Inscription and divine presence: golden letters in the early medieval apse mosaic
2011; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 27; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/02666286.2011.541122
ISSN1943-2178
Autores Tópico(s)Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies
ResumoClick to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I am grateful to Jeffrey F. Hamburger and Karl F. Morrison for their valuable comments on this paper. Notes Abbreviations: LP — Le Liber Pontificalis. Texte, introduction et commentaire, ed. Louis Duchesne (Paris: E. De Boccard, 1955–1957), 3 vols; CBCR — Richard Krautheimer, Corpus basilicarum christianarum Romae (Vatican City: Ponteficio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana, 1937–1970), 5 vols; ICUR — Giovanni Battista de Rossi, Inscriptiones Christianae urbis Romae septimo saeculo antiquiores (Rome: Ex Officina Libraria Pontificia, 1857–1888), 2 vols; ILCV — Ernst Diehl, Inscriptiones Latinae Christianae Veteres (Berlin: apud Weidmannos, 1925–1985), 4 vols. 1 – For the inscription in S. Cecilia, see above, page 282. On the mosaic in general, which until the early eighteenth century extended to the apsidal arch representing the Virgin and Child in the center, approached by virgin martyrs and adored by the 24 elders, see Giovanni Ciampini, Vetera monumenta, 2 vols. (Rome: Ex typographia J. J. Komarek, 1690–1699), vol. 2, pp. 153–62, pls. 51–52; Giovanni Battista de Rossi, Musaici cristiani e saggi dei pavimenti delle chiese di Roma anteriori al secolo XV (Rome: Guglielmo Haass, 1899), unpaginated, pl. 24; Marguerite van Berchem and Etienne Clouzot, Mosaïques chrétiennes du IVe au Xe siècle (Geneva: Les presses de l'Imprimerie du “Journal de Genève”, 1924), pp. 245–49; Walter Oakeshott, The Mosaics of Rome (London: Thames and Hudson, 1967), pp. 212–13; Guglielmo Matthiae, Mosaici medioevali delle chiese di Roma (Rome: Istituto poligrafico dello Stato, 1967), vol. 1, pp. 234–35; John Osborne and Amanda Claridge, The Paper Museum of Cassiano dal Pozzo. Mosaics and Wall Paintings in Roman Churches, 2 vols. (London: Harvey Miller, 1996), vol. 1, pp. 78–81. 2 – Laura Kendrick, Animating the Letter: The Figurative Embodiment of Writing from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1999); Erik Thunø, ‘Looking at letters: “Living writing” in S. Sabina in Rome,’ Marburger Jahrbuch 34 (2007), pp. 19–43; 20–21, 32–35; Jeffrey Hamburger, ‘Script as image’, with extensive bibliography. 3 – ‘Totum quod legimus in divinis libris nitet quidem et fulget … .’; Jerome, Ad Paulinum Presbyterum (Epistula 58, 9), in Saint Jérôme, Lettres, ed. and trans. Jérôme Labourt (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1953), vol. 3, p. 83; Thunø, ‘Looking at letters,’ p. 33. For the concept of ‘Living Writing’ as opposed to the letter that ‘kills’ (2 Cor. 3: 6ff.), see Kendrick, Animating the Letter, p. 65. See also Peter Brown, ‘Images as a substitute for writing,’ in East and West: Modes of Communication, ed. Evangelos Chrysos and Ian Wood (Leiden: Brill, 1999), pp. 15–35, esp. 28–29, who argues for a gradual convergence of lectio and pictura, reaching an equal footing in the sixth century. 4 – ‘aureis litteris conscribendum et per omnes ecclesias in locis eminentissimis proponendum esse dicebat’; Augustine, De Civitate Dei, X, 29, trans. David S. Wiesen (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: W. Heinemann, 1984), pp. 392–93. See also Thunø, ‘Looking at letters,’ p. 33 and Hamburger, ‘Script as image,’. 