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Lorsch Gospels, c.810, Alba Julia, Biblioteca Documentară Batthyáneum, MS R II 1, fol. 13r: Canon I. © Biblioteca Naţională a României.
Source publication
A double interaction can be observed between the ancient columns on the marble tomb of St Peter placed in the most important church of Western Christianity in Rome, and their painted counterparts in the canon tables with bodies and faces inscribed. In book illumination, some freedom and fantasy are possible that can hardly be built or sculptured. T...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... the following, I investigate a special feature of Carolingian canon tables: the specific vitality of the imitation stone pillars that form the architectural framework ( Fig. 1).1 I take as my point of departure a statement by Carl Nordenfalk in the 1965 Charlemagne exhibition catalogue. Here the author stated that the canon panels must be thought of as the 'pillar vestibule' of gospel manuscripts, through which one enters the building of the Holy Scriptures.2 I intend to go further in this article and claim ...
Context 2
... a vine entwining each of them ( Fig. 9). Between the narrow turns of the vine, a myriad of white figures populates the pillar. With their predominantly upraised arms, the crowd seems to surge toward the capitals or, indeed, toward two sunflower-like blossoms at the top of the columns, just as the heliotrope itself always aligns with the light (Fig. 10). At the base of the left-hand column, a naked man bends down appearing to pick something up, but at the same time reaches up into the vine. His pose underscores how all the figures of the two pillars span the windings of the column, delineating its contours. Moreover, that all the figures are to be considered naked becomes clear when ...
Context 3
... male figure touches the capital ring with his left, outstretched arm. This cowering figure is mirrored on the column on the other side, where in the penultimate turn above a human is crouched with legs bent and arms gesticulating, while on the left above him a creature stands under seven grapes and reaches for them, as if wishing to juggle them (Fig. ...
Context 4
... isolated case. The gospels of Saint-Médard de Soissons also includes a corresponding example.35 On folio 7v of this manuscript, which collects all four gospels in its register, the two grapepicker columns occupy the outermost positions. At the foot of the right-hand spiral column in the already familiar deep blue, a white fox-like animal appears (Fig. 11). It lifts its left front paw against the strong vine, which, unlike the Codex Harley does not wrap around the column, but scrolls along it, interrupted several times. The beast may have been interpreted as the parable of the foxes in the vineyard in the Song of Solomon chapter 2:15,36 whereby in the Old Testament the vineyard ...
Context 5
... Cf. Schaefer 1994, fig. 143. of grapes, pecking upwards into the vine, while a smaller bird below the adjoining double capital mirrors the action. The nude grape pickers in the vines and the spiral columns populated with birds, satyrs and other animals, recall the most famous preserved vine pillars: those of the Confessio Petri of St Peter's basilica in Rome ...
Context 6
... 1994, fig. 143. of grapes, pecking upwards into the vine, while a smaller bird below the adjoining double capital mirrors the action. The nude grape pickers in the vines and the spiral columns populated with birds, satyrs and other animals, recall the most famous preserved vine pillars: those of the Confessio Petri of St Peter's basilica in Rome (Fig. ...
Context 7
... in the name of an unadulterated antiquity providing a framework for the Scriptures is difficult to conceive. The story of living stone does not end with Charlemagne however. The first movement in monumental sculpture to survive after antiquity dates from the second half of the eleventh century and renews quotations of the columns of St Peter's (Fig. 13) As Peter Cornelius Claussen has shown, two white mar ble columns in the Roman churches of Santissima Trinità dei Monti, and San Carlo in Cave copy many details of the Solomonic vine columns.39 Featuring naked settlers, grape gleaners and peaceful cohabitation with all animals they may be interpreted as a monumental promise of paradise. ...
Context 8
... same applies to the six twisted marble pillars of the former Paradisus and the main portal of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela (Fig. ...
Context 9
... a brief example, the gospel of the last Ottonian emperor Henry II, Clm 4454 in the Bavarian State Library in Munich, probably originated around 1010 on the island of Reichenau (Fig. 15). All elements of the canon table on fol. 17r are enhanced to the highest degree of splendour: the two outer columns are golden, the inner ones denote dark red porphyry of the highest quality, the imperial stone of the Porphyrogenitos emperors. The Byzantine imperial reference is logical, since Emperor Otto's marriage to princess ...
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Citations
This chapter concentrates on how early medieval authors instrumentalised the malleable connotations concerning stone and construction as part of their broader applications of civic discourse throughout the early medieval period. Over five sections, this chapter uncovers these important connections through a unique body of sources. It first concentrates on how late antique and early medieval exegetes correlated abstract conceptualisations of living stones of the heavenly city with explicit links to citizens in the terrestrial realm. With the link between the heavenly and terrestrial citizens established, the chapter then moves to an understudied liturgical rite in order to demonstrate how the bonds between these two bodies were emphasised in an effort to seek divine protection for a city on earth. The possibilities and limitations of the creation of sanctified space on earth through construction are then explored through two further bodies of evidence: the ideal construction of sanctified space on earth through the Vita s. Chrothildis and the problematic nature of this ideal in two ninth-century letters composed during the Carolingian period. Together, this analysis of these diverse sources illuminates the ongoing correspondence between medieval conceptions of civic space and civic bodies throughout each of these diverse texts.
