Envisioning Experience in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages Dynamic Patterns in Texts and Images

8/10/2019 Envisioning Experience in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages Dynamic Patterns in Texts and Images

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ENVISIONING EXPERIENCEIN LAE ANIUIY AND HE MIDDLE AGES


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Envisioning Experience in Late

Antiquity and the Middle AgesDynamic Patterns in exts and Images

Edited by

GISELLE DE NIE

HOMAS F.X. NOBLE


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Printed and bound in Great Britain by the

MPG Books Group, UK

Giselle de Nie and Tomas F.X. Noble 2012All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or trans-mitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwisewithout the prior permission of the publisher.

Giselle de Nie and Tomas F.X. Noble have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs andPatents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work.

Published byAshgate Publishing Limited Ashgate Publishing CompanyWey Court East Suite 420Union Road 101 Cherry StreetFarnham BurlingtonSurrey, GU9 7P V 05401-4405

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Envisioning experience in Late Antiquity and the MiddleAges : dynamic patterns in texts and images.1. Imagery (Psychology) 2. Recollection (Psychology)3. Imagination (Philosophy) 4. Emotions and cognition--Historyo 1500. 5. Psychology and artHistoryo

1500. 6. Psychology and literatureHistoryo 1500.7. Christian art and symbolismo 500. 8. Christian artand symbolismMedieval, 500-1500.I. Nie, Giselle de. II. Noble, Tomas F. X.701.150902-dc23

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Envisioning experience in late antiquity and the Middle Ages : dynamicpatterns in texts and images / [edited by] Giselle de Nie and Tomas F.X.Noble. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4094-3948-6 (hardcover) 1. Arts,Medieval--Temes, motives. 2. Arts--Psychological aspects. 3. Imagery(Psychology) in literature. 4. Art and literature--History--o 1500. I.Nie, Giselle de. II. Noble, Tomas F. X.NX449.E58 2012

700.902--dc23 2011044436

ISBN 9781409439486 (hbk)ISBN 9781409446217 (ebk)


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Contents

List o Figures viiList o Contributors ix

Introduction 1

1 Movement and Miracle in Michael Pselloss Account of theBlachernae Icon of the Teotokos 9

Charles Barber

2 Images, A Daydream, and Heavenly Sounds in the Carolingian Era:Walahfrid Strabo and Maura of royes 23

Tomas F.X. Noble

3 Moving Pictures: Dante and Botticelli (Purgatorio10, 12, 2833)and the Millennial Celebration of St Romualds Martyrdom(Malines, 1775) 47

Karl F. Morrison

4 Image as Insight in Joachim of FioresFigurae 93 Bernard McGinn

5 Concordiuss Dream-Discovery of a Healing Saint 119 Giselle de Nie

6 Beyond Word and Image: Aural Patterning in AugustinesConessions 143

Catherine Conybeare

Index 165
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1.1 Crucifixion and Saints. Sinai, Monastery o St. Catherine 111.2 Marian Icons and Christ's Miracles (detail). Sinai, Monastery

o St. Catherine 153.1 Sandro Botticelli, Illustration to Dantes Te Divine Comedy,

Purgatory XII: Images o punishment or pride; the angel at thesteps to the second circle. Afer 1480 58

3.2 Sandro Botticelli, Illustration to Dantes Te Divine Comedy,Purgatory XXXII: Te Earthly Paradise; the tree o knowledgeand the historical ate o the Church. Afer 1480 72

3.3 Sandro Botticelli, Illustration to Dantes Te Divine Comedy,Purgatory X: First circle, the marble relies (Te TreeHumilities); penitence o the proud. Afer 1480 79

3.4 Girolomo Fabrizio (Hieronymus Fabricius ab Aquapendente,15371619),De Visione, Voce, et auditu (Venice: FrancescoBolzetta, 1600) 82

3.5 St. Romuald destroys pagan images and erects a Christian one,the Cross; scenes rom Romualds lie 86

3.6 Te riumph o the Church, a powerul contrast with Dantesportrayal o the spiritual corruption o the historical Church, asillustrated by Botticelli 88

3.7 Popular games, engravings bound into thePrael-treynas asupplement to the engravings o official floats and displays oruling corporations 90

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Psalterium decem cordarum rom theLiber Figurarum. Oxord,Corpus Christi College, MS 225a, ol. 8r. 102

List o Figures


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List of Contributors

Charles Barber is Professor of Medieval Art History, and chair of thedepartment of Art, Art History, and Design at the University of Notre Dame.His most recent book is Contesting the Art o Painting(2007). He has authoredand edited several other volumes and his articles and essays have appeared innumerous books and periodicals.

Catherine Conybeareis Associate Professor and director of the graduate groupin Classics at Bryn Mawr College. Her book Te Irrational Augustineappearedin 2006. She continues to work on Augustine and also on Ciceros philosophicaldialogues.

Giselle de Niewas Senior Lecturer in the history faculty of the University of

Utrecht. Author of a deeply original book on Gregory of Tours and of manyarticles, herPoetics o Wonder: estimonies o the New Christian Miracles in theLate Antique Latin Worldwill appear in 2012.

Bernard McGinn is the Naomi Shenstone Donnelly Professor Emeritus inthe Divinity School of the University of Chicago. Although he has published

widely on the history of Christian thought, McGinn is acknowledged to be thepremier student of Christian mysticism.

Karl F. Morrison is the Lessing Professor of History and Poetics at RutgersUniversity. Author of eight books and editor of several more, Morrison iscurrently completing a book on the hypothetical end of Christian art.

Tomas F.X. Nobleis Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame. Hislast book, Images, Iconoclasm, and the Carolingians(2009), won the GrndlerPrize from the Medieval Institute of Western Michigan University. He is now

preparing a monograph onRome in the Medieval Imagination.


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Enisioning Experience in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages2

relate to each other in associative and analogicali.e. dreamlikemodes ratherthan according to logical, syntactic models.

Instead o purely subjective ancies, then, unrelated to any intersubjectiverealityas the western rationalist tradition has long regarded themthe many

orms o mental imaging represent the other, usually neglected hal o our realhuman experience. Modern anthropological and psychological sciences presentoverwhelming evidence that it is the part that in act shapes much o our supposedlyempirical and rational judgments and can even cause significant changes in ourbodies. Te chapters in this volume show that identiying the dynamic affective

patterns and what Bachelard calls their reverberations implicit in particular textsand images can uncover up to now unnoticed, important dimensions o experienceand meaning.

In act, the experiential truth o the figural or symbolic language that evokes thisimagistic, affective experience has been recognized in art and literature rom theearly twentieth century. Only in recent times, however, is it coming to be acceptedand worked with in other fields. Bachelards pupil, the philosopher Paul Ricoeur,in Te Symbolism o Evil (1967), posited that the symbol gives rise to thought.Giselle de Nie, in Views om a Many-Windowed ower(1987), and Patricia CoxMiller, especially in Te Poetry o Tought in Late Antiquity (2001), have made use

o Bachelards views in examining non-poetic texts. David Freedbergs Te Power oImages (1989), however, without mentioning Bachelard, showed how all kinds omaterial and immaterial visual imagesoutside o textsalso evoked a dynamicmimetic response; and Karl Morrison, in hisHistory as a Visual Art in the welfh-Century Renaissance(1990), independently showed that in this period both textualand material imagesthrough associations o analogy or contrastcould even,or some, lead beyond words and images to aniconic epiphanies o transcendentrealities. Te contributions in this volume show these and other dimensions and

dynamics in various kinds o texts and images.Te relation between words and images, however, has long been o intense

interest to scholars in several fields o the humanities and social sciences. Enteringthe keyword set word and image into the electronic catalogue o any majorlibrary will return dozens upon dozens o hits, some o them reaching back tothe nineteenth century. In the 1980s two new journals were established preciselyto explore word and image. ucked into the very first number oRepresentations(1983) was a solicitation or subscriptions, with this message rom the eminenthistorian Natalie Zemon Davis: Representationsbrings a strikingly original set o

voices to the interpretation o history, literature and art. Te articles range acrosscentury and geographical boundary, the reerents may be peasants, queens, gamesor murders, but the ocus is always on words and images, explicated in a new andinterdisciplinary way. Word & Image(1985) began with an editorial saying that


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Introduction 3

the new journal proposes to attend to any interesting encounter between verbaland visual images.