5 – Dominic Janes, God and Gold in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), esp. pp. 63–93. On gilt writing, see Kendrick, Animating the Letter, pp. 75–76; Ulrich Ernst, ‘Leuchtschriften: Vom Himmelsbuch zur Lichtinstallation,’ in Beiträge zu einer Kulturgeschichte des Leuchtenden, ed. Christina Lechtermann and Haiko Wandhoff (Bern: Peter Lang, 2008), pp. 71–89, esp. 71–76; Thunø, ‘Looking at letters,’ p. 33; Hamburger, ‘Script as image’; Ulrich Ernst, Facetten mittelalterlicher Schriftkultur. Fiktion und Illustration. Wissen und Wahrnehmung (Heidelberg: Winter, 2008), pp. 258–63. 6 – Jerome, Ad Paulinum Presbyterum (Epistula 53, 5), in Saint Jérôme, Lettres 3, p. 14; for the letter as Christ's flesh and for scripture as his body, see Kendrick, Animating the Letter, 65ff., with patristic references. For letter and body, see also Urban Küsters, ‘Der lebendige Buchstabe: Christliche Traditionen der Körperschaft im Mittelalter,’ in Audiovisualität vor und nach Gutenberg: Zur Kulturgeschichte der medialen Umbrüche, ed. Horst Wenzel, Wilfried Seipel, and Gotthart Wunberg (Vienna: Kunsthistorisches Museum, 2001), pp. 107–17 and Hamburger, ‘Script as image.’ 7 – John Burnam, ‘The Early gold and silver manuscripts,’ Classical Philology 6:2 (1911), pp. 144–55; Herbert L. Kessler, ‘The Book as icon,’ in In the Beginning: Bibles before the Year 1000, ed. Michelle P. Brown (Washington, D.C.: Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, 2006), pp. 77–103, 77ff; Ernst, Facetten, pp. 267–279 and Hamburger, ‘Script as image.’ 8 – Thunø, ‘Looking at letters.’ The building inscriptions on the Pantheon and the Arch of Constantine, for instance, were originally filled with such litterae aureae; see Nicolette Gray, A History of Lettering: Creative Experiment and Letter Identity (Oxford: D.R. Godine, 1986), p. 20. 9 – Armando Petrucci, ‘La scrittura fra ideologia e rappresentazione,’ in Storia dell'arte italiana, 14 vols. (Turin: Einaudi, — 1978–83 — pt. 3), vol. 2, pp. 5–7; Carlo Carletti, ‘Epigrafia monumentale di apparato nelle chiese di Roma dal IV al VII sec: dalla lettura alla contemplazione,’ in Atti del VI Congresso Nazionale di Archeologia Cristiana (Florence: La Nuova Italia Editrica, 1986), pp. 275–86; Thunø, ‘Looking at letters’. 10 – Joseph Wilpert, Die römischen Mosaiken und Malereien der kirchlichen Bauten vom IV. bis XIII. Jahrhundert, 4 vol (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1916), vol. 2, p. 1272; Cäcilia Davis-Weyer, ‘Das Traditio-legis-bild und seine Nachfolge,’ Münchner Jahrbuch der Bildenden Kunst 3/12 (1961), pp. 7–45, 25–26; Yves Christe, L'Apocalypse de Jean. Sens et développement de ses visions synthétiques (Paris: Picard, 1996), p. 80. See also Valentino Pace, ‘Da Costantino a Foca: osservazioni marginali su temi centrali dall'arte a Roma fra tarda antichità e primo medioevo,’ in Società e cultura in età tardoantica, ed. Arnaldo Marcone (Florence: Le Monnier Università, 2004), p. 224. Charles Rufus Morey, on the contrary, described the clouds as evoking the sunset: see Morey, Lost Mosaics and Frescoes of Rome from the Medieval Period (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1915), p. 35. See also Jean-Michel Spieser, ‘The Representation of Christ in apses of the early Christian churches’, Gesta 37/1 (1998), pp. 63–73. 11 – Davis-Weyer, ‘Traditio-legis-bild,’ pp. 24–26, who cites poetry by Lactantius and Claudian. See also Roelof van den Broek, The Myth of the Phoenix According to Classical and Early Christian Traditions (Leiden: Brill, 1972). 