Images and image cycles with genealogical content were everywhere in the high and later Middle Ages. They represent families related by blood as well as successive office holders and appear as family trees and lineages of single figures in manuscripts, on walls and in stained glass, and in sculpture and metalwork. Yet art historians have hardly remarked on the frequency of these images. Considering the physical contexts and functions of these works alongside the goals of their patrons, this volume examines groups of figural genealogies ranging across northern Europe and dating from the mid-twelfth to the mid-fourteenth century. Joan A. Holladay considers how they were used to legitimize rulers and support their political and territorial goals, to reinforce archbishops' rights to crown kings, to cement relationships between families of founders and their monastic foundations, and to commemorate the dead. The flexibility and legibility of this genre was key to its widespread use.

The art of predicting earthly events from the movements of stars and planets has always been a source of fascination. Medieval astrologers, though sometimes feared to be magicians in league with demons, were usually revered scholars whose ideas and practices were widely respected. Politics, medicine, weather forecasting, cosmology and alchemy were all influenced by astrological concepts. Astrology in Medieval Manuscripts explores the dazzling complexity of western medieval astrology and its place in society, as revealed by a wealth of illustrated manuscripts from the British Library's rich medieval collection.

Coinciding with a major refit of the medieval galleries at the British Museum, this book presents some of the highlights, concentrating on the period 1050-1500. The pieces are photographed superbly in full colour, each with a description on the facing page. The book is arranged into three sections - devotional art, society and international influences - and the succesion of artefacts follows a logical thread, but this will mainly be a book to dip into, and a feast for the eyes.

Friars transformed the relationship of the church to laymen by taking religion outside to public and domestic spaces. Mendicant commitment to apostolic poverty bound friars to donors in an exchange of donations in return for intercessory prayers and burial: association with friars was believed to reduce the suffering of purgatory. Mendicant convents became urban cemeteries, warehouses filled with family tombs, flags, shields, and private altars. As mendicants became progressively institutionalized and sought legitimacy, friars adopted the architectural structures of monasticism: chapter houses, cloisters, dormitories, and refectories. They also created piazzas for preaching and burying outside their churches. Construction depended on assembling adequate funding from communes, confraternities, and private individuals; it was also sometimes supported by the expropriation of property from heretics. Because of irregular funding, construction was episodic, with substantial changes in scale and design. Choir screens served as temporary west facades while funds were raised for completion. This is the first book to analyze the friars' influence on the growth and transformation of medieval buildings and urban spaces.

Fur den Deckenschmuck der Abtsstube schlagt die Studie erstmalig eine Deutung vor. Sie versteht die sieben Medaillons als Bildprogramm zur Verherrlichung des Klosterpatrons und bezieht die sechs Tiersujets, die den Drachentoeter St. Georg umgeben, typologisch auf die Zentralfigur. Zum Nachweis dieser Moeglichkeit ermittelt sie zunachst anhand von Quellen die herkoemmlichen allegorischen Auslegungen der Tiere (Physiologustradition); dann zeigt sie Analogien auf zwischen den Tiergeschichten bzw. -exegesen und dem legendaren Leben und Wirken des Martyrers. So interpretiert, erhalt das bislang unbeachtete Deckenprogramm kunsthistorische Relevanz als innovatives Beispiel der Heiligenverehrung.

Two lavish, illustrated histories confronted and contested the Byzantine model of empire. The Madrid Skylitzes was created at the court of Roger II of Sicily in the mid-twelfth century. The Vatican Manasses was produced for Ivan Alexander of Bulgaria in the mid-fourteenth century. Through close analysis of how each chronicle was methodically manipulated, this study argues that Byzantine history was selectively re-imagined to suit the interests of outsiders. The Madrid Skylitzes foregrounds regicides, rebellions, and palace intrigue in order to subvert the divinely ordained image of order that Byzantine rulers preferred to project. The Vatican Manasses presents Byzantium as a platform for the accession of Ivan Alexander to the throne of the Third Rome, the last and final world-empire. Imagining the Byzantine Past demonstrates how distinct visions of empire generated diverging versions of Byzantium's past in the aftermath of the Crusades.

