de l’au-delà, 148–63. 71. Ibid., 150. 72. Ibid., 151. 73. Ambrose, “Attunement to the Damned.” 74. On the role of Sainte Foy in releasing prisoners, see Sauerländer, “Omnes perversi,” 46. 75. Bouché, “Anomaly and Enigma.” 76. “o peccatores transmutetis nisi mores, ivdicium dvrvm vobis scitote fvtvrvm.” See Kendall, Allegory of the Church, 93. 77. Rupprecht, Romanische Skulptur in Frankreich, 99. 78. Kendall, Allegory of the Church, 93–98, esp. 95. 79. Rupprecht, Romanische Skulptur in Frankreich, 99: “sic datvr electis ad celi gavdia v[e]ctis gloria pax reqvies perpetvvsqve dies.” Trans. Kendall, Allegory of the Church, 218, but with the mistaken translation of “dies” as light. 80. “sanctorvm cetus stat xpisto ivdice letvs.” Trans. Kendall, Allegory of the Church, 168; translation modified by author. 81. “penis inivsti crvciatvr in ignibvs vsti demonas atqve tremvnt perpetvoqve gemvnt.” Trans. Kendall, Allegory of the Church, 218; translation modified by author. 82. “hom[i]nes perversi sic svnt in tartara mers[i].” Ibid.; translation modified by author. 83. Kendall, ibid., reconstructs the series as “[fides spes] / caritas [constancia] / vmilitas.” Rupprecht, Romanische Skulptur in Frankreich, 99, recognizes traces of Constancia. 84. Bouché, “Anomaly and Enigma,” 317–28. 85. Bonne, Art roman de face et de profil, 45–58. 86. Low, ‘“‘You Who Once Were Far Off,” with earlier literature. 87. Taylor, “Pentecost at Vézelay.” 88. Angeben, “Apocalypse.” 89. Friedmann, Monstrous Races, 62–69, 77–80; Low, “‘You Who Were Once Far Off.’” 90. See Palazzo, “L’Iconographie des portails de Vézelay.” 91. Koehler, “Byzantine Art and the West.” 92. Étaix, “Le Lectionnaire de l’office à Cluny,” esp. 105–6. 93. On the history of the text of the hymn, see Connelly, Hymns of the Roman Liturgy, 106–7, with complete Latin text and translation. 94. “Accénde lumen sénsibus, Infúnde amórem córdibus. / Infírma nostri córporis / Virtúte firmans pérpeti.” 95. Biernoff, Sight and Embodiment, 97–98; Jung, “Tactile and the Visionary,” 207.

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Notes to Pages 208–218

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96. “Tu septifórmis múnere / Dextrae Dei tu dígitus / Tu rite promíssum Patris / Sermóne ditans gúttura.” 97. Guido Farfensis, Disciplina Farfensis 11 (PL 150.1215C). 98. “Factus est repente de caelo sonus advenientis spiritus vehementis alleluia alleluia.” See Cantus at http://cantusdatabase .org/id/002847. 99. “Repléti sunt ómnes, Spíritu Sáncto, et coepérunt lóqui, allelúia.” 100. Ambrose, Nave Sculpture of Vézelay, 28–32. 101. Raoul Glaber, Homilia LXXII, “In die Sancto Pentecostes” (PL 155.1935D–1940D, esp. 1938A–B). 102. Ibid., 155.1938C. 103. Odilon, Sermo IX, “In die Pentecostes” (PL 142.1014–19, esp. 1015C). 104. Peter Abelard, Sermo XVIII, “In die Pentecostes” (PL 178.505D–512D). 105. Ibid., 178.510B. 106. Guido Farfensis, Discipina Farfensis 11 (PL 150.1214C–1215C), esp. 1214C). 107. Ibid., 150.1215A. 108. Ibid., 1215C–1217C. 109. Udalricus Cluniacensis, Antiquiores consuetudines Cluniacensis monasterii 23, De vigilia Pentecostes (PL 149.671B–D). 110. Ibid., 149.671D. 111. Ibid., 149.671D–672A. 112. Atchley, History of Incense, 300–303. 113. Martène, De antiquis monachorum ritibus 1.3.22.11, p. 492, cited in Atchley, History of Incense, 303. 114. Anselmus Cantuariensis, Meditationes et orationes 1.3 (PL 158.712D–713A), translated in in Christian Classics Ethereal Library, http://www.ccel.org/ccel/anselm/meditations .iv.i.html. 115. William of Saint-Thierry, De natura corporis et animae (PL 180:695–726), trans. McGinn, Three Cistercian Treatises on Man, 117–23. 116. Appleby, “Priority of Sight.” 117. Peter the Venerable, Contra Petrobrusianos Hereticos 200, translated in Appleby, “Priority of Sight,” 133. Conclusion

6. Powell, Depositions. 7. See, e.g., Hersey, Falling in Love with Statues, 7–8. 8. Schloeder, Architecture in Communion. 9. Ahmed Rashid, “After 1,700 years, Buddhas Fall to Taliban Dynamite,” Telegraph, March 12, 2001, http://www.telegraph .co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/1326063/After-170 0-years-Buddhas-fall-to-Taliban-dynamite.html. 10. “Ten Years On: The Fall of Saddam’s Statue,” Listening Post— Feature, Al Jazeera English, May 5, 2013, https://www.youtube .com/watch?v=bwwrBfMCOBs; Peter Maas, “Toppling: How the Media Inflated a Minor Moment in a Long War,” New Yorker, January 10, 2011, http://www.newyorker.com/maga zine/2011/01/10/the-toppling. 11. Elsner, “Iconoclasm as Discourse,” esp. 370–71. 12. Kareem Sharim, “Outcry over Isis Destruction of Ancient Assyrian Site of Nimrud,” Guardian, March 6, 2015, https:// www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/06/isis-destroys -ancient-assyrian-site-of-nimrud. 13. Flood, “Between Cult and Culture.” 14. Harmanşah, “ISIS, Heritage.” I thank Jennifer Pruitt for this reference. 15. Parasko, “Bringing into Being,” esp. 69. 16. E.g., Maures, Cabinets of Curiosities; Nicholson et al., Natasha Nicholson—The Artist in Her Museum. 17. Examples include both contemporary and historical material: Glass in All Senses, Brattleboro Museum and Center, Vermont, 2011, https://urbanglass.org/glass/detail/sensual-glass -museum-exhibition-in-vermont-encourages-viewers-to-touch -smel; Mami Wata: Arts for Water Spirits in Africa and Its Diasporas, Fowler Museum, UCLA, Los Angeles, 2008; Drewal, Mami Wata; A Feast for the Senses: Art and Experience in Medieval Europe, Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, 2016; and Bagnoli, Feast for the Senses. 18. See http://www.nightatthemuseummovie.com/index.php ?page=home#video; and Hersey, Falling in Love with Statues, chaps. 7 and 9. 19. See “Tear Down the Confederate Monuments—But What Next? 12 Art Historians and Scholars on the Way Forward,” artnetnews, August 23, 2017 https://news.artnet.com/art -world/confederate-monuments-experts-1058411.

1. Gombrich, review of Freedberg, Power of Images. 2. For a comparable argument specifically focused on pilgrimage sites, see Lamia, “Nostalgia, Memory, and loca sancta,” 105–16. 3. See, e.g., Pinkus, Sculpting Simulacra. 4. See Jung, “Kinetics of Gothic Sculpture.” 5. Gertsman, Worlds Within.

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Zink, Jochen. “Moissac, Beaulieu, Charlieu—zur ikonologischen Kohärenz romanischer Skulpturen programme im Südwesten Frankreichs und in Burgund.” Aachener Kunstblätter 56 (1988–89): 73–182. ———. “Zur Ikonographie der Portalskulptur der Kathedrale Saint-Lazare in Autun.” Jahrbuch des Zentralinstituts für Kunstgeschichte 5/6 (1989–90): 7–160.

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Index Italicized page references indicate illustrations with inserts noted with plate followed by the plate number. Endnotes are referenced with “n” followed by the note number. Aaron (biblical character), 201 Abel (biblical character), 80, 137 Abelard, Peter, 209 Abraham (biblical character) as heavenly representative, 59, 65, 67, 164, 168, 201 with Isaac, symbolism, 164, 165 Sacrifice of Isaac, 81, 83 as voluntary poverty example, 50 acrobats, 144, 145–46, 147 Acts of the Apostles, 183, 205, 208–9 Acts of the Council of Trullo, 19 Acts of the Second Vatican Council, 216 Acts of the Seventh Ecumenical Council of Nicaea, 92 Acts of the Synod of Mainz, 111 Adam (biblical character) monstrosities as children of, 137 postlapsidarian nakedness of, 51–52, 56, 56–57, 62, 79, 80, 82 prelapsidarian nakedness of, 49, 52–53, 55, 56 Adhémar, Jean, 78 Ad Herennium (Cicero), 155–56 Adoration of the Cross, 19–23, 25, 28–31, 35 40 Adoration of the Magi altarpiece relief themes of, 37–38, plate7 capital relief themes of, 159, 160, 161 liturgical reenactments of, 35–36, 38–39, 40, 41, 43 multisensory associations of gifts of, 160, 162 portal relief themes of, 41, 42, 42–43, 188, 206, 207, plate8 “Adorna thalamaum” (antiphon), 34 Advent, 86, 155, 189–90, 195, 203 Aelred of Rievaulx, 25, 27 affectus biblical narratives supporting multisensory experiences of, 12, 13, 25, 28, 34, 41 crucifix ritual practices and bodily attitudes for, 31 definition, 2, 48 material objects criticized as distracting to, 25 multisensory pathways to, 12, 13, 27, 158, 208, 211

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prayer states engaging sensory imagination for, 25 profane love vs., 48–49, 74 Agnellus, 93 Alcher of Clairvaux, 74 Alexander I, Pope, reliquary portrait, 98, 101–3, 121, 123, plate15 altars altarpieces, history of, 37 frontals of (antependia), 174, 176, 176 sculpture locations, 23, 35 symbolic representation of, 35, 37 Virgin and Child altarpiece reliefs, 37–38, 39, plate7 Amalarius of Metz, 19, 22 Ambrose, Saint, 91 Ambrose, Kirk, 81, 133, 159, 201, 209 Ambrose Autpertus, 143 Angheben, Marcello, 205–6 Angilbert of Saint-Riquier, 93 Anglo-Saxon art, 132, 150, 173 animals Gentile symbolism, 167–68 human deformities associated with, 129, 135–36, 147–48, 151 profane music representations, 144, 145 temptation symbolism, 57, 166–67, 171 vice associations, 47, 48, 64, 64, 66, 81, 82 vices representations, 167 See also hybrid monstrosities; monstrosities; specific species and types Annunciation altarpieces featuring, 38, plate7 lust personifications with, 66, 76, 76 portal sculptures of, 206 sanctuary capital reliefs of, 159, 161 theophanic experiences with, 188 Annunciation to the Shepherds, 42, plate8 Anointing of the Sick, 196–97 Anselm of Canterbury, Saint, 24–25, 50, 71, 134, 157, 211 antependia, 174, 176, 176, 183 Anthony the Hermit, Saint, 153, 166 Antichrist, 166 antiphons, 34, 86, 87, 189–90, 195 apes and monkeys as cloister relief subject, 125, 126, 127, 128, 130, 135–36, 147