12 – On those connections, see Franz Joseph Dölger, Sol salutis: Gebet und Gesang im Christlichen Altertum (Münster: Aschendorff, 1971, 3rd ed. 1972), pp. 212–44, 370–77; Martin Wallraff, Christus verus sol (Münster: Aschendorffsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 2001), pp. 119–20, 169–70, 158–62. See also Jerzy Miziołek, Sol verus. Studia nad ikonografią chrystusa w sztuce pierwszego tysiąclecia (Wrocław: Zakad Narodowy im. Ossolinskich, 1991), pp. 167–82, 174. 13 – On rising sun and Incarnation, see Davis-Weyer, ‘Traditio-legis-bild,’ p. 26; Wallraff, Christus verus sol, pp. 174–90. See also Franz Joseph Dölger, ‘Das Sonnengleichnis in einer Weihnachtspredigt des Bischofs Zeno von Verona: Christus als wahre und ewige Sonne,’ Antike und Christentum 6 (1940–1950), pp. 1–56. 14 – For the interactions between apse imagery and the liturgy of the Eucharist, see Geir Hellemo, Adventus Domini. Eschatological Thought in 4th Century Apses and Catecheses (Leiden: Brill, 1989); Dale Kinney, ‘The Apocalypse in early Christian monumental decoration,’ in The Apocalypse in the Middle Ages, ed. Richard K. Emmerson and Bernard McGinn (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992), pp. 200–16; Ursula Nilgen, ‘Die Bilder über dem Altar: Triumph- und Apsisbogenprogramme in Rom und Mittelitalien und ihr Bezug zur Liturgie,’ in Kunst und Liturgie im Mittelalter, ed. Nicolas Bock, Sible de Blaauw, Christoph Luitpold Frommel, and Herbert Kessler (Munich: Hirmer, 2000), pp. 75–89. 15 – See also Hamburger, ‘Script as image’. 16 – For an analytical overview of inscriptions in apses, on apsidal and triumphal arches in Rome and elsewhere, see Christa Belting-Ihm, ‘Zum Verhältnis von Bildprogrammen und Tituli in der Apsisdekoration früher westlicher Kirchenbauten,’ in Testo e Immagine nell'Alto Medioevo, Settimane di Studio del Centro Italiano di Studi sull'Alto Medioevo 41 (Spoleto: Presso la sede del Centro, 1994), vol. 2, pp. 839–84; Richard Krautheimer, ‘The Building inscriptions and the dates of construction of Old St. Peter's: A reconsideration,’ Römisches Jahrbuch der Bibliotheca Hertziana 25 (1989), pp. 3–23, 8ff., who lists a large number of the now lost inscriptions collected by the compilers of the syllogae from the sixth century on; Ursula Nilgen, ‘Texte et image dans les absides des Xle-Xlle siècles en Italie’, in Epigraphie et iconographise, ed. Robert Favreau (Poitiers: Université de Poitiers, 1996), p. 153--64. See also Krautheimer, ‘A Note on the inscription in the apse of Old St. Peter's,’ Dumbarton Oaks Papers 41 (1987), pp. 317–20; Thunø, ‘Looking at letters,’ 19ff. 17 – On this mosaic and other early surviving and lost apses with Christ and the apostles, see Christa Ihm, Die Programme der christlichen Apsismalerei vom 4. Jahrhundert bis zur Mitte des 8. Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart: F. Steiner, 1992), pp. 11–15; for a general overview of apse mosaics in Rome and their imagery, see also De Rossi, Musaici cristiani; Oakeshott, Mosaics of Rome; Matthiae, Mosaici medioevali; Maria Andaloro and Serena Romano, ‘L'immagine nell'abside,’ in Arte e iconografia a Roma da Costantino a Cola di Rienzo (Milan: Jaca book, 2000), pp. 93–133. 18 – Belting-Ihm, ‘Verhältnis von Bildprogrammen und Tituli,’ pp. 868–73. A few variations occur within the proposed scheme: in the San Venanzio Chapel the inscription exceptionally consists of white letters on a deep-blue background; in S. Maria in Domnica, Pope Paschal is not holding a model of the church, but kneels in front of the Virgin. A close adaptation of the Roman scheme is found in the apse mosaic in the Basilica Eufrasiana in Poreč, Croatia (524–556). See Ann Terry and Henry Maguire, Dynamic Splendor: The Wall Mosaics in the Cathedral of Eufrasius at Poreč (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007), pp. 