Call for editors: Co-editors-in-chief for postmedieval journal, deadline 1 October 2023

We seek to recruit up to FOUR new Editors-in-Chief (EiCs) –two EiCs to begin three-year terms in January 2024; two to start in January 2025. (Staggered start dates will allow current editors to move out of their roles in rolling sequence. The total number of co-editors-in-chief will rise from three to four.)

Responsibilities of Editors-in-Chief are as follows:

  • -Helping to lead the journal into the future, guided by intellectual vision and ethical/political principles, in collaboration with co-editors and the editorial board
  • -Soliciting content for the journal (open-topic articles, essay clusters, and special issues), with the goal of publishing four issues annually
  • -Managing the peer-review process
  • -Editing (developmental editing, line editing, and copy editing – probably the largest single time commitment)
  • -Collaborating with the journal’s editorial board to maintain and strengthen the journal’s self-governance and profile
  • -Developing initiatives to make postmedieval more accessible, visible, and active.

Note that the publisher, Palgrave Springer, does not substantially remunerate the position of EiC; payment is limited to a small annual stipend. The hours of work per week vary with publication-schedule but regularly range between 5 and 10 hours/week. Editors-in-Chief are aided by a part-time, salaried Managing Editor, responsible for many of the day-to-day operations of the journal. We ask that new editors plan to occupy the role for at least three years from their start date.

postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies is a quarterly academic journal that publishes theoretically driven scholarship on premodernity and its ongoing reverberations. Contributions are characterized by conceptual adventure, stylistic experiment, political urgency, or surprising encounter. Our aim is to facilitate collaborative, ethical, and experimental engagements with the medieval – with its archives and art, its thought and practices, its traces and its enduring possibilities. The current editors and editorial board are committed to expanding the fields of knowledge and geography represented in the journal, by showcasing scholarship that reaches across disciplines, language traditions, locales, modes of inquiry, and levels of access.

A full catalogue of postmedieval’s issues to date is available here. This content is largely paywalled. If you lack access, please write to postmedievalED@gmail.com to request a representative sample of articles.

The journal is seeking diverse editorial leadership, to help define what a theoretically minded premodern studies can be – across disciplines, language traditions, identity positions, locales, modes of inquiry, and levels of access.

Applications are warmly invited from scholars in all fields of premodern studies, including but not limited to the disciplines of Art History, History, Languages and Literatures, Musicology, Philosophy, Religious Studies, and Theater and Performance Studies, and/or in subfields like Gender and Sexuality, Ecocriticism, Global Medieval Studies, and Medievalism. Early Modernists who are medievally inclined would be very welcome.

Selection of new editors will be made by a committee consisting of current EiCs (Shazia Jagot, Julie Orlemanski, and Sara Ritchey) and members of postmedieval’s editorial board. The plan is to conduct online interviews after an initial review of applications.

To apply, please send a CV (short-format is fine) as well as a brief cover letter (2-page max) addressing the following three prompts. Note: CVs are requested to establish details of career history and intellectual and publishing experience, rather than prestige; many different academic trajectories would be welcomed and valued.

Prompts (to be addressed in the cover-letter):
-Your vision for the future of postmedieval
-Prior experience that has prepared you for this editorial role (whether in editing, academic organizing and leadership, collaborative scholarship, and/or involvement in the publishing process)
-Your sense of how an editorial position at postmedieval fits into the logistics of your life over a three year term (January 2024–December 2026 or January 2025–December 2027) as well as longer-term professional and intellectual goals. Please specify whether you would prefer to start in 2024 or 2025 and how strong this preference is.

Completed applications should be sent to postmedievalED@gmail.com. Also, feel free to reach out with any questions!

APPLICATION DEADLINE: OCTOBER 1

CFP: ‘The Medieval in Museums’, IMC Leeds 2024, deadline 18 September 2023

Proposals are invited for 15-minute papers examining presentations of the medieval in museum and heritage contexts. We invite interrogation of the social, political, historical, and cultural effects of museum and heritage work, including: 

  • practices of acquisition, curation, display, and interpretation
  • archives, record-keeping, and databases
  • education and community projects
  • digital presences
  • outreach or knowledge exchange activities run by field archaeologists or academics
  • performances or reenactments
  • artworks or events commissioned as part of museum or heritage programming

Catherine Karkov (2020), Alexandra Sterling-Hellenbrand (2021), and Karen Jolly (2022) have argued that museums reflect and construct national and local identities, which, intentionally or unintentionally, may prop up myths of ethnogenesis or ethnonationalism. Joshua Davies (2018), Clare Lees and Gillian Overing (2019), and Beth Whalley (2023) have directed attention to the workings of creative medieval heritage broadly conceived. We invite a similarly expansive approach to the medieval and to museums.