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apes and monkeys (continued) manuscript illustrations of, 147–48, 149 symbolism, 135–36, 147, 148 Apologia (Bernard of Clairvaux), 147, 181, 211 apostles Pentecost and mission of, 129, 204, 205–6, 207–9 statue-column reliefs of, as church architectural metaphors, 107, 182–83, 184 architectural sculpture, overview function of, 7, 41–42, 46 history of, 7, 8 influences on, 8–9, 17, 18, 37–38, 40, 180 multisensory experiences of, 3, 5, 41 sculpture in the round comparisons, 87 Aristotle, 6, 134 Ark of the Covenant, 13, 14, 93 Arles, Saint-Trophîme, 77, 174 Arnaud of Bonneval, 37 Arnobius Afrus, 91 Ascension of Christ Crucifixion themes with, 45–46, 46 theological significance of, 183, 184–85 theophany of, 179, 183–85, 186, 207, 207–8 asceticism, 23–24, 49–50, 132, 181 Assumption of the Virgin, 34, 39–40, 59 Atchley, E. G. Cuthbert F., 210 Athanasius, 153, 166 Augsburg convent, 30 Augustine of Hippo, Saint boar associations, 166 human creation in image of God, 52 imagination theories, 74, 134, 152 Last Judgment and eternal punishment, 150–51 monstrosity theories, 136, 137–38, 157 naked Christ symbolism, 50 physical body as inner spirituality reflection, 145 resurrection theology, 115, 150 vision process and perception theology, 10, 25, 187 Augustus, Roman Emperor, 118 Austin, James, 202 authority portraiture and attributes of, 102, 103, 105, 110–12 as portraiture function, 33, 95, 110, 123 automation, 100, 116, 121–22 Autun, Saint-Lazare Cain with deformity capital relief, 137 Eve nude, former north transept portal relief, 48, 49, 63 Last Judgment tympanum conversion symbolism, 164 function and impact of, 77, 164 heaven, views and descriptions, 194, 194–95

hell, views and descriptions, 193, 193–94 psychostasis imagery, 138, 138 Resurrection of the Dead lintel, 61–62, 62 theophany of, 188–89, 189, 190 Lazarus, Mary, and Martha trumeau, 197, 197–98 Presentation in the Temple capital relief, 195, 196 avarice as Christ’s temptation, 170, 170 Last Judgment themes of, 164, 165, 169 parable imagery representing, 66–67, 67, 164, 188 sexuality and symbolism of, 66, 81, 82 Azay-le-Rideau, Saint-Symphorien, 176–77, 177 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 131, 147 Baltrušaitis, Jurgis, 130 Balzer, Edeltraud, 117 baptism of Christ, 38, 42, 43, 57–58, plate7, plate10 nakedness and representations of, 57–58 sacrament of, 38, 58 baptismal basins/fonts, 57–58, 117–18, plate10 Barbarossa portrait bust descriptions, 89, 90, 117, plate11 eye pronouncement, 121, 123 function of, 123 individual personalization of, 90, 110, 118–21, 123 inscriptions, 89, 90, 117 literary descriptions compared to, 118, 119–20 provenance, 117–18 relics in, 117, 123 reliquary repurpose, 95, 118, 119–20, 123–24 style influences on, 95, 123 Baroque sculpture, 216 Baschet, Jérôme, 55, 70, 150, 163, 164, 199, 201 Basel antepedium, 174, 176, 176 basilisks, 138–39, 155, 167, 170–71 Basil the Great, 93 Battle of the Soul, 63 Baudîme, Saint, reliquary portrait, 98, 100, 101, 121, plate14 beard-pulling, 56 bearing, sins of, 197 bears double-bodied, 125, 127, 149 hybrid monstrosities with anatomy of, 168 multisensory experiences of, 126, 149 as profane music representation, 144, 145 Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne, Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Paul Daniel in the lion’s den porch wall relief, 165, 169, 170, 171 porch and portal views, 166 portal sculptures, function of, 165–66, 171 portal sculpture style influences, 174

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Index Second Coming of Christ tympanum relief, 44–45, 165–69, 166, 167, 168 Temptations of Christ porch wall relief, 169–71, 170 Bede, The Venerable, 52 Bedos-Rezak, Brigitte, 110 Bégon, Abbot of Conques, 198 Belle Verrière, Chartres, 37 Benedict, Saint, 153 Benedictine Rule, 51, 140, 141, 146, 148, 153, 154 Benedictines architectural sculpture purpose of, 9 diabolical monstrosities in texts of, 152 imaginative visualization writings of, 13–14 multisensory visionary experiences of, 17, 25, 27–28 regulations of, 51, 140, 141, 146, 148, 153, 154 visionary experiences of, 20, 21, 27–28, 30, 47, 50 visual images, perception of, 14, 25–26, 155 women, views on, 149 Benedict of Aniane, sacramentaries of, 196 Benjamin Major (Richard of Saint Victor), 186 Beowulf (manuscript), 132 Berengar of Tours, 23 Bernard of Angers, 94, 96, 97, 100, 101 Bernard of Chartres, 145 Bernard of Clairvaux, Saint artistic images, views on, 8, 28, 125, 132, 155 body and soul resurrection, 62 body movement, 147 church building criticism, 181 conversion requirements, 157 diabolical monsters, 138, 169–71 Mary as tabernacle, 37 monstrosity sculpture descriptions, 125, 132–33, 140, 147 monstrosity theories, 139–40 multisensory transcendence, 141–42 physical appearance and virtue associations, 102–3 redemptive powers of vision, 85 temptation control sermons, 158 visions of, 28 Bernard of Cluny: De contemptu mundi, 72, 73, 74, 77 Bernini, Gian Lorenzo: Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, 216 Bible architectural metaphors, 182, 206 body and soul, 211 divine light, 198 Doubting Thomas sensory experiences, 3 Last Judgment, 150–51, 190–92, 202, 203 monstrosities, 138–39, 148, 149, 155, 165 Pentecost and apostolic mission, 205, 206 spiritual vs. physical sensory experiences, 184 tabernacle metaphors, 37

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See also Genesis; Matthew, Gospel of; Psalms; Revelation; Song of Songs bird-sirens (harpies), 79, 126, 129, 158, 158, 159, plate20 Blanca of Navarre, Queen, sarcophagus of, 59, 59–60 Bleeke, Marian, 3 blood emissions, 11, 12, 23, 47, 50 boars, 166–68 body, human in animal poses, 125–26, 127, 128, 135–36, 147 appearance reflecting inner spirituality, 120–21, 135–36, 137, 139, 146 comportment, 53, 145, 191, 197, 201 concept, 6, 9–13, 49 crucifix ritual practices with, 31 death and soul ascension from, 58–61, 59, 60, 61 dream theories and, 154 eyes, 11, 98–100, 117, 119, 120–21 hybrid monstrosities of animal and, 133–35, 139, 147–49, 159 (see also sirens) idealized descriptions of, in literature, 73–74, 119–20 image of God, 52 judgment and punishment of, 70, 72–73, 77, 86–87, 150–51, 173, 201 microcosm, 52–55 monstrosity in movement of, 139, 144–48 music and, 145 positive views of, development, 9–12 soul relationship to, 6, 9, 49, 99, 211 theophany and purification of, 195–97 See also nakedness; nudity; Resurrection of the Dead Boethius, 145 Bonne, Jean-Claude, 55, 163, 203 Book of Compound Medicine (Causes and Cures) (Hildegard of Bingen), 53, 74–75 Book of Divine Works (Liber divinorum operum) (Hildegard of Bingen), 53–54, 54, 140 Book of Miracles of Sainte Foy, 201 Book of the Dead, 191 Boredom (otium), 134 Bouché, Anne-Marie, 202, 203, 205 Boynton, Susan, 174, 205 Braun, Joseph, 97 Bredekamp, Horst, 63, 79, 80 Brenk, Beat, 8 bride/bridegroom theology, 34, 39, 41, 141, 190 bronze, 58, 78–79, 107, 110, 112, 115 Bruno of Hildesheim, 60, 60 Bruno of Segni, 111 Büchsel, Martin, 18, 98 Buddhas of Bamiyan, 216, 217 Burckhardt, Jacob, 89–90 Bynum, Caroline Walker bodily metamorphosis, 162

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Bynum, Caroline Walker (continued) hybridity symbolism, 139 individuality and self-discovery, 109 meditation roles of material objects, 6 monstrosities and resurrection imagery, 168 monstrosities and resurrection theology, 150 monstrosities and wonder, 132 naked crucified Christ symbolism, 51 tomb effigies and resurrection theology, 115 Byzantine Orthodox Church, 33–34, 93 cabinets of curiosities, 217 Cadden, Joan, 74 Caesarius of Heisterbach, 152 Cain (biblical character), 80, 137 Cambridge Bestiary, 147 Camille, Michael, 3, 131, 133–34, 149–50 Candlemas. See Feast of the Purification of the Virgin Canterbury Cathedral, 134, 135 Cappenberg, Count Otto von, 117–18 Cappenberg head. See Barbarossa portrait bust caput, 98 carnality, 15, 62, 144, 149 carnivalesque, 131, 147 Carolingian art crucifixes of, 19–21, 20, 21, 22, plate4 lust iconography in, 63 portraiture, 33, 92–94, 95–97, 123 sculpture in the round style development, 7–8 Carrières-sur-Seine (formerly Carrières-Saint-Denis), 37–38, 42, plate7 Carruthers, Mary, 85–86, 134–35, 148, 155, 157 Cassian, John, 69, 153 Castiñeiras, Manuel, 7 Catalonia crucifixes from, 1, 57, plate9 San Juan de Tredos, 35 Santa Eulàlia, 28, 30 Santa Maria de Ripoll, 126, 130 Virgin and Child style descriptions, 35 Cathedral of San Pedro, Jaca. See Jaca Cathedral Cathedral of Troyes, 17 Causes and Cures (Hildegard of Bingen), 53, 74–75 Caviness, Madeline, 83 Celestial Hierarchies (Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite), 14 celestis porta, 86 celibacy, 3, 15, 23, 68–70, 132, 162 centaurs, 126, 129, 132, 133, 137, 214 Césaire, Saint, reliquary portrait, 98 Chaffre, Saint, reliquary portrait, 98 Champmol monastery portal, 215 Chanson de Roland (literary work), 120 Chariot of Aminadab, 14, plate2

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Charlemagne, 19, 105, 119, 120, 198 Charles the Bald, 19, 20, 21, 63, plate4 Charlieu, piory, 183 Chartres Cathedral, 35, 36, 36–37, 37, 41, 181 chastity (virtue) monastic vows of celibacy, 3, 15, 23, 68–70, 132, 162 representations of, 66, 86, 143, 144, 161, 163 Chauvigny, Collégiale de Saint-Pierre, 158–64, 161, 162, plate20 Chazelle, Celia, 19, 20–21 Childebert, King of Merovingia, tomb effigy, 122, 122 chimeras biblical references to, 168 descriptions and reliefs of, 135, 137 human invention symbolism, 134 human nature duality described as, 140 as phantasms of imagination, 169, 171 Chrétien de Troyes, 73–74 Christ baptism of, 38, 42, 43, 57–58, plate7, plate10 bride/bridegroom theology, 34, 39, 41, 141, 190 church as body of, 163, 174, 180 deposition/burial of, 28–29, 29, 30, 31, 45–46, 46 infancy of, 69, 70, 76, 86, 188 liturgical reenactments with sculptures of, 29–30 monstrosities as temptations of, 169–71, 170 multisensory experience for spiritual knowledge of, 3–5, 13 nakedness of, 21, 47, 49–51, 83 natures of, 183, 184–85 Resurrection of, 3–5, 4, 13, 45–46, 46, 142, 142–43 soul ascension to, 60, 60 as ultimate image of God, 109 See also Ascension of Christ; Christ in Majesty; Christ’s real presence; crucifixes; Crucifixion; Last Judgment; Presentation in the Temple; Second Coming; theophanies; Virgin Mary and Child enthroned Christ de Courajod, 28, 29 Christian reinterpretation, 77, 81 Christ in Majesty (Maiestas Domini) Last Judgment theophany with, 188–89, 189, 190 multisensory experiences of liturgical rituals with, 86–87 portal sculpture featuring, 42, 43, 45, 167 redemption symbolism, 76, 76 Second Coming themes with monstrosities and vices, 165–69, 166, 167 as theophanic theme, 175, 177–78, 178, 179, 185, 185–86, 188–89 Trinity illustrations, 11–12, 12 Virgin and Child altarpieces featuring, 39, 42–43 visionary experiences with, 17 Christ’s real presence crucifix symbolism and eucharistic theology, 9, 11–12, 18, 20–23, 26, 31–32, 35 doctrine development, 9