4–5. The scheme may also include the now lost apse mosaic in S. Susanna, commissioned by Pope Leo III (795–815): see most recently Franz Alto Bauer, Das Bild der Stadt Rom im Frühmittelalter (Wiesbaden: L. Reichert, 2004), pp. 106–09, with further references. Exceptions are Leo III's now lost apse mosaics in the triclinia of the Lateran Palace and in SS. Nereo ed Achilleo; whereas the first two had different types of inscriptions, and showed no titular saints, the latter seems to have had neither inscription nor an apse imagery with human figures. See Hans Belting, ‘Die Beiden Palastaulen Leos III. im Lateran und die Entstehung einer päpstlichen Programmkunst,’ Frühmittelalterlichen Studien 12 (1978), pp. 55–84; Bauer, Bild der Stadt Rom, pp. 115–20, 195–99, with further references. 19 – The mosaic in the apse conch was demolished when the basilica was enlarged and reoriented in the thirteenth century, but what seems to have been its former inscription in golden letters has been recorded and was inscribed in the nineteenth century above the mosaic on the apsidal arch that represents the patron pope and titular saint; CBCR 2: 10; Matthiae, Mosaici medioevali, pp. 149–62; Ihm, Programme, pp. 138–39, with further references. 20 – HAEC DOMVS AMPLA MICAT VARIIS FABRICATA METALLISOLIM QVAE FVERAT CONFRACTA SVB TEMPORE PRISCOCONDIDIT IN MELIVS PASCHALIS PRAESVL OPIMVSHANC AVLAM D[OMI]NI FORMANS FVNDAMINE CLAROAVREA GEMMATIS RESONANT HAEC DINDIMA TEMPLILAETVS AMORE DEI HIC CONIVNXIT CORPORA S[AN]C[T]ACAECILIAE ET SOCIIS RVTILAT HIC FLORE IVVENTVSQVAE PRIDEM IN CRVPTIS PAVSABANT MEMBRA BEATAROMA RESVLTAT OVANS SEMPER ORNATA PER AEVV[M]; ICUR 2, 1; 151, 26; 156, 6; 444, 170; De Rossi, Musaici cristiani, unpaginated, pl. 24. I am grateful to Karl F. Morrison for the translation of this inscription. The sentences are interrupted by a few ornamental heart-shaped leaves, typical of Pope Paschal's inscriptions. In addition to calling attention to borrowings from Virgil, Ovid, and Sedulius, which is normal for this type of inscription, Favreau notes the inscription's grammatical and metrical errors, which make a translation only approximate: see Robert Favreau, Épigraphie médiévale (Turnhout: Brepols, 1997), pp. 118–19. 21 – LP, 2:55–58; The Lives of the Ninth-Century Popes, trans. Raymond Davies (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1995), pp. 14–18. The bodies of the other martyrs placed under the altar were of Tiburtius (brother of Valerian), Maximus (a Roman soldier), and the two third-century popes Urban and Lucius. For the translation account, which represents a particular literary genre, see Gritje Hartman, ‘Paschalis I. und die Heilige Cäcilia: Ein Translationsbericht im Liber Pontificalis,’ Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken 87 (2007), pp. 36–70; Caroline Goodson, The Rome of Pope Paschal I. Papal Power, Urban Renovation, Church Rebuilding and Relic Translation, 817–824 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 245–52, which also includes a discussion and reconstruction of the arrangement of the bodies under the altar. 22 – CBCR, 1:94–111; Caroline Goodson, ‘Material memory: Rebuilding the Basilica of S. Cecilia in Trastevere, Rome,’ Early Medieval Europe 15/1 (2007), pp. 2–34. For an edition of S. Cecilia's late fifth-century Passio, see Hippolyte Delehaye, Études sur le légendier romain: Les saints de novembre et de décembre (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1936), pp. 73–96, 194–220. For a discussion of the relationship between S. Cecilia's Passio and the translation account in the Liber Pontificalis, see Hartmann, ‘Paschalis I. und die Heilige Cäcilia,’ pp. 50–62; Goodson, The Rome of Pope Paschal I, pp. 244–52. 