We encourage reflection on the stakes of representing the medieval at a time of increased public awareness of how museums and heritage are entangled with histories of European imperialism, calls for decolonisation, and matters of social justice. 

We also encourage attention to written medieval sources (histories, poems, or other texts): how manuscripts are displayed or interpreted in conjunction with other visual or material culture, places, or landscapes.

To apply: please send an abstract of no more than 150 words explaining your approach to the medieval and museums and/or heritage to Fran Allfrey and Maia Blumberg, fran.allfrey@york.ac.uk; m.blumberg@qmul.ac.uk 

Deadline: 18 September 2023. The session organisers will submit the complete session by 29 September 2023. 

Please include the following: 

  • details of your academic affiliation (if appropriate), email, and postal address. 
  • a short abstract for the paper of no more than 150 words, in the language in which you want to present your paper. 

CFP: ‘Commemoration and the Senses in Late Medieval Europe’, IMC Leeds 2024, deadline 24 September 2023

In the lesser-known treatise De cura pro mortuis gerenda, Augustine of Hippo argued that tombs, when located in beautiful surroundings, are particularly powerful tools to incite genuine experiences of prayer in the mourner. Though writing in late antiquity, Augustine’s words would be echoed in several late medieval texts concerning commemoration, as a myriad of sensorial experiences was thought to be an integral component of the commemoration of deceased individuals. The ensemble of funerary art was charged with meaning through the careful orchestration of rituals and their sensorial input. Material remains, such as the tombs of the deceased, are only one of the sensory aspects once associated with the commemoration, while ephemeral displays of emotion by individuals through gesture, music, or clothing and other meaningful sensory signifiers are often hard to trace. Access to these ephemeral details is in the direct or indirect accounts of funerary rituals that tried to capture a sensory experience in text. These descriptions charged a monument or other funerary object with meaning, and allowed it to leave its material form and to start circulating throughout Europe in textual and visual copies.

While Augustine’s thought on the importance of senses in experiencing tombs was agreed upon and taken over by many authors in Late Medieval Europe, modern-day scholarship on funerary monuments and other commemorative practices has taken a long time to catch up with the intricate intellectual legacy on that matter. Particularly in the last two decades, scholarly attention has shifted to how commemoration goes beyond what remains visible today. Sharon Strocchia’s seminal 1992 book on burial rituals in 15th -century Florence was one such trailblazer, showing that key parts of the cityscape could be appropriated and activated to commemorate significant deceased individuals. While this and other publications have prompted more scholarly attention for the rituals surrounding commemoration in many parts of the European continent and beyond, much still remains to be said on how actively the senses were targeted in these rituals and what the link is between commemoration and the senses in the period after the ritual. This session, therefore proposes to look at funerary practices and their associated objects in Late Medieval Europe through the lens of sensory experiences. In our section, we tend to explore this intersection between ritual and object in which an object gets charged, activated or loaded with a certain meaning through a sensory effect at its initiation.

As such we would be very interested in posing questions such as (but certainly not limited to); In what way was existing liturgy embedded in the sensory “experience” of mourning? How was the sensory experience of funerary monuments and rituals captured in words? How could funerals temporarily “take over” public spaces by their ephemeral sensory presence? How could mourning, sermons, and commemorative literature be used to comment or reflect on a material object and its artistic qualities or another sensory performance. How did the spatial arrangements of the funerary monument relate to a specific funerary ritual and its sensory expressions? How did views of gender impact commemorative practices? How was music used to commemorate or commiserate? To what extent did certain rituals guide the gaze of the audience through the spatial arrangement? How were ephemeral rituals remembered and did the interpretation of them leave a lasting impression in the material culture?

This session encourages scholars to present new types of sources and approaches that give us new insights on the relation between the senses and mourning rituals. The session furthermore shows the importance and interconnectedness of sensory experience and commemoration, as it allows us to research the mechanisms and strategies of consolidating memory into existing rituals and spaces in Late Medieval Europe.