In his fine book Word and Image: An Introduction to Early Medieval Art(2000)William Diebold says that in the early Middle Ages (and certainly not in that

period alone) writing and pictures were inextricably linked. It may seem slightlyironic, thereore, when Diebold claims that this premise may seem strange becausethe modern tendency is to separate the verbal and the visual rather than to linkthem.2He acknowledges that the overwhelming majority o early medieval images

were prompted by words, usually words in the Bible or in other religious texts. Inaddition, the sparkling essays in John WilliamssImaging the Early Medieval Bible(1999)3address two issues that have long excited and complicated word-and-imagestudies: iconography and the relationship between words and images in books, inthis case the Bible. Iconography, as it developed in the work o Kurt Weitzmannand Erwin Panosky, is a highly ormalist approach to the genealogy o imagesthemselves. In other words, later images always derive rom earlier ones and rigidlymaintain stylistic conventions. Te specialist in iconography may or may not take

prompts rom texts in general or rom the specific texts that accompany images,but he/she is primarily interested in the repetition o the images themselves. Te

present volume owes little to iconographic studies, Karl Morrisons chapter being

the sole and partial exception.Like Diebold, Mary Carruthers perceives a separation between word and image,as when she says: Since at least the eighteenth century, it has become commonplaceto define verbal and visual arts as two separate realms o representation(or epistemology), based upon wholly different sorts o apprehension andcomprehension. She goes on to say that contemporary analysis o the classical arto rhetoric has confined its application to wholly verbal artiacts.4But Carruthersadds a key point: cognitionthe authentic mental-affective experiences that

occur in the rontier zone between words and images. Henry Maguire, on thecontrary, not only avoids splitting word and image but also reminds us that art toocan be eloquent, can speak, can be rhetorical.5Both words and images, then, canundamentally initiate apprehension and comprehension.

2 William Diebold, Word and Image: An Introduction to Early Medieval Art(Boulder, CO:Westview Press, 2000), p. 1.

3 John Williams,Imaging the Early Medieval Bible(University Park, PA: Pennsylvania StateUniversity Press, 1999).

4 Mary Carruthers, Moving Images in the Minds Eye, in Jeffrey F. Hamburger and Anne-Marie Bouch eds, Te Minds Eye: Art and Teological Argument in the Middle Ages(Princeton:Princeton University Press, 2006), p. 287.

5 Henry Maguire,Art and Eloquence in Byzantium(Princeton: Princeton University Press,1981).


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Introduction 5

express and transmit. Tematically rather than historically ordered accordingto their points o departurerom materiality to increasing degrees oimmaterialitythey will examine: verbal descriptions o the experience o anicon and o a statue; imaginative visions and auditions connected with material

depictions; verbal imagery describing imagined sculptures and scenes, drawingsvisualizing this, and drawings o a moving historical pageant; drawings osymbolic figures representing relationships between verbal expositions thatresist discursive representation; images in dreamvisions that precipitate physicalhealing; and aural patterns as images o affective dynamisms in a sounded text.As will be seen, the dynamisms in verbal and material images are indeed oundto make inspectable, transmit, and expand real experience. In the crevices in, andlimits o, re-presentation, however, a deeperunconsciouskind o affectiveexperience is shown to arise: although indirectly induced by an image or a text,it cannot be visualized or expressed in words.

Charles Barber analyzes Michael Pselloss eleventh-century description o theresponse to an icon o the Virgin at Blachernae and shows that affective movementcan begin not only when an internalized image generates enriching others, butalso when a material image induces the viewer to sense the presumed qualitieso its subject that are beyond the limits o physical representation. Beginning

with Pselloss definition o an icon as a picture that participates to some degreein the archetype o the one it represents, Barber then analyzes his description othe weekly mysterious unveiling o an icon o the Virgin (no longer extant) thatis intended to prove that, at those times, the Mother o God was miraculously

present in it. For those who viewed it with an apt disposition, Psellos writes,the image was experienced to come alive miraculously and somehow movesomething the author can only alteringly describe with words; he interprets itas the working o grace and the gif o the one represented. Tis affective kind o

seeing would have been granted not through the correct perormance o the ritualbut through each individuals interior affective bonding with their mental imageo the livingVirgin Mother who, as such, can only be incompletely representedby the material picture. Tereby the unrepresentable dimension o the picture

would be accessed: the living spiritual patternmentally imaged and therewithexperienced by the believersthat was believed to be invisibly present in the

visible man-made representation, the archetype that was believed to have onceinspired the artist and guided his hand.

Tomas Noble examines two imaginative responses to material images in theCarolingian period. Walahrid constructed a poetically expressed reverie arounda statue o Teoderic that visualizes images o vainglory and its attendant vices,thereby defly hinting at abuses o the contemporary court. Prudentius oroyes, upon the urging o Mauras powerul relatives and supporters, delivered


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a sermon commemorating the lie and miracles o this Holy Virgin. Alongsideher more conventional miracles, ofen involving contact, the lady is reportedto have revealed on her deathbed that, during her prostrated prayer in ront othree depictions o Christas an inant on his mothers lap, as suffering on the

cross, and as reigning in heavenshe heard the subjects o these depictions,respectively, cry, groan, and thunder (although the Lord o glory also handedher a golden rod). In auditive orm, the experience itsel resembles that throughaffective bonding by the woman at Blachernae; its interpretation is different.Maura hersel naively thought that the report o these experiences mightstrengthen others aith in the sacraments. Tis appears to indicate that sheeltand thereby heard Christs presence in the depiction just as she elt it in thesacrament. She is not reerring to a Church dogma o real presence, however,or to the Byzantine view o the icon participating in the archetypethe latterbeing firmly rejected by the Carolingians. Although Prudentius records her

words, he cautiously lets them stand without comment, perhaps hoping that hislisteners and readers would not notice their possible implications.

Te verbal images in Dantes Divine Comedy are o his own making; but,as Karl Morrison points out, prior knowledge o history and texts is necessaryto understand them. Analyzing the perception o psychic and physical

movement as expressed in this text, he takes us through what is described asthe progressively more spiritual responses o Dantes narrator to the images hesees on his journey in the other world: first, those cut in stone and then thosemoving and speaking. Te comparison, thereafer, o affective movement inthe viewers o Botticellis illustrations or Dantes text and o the drawings oa historical pageant in seventeenth-century Malines makes visible a change oorientation. Dantes conceptions had centered on his amous premise that artis the grandchild o God in its power to give veridical expression to the truth

o Nature. Yet he also remembered the tradition, going back at least to Plato,which censured painting or its lies, as one instance o many in which humanbeings countereited truth. Trough changes o trompe loeilbarely apparent inBotticelli, the change continued into the eighteenth century and flowered inthe conception o art as the realization o the genius o humanity. Te movingimages at Malines represent an awareness, which pervades Baroque and Rococoart, that art is distinguished precisely by its power, through deception, to arousereal eelings. Te artists hand and the beholders eye now became complicitin a skillul duplicity with which they created an alternate, and specious,naturea social nature governed by the variably patterned truths o taste. Tisshif in master paradigms between Dante and the designers o the estival inMalines moved the individuals creative center rom attempting to apprehendand achieve a true representation o the dynamic patterns o eternal cosmic


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Introduction 7

energies to representing, through artul deceptions o eye and mind, humanlyconstructed energetic fields such as ethnic identity and national spirit.

Like the nineteenth-century chemist Friedrich Kekul, who amouslydiscovered the ringed molecular structure o benzene through a reverie or

dream o the Ouroborosa traditional symbolic image o a snake seizing itsown tailthe twelfh-century Abbot Joachim o Fiore, afer or a long timedesperately trying to understand and believe in the rinity, suddenly had a

vision o a ten-stringed psaltery. riangular in shape, with a round soundinghole, the image itsel made the insight visible. Bernard McGinn shows how

Joachim later commented on the various constituent parts o each figureas representing theological points; the image as a whole showed how they

were related to each other in a way that successive verbal sentences could notrepresent. Te image o the psaltery was one o 16 symbolic figures which

Joachim conceived to help his readers understand the hidden spiritual meaningsin the Bible. Hal o these figures were vegetative, symbolizing the growth osacred history. Most numerous, however, were the geometrical ones, which theabbot interpreted as revealing the hidden divine patterns or vivens ordo rationis,the ideal orms in the divine mind, which were realized in the structure o the

world, in sacred history, and in the Churchs liturgy as mirroring the cosmos and

history. Joachim envisioned this history as about to enter a new phase in whicheveryone would understand things in a contemplative and spiritualin act,imagedmanner; his own writings were an introduction to this. In contrast to

verbal circumlocution then, images could be direct maniestations o spiritualtruth. Whereas Augustine had separated spiritual vision and its subsequentintellectual understanding, McGinn writes, or Joachim the image itselatthe intersection o the perceptible and the intelligiblecommunicates instantunderstanding through its symbolic orm. Affective understanding, a spiritual

kind o emotional intelligence, has replaced reason as the highest humanaculty, and images are its words or language. Unpacked into Bachelardianterms: Joachims symbolic image makes visible a dynamic pattern o divine truth

whose assimilation and replication in the mind/heart o the beholder generatesan affective understandingeven becomingo the pattern.

How what arrived in the North Arican city o Uzalis as uncertain amorphousbits o dust became clothed with hope and transormed in needy peoples dreamsand visions into a powerul healing image o a saint emerges rom an earlyfifh-century collection o stories about a martyrs relic. Giselle de Nie showsthat, given hope by imaged Bible passages, the remembering and borrowing oearlier traditional images (such as images o a shining, heavenly Christ in theapocryphal literature and the numinous statues o the pagan gods), what thestories show is a slowly crystallizing dream image o a healing saint. She suggests


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that it may visualize an innate, perhaps universal, latent psychic pattern, by somelater mystics designated as the inner Christ. Its uplifing, vitalizing pattern oaffective movement, when visualized and thereby affectively mimicked, inducesits assimilation and replication as a harmonious sel-realization in the viewer.