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Index Magi gifts as eucharistic symbolism representing, 160, 162 nakedness symbolism and eucharistic body of, 57 seal impressions analogies, 110 theophanic themes of, 183 Virgin and Child symbolism, 35–36, 38 See also theophanies Christus patiens, 23 church building and architecture cloisters of, 9, 126, 140–41, 183 consecration rites and sanctification of, 163, 180–81 heaven imagery of, 199, 201 material ostentation of, criticism, 181 modern changes to layout of, 216 naves of, 182 public sculpture of, 174–80, 183 reliefs with imagery of, 207 sanctuaries of, 156, 158–64 sex and purification of, 71 style development, 181, 182 theological symbolism and metaphors of, 163, 174, 180, 181, 182–83, 206, 207 See also portals and portal sculpture ciborium, 36, 37, 42 circumcision, 81, 167–68 Cistercians imaginative monstrosities in texts of, 74, 152, 154 monk conversion requirements, 85 sexual imagination treatises, 74 visual images, perception of, 8, 14, 25, 26, 28, 130 women, views on, 149 City of God (Augustine), 136 Civray, Saint-Nicolas, 63, 65, 181, 183 Clanchy, Michael, 232–33n158 “Clara chorus” (hymn), 37 Clark, Sir Kenneth, 48–49 classical sculpture appreciation for, 78–79 idolatry associations, 7–8, 92–93 as monstrosity imagery source, 79–80, 133, 143, 148 nudity and, 48, 49, 79 physical appearance as inner spirituality reflection, 133 Romanesque nude sculpture influenced by, 49, 63, 77–85 See also Roman sculpture Clermont-Ferrand, Notre-Dame-du-Port postlapsarian nude subjects, 56, 56–57 Virgin and Child portal reliefs at, 42, 42–43 Virgin and Child reliquary statues of, 32–33, 35 Virgin Mary’s role at, 57 cloisters architectural descriptions and symbolism, 140–41 audience and usage descriptions, 9, 141, 183 capitals described by St. Bernard, 125–26

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capital reliefs of, monastic role models, 141–43, 142 capital reliefs of, monstrosities, 127, 128, 129, 130, 143–51, 146 capital reliefs of, purpose, 151–58 capital relief subjects, overview, 141 exterior views of, 126 Cluniac Lectionary, 205, 208 Cluniacs architectural sculptural style influences, 9 meditation practices, 154 theophanic themes, 183–84 visual images, views on, 155 Cluny III Abbey, 183 coinage, 52, 111, 201 Collégiale de Saint-Pierre, Chauvigny, 158–64, 161, 162, plate20 Cologne, Saint George, 23, 24 Cologne Cathedral, 18, 22–23, plate3 Commentary on Revelation (Haimo of Auxerre), 187, 187 Commentary on the Dream of Scipio (Macrobius), 152 compassionate devotion, 20, 50, 62, 66 comportment, 53, 145, 191, 197 concupsicence. See lust; Lust/Luxuria Confederacy statues, 218 Conferences, The (Cassian), 153 Conques, Sainte-Foy architectural style of, 181 interior views of, nave, 182 Last Judgment tympanum relief Christ and theophanic experiences, 202, plate19 conversion symbolism, 164 descriptions, 198–99, plate21 divine punishment imagery, 201 heaven, descriptions and views, 198, 199, 199, 201–2 hell, descriptions and views, 198, 199–201, 200 hellmouths, 150, 199, 200 Sainte Foy in, 121, 201, plate19 Son of Man cross, 198 See also Foy, Sainte, reliquary portrait consecration rites authority and dual natures through, 111–12 for church building sanctification, 163, 180–81 of eucharistic body, 31, 35, 38, 162, 213 Constable, Giles, 109 Constantine, Roman Emperor, 7, 182 Conte de Floire et Blancheflor, Le (literary work), 116 contrefaire, 90–91 conversion baptism for, 57 facial expressions as desire for, 164 Last Judgment themes and, 70, 77, 196–97, 201 lust and multisensory experiences for, 85–87 memory of vices for, 157 as monstrosity function, 158

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conversion (continued) of monstrous races, 129, 132, 206, 209 sacraments for, 70 theophany and requirements of, 196–97 Corinthians (biblical book), 5, 11, 191 Coronation of the Virgin, 34 coronation rituals, 63, 105, 111–12, 116 corpses, living, 116 Cosmas of Jerusalem, Saint, 34 Counter-Reformation, 216 court culture, 9, 180 Cowdrey, Herbert, 123 creation hierarchy of, 14 of humans, 56, 62 humans asserting authority over, 55 monstrosities as divine, 136, 147 monstrosity inventions compared to divine, 134 Cremona Cathedral, 182 Cross of Muiredach, 192, 192 crucifixes architectural sculptures with, 43–46, 45, 46 display locations for, 22, 23, 35 early examples of, 18–19, 22–23, plate3 function of, 18, 19, 26–27, 30 impact of, 1, 2 materiality of, 21–22, 23, 40 meditation instructions for, 24–27 nakedness of Christ on, 47, 50 as reliquaries, 21, 22, 23, 221n39 ritual practices with, 13, 19–22, 20, 24–25, 28–32, 29, 30, 35, 40, 45–46, plate4 style descriptions, 21, 21–23, 24, 28, 40, 47, 222n118, plate1, plate3, plate9 style development influences, 19, 23–24 symbolism of, 14, 20–21, 22, 26, 35 Trinity imagery with, 11–12, 12 visionary experiences with, 1, 17, 27–28, 41, 47, 50 Crucifixion liturgical reenactments, 20–21, 22, 29, 35, 40 Crusades, 44, 132, 177 Cuxa cloister cloister reconstructions, 125 cloister of, exterior views, 126 monstrosity imagery apes and ape-like humans, 125–26, 127, 128, 135–36, 147 descriptions, overview, 125–26, 127, 128 double-bodied beasts devouring, 125, 126, 127, 130, 148, 149 function and symbolism, 135, 143, 147, 153, 154–56, 157 hybrids of human and animals, 149 locations for, 140–41 monstrous mouths devouring, 126, 128, 143, 149–51 music and dancing, 126, 128, 143, 144, 145–47

sirens, 126, 128, 148–49 sources for, 143, 148 cyclopses, 133 cynocephali, 129, 136, 209 Dadon (hermit), 198 Dagobert, King, tomb effigy, 122 damnatio memoriae, 216 dancing lust dreams and naked, 153 monstrosity and vice associations, 126, 128, 143, 144, 145, 146–47, 156 spirituality associations, 145 symbolism of, 146–47 Daniel (book and biblical character) Last Judgment references, 198 monstrosities in mythology of, 165, 169, 170, 171 monstrosities in visions of, 168 psychostasis references, 191–92 De adoranda cruce (Einhard), 19 death anointing and purification rituals for, 196–97 lust iconography associations, 64–65, 66 and purgatory, 59, 61, 113, 191 soul ascension and resurrection, 57, 58–62, 59, 60, 61, 62 See also funerary art and ritual; sarcophagi; tomb effigies Debiais, Vincent, 114 De consideratione (Bernard de Clairvaux), 139–40 De contemptu mundi (Scorn for the World) (Bernard of Cluny), 72–73, 77 De cultu imaginorum ( Jonas of Orléans), 19 deformities. See monstrosities De Lasarte, Juan, 35 De laudibus beatea Mariae virginis (Arnaud of Bonneval), 37 “De membris humanis” (sermon), 99 De miraculis (Peter the Venerable), 152, 153, 154 demons Dives parable and punishment by, 65–66, 67, 68, 164, 173, 188 in hell, 138, 138, 168, 173, 192, 193, 193, 199–200, 200, 201 as hybrid monstrosities, 126 lust associations, 47, 48, 62, 64, 66 monastic meditations as protection from, 154–58 multisensory experiences of, 139 profane music associations, 144–45, 146 sanctuary symbolism, 158, 162, 163 scholarly interpretations of, 152 theological interpretations of, 129, 138–39, 152–53, 157, 169 See also Satan De natura boni (Augustine), 147 Deposition from the Cross, 28–29, 29, 30, 31, 45–46, 46 De sacramentis (Hugh of Saint Victor), 115 descriptio personae, 73–74, 119 despair, 61, 64, 66, 191, 197

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Index De universo (Hrabanus Maurus), 99, 137, 182 devotional sculptures, overview criticism of, 8, 25 impact of, 1–2, 7, 17–18 post-Romanesque stylistic developments, 215–18 promotion and popularity of, 14, 18, 25–27, 28, 211 Romanesque compositional descriptions, 3 devouring imagery animal associations, 167, 168 double-bodied beasts, 125, 126, 127, 130, 148, 149 dragons, 126, 130, 156, 157, 159, 160, 160 sensory associations, 126, 135–36 symbolism of, 131, 150, 162, 163, 165, 168–69 See also hellmouths; mouths, monstrous Dialogues (Gregory the Great), 153 Dialogus miraculorum (Caesarius of Heisterbach), 152 Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite, 14, 132 Dittmar, Pierre-Olivier, 55, 163 Dives (biblical character) narrative descriptions, 65–66, 164, 168, 173, 188 parable symbolism, 66, 67–68 relief imagery of, 67, 68 theme purpose, 9, 87 Dixon, Susan, 66 Documentum de arte versificandi (Geoffrey of Vinsauf), 119 Dominic, Saint, 31 double-bodied beasts devouring imagery, 125, 126, 127, 130, 148, 149 multisensory experiences of, 135, 136, 139, 149 scholarly interpretations of, 151–52 Doubting Thomas, 3, 4, 13, 13, 45, 46 dragons devouring imagery, 126, 130, 156, 157, 159, 160, 160 as imaginative diabolical interventions, 138–39, 153, 155, 170 as temptations of Christ, 170, 171 dreams, 138, 152–57 Drewal, Henry J., 6 drums, 144, 145 Duomo, Verona, 41, 42, plate8 Durandus, Abbot of Moissac, 107, 108 dwarfs, 156, 157 Easter, 5, 165, 207, 207, 210 ecclesia architectural metaphors of, 163, 174, 180–83, 206, 207 Crucifixion imagery representing, 43 sculptural figures symbolizing, 197–98 Virgin Mary symbolizing, 35, 36–37, 38 Ecstasy of Saint Teresa (Bernini), 216 effigies, 91, 92, 93, 94 See also tomb effigies Einhard, 19, 119, 120

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elements of universe, 54 Elizabeth of Schonau, 12 Elliott, Dyan, 69, 132 Emmaus, journey to, 3, 5, 5, 207 emotional displays, 64, 121, 151, 164, 193, 201 emperor worship, 7–8, 93 Enéas, Roman d’ (literary work), 74 Eneide (literary work), 73 Enger, Stiftskirche, 107, 108, plate17 entertainers acrobats, 144, 145–46, 147 dancers, 126, 128, 143, 144, 145, 146–47 imitation and animal associations, 148, 149 portraiture conventions for, 121 profane music, 64, 128, 143–46, 144, 145, 146 Entry into Jerusalem, 29–30 Ephesians, 182, 206 Epiphany, 35–36, 40, 41–42, 159–61, 207 Erec et Enide (Chrétien de Troyes), 73–74 Erfurt Cathedral retable, 38, 39, 42–43 eroticism, 14, 21, 27–28, 47, 48, 50 See also lust; Lust/Luxuria; nudity Essen, Germany, Golden Madonna, 33–34, plate 6 Etymologies (Isidore of Seville), 92, 98–99, 136 Eucharist crucifix imagery and blood emission symbolism, 11, 23, 47, 50 crucifix rituals and, 9, 11–12, 18, 20–23, 26, 31–32, 35 as crucifix style influence, 23 light-reflecting materiality symbolism, 14 Magi gifts representing gifts of, 160, 162 monstrosities representing threats to, 159, 160, 162–63 nakedness and salvation history symbolism, 57 real presence in, 20–21, 22–23, 69–70 sexual restrictions based on theology of, 69–71, 162–63 theology and doctrine development, 9, 163 theophanic themes with symbolism of, 206–8 Virgin and Child sculpture and symbolism of, 35–38, 159, 162, 188 Eugene III, Pope, 140 evangelists, 14, 42, 43, plate2 See also John the Evangelist, Saint Eve (biblical character) classical sculpture influences on, 49, 49, 77, 78 postlapsarian nakedness of, 49, 51–52, 56, 56–57, 62, 63, 80, 82 prelapsarian nakedness of, 48, 49, 49, 55, 56, 62 women’s sexuality and perceptions of, 69, 149 Eventius (martyr), 102 Exaltation of the Holy Cross, 203 Exordium magnum cisterciense (Konrad of Eberbach), 152 Explusion of Adam and Eve, 56, 56–57 Exposition on the Song of Songs (William of Saint-Thierry), 25, 26 eyes, 11, 98–100, 117, 119, 120–21

