A game piece and the interconnectedness of the medieval world

 

As is well known in contemporary scholarship, the medieval world - however delineated and defined - was much more interconnected than has commonly been acknowledged. While few individuals travelled vast distances, goods and ideas did so very frequently. Moreover, the interconnectedness of the medieval world existed in sprawling networks of contacts - whether diplomatic, mercantile, religious, intellectual, cultural or military - and movement could occur in many different direction.  

There are several medieval sources that demonstrate and even embody this interconnectedness, and today I was reminded of one such example as I was browsing through some old photos. The object in question is currently housed in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. It is a game piece - possibly for checkers - carved in the Rhineland region around the year 1200. The material from which the piece is carved is walrus ivory, which was an important trade commodity of the twelfth century. It is likely that the ivory was brought from Greenland, possibly via ports in Norway, as this appears to be the most common route by which walrus ivory travelled to the European continent in the period.

Aside from the materiality of the game piece, the image carved into it is an example of how widely stories travelled in the Middle Ages. The scene depicted on the game piece shows Alexander the Great borne aloft by two griffins, one of the most iconic and common scenes from the Alexander legend, as it travelled westward throughout the medieval period through adaptations and retellings of the legend by Pseudo-Callisthenes. Those who played with this game piece were most likely of the secular nobility or perhaps the upper echelons of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, and they are likely to have been very familiar with the Alexander legend - perhaps more familiar with the ideas of distant India conveyed through that legend than the northern waters in which the walrus was hunted.     

The ideas about distant lands entertained by those who used this game piece were most likely very inaccurate and based on legends and distorted reports that had travelled through many stages to arrive in the Rhineland around the year 1200. However, even if they were wrong about the wider world, they knew the wider world existed, and they knew that it was possible to travel back and forth between the familiar and the unfamiliar, yet known, parts of the world

Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, KK 9962

Saint Florian and the fire

Today, May 4, is the feast of Saint Florian. According to legend, he was killed during the Diocletian persecution, and his main cult centre was at Linz in Austria. His relics, however, were said to be kept at Rome, and from there they were allegedly translated to Krakow in 1183/84. In the later Middle Ages, Florian was predominantly venerated in Austria and Poland, due to the centres of Linz and Krakow.

It was believed that his wonderworking speciality - or his patronage par excellence, as it were - was protection against fire. The belief in Florian's firefighting abilities is clearly demonstrated by this late-fifteenth-century statue from Vienna, where the saint is pouring water onto a towered building which seems to be on fire. As this statue was originally placed on the facade of a house nearby the Church of Saint Stephen, Vienna's cathedral, it is likely that several onlookers would interpret the building at Florian's feet as the cathedral which he was facing.       

Florian's armour marks him as a soldier saint, which was quite common for male saints of the Diocletian persecutions. Tales of Christian soldiers in the imperial army who were martyred for their faith were popular, and the sheer size of the Roman army - at least as that size was imagined in later centuries - provided a near-endless possibility for new stories to be told. Just as the Diocletian persecutions became a time in which it was logical to place unknown saints or saints of an uncertain date, so the occupation of a Roman soldier became a logical marker of male saints killed in this period.

Saint Florian, c.1480-c.1490 

Wien Museum Karlplatz

Saint George in Vienna - the protector and the shield

 

Today is the feast of Saint George, who, according to his legend, was a Roman soldier martyred during the Diocletian persecutions of the early fourth century. The early history of his cult is obscure, and scholars have yet to piece together something close to an overview of the cult's trajectory throughout the medieval period. What we do know, however, is that from the twelfth century onwards, George became increasingly popular in Latin Christendom, and in the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the image of George as a dragonslayer became dominant in his iconography. I have written a short piece on this trajectory here. That George was both a soldier and a dragonslayer made him a very suitable patron for knights and other soldiers, and we often find his image in a military context. One such context I encountered by chance while I was visiting the Wien Museum on Karlsplatz in January, which has a small but very interesting selection of artefacts from Vienna's medieval past. Among these artefacts is a late-fifteenth-century shield featuring Saint George in the act of slaying the dragon, standing atop it and piercing the beast with a spear - a posture inherited from the iconography of Saint Michael the Archangel.   

The image of Saint George is quite typical of the period and resembles a number of contemporary depictions in church art, such as a wall-painting from Sanderum Church in Denmark. However, it is the first time I see the dragonslayer on a shield, an object which really highlighted the close ties between the cult of saints and the military life of the Middle Ages. The shield is called Setztartsche, or in English a pavise, and was developed by the Hussites during the Hussite Wars of the early fifteenth century. The shield featuring Saint George, however, was used in Vienna, and was part of the city's own armament efforts of the late 1400s.   

The ubiquity of the cult of saints in medieval life is a continuous source of fascination for me, and the many ways in which the saints were present in people's lives - if only as images - is a good reminder that we are still a long way away from understanding the full impact of the the cult of saints in medieval society. 

