Speakers
For a list of speakers from ‘Transition in the Medieval World’ held on 12-13 May, 2012 Click here
‘Transition Revisited’ is a one-day conference intended to further some of the ideas, questions, and conversations raised by ‘Transition in the Medieval World. Drawing delegates and papers from across the United Kingdom and Ireland, this event provides an avenue for postgraduates and early career researchers to engage with established scholars in order to better foster communication in an endeavor to strengthen and further the study of the medieval worldwide.
Speakers include:
Elizabeth Alexander - University of York
The Problem of the Picts: Issues surrounding the identification of Jonah and the Ketos in Early Medieval Scotland
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Pictish art – the art of early Medieval Scotland – is, for many reasons, considered to be unique, not only in the context of Insular art, but in the art of early Medieval Europe generally. By definition therefore, it has, with only few exceptions, been largely excluded from art historical discussions of early medieval or early Christian art. With the studies of Pictish art themselves focussing on the material almost to the exclusion of wider contexts. In part this is understandable: unlike other areas of the Insular world there is little material evidence for this society apart from stone carvings, let alone documentary sources, and many of the stone carvings themselves are unique in form and range of decorative motifs. In light of this, the commonly (although not exclusively) restrictive nature of the scholarship is hardly surprising.
As a means of engaging with this situation, this paper will focus on a particular distinctive image type preserved on a small number of carved stone monuments (four), which have, without discussion in the scholarship, been considered as illustrating the Old Testament scene of Jonah and the Ketos (a sea monster with its own specific and longstanding iconography). Despite this universal acceptance of the scenes identity however, the four examples of this image display iconographic features that are markedly different, not only from each other, but from the well established iconographic versions of the Jonah scene surviving in the corpus of early Christian art across Europe.
It will be suggested here that these images should be considered, not as established markers of Christian identity among the Picts, but as signifiers of a culture in transition, a society concerned to associate the Christian and the pre-Christian, the new and the traditional – which has been lost and so now is unfamiliar.
Alice Blackwell - National Museums Scotland
Brooches in transition
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This paper highlights a new aspect of the design and iconographical programme of the Hunterston brooch. Animals embedded in the form of the brooch terminals flank the cross panel, and are interpreted as a motif rooted in the Canticle of Habakkuk’s assertion that Christ would be recognised between two living things. This Old Testament text was given wide meaning by early Christian thinkers, encompassing the central concept of the recognition, the ‘knowing’, of Christ and thus can be regarded as a fundamentally important subject for expression. Objects that feature the motif include those usually identified as secular metalwork such as brooches as well as church objects and Christian sculpture. It is suggested that the depiction of such a central Christian theme might lie behind the motivation to ‘close the gap’ between the terminals of the Hunterston and ‘Tara’ brooches. If so, this adaptation would provide a way to depict a central Christian motif which simultaneously maintained a visual link with the traditional brooch form whilst highlighting the ‘new’ Christian element precisely because it was what was added.
Martin Goldberg - National Museums Scotland
Pictish adventus: Early Medieval sculpture as transitional monuments
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Adventus ceremonies, inherited from the Roman imperial past, structured the reception of bishops, nobles, kings and even saint’s relics at particular times and places throughout medieval Europe. An adventus entrance ceremony has spatial and conceptual associations with transitional points including doorways, boundaries and routeways. This paper will discuss the distinctive forms of adventus imagery that were developed for display on some Pictish cross-slabs and the implications of this for the original context of these monuments. The adventus inspiration for the rider and hunt imagery on Pictish cross-slabs means that in some instances an interpretative leap, a mental transition, can be made from iconography to liturgical performance, providing further insights into the places, roles and functions that the monuments commemorate.
Guy Halsall - University of York
Every thought is a throw of the dice: Transition and irony, change and chance
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Abstract Forthcoming
Robert Halstead - University of Leeds
The Leeds Cross in Context
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The ninth-century Leeds cross famously features both Christian iconography and the hero Weland in his flying machine. Previous analyses have taken a traditional iconographical approach, with the classification of elements as “Anglian” or “Scandinavian” a particular concern and the emphasis on the cross’s reliance on the Anglian sculptural tradition. This has failed to recognise that much relating to the cross defies clear categorisation and may be deliberately ambiguous, and has obscured the extent to which it is an innovative, transitional monument. This paper will provide a new reading of the cross by resituating it in its geographical, linguistic and cultural context, considering the distribution of stone sculpture in the region along with place-name evidence. The significance of the cross will be discussed in terms of the contemporary meaning rather than the ultimate derivation of figures and motifs. Such an analysis will show that the cross was probably erected in a borderland between areas of Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian influence. In this context, the cross is revealed as a transitional object, with ambiguous motifs and iconography which resonated across cultural boundaries. This study will thus place new emphasis on the ambiguity and innovative cross-cultural appeal of the cross’s iconography. Furthermore, by contextualising the monument in the landscape and placing the cross in a borderland between two cultures, a space in which identity was being negotiated, the cross will be shown to be moving beyond both the Anglian tradition and the culture of the Scandinavian newcomers.
James Hillson - University of York
The Changing Image of Plantagenet Kingship: Hagiography and Political Iconography in the East End of St Stephen’s Chapel
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Though St Stephen’s Chapel in Westminster has attracted great attention from architectural historians, its extensive decorative programme has been comparatively neglected. Though fragmentary in survival, the painted programme of the 1350s was nonetheless dominated in the east by the image of King Edward III and his family being led by Saint George in veneration of a central reredos, surrounded by saints who were the object of the King’s private devotions. The aim of this paper is to show that this mural reflects a transition in the paradigm of how Plantagenet rulers constructed their royal image. In essence, the painting represents a change from the promotion of the cults of role-models such as Edward the Confessor or King Arthur which provide typological exemplars that typify English kingship to emphasising the image of a reigning monarch: the person of Edward III supported by his saintly companions in peace and war. Through drawing comparisons with his use of hagiographical heraldry, promotion of Saint George and projects earlier in his reign such as the abortive Round Table Order and the 1330s sculptural programme at St Stephen’s, this paper will explore the image’s specific response to a changing political situation following Edward’s triumphant victories in France during the 1340s. Further comparison to works patronised by Henry III, the Black Prince and Richard II will be used to place the image in its wider transitional context as this new relationship between royal ruler and personal saints developed to construct and reinforce an individualising image of kingship.