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facial expressions bodily movement and deformity of, 139 of crucified Christ, 21 of damned, 164, 201 of demons, 64, 121, 193, 201 of monstrosities and demons, 64, 121, 151, 164 of portrait busts, 120 of Roman gods, 96 Fall, the, 11, 51–52, 56–57, 75, 81, 82 Farfa Abbey, Lazio, Italy, 31, 210 Fassler, Margot, 36–37 Feast of Dedication, 37 Feast of the Fools, 147 Feast of the Purification of the Virgin, 34, 67, 70, 86, 195 Ferreolus, Saint, 101 fire Christ in Majesty and, 198 hell descriptions, 72, 200 Holy Spirit manifestations, 205, 209 Pentecost and rituals with, 210 purgatory descriptions, 191 spiritual elements and sensory associations of, 54 Fisher, Annika Elizabeth, 22 Five Senses, The (Serres), 6 Flood, Finbarr Barry, 217 Focillon, Henri, 126, 163, 186 Foletti, Ivan, 100 Fontevraud Abbey, 173 Forsyth, Ilene, 17–18, 33, 39, 41, 67–68, 134 fortitude (virtue), 77, 81, 97, 102 Foulcoi, Archdeacon of Beauvais, 78, 96 Fourth Sermon on the Ascension (Augustine), 184 Foy, Sainte, 121, 201–2, plate19 See also Foy, Sainte, reliquary portrait Foy, Sainte, reliquary portrait descriptions, 95, 96, plate12, plate13(detail) display locations, 101 eyes pronouncement, 95, 100, 121 function of, 94, 96 history and dating, 95–96 impact of, 101 materialism, 95, 97, 100 presence of, 97, 101, 121 as Virgin and Child sculpture style influence, 32 visions of, 101 Frederick I Barbarossa, Holy Roman Emperor, 118, 119–20 See also Barbarossa portrait bust Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, 118 Freedberg, David, 7, 17, 213 Frese, Tobias, 25 Fricke, Beate, 33, 96 Friedman, John Block, 132

Friedrich von Wettin tomb effigy, 79, 81(detail), 107, 108, 111, plate18(detail) Frómista, San Martín, 79–81, 81, 82 Frugoni, Chiara, 144 Fruttuaria Monastery, 30 Fulbert of Chartres, 31 Fulton, Rachel, 23–24, 25, 31 funerary art and ritual Deposition and Burial of Christ reenactments, 28–29, 31, 45–46 funerary statue animation in literature, 116 living corpse processions, 116 olfactory experiences, 122, 229n169 portal processions, 87, 195 soul ascension themes, 58–60, 60 See also sarcophagi; tomb effigies Gaia (deity), 63 Galatea (mythological figure), 1, 2 Galpern, Joyce, 150 Ganelon (literary character), 120 Gauthier de Coincy, 3 gemina persona, 111 Genesis (biblical book) architecture and material ostentation themes, 181 Cain and Abel themes, 80 church building criticism models, 181 gender roles, 15 nakedness, 47, 49, 51–53, 56–57, 62 vision theories based on, 11 Gentiles, 167, 188, 195, 206 Geoffrey of Vendôme, 149 Geoffrey of Vinsauf, 119 Gerald of Aurillac, Saint, reliquary portrait, 94, 100 Gerald of Wales, 133 Gerbert of Aurillac, 116 Gerhoch of Reichersberg, 110 Gero Cross, Cologne Cathedral,18, 22–23, plate3 Gertsman, Elina, 7, 215 gesture, 139, 144–46, 148. Gilabertus of Toulouse: Martyrdom of Saint John the Baptist, 60–61, 61 Gilbert of Maria Laach tomb effigy, 105, 106, 106 Gislebertus: Last Judgment, Saint-Lazare, 61–62, 62, 188, 189 Glaber, Raoul, 50, 209 “Glory Laud and Honor” (hymn), 30 Glossaries (Salomo of Constance), 54, 55 Gloss on Timaeus (Bernard of Chartres), 145 gluttony, 66, 151, 164, 165, 169, 188 Gnadenstuhl, 11–12, 12 God crucifix veneration for soul’s access to, 26–27 diabolical temptation allowed by, 157

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Index inscriptions as speaking voice of, 202 monstrosities and trust in, 138, 155 monstrosities as creation of, 136, 147 monstrosity inventions comparisons, 134 perception theories and manifestation of, 11 See also image of God; Last Judgment; theophanies Godfrey of Admont, 160 Gofridus, 159, 161 gold, 97 Golden Epistle (William of Saint-Thierry), 25 Golden Madonna of Essen, 32, 33–35, plate6 Gombrich, Ernst, 131, 213 Good Friday, 19, 21, 22, 23, 28–31, 40, 45 Gospels of Henry II, 63 Great Golden Madonna, 33 Great Whore of Babylon, 159, 161, 163 Greek nude sculpture, 48 Gregorian Reform, 23, 68–70, 132, 148–49, 162–63, 180 Gregory of Tours, 101 Gregory the Great, Pope church imagery purpose, 8, 10 imagination as demonic interference, 153 Last Judgment and eternal punishment, 150–51 monastic reforms, 23, 68–70, 132, 148–49, 162–63, 180 monstrosity theology, 147–48, 149, 156–57, 157 griffins, 126, 168, 169 Grosse Goldene Madonna (Hildesheim), 33 Grundmann, Herbert, 118, 120 Gumbrecht, Hans Ulrich, 6 Gurevich, Aron, 61, 191 gyrovagi, 146 Habakkuk (prophet), 169 Hadrian II, Pope, 33, 93, 95 Hahn, Cynthia, 19, 102–3, 187 Haimo of Auxerre, 187, 187 hair pulling, 62 Halitgarius of Cambrai, 143, 144 Ham (biblical character), 83, 83 Hamburger, Jeffrey, 6–7, 26, 51, 186 Harmanşah, Ömür, 217 harpies (bird-sirens), 79, 126, 129, 158, 159, plate20 Haskins, Charles Homer, 8 hearing (sound) anointing rituals for purification of, 197 crucifix rituals with oral recitations, 20 inscriptions for oral performance, Last Judgment reliefs, 61, 77, 193–94, 202–3, 205 inscriptions for oral performance, reliquary portraits, 89, 90, 102, 117, 123 inscriptions for oral performance, tomb effigies, 105, 112–13, 114, 123, 214 monstrosity and meditation recitation, 154

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monstrosity imagery and allusion to, 126, 135, 139, 149 Pentecost and Holy Spirit manifestation through, 208–9, 210 prayer as sensory experience of, 39, 100, 101 religious experiences with, 27–28, 31 for spiritual vision access, 187 See also music and musical instruments heaven Christ in Majesty theophany in, 42–43, 43, 189, 190, 191, 198 church portals and, 9, 85, 86, 87, 164, 174, 180, 195 comportment of blessed, 53, 191, 197 descriptions and views of, 194, 194–96, 199, 199, 201–2, plate21 gates of, 34, 181, 187 material ostentation and architectural representations in, 181 monstrosities in, 168 portrait materialism representing, 97, 101, 108, 113 representatives of, 59, 65, 67, 164, 168, 198, 201 soul ascension to, 59–60, 60 See also Ascension of Christ Hebrews (biblical book), 37 hell bodily punishment in, 70, 72–73, 77, 86–87, 150–51, 173, 201 comportment of damned, 191, 197, 201 demons in, 138, 138, 168, 173, 192, 193, 193, 199–200, 200, 201 descriptions of, 191, 193, 193–94, 198, 198, 199–201, 200, plate21 hellmouths as portals of, 150–51, 168, 173, 174, 193, 193, 200 Hellinus, Abbot of Notre-Dame-aux-Fonts, 58 hellmouths imagery origins, 150 Last Judgment themes and imagery of, 150–51, 168, 173, 174, 193, 193, 200 monastic meditations on, 154 Henri of Blois, Bishop of Winchester, 78 Henry II, Ottonian Emperor, 63, 176, 176 Henry II, King of England, 174, Henry IV, Emperor of Germany, 103, 105, 111, 112 Herbert of Clairvaux, 138, 152 Herder, Johann Gottfried, 2 Herrad of Hohenbourg, 168–69 Heslop, Sandy, 134 Hildegard of Bingen, 53–54, 54, 74–75, 140 Hildesheim Cathedral, 60, 60 Himmelmann, Niklaus, 48 Hinz, Berthold, 78, 111 Hodegetria, 33–34 Holsinger, Bruce, 145 Holy of Holies, 37 Holy Spirit Advent procession rituals, 86 crucifix rituals with, 26, 27 multisensory aspects of, 208–9 Pentecost themes featuring, 205, 208 Trinitarian imagery of, 11–12, 12, 53, 54

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Holy Week, 19, 28 homosexuality, 54, 83 Horace, 139 horn-blowers, 4, 128, 143, 145 Hortus deliciarum (Herrad of Hohenbourg), 168–69 Howes, David, 6 Hrabanus Maurus, 99, 137, 182, 208 Hugh of Besançon, 111 Hugh of Cluny, Abbot, 86, 208 Hugh of Lincoln, Saint, 173 Hugh of Saint Victor cast metal statue as resurrection metaphor, 115 image of God, 53 monstrosity theories, 139 sacraments, defined, 58 seal impressions and conformity, 109–10 soul ascension, 60–61 spiritual vision, 99 vision process and perception theology, 11, 14 humility, 49–50, 83, 102 Husillos Sarcophagus, 80, 82 Hussein, Saddam, statues of, 216 hybrid monstrosities animal, 126, 134, 136, 137, 138, 159, 164 animal-humans, 133–36, 139, 147–49, 159, 168 metamorphosis concepts and, 162 race perceptions, 129, 132, 206, 209 See also chimeras; sirens iconoclasm, 216–17 identity and individuality concept of, 109 physical appearance reflecting inner character, 120, 133 portraiture conventions, 89–90, 98 of reliquary portraits, 98, 101–3 of tomb effigies, 103, 105, 110–13, 118, 121 idolatry holy image distinctions, 8, 18, 93, 94 imagery restrictions due to, 7–8, 92–93, 94, 215–17 portraiture styles related to, 91, 92, 93, 94 reliquary distinctions, 17, 18 image of God (imago) baptism for restoration of, 57–58 as portraiture imitation model, 94, 108–10, 118–21 prelapsarian humans in, 48, 52–55 soul ascension/resurrection restoring, 59–62 imagination (phantasia) architectural sculptures for, 87 and dreams, 138, 152–57 idealized beauty descriptions, 73–74 images for activation of, 1–2, 7, 17, 18, 213 medieval concept development and theories on, 152–53