And as De Nie argues, modern biomedical research has in act shown that thebody translates mentally imaged vitalizing symbols into analogous commands,carried by neurotransmitters, to all its automatic systems. When stimulatedby a pressing need and given hope, then, the human heart-imagination can letexisting relevant images generate a psychological/physiological dynamic patternthat addresses its need in the orm o a dream image o a savior saint whose caringencounter, with its symbolic dimensions, induces transormational moments o

physical healing.Catherine Conybeare introduces a new, original application o Bachelards

notion o dynamic pattern: now as transmitted and replicated in the listener/(reader) through images o sound. She shows that, in his Conessionsas a textintended or reading aloud, Augustine used aural patterning, rhythms andrepetitions in sounded language as images o an apprehended voice (perceptaeocis imago) to convey affective patterns that do not have an affinity or words.In his pointing to the gul between embodied humanity and the incorporeal

God, Augustine used, instead o visual images, which would call attention to thematerial world, contrived aural effects to show how human languagerootedin the bodystumbles and alters beore the hearing o the divine silent,incorporeal Word beyond words. But he also indicates that jubilation, praisingHim by making a joyul noise to the Lord (Ps. 100:1) without words, canbe a tentative bridge. I words are usedand Augustine emphasizes that this

praise should be a collective endeavorthen Gods own words in the psalms arethe ones that come closest to Him. Te psalms specific use o language would

induce in everyone patterns o affective movement that open the mind to God.With his language ofen as it were imperceptibly shading into that o the psalms,this is also what Augustine attempted to achieve with his Conessions.

Looking in the experiencing o images or dynamic patterns o eelingand their effects, then, has brought elusive kinds o experience into sharperocusthose o: the living presence o their subject, presumed cosmic patterns,human ideals, doctrinal coherences, emotional-physical healing, and attemptsto approach an incorporeal divinity. We hope that these explorative orays willstimulate others to urther develop this hermeneutic tools potential.

Te Editors2012


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Chapter 1

Movement and Miracle in Michael Pselloss

Account o the BlachernaeIcon o the Teotokos

Charles Barber

Movement is not necessarily the first word one thinks o when asked to callByzantine icons to mind. Rather, this is an art that on its own ormal termsis more ofen noted by modern eyes or its static and repetitive qualities. 1 Ithas, thereore, come to depend upon the sympathetic words o modern andhistorical spectators to grant it those vivid and dynamic qualities that are so ofendesired o a religious art. In what ollows, I will revisit some already published

material in order to develop a point that seems pertinent to this collection ochapters and the workshop rom which they derive.2In particular, I would liketo contemplate an instance o the poetics o spectatorship in the pre-modernera and thence the conditions that might or might not relate the subject andobject in the act o looking. Tese considerations have been provoked by Gisellede Nies original charge or our workshop and are shaped by and resist GastonBachelards evocation o imaginary movement and post-Cartesian subjectivityin Air and Dreams: An Essay on the Imagination of Moement.3 In that work,

Bachelard offers a typically poetic account o the imagination, emphasizingits role in the production o new subjectivities in the affective and dynamic

1 For an excellent introduction to modern perceptions o Byzantium see Robert S. Nelson,Hagia Sophia, 18501950: Holy Wisdom Modern Monument(Chicago: University o ChicagoPress, 2004).

2 Te discussion o the Psellos material has already been published in Charles Barber,Living Painting, or the Limits o Pointing? in: Charles Barber and David Jenkins eds,ReadingMichael Psellos (Leiden: Brill, 2006), pp. 11730, and in a more extended ashion in CharlesBarber, Contesting the Logic of Painting: Art and Understanding in Eleventh-Century Byzantium(Leiden: Brill, 2007), pp. 6198. It is offered again here as a contribution to and commemorationo the evaluation o Bachelards thought provoked by this workshop.

3 Gaston Bachelard,Air and Dreams: An Essay on the Imagination of Moement, trans. EdithR. Farrell and C. Frederick Farrell (Dallas: Dallas Institute o Humanities and Culture, 1988).
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encounter o a subject and object now bound together in the imaginary playand the new reality o the subject now subject to and united with the thing seen. Itis an ecstatic account o being, one that opens the possibility o escaping the moreamiliar and static model o perception that tends to shape our cool encounter with

appropriately ramed works o art. Tis is an invitation to learn to respond to theworks we study through the words that have already imagined them in the past andthence to disrupt our assumptions regarding these objects, becoming complicit intheir alterity.

Bachelards model is prooundly logocentric even as it seeks to open subjectivityto that which lies beyond the intellect. It delights in the language o those poetsand writers who conront the other with the imaginary orce o words. As such,it is arguably constrained by the medium o its expression. With this thought inmind, I would like to depart rom this model, both setting off rom this startingpoint and leaving it behind, and to discuss an example o dynamism that operatesthrough the gaps that open within discoursethat is through the silence and verbalincompetence that seems ar rom Bachelards heroic poetics. I would like therebyto redirect our attention away rom the spectator and towards the subject o thework o art. In so doing, I will suggest that the power o the pre-modern icon lies inthose spaces that open beyond words.

Te possibility o such a space beyond words can be introduced by an ekphrasticencounter with an icon o the crucifixion that was written by the eleventh-centuryphilosopher, poet, historian, rhetorician, historian, courtier, and monk MichaelPsellos.4We will see that in hisDiscourse on the CrucifixionPsellos not only providesa beautiul evocation o this encounter, but in so doing he also betrays the limitso words he deploys. Hence, in the course o his writing we will be able to identiya altering in the certainty o his representational claim at the very moment whenthe image becomes a markedly mobile thing. Te passage in question comes in

the final section o a lengthy discussion o the spiritual value o the crucifixion.While this appears to have been written or a monastic audience, the date and thelocation o the delivery o theDiscourseare uncertain. Psellos has just completeda thorough evocation o an icon o the crucifixion, perhaps somewhat akin to theicon reproduced in Figure 1.1. He now introduces a surprisingly dynamic and fluidaccount o the painting itsel:

But that the painting is exact as regards the accuracy o art is plain rom the

complexion, said the philosopher [Pythagoras]. However, the marvel lies not in this,

but in the act that the whole image seems to be living and is not without a share o

motions. I one will but direct ones gaze to the parts o the picture one afer another,

4 A uller discussion o the whole text can be ound in Barber, Contesting the Logic, pp. 7280.


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Moement and Miracle in Michael Pselloss Account of the Blachernae 11

it might seem to him that some might alter, some might increase, some might change,while some [seem] to experience or make a difference, as i presently waxing or waning.

Hence the dead body [seems] apparently to be both living and lieless. Te outlines

o such a painting might be seen even in images [produced] by the artlessnamely a

similar straightening, breaking, or bending [o limbs], an illusion o lie by virtue o

blood or o death by virtue o pallorbut these are all, so to speak, imitations o figures

and likenesses o likenesses. But here these things do not seem to take their existence

rom colors, rather the whole thing resembles nature, which is living and artlessly set

in motion, and no one is able to discover whence the image has become like this. But,

just as beauty exists as a result o the opposition and harmony o limbs and parts, and

yet ofen a woman is extraordinarily radiant as a result o entirely different causes, so it

is in this case. While this living painting exists as a result o component parts combined

most elicitously, the entire living orm seems to be beyond this, so that lie exists in the

Figure 1.1 Crucifixion and Saints. Sinai, Monastery o St. CatherineSource: Reproduced courtesy o the Michigan-Princeton-Alexandria Expedition to Mount Sinai.


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image rom two sources, rom art which makes a likeness and rom grace which does

not liken to anything else. Is this then a comparison o images and shadows? Yet I would

not compare this painting to any other paintings, neither those set up by past hands or

that represented the archetype accurately, nor those rom our own time or rom a little

beore that had made some innovations in orm. I declare that this picture to be like myChrist in times past, when a bloodthirsty crowd brought out a vote o condemnation

against him to a submissive Pilate. Tus, it seems to me that Christ hangs in the delineated

and colored likeness. And I would not dispute that there is oversight that is beyond the

painters hand and that this overseeing mind had returned that painting to its prototype.5

Tis lengthy passage deserves our attention, as it begins to draw out the ambiguousand doubled grounds or painting. Here, visible likeness is paired with the less well-defined grace (), which does not liken to anything else. Te opening madeby the introduction o this double ground is then continued when Psellos tells usthat the likeness in an icon resembles nature. For Psellos, this naturalism extendsbeyond mimesis, as it also implies an enlivening o the painting that lies beyond thetechnical skills o the artist as it has its origins beyond the visible horizon. In ourpassage, he states that: while this living painting exists as a result o componentparts combined most elicitously, the entire living orm seems to be beyond this, so

5 Elizabeth A. Fisher, Image and Ekphrasis in Michael Pselloss Sermon on the Crucifixion,Byzantinoslavica 55 (1994): 55; Michael Psellus, Orationes hagiographicae, ed. Elizabeth A.Fisher (Stuttgart: eubner, 1994), pp. 195.843197.879: , , , . , , , , , ,

, , , , , , . , , . , , . , , , . ; , , , . , .


