Saint Bartholomew at the Basilica dei Santi Quattro Coronati

 

During a stay in Rome for a conference last week, a friend and I spent one day as tourists, seeking out churches of particular interest to two medievalists interested in the cult of saints. It was a rich day, full of wonderful sights and glorious reminders of the medieval past of a city currently so dominated by Baroque ecclesiastical architecture. 

While I hope to return to some of the sights of that day in future blogposts, I will here just briefly present one of the spectacular works of art to be found in some of these churches, namely the flayed Saint Bartholomew in the Church of the Four Crowned Saints. Bartholomew appears in a gory fashion quite typical of representations of him in art, carrying his flayed skin over his shoulder like a piece of cloth, with the instrument of his martyrdom, the knife, in his hand. I have not yet been able to ascertain the date of this fresco cycle.  

Bartholomew is one among several saints in the fresco cycle on northern wall of the church nave, but arguably the most arresting of them all. The image is a stark reminder of how visual communication in medieval churches could be very visceral, and presumably all the more effective. The legend of Saint Bartholomew, and especially the manner of his death, was especially suited to this kind of visceral communication. 

The frescoes in Quattro Coronati are beautiful pieces of art, however disturbing, and also serve to remind us that beauty can often serve to fashion grim tools for what is ultimately a beautiful message - at least if you are a Christian believing in the saints - which is the steadfastness of the faithful. 

Object lessons in commercial medievalism - or, Adventures in medievalism, part 5

 
I use this particular blogpost series, Adventures in medievalism, to examine some of the many forms of medievalism that can be found in modern society. Medievalism, as I most commonly use it, means the deliberate use of the medieval past for a particular purpose. Moreover, that use represents a discontinuity with the past, and the use is based on the idea that the Middle Ages is notably different - that it is a chronological other. 

This blogpost is the result of some encounters I have had during my travels this past month, which reminded me that one of the most prevalent forms of medievalism today is commercial medievalism, namely the use of the past for commercial purposes. The past sells, and various commercial actors have understood this fact, and they have therefore made their advertisements or even their products in such a way that it appeals to people's fascination with history. 

Medievalism consists of various stock figures that represent the Middle Ages and that serve as a kind of shorthand for the past, evoking a historical period in a simple and effective way. One of the most widely used stock figures is the Viking, and because of the Viking's ubiquity in popular culture, it has also become ubiquitous in commerce. I was reminded of this ubiquity several times during my recent travels. 

One of the least surprising uses of the Viking in commercial medievalism is in Scandinavian souvenirs. All kinds of things are being sold through the appeal and the recognisability of the Viking, and apparently it works. For a medievalist scholar, however, the manifestations of commercial medievalism, i.e., the objects that are being sold, as well as their form and design, can often reach parodic levels. During a recent stay at Oslo airport, for instance, I encountered a couple of such unintentionally parodic, ridiculous souvenirs, and I must admit that I was not prepared for just how risible I found these particular objects to be. The figure of a strong, bearded, manly Viking with the requisite unhistorical horned helmet, was used to decorate a key chain and a bottle opener cum fridge magnet. The violent, warlike aspect of the Viking is used in different ways in both these object. One Viking is heavily armed and appeals perhaps more to a younger audience, children still playing war with each other or with toy figurines. The other has muscular arms and flowing blonde hair, and is likely to be aimed more at adults, mainly adult men who want themselves to be muscular with flowing blonde hair. In both cases, the iconography of the Viking is used to appeal to the prospective buyer's desire to emulate - whether in play or in reality - the figure of the past.   

Encountering Vikings as an avatar of commercial medievalism is common enough in Norway - and I would say depressingly so - but since the Viking is a global figure in modern popular culture, the use of the Viking for commercial purposes can also appear in rather unexpected places. One such place is Toledo, where I encountered a shop of local delicacies which advertised mead through the stock figure of the Viking. The Viking, again with the unhistorical horned helmed, was depicted leaning on his axe and raising a drinking horn of mead, with the text of the poster saying "Mead - the Viking beer". 

That Vikings are used to sell mead is not surprising - after all, mead is famous as a drink widely used by the Norse in the Middle Ages. What was surprising in this case, however, was that the Vikings never went to Toledo, and mead can hardly be said to be a traditional delicacy of Toledo. While we do know that Norse raiders attacked Spanish shores on several occasions, and that Norse travellers often stopped in Iberia, they mainly stayed along the coast or, in case of pilgrims to Santiago de Compostela, went overland along the northern route. Toledo, situated almost in the middle of the Iberian pensinsula, whose only waterway is the beautiful but very shallow river Tajo, would be beyond the reach of Vikings. However, medievalism has very little to do with the actual past, and since Vikings are so widely known, this particular shop has decided to use a stereotypical Viking to sell their goods. 

The case of the Toledan Viking was particularly amusing to me, as this was the first time I had learned the Spanish word for mead, "hidromiel" or "water-honey", and later that day I was asked by a Mexican friend in Madrid what hidromiel was. I was only able to explain the concept thanks to the Toledan Viking. 

Vikings are used to sell things because Vikings themselves sell. Modern popular culture and people's fascination with the past both contribute to the enduring appeal of Vikings. These object lessons are just a few, but they highlight some of the key aspects of commercial medievalism: a clear aim at an audience (whether children or adults), the use of recognisable features (the horned helmet, the axe, the beard), and the complete irrelevance of whether the use of the Viking has any historical grounding. Recognising these aspects of commercial medievalism is important in helping us understand how this form of medievalism works, and why it can work all over the world. 


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Similar blogposts: 


Adventures in medievalism, part 1 

Adventures in medievalism, part 2 

Adventures in medievalism, part 3 

Adventures in medievalism, part 4

Constructing an archiepiscopal identity in Toledo Cathedral

 

As mentioned in my previous blogpost, I was recently in Toledo and visited the cathedral, allegedly the oldest of Spain’s metropolitan sees. This building being an impressive and complex conglomeration of historical eras, styles and artefacts, it was difficult to get a sense of the building as a unified whole. In some parts of the cathedral, however, the concerted effort to construct a space that unified, condensed and represented the totality of Toledo’s history as an archiepiscopal see became very clear. In this blogpost, I will briefly present one such space, namely the chapter house, in which the bishop and the cathedral chapter engage in an impressive form of identity-construction centred on the bishop as a historical agent.

The chapter house is a stunning architectural space, featuring a golden mudéjar ceiling, a series of wall-paintings of biblical scenes along the upper part of the walls, and then two rows of portraits – all of a modern make if not a modern style – which show the bishops of Toledo from the beginning until the present.           

While I will be careful in analysing the details of this space of historical meaning and identity-construction – as I know very little about the history of Toledo and its bishops – the overall impression of the chapter house and its decoration is that it is a space designed to imbue the bishops and their retinues with a strong sense of their place in history, and their identity as bishops of Toledo. 

Beginning from the top, it seems that the mudéjar ceiling serves not only to provide the bishop and the cathedral chapter with a beautiful setting, but also to represent the multicultural history of Toledo itself. After all, Toledo is one of the historical centres of the mudéjar style.            

The biblical section of the wall appears to serve as a reminder that the works of the bishop takes place within a holy history that began with the creation of the world and continues under the aegis of God and God’s plan. In other words, the deeds of the bishops of Toledo, and the city of Toledo itself, is linked with biblical time and biblical history. This link is highlighted by a paraphrase of Isaiah 32: 17, whose text ‘cultus justitiae silentium’, ‘the service of justice quietness’, reminds the bishops that they are supposed to be servants, and the spiritual successors of the bishops.  

The lowest section of the wall is perhaps the most striking in terms of a construction of episcopal identity. The rows of bishops do of course represent the historical continuity of the office, and it puts the current bishop in context of his predecessors. But the series of bishops is perhaps most remarkable for its claim about the length of that continuity, namely the first century, starting with Saint Eugenius Martyr.           

It is, I should add, not uncommon for bishoprics to make grand claims about the date of their founding, and perhaps especially archiepiscopal sees. According to tradition – whose history I know too little – the metropolitan see of Toledo was founded by Saint James the Elder, also known as Santiago, and the office was first held by Saint Eugenius. As stated in the portrait in Toledo chapter house, he was archbishop from the year 67 to 103, and was believed to have been a disciple of Dionysius the Areopagite, who is often identified as Saint Denis, the first bishop of Paris, according to Gregory of Tours.            