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monstrosities as phantasms of, 131, 132, 134, 137–39, 152–57, 162, 169–70 nudity and activation of, 77 prayer states for spiritual, 25 and sexual fantasy, 74, 153–54 imago. See image of God imago (portraiture style), 94, 108–10, 118–21 imitation animals associated with, 147–48, 149 idealized portraits as models of, 92, 109–10 wonder of monstrosities vs. idealized, 133 Improperia, 29 Incarnation chastity symbolism, 66, 67, 36 embodied religious experiences influenced by, 12, 13 liturgical reenactments of, 215 Pentecost apostle inspiriting compared to, 209 sensory perception theories for, 11 theophany and themes of, 206, 207 Virgin and Child with themes of, 35, 37, 38, 36, plate7 incense Adoration of the Magi liturgical rituals and, 160 Deposition scenes with, 45, 46 funerary rituals with, 122 Last Judgment reliefs and symbolism of, 202 Pentecost rituals with, 210 reliquary portraits and sensory experiences with, 101 Second Coming illustrations and symbolism of, 187, 187 theophanic spiritual visions and sensory experiences, 189 tomb effigies and sensory experiences with, 122 Virgin and Child reliefs and angels with, 43 inscriptions in cloisters, 134 Last Judgment reliefs with, 61, 77, 193–94, 202–3, 205 man as microcosm illustrations with, 54 as reliquary portrait provenance evidence, 117–18 oral performance, 112–14, 193–94, 202–4 reliquary portraits with, 89, 90, 102, 117, 123 tomb effigies with, 105, 112–13, 114, 123 Institutes, The (Cassian), 153 interpretatio christiana, 77, 81 Iogna-Prat, Dominique, 163, 180, 181 Ipomédon (Hue de Rotelande), 120 Isaac (biblical character), 81, 83, 164, 165 Isaiah (bibilical book), 148, 167 Isarn of Marseilles, Saint, tomb portrait, 106, 107, 112–13, 114, 123 Isidore of Seville, 91–92, 98–99, 136–37 Islamic State (ISIS), 216–17 Ivo of Chartres, 184 Jaca Cathedral (Cathedral of San Pedro) classical-influenced nude sculptures, 81, 83, 83, 84, 85

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Index soul elevation reliefs, 59, 59 Jacques de Vitry, 133 Jaeger, Stephen, 102 Janson, Horst, 147 Jeremiah (biblical prophet), 188, 188 Jerome, Saint, 50, 148 Jerusalem, heavenly, 97, 117, 181, 185, 195, 201 Jews, 81, 132, 167–68, 206 Jezebel (biblical character), 67, 68 Job (biblical book) dreams and commentaries on, 157 hellmouth references, 150, 151 monstrosities in, 168 psychostasis references, 191 as voluntary poverty example, 50 John, Gospel of, 3, 184, 198, 205, 211 John Chrysostom, 93 John the Baptist, Saint baptism narratives, 38, 58, plate10 as heavenly representative, 194, 195 martyrdom and soul ascension, 60–61, 61 Pentecost themes with, 205 relics of, 101 reliquary portraits of, 118–19, 119, 121 as voluntary poverty example, 50 John the Evangelist, Saint Crucifixion themes with, 43 Deposition themes with, 28, 30, 45, 46 Last Supper themes, 141, 142 relics of, 117, 123 reliquary portraits of, 95, 118, 119–20, 123–24 Resurrection themes, 142, 142–43 spiritual vision of, 186–87, 187 Jonah (biblical character), 168 Jonas of Orléans, 19, 93 jongleurs, 4, 143–47 , 144, 145, 146, 149 Joseph of Arimathaea, 28, 30, 45, 46 Jotsald, 100 Judas (biblical character), 71, 141, 142 Julian, Saint, 101 Julian of Eclanum, 50 Julian of Vézelay, 14 Jung, Jacqueline, 7, 20 Kantorowicz, Ernst, 111 Kargère, Lucretia, 40 Katzenellenbogen, Adolf, 36 Keller, Harald, 22 Kendall, Calvin, 77, 202 Kessler, Herbert, 6, 93 kissing rituals, 13, 21, 30–31, 47, 50, 53 Knidian Aphrodite (Praxiteles), 48, 49, 214

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Knights Templar, 44 Koehler, Wilhelm, 208 Konrad of Eberbach, 152 Kruger, Steven, 154 Kunigunde, Empress, consort of Henry II, 174

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Lactantius, 50, 91 La Daurade, Toulouse, 13, 13, 141, 142 land acquisition witnessing, 94 Last Judgment biblical references, 150–51, 190–91, 202, 203 Christ enthroned theophany, 188–89, 189, 190, 202, plate19 conversion symbolism, 164 diabolical imagination as trial for, 157 multisensory experiences of, 61, 77, 193, 193–94, 202–3, 205 Son of Man crucifixes in, 44–45, 167 theme function and impact, 70, 77, 86, 178, 190 theme popularity, 190 theophanic portal experiences, 188–89 theophany requirements, 195–98 trumpets announcing, 165, 167, 168, 178, 189, 190–91, 198 See also heaven; hell; hellmouths; psychostasis; Resurrection of the Dead Last Supper, 141, 142, 207 Lateran Councils, 37, 69–70, 162–63 Lawrence, Saint, 51, 51 Lazarus, the poor man Dives parable and virtuous modeling of, 9, 65, 66, 67, 76, 87, 168 173 funerary liturgy antiphons featuring, 87 as heavenly representative, 67, 168, 201 Last Judgment associations and symbolism of, 197, 197–98 Lazarus of Bethany, Saint, as bishop, 197–98, 108 intercession prayers and healing shrines of, 191, 197 Leclercq, Jean, 158 Leclercq-Kadaner, Jacqueline, 63 Le Goff, Jacques, 59 Le Monastier, Saint Chaffre, 98 Lent, 63, 70, 165 Leo III, Pope, 19 Leo IX, Pope, 111 León, San Isidoro, 45–46, 46 Leonardo da Vinci: “Vitruvian man,” 53 Liber compositae medicinae (Causes and Cures) (Hildegard of Bingen), 53, 74–75 Liber divinorum operum (Book of Divine Works) (Hildegard of Bingen), 53–54, 54, 140 Liber miraculorum (Herbert of Clairvaux), 152 Liber miraculorum sancte fidis (Bernard of Angers), 94, 96, 97, 100, 101 Liber monstrorum, 148 Liber officialis (Amalarius of Metz), 19 Liber ordinarii, 30

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Liber ordinarius, 34 Liber pontificalis, 33, 93–94 Liber vitae, 202 Libri Carolini (Theodulf of Orléans), 18, 92–93 Libri poenitentiales, 70 Liège, Notre-Dame-aux-Fonts, 58, plate10 Liège, Saint-Barthélemy, 58, plate10 Life of Elizabeth of Schonau (Eckbert of Schonau), 12 Life of Odilo of Cluny ( Jotsald), 100 Life of Saint Anthony the Hermit (Athanasius), 153 Life of Saint Godric (Reginald of Durham), 1 Life of Saint Hugh of Lincoln, 173 Life of Saint Maura of Troyes (Prudentius of Troyes), 17, 20 Life of Saint Stephen of Obazine, 100 light(s), 99, 198, 205, 208, 210 liminality of monstrosities, 131, 164 of portals, 9, 85, 86, 164, 174, 180 Lincoln Cathedral, 173, 174 Lindau Gospels, 21, 21 lions biblical narratives of, 165, 169, 170, 171 as diabolical monstrosities, 138–39, 153, 155 double-bodied, 125, 126, 127, 149 hellmouths of, 150 hybrid monstrosities with features of, 158–59, 160, 164, 165, 168 manuscript illustrations of, 156, 157 multisensory allusions, 126, 149, 162 symbolism of, 156 vice associations, 167, 171 Lipsmeyer, Elizabeth, 30 Literal Commentary on Genesis (Augustine), 52 literature as architectural sculptural style influence, 9 living corpses in, 116 monstrosities in, purpose and impact, 133 monstrosity varieties compared to poetry, 133 physiognomic descriptions in, 73–74, 118, 119–20 popularity of, as aesthetic influence, 79 liturgical/paraliturgical performances Adoration of the Magi reenactments, 35–36, 38–39, 40, 41 with crucifixes, 18, 19–23, 25, 28–32, 35, 38, 40, 45–46 death and soul departure, 59 Holy Week portal processions, 165 Incarnation themes, 215 Last Judgment themes, 202–3, 205 monastic, for protection against demons, 154–55 nudity and multisensory experiences of, 86–87 Pentecost themes, 205, 209–10 portal sculpture as backdrop for, overview, 180, 183, 211–12, 215 sculpture activation through, 7, 14–15, 18, 40 theophanic experiences with, 174

Virgin and Child sculpture rituals, 34–36, 38–40, 41 See also Eucharist; processions; rituals Louis the Pious, 198 love, 78, 158 See also affectus Low, Peter, 205 Ludwig Psalter, 19–20, 20 Luke, Gospel of, 188, 203 lust (concupsicence) Christ and, 50 classical sculptures on tomb effigies symbolizing, 79 conversion and, 71, 85–87 imagination and sexual fantasy, 73–74, 153–54 medical theories on, 74–75 monstrosity associations, 147, 148, 151, 156, 159, 163 music and body movement associations, 144, 144–47 prelapsarian/postlapsarian nudity symbolism, 51–52, 57, 62 purification rituals for, 197 sublimation strategies, 68–73, 158 theological/biblical theories on, 75 See also Lust/Luxuria (personification) Lust/Luxuria (personification) classical influences on, 48, 64, 77–78 damnation and punishment themes, 65–66, 66, 67, 76, 164, 188, 191 death themes, 48, 64–65, 66 demonic monstrosity associations, 47, 48, 62, 64, 66 function and impact of, 68–73, 75, 76–77, 81, 85–87 iconographic descriptions and symbolism, 47–48, 48, 62, 63, 64, 64, 66, 80, 81, 82 iconographic development, 62–64, 77 iconographic influences, 73–75 monstrosities as vices assaulting, 143, 144 Second Coming themes with, 165, 169, 185–86, 190 virtuous representations juxtaposed with, 66, 76, 76 lyre, 144, 145 Macpherson, Fiona, 6 Macrobius, 152 Madonna. See Virgin Mary Madrid, Santa María de Husillos, 80, 82 Magdeburg Cathedral tomb effigies of, 79, 81, 107, 108, 110, 111, plate18 tomb locations in, 113–14 Magi. See Adoration of the Magi Magister Gregorius, 78–79 Maiestas Domini. See Christ in Majesty Mâle, Émile, 151–52, 186 man as microcosm, 53–55, 54, 55, 58, 133, 140 Marcus Aurelius equestrian statue, 79 Mark, Gospel of, 203 Marseilles, Saint-Victor, 106–7, 107 Martha of Bethany (biblical character), 197, 198

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Index martyrdom nakedness of, 50–51, 51 reliquary portrait attributes of, 102, 119 soul ascension, 60–61, 61 Virgin and Child sculptures with themes of, 38 Mary of Bethany (biblical character), 197, 198 masochism, 50–51 Mass, 20–21, 22, 98, 122, 150, 229n169 Master Gregory, 78 masturbation, 51 materiality of architectural sculptures, 198 ascetic criticism of, 181 of crucifixes, 21–22, 23, 40 development of, 14, 18 doctrine supporting, 9 light-reflecting, purpose and symbolism, 3, 14, 18, 21, 40, 58, 96 of reliquary portraits, 90, 95, 96, 97, 100, 101 of tomb effigies, 107, 108, 112–13, 115–16 of Virgin and Child sculptures, 40 Matthew, Gospel of Last Judgment, 150, 190–91, 202, 203 Second Coming, 165 Son of Man, 44–45, 198 soul ascension, 60 Matthew of Vendôme, 119 Maura of Troyes, Saint, 17, 20 Maxwell, Robert A., 9, 180 medieval sculpture style, 96, 215 meditations crucifixes as stimulus for, 12–13 as crucifix style influence, 24–25 demon-expelling, 154–55 for embodied religious experience, 12 nakedness of Christ symbolism in, 50 prayer states for, 25 purpose, 154 sculpture as memory aids for, 154, 155–56 visual images as stimulus for, 14 Meditations (Anselm of Canterbury), 211 Méhu, Didier, 180 Mellinkoff, Ruth, 132 memory architectural sculpture reliefs as meditative aids for, 155–56 liturgical objects as aids for, 18 monstrosities and imagination stimulation through, 134 multisensory experiences for, 98–99, 211 statue destruction as damning of, 216 of vices for conversion, 157 visual experiences imprinting on, 85, 87 men circumcised, 81, 167–68