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that lie exists in the image rom two sources, and then that an overseeing mindhad returned that painting to its prototype. It is this double origin, a combinationo the natural and the supernatural, the human and the divine, that makes this icondistinct. In describing the origin o the work o art in these terms, Psellos orces us

to consider the limits o human poetics.Having identified these limits, Psellos quickly realizes that he has not yet given a

precise account o how that which lies beyond the artist can become present in theartiact. His resolution is to re-present the artist as now inspired:

Although this suffering brings him [Christ] in due course to death, the power that moves

the hand o the artist also animates the body that has breathed its last. Tus he has been

distinguished rom those living among the dead, and rom the dead who live among the

living. For his veiled limbs are somewhat ambiguous, and the visible parts are no less doubtul.

Just as art shrouds it also discloses both the lieless and the living. Tis is true o his bloody

garments, whether light or dark, as well as o the living dead presented on the cross and clearly

suffering an excessive death, now living because o the accuracy o imitationor rather, then

and now in both manners. But there his lie is beyond nature and his death is beyond pain.

Here both are beyond the art and the grace that has shaped the art.6

Now inspired, the clarity that had been associated with the artists limitedmediation o the visible has become clouded, or art is here said both to shroud andto disclose its subject. As such Psellos has taken us away rom his earlier emphasison the accuracy o painting. Now both the visible and the painting made aferit have become ambiguous, altered by the evident interplay o the seen and theunseen. Having introduced this inspired turn, Psellos remains rustrated. Asthe language o his ekphrasis makes clear, the painting can convey this qualityo being doubled, open to both the visible and the invisible, and yet can never

present this doubled subject. Te spectator is not given an opportunity toovercome this objective deficiency, as Pselloss attention, in his evocation o thiscrucifixion image, remains absorbed by and constrained within the limits o thework o art itsel.

6 Fisher, Image and Ekphrasis, 534; Psellus, Orationes hagiographicae, pp. 193.786194.800: , , , , , , , , , , . , .


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Tis is a rich passage, laden with themes that will play out in the rest o PsellossDiscourse. Some initial comments might be made. First, Psellos reports that it isonly at the moment o unveiling that this icon becomes the site or the livingvisit o the Mother o God. Prior to this, the icon can be understood as simply a

ormal likeness, a man-made image that is on a par with any other icon. Te riseand all o the veil can thus be said to mark both the temporal and spatial limitso the Teotokoss presence. It is when the Mother o God is revealed here atthe moment o the miracle that the audience can conront a real presence ratherthan a mere depiction and can thence become intimate with the subject revealedtherein. For Psellos, the lifing o the veil alone did not mark this ull presence inthe icon. Significantly, Psellos adds that there was a change o appearance in theicon. We are told that this change has arisen because that which was normallyinvisible has become visible in what can be seen. Te Mother o God has nowbecome visibly and wholly present in what had previously simply been a likeness.While Psellos is reticent about the precise nature o this change, and is in actthe only author to develop this theme, it remains a crucial aspect o his discourseon the icon itsel.10

Tis last point is urther developed in a lengthy philosophical reflection on themiracle that is ound at the end o theDiscourse.11Building on the Neoplatonic

assumption that lesser things participate in the higher, Psellos argued that thisparticipation was maniested by change in the thing seen. Hence:

Some beings are precisely that, truly beings, divine and extraordinary, while others

are inerior to those, and the subordinate reaches down as ar as sense and matter

itsel, and the bodies receive some maniestation o better things. For the inerior is

a participant in the higher. While the divine is like unto itsel and entirely without

change, everything sub-lunar is unlike and changeable, and as the descent proceeds,

this condition deepens. Te inerior receives illumination rom superior things, notas they are, but as they are able. Divinity is unmoving, but whenever the illumination

proceeds hence to the body, this body has moved. For it does not receive the

maniestation without change, as this would be impossible. Te creating orce is

shapeless, while the thing that receives the creative orce receives some shape and

alteration.12

, .

10 Barber, Contesting the Logic, pp. 6198.11 Psellus, Orationes hagiographicae, pp. 226.660229.733.12 Psellus, Orationes hagiographicae, pp. 226.676227.689:

, ,


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Tis reiterates the point that the icon must be seen to change i it is truly tomaniest divine beings. I the icon is to make the divine being ully available thenthe medium o its maniestation must necessarily be changed in the process. Tiswould be everything that is not a visible trait o the subjects body. In this case,

it would be the Mother o Gods essential (as opposed to ormal) humanity andalso her holiness, which is to say her participation in divinity. For the Mother oGod to be there in the icon, these other aspects o her being need to be presentedat the moment o the miracle. It is only thus that the spectator can truly see theMother o God in her entirety. Such a visit is maniested by a necessary changein that which is already in the icon, namely the ormal traces o the Mother oGods body. Remarkably, as already noted above, having announced this changeo appearance, Psellos then chooses to describe neither the depicted appearanceo the Mother o God prior to the miracle nor her appearance ollowing hermiraculous maniestation in the icon.13

Psellos returns to the relative impotence o words in the ace o this miraclewhen he addresses the topic o the crowd that witnesses the advent o the Mothero God. Here, he draws a distinction between the perormance o the wordsound in the rituals that attend the miracle and the event o the miracle itsel. obegin with Psellos underlines that this is a communal experience, repeating the

word (crowd) at several points in his description o those attending themiracle so as to reiterate the sense o a large throng o spectators. Furthermore,he notes the variety o people to be ound in this crowd. Tese reach rom thoseo the highest standing (such as himsel, perhaps) to the woman who stands atthe back o the crowd and who ails to address the icon with the correct words oa seemingly established hymn. What Psellos notices is that both the well-versedand the less-than-well-versed spectator are able to see the vision o the Teotokosthanks to the miracle that is maniest through the icon. It is this careully crafed

common possibility, available to people o very different capabilities, thatintrigues Psellos and that then allows him to offer a very particular reading othe value o the words in play around this miracle.

, , , , . , , . , , , , .

13 Papaioannou Usual Miracle, pp. 1868 draws attention to this change. Furtherdiscussion can be ound in Barber, Contesting the Logic, pp. 6198 and Pentcheva, Te SensualIcon, pp. 18591.


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Here, it is Pselloss account o the woman at the back o the crowd that is oparticular significance. Te section in which she appears is particularly complex,but may be translated in this manner:

When representing and likening her [the Teotokos], ekwe have her maniested bymeans o these likenesses [i.e. works o art], but [she becomes even more apparent]

when we figure her not so much by means o colors but through secret yearnings

and through becoming close to her virtuous nature. One might not see the patterns

themselves by means o the abrications o their radiances, even though in some small

measure one might know o the archetypes rom the likenesses. But we depict the

Virgin at the moment when we set [our] heart about the image: we see her partly

visible to our eyes, as a phenomenon indeed, and partly eel her impressed into our

soul. Tus, we possess a mysterious affection or her and her sympathy or us is even

more mysterious Te sympathetic nature o the Mother o God, who possesses a

supernatural philanthropy, appears the same way to all, both to those whose soul is

radiant and to those whose mind is still conused. One might see her with ones own

eyes in so ar as it is possible to see, not only those with the highest and mightiest

virtue but also a simple woman attending her icon rom the rear [o the crowd] and

incorrectly reciting her hymn. For she [the Teotokos] does not praise and embrace

the best verbal portrayal, but the best living portrayal, nor does she gather to herselwell-turned phrases, but rather the most apt disposition.14

Clearly, the relation o the spectator and the image is in question here. Forwhile Psellos notes that material images can be useul in providing a likeness,he urges us to look beyond the mimetic unction o likeness and to consider

14 Psellus, Orationes hagiographicae, pp. 202.56203.82:

, , . , , , ., , , , , , , , , . , , , .


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the implications o the inscription o this likeness on our own bodies. It isthis ethical relation that prepares the spectator or the maniestation o theTeotokos hersel.15 Having raised this point, he then distinguishes betweendifferent types o spectator within the crowd, contrasting the person o high

virtue with the simple woman who cannot recite the hymn properly. Tis rangeis only introduced in order to deny the value o the implicit distinction. AsPsellos tells us, in spite o these differences, both types can see. Whether one hasthe verbal mastery o a rhetorician or an inability to sing the hymns that pertainto the ritual, neither o these properties has anything to do with ones ability tosee the Teotokos. Rather, Psellos moves our attention away rom the discursiveskills that belong to the perormance o the ritual and towards the condition oones soul. In so doing, he returns us to the ethical conditioning o the spectatorand implies that it is this that makes one able to receive the affect o the visiongranted by the Mother o God.

Te point is picked up in a phrase ound in the already discussedphilosophical passage at the end o theDiscourse. Tis states that: Te ineriorreceives illumination rom superior things, not as they are, but as they are able( , , ). Psellos here clearly echoes the thinking o one o his primary

philosophical influences, namely Proclus, the fifh-century Neoplatonist. Forexample, we find this in proposition 173 o ProclussElements of Teology: Eachprinciple participates its superiors in the measure o its natural capacity, and notin the measure o their being. Proclus then goes on to explain: On the lattersupposition they must be participated in the same manner by all things, whichis not the case: thereore participation varies with the distinctive character andcapacity o the participants. I Psellos were simply ollowing Proclus, then wemight suppose that the more elevated spectator and the simple woman o his

text would see the Mother o God differently. But, as Psellos has told us and as herequires, the Mother o God appears to all in the same way. What permits himto say this is that the distinction drawn between the more elevated spectator andthe simple woman operates at the discursive and perormative level rather than atthe level o their ethically endowed bodies, their souls. Tis distinction will leadPsellos to set aside the active and poetic model o vision ound in the Crucifixion

15 Tis ethical implication o Byzantine icons have been discussed by a number o authors:Milton Anastos, Te Ethical Teory o Images Formulated by the Iconoclasts in 754 and 815,Dumbarton Oaks Papers 8 (1954): 15360; Henry Maguire, Te Icons of Teir Bodies: Saintsand Teir Images in Byzantium(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), passim; CharlesBarber,Figure and Likeness: On the Limits of Representation in Byzantine Iconoclasm(Princeton:Princeton University Press, 2002), pp. 1315.


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ekphrasis and to replace it with a model that implies that the spectator openshim- or hersel to the reception o a sight granted by the thing seen.

Tis distinction that Psellos has drawn between supernatural and humanactivity is vital to his judicial argument and is reiterated when Psellos reminds his

audience that the miracle must necessarily be beyond our comprehension. Tispoint was introduced when Psellos commented on those occasions when themiraclethat is: the lifing o the veildid not happen. Tese were significantmoments.16o remind us o our lack o control over the miracle, Psellos likenedthese ailed occasions to an eclipse, but then added the qualification that,unlike an eclipse, they could not be predicted. For, while the solar eclipse,as a natural phenomenon, can be comprehended by human reasoning, themiraculous resists such understanding. In returning to this theme, Psellos keepsreminding his audience that the miraculous lies beyond either human controlor comprehension and may thereore be a valid ground or a judicial decision.

Tis point is continued when Psellos turns to a comparison o the icon withancient oracles, such as those at Dodona, Delphi, and Oropos among others.17Itis apparent that he does this in order to draw a sharp distinction between paganoracles and their Christian iconic successors. Tis distinction continues hiscritique o the pagan oracular tradition ound in his 1058Accusation against the

Archbishop before the Synodthat was written as a condemnation o the PatriarchMichael Keroularios.18In his many writings on oracles, Psellos draws attentionnot only to their ambiguous nature, but also to the evidence o trickery or humanintererence in their operations. Tis then leads to his central claim, namely thatpagan oracles were mediated or indirect experiences rather than the unmediatedexperience o the divine being that was available through the transormed andmiraculous icon. Hence, when the veil lifed or the image was seen to move atBlachernae, it offered unambiguous testimony o her being there.19Tus:

[B]ut even these [the ancient oracles] are less than the maniestations and

overshadowings o the Teotokos. For their maniestation was unclear, their color

variegated, their symbolism not at all apparent. But here [at the Blachernae], what

16 A notable instance happened in November 1107, when the Emperor Alexios I Komnenosdelayed his departure rom Constantinople until afer the miracle occurred: Anna Komnena,Alexeiad13.1, ed. Bernard Leib,Alexiade, vol. 3 (Paris: Les belles lettres, 1946), p. 87.1523.

17 Psellus, Orationes hagiographicae, pp. 213.356218.465.18 Michael Psellus, Orationes Forenses et Acta, ed. George . Dennis (Stuttgart: eubner,

1994), pp. 2103.19 Psellus, Orationes hagiographicae, p. 214.36870.


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was moved or the sake o truth was something immovable, what appeared [was]

something meet or a god, what was thought [was] something supernatural.20

Tus while movement or change is clearly an important marker or the

presencing o the Teotokos,21it remains o great importance to Psellos that thistransormation o the object be understood to be a gif rom the supernaturalrather than the product o any magical human manipulation o nature.

Tis judicial point also determines Pselloss larger argument, namely thatit is our inability to understand the miracle and thereore to represent it indiscourse, which ought to remind the reader that he or she conronts somethingmiraculous here in the Blachernae.22 Tis discursive impotence stands incontrast to the modernist poetic powers evinced by Bachelards model o adynamic imagination, or Bachelard remains trapped by his ascination withwords. It is these rather than the silences o things that mediate the newlydynamic subjectivity he introduces. Where Bachelard suggests that imagescan no longer be understood by their objective traits, but by their subjectivemeaning and invites the imagining o new subjectivities and realities in theimaginary circulation o verbalized dreaming, I would suggest that some wordswritten by Hans-Georg Gadamer might take us urther in our consideration

20 Psellus, Orationes hagiographciae, p. 217.42531: , , .

21 Te point can be extended by consideration o the Antiphonetes image veneratedby the Empress Zoe, where color changes in the icon are used or oracular purposes: MichaelPsellus, Chronographia, 6.66, ed. mile Renaud, Chronographie, vol. 1 (Paris: Les belles lettres,1926), p. 149; Cyril Mango, Te Brazen House: A Study of the Vestibule of the Imperial Palace in

Constantinople(Copenhagen: Ejnar Munksgaard, 1959), pp. 1428; John Duffy, Reactions owo Byzantine Intellectuals to the Teory and Practice o Magic: Michael Psellos and MichaelItalikos, in: Henry Maguire ed., Byzantine Magic (Washington: Dumbarton Oaks ResearchLibrary and Collection, 1995), pp. 8890; Liz James,Light and Colour in Byzantine Art(Oxord:Clarendon Press, 1996), pp. 835.

22 Psellus, Orationes hagiographicae, p. 206.14763: , , . , , , , , . , , .


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o the pre-modern imaginary. In ruth and Method Gadamer notes that: thequestion is not what we do or what we should do, but what happens beyondour willing or doing.23 I believe that this sentiment provides a useul rameor understanding the operation o the relation between cult and image in

Michael Pselloss text. It is apparent that or this eleventh-century philosopherthe ritualized preparation to see was no guarantee o a vision. Granted this, Iwould argue that Pselloss simple woman ( ) perorms a veryimportant unction in his text. She provides a model o epiphanic experience,demonstrating that one can receive the miraculous sightthe truth in thepaintingdespite ones perormative and verbal incompetence. For it is notthe ritualized cult perormance that brings the Teotokos to presence, ratherit is the apt disposition o those looking that opens them to the possibility oseeing a vision that is granted them by the Teotokos and that is mediated byher icon. In the case o the text that we have to hand, we can suggest that thissimple woman has become the very guarantee or Pselloss understandingo the supernatural origin or the regular living visit o the Teotokos to theBlachernae and, thereore, o the authenticity o this miraculous experience thatserves to guarantee the legal role o the icon in discussion. His silence is telling.

23 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode: Grundzge einer philosophischenHermeneutik, 2nd ed. (bingen: Mohr, 1965), p. xiv: Nicht, was wir tun, nicht, was wir tunsollten, sondern was ber unser Wollen und un hinaus mit uns geschieht, steht in Frage.


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Chapter 2

Images, A Daydream, and Heavenly

Sounds in the Carolingian Era: WalahridStrabo and Maura o royes

Tomas F.X. Noble

In recent years the considerable corpus o dreams and visions rom the eighthand ninth centuries has begun to attract scholarly attention.1 wo examplesrom that corpus orm the subjects o this study. In 829 Walahrid Strabo (80849) wrote hisDe imagine etrici, a poem in 262 hexameters that concludes witha six-line colophon comprised o three distichs.2Walahrids is one o the mostcomplex and difficult poems, indeed texts, rom the whole Carolingian period.

Its language and syntax are obscure and its allusions rich. In some year in the850s, probably on a September 21st, the anniversary o Mauras death, BishopPrudentius o royes delivered a sermon commemorating theLie and Death othe Glorious Virgin Maura.3Tis ascinating little text has attracted very littlescholarly attention.4

1 See especially Paul Dutton, Te Politics o Dreaming in the Carolingian Empire(Lincoln,NE: University o Nebraska Press, 1994).

2 I cite the edition and translation o Michael Herren, Te De imagine etrici o WalahridStrabo: Edition and ranslation, Journal o Medieval Latin, 1 (1991): 11839 (Latin text pp.12231, Eng. trans. pp. 1319). Scholarship has traditionally cited the edition o Ernst Dmmler,Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Poetae latini aevi Carolini[MGH, PLAC] (Berlin, 1884), vol.2, pp. 37078. Te text survives in a single late ninth-century manuscript, Saint Gall 869. In thepreatory remarks to his edition Herren explains how and why his edition differs rom Dmmlers.