Submissions from a variety of disciplines are accepted, including but not limited to: archaeology, hagiography, religious studies, cultural and textual studies, humanist studies, musicology, history, history of art etc.

Please submit a 200-300 words proposal (in English) for a 15-20 minute paper. Proposals should include an abstract and be accompanied by a CV (including contact details, institution and academic or other affiliation).

This session is planned to take place in-person.

Please submit all relevant documents by 24 September 2023 to the following email addresses:

Mats Dijkdrent: mats.dijkdrent@uclouvain.be
Philip Muijtjens: ptm36@cam.ac.uk

New Publication: ‘Welsh Saints from Welsh Churches’ by Martin Crampin

The imagery of saints was once commonplace in churches in Wales, and by the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries painted and carved images of local and international saints would have been found on altars, screens, on the walls and in glazed windows of churches. Larger standing figures would have also been a feature of medieval churches, and these were probably the first images to have been removed and destroyed at the time of the Reformation.

Although images of saints in Wales survive from the later medieval period, very few can certainly be identified as Welsh saints, and the imagery of Welsh saints that can be seen in churches today mostly dates from the end of the nineteenth century and the twentieth century. These images are mainly in the form of stained glass and sculpture, charting the changing tastes of the Gothic Revival, the Arts and Crafts Movement and the changes in the way that medieval saints were understood in the popular imagination. Standing figures of saints sometimes make references to hagiographic texts, and additional scenes sometimes portray episodes from these stories.

Hardly any of this imagery has been studied or published before, and around 580 colour illustrations are provided by the author.

Dr. Martin Crampin is a Research Fellow at the University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies in Aberystwyth, with a particular expertise in the study of ecclesiastical art. He is also an acclaimed artist and photographer, and the author of Stained Glass from Welsh Churches (Y Lolfa, 2014) as well as a series of studies on individual churches.

Job: History of Art Tutor, Department for Continuing Education, University of Oxford, deadline 18 August 2023

The Department for Continuing Education specialises in providing quality education to adult learners and is seeking tutors to teach Medieval History of Art. Candidates will be well-qualified academically with experience of teaching and researching at university level. The minimum qualification required is a PhD or equivalent experience in a relevant art historical subject or in museum curation.

Each year the Department for Continuing Education offers some 1,000 courses and has some 20,000 students. Many of these courses are credit bearing, open access courses, mainly taught by part-time tutors. In addition to our open access courses, the Department offers opportunities for students to progress to award-bearing programmes at undergraduate and graduate level.  

We are seeking a part-time tutor to teach on our Undergraduate award-bearing courses in the History of Art, with a specialism of Medieval History of Art on the Certificate modules (First-year undergraduate level (FHEQ level 4)) and Undergraduate Diplomas (Second-year undergraduate level (FHEQ level 5)). These are part-time award-bearing courses taught over a period of at least one year. Tutors’ duties include teaching face to face and marking and providing feedback on assessments. The teaching will take place on Tuesdays at 2pm in Ewert House starting 3 October 2023.

We are specifically seeking candidates who are familiar with the latest developments and debates in the discipline. We especially welcome applications from candidates who demonstrate an ability to teach global approaches to the History of Art including visual and material culture more broadly conceived.

We expect interviews to take place shortly after the closing date, towards the end of August.

The Department for Continuing Education welcomes people from all backgrounds, at all times of life and from all over the globe, actively promoting an inclusive culture of equality, diversity and respect. We inspire people locally, nationally and globally by extending access to Oxford’s world-class teaching and resources through flexible and inclusive opportunities for study and research. We acknowledge the diverse needs, experience and ambitions of our students and staff, and work together to ensure a mutually supportive professional and learning community. Please see our mission and values for more information.

For more information and an application form, visit www.conted.ox.ac.uk/about/tutor-panel or contact Dr Leah R. Clark (leah.clark@conted.ox.ac.uk), Director of Studies in History of Art.

More information.

