Images and Objects in Ritual Practices in Medieval and Early Modern Northern and Central Europe [1 ed.] 9781443864282, 9781443851336

Citation preview

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices in Medieval and Early Modern Northern and Central Europe

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices in Medieval and Early Modern Northern and Central Europe

Edited by

Krista Kodres and Anu Mänd

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices in Medieval and Early Modern Northern and Central Europe, Edited by Krista Kodres and Anu Mänd This book first published 2013 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2013 by Krista Kodres, Anu Mänd and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-5133-7, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-5133-6

TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements ......................................................................................vii .

Introduction Krista Kodres and Anu Mänd ........................................................................ 1 Part I Images and Objects in Religious Rituals ................................................. 13 Late Medieval Images and the Variability of Rituals Gerhard Jaritz ........................................................................................ 15 “To Show That the Place Is Divine”: Consecration Crosses Revisited Andrew Spicer ........................................................................................ 34 The Rosary and the Wounds of Christ: Devotional Images in Relation to Late Medieval Liturgy and Piety Stina Fallberg Sundmark........................................................................ 53 Image, Time and Ritual: The Motif of the Last Supper in Lutheran Churches Martin Wangsgaard Jürgensen............................................................... 68 Morian and Merian. Word and Image: A Painting Used in Teaching the Catechism in the Keila Church (1669) Aivar Põldvee ......................................................................................... 89 Part II Visual Culture and the Performances of Power .................................... 103 The Gaze of Power, the Act of Obedience: Interpreting Byzantine Wall Paintings in Trakai, Lithuania Giedrơ Micknjnaitơ ................................................................................ 105 Baptism and the King’s Coronation: Visual Rhetoric of the Valdemar Dynasty on Some Scanian and Danish Baptismal Fonts Kersti Markus ....................................................................................... 122

vi

Table of Contents

In Between the Secular and the Religious: Art, Ritual and Science in the Funeral Chapel of Reinoud III of Brederode, Lord of Vianen (1491–1556), and His Wife, Philipotte de la Marck (d. 1537), in the Reformed Church of Vianen Juliette Roding and Nico Hijman ......................................................... 143 Images of Hereditary Succession Hugo Johannsen ................................................................................... 164 Magic of Presence: The Ceremony of Taking an Oath of Allegiance in 1690 in Tallinn (Reval) Krista Kodres ....................................................................................... 183 Between Act, Image, and Memory: Ritual Re-Enactments in Eighteenth-Century Denmark Birgitte Bøggild Johannsen .................................................................. 204 Part III Ritual and Self-Representation ............................................................... 225 The Self-Representation of the Late Medieval Cistercian Abbot: The Case of Henry Kresse of Bukowo Morskie Emilia Jamroziak .................................................................................. 227 Memoria and Sacral Art in Late Medieval Livonia: The Gender Perspective Anu Mänd ............................................................................................. 239 The Ritual Context of Chandeliers and Sconces in Early Modern Lutheran Churches Jürgen Beyer......................................................................................... 274 The Art of Rituals: How Samuel Pepys Used His Eyes and Ears Ruth-E. Mohrmann ............................................................................... 289 Wining and Dining in Style: Architectural Innovations as a Source for Ritual Change in German Renaissance Palaces Stephan Hoppe ..................................................................................... 301 Contributors ............................................................................................... 324

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Throughout the process of preparing this collection of articles, we have received support from many people and institutions, whom we would like to acknowledge. Thanks are due in particular to the editorial assistant, Martin Jänes, who contributed almost a year of his time to this project. We are also grateful to Richard Adang, who kindly reviewed the language of the book, and to Carol Koulikourdi who recommended it to Cambridge Scholars Publishing. The following institutions and research projects have contributed to the funding of the book: Institute of History of Tallinn University, Institute of Art History of the Estonian Academy of Arts, Estonian Cultural Endowment, targeted ¿nanced project no. SF0130019s08 “Christianization, Colonization and Cultural Exchange: The Historical Origins of the European Identity of Estonia (13th–17th Centuries)”, and the EuroCORECODE programme’s project “Symbols that Bind and Break Communities” of the European Science Foundation. Last, but not least, we would like to thank all the contributors for their stimulating ideas.

INTRODUCTION KRISTA KODRES AND ANU MÄND This collection of essays explores the use of images and objects in medieval and early modern ritual practices, as well as how certain ceremonies were depicted in works of art. The topic is not entirely new,1 and the answer to the question of why it was chosen should be given at the beginning. The editors of this collection see it as an experiment, or even as a provocation, the origins of which can be traced back to 2011. In that year we invited our colleagues to participate in a conference in Tallinn, entitled “Art and Ritual in Late Medieval and Early Modern Northern and Central Europe.” The call for papers included a statement that in the Middle Ages and in the early modern era “images, spaces and rituals were closely interconnected; hence, the complex study of these phenomena is essential for a better understanding of the medieval and early modern societies and people… Topics to be discussed include church, court and civic ceremonies, performative aspect of festivals, rituals associated with images, rituals of dying and commemoration, (self)representation of individuals and social groups, and art and architecture as means of symbolic communication.”2 As is evident from this text, it was assumed that the papers would focus on the role of visual means in various medieval and early modern social practices, which were linked by their ritual character. It can also be inferred that we took a fundamental approach to “ritual” as an action, which, on the one hand, is discussed under the general umbrella term “performative practice,” which characterises societies as a whole, and, on the other hand, is characterised by a synthesis between the repetitive and the extraordinary that carries an intense 1 Here it is suf¿cient to draw attention to two recent publications: Claus Ambos et al., eds., Bild und Ritual: Visuelle Kulturen in historischer Perspektive (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2010), and Gerhard Jaritz, ed., Ritual, Images, and Daily Life: The Medieval Perspective (Münster: Lit, 2012). 2 This was the fourth international conference in memory of Prof. Sten Karling (1906–1987). The previous conferences have led to the following publications: Art and the Church: Religious Art and Architecture in the Baltic Region in the 13th–18th Centuries, ed. Krista Kodres and Merike Kurisoo (Tallinn: Eesti Kunstiakadeemia, 2008); The Problem of Classical Ideal in the Art and Architecture of the Countries around the Baltic Sea, ed. Krista Kodres, Piret Lindpere, and Eva Näripea (Tallinn: Eesti Kunstiakadeemia, 2003); Sten Karling and Baltic Art History, ed. Krista Kodres, Juhan Maiste, and Vappu Vabar (Tallinn: Teaduste Akadeemia Kirjastus, 1999).

2

Introduction

symbolic meaning and is emotionally charged. In addition, we looked at ritual as a teleological act of communication, in which images and objects as means of persuasion play an important role. Ritual has also been termed an event which is “performed” for someone at the present time. Moreover, we imply that a “ritual moment”3 is not only a communicative event but also an emotional one; at its onset, visual and material objects are essential components, media that stimulate sensomotoric reactions. One of the reasons why we offered so broad, perhaps even too broad, a platform to the conference participants was to obtain some feedback from them, so that we could discuss which events and activities in different places in medieval and early modern Europe could be treated as rituals. While preparing for the publication, we asked all the authors to clