This book focuses on apse mosaics in Rome, which were commissioned by a series of popes between the sixth and ninth centuries CE. Through a synchronic approach that challenges current conceptions about how works of art interact with historical time, Erik Thuno proposes that the apse mosaics produce an inter-visual network that collapses their chronological succession in time into a continuous present in which the faithful join the saints in the one living body of the Church of Rome. Throughout, this book situates the apse mosaics within the broader context of viewership, the cult of relics, epigraphic tradition, and church ritual while engaging topics concerned with intercession, materiality, repetition and vision.

A narrative of decline punctuated by periods of renewal has long structured perceptions of Rome's late antique and medieval history. In their probing contributions to this volume, a multi-disciplinary group of scholars provides alternative approaches to understanding the period. Addressing developments in governance, ceremony, literature, art, music, clerical education and the construction of the city's identity, the essays examine how a variety of actors, from poets to popes, productively addressed the intermittent crises and shifting dynamics of these centuries in ways that bolstered the city's resilience. Without denying that the past (both pre-Christian and Christian) consistently remained a powerful touchstone, the studies in this volume offer rich new insights into the myriad ways that Romans, between the fifth and the eleventh centuries, creatively assimilated the past as they shaped their future.

As the locus of the Christian ritual, the altar has often been the object of artistic attention. Decorating the Lords Table treats the profusion of sumptuously ornate altars produced in various media during the European Middle Ages. Many of the altars display images of Christ, the saints, and Biblical personages, often in conjunction with narrative cycles depicting the lives of Christ and various saints. Investigating interrelationships between image and altar in the light of important recent methodological developments in the field of art history, the essays in this book treat themes such as the human body, materiality, pictorial narrative, and liturgy, and focus on evidence from Italian, German, and Scandinavian contexts.