CFP: ICMS Kalamazoo 2024 – two sessions on Queer(ing) Medieval Art, deadline 15 September 2023

This session seeks papers that bring queer methodologies to the study of medieval visual culture. Case studies from across the medieval globe are welcome as are a broad range of approaches. Among the questions for consideration are the following: Under what circumstances does queerness become apprehensible within the visual field? What contextual factors allow it to be sensed, consciously or unconsciously? And once queerness is found to reside within the medieval artwork, does it then have some kind of agency? Instead of addressing accusations of anachronism, the papers in this session look to the past for new directions in queer scholarship. These contributions not only disrupt prevailing assumptions about the Middle Ages, but also highlight what medieval visual and material culture can teach us about more fluid or expansive perspectives on gender, sexuality, masculinity, and femininity.

Proposals for papers are due by September 15, 2023 and must be submitted through the Kalamazoo website. Go to https://icms.confex.com/icms/2024/cfp.cgi and scroll to the bottom of the page to choose “Sponsored and Special Sessions of Papers.”

Questions can be directed to Gerry Guest (geraldbguest@gmail.com). General information about the Kalamazoo conference can be found at https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress.

Conference: ‘Reliquary busts between Italy and Europe (XII-XVIth centuries’, 22-24 Sep 2023

‘Reliquiari a busto tra Italia ed Europa (secoli XII-XVI)’/Reliquary busts between Italy and Europe (XII-XVIth centuries)

Organised by Palazzo Madama-Museo Civico d’Arte antica di Torino, in collaboration with the Soprintendenza per i beni e le attività culturali della Valle d’Aosta
Turin, Palazzo Madama, September 22nd-23rd 2023
Aosta, Biblioteca Regionale, September 24th 2023

This conference follows the exhibition Ritratti d’oro e d’argento. Reliquiari medievali in Piemonte, Valle d’Aosta, Svizzera e Savoia (Gold and Silver Portraits exhibition. Medieval reliquaries in Piedmont, Valle d’Aosta, Switzerland and Savoy), held in 2021 in two italian museums: Palazzo Madama in Turin and the Museo del Tesoro della Cattedrale in Aosta.

Both exhibitions focused on reliquary busts, in precious metals and in wood, produced in this area – the ancient duchy of Savoy – in the Middle Ages; or imported from abroad, mainly northern Europe, in the medieval period, sometimes brought by merchants, or offered as gifts by the dukes of Savoy to important ecclesiastical institutions.

The high number of reliquaries of this type still preserved in this region (almost 30, from the survey carried out for the exhibitions), together with the great many no longer extant but described in local church and abbey inventories, makes it possible to consider this territory as a kind of case study. The catalogue, edited by Simonetta Castronovo and Viviana Vallet – now engaged in the organization of the conference – advances two hypotheses in relation to these surviving reliquaries: the presence in the area, ab antiquo, of an illustrious model, the reliquary bust of Saint Maurice in the Vienne Cathedral (Isère), dating back to the IXth century; and a certain immobility in taste which often characterizes the mountain valleys, and which saved these medieval works from fusion and replacement with more modern objects.


The conference aims now to establish a comparison with other contemporaneous contexts: first of all by examining the heritage of other Italian regions – where the success of the Renaissance and then Baroque art has in many cases caused the disappearance of medieval liturgical artefacts; then by widening the scope to include other European countries, such as France, Spain and Belgium. This is a work in progress, of course: where we want to consider not only the iconographic, historical and stylistic aspects of these works of art, but also the techniques of manufacture and the social role played by these reliquaries – especially those of local and popular saints – in the communities where they come from (in processions and special festivities), where the devotion to some of them is still alive today.

Find out more here.

Conference programmeDownload

Call for Proposals: ‘Social Sculpture in the Middle Ages’, Different Visions journal, deadline 1 October 2023

This special issue of Different Visions seeks to address the methodological unity between sensory experience, reader response, and performance studies through the paradigm of “social sculpture.” Since Joseph Beuys introduced the term “social sculpture” in the late 1960s, contemporary art historians have investigated the potentialities of bodies-as-sculpture to shape social communities and identity through performance. Beuys’ expanded definition of artistic creativity no longer limited art to the creation of tangible objects; instead, the social realm became a stage for embodied performance that actively required the participation of its audience for its completion.

This methodological approach has the potential to usher medieval studies outside the archive and into the embodied repertoire, yet social sculpture has never been explored within the context of medieval art history. For medieval art historians, social sculpture can provide a paradigm to rethink our approach to medieval materials, documents, and objects by reframing these extant materials as only one actor within the greater collage of embodied participation that shaped medieval religious, political, and social communities.