Pavise featuring Saint George 

Wien Museum Inv. 126100

The vanity of exploration - or, The discovery of Bouvet Island prefigured?

This spring, I am teaching a course on utopian thinking in the Middle Ages. The course is designed for MA students, and to prepare a good foundation for delving into details and focusing on specific themes within the vast umbrella of the course's main topic, my co-teacher and I have dedicated the first seminars to a chronological walkthrough of utopian material, ending with the Early Modern Period and stopping around 1750 for purely practical reasons. One important reason for bringing the early modern material into discussion with the medieval texts, was to highlight how increasing geographical knowledge affects the way utopian places are imagined, and where they are placed on the map.  

Thinking about the development of cartography and geographical knowledge, I was reminded of a detail I noticed in a painting I had the pleasure of seeing up close in January, namely Antonio de Pereda's allegory of vanity, exhibited in Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. The painting is an exquisite example of the vanitas genre, one of my favourite types of paintings, as it combines the exuberant display of skill typical of the still life with the sombre and melancholic note of the memento mori artwork of the Late Middle Ages. The genre takes its name from the Book of Ecclesiastes, which is an immensely beautiful and human reflection on the pointlessness of human endeavour: All is vanity, all is in vain. Since part of the point of a vanitas painting is the juxtaposition of numerous and often contrasting pursuits, the genre also offered artists an opportunity to show how skilled they were at drawing complicated things, while also adhering to the iconographical standards of the genre (such as a skull, an extinguished candle, and an hourglass with all the sand in the bottom).       

Antonio de Pereda (1611-78), Alegoria de la vanidad (1632-36)

Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Inventory no. GG 771

One detail that particularly fascinates, and pleases, me about Antonio de Pereda's rendition of the vanitas motif, is the way that he has rendered the globe, a detail I only properly realised when I was standing right in front of the painting. As seen below, the globe is placed on its side - its imagined side, rather - with north facing east and the west facing north. The hand of the genius representing the passing of time and the eventual pulverisation of all things mortal and temporal, is pointing towards the tip of the African continent, to a point between Africa and Antarctica. 

The detail is particularly interesting to me in light of the time when the painting was made, namely the 1630s. At this time, the Portuguese had spent generations mapping the coastlines of Africa and the Indian Ocean World, and there had been great strides in cartography. Madagascar - which was merely  a a rumour to medieval Europeans, if even that - is slowly receiving its actual shape, and the interior of Africa is mapped in the minds of European traders through stories encountered in the great Swahili trading cities such as Sofala and Mombasa. Indeed, if we look very closely on the globe in Pereda's painting, we see that the map of Africa represents two cartographic stages, with an earlier phase rendered in a strong green colour - reminiscent of the way Africa is depicted in early sixteenth-century maps - and a more modern, broader outline in weaker grey-green colour, which seems to represent the extent of Africa as known by modern cartography. Further south, moreover, is the great southern continent that was hypothesised by numerous cartographers throughout the medieval and early modern periods. This was a continent expected to exist to the south of Africa, based on the knowledge that the earth was round, and that the lower hemisphere should resemble the upper in climate, and perhaps also in having a large continent that would correspond with Eurasia. It is important to note, however, that by the time Antonio de Pereda painted this allegory, no European had been far enough south to ascertain the existence of this continent.   

In light of Antonio de Pereda's own times, and the increasing cartographic knowledge of the era, how are we to understand the way that the globe is included and rendered in the painting? While I do not know for certain, I suspect that in an age when voyages for trade, domination and conquest were still an important part of the geopolitical and even everyday life of Europe, the mapping of distant shores would be a natural part of the register of motifs that could emphasise the pointlessness of human endeavour. That the outline of Africa is rendered in two versions might be understood as a shorthand of the recent cartographic development of Pereda's times, which, ultimately, is as pointless as the game of cards or the possession of jewelry, since it does not ensure humans that eternal peace and afterlife which can only be attained through spiritual pursuits. Essentially, the painting seems to say: Yes, we know more about the world, but so what? 

 

One detail in the rendition of the globe is particularly amusing to me, as it is a pure coincidence. The finger of the genius is pointing to a location between the southern tip of Africa and the great southern land, the Terra Australis, that corresponds roughly to what we know now to be Antarctica. If we look at a modern map of this area, the finger is placed on, or at least very near, Bouvet Island, known as one of the most isolated places in the world. The first known sighting of Bouvet Island, currently under the jurisdiction of Norway, happened in 1739 during a voyage under Jean-Baptiste Charles Bouvet de Lozier (1705-86), and the first known landfall happened in 1822 by American whalers. Consequently, Antonio de Pereda did not know about Bouvet Island, and the placing of the genius' finger is purely coincidental. But it pleases me to think about how human speculation and imagination very often does manage to envision the real world despite lack of certain knowledge.      