The sacred and the secular in medieval literature have too often been perceived as opposites, or else relegated to separate but unequal spheres. In Medieval Crossover: Reading the Secular against the Sacred, Barbara Newman offers a new approach to the many ways that sacred and secular interact in medieval literature, arguing that (in contrast to our own cultural situation) the sacred was the normative, unmarked default category against which the secular always had to define itself and establish its niche. Newman refers to this dialectical relationship as "crossover"-which is not a genre in itself, but a mode of interaction, an openness to the meeting or even merger of sacred and secular in a wide variety of forms. Newman sketches a few of the principles that shape their interaction: the hermeneutics of "both/and," the principle of double judgment, the confluence of pagan material and Christian meaning in Arthurian romance, the rule of convergent idealism in hagiographic romance, and the double-edged sword in parody. Medieval Crossover explores a wealth of case studies in French, English, and Latin texts that concentrate on instances of paradox, collision, and convergence. Newman convincingly and with great clarity demonstrates the widespread applicability of the crossover concept as an analytical tool, examining some very disparate works. These include French and English romances about Lancelot and the Grail; the mystical writing of Marguerite Porete (placed in the context of lay spirituality, lyric traditions, and the Romance of the Rose); multiple examples of parody (sexually obscene, shockingly anti-Semitic, or cleverly litigious); and Rene of Anjou's two allegorical dream visions. Some of these texts are scarcely known to medievalists; others are rarely studied together. Newman's originality in her choice of these primary works will inspire new questions and set in motion new fields of exploration for medievalists working in a large variety of disciplines, including literature, religious studies, history, and cultural studies.

This book offers an analysis of Giotto's painted architecture, focusing on issues of structural logic, clarity of composition, and its role within the narrative of the painting. Giotto was the first artist since antiquity to feature highly-detailed architecture in a primary role in his paintings. Francesco Benelli demonstrates how architecture was used to create pictorial space, one of Giotto's key inventions. He argues that Giotto's innovation was driven by a new attention to classical sources, including low reliefs, mosaics, mural paintings, coins, and Roman ruins. The book shows how Giotto's images of fictive buildings, as well as portraits of well-known monuments, both ancient and contemporary, play an important role in the overall narrative, iconography, and meaning of his works. The conventions established by Giotto remained at the heart of early modern Italian painting until the sixteenth century.

An examination of the passion and crucifixion of Christ as depicted in the visual and religious culture of Anglo-Norman England. The twelfth century has long been recognised as a period of unusual vibrancy and importance, witnessing seminal changes in the inter-related spheres of theology, devotional practice, and iconography, especially with regard to thecross and the crucifixion of Christ. However, the visual arts of the period have been somewhat neglected, scholarly activity tending to concentrate on its textual and intellectual heritage. This book explores this extraordinarily rich and vibrant visual and religious culture, offering new and exciting insights into its significance, and studying the dynamic relationships between ideas and images in England between 1066 and the first decades of the thirteenth century. In addition to providing the first extensive survey of surviving Passion imagery from the period, it explores those images' contexts: intellectual, cultural, religious, and art-historical. It thus not only enhances our understanding of the place of the cross in Anglo-Norman culture; it also demonstrates how new image theories and patterns of agency shaped the life of the later medieval church. John Munns is a Fellow of MagdaleneCollege, Cambridge.

The magnificent bronze doors of Hildesheim Cathedral, the ivory, gold, enameled, and bejeweled book covers made to contain superbly illuminated manuscripts, the startling reliquary caskets made in the shape of the part of the body supposed to be contained within them-these and other sacred objects were contained within church treasuries and cloisters in the early Middle Ages in Europe. This beautiful book traces the development of these so-called Minor Arts and the major role they played alongside the other pictorial arts and architectural sculpture of the period. Although it is impossible to establish a strict chronology of this period, since styles evolved concurrently and with varying speed across diverse regions of Europe, Peter Lasko has established an object-based chronology that enables him to trace the developments of these styles. In addition, he describes the personalities, stylistic traits, and influence of some of the great craftsmen whose names are briefly recorded in cathedral treasury records. He surveys the sacred arts from Scandinavia to Spain and from Italy to England, examining the impact of English art on the court of Charlemagne and investigating external influences on English art both before and after the Norman Conquest. Lasko records the wide range of opinions on style and method and also explicates his own; his comprehensive survey of craftsmanship alters previous assumptions about chronologies, creates new groupings of materials, and reassesses stylistic sources.

Originally published in 1926, this book analyses the role of the Abbey of St Gall in the development of German arts in the Middle Ages. Clark examines the various influences on the abbey from other European traditions and the importance of its manuscript collection for medieval learning. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in medieval Europe and the role of the Church in the transmission of learning.

In the Middle Ages, liturgies, books, song, architecture and poetry were performed as collaborative activities in which performers and audience together realized their work anew. In this book, essays by leading scholars analyse how the medieval arts invited and delighted in collaborative performances designed to persuade. The essays cast fresh light on subjects ranging from pilgrim processions within Chartres Cathedral, to polyphonic song, and the 'rhetoric of silence' perfected by the Cistercians. Rhetoric is defined broadly in this book to encompass its relationship to its sister arts of music, architecture, and painting, all of which use materials and media in addition to words, sometimes altogether without words. Contributors have concentrated on those aspects of formal rhetoric that are performative in nature, the sound, gesture and facial expressions of persuasive speech in action. Delivery (performance) is shown to be at the heart of rhetoric, that aspect of it which is indeed beyond words.

This study provides an historical context for the origin and evolution of the Spanish tradition of Apocalpyse imagery. The volumes in this series include an introductory text and catalogue raisonnee in chronological sequence in which concise codicological descriptions of each item are given, as well as critical discussions of date and orgin. All the illustrations of each manuscript are reproduced forming a corpus of nearly 2000 illustrations.;The following manuscripts are catalogued and fully illustrated in this volume: the Silos fragment; the Morgan Beatus; Madrid Vitrina 14-1; the Volladolid Beatus; the Tabara Beatus; the Girona Beatus; and the Madrid 14-2 fragment. All inscriptions are transcribed and translated.

Originally published in 1922, and first delivered in a slightly altered form as lectures at the University of London in 1911, this book gives a general review of 'the Church-Building Arts of England' from the Roman occupation until 1540. Prior studies the effects of major political and social events on English church art and architecture, and the ways in which art, particularly art located in churches and cathedrals, served as 'the vehicle of medieval civilization'. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in English medieval art and history.

Originally published in 1950, this book examines the art of the Cluniac religious order, specifically the sources of Cluniac iconography and the ways in which the life, practices and needs of the Order influenced the development of its art. Evans details the influence that liturgical dramas, Roman ruins and numismatic imagery held over the artists of the Order, and illustrates her text with over 200 photographs of Cluniac manuscripts, sculpture and architecture. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in Cluniac art and its roots.

Originally published in 1931, this was the first comprehensive textbook on the development of French medieval sculpture to appear in the English language. Detailed yet accessible, it was designed to 'cater for the intelligent tourist as well as the student'. Numerous photographs are contained throughout, the majority of which were taken by the author during various church visits. Examples are drawn from more genuine and less restored pieces, and where restoration is obvious it is pointed out in the text. This is a beautifully presented book that will be of value to anyone with an interest in medieval France, church architecture and sculpture.

From Horace Walpole to Angela Carter and the X-Files, new and familiar texts are reassessed, and common readings of Gothic themes and critical approaches to the genre are interrogated. The popularity of Gothic fictions, themes and films suggests that the genre is the norm as much as the dark underside of contemporary cultural production. Having endured for over two hundred years and settled onto numerous respectable courses of study, the meaning and value of the Gothic seems due for reappraisal. The essays in this volume, written by critics whose work over the last twenty years has considerably advanced the understanding of the Gothic genre, reexamine its literary, historical and cultural significance: from Horace Walpole to Angela Carter and the X-Files, new and familiar texts are reassessed; common readings of Gothic themes and critical approaches to the genreare interrogated: Gothic finds itself integrally involved in the production of a modern sense of the nation; it continues to haunt legal discourses; it underpins social mythologies and ideologies; informs histories of sexuality and identity; offers curious substance to notions of community and culture, and raises questions of ethics and postmodernism. Professor FRED BOTTING teaches in the Department of English at Keele University. Contributors: DAVID PUNTER, ELISABETH BRONFEN, E.J. CLERY, ROBERT MILES, JEAN-JACQUES LECERCLE, LESLIE J. MORAN, HELEN STODDART, FRED BOTTING, JERROLD E. HOGLE.

