Vom liturgischen Textil zum Werbebanner? Zwei byzantinische Goldstickereien im Dom zu Halberstadt

2017 ◽  
Vol 80 (2) ◽  
pp. 219-246
Author(s):  
Patricia Strohmaier

Abstract Two church banners made from a garment of late-fourteenth-century Italian lampas display two late-twelfth-century purple veils embroidered with gold. Bishop Konrad of Krosigk, having acquired a treasure of relics, textiles, and liturgical objects during the Fourth Crusade, donated these to his cathedral. The article focuses on how the two veils, which originally had veiled the chalice and the paten in the Byzantine mass, were reused and reframed. There is evidence that at first they were displayed upon or close to the altar, representing the cathedral’s new wealth by their costly appearance and Greek inscriptions evoking the splendor of Byzantine textile production. When sewn on church banners in the fifteenth century, they assumed the role of an advertisement for the Byzantine treasure, an attempt to reaffirm the marginalized cathedral’s prestige.

1989 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 99-109
Author(s):  
Virginia Davis

At the beginning of the fourteenth century ecclesiastical recruitment AA was flourishing in England. Hundreds of men turned up to be ordained at the four Ember seasons each year at which major ordinations were permitted to be held. The majority of these men were secular clergy; only a small proportion were members of religious orders. Of the scores of people in the diocese of Winchester who came at the stipulated time to be ordained to the major orders at this date only about one fifth were members of religious orders and of those, only a handful were mendicants. However, by the end of the century, after the ravages of the Black Death, although the total numbers of men being ordained had declined dramatically a greater percentage of these were regular rather than secular clergy. A similar pattern can be seen all over Southern England. It was a trend which persisted throughout much of the fifteenth century. This paper will investigate the changing patterns of secular and regular ordinations to the priesthood in southern England in the period between 1300 and 1500. In the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries extensive anti-mendicant feeling was expressed both in late medieval literature and in rivalry between the secular clergy and the friars over the pastoral role of the latter. Was this, in fact, a reflection of a reality which meant that, compared to the position in the early fourteenth century, far more ordained friars were on the streets and in the parishes?


2015 ◽  
Vol 21 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 232-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Weber

Contacts between Ethiopia and the papacy may have developed since the twelfth century and are securely documented from the first half of the fourteenth century. Information and mutual knowledge, very vague at the beginning, slowly increased through merchants, missionaries, and official embassies; both sides learned from each other. But numerous misunderstandings remained and fabulous tales about Ethiopia were diffused in papal documents until the fifteenth century. This was caused, of course, by the difficulty of obtaining precise and genuine information about these remote lands but it was also the consequence of an intentional confusion and distortion of reality, fed by the papacy in order to highlight its universal power.


Ars Adriatica ◽  
2014 ◽  
pp. 63
Author(s):  
Pavuša Vežić

In order to deepen our contemporary knowledge about the Romanesque cathedral of Dubrovnik, it is of utmost importance to turn to the archaeological remains and the documented material evidence in order to establish its ground plan. On the basis of the ground plan and in combination with the way the Cathedral was depicted in the art works produced during the period from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century, while also taking into account the contemporary written sources, we can propose a reconstruction of the Romanesque Cathedral together with a number of architectural features which have not been preserved. The Cathedral was an aisled basilica with a semi-circular apse which protruded at its east end. The nave was separated from the two aisles by means of arcades consisting of six piers resting on rectangular bases. The piers carried the vaults and these, in turn, supported the galleries above the aisles and the roof of the basilica. Such an arrangement was recorded by Diversis and Casola in the fifteenth century. In all likelihood, the two buttresses on the façade and eight more on each lateral wall were added later. At the top, the buttresses were connected by semi-circular arches and an exterior gallery existed above them. This gallery was connected to the one at the back of the church, creating thus an ambulatory which enabled the circumambulation of the basilica. This feature was mentioned by Casola and can be seen, to a certain degree, on the triptych painted by Nikola Božidarević. Most depictions show the Cathedral as having a dome on a round drum. However, the dome on the triptych painted by Pietro di Giovanni features a polygonal drum. The fact that the bases of the two piers situated under the dome are narrower compared to others, as can be seen on the ground plan recorded by Stošić, may have had something to do with that. The depictions of the dome regularly show exterior ribs which is a feature that requires further critical deliberation. At the same time, the dome does appear frequently in the architecture of Italian Romanesque churches. This can be seen in the architectural heritage of Apulia, Tuscany and Lombardy alike. When it comes to Dalmatia, however, only the cathedrals in its southern part, that is, at Dubrovnik and Kotor, were provided with a dome which is a phenomenon that points to the longevity of Byzantine tradition in these towns. The proposal put forward by Stošić, that the building of the Romanesque cathedral started during the last three decades of the twelfth century, when the Archbishop of Dubrovnik was Andrew of Lucca in Tuscany, seems convincing. Stošić also drew attention to the fact that the buttresses were added onto the exterior face of each lateral wall in order to carry the weight of the gallery in the upper part of the basilica. This may indicate that the initial concept was altered and it could be linked to an archival record of 1199 which mentions that a certain Eustace was required to carry out building works on the Cathedral. This Eustace was the son of Bernardo, a foreman (protomagister) in Trani in Apulia. This means that the twelfth century was not the time when the building works began, as Peković suggested, but the time when the building continued after the introduction of a new design with exterior galleries. Such galleries are found in Italian churches (in Apulia, Tuscany and Lombardy alike) as well as in some Dalmatian ones, for example on the lateral wall of Zadar Cathedral and on the wall of the semi-circular apse of the basilica of St Chrysogonus in the same town. On the other hand, fact remains that the exterior galleries in Apulian churches were supported by a series of robust buttresses which carried high vaults (Bari, Bitonto, Trani). These buttresses are much more solid in comparison to the narrow ones which were added onto the walls of Dubrovnik Cathedral. Perhaps this can be understood as a consequence of the change of design for the new cathedral which saw the replacing of what one might call a Tuscan project of the second half of the twelfth century with the Apulian one from the turn of the thirteenth. The building works continued long after this, well into the mid-fourteenth century, and in the process the cathedral acquired a number of Gothic elements. Its overall architectural composition was also imbued with the Gothic spatial articulation such as the testudines opere gothico. This makes it clear that during the thirteenth and fourteenth century, Dubrovnik experienced intense connections with Apulia.


2007 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 423-450 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Ackerman Smoller

ArgumentMedieval authors adopted a range of postures when writing about the role of reason in matters of faith. At one extreme, the phrase “natural theology” (theologia naturalis) was used, largely pejoratively, to connote something clearly inferior to revealed theology. At the other end, there was also a long tradition of what one might term “the impulse to natural theology,” manifested perhaps most notably in the embrace of Nature by certain twelfth-century authors associated with the school of Chartres. Only in the fifteenth century does one find authors using natural reason to investigate religious truths who also employ the term “natural theology,” now in a positive light, for their activities. Among such thinkers, astrology and eschatology frequently played an important role. In that respect, the writings of fourteenth-century Bolognese jurist John of Legnano offer an important example of the place of astrological, prophetic, and apocalyptic material in late medieval natural theology. In his 1375 treatise De adventu Christi, Legnano demonstrated that ancient poets, pagan seers such as the Sibyls, and non-Christian astrologers had all predicted, like Old Testament prophets, the virgin birth of Christ. For Legnano, not simply was Creation part of God's revelation, but, equally importantly, the very categories of reason and revelation blur in a way that points toward the works of Renaissance humanists and lays a foundation for a model of natural vaticination that showed reason's capability to reach fundamental religious truths.


1989 ◽  
Vol 69 (2) ◽  
pp. 279-297
Author(s):  
Valerie Horsman ◽  
Brian Davison

Excavations in the New Palace Yard at the Palace of Westminster, between 1972–4, have illuminated the development of this historic site on the northern periphery of the medieval palace. The Yard was first laid out in the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century over previously marshy land at the edge of Thorney Island. In the central area of the Yard, part of the foundation of a magnificent fountain, known historically as the Great Conduit was found. Built in the mid-fifteenth century, the conduit formed a major landmark until its demolition some two hundred years later. Preserved within its foundation were the fragmentary redeposited remains of a high quality fountain of polished Purbeck marble, dated to the late twelfth century. Due to the enormous scale of the building works significant environmental evidence was recovered allowing elucidation of the topographical development of this important site, from the prehistoric period to the creation of the Yard in the late thirteenth century.This paper is published with the aid of a grant from the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England.


1992 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 510-522 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Lautner

It has been strongly disputed that Philoponus is the author of the commentary on the third book of De Anima printed in vol. xv of CAG under his name, and Stephanus of Alexandria has been taken to be its real author. The evidence for the authorship of Stephanus is as follows: (I) Codex Parisinus gr. 1914, written in the twelfth century, has an adscript by a later hand saying βιβλ⋯ον τρ⋯τον ⋯π⋯ ϕωνης στεϕ⋯νου (‘third book from the voice of Stephanus’), and the same appears in the fifteenth-century Codex Estensis iii F 8. (II) In 543.9 there is a clause saying ὡς ⋯ν τῷ περ⋯ ⋯ρμηνε⋯ας ⋯μ⋯θομεν (‘as we learnt in the De Interpretatione’), which was taken by M. Hayduck to be direct reference to Stephanus' commentary on the De Interpretatione, edited also by Hayduck in vol. xiii/3 of CAG. (III) The third book, says Hayduck, is short (brevis) and jejune (jejunus), in contrast to the verbosity of the preceding two books. (IV) The commentary on the third book of De Anima is divided into lectures (πρ⋯ξεις), but the first two books are not. (V) Some locutions are used constantly in the third book and in Stephanus' in De Interpretatione as well. (VI) In the Codex Vaticanus gr. 241 fol. 6 (fourteenth century) we are told that Stephanus also wrote a commentary on the De Anima.


