Sospeso tra due mondi: il velo di San Giusto tra Bisanzio e Trieste

This article aims to a preliminary reassessment of the silk veil preserved in the Treasury of Trieste cathedral. The cloth is unparalleled in Byzantine as well in western medieval art, in that it is painted with tempera on both sides. It depicts a youthful martyr in a court costume, and bears an inscription that identifies the saint as St. Just. Since its alleged recovery from a reliquary in the early nineteenth century, the cloth has been often addressed by the scholars, who ascribed it either to a Byzantine or to a local master and dated it between the eleventh and the fourteenth century. Despite being referred to in several more general studies, it has been rarely considered individually. In this paper I address the many questions that the Trieste veil raises, including problems of chronology, provenance, function, and iconography. After careful observation and based on both primary sources and visual evidence, I argue that it was produced in Byzantium, possibly at an early date, to serve as a liturgical implement; later, it was brought to the West, where the saint was given a new identity and the cloth was reused as a banner after being painted on the reverse.

Langobardia maior et minor: indagini sul legame tra la scultura altomedievale e i capitelli campani

Langobardia maior et minor: indagini sul legame tra la scultura altomedievale e i capitelli campani. Within the southern Italian city of Capua – in the 10th and 11th century ruler's residence of the Lombard principality of Benevento and capital of Langobardia minor – a group of early medieval capitals has survived, which can be divided into three closely related types. On the basis of type I, which is bound to the corinthian capital, an examination will be made regarding to what extent relationships can be verified with the architectural sculpture of the older Lombard kingdom in northern Italy, which was incorporated into the Frankish Empire by Charlemagne as early as 774. For this purpose, certain technical and stylistic characteristics can be used, which concern in particular the overlapping tips of the acanthus leaves. The thesis is that in the very specific forms of Capuan capitals a line of tradition can be traced that is also found in other contexts of early medieval art in Campania, possibly with origins in the north.

Helen Nemanjić (?–1314)

Queen Helen Nemanjić (?–Brnjaci near Zubin Potok, February 8, 1314) was a Serbian medieval queen and consort of King Stefan Uroš I (r. 1243–1276), the fifth ruler of the Serbian Nemanide dynasty. She was the mother of the kings Stefan Dragutin and Stefan Uroš II Milutin. Today, she is known as Helen of Anjou (Jelena Anžujska in Serbian) although her real name was most probably Heleni Angelina (Ελένη Aγγελίνα). She was the founder of the Serbian Orthodox monastery of Gradac as well as four Franciscan abbeys in Kotor, Bar, Ulcinj, and Shkodër. Together with her sons, Kings Stefan Dragutin and Stefan Uroš II Milutin she helpedrenovation of Benedictine abbey of Sts. Sergius and Bacchus near Shkodër on Boyana river in present-day Albania. After the death of her husband, she ruled Zeta and Travunija until 1306. She was known for her religious tolerance and charitable and educational endeavors. She was elevated to sainthood by the Serbian Orthodox Church. Along with Empress Helen, the wife of Serbian Emperor Stefan Uroš IV Dušan, Queen Helen was the most frequently painted woman of Serbian medieval art. Six of her portraits can be found in the monumental painting ensembles of the Serbian medieval monasteries of Sopoćani, Gradac, Arilje, Đurđevi Stupovi (Pillars of St. George), and Gračanica, as well as on two icons and one seal. Queen Helen is also the only female Serbian medieval ruler whose vita was included in the famous collection of the “Lives of Serbian Kings and Archbishops” by Archbishop Danilo II, a prominent church leader, warrior, and writer.

C.G. JUNG, J.J. HONEGGER, AND THE CASE OF EMIL SCHWYZER (THE ‘SOLAR PHALLUS’ MAN)

The case of Emil Schwyzer, a.k.a. the ‘Solar-Phallus Man’, was foundational in giving shape to Jung’s early reflections on the concept of the collective unconscious. In 1906 Schwyzer identified a tail of light coming off the sun as a phallus, which Jung interpreted as a particularly important example of ‘the fantasies or delusions of…patients…[being] paralleled in mythological material of which they knew nothing’ (Bennet 1985:69). This was because it represented not only a single mythological symbol or idea that Schwyzer could not have known but an entire passage from an ancient document known as the Mithras Liturgy. According to Jung, Schwyzer’s ‘vision’ also paralleled a rare theme in Medieval art. Jung’s student J.J. Honegger gave a paper on the Schwyzer case at the March 1910 Second Psychoanalytic Congress in Nuremberg. In it he again discussed Schwyzer’s description of the light tail on the sun but especially his concept of a Ptolemaic flat earth. Relying largely on archival material not previously discussed, the present article provides a history of the Schwyzer case along with a thoroughgoing evaluation of what Jung and Honegger made of it. KEYWORDS J.J. Honegger, Emil Schwyzer, ‘Solar-Phallus Man’, Mithras Liturgy, Collective unconscious, Inherited ideas, Hortus Conclusus.

Preaching, Emotion, and the Aristotelian Turn

Chapter 7 explores the impact of Aristotelian rhetoric on the emotional work of preaching. Many manuscripts of Aristotle’s Rhetoric (and a good proportion of manuscripts of De regimine principum) belonged to clerical institutions; some of the most interesting responses to Aristotelian rhetoric are left to us by readers who were actively engaged in preaching. The many medieval artes praedicandi offer nothing like Aristotle’s Rhetoric in terms of teaching emotional appeal. The preachers who encountered the Rhetoric would find that it voiced the theory behind what was already lodged in their practice but which the preceptive traditions they had inherited did not articulate. It affirmed, in theoretical terms, what no medieval art of preaching articulated so systematically: the behavioral psychology of emotion and the strategies for appealing to emotions through argument. This chapter gives particular attention to three preachers who used the Rhetoric in their own practice: Thomas Eborall of London, Engelbert of Admont, and Mathias of Linköping (confessor to Birgitta of Sweden). Finally, the chapter explores the impact of the Rhetoric on an anonymous fifteenth-century pastoral reader who composed a short English verse on “Piers the Plowman” which he left in a copy of Aristotle’s Rhetoric next to the section on amicitia; it considers how this preacher brought together the emotional concerns of English poetry (the broad Piers Plowman phenomenon) and the theory of emotion in the Rhetoric.