Such a claim of antiquity as seen here is in and of itself neither rare nor uncommon. What is remarkable in the case of the chapter house of Toledo cathedral is the very forceful and direct demonstration of the idea that the current archbishop is the incumbent of an office that stretches all the way back to near-biblical time. Indeed, the archbishop can see his first successor when entering the chapter house. This way of constructing an episcopal identity, and this way of forcefully and constantly arguing for this identity, by making the current archbishop walk among portraits of his successor is remarkable, and a very fascinating case of how such institutional identity can be enacted. It is also a reminder that such forms of identity-construction, where the contemporary era is linked with the Bible, are still employed, and, we might surmise, presumably effective. 

Choirstalls as history-writing - an example from Toledo cathedral

 

As a prefatory note, I will admit that this blogpost uses the term ‘history-writing’ in a very loose sense, since the form for conveying history that I look at here has very little writing in it. However, drawing on Cynthia Hahn’s concept of ‘pictorial hagiography’ – that a saint’s legend can be told through images rather than text – I have decided to embrace the more ample definition of ‘writing’. The argument is, in essence, that choir benches, or choirstalls, in cathedrals and churches can serve as a form of communicating history. This form of communicating history has in turn a function as identity-construction. This is to say that the placement of the history-writing, or history-communication, the media by which history is communicated, and the type of history all serve to contribute towards the construction of a particular identity, be it institutional, ethno-religious, or national.

The inspiration for this blogpost comes from a visit to the cathedral of Toledo, whose choirstalls are the most richly and consummately adorned that I have ever seen. Two recent blogposts have also been concerned with choirstalls, but what I saw in Toledo was on a very different level of craft and communication. These choirstalls contain an array of elements typical of medieval decorations – be they in ink, paint, wood or stone – but they also have a degree of coherence and narrative that is unusual for choirstalls. The cases I have seen in previous travels – Ripon, Lund, Erfurt, for instance – are all exquisitely detailed and draw on the same iconographic programme and its stock figures, such as the dragon, the wild man of the woods, the mermaid, and so on. However, in these instances I have not been able to detect anything resembling a consecutive and coherent narrative.         

Overview of the arrangement of the choirstalls of Toledo cathedral  

The fall of one city whose name I have been unable to identify. 

Above the episode we see decorations that combine vegetation and animal life.

The choirstalls of Toledo cathedral are markedly different, because there is a story that is being told, and one can follow that story by going from seat to seat. The story in question is the conquest of the Kingdom of Granada, the last pocket of Muslim Spain which fell to the combined forces of Castilla and Leon towards the end of the fifteenth century, and which culminated with the fall of Granada in 1491. This campaign is commonly known as the Reconquest, but given that a) this is a much-abused term in right-wing corners of the world, and b) the area had been under Muslim rule for so many generations that it is difficult to justify the term ‘reconquest’ rather than ‘conquest’, I will avoid this term here.

That the choirstalls of Toledo cathedral are used to tell this story, and that this is the story being told, is significant, as it can most likely be explained by Toledo’s fame as a border city between Christian and Muslim Spain, and as a city particularly marked by the co-existence of Jews, Muslims and Christians. When the Granada Wars were carried out towards the end of the fifteenth century, Toledo had been under Christian control for four centuries, and when these choirstalls were constructed – seemingly in the course of the sixteenth century – Jews and Muslims had either been expelled or forcefully converted long ago. This means that the story of the Granada Wars told in these choirstalls are not contemporary events as such, but a generational touchstone that served as a point of reference and as a point of identity-construction of Christian Spain long after it was finished. Or rather, it is perhaps more correct to say that the choirstalls were constructed in a time when the aftermath and consequences of the Granada Wars were still strongly felt, for instance in the persecution of individuals suspected of being Jews and Muslims, and the continuous distrust in converts. Since the Granada Wars had defined Christian Spanish identity with such force, it is no wonder that a city so far removed from Granada, and who had long ago undergone its own takeover by Christian rulers, would still use this story as an identity-forming element. Moreover, that this story is being told through choirstalls also points us to its more specific function as a form of identity-construction, namely that it served as a constant reminder for the cathedral chapter and the community of clerics that the antagonism against Islam was the order of the day. We can imagine the stalls being used as both constant reminders to those who knew the story, but perhaps also as a way to educate choir boys about the foundation for the bellicose rhetoric wielded in those days. 