James Jago - University of York
"This House must Appeare to be His Peculiar": Mediaeval Architecture and Protestant Identity in Early Modern England
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Abstract Forthcoming
Axel Kelly - Trinity College Dublin
The Idea of Martyrdom in Pre-Crusade and First Crusade Sources
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The authors of many of the primary sources that recount events of the Crusades frequently used the designation ‘martyr’ for those who died in Crusade battles. This usage indicates a significant change from the early Christian concept of martyrdom as it was described by early Christian writers such as Eusebius. These writers told of martyrs who died bearing witness for Christ, refusing to repudiate their belief in Him and emulating Him by passively meeting death without offering resistance. Many early Christian martyrs lived among those of other faiths, neither inviting death by provocation nor resisting death as witnesses for their faith. Those who died in battle on Crusade however, while they bore witness for Christ by dying for Christianity, violently resisted death while simultaneously endeavouring to kill as many of the Muslim enemy as possible. This presentation will examine sources that describe both the First Crusade and the proto-Crusade conflicts in which combatants were said to have been martyred. It will seek to identify the point at which the concept of martyrdom changed from that exemplified by martyrs in the first centuries of Christianity, to that shown in the accounts of the militant martyrs described in Crusade and proto-Crusade sources.
Harry Stirrup - University of York
'Samuel and Saul: A Change of Clothes on the Morgan Leaf'
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During the period 1150-75 in England the growing influence of the Byzantine mosaics of Norman Sicily was reflected in the stylistic changes seen in liturgical manuscripts produced in monastic scriptoria. Sometimes existing illuminations were repainted and updated, undergoing a material and stylistic modernization at the hands of younger, more ‘modern’ artists. Such a transformation can be seen in the illuminations of the Winchester Bible where, because these changes were sometimes incomplete, it is possible to observe earlier and later styles on the same page, in a ‘before and after’ relationship which records the stylistic transition taking place. This paper deals with the illuminations of the Morgan Leaf, a large single leaf now detached from the Winchester Bible and which was partially over-painted in a more modern style. On the recto of the Leaf is an illustration by the original artist depicting the transition from one state of being to another, without using words, captions, labels or scrolls. The simple and direct visual symbolism probably had its origins in a letter written by Jerome, and it is fortunate that the illustration was not over-painted; had it been, evidence of its subtle symbolism would have been lost.
Heidi Stoner - University of York
The Architecture of the Life of a Saint
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The decades following the Norman Conquest saw the landscape and people of England change. Historians discuss the date as the definitive end of the Anglo-Saxons; and rightly so, as the Anglo-Saxon king was dead and gone. However, there is often little thought given to those individual communities that remained, adapted and changed. Durham saw their Anglo-Saxon Cathedral- the White Church- torn down and replaced with the formidable Durham Cathedral. While the changes caused by the conquest are drastically evident, there were communities of those who remained who left an evermore subtle mark. The clerks who had been the stewards of Cuthbert, were replaced with Benedictine Norman Monks, some of the clerks however joined the monks and continued on as stewards of Cuthbert as their church was taken down and rebuilt before their eyes. It is this change that can be reflected in a manuscript illuminated by the Durham scriptorium as the cathedral was concurrently being built.
This discussion is concerned with the iconographic reading of a single manuscript, namely, Oxford University College Manuscript 165, which contains Bede’s Life of St. Cuthbert. This paper will propose a methodological approach which gives insight into the cultural context within which this manuscripts was made, and will further engage with several images to provide possible reading of the images directly affected by the circumstance of its production. The architectural imagery within the images of Oxford University MS165 will be interpreted as an architectural metaphor that will reference the theological, exegetical and social-political context from which the manuscript was illuminated. Furthermore, the images use a complex visual language to reference the importance of building, and building types that are not necessarily what is evidenced from Anglo-Norman Durham. This paper will suggest a reading that has been particularly influenced by the change in stewardship of the relics of St. Cuthbert and the political climate following the Norman Conquest.
Victoria Symons - University College London
Transitional meanings and the place of the word on the Franks Casket
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Each panel of the Franks Casket, an 8th century whalebone box from Northumbria, consists of a border of text surrounding a central image or images, with narratives drawn from Biblical, Classical and Germanic mythology. It is generally assumed that the texts elucidate or explain the images they enclose, with scholars attempting to construct a linear transition from image, to text, to meaning.
The progression towards meaning is not, however, as straightforward as it may seem, and the divisions between image and text are far from rigid. On the back of the casket the image interrupts the border, and several times words appear within the images. Similarly, the text on the front (and most conceptually elaborate) panel has nothing overtly to do with the scenes it accompanies. In this way, text and image interact and meaning is not a single constant but a shifting variable.
This paper will discuss the ‘place’ of the text, both in the sense of its purpose and its physical position, on the Franks Casket, arguing that multivalency is written into the casket’s design; ambiguity is not a problem to be solved but rather a value to be appreciated. In this context, the paper will argue that the same principles that govern the design of the casket are found in the structure of the Cotton Maxims and other Old English catalogue poems, in which meaning results not from a text’s linear progression, but rather from the points of transition between discrete and contrasting elements.