We seek to open this relatively new field of study through a diverse and interdisciplinary special issue incorporating scholars’ work across the medieval world (broadly defined). As an online, open-access journal, Different Visions accommodates dynamic and interactive media. We invite submissions that include digital content such as video and audio clips or three-dimensional models.

Paper proposals should consider the intersections between embodied action and material culture, including but not limited to:

  • Participatory objects, performance, and spectacle
  • The role of the sculpted body-in-space in structuring religious and civic ritual
  • Animated images and automata
  • The migration and performative uses of portable objects along pilgrimage, procession, and trade routes
  • The various publics of medieval social sculpture
  • The representation and/or interaction of the body with ephemeral or recyclable materials, such as votive offerings in shrine space(s) and on cult objects
  • Delimiting premodern racial and religious communities through public oaths and acts of conversion
  • Manipulation of the body in penitential and confessory settings

Different Visions believes that peer review should be an open, productive, and reciprocal process. Submissions are reviewed by the editors, and then sent to external reviewers. The first stage of the external review will be double blind. Following the first review, author and reviewer(s) are invited to communicate and collaborate during the remaining review process.

Please submit a proposal of no more than 300 words to differentvisionsjournal@gmail.com by October 1, 2023. First drafts of accepted essays of approximately 10,000 words will be due in Fall 2024.

For questions please reach out to differentvisionsjournal@gmail.com.

You may also reach out to the special issue editors:
Kris Racaniello at kris.racaniello@gmail.com
Ariela Algaze at aalgaze1@jhu.edu

Find out more here.

Conference: ‘Visualizing Drugs & Dyes. Art and Pharmacology in (Early) Medieval Worlds (600–1400)’, 4-6 Sep 2023, University of Basel

4–6 September 2023, University of Basel: Forum eikones (Rheinsprung 11) & Pharmacy Museum (Totengässlein 3) & online

Organized by: Theresa Holler (University of Basel); Hannah Baader (KHI Florenz/4A_Lab Berlin); Andrew Griebeler (Princeton University)

Plants have long shaped the material practice and imagination of pharmacy. Far more than animals or minerals, plants and their products were central to medicine in premodern epistemologies. Over centuries, images and imaginings of vegetal materia medica played a profound role in human conceptions of and interactions with the natural world. In many ways, they continue to do so. Conversely, the therapeutic efficacy of plants and their products impacted broader visual and material cultures and practices. Thus, premodern pharmacological techniques interacted with the practices of image-making, artistic processes, and art. The international conference wants to foster a dialogue between conservators, art historians, medical historians, philologists, anthropologist and literary studies.

Find out more here.

Register here for online participation.

Program

Monday, September 4, 2023
Venue: University of Basel, eikones, Rheinsprung 11, 4051 Basel

09:00–09:15 Welcome & Introduction
Theresa Holler (University of Basel), Hannah Baader (KHI Florenz/4A_Lab Berlin) and Andrew Griebeler (Princeton University)

09:15–10:00 Richard Gameson (Durham University): The Colour of Plants

10:00–10:45 William Brockbank (Bern University): Wið eagena sare ond geswelle: Treating Afflictions of the Sensory Organs with the Old English Herbarium

Coffee Break

11:00–11:45 Laurence Totelin (Cardiff University): The Enslaved Rose? Visualising Roman Healing Roses and Those Who Worked with Them

11:45–12:30 Danielle Joyner (Lawrence University): Exploring the Tangled Roots of Glass Furnaces in Medieval Herbals

Light Lunch at eikones

Venue: University of Basel, Universitätsbibliothek, Schönbeinstrasse 18-20, 4056 Basel

14:00–16:00 Site visit with Monika Studer from the Manuscript Department (for speakers only)
Kristina Domanski (University of Basel): Heilende Ordnung – Heilung in der Unordnung (D III 14)
Venue: University of Basel, eikones, Rheinsprung 11, 4051 Basel

16:00–16:30 Coffee Break

16:30–17:15 Francesco Roberg (Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek der Stadt Trier/Stadtarchiv): Metrologie als Schlüssel zum Verständnis mittelalterlicher Rezepte

17:15–18:00 Robin Reich (Seattle University): The Many Lives of (Sal) Ammoniac in the Medieval Central Mediterranean