3 Patrologia Latina [PL], 115: 1367C1376A.4 Albert Castes, La dvotion prive lpoque carolingienne: le cas de Saint-Maure

de royes, Cahiers de Civilisation Mdivale, 33 (1990): 318. Te text was discovered andpublished, but only lightly discussed, by Nicolas Camuzat,Promptuarium sacrarum antiquitatumricassae diocesis;in quo praeter seriem historicam ricassinorum praesulum, origines praecipuarumecclesiarum, vitae etiam Sanctorum qui in eadem diocesi floruerunt, promiscue continetur (royes,1610). Camuzats text is the one in PL. Rmi Breyer, Les vies de saint Prudence, vque de royeset de saint Maure, vierge(Paris: C. Osmont, 1725), discovered two more manuscripts and addedsome biographical details. For a brie discussion see Tomas F.X. Noble,Images, Iconoclasm, and


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What recommends these two texts or inclusion in this volume is that thesources or both Walahrids and Mauras experiences describe imaginativeresponses to images. Walahrid was spurred to flights o imagination by astatue o the Ostrogoth King Teoderic that stood in the courtyard outside

the Carolingian palace at Aachen. Prudentius reports that Mauras visions wereinduced by three imagesa crucifix, a Madonna, and a Maiestas. Te statueo Teoderic has long since vanished. Te ricassin crucifix was apparentlystill extantalbeit in terrible conditionin 1779 but it, along with the othertwo images, is gone.5We have now only textualized versions o the two setso experiences. Without getting too ar ahead o my story, and beore settingthe sources into their specifically Carolingian contexts, the issue may beormulated in terms offered by Gaston Bachelard and David Freedberg.6Forboth authors the central act about images is that they are dynamic. WhereasFreedberg is almost exclusively concerned with visual images, Bachelard ismore concerned with verbal ones. Nevertheless, throughout Bachelards workthere is a proound dialectic between the verbal and the visual, between thephysical and the mental. A mental image makes visible the dynamic pattern oa psychic reality, an authentic experience. We need to leave behind the notionthat the products o imagination are irrational, superstitious, or primitive.

Imaginative responses are affective and may be involuntary. Images andconcepts are ormed at the opposite poles o mental activity: imagination andreason. Concepts distill structures rom perceptual images and thereby stifletheir dynamic dimension. Imagination weaves association around perceptualimages that reveals their hidden lie, ertility, and movement. Between concept andimage there is little likelihood o synthesis. People in many cultures, in differentplaces, and at different times have imagined images to be alive, to act, move, speak,bleed, perspire. An insight o Nelson Goodman helps to put this into perspective:

in aesthetic experience the emotions unction cognitively. Te work o art is

the Carolingians (Philadelphia: University o Pennsylvania Press, 2009), pp. 335, 3434. MicheleCamillo Ferrari indicated to me (personal communication January 2011) that he believes thesermon is a much later orgery, conected not earlier than the fifeenth century and possibly aslate as the seventeenth. He has not published his interpretation and did not share his suspicionswith me. I am skeptical and continue to believe that we have a ninth-century text. I thank WilliamDiebold, who also believes the text is Carolingian, or a bracing discussion o the issues.

5 Castes, Saint-Maure de royes, 711 tells what can be deduced rom Camuzat andseveral eighteenth-century testimonies.

6 Gaston Bachelard, On Poetic Imagination and Reverie, translated with an Introductionby Colette Gaudin (Indianapolis: Bobbs Merrill, 1971);Air and Dreams, translated by Edith R.and C. Frederick Farrell, Te Bachelard ranslation Series (Dallas: Dallas Institute Publications,1988 (1943)). David Freedberg, Te Power o Images: Studies in the History and Teory o Response(Chicago: University o Chicago Press, 1989).


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Images, A Daydream, and Heavenly Sounds in the Carolingian Era 25

apprehended through the eelings as well as through the senses (his emphasis).7Freedberg characterized his book as an experiment in cognition. Tis chapter tooexplores relationships between words, images, and cognition.

First, as noted, the only realities that we have are the texts. In Walahrids case the

dreamy visions inspired by Teoderics statue are presented as imbricated in a denseweb o poetic conceits. It is not as i he were on the couch and trying to explainhis dreams to his analyst. o quote Peter Godman: With an almost Virgilian senseo caution Walahrid embarked on a description o a work o art within a worko art.8In Mauras case we have only a second-hand report. She told Prudentiusabout sounds she heard when contemplating images and he later reported on themin a sermon. In the same sermon he also mentioned heavenly voices and organsounds heard by several people standing around Mauras deathbed and describedsome images that ormed in the mind o Sedulia, Mauras mother. Walahrids poemreveals one experience. Prudentiuss sermon reveals several. I poetic conceits putus on our guard as we read Walahrid, then Prudentiuss desire to prove Maurassanctity must also make us cautious.

Walahfrid Strabo and the Image of Teodoric

In 829 the precocious Walahrid had been summoned to court.9Soon he wouldbe appointed tutor to the six-year-old Charles, Louis the Piouss ourth son

7 Languages o Art: An Approach to a Teory o Symbols, 2nd edn edn (Indianapolis: Hackett,1976), pp. 2478 (the passage is quoted in Freedberg,Power o Images, p. 25).

8 Peter Godman, Poets and Emperors: Frankish Politics and Carolingian Poetry (Oxord:Oxord University Press, 1987), p. 137.

9 On Walahrid in general see: Max Manitius, Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur desMittelalters(Munich: C.H. Becksche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 191131), vol. 1, pp. 30214; KarlLangosch, ed.,Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters: Verasserlexikon(Berlin: De Gruyter, 1953),vol. 4, pp. 73469; Franz Brunhlzl, Histoire de la littrature latine du moyen ge(urnhout:Brepols, 1991), vol. 2, pp. 10215; Godman,Poets and Emperors, pp. 13347. In particular, see:F. Von Bezold, Kaiserin Judith und ihr Dichter,Historische Zeitschri, 130 (1924): 377439; A.Dntl, Walahrid Strabos Widmungsgedicht an die Kaiserin Judith und die Teoderichsstatuevor der Kaiserpalz zu Aachen, Zeitschri des Aachener Geschichtsvereins, 52 (1930): 323;Heinz Lwe, Von Teodreich dem Grossen zu Karl dem Grossen (Darmstadt: WissenschaflicheBuchgesellschaf, 1968), pp. 5969; Helene Homeyer, Zu Walahrid Strabos Gedicht ber desAachener Teoderich-Denkmal, Studi Medievali, 3 serie 12 (1971): 899913; Al nneors,Walahrid Strabo als Dichter, in: Helmut Maurer, ed., Die Abtei Reichenau: Neue Beitrgezur Geschichte des Inselklosters (Sigmaringen: Torbeke, 1974), pp. 83118; Michael Herren,Walahrid StrabosDe imagine etrici: An Interpretation, in: Richard North and ette Hostra,eds,Latin Culture and Medieval Germanic Europe, Germania Latina 1 (Groningen: E. Forsten,


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whose mother was Judith, Louiss second wie. Early one spring morning (cheerulspring is wakened by the flowering breezes, / [While] great Phoebus passes throughthe glowing aether in steps. / And the days now grow longer and shadows sofen10)Walahrid ound himsel in the courtyard at Aachen beore an equestrian statue

o Teoderic, and other figures too. As he waited to enter the palace and presenthis laudations, he affected to all into a deep reverie. Te statue that promptedWalahrids imaginings seems to be described by Agnellus o Ravenna, who reportsthat about thirty-eight years ago (i.e. 801) Charlemagne passed through Ravennaon his way home rom a visit to Rome when he saw a most beautiul statue, whoselike he had never seen beore and he ordered it to be taken to Aachen.11Agnellusdid not mention any other figures and no one has ever ventured a guess as towho might have been represented by the other statues in the Aachen courtyard.Walahrids account o his dreamy state takes the shape o an eclogue, a poem indialogue orm with a lovely bucolic opening. Although there are implicit andexplicit Boethian allusions in the poem, Walahrid differs rom Boethius in at leastone important way. Whereas Boethius constructs a dialogue between himsel andLady Philosophy, Walahrids dialogue is between two versions o himsel. Strabus,the nickname by which he names himsel in the poem, is sel-evident: the wordmeans squinter, so perhaps Walahrid is playing with what can and cannot be seen

clearly. Scintilla (spark) is not a separate conversation partner but instead a petname or Walahrid himsel. In a dedicatory poem to his beloved teacher Grimaldthat accompanied his somewhat earlier Visio Wettini, Walahrid says I have acertain spark (Scintilla) that lacks uel.12Te plea or patronage is palpable but Iwish to lay stress on Scintilla, Walahrids muse. Te point is that while these imagesare provoking urther imaginings in Walahrids head, there is a sort o conversationgoing on inside that head itsel. As Peter Godman puts it, the poem is constructedas an interior reflective monologue conducted between two projections o a single

composite person.13In a state o reverie, as Bachelard might put it, Walahridsdisembodied mind is playing with an image and with the images prompted by it.

For the benefit o readers who are not amiliar with the poem, a concisesummary with occasional analytical reflections may be helpul beore I turn to

1992), pp. 2541; Kurt Smolak, Bescheidene Panegyrik und diskrete Werbung: Walarid StrabosGedicht ber das Standbild Teoderichs in Aachen, in: Franz-Reiner Erkens, ed., Karlder Grosseund das Erbe der Kulturen (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2001), pp. 89110.