It is easy enough to recognise the story that is being told, and it is easy enough to recognise the purpose of that story. The form of communicating the story, however, might be less straightforward, as the choirstalls comprise a complex assemblage of iconographic features, which may or may not contribute towards a whole. The reason for this difficulty is simply the question of whether all the iconographic features pertaining to one particular seat can be seen as a communicative unit, or whether we have one unit telling the story of the Granada Wars, and other units that communicate other messages. In other words, the big question has to do with coherence. The many details carved into the choirstalls all conveyed some sort of message, whether it was by allusion to common iconographic tropes, to stories, or to biblical narratives. The scenes that depict the taking of a specific town or city under Muslim rule is part of a coherent story across the choirstalls. But the question is whether each episode is somehow iconographically connected to the other elements of that particular seat. I have no definite answer to this question as of now, and it would require its own book-length study to approach some sort of conclusion. In the following, therefore, I will only present the challenges of trying to recognise that kind of coherence.   

For each seat of the choirstall, the episode from the Granada Wars is the most striking feature and is level with the head. In each case, the name of the city in the episode is marked in writing, and in the picture below we see the conquest of Ronda. Atop and below the panel containing the episode, we find decorations drawn from the well-established iconographic programme of medieval art, which consists of vegetation, hybrid creatures, ridiculous scenes, battles between beasts, between beasts and humans, and between humans, and also stock characters like the wild man or the mermaid. There seems to be some sort of pattern in that below each episode from the Granada Wars were sets of two beasts of the same type fighting each other. But whether this pattern is on a meaning-bearing, or semiotic, level different from the episode from the Granada Wars – a level that runs along the choirstalls but independent of other levels in the decoration – or whether there is some relationship between these decorations and the taking of the town, is a question that deserves a study in its own right. 

Below the episode we find two beasts of the same kind battling each other. 

On the next level, a wild man is battling, and losing, to what looks like a bear.

The next strata of the seat is at shoulder or chest level, and here we see battle scenes between various stock figures of medieval art. These battle scenes follow a coherent line across each choirstall and thereby connects each seat. The big question, however, is whether the coherence is not only horizontal, but whether there also is some sort of vertical coherence, i.e., a coherence between the different pictorial levels. This same question applies to the last two pictorial levels as well: the back of the seat which is covered with non-figurative patterns, and the underside of the seat itself – which is shown in an upright position when the seat is empty – where we find figures or scenes with figures drawn from the well-established and centuries-old repertoire of medieval iconography. Moreover, between each seat, a figure is protruding from the panel that divides one seat from the next. While each of these levels, and while each of these scenes or figures or assemblages carry meaning and convey some sort of message or allusion, it is difficult to assess whether we can see them as contributing towards one and the same message. On the one hand, these various scenes all serve to communicate prevalent ideas about the created world: that it was inhabited by various creatures, that it was told through various stories, that it consisted of battles and dichotomies. In that sense, we might argue a universal message in the choirstalls, much the same way that an encyclopaedia can be said to provide a unified story in that it seeks to describe the world, or a discipline, or a phenomenon. The question is whether the history-writing conveyed through the episodes depicting the Granada Wars is somehow aided by or connected to the allusions, allegories and stories that surround the episodes. At present I have no idea, and I suspect that there is no overall coherence, but I would love to see a study in which the seats and the decorations were examined in detail to assess whether such a coherence could make sense. 

All the various levels in one picture

What is clear, however, is that the inclusion of episodes from the Granada Wars in such a holy space as the cathedral choir, with such an influential audience as the cathedral chapter and with the telling of this history within a space filled with various other stories well-known to the medieval Latin Christian eye, the Granada Wars are both situated within a wider universal frame – a frame represented by the iconographical tropes that are universal in their agelessness – and within the community of cathedral clerics. Such a placement provides a powerful potential for identity-construction, reminding the cathedral clerics that they are Spanish Christians whose identity is linked with the recent paradigm shift of the Granada Wars.