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classically-influenced nudes of, 49, 79–81, 82, 84 classical nudity and gender representations, 49 double-bodied, 159 hell and role reversal imagery, 200 man as microcosm, 53–55, 54, 55, 58, 133, 140 monstrosities devouring naked, 128, 160, 164 monstrosities riding naked, 156, 157 sexually-explicit nude sculptures of, 55, 79–81, 81, 82 squatting, naked, 125–26, 127, 128, 135 Merback, Mitchell, 50 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 6 Merovingian tomb effigies, 122, 122 Merseburg Cathedral, 122–23 See also Rudolf von Schwaben tomb effigy metamorphosis, 162, 215 Meyer, Birgit, 6 Michael (archangel), 192, 192, 202 Microcosm. See body and man as microcosm Miles, Margaret, 132 Mills, Robert, 50–51 Mittman, Asa, 132 Modena Cathedral, 55, 56, 62 Moissac, Saint-Pierre cloister relief subjects, 141, 155–56 cloister statue-column relief portraits, 107, 108, 182–83, 184 Infancy of Christ relief, 69, 70, 76, 86, 188 inscription wordplay at, 134 Jeremiah trumeau sculpture, 188, 188 lust iconography, 47, 48, 62, 64–66, 67, 68, 68–72, 76, 85–87, 164, 168 Luxuria vs. Chastity manuscript illustrations from, 143, 144 Maiestas Domini theophany, 174, 175, 178, 185, 188–89, 190 monstrosity imagery, 66, 67, 126, 130, 155, 164 porch and portal views, 175 portal sculptures, style and function, 9, 174, 178 theophanic experiences of, 187–88 monks and monastic culture body comportment expectations, 145 cloister architecture and role of, 140, 183 conversion through sensory experiences, 86 crucifix ritual practices, 31 dreams and imagination of, 137–39, 152–58, 162, 169–70 homosexuality repression, 54 inscription wordplay, function of, 134 Last Judgment imagery and conversion metaphors, 200, 201 lifestyle descriptions, 23–24, 49–50, 146 monstrosity imagery, function and symbolism, 131, 135, 147, 148, 150, 154–56 as sculpture style influence, 9 sexual fantasy themes, 70–77 sexuality restrictions, 3, 15, 23, 50–51, 68–70, 132, 162 See also meditations

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monsters and monstrosities classical aesthetics comparisons, 78 criticism of, 8, 125, 130, 132 entertainers as, 143–47 , 144, 145, 146 function of, 126, 129, 132–36, 133, 154–60, 163, 171, 173, 215 locations of, cloister capitals, 127, 128, 129, 130, 141–51, 142, 143–51, 146 locations of, portals, 164–71, 165, 167, 170 locations of, sanctuaries, 158–64, 160, 161, plate20 multisensory experiences of, 126, 135–36, 141, 159, 160 poetry compared to, 133 portraiture conventions, 120, 121 profane music represented by, 143–45, 145, 146 and race, 129, 131, 132, 136, 162, 206, 209 scholarly interpretations, 130–32, 151–52 sources for, 79–80, 133, 143, 148 symbolism of, 129, 132, 134, 137, 148–51, 162, 163, 168–71, 192 term origins and definition, 136 theological interpretations, 135–40, 147, 148, 152–53 varieties and degrees of, 125, 129 views of, architectural reliefs, 129, 130, 135, 160, 165, 170 views of, manuscript illustrations, 144, 145 See also specific types of monstrosities and animals Monti, James, 30 Moralejo, Serafín, 80 Moralia in Job (Gregory the Great), 147–48, 149, 156–57, 157 Morgan Madonna Sedes Sapientiae, 32, 33, 40, plate5 Morris, Colin, 89, 118 mosaics, 8, 105–7, 106 Moses (biblical character), 201 Mosul Museum, 216, 217 mouths, monstrous animal associations, 154, 168 devouring architecture, 181, 183 devouring humans, 126, 128, 143, 149–50, 164, 165 multisensory experiences of, 126, 135–36 See also hellmouths mouths, opened, 64, 78, 121, 144, 150, 164 Mozat, Saint-Pierre de Mozat, 54–55, 55 museum installations, 217 music and musical instruments angels’ trumpets, 165, 167, 168, 178, 189, 190–91, 198 perception of, 145 profane, 64, 128, 143–46, 145, 146 sacred, 4, 143, 144, 145 spiritual vision access and sensory allusions, 187, 187, 189 See also dancing Nájera, Santa María Real, 59, 59 nakedness baptism and, 57–58 of crucified Christ, 21, 47, 50–51, 83 death and soul ascension, 58–61, 59, 60, 61

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of eternal damnation, 151, 200, 200 historical concepts of, 48–49 man as microcosm, 53–55, 54, 55 martyrdom and, 50–51 nudity vs., 48–49 postlapsarian symbolism of, 48, 49, 51–52, 55, 55, 56, 57, 62–63, 80, 82 poverty and, 49–50 prelapsarian symbolism of, 49, 52, 56, 56, 58, 62 of resurrection, 57, 61–62, 62, 168 as vice attribute, 128, 143, 144, 145, 146 See also nudity Narracio de mirabilibus urbis Romae (Magister Gregorius), 78–79 Nativity, 25, 36, 36, 86, 206, 207 Nichols, Stephen, 198 Nicodemus (biblical character), 28, 30, 45, 46 Night at the Museum (movie series), 218 Noah (biblical character), 81, 83, 83 Norman Anonymous, 111 Notre-Dame-aux-Fonts, Liège, 58, plate10 Notre-Dame d’Orcival, Orcival, 35 Notre-Dame-du-Port. See Clermont-Ferrand, Notre-Dame-du-Port Notre-Dame-du-Pré, Donzy-le-Pré, 43, 44 Notre-Dame-en-Vaux, Châlons-sur-Marne, 120, 121 Notre-Dame-la-Grande, Poitiers, 35 nudity classical-influenced, 49, 63, 77–85, 83, 84, 85 function and impact of, 56–57, 63, 68–77, 81, 85–87 historical concepts of, 48–49 monstrosity associations, 125–26, 127, 128, 149, 159, 160, 167–68 nakedness vs., 48–49 Romanesque interpretations of, overview, 47–48, 52 See also Lust/Luxuria; nakedness Numbers (biblical book), 150 Odilo of Cluny, 78, 100, 209 Odo of Cambrai, 31–32 Office of the Dead, 59, 87, 114, 195, 196 Officium sepulturae, 115 Officium Stellae, 38 olfactory experiences. See smell O’Meara, Carra Ferguson, 42 On Conversion (Bernard of Clairvaux), 85 Onians, John, 181, 182 “On the Aesthetic Attitude in Romanesque Art” (Schapiro), 130 On the Nature of the Body and Soul (William of Saint-Thierry), 211 “On the Solitary and Contemplative Life” (Augustine), 166 On the Trinity (Augustine), 10, 137, 152 Opus Caroli regis contra synodum (Libri Carolini) (Theodulf of Orléans), 18, 92–93 Oratio 2 (Anselm of Canterbury), 24–25 orbs, cruciform, 103, 111, 112 Orestes and Clytemnestra (myth), 80–81, 81, 82

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Index orientalism, 132 original sin, 51–52, 57, 58, 75 See also Fall, the Oswald, Saint, reliquary portrait, 98 Otto II, Holy Roman Emperor, 33 Ovid, 1–2 paganism, 48–49, 79, 91–92, 111, 130–31, 146 Palazzo, Éric, 7, 17, 18, 180, 211 Palmesel, 29–30 Palm Sunday, 29–30 Panofsky, Erwin Romanesque sculpture style influences, 8, 77, 81, 174 tomb portraiture style, 105, 106, 107, 114 Parasko, Michael, 217 Paris, Saint-Denis, 14, 37, 122, 122, 181, 210, plate2 Paris, Saint-Germain-des Prés, 122, 122 Parthenay, France, 9, 180 Paschasius Radbertus, 22, 23 Pastoral Care (Gregory the Great), 10 pathos formula, 80 Paul, Saint architectural metaphors, 182–83 Pentecost and universal church, 205, 206 perception theories based on writings of, 11 portal sculptures of, 165 Resurrection of the Dead, 191 sensory experience interpretations, 6 spiritual vision theology, 5, 184 tabernacle references, 37 Paul I, Pope, 33 Paxton, Frederick, 196 penitence, 63, 71, 85–87, 197–98 Pentcheva, Bissera, 100 Pentecost, 204, 205–12 performance, 7, 105, 112–13, 114, 123, 214 See also liturgical/paraliturgical performances; rituals perfume, 159 Perkinson, Stephen, 90–91 Peter, Saint, 33, 165, 195, 198, 206 Peter Damian, 23–24, 70, 163 Peter Lombard, 52, 57, 58, 71, 115 Peter of Celle, 140–41, 147, 166–67 Peter the Venerable, Abbot of Cluny affectus sensory experiences, 211 Bernard of Cluny writings dedicated to, 72 cloisters and lay accessibility, 141 diabolical monstrosities in texts of, 152, 153, 154 imaginative visualization writings, 13–14 monstrosities and character associations, 139 phantasia. See imagination Pheidias, 91

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Phenomenology of Perception (Merleau-Ponty), 6 Philippi, Friedrich, 118 physiognomy deformity of, 132, 139 (see also monstrosities) portraiture conventions, 89–90, 93–94, 97, 133 of reliquary portraits, 89–90, 91, 96, 97, 98, 101–2, 118–21 of seal impression portraits, 108, 109–10 of tomb effigies, 103, 105, 109–11 See also facial expressions Pliny the Younger, 162 poetry, 133 Poitou Saint-Jouin-de-Marnes, 63, 64, 76, 76, 78 Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe, 81, 83, 83 polychrome, 21–22, 23, 40, 43, 198 Polykleitos, 91 portals and portal sculpture aesthetic influences on, 174, 176 audience for, 180 Crucifixion imagery at, 43–45, 45 function of, 9, 178, 180 liturgical performance roles of, 7, 165–66, 174, 180, 183, 209, 211–12, 215 monstrosity imagery at, 164–71, 165, 167, 170, 215 multisensory viewing experiences of, 85–87 theological symbolism of, 9, 85, 86, 87, 164, 174, 180, 184–85, 195 theophanic experiences of, 188–89 Virgin and Child imagery at, 36, 36–37, 41–43, 42, 44 See also Last Judgment portraiture deformity in, 120, 121 as devotional sculpture influence, 18, 33 function of, 33, 92, 95, 110, 123 history and terminology for, 90–95 idolatry associations, 7–8, 92–93, 94 impact of, 89 physiognomic conventions, 89–90, 93–94, 97, 133 on seal impressions and coinage, 103, 105, 109–11 style descriptions, 33, 89, 90, 92–97 style influences, 33, 89 See also Barbarossa portrait bust; reliquary portraits; tomb effigies poverty, 49–50 Powell, Amy, 215–16 Power of Images, The (Freedberg), 7, 213 Prado-Vilar, Francisco, 80 Praxiteles: Knidian Aphrodite, 48, 49, 214 prayer(s) animal analogies on monastic training in, 148 intercessory, 35, 114, 117, 121, 123, 191, 201–2 meditation states of, 25, 26 multisensory experiences of, 39, 100, 101 See also meditations