10 Strabus, Magnus et ardentem gradibus legit aethera Phoebus, / Iam spatiis creuere dies,dulcescit et umbra, / In flores partusque nouos et gaudia ructus, vs. 24, ed. Herren, p. 122.

11 Liber Pontificalis Ecclesiae Ravennatis, c. 94, ed. Deborah Mauskop Deliyannis, CCCM199 (urnhout: Brepols, 2006), pp. 25960.

12 Ed. Ernst Dmmler, MGH,Poetae Latini Aevi Carolini, vol. 2 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1884), p. 302.13 Godman,Poets and Emperors, p. 138.


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more general interpretations. Te poem opens on a cheerul note. Walahrid,presumably, is about to enter the palace and deliver a series o laudations. Heasks Scintilla i he may put some questions (vs. 89). Scintilla replies thatStrabus surely knows that the poets o old sang songs worthy o the gods and o

great lands.14Now, however, all is conusion: Instead o groves, ivy, echoes andfine phrases, / Our lot is horrid commotion on all sides.15Scintilla goes on, inagitated diction, to speak o the latest crisis and o the shouts o protesters, thecries o people who want something and she says, urther, that bare legs growfilthy in black dung. Te present situation is marked by Faeces, uproars, filthycurrents and tumults.16 Strabus then asks why this statue and its surroundingfigures were ashioned in the first place.

Scintilla says that Teoderic was a miser who kept his great wealth or himsel.Now, however, he walks along the pitch-black Avernus (a volcanic craterbelieved to be the entrance to the underworld); he is cursed in every mouth;he suffers the reproach o God himsel and the judgment o the world.17I thestatue was crafed during Teoderics lie, then it was either made by sycophantseager to please or demanded by the tyrant himsel.18Strabus puts some questionsto Scintilla: Does it matter that dovessymbols o peace and reconciliationcome thrice daily to the statue? Scintilla interprets the doves as the awning

multitude.19

So Strabus asks again: I you know anything about these figures,please make it known.20Scintilla says that Greed flashes all golden rom hisembellished parts21 and, while speaking o habitual plunder (solitisque rapinis), says: Tat this golden image reigns surrounded by a dark entourage/ Means nothing else than this: o the extent that wicked luxury swells some

14 Scintilla, Digna diis terrisque canebant carmina magnis, vs. 11, ed. Herren, p. 122.15 Scintilla, At nos pro siluis, hederis, echone, coturno / Immanes omni erimus de parte

tumultus, ed. Herren, vs. 1819, p. 122.16 Scintilla, Stercoribusque novissima, pro pudor, omnis inhorret. / Hinc detractorum,sonat illinc clamor egentum / Nudaque stercoribus sordescunt crura nigellis. Stercora, clamores,caenosa fluenta, tumultus, vs. 213, 25, ed. Herren p. 122.

17 Scintilla, piceo spatiatur Auerno, nam omni maledicitur ore, Blasphemumque deiipsius sententia mundi / Ignibus aeternis magnaeque addicit abysso, vs. 3036, ed. Herren, p. 123.

18 uam statuam vivo artifices si orte dederunt, / Credito, blanditos insano hac arte leoni,/ Aut etiam, quod credo magis, miser ipse iubebat / Haec simulacra dari, quod saepe superbiadictat, vs. 3841, ed. Herren, p. 123.

19 Strabus, Cernimus aerias simul adventare columbas, / erque die exorta, media etuergente venire: alia non vanis addam spectacula rebus. Scintilla, Nonne vides humiles saevosquasi amare tyrannos? / Non ex corde tamen, sed enim pro temporis huius / Pace; petunt pastum,non nidificando quiescent, vs. 4651, ed. Herren, p. 123.

20 Strabus, Si quid in his aliud, nobis edicito, nosti, v. 59, ed Herren, p. 124.21 Scintilla, Fulget avaritis exornatis aurea membris, v. 60, ed. Herren, p. 124.


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with a sense o greed, / Burning poverty brings destruction to others in the samedegree.22Scintilla continues with a searing condemnation o Teoderics heresyand how his vile power defiled pious souls.23

Te meaning o these verses depends first o all on a bit o word play. etricus,

whose statue called orth the mental debate and the poem, is recognizablyTeoderic, who ruled Italy rom 493 to 526. But Walahrid applies to him asyncopated orm o taeter, meaning harsh, gloomy, cruel.24In the second place,the years 82829 had indeed been difficult ones or the Frankish world. Tere hadbeen a military disaster in the Spanish March, episcopal criticism o the court, andthe first stirrings o the amilial rivalries that would plunge the Carolingian Empireinto civil war or much o the next decade. Strabus and Scintilla oscillate betweenrejoicing in a fine spring morning and worrying about the dangers o the currentpolitical climate. Scintillas criticisms o Teoderics (Arian) heresy do not seem tohave had particular contemporary resonance, unless she is making the point that badrulers always run the risk o losing the souls o those entrusted to them. But Scintillascomments about greed and about people clamoring or preermentsconnectedas they were with both the imago etriciand the other figures in the groupmustimply a certain criticism o the people around Louis the Pious. Te 820s were richis what Paul Dutton has called oneirocriticism. Most o this had been directed

at the age o Charlemagne, sometimes criticizing the ruler himsel and sometimeshis greedy, oppressive officials.25InDe imagine etrici, however, Walahrid does notseem to have been indulging an urge to criticize.26He was a young man on the make

22 Scintilla, Aurea quod regnat stipata satellite nigro, / Non aliud portendit enim, quamquod, mala quantum / Luxuries quosdam sensu distendit auaro, / antum pauperies alios deuastatadurens, vs. 6066, esp. 636, ed. Herren, p. 124.

23 Scintilla, uam pia corda tuis macules, uis pessima, telis, v. 79, ed. Herren, p. 125. It is

important to note that Teoderic was not a significant figure or the Carolingians: Godman,Poetsand Emperors, pp. 1345. Te material on Teoderic in Walahrids poem is conventional andprobably derived rom Gregory the Great,Dialogues, 4.331, trans. Odo John Zimmerman (NewYork: Fathers o the Church, 1959), p. 227 and Gregory o ours, On the Glory o the Martyrs, c.39 trans. Raymond van Dam, ranslated exts or Historians (Liverpool: Liverpool UniversityPress, 1988), p. 60: see Homeyer, Zu Walahrid Strabos Gedicht, 9034.

24 Herren, Te De imagine etrici, 120.25 Dutton,Politics o Dreaming, pp. 50112; Noble, Greatness Contested and Confirmed:

Te Raw Materials o the Charlemagne Legend, in: Matthew Gabriele and Jace Stuckey, eds,Te Legend o Charlemagne in the Middle Ages: Power, Faith, and Crusade(New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2008), pp. 49.

26 Tis was Bezolds argument in Kaiserin Judith und ihr Dichter. I ollow Homeyer, ZuWalahrid Strabos Gedicht, 90812. See also Godman,Poets and Emperors, pp. 1334. Smolak,Bescheidene Panegyrik, pp. 1038 does careully examine the very specific circumstances whereWalahrid used polemicor example, to attack contemporary authors.


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and it would have been oolish or him to be too critical o the ruler and his court.He was about to enter the palace and deliver a series o laudations. Instead o explicit,or even implicit, criticism I believe that we see two things in the opening section othe poem. First, technically, Walahrid was displaying his command o the rhetorical

art. A properly arrayed panegyric begins with castigatiobeore it turns to laudatio.One aspect o panegyric is ofen that the person about to be praised has conrontedand resolved urgent problems.27Second, the images in the courtyard sparked manyassociated dynamic image patterns in Walahrids mind that had a bearing on Louisand his children. Especially in Judith and Charles, Walahrid imagined promiseamid the baleul threats then gathering around the regime.

Continuing the dialogue, Strabus now tells Scintilla that It is fitting, I think,now that these gloomy matters have been set out, / o honour the promises opraise due to princes (vs. 8990). Walahrid, as Scintilla, continues with praisesor Louis the Pious (vs. 94127), Lothair (vs. 12834), Louis the German (vs.13540), Pippin (vs. 1413), Judith and Charles (vs. 14478), ArchchaplainHilduin (vs. 17990), Einhard (vs. 1916), and Grimald (vs. 197208). Mosto this material is unremarkable, although i our subject here were Carolingianpolitics we could extract rom it some interesting observations. A ew points maybe noted, however. Louiss is a golden age.28Lothair promises orderly succession.

Te courtiers provide good advice. Tese promising possibilities may be set offagainst the dark thoughts inspired by the statues. Louiss age is called golden, notby mere poetic convention but with a very specific point in mind: Let others havetreasure or their ornament; may you be more distinguished by your merits. / Whileothers take pleasure in tyranny you give pleasure by goodness.29Walahrid drawsan explicit comparison between Charlemagne and Louis. Charlemagne did greatthings, to be sure, but now His golden effigies sport at the tops o columns, / ohis genius I do not apply the teaching o Plato.30Near the end o the poem the

precise meaning o these lines becomes clear: only then does a prosperous republicrise, / When kings are sufficiently wise and wise men are kings.31Like Teoderic,Charlemagne permitted golden statues o himsel and, perhaps, lacked a certainkind o wisdom.