For several years now, sigillography as an independent subarea in the field of Byzantine studies has received increasing attention from both Byzantine studies and related disciplines, because it is the only area still able to provide academia with large amounts of material not previously analysed. The articles of Studies in Byzantine Sigillography deal with all aspects of Byzantine sigillography: presentation of new finds, discussion of new methods, questions of the political and ecclesiastical administration of Byzantinum, prosopography, historical geography, and art historical and iconographical problems. In addition, the volumes contain a loosely arranged list of Byzantine seals, which have been published in essays and auction catalogues, thus enabling those from more obscure publications to be located and identified.

Sir Steven Runciman's History of the Crusades (1951-4) remains widely read and influential but represents only a part of his wide-ranging, erudite and immensely readable literary activity. His early work focused on Byzantium in the tenth century (The Emperor Romanus Lecapenus) and the history of the first Bulgarian empire. Later he wrote with authority on ecclesiastical relations between the eastern and western Churches (The Eastern Schism), more generally on Byzantine culture (Byzantine Style and Civilization), with forays into medieval diplomacy (The Sicilian Vespers) and British colonial society (The White Rajahs). With a diplomatic past which informed his studies, he was the doyen of Byzantine studies in Britain. This volume of essays explores topics relevant to Sir Steven's interests, long planned in his honour by British Byzantinists of all generations, and includes a memoir of his life and a full bibliography of his work.

This is the fifth in a series of catalogues that present descriptions and complete cycles of illustrations of all existing manuscripts of the "Commentary on the Apocalypse" written by the 8th-century Spanish monk Beatus. The entire corpus, which spans the 9th to the 13th century, constitutes the greatest single tradition of Apocalyptic writing in the Middle Ages. All illustrations in these six manuscripts are reproduced and each catalogue entry discusses the location of production, the work of the outstanding illuminators and scribes, as well as details of codicology. A short introduction places the manuscripts in their historical context and analyzes the style of the miniatures. The volume includes a bibliography, relevant tables, and an index.

In CHROMA Derek Jarman explains the use of colour in Medieval paintingthrough the Renaissance to the modernists and draws on the great colour theorists from Pliny to Leonardo. He also talks about the meaning of colours in literature, science, philosophy, psychology, religion and alchemy. The colours on Jarman's palette are mixed with memory and insight to create an evocative and highly personal work.

First published in 1951, as the revised edition of a 1935 original, this volume provides a historical study of English sculpture during the medieval period. It was created as a response to the increasing popularity of art history, providing students with a detailed, yet accessible, introduction to its subject. The text is particularly distinguished by its comprehensive range of illustrative material, containing 683 high-quality photographs from a broad range of sources. This is a fascinating book that will be of value to anyone with an interest in religious art and the development of medieval sculpture.

Before the late sixteenth century, the churches of Florence were internally divided by monumental screens that separated the laity in the nave from the clergy in the choir precinct. Enabling both separation and mediation, these screens were impressive artistic structures that controlled social interactions, facilitated liturgical performances, and variably framed or obscured religious ritual and imagery. In the 1560s and 70s, screens were routinely destroyed in a period of religious reforms, irreversibly transforming the function, meaning, and spatial dynamics of the church interior. In this volume, Joanne Allen explores the widespread presence of screens and their role in Florentine social and religious life prior to the Counter-Reformation. She presents unpublished documentation and new reconstructions of screens and the choir precincts which they delimited. Elucidating issues such as gender, patronage, and class, her study makes these vanished structures comprehensible and deepens our understanding of the impact of religious reform on church architecture.