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Prayerbook of Charles the Bald, 20, plate4 Presentation in the Temple classical sculpture in lectionary illustrations on, 79 eucharistic sacrifice symbolism, 36, 43, 159 multisensory symbolism of, 160 portal reliefs of, 36, 42, 42–43, 66–67, 70, 195, 196 purification symbolism, 66–67, 70, 163, 195 sanctuary capital reliefs of, 159, 160, 161, 163 theophanic experiences with, 188 Virgin and Child statues for reenactments of, 34 principle of disjunction, 77 processions as cloister function, 141 with crucifixes, 29–30 with living corpses, 116 portal, funerary, 87, 195 portal, nudity and conversion, 86 portal, theophany experiences, 174, 180, 183, 187–90, 203, 205, 210, 214 with reliquary portraits, 97, 98, 108, 122 with Virgin and Child statues, 14, 32, 34–35, 39–40, 41 Prometheus, 92 prostration, 19, 30, 48, 63, 201 Protestant Reformation, 215–16 Prüfening, Saint George, 54, 55 Psalms demon-expelling mediations from, 154–55 hellmouth references, 150 leonine sensory experiences, 149 monstrosities as temptations, 138, 155, 169–71 psychostasis references, 191, 192 taste and spiritual union analogies, 28 Psalter of Louis the German, 19–20, 20 Psychomachia (Prudentius), 63, 64 psychostasis crosses with scenes of, 192, 192 imagery convention influence, 191 manuscript illustrations of, 192, 192 portal reliefs with themes of, 138, 189, 191, 196, 198, 202, plate21 public sculpture, 174, 176, 183 See also portals and portal sculpture punishment, 70, 72–73, 77, 86–87, 150–51, 173, 201 pupils of eye, 99 purgatory, 59, 61, 113, 191 purification baptism as, 57 Last Judgment theophany requirements of, 195–97 nudity as symbol of, 49 Virgin Mary symbolizing, 34, 67, 70, 86, 163, 195, 196 Pygmalion (mythological figure), 1, 2 Pygmalion effect, 1–3, 4–9

races, monstrous, 129, 131, 132, 136, 162, 206, 209 Rahewin (chronicler), 118, 119–20 Reginald of Durham (aka Coldingham), 1, 41 Reichsapfel (cruciform orbs), 103, 112 Reims, Saint Remigius, 144, 145 relics in crucifixes, 21, 22 materiality development and cult of, 9, 18 in reliquary portraits, 97, 98, 101, 117, 123 in statues, 17–18 reliquaries crucifixes as, 21, 22, 23, 221n39 function of, 17, 18, 98 statues as, 17–18 See also Barbarossa portrait bust; reliquary portraits reliquary portraits display locations, 97, 100–101 examples of, plate12, plate13, plate14, plate15 eye pronouncement features, 95, 98–100, 121 function and impact of, 2, 17–18, 89, 94, 98, 100, 108, 121–22 head/face, 101, 119, plate15 inscriptions, 89, 90, 102, 123 materiality of, 90, 95, 96, 97, 100, 101 relics in, 97, 98, 101, 117, 123 ritual practices with, 97, 98, 108, 122 secular portraits repurposed as, 95, 118, 119–20, 123–24 style descriptions and physiognomic conventions, 89, 90, 95–98, 101–3, 118–21, 124 Virgin and Child sculpture as influences on, 32–33, plate6 in visions, 97, 100, 101 See also Barbarossa portrait bust Renaissance sculpture, 215 Renier de Huy: Baptism of Christ baptismal font, 58, plate10 Reproaches, 29 Requiem Mass, 122, 150, 229n169 Resurrection of Christ, 3–5, 4, 13, 45–46, 46, 142, 142–43 Resurrection of the Dead hellmouth symbolism as reversal of, 150 Last Judgment imagery of, 121, 189, 190–91, 198, plate19 of monstrous bodies, 136 nakedness of, 57, 61–62, 62 regurgitated bodies symbolizing, 165, 168–69 theology of, 115, 150 tomb effigy representations as, 108, 112, 114–16, 121–22 Revelation (biblical book) heavenly Jerusalem, 97, 117, 124, 181 Last Judgment, 150, 202, 203 monsters, 159, 168 Second Coming, 165–66, 168 spiritual vision and divine revelation, 186–87 Rhetorica ad Herennium (Cicero), 155–56

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Index Richard of Saint Victor, 186, 187 Riché, Pierre, 146 Ringelheim Cross, 221n39 rituals anointing for sensory purification, 196–97 commemoration, 113–14, 115, 122–23 coronation, 63, 105, 111–12, 116 land acquisition witnessing, 94 monastic conversion, 85–87 See also consecration rites; Eucharist; liturgical/paraliturgical performances; processions Rizzo, Adriana, 40 Robinson, Ian, 112 Roman de la Rose (literary work), 1, 2, 3 Roman de Troie (Benoît de Sainte-Maure), 116 Romanesque, term origins, 7 Roman sculpture idolatry associations, 7–8, 92–93 nudity of, 79, 80 portraiture, 7–8, 33, 78, 89, 91, 96, 118 public art revival influenced by, 174 Romanesque nudity influenced by, 63, 77, 80–81, 81 as Romanesque portraiture influence, 118 sarcophagi reliefs, 80–81, 82 tomb effigies, 105–6, 107 Rome, Old Saint-Peter’s, 19, 22 Rome, San Salvatore (San Giovanni in Laterano), 7 Rosenwein, Barbara, 154 Rudolf von Schwaben tomb effigy accoutrements of office, 103, 105, 111–12 biographical information, 103 casting process descriptions, 110 inscriptions, 105, 107, 114, 123 materiality, 108, 112 ritual practices with, 122–23 seal impressions compared to, 111 style descriptions, 103–5, 104, 107, 118, 121, plate16(detail) Rudolph, Conrad, 156–57 ruminatio, 131, 150 Rupert of Deutz crucifix ritual practice descriptions, 29 imaginative visualization writings of, 14, 25 lust relief imagery, 66 monstrosity theories, 137 multisensory religious experiences of, 20, 27–28, 30, 31, 47, 50 sexual awakening interpretations, 52–53 Rutchick, Leah, 155 sacraments, 58 See also baptism sacram imaginem, 94 Sacrifice of Isaac, 81, 83

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Said, Edward, 132 Saint-André-de-Soréde, 176, 177–78, 179 Saint-Barthélemy, Liège, 58, plate10 Saint-Bertin, Saint-Omer, 20, 105–6, 106 Saint Chaffre, Le Monastier, 98 Saint-Denis, Paris, 14, 37, 122, 122, 181, 210, plate2 Sainte-Foy, Conques. See Conques, Sainte-Foy Sainte-Marie, Souillac, 149–50, 164, 165 Sainte-Marie-Madeleine, Vézelay. See Vézelay, Sainte-Marie-Madeleine Saint-Étienne, Toulouse, 60–61, 61 Saint-Genis-des-Fontaines, Roussillon, 176, 177, 178 Saint George, Cologne, 23, 24 Saint George, Prüfening, 54, 55 Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Paris, 122, 122 Saint Gertrude (now Market Church), Essen, 34 Saint-Gilles-du-Gard, Abbey of, 41, 43–44, 45, 174 Saint John, Essen, 34 Saint John the Evangelist monastery, Cappenberg, 117–18 See also Barbarossa portrait bust Saint-Jouin-de-Marnes, Poitou, 63, 64, 76, 76, 78 Saint-Lazare, Autun. See Autun, Saint-Lazare Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa. See Cuxa cloister Saint-Nectaire, Abbey of, 15, 98, 100, plate14 Saint-Nicolas, Civray, 63, 65, 181, 183 Saint-Omer, Saint-Bertin, 20, 105–6, 106 Saint Peter’s, Rome, 19, 22 Saint-Pierre, Moissac. See Moissac, Saint-Pierre Saint-Pierre de Mozat, Auvergne, 54–55, 55 Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Paul. See Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne, Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Paul Saint Remigius, Reims, 144, 145 Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe, Poitou, 81, 83, 83 Saint-Sernin, Toulouse, 9, 174, 178, 179, 180, 183, 201 Saint-Symphorien, Azay-le-Rideau, 176–77, 177 Saint-Trophîme, Arles, 77, 174 Saint-Victor, Marseilles, 106–7, 107 Salomon, Nanette, 49 Salomon of Brittany, King, 33 Salomo of Constance, 54, 55 Sancha, Doña, sarcophagus of, 59, 59–60 sanctification rites, 163, 180–81 sanctuaries, 156, 158–64, 160, 161 San Isidoro, León, 45–46, 46 San Juan de Tredos, Catalonia, 35 San Martín, Frómista, 79–81, 81, 82 San Salvatore in the Lateran, Rome, 7 Sansterre, Jean-Marie, 41 Santa Eulàlia, Erill la Vall, Catalonia, 28, 30 Santa María de Husillos, Madrid, 80, 82 Santa Maria de Ripoll, Catalonia, 126, 130 Santa Maria La Mayor cloister, Tudela Cathedral, 51, 51

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Santa María Real, Nájera, 59, 59 Santiago, Saint, 191 Santiago de Compostela, 182, 201 Santo Domingo de Silos, Burgos capital relief subjects, 141 Deposition from the Cross relief, 45, 46 Doubting Thomas relief, 3–5, 4, 13, 45, 143 Journey to Emmaus, 3, 5, 5 monstrosity capital reliefs, 126, 129 musician imagery, 4, 143 sarcophagi Last Judgment resurrection of the dead, 189, 190–91 Roman, as nude sculpture source, 80–81, 81, 143 with soul ascension imagery, 59, 59–60 Sarum rites, 229n169 Satan (devil) animal associations, 147 dreams derived from, 157 imagination as diabolical interference of, 153 jongleur masks of, 147 Last Judgment hell featuring, 199 temptation symbolism, 158, 159, 169 women’s sexuality associated with, 70, 132, 163 See also demons satyrs, 83, 84, 85, 148, 156, 157 Sauerländer, Willibald, 198 scepters, 112 Schapiro, Meyer architectural sculpture revival, 8–9 classical sculpture influences, 78 Lust and Virgin Mary juxtaposition, 66 monstrosity theories, 130–31, 151 portal sculpture purpose, 9, 178, 180 portal sculpture style, 164 profane music imagery, 143 Scheifele, Eleanor, 66 Schmidt, Gary, 150 Schmitt, Jean-Claude, 148 School of the Cloister (Peter of Celle), 140–41 Schüppel, Katharina, 18–19, 31 Scorn for the World (Bernard of Cluny), 72–73, 77 sculpture in the round animation of, as literary theme, 1, 2, 116 function, 18 history of, 7–8, 9, 17, 33, 214 impact of, 18 influence of, 18, 40 seal impressions, 103, 105, 109–11 Second Coming Last Judgment monstrosities in, 165–69, 166, 167, 190 sexual fantasy themes in, 70

Son of Man crucifixes in, 44–45, 167 spiritual vision of, 187, 187 theophany of, 171, 179, 183–85, 189–90, 205–6 See also Christ in Majesty; Last Judgment Second Vatican Council, 216 Sedes Sapientiae, 32 See also Virgin Mary and Child enthroned Seidel, Linda, 176–77 senses medieval theories of, 9–14 modern historiography, 6–7 Romanesque sculpture’s appeal to, 2–6 See also hearing, smell, taste, touch, vision sensiotics, 6 Sentences (Isidore of Seville), 92 Sentences (Peter Lombard), 115 Septuagesima, 86 serpents as monstrosities, 138–39, 155, 168 temptation symbolism, 57, 171 vice associations, 47, 48, 63, 64, 64, 66, 81, 82 Serres, Michel, 6 sexuality baptism imagery and concealment of, 58 of Christ, 50 church site restrictions, 71 Genesis narrative and views of, 51–52, 56, 57, 62 lay restrictions on, 70 monastic restrictions on, 3, 15, 23, 50–51, 68–70, 132, 162 nude imagery symbolism, 54 purification rituals, 197 sirens as symbols of feminine temptation, 148–49 of women, views on, 69–70, 132, 148–49, 163 See also lust; Lust/Luxuria Shakespeare, William, 1 Sidonius Apollinari, 119–20 Sigbert, Abbot of Gorze, 29 signum, 91 Simeon (biblical character), 34, 86, 159, 160, 161, 188, 195–96, 196 simulacrum, 2, 91–94 sirens biblical references to, 148 bird-, 79, 126, 129, 158 cloister capital reliefs of, 126, 128, 130, 148–49 lust and dream references of, 153 scholarly interpretations of, 152 sources for, 79–80, 143, 148 symbolism of, 148–49 Sluter, Claus, 215 Smaragdus of Saint Mihiel, 51 smell (olfactory experiences). See also incense