27 Homeyer, Zu Walahrid Strabos Gedicht, 900.28 Scintilla, Aurea, quae prisci dixerunt saecula uates, / empore, magne, tuo Caesar,

uenisse uidemus, vs, 945, ed. Herren, p. 125.29 Scintilla, Tesauris alii, meritis tu comptior esto, / u bonitate places, aliique tyrannide

gaudent, vs. 978, ed. Herren, p. 125.30 Scintilla, Aurea cui ludunt summis simulacra columnis, / Cuius ad ingenium non

conero dogma Platonis, vs. 11011, ed. Herren, p. 126.31 Scintilla, Nunc tandem creuit elix res publica, cum sat / Et reges sapient simul et regnant

sapientes, vs. 2567, ed. Herren, p. 130.


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In these laudations, Walahrid envisions Louis as Moses and Hilduinas Aaron. Seeing the ruler as Moses was highly unusual, but seeing Aaronin Hilduin makes sense in terms o the archchaplains critical position as theempires chie ecclesiastical officer. Michael Herren offers a brilliant, and to me,

persuasive reading o the Moses and Aaron figures. Essentially, Herren sees thepoem as an exegesis o Exodus 28 and 32, the chapters that tell about the goldencal. More specifically, Herren perceives a bouleversement o the traditionalmeaning o the biblical chapters. Moses (Louis) shifs rom a loyal servant oGod to a gold-loving idolater, while Aaron remains true to his priestly calling.32

What Walahrid is imagining at this point starts to become clear at line 209where he envisions etricus the gilded horseman (auratus eques) suddenlyspringing to lie and, accompanied by a crowd on oot, dashing back and orth.Bells are heard, along with an organ and A sweet melody begins to deceive oolishminds.33A womanher identity is not revealed and seems unimportantlosesher senses. Te ollowing verses help to clariy the significance o the organ whichWalahrid envisages: Let the great image o your colossus depart, O Rome; it isexcessive. / Should great Caesar will, whatever the wretched world stirs up willmigrate to the Frankish citadel. / See now, with what things Greece prided itsel:/ Te great king has installed an organ.34In act, as Ermoldus Nigellus reports,

Louis did indeed install an organ and Ermoldus insists that the East now nolonger has anything superior to the West.35 For Ermoldusand Louis?theorgan was a matter o legitimate pride; or Walahrid, however, o vainglory.Te whole chaotic scene evoked by the equestrian statue thus makes visible thedynamic pattern o vainglory.

Te scene then shifs to the interior o the palace as Strabus visualizes thecrowd that ollows afer brilliant Moses.36It is not crystal clearin this poemalmost nothing ever iswhether Moses/Louis is the statue come to lie or one

o the other figures. But another surprise awaits:32 Te De imagine etrici, pp. 12021; Walahrid StrabosDe imagine etrici, pp. 379.33 Scintilla, Dulce melos tantum uanas deludere mentes, v. 212, ed. Herren, p. 129.34 Scintilla, Cedant magna tui, super est, figment colossi, / Roma: uelit Caesar magnus,

migrabit ad arces / Francorum, quodcumque miser conflauerit orbis. / En quis praecipue iactabatGraecia sese, / Organa rex magnus non inter maxima point, vs. 21519, ed. Herren, p. 129.

35 In honorem Hludowici Christianissimi Caesaris Augusti Ermoldi Nigelli exulis elegiacumcarmen, vs. 252029, ed. Edmond Faral (Paris: Socit ddition Les Belles Lettres, 1932; repr.1964), p. 192. TeAnnales regni Francorum, sub anno 826, ed. Friedrich Kurze, MGH, Scriptoresin usum scholarum (Hanover: Hahn, 1895), p. 170 reports that a priest named George came romVenice promising to build an organ. Louis sent him to Aachen and ordered that he be given allthat he needed.

36 Scintilla, Interea magnis crepitant tabulata catervis, / uae clarum sequitur pulcherrimaturba Moysen, vs. 2289, ed. Herren, p. 130.


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I was astonished, I must coness, that he [i.e. Moses] was ornamented with gems andgold, / And I beheld him and pondered things one by one, / And I wondered whetherI was gazing on good Solomon or great David, / Knowing that it was not Herod, norwould the great king o heaven / Make him a participant in an honour o that kind.

/ I realized at length, afer the numbness had departed rom my bones, / Tat thiswas the horned countenance [surely Moses again] o the holy ather flashing in glory;/ Te ellowship o the divine word had conerred a brilliance on him / Who is thegentlest o mortals.37

Moses, as we have seen, could be in this poem a symbol o both lawgiving andgold-hungry decadence. Solomon was, or the Carolingians, a symbol o royalwisdom and justice, whereas David symbolized courage and, as the psalmist,poetic, perhaps more broadly artistic, creativity. It is as i Strabus cannot quitemake out what his minds eye is revealing to him and he is weighing variouspossibilities, envisioning various patterns. In so ar as this is an example ooneirocriticism, Walahrid is perhaps offering gentle criticisms by means o aseries o contrasting interpretations o the figures lurking in his imagination. Atthis point Walahrids poem turns to some typical and uninteresting pleas orpatronage. We may turn to some attempts at interpretation.

I ollow Herren in believing that Walahrid thinks that his troubled agerequires not a conventional king, one who can lead in times o prosperity, butinstead an extraordinary figure who can triumph in times o adversity. Louis/Moses was the lawgiver and he had, i not eet o clay, then at least an all toohuman capacity to ail. Tus he could be led astray by the Roman/Byzantinesplendor o the organ; he could adorn himsel in gems and gold and not acceptthe humble state o the minister Dei. Strabus and Scintilla have imagined an idealcourt but had seen the tawdry reality. I there were admirable figures in this

world, persons worthy o emulation, then they were churchmen like Hilduinand Grimald.38

So ar, so good. But it seems to me that Herren has missed a key aspect othe whole scene. Beore the statues came alive, cavorted noisily in the courtyard,and entered the palace, Walahrid, as Scintilla, spoke his laudations. Tese musthave been dry runs or once he entered the palace and saw his beloved Mosesall gemmed and gilded, he could not have spoken as he supposedly did. We

37 Scintilla, Obstupui, ateor, gemmis auroque decorum / Et vidi et mecum uoluens tumsingular, uolui, / An Solomona pium an magnum Davida uiderem, / Herodem non esse sciens, nectalis honoris / Participem aciat caeli rex optimus illum. / Percepi tandem, postquam rigor ossareliquit, / Ora sacri cornuta patris splendore corusco; / Hunc cui ulgorem diui consortia uerbi /Ediderant, qui in terrigenis mitissimus extat, vs. 23037, ed. Herren, p. 130.

38 Walahrid StrabosDe imagine etrici, pp. 379.


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too lef the world but, Prudentius says, did so thinking only o worldly things,while Maura, who remained in the world, thought only o heavenly things.Prudentius urges Eutropius not to grieve because his plans have been rustrated.Maura has indeed made a noble and powerul marriage and she has won great

riends in heaven, namely Peter and Paul. Maura provided oil or the churchslamps, cloths or the church, and vestments or the clergy. Prudentius holds hermore dear than gold or topaz.41He concludes this section o the sermon withheartelt words that again signal his diminishing reluctance:

O generous and kind virgin, you have done these things and I have been silent. I havebeen silent. Shall I orever be silent? Tere is as time to be silent and a time to speaksince she is now in heaven with her groom o glory. I coness, O most skilled virgin,that I can no longer keep my mouth shut.42

He then goes on with some highly rhetorical reflections on Mauras double gif,the one being the things she made and the other being she hersel. For too long,he says, he had fixated on the lovely things Maura had made. He concludes bytelling Sedulia to rejoice in her daughters heavenly joy and in the prooundgratitude that all eel or Mauras exemplary lie.43

At this point in the sermon temporal sequences become a little hard to ollow.Prudentius implies that he has been silent or some time but can remain silent nolonger. In other words, it would appear that we have a commemoratory sermonpreached some (little, long?) time afer Mauras death. But then he addressesSedulia and urges her to stop weeping and dry her tears.44Presumably Seduliahas continued in her sorrow. Ten the scene shifs, back in time, to Maurasdeathbed:

Now, thereore, good Sedulia, wipe away your weeping, dry your tears, or you haveheard a voice alling rom heaven, publicly, and in our company. Come, the voicesaid, my beloved, and I shall place my throne in you because the king has lookedupon your beauty while you were calling upon the Lord. Te Lord o Lords spokeand called Maura, calling her with a clear voice and audible sound, the Lord who hadpreviously called to her in her imagination. I was standing on one side o her bed,and Abbot Leo on the other side; he was, in a low voice as was his way, intoning the

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Envisioning Experience in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages Dynamic Patterns in Texts and Images

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