23 – Sant'Agnese appears with two flames and a sword beneath her feet, referring to the saint's fifth-century Passio: see Ihm, Programme, pp. 141–2. In San Marco the names of the depicted saints are inscribed on their footstools: see Claudia Bolgia, ‘The Mosaics of Gregory IV at S. Marco, Rome: Papal response to Venice, Byzantium, and the Carolingians,’ Speculum 81/1 (2006), pp. 1–33, here p. 3. 24 – LP, 2:57; Lives of the Ninth-Century Popes, p. 18. For these identifications, see the literature on the apse mosaic referred to in n. 1 above. 25 – See discussion in Bolgia, ‘Mosaics of Gregory IV,’ pp. 24–29. 26 – Rotraut Wisskirchen, Das Mosaikprogramm von S. Prassede in Rom: Ikonographie und Ikonologie (Münster: Aschendorff Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1990), p. 42. 27 – Klaus Gereon Beuckers, ‘Stifterbild und Stifterstatus. Bemerkungen zu den Stifterdarstellungen Papst Paschalis I. (817–824) in Rom und ihren Vorbildern,’ in Form und Stil: Festschrift für Günther Binding zum 65. Gerburtstag, ed. Stefanie Lieb (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2001), pp. 56–75, esp. 66; for the papal donor portrait in S. Cecilia and in general, see also Gerhart Ladner, Die Papstbildnisse des Altertums und des Mittelalters (Vatican City: Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana, 1941), vol. 1, pp. 62–64; Carola Jäggi, ‘Donator oder Fundator? Zur Genese des monumentalen Stifterbildes,’ Georg-Bloch-Jahrbuch des Kunsthistorischen Instituts der Universität Zürich 9/10 (2002–2003), pp. 27–45, 37–38; Jean-Pierre Caillet, ‘L'Affirmation de l'autorité de l’évêque dans les sanctuaires paléochrétiens du Haut Adriatique: De l'inscription à l'image,’ Deltion tes Christianike Archaiologike Hetaireia 24 (2003), pp. 21–30; Emanuel S. Klinkenberg, Compressed Meanings: The Donor's Model in Medieval Art to around 1300 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), pp. 19–28. On the square halo, which implies that the yet-to-become saint is still alive, see Gerhart Ladner, ‘The So-called square nimbus,’ Medieval Studies, 3 (1941), pp. 15–45; John Osborne, ‘The Portrait of Pope Leo IV in San Clemente, Rome: A Re-examination of the so-called “square” nimbus in medieval art,’ Papers of the British School at Rome 47 (1979), pp. 58–66. 28 – Klinkenberg, Compressed Meanings, p. 21. Through the golden inscriptions in SS. Cosmas and Damian and S. Prassede, Popes Felix IV and Paschal I literally express their hopes of receiving heavenly reward for their undertakings. 29 – For a discussion of the temporal and spatial implications of the donor's presence in the apse, see Ann Marie Yasin, ‘Making use of Paradise: Church benefactors, heavenly visions, and the late antique commemorative imagination’, in Looking Beyond. Visions, Dreams, and Insights in Medieval Art & History, ed. Colum Hourihane (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), pp. 39–58. See also Yasin, Saints and Church Spaces in the Late Antique Mediterranean. Architecture, Cult and Community (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 275–278. 30 – On Pope Paschal, his patronage and role as mediator of the sacred, see Erik Thunø, Image and Relic: Mediating the Sacred in Early Medieval Rome (Rome: L'Erma di Bretschneider, 2002), 157ff., 176ff.; Goodson, The Rome of Pope Paschal I. On the translation of saints’ relics as a means to increase ecclesiastical power, see Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), p. 37; Patrick Geary, Furta Sacra: Thefts of Relics in the Central Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990). 