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Index anointing rituals for purification of, 197 monstrosity associations, 136, 139, 159, 170 universal element associated with, 54 social status hell imagery and representations of, 173, 200–201 portraiture conventions indicating, 103, 105, 110, 111–12, 121 Solomon Glossaries (Salomo of Constance), 54, 55 Solomon of Brittany, statue, 95 somatic spiritualism, 6 Song of Songs affectus themes supported by, 41 allegorical interpretations of, 50–51 contemplative models, 141 crucifix style influenced by interpretations of, 24, 26, 28, 50 divine love and multisensory experiences, 12, 13, 25, 28, 34, 41 embodied religious experiences influenced by, 12, 13 monastic sermons as sexual sublimation aids, 157–58 Virgin and Child statue rituals and antiphons alluding to, 34 vision descriptions, comparisons, 28 Son of Man, 44–45, 167, 198, plate21 Souillac, Saint-Marie, 149–50, 164, 165 soul body relationship to, 6, 9, 49, 99, 211 death and ascension of, 58–62, 59, 60, 61, 62 iconographic representations, 59 as image of God, 52–53 perception theories and role of, 11 sensory experiences for development of, 12–13, 99 sinfulness as nudity of the, 51 See also spirituality sound. See hearing Späth, Markus, 100 speaking in tongues, 208, 209 “speaking” sculptures, 77, 97, 121, 123, 202 sphinxes, 158, 162 Spinario, 79, 80, 111 spirituality body movement associated with, 145 physical appearance as reflection of inner, 120–21, 137, 139, 146 portraiture conventions signifying, 90, 94, 103, 121, 124 squatting capital relief imagery of, 55, 127, 128, 161 symbolism, 54, 135, 147, 159 stained-glass windows, 14, plate2 statua, 94 status animalis, rationalis, and spiritus, 25 Stavelot Abbey, 98, 101–3, plate15 Stephen II, 33 Stephen of Obazine, Saint, 100 Stiftskirche Enger, 107, 108, plate17 Stoichita, Victor, 1–2

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stones, living, 163, 174, 180–83, 207 Strasbourg Cathedral, 19 Strickland, Debra, 132 Stuttgart Psalter, 192, 192 sublimation, 68–73, 157–58 Suger, Abbot of Saint-Denis, 14, 37 Sullivan, Lawrence, 205 Summae confessionis, 70 Sylvester II, Pope (Gerbert), 116 synaesthesia, 6, 10, 205

273

Taliban, 216, 217 Taralon, Jean, 96 Taralon-Carlini, Dominique, 96 taste (sense) anointing rituals for purification of, 197 crucified Christ meditations describing sensory experiences of, 25 crucifix rituals and somatic sequence, 20 lust associations, 151, 159 monstrosities and allusions to, 126, 135–36, 159 Presentation at the Temple themes and, 160 religious experiences with, 27–28 universal element association, 54 valorization of, 10 Taylor, Michael, 205 Te igitur (initial), 12, 12, 21, plate4 Tellus (deity), 63, 77 Temple of Solomon, 37, 92, 93, 181, 182 Terra Mater (deity), 63, 77 Theoderic II, King of the Ostrogoths, 119–20 Theodolus (martyr), 102 Theodosius I, Roman Emperor, 8 Theodulf of Orléans, 30, 92–93 theophanies aesthetic influences on, 174, 176, 176 Ascension/Second Coming themes, 179, 183–85, 186, 207 Christ in Majesty themes, 175, 178, 185, 185–86, 188–89 definition, 174 early examples of, 174, 175, 176, 176–78, 177, 178, 179 Holy Spirit and Pentecost, 204, 205–6, 207–12 Incarnation themes, 206, 206–7 portal sculpture experiences of, 187–90 sculpture locations for themes of, 174, 180–83 spiritual vision accessibility for, 186–87 See also Christ’s real presence; Last Judgment Theophano (Byzantine princess), 33 Theophilus, legend of, 164 theosis, 198 Thietmar of Merseburg, 22 Thomas (apostle), 3, 4, 13, 13, 45, 46 Throne of Mercy, 11–12, 12

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Index

274

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Throne of Wisdom, 32 See also Virgin Mary and Child enthroned tomb effigies accoutrements and attributes, 103, 105, 110–12 bronze casting processes for, 110 church locations of, 113–14 with classical details, 79, 81, plate18 function and impact, 2, 96, 108, 114, 116, 121–22 history and terminology origins, 91, 92, 93 inscriptions for oral performance, 105, 112–13, 114, 123, 214 materiality of, 107, 108, 112–13, 114, 115–16 physiognomic conventions, 90, 110, 133 resurrection representations, 108, 112, 114–16 ritual practices with, 113–14, 115, 122–23, 229n169 style descriptions, high-relief examples of, 107, 122, plate17, plate18 style descriptions, low-relief examples of, 103–5, 104, plate16 style descriptions, mosaic, 105–7, 106 style descriptions, Roman style, 106, 107 style development, 105, 107 style influences, 105–6, 111 Topography of Wales (Gerald of Wales), 133 touch (sense) anointing rituals for purification of, 197 crucified Christ meditation descriptions of, 25 crucifix ritual practices of, 13, 20, 21, 30–31, 47, 50, 53 Doubting Thomas, 3, 5, 1 Herder on sculpture’s appeal to, 2 monstrosities and allusions to, 126, 136, 139, 149 Pentecost and Holy Spirit manifestation, 208 Presentation at the Temple themes and, 160 religious experiences with, 2, 3, 7, 13, 18, 27–28 reliquary portraits, 100 for spiritual vision access, 187, 187 universal element associated with, 54 valorization of, 10 variables of, 6 Virgin and Child veneration through, 39 Toulouse, La Daurade, 13, 13, 141, 142 Toulouse, Saint-Étienne, 60–61, 61 Toulouse, Saint-Sernin, 9, 174, 178, 179, 180, 183, 201 Tower of Babel, 181 transubstantiation, 37, 38, 162, 215 Treatise on the Eight Vices (Halitgarius), 143, 144 Treatise on the Sacraments (Hugh of Saint Victor), 11 Treatise on the Spirit and the Soul (Alcher of Clairvaux), 74, 152, 154 Treatise on the Trinity (Augustine), 10, 137, 152 Trexler, Richard, 47 Trinity manuscript illustrations of, 11–12, 12 perception theories based on, 10, 11–12, 137, 152 portraiture and image of God of, 52

Son of Man crosses, 44–45, 167, 198, plate11 See also Holy Spirit Truitt, Elly, 116 Tudela Cathedral, 51, 51 Ulrich of Cluny (aka Zell), Saint, 196, 210 urbanization, 8, 180 Urnes Stave Church, Norway, 1, plate1 Utrecht Psalter, 22 Valerannus, 50 vanity, 62 variety (varietas) and the monstrous, theory of, 134 veneration (adoratio) of crucifixes, 12–13, 17, 18, 19–23, 25–31, 35, 38, 40 of dead, 92, 93 idolatry and, 7–8, 17–18, 19, 92–93, 94 of reliquary portraits, 17, 18, 98 of sculpture in the round, 18 of Virgin and Child sculptures, 39 Veneration of the Cross, 19–23, 25, 28–31, 35 40 “Veni Creator Spiritus” (hymn, Hrabanus Maurus), 208, 210 Venus (Roman goddess) betrothals to statues of, 2–3 classical gender representations, 49 in Pygmalion mythology, 1, 2 as Romanesque nude sculpture influence, 49, 49, 77, 78 Verona Cathedral (Duomo), 41, 42, plate8 versus rapportati, 134 Vescovi, Michele Luigi, 165 Vézelay, Sainte-Marie-Madeleine Holy Spirit theophany, 205–12 lust-themed capital reliefs, 64, 66 monstrous races reliefs, 129, 131, 132 Pentecost tympanum, 129, 131, 132, 204, 205–6 Portal of Easter, 207, 207–8 Portal of the Incarnation, 41, 206, 206–7 profane music monstrosity reliefs, 144–45, 146 Virgin and Child statues, 35, 39 vices animal representations, 167 iconographic traditions of, 63, 65 manuscript representations of, 54 monstrosities representing, 134, 143, 144, 147 nudity associations, 143 sublimation and conversion through memory of, 157 theme purpose, 9, 178 See also avarice; gluttony; lust; Lust/Luxuria Vienna Genesis, 137 Vierge ouvrante, 215 Villard de Honnecourt, 90–91

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Index Vincent of Saragossa, Saint, 51 Virgin Mary Annunciation themes, 66 betrothal rituals to statues of, 3 Crucifixion reliefs featuring, 43 Deposition from the Cross themes featuring, 28, 30, 45, 46 ecclesia symbolism and role of, 35, 36–37 Infancy of Christ, 69, 70, 76, 86, 188 Last Judgment themes with, 194, 195, 198, plate21 Presentation in the Temple, 67, 70, 86, 161, 163, 195, 196 ritual practices with, 18, 189–90 visions with, 28 See also Virgin Mary and Child enthroned Virgin Mary and Child enthroned (Sedes Sapientiae, Throne of Wisdom) altarpiece reliefs featuring, 37–38, 39, plate7 display locations for, 35, 37 early examples of, 32, 33–34, plate5, plate6 function of, 18, 32, 34 materiality of, 40 popularity of, 32 portal reliefs featuring, 36, 36–37, 41–43, 42, 44, 69, plate8 as reliquaries, 17 ritual practices with, 14, 32, 34–35, 34–36, 38–40, 39–40, 41 style descriptions, 32–33, 35, 40–41, plate6 symbolism of, 35–38, 159, 161, 162, 188, 207 theophanic experiences with, 188 visions with, 1, 17, 41 viriliphobia, 83 virtues iconographic representations of, 51, 63, 65 Last Judgment inscriptions of, 203 manuscript representations of, 54 music and harmony of, 143–45 portraiture conventions symbolizing, 102, 103, 105, 109–10, 110, 111, 121, 139 reliquary portraits and symbolism of, 97, 98, 101–3 theme purpose, 9, 178 vice juxtapositions with, 63, 66, 67, 76 vision (sight) anointing rituals for purification of, 196–97 crucifix rituals and sensory perception sequence with, 20 factors impacting, 6 idealized beauty and imaginative power of, 73–74 monastic conversion rituals with, 85 monstrosity allusion to, 136, 139 monstrosity imagery and, 154, 159 nudity and, 87 Pentecost and Holy Spirit manifestation, 208 perception theology, 10–12, 137, 152 25, 187 religious experiences with, 18, 27–28

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reliquary portrait presence through, 98–100 sexual awareness and contemplation through, 51–52 sexual fantasy and imaginative power of, 74 for spiritual vision, 3, 5, 9–10, 20, 27, 99, 186–87, 189 for theophanic experiences, 186–87, 189, 202 universal elements associated with, 54 valorization of, 99 Virgin and Child veneration through, 39 visions reliquary portrait presence and, 97, 100, 101, 121 scholarship theories on, 7 sculpture for multisensory experiences of, 1, 17, 27–28, 41 Visitation, 66 Vitalis, Saint, reliquary portrait, 98 “Vitruvian man” (Leonardo da Vinci), 53 Vöge, Wilhelm, 181 Volto Santo crucifixes, 21

275

Walafrid Strabo, 93 Warburg, Aby, 80 Warmundus of Ivrea, 59 water, 54, 57–58, 71 Werckmeister, Karl, 63 white (color), 97 Wibald, Abbot of Stavelot, 101, 102–3 Wichmann von Seeburg, Archbishop of Magdeburg, 107 Widukind of Enger tomb effigy, 107, 108, plate17(detail) Wiligelmo: Creation of Eve, Modena Cathedral, 56, 56, 62 William of Flanders, 105–6, 106 William of Malmesbury, 2–3, 116 William of Saint-Thierry human/soul development, 12–13, 211, 217 meditative prayer states, 25 multisensory crucifix veneration, 13, 25–27 multisensory experience activation, 211 sexual desire theology, 52 spiritual vision and imagination, 187 Williams, David, 132 Winckelmann, Johann, 48 Winter’s Tale, The (Shakespeare), 1 Wirth, Jean, 33, 54 women classically-influenced nudes of, 83, 84, 85 classical nude and gender representations of, 49 hell and role reversal imagery, 200 idealized beauty descriptions, 73–74 profane music representation and naked, 145, 146 sexuality and views of, 69–70, 132, 148–49, 163 sexually-explicit nude sculptures of, 79–80 See also Eve; Lust/Luxuria; Virgin Mary; Virgin Mary and Child wonder, 132–33

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Index

276

Wonders of the East, The (manuscript), 132 wordplay, 134 wounds of Christ blood emissions, imagery and symbolism, 11, 12, 23, 47, 50 Christ in Majesty display of, 45, 167 Doubting Thomas themes, 3 ritualistic practices with, 21, 24–25, 30–31 sensory associations, 25 symbolism of, 22, 198 Wunderkammern, 217 Zink, Jochen, 66, 165, 168, 191

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