18:00–18:30 Brigitte Buettner (Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts): Minerals as materia medica: Excavating the Visual Tradition (online)

Apéro Riche at eikones

Tuesday, September 5, 2023
Venue: Pharmacy Museum Basel University, Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Totengässlein 3, 4051 Basel

09:15–10:15 Site visit at the Pharmacy Museum with Elias Bloch (for speakers only)

Coffee Break

10:45–11:30 Maurizio Aceto (Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale): From Dioscorides to the Arab World: A Voyage into the Colourants Used in the Ancient Herbals

11:30–12:15 Ayman Yasin Atat (Technische Universität Braunschweig): Plants as Dyes in the Medieval Arabic Civilization; Ibn al-Bayṭār as a Case Study

12:15–13:00 Farnaz Masoumzadeh (Art University of Isfahan): Mimesis Approach in the Drug Illustrations of the Paris Kitāb al-Diryāq Based on Walter Benjamin’s Doctrine of the Similar

Light Lunch at the Pharmacy Museum

14:00–14:30 Ruiying Gao (Wake Forest University): Collecting Nature on Paper? An Early History of Materia Medical Images in China (online)

14:30–15:00 Lyla Halsted (Davidson College, Davidson, North Carolina): Therapeutic Arabic Scrolls: The Use of Saffron on Medieval Magic-Medicinal Amulets (online)

15:00–15:30 Wanessa Asfora Nadler (Universidade de Coimbra/Universidade de São Paulo) and Isamara Lara de Carvalho (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais/Fundação Biblioteca Nacional): Madder: Arts, Crafts and Medical Literature at the Crossroads (online)

15:30–16:15 Isabelle Balmer (University of Basel) and Anina Steinmann (Stiftsarchiv St.Gallen): The Narrator Dyes. Analyzing Colour and Cure in Medieval Literature

Coffee Break

16:45–17:30 Arsenio Ferraces Rodríguez (Universidade da Coruña): Imaginario colectivo, tradición iconográfica e inercia de los editores: un nuevo nombre para la mandrágora en Isidoro de Sevilla (Etym. 17, 9, 30)

17:30–18:00 Gregory Bryda (Barnard College, Columbia University): A Mandrake Crucifix on the Wendish Borderlands of Styria (online)

Conference Dinner for Participants

Wednesday, September 6, 2023
Venue: University of Basel, eikones, Rheinsprung 11, 4051 Basel

10:00–10:45 Samuel Umoh Uwem (University of KwaZulu-Natal): Indigenous Apothecary, Folkloric Claims and Musa paradisiaca in 11th-century Precolonial Nigeria

10:45–11:30 Elisa Palomino (Smithsonian Institution Arctic Studies Center): Use of Indigenous Arctic Plants as Dyes and Tannins in the Traditional Northern Fish Skin Processing

Coffee Break

11:45–12:30 Maite Álvarez and Cathy Carpenter (J. Paul Getty Museum): Woad in Medieval Spain: Exploring the Multifaceted Role of a Prized Colorant, Curative, Protective, and Decorative Material

Light Lunch at eikones

13:30–14:15 Closing Lecture
Nancy K. Turner (J. Paul Getty Museum): Pigments and Dyes, Vision and Healing: Finding materia medica in Manuscript Illumination

14:15–14:45 Round Table Discussion

visualizing_drugsdyes_flyerDownload

New Publication: ‘Colors in Medieval Art: Theories, Matter, and Light from Suger to Grosseteste (1100–1250)’, by Alberto Virdis

Projected color saturates our world of images and screens, leading to a dissociation of color from material realities through its cultural attachment to light and the efflorescence of optics. Under these conditions, it is difficult to imagine a past where color was an eminently material, cultural, and social object. This book argues that color is and was a central “cultural object” within art history, a fact first elucidated through an examination of the debates and difficulties of color in language, theology, science, and philosophy. Following this overview of medieval aesthetical debates, the author pursues two pivotal case studies which span the twelfth and thirteenth centuries: the Basilica of Saint-Denis and the Cathedral of Lincoln, respectively connected to the figures of the abbot Suger and the bishop Robert Grosseteste. Prominent thinkers and concepteurs of sacred spaces and images, they both confronted existing theories of color and optics, and the theology of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. The case studies both center the art of stained glass, a revolutionary medium that blurs the boundaries between color, materiality, and light. Emerging strongly throughout this beautifully illustrated volume are traces of a central Middle Ages in which color played a fundamental yet groundbreaking role at the crossroads of aesthetic, intellectual, and theological issues.

