Browse Exhibits (16 total)

     This exhibit presents a selection of medieval objects containing religious invocations, ranging from an imperial seal to a page from the Qur'an. The diversity of objects in the exhibit serves to illustrate an important point: religion was a ubiquitous and constant presence in medieval life. There are many reasons why the holy was invoked in such a large number of objects from the Middle Ages. First, religion, in particular Christianity and Islam, was vital to maintaining the power of the ruling class. Rulers claimed a special relationship with God, deriving their power not only from their lineage but from a divine right. In addition, the large attendance at religious services and events ensured that the holy was a constant presence in the minds of the populace. In the West, a strong monastic tradition allowed for the copying of religious works, as well as the dissemination of religious information. 

     The ubiquity of religious invocation is demonstrated, rather differently, by each object in this collection. The coins show religion in relation to power, expressing the divine right of rulers described above. The seal offers a direct invocation to the Lord, demonstrating the perceived power of God. The censer serves as a means for invocation by providing the smoke to carry a person's prayers to heaven and imagery meant to expose people to Christ so that they may come to worship and venerate him. The Man of Sorrows serves as a visual representation of the suffering of Christ. It evokes humility from the viewer and urges the viewer to worship, as Christ died for his/her sins and thus should be venerated. Finally, the page from the Qur'an offers perhaps the most direct example of religious invocation, with its calligraphic style meant to honor and praise the Lord. The page serves to connect the reader with the word of God and to promote introspection, as to develop a deeper understanding of oneself by way of scriptural interpretation. 

The world of the medieval is a vast one, both geographically and temporally. It contains many traditions, many rulers, and many ways of life. One natural question that arises, then, is how much interplay was there between the various cultures of the Middle Ages? On the one hand, long-distance traveling was certainly not the norm, and local identities generally seem to have been strong and well preserved. Yet, one can also point to countless examples of cultural exchange. From pilgrimages to crusades to traveling scholars, many possible paths were open to allow for the diffusion of ideas. Thus, attempting to answer the question posed above quickly turns into a dizzying and overwhelming affair. Is there any way of getting a more visceral, even intuitive, feel for the extent and limitations of medieval cultural interplay? This exhibit seeks to do just this by employing one image, that of the Man of Sorrows, as an illustrative example of the geographic and temporal evolution of ideas in the Middle Ages. As a distinctly Christian image its spread is limited to Christian lands, but even so this exhibit will help us to gain a sense of what it takes to transmit an idea through different societies and through different centuries.

Beyond the limitation presented above, the Man of Sorrows image is particularly well-suited to this exhibit’s goal. It had a wide geographic spread, originating in the Byzantine world and reaching to the northern parts of Europe. Intriguingly, the mechanisms of the image’s transcultural movement can oftentimes be identified, partly because its unique depiction of Christ is not likely to have been independently created in different Christian regions. One problem with tracing many other unusual images is that they are limited in quantity (at least, in the quantity that has been preserved to the present day). However, the Man of Sorrows is found in abundance. Finally, it is a valuable image for this exhibit to focus on because it clearly demonstrates one central theme of medieval cultural diffusion: societies may have been willing to adopt “foreign” concepts, but they rarely did so without making such concepts their own. Hence, for instance, we can clearly differentiate Italian Man of Sorrows images from northern European equivalents on the basis of their material and iconographic natures.

This exhibit consists of three parts. First, it presents the origins of the Man of Sorrows image in the Byzantine Empire. Next, the exhibit moves to the Italian peninsula, where one can see a particularly interesting cultural interplay in the adoption of the Man of Sorrows. Finally, the exhibit ends in central and northern Europe, far away from the image’s beginnings but surprisingly faithful to its key attributes.