Author(s):  
James Morton

Chapter 8 moves from the Norman kingdom of the twelfth century to the newly changed situation in the early thirteenth century, as the demise of the Hauteville dynasty and the minority of the young king Frederick II Hohenstaufen (r. 1198–1250) created an opportunity for Pope Innocent III (r. 1198–1216) and his successors to enforce their authority in southern Italy. Meanwhile, the Latin conquest of Constantinople in the Fourth Crusade (1204) created an imperative for the papacy to develop a coherent policy towards the integration of Greek Christians into the Roman church’s administrative and legal structures. The chapter discusses how the papacy formulated this policy at the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) and the resulting increase in papal interventions in the legal affairs of the southern Italian Greeks. It then looks at Pope Honorius III’s (r. 1216–1227) short-lived effort to organise Byzantine-rite monasteries into an Order of St Basil under Grottaferrata (a predecessor to Eugenius IV’s more successful fifteenth-century order). It examines the Grottaferrata Nomocanon (Marc. gr. 171), a manuscript produced at the monastery in c. 1220–1230 that was apparently intended to provide a legal guide for the new order yet was still entirely Byzantine in character. The chapter finishes by focusing on the conflict between the Holy Saviour monastery of Messina and the papacy in the 1220s–1230s as an important example of the papacy’s efforts to bring the royal monasteries of the Kingdom of Sicily under episcopal control.


Author(s):  
George Garnett

Chapter 5 analyses three genres of historical writing about England in the later middle ages: histories of individual churches, universal histories, and histories of the kingdom. It confirms the provisional judgement reached in Chapter 4: that with respect to the Conquest and earlier England, historical writing fossilized. There were, however, exceptions, most of which could be categorized in the first genre. These are examined in great detail, and follow on from the treatment of the unusual episodes recorded during the thirteenth century at St Augustine’s, Canterbury and Burton Abbey which were considered in Chapter 4. The first is the problematic, neglected Historia Croylandensis attributed to (Pseudo-)Ingulf, which is for the most part a fabrication of the fourteenth or fifteenth century, but which masquerades as the work of the abbot at Crowland at the end of the eleventh century, and therefore as contemporaneous with the great post-Conquest histories of England. The second is the early fourteenth-century Lichfield Chronicle, written by Alan of Ashbourn. The third is a general history of England conventionally attributed to John Brompton, abbot of Jervaulx in the early fifteenth century, and perhaps written at the abbey. All three pay a great deal of attention to (different) twelfth-century compilations of Old English and immediately post-Conquest law. This unusual characteristic accounts for their exceptional interest in the Conquest. The chapter also includes a briefer discussion of the more conventional histories into which condensed earlier discussions of the Conquest were inserted.


1956 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 7-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leicester Bradner

The revival of the drama was not one of the accomplishments of the Renaissance. This revival had already taken place during the later Middle Ages, and by the twelfth century the plays connected with the festivals of the church had reached a considerable degree of complexity and dramatic effect. By the end of the fourteenth century the cycles of Biblical plays were well established, and in the fifteenth century they reached their greatest development. The rise of the moralities—those plays in which personified virtues and vices struggle for the possession of man's soul—also took place in the later Middle Ages, although the earliest references to them go back no further than the last quarter of the fourteenth century.


Author(s):  
Nikolai A. Alekseienko ◽  

This research republishes an interesting sigillographic find from Byzantine Cherson (Shumen, 2011), which first attribution was tentative, suggesting subsequent clarifications and corrections. Oleksandr Alf’orov has provided a new reading of the place-name on the seal reverse, thus indicating the necessity of setting aside the initial attribution of the seal to one of the bishoprics in Bulgaria and allowing one to relate the find from Cherson with the metropolis of Rus’. Now the obverse legend has been successfully reconstructed, uncovering that the seal certainly shows not the traditional image of St. Nikephoros, but rather that of the homonymous saint, the glorified patriarch of Constantinople in the ninth century. The image of St. Nikephoros is among the rarest pieces of Byzantine sigillography, though the image of St. Patriarch Nikephoros of Constantinople does not meet with any analogies. The chronology of the seal depends on the specific script and abbreviations in the legend, typical of the period from the twelfth to fourteenth century. Taking stylistic and epigraphic features of the find from Cherson and the term πάσης Ῥωσίας (“of all Rus’) used in the legend into account, there are reasons to consider that, among two metropolitans of Kiev bearing the same name in the twelfth century, the owner of the seal in question was Nikephoros (Nikifor) II who headed the Rus’ian Orthodox church in the late twelfth and the very early thirteenth centuries. The new attribution of this seal clarifies the list of church figures who received letters from Byzantine Cherson in the Late Byzantine period and uncovers this seal’s role of a source valuable and important for the history of the region, which testifies to the existence of inter-church connections between Cherson and Rus’ at the turn of the twelfth and thirteenth century.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document