31 – Beat Brenk, ‘Da Galeno a Cosma e Damiano. Considerazioni attorno all'introduzione del culto dei SS. Cosma e Damiano a Roma’, in Salute e guarigione nella tarda Antichità, ed. Hugo Brandenburg, Stefan Heid and Christoph Markschies (Vatican City, Pontificio Istituto di archeologia cristiana, 2007), who mentions that the two saints are first recorded in Rome under Pope Symmachus (498–514); LP, 1:262. 32 – Peter Cornelius Claussen, Die Kirchen der Stadt Rom im Mittelalter 1050–1300, Corpus Cosmatorum II, 1 (Stuttgart, 2002), p. 369. On the fragmentary history of the two saints, see Brenk, ‘Da Galeno a Cosma e Damiano,’ p. 82ff. 33 – CBCR, 1:30–35 (Sant'Agnese); 2:124–125 (San Lorenzo); Richard Krautheimer, Rome. Profile of a City, 312–1308 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), pp. 83–85. 34 – LP, 1:330; Gillian Mackie, Early Christian Chapels in the West. Decoration, Function and Patronage (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), pp. 212–30. On the cult of relics and their translations in Rome, see also John Osborne, ‘The Roman Catacombs in the Middle Ages,’ Papers of the British School at Rome 53 (1985), pp. 278–329; Caroline Goodson, ‘Building for bodies: The architecture of saint veneration in early medieval Rome,’ in Roma Felix — Formation and Reflections on Medieval Rome, ed. Éamonn ó Carragáin and Carol Neuman de Vegvar (Aldershot, Ashgate, 2007), pp. 51–81; Goodson, The Rome of Pope Paschal I, pp. 198–211, with further references. 35 – LP, 2:54; on the relics at S. Prassede, see Goodson, The Rome of Pope Paschal I, pp. 228–44. On the mosaics, see Wisskirchen, Mosaikprogramm. 36 – See discussion in Bolgia, ‘Mosaics of Gregory IV’, pp. 24–9, who demonstrates that also the relics of the Persian saints Abdon and Sennen were brought from the cemetery of Ponziano on the Via Portuense to the crypt of San Marco. 37 – Goodson, The Rome of Pope Paschal I, pp. 100–01, 122–23; Cristina Ranucci, ‘Il mosaico absidale: Note sulle vicende conservative e fortuna critica,’ in Caelius I. Santa Maria in Domnica, San Tommaso in Formis e il Clivus Scauri, ed. Alia Englen (Rome, L'Erma di Bretschneider, 2003), pp. 228–40; Erik Thunø, ‘Decus suus splendet ceu Phoebus in orbe: Zum Verhältnis von Text und Bild in der Apsis von Santa Maria in Domnica in Rom,’ in Die Sichtbarkeit des Unsichtbaren. Zur Korrelation von Text und Bild im Wirkungskreis der Bibel, ed. Bernd Janowski and Nino Zchomelidse (Stuttgart, Deutsche Bihelgesellschaft, 2003), pp. 147–65; Thunø, ‘Materializing the invisible in early medieval art: The Mosaic of Santa Maria in Domnica in Rome,’ in Seeing the Invisible in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, ed. Giselle de Nie, Karl F. Morrison, Marco Mostert (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), pp. 265–89. 38 – On the mediating power of relics and the Virgin Mary, see Brown, Cult of the Saints, pp. 1–49; Robert Deshman, ‘Servants of the Mother of God in ancient and medieval art’, Word & Image 5/1 (1989), pp. 33–70; Hans Belting, Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image Before the Era of Art (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), pp. 30–46; Arnold Angenendt, Heilige und Reliquien. Die Geschichte ihres Kultes vom frühen Christentum bis zur Gegenwart (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1997), pp. 103–15; Thunø, Image and Relic, pp. 86–87, 176–78; Yasin, Saints and Church Spaces, pp. 210–39. 