Saint Catherine of Alexandria in Vienna

The past few months have been a blur of travels and museum visits, so I am still sorting through the photographic souvenirs to decide which wonders to share, and when. When working my way through a museum, my eye is often caught by the unfamiliar, unknown or unusual, and so I am more likely to capture an artefact of which I have not heard before. Part of this impulse appears to be either rooted in or otherwise related to my scepticism towards canon formation, and the typical focus on the big famous items that museums often tend to embrace when marketing their collections. 

Today's overlooked jewel comes from the medieval collection of Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, an institution most famous for its late-medieval paintings - what some call "Renaissance" - but where one can also find some absolute treasures that once adorned various churches and chapels. One such treasure was a wooden bust of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, attributed to Michel Erhard (active c.1469-1522), holding a fragment of wheel intended for her torture (but broken by an angel before the torture could commence). 

The sculpture can be called a minor treasure in that it is not in any way highlighted in the museum's collection - at least not that I could see - and because it was just one item out of many in the unjustly downplayed medieval section of the museum. Yet this relative obscurity is deceptive, because Michel Erhard is one of the most famous Gothic sculptors active in the late-medieval German-speaking area, and we should imagine that the bust was originally a revered work of art, enjoyed not just because of its obvious beauty and craft, but also because of its association with a feted artist. 

The bust of Saint Catherine of Alexandria in Kunsthistoriches Museum is a good reminder of how beauty might very well be objective to some degree, yet that objectivity pales in the absence of a subjective marker of quality, such as fame. So when the fame once attached to the item has faded, so the artwork - despite its artistic qualities - fades into a relative obscurity.   

Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, KK 9938

 

The moon over Saint Rupert's Church

In the middle of January, I spent ten days in Vienna as part of a work-stay organized by the project where I am currently working as a postdoctoral researcher. The days in Vienna were quite intense, as there were a lot of different work-related tasks that needed my attention, and so there were only a few times I could really indulge in the many different sights of the city. With what time I had, however, I still managed to take in quite a lot of things big and small, and I hope to delve deeper into some of them in future blogposts. 

One of the highlights for me was the Church of Saint Rupert of Salzburg, das Ruprechtskirche, which is situated close by the Danube canal on the northern edge of the old city centre, the so-called Ring, where we were staying. The church is dedicated to the patron saint of Salzburg, the seventh-century bishop Rupert, who is also considered to be its founder. In the Later Middle Ages, he became the patron saint of salt miners and salt traders, and in art he is frequently depicted holding a salt cellar. Saint Rupert's Church in Vienna is believed to have been built close to where the salt traders had their stalls and headquarters during the medieval period. 

The Church of Saint Rupert became something of an obsession of mine during my days in Vienna. Partly, this obsession stems from my constant fascination with saints, and since I knew very little about Saint Rupert prior to my arrival in Austria, the tantalizing opportunity to learn more was impossible to resist. Another part of the obsession came from the fact that the church is believed to be the earliest church in Vienna - dated to the eighth century - and, more importantly, that part of the church retains some elements from the twelfth century, namely the tower and the northern wall. Despite these objectively good reasons for my fascination with the building, I think one aspect that was just as important was the rather ludicrous feeling of ownership that came from the chance act of stumbling across it as a friend and I were wending our way through the streets in search of a good place to eat. This happened on the first day, just shortly after the hotel check-in, and as I had not done much to prepare for my trip by reading up on Vienna's history, the sudden appearance of a church with unmistakably Romanesque elements - my favourite architectural style - was both arresting and exciting. 

Since the church is closed most days, except for Fridays and special occasions, I had to wait a full working week before being able to see the inside of the building. Although I was assured by another friend that the interior was much less interesting than the exterior, I could not help feeling a certain yearning to get inside, not because I expected the interior to be full of exciting details, but because I steadily built it up in my head as a unique chance to see something medieval in a city whose remaining architecture is mostly eighteenth-century and later. 

I did eventually get inside, and I managed to go twice. And while the church does not hold many exciting details, there turned out to be plenty of them to explore. For the present blogpost, however, the interior will have to wait, and I will instead provide you with some examples of the kind of pull that this building exerted on me, as I walked past it a few times during January afternoons under a waxing moon. In the combined light of the city and the moon, the Church of Saint Rupert acquired an aura of peace and stability, as of time having turned to stone, and it lay like a promise in the folds of city, in marked contrast to some of the more ostentatious buildings that have become famous hallmarks of Vienna. I have always preferred the Romanesque simplicity to the exorbitant Baroque, and although I also appreciate the latter in many of its forms, the different space offered by the Romanesque is always preferable to me - and I say this, knowing full well that Romanesque churches and cathedrals in their original state would have been both ostentatious and gaudy, and quite different from their current surviving forms. In short, the Church of Saint Rupert became something of a point of orientation for me during my days in Vienna, and I treasure the memories of its beauty and gravitas.