Find out more about this publication here.

Contents

  • ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  • PREFACE by Herbert L. Kessler
  • INTRODUCTION: THE ELUSIVENESS OF COLORS
    • FROM MODERN TO MEDIEVAL COLOR: METHODOLOGICAL CAVEATS AND HISTORIOGRAPHICAL APPROACHES
    • HISTORIOGRAPHICAL APPROACHES
    • THE COLOR AND LANGUAGE CONUNDRUM
    • A HISTORIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: KOLORITSGESCHICHTE VS. HISTORICAL APPROACH
      • Michel Pastoureau: Colors at the Crossroads of History and Anthropology
      • From Color to Experience and Abstraction
  • 1. SCIENCE, THEOLOGY, AND AESTHETICS
    • 1.1 COLOR AND THEORIES OF VISION
      • Plato and Aristotle
      • The Islamic World and the Spread of Aristotelian Knowledge
      • From Al-Kindī to Averroes
      • From the Early Medieval Three-Color System to Intermediate Colors: Medieval Encyclopedias and the Look on the Natural World
    • 1.2. THEOLOGICAL DEBATE AND AESTHETIC FORMULATIONS ON LIGHT AND COLORS: AN INTERTWINING DIALOGUE
      • Late Antiquity
      • Pseudo-Dionysius’ Neoplatonism and its Long Legacy
      • Matter or Light? Early Medieval Aesthetics and the Iconoclastic Controversy
      • From Bernard of Clairvaux to Robert Grosseteste: Theology, Literature, and Science
    • 1.3 TECHNICAL ART TREATISES OF THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES AND THE TWELFTH CENTURY
      • Heraclius’ De coloribus et artibus Romanorum
      • De coloribus et mixtionibus
      • Theophilus’ Schedula diversarum artium
  • 2. A KIND OF BLUE: ABBOT SUGER AND THE MATERIA SAPHIRORUM
    • 2.1. THE ABBEY OF SAINT-DENIS
      • Historical Milestones
      • The Enlargement of the Basilica at the Time of Suger (ca. 1135–1144)
      • The French Revolution and the Nineteenth Century
    • 2.2. COLOR, STAINED-GLASS WINDOWS, LITURGICAL FURNISHINGS, AND THE NEOPLATONIC METAPHYSICS OF LIGHT
      • Light and Color in Suger’s Writings
      • The Metaphysics of Light
      • What is the Materia Saphirorum
      • Saphirus as a Color Term
      • Saphirus as a Precious Stone
      • Saphirus as a Pigment
      • Anagogical Colors: From Matter to Light
    • 2.3. THE ICONOLOGY OF BLUE AT SAINT-DENIS
      • The Rise of Blue
      • A Supernatural Color?
  • 3. ROBERT GROSSETESTE’S DE COLORE AND THE CATHEDRAL OF LINCOLN
    • 3.1. ROBERT GROSSETESTE: A BIOGRAPHICAL PROFILE
      • Grosseteste’s Works
    • 3.2. LIGHT AND COLOR
      • De Luce, De Colore, De Iride, and Le Chasteu d’amur
    • 3.3. THE CATHEDRAL OF LINCOLN AND ITS STAINED-GLASS WINDOWS
      • Architecture
      • The Thirteenth-Century Stained-Glass Windows
      • The Vitae of St. Hugh of Lincoln
    • 3.4. GROSSETESTE’S TRANSLATION OF PSEUDO-DIONYSIUS
      • The Mystical Theology, Color Metaphors, and Stained-Glass Windows
  • 4. MYSTICAL COLORS: ANAGOGICAL WINDOWS IN LINCOLN AND SAINT-DENIS
  • CONCLUSIONS

Biography of author

Alberto Virdis

Alberto Virdis is a researcher in Medieval Art at the Masaryk University, Centre for Early Medieval Studies, Brno. He is currently leading a project funded by the Czech Science Foundation on the origins of stained glass art in the Early Middle Ages. His main research interests span from the history of colours in medieval art and their relation with the art of stained glass, to artistic and cultural interactions in the Mediterranean space in the High Middle Ages, with a special focus on mural paintings and studies on Medieval landscape.