39 – For a reconstruction of this arrangement, see Goodson, ‘Material memory,’ pp. 22–24, figure 8; on the burial of relics underneath the altar and its tradition, see Godefridus J.C. Snoek, Medieval Piety from Relics to the Eucharist: A Process of Mutual Interaction (Leiden: Brill, 1995), pp. 175–86. 40 – Thunø, ‘Materializing the invisible,’ pp. 266–68. 41 – For the significance of metallis, see Eve Borsook, ‘Rhetoric or reality: Mosaics as expressions of a metaphysical idea’, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 44 (2000), pp. 2–19, 4–5, with further references, and Thunø, ‘Materializing the invisible,’ pp. 267–68. 42 – Arwed Arnulf, Architektur- und Kunstbeschreibungen von der Antike bis zum 16. Jahrhundert (Berlin: Deutscher Kunstvevlag 2004), pp. 51–71; Erik Thunø, ‘Inscriptions on light and splendor: From Saint-Denis to Rome and back,’ in Inscriptions in Liturgical Spaces, ed. Kristin B. Aavitsland and Turid Karlsen Seim, Acta ad archaeologiam et artium pertinentia 24 (seria nova) (forthcoming). 43 – Ovid describes the palace as ‘Bright (clara micante) with flashing gold and pyrope that mimics flames’/‘the double doors radiated (radiabant lumine) the brightness of their silver,’ Metamorphoses I–IV, ed. and trans. D.E. Hill (Warminster, 1985), p. 49 (Book 2, 1–5); Arnulf, Kunstbeschreibungen, pp. 61–62, who also notes (p. 31) that Homer's description of the Palace of Alkinoos in the Odyssey is the earliest recorded ekphrasis on a building. In addition to Ovid, other Latin authors of ekphrasis are Vergil, Horace, Claudian, and Lucan, who were all read throughout the Middle Ages. For the relationship between late antique poetry and the visual arts, see also Michael Roberts, The Jeweled Style: Poetry and Poetics in Late Antiquity (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1989), pp. 66–122. 44 – Procopius, De aedificiis, Book 1, Chapter 1; trans. H.B. Dewing and G. Downey (London and New York: Loeb Classical Library 1940), pp. 11–33; Paul the Silentary, ‘Description of Hagia Sophia,’ in Three Political Voices from the Age of Justinian, trans. Peter Bell (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press 2009), pp. 195–212. For large extracts of their ekphrasis, see also Cyril Mango, The Art of the Byzantine Empire 312–1453 (Englewood Cliffs, Prentice-Hall, 1972), pp. 72–78, 80–91. 45 – Suger, De administratione, pp. 174, l. 775–84; 180, l. 813–21, in Abt Suger von Saint-Denis. Ausgewählte Schriften, ed. Andreas Speer and Günther Binding (Darmstadt, Wissenscheq Buchgesell 2000), pp. 325–26; Arnulf, Kunstbeschreibungen, pp. 89–135, 263–6; Thunø, ‘Inscriptions on light and splendor’, which discusses the connections between Suger's inscriptions and those of the early medieval apse mosaics. 46 – Thunø, ‘Materializing the invisible,’ pp. 267–68. 47 – For this analogy, see also Anatole Frolow, ‘La mosaïque murale byzantine,’ Byzantinoslavica 12 (1951), pp. 180–209, 208; Borsook, ‘Rhetoric or reality,’ p. 4. 48 – The inscription in the apse mosaic at Poreč in Croatia also describes the former church: ‘At first this temple, with ruin shaking it, was terrible in its [threatened] collapse, being neither solid nor secure of strength, small, filthy, and then devoid of great mosaic decoration; the rotted roof hung only by the power of grace’; Terry and Maguire, Dynamic Splendor, pp. 4–5. 49 – Edmund Thomas and Christian Witschel, ‘Constructing reconstruction: Claim and reality of Roman rebuilding inscriptions from the Latin West,’ Papers of the British School at Rome 60 (1992), pp. 135–79. See also the critical comments by Garrett G. Fagan, ‘The Reliability of Roman rebuilding inscriptions,’ Papers of the British School at Rome, 64 (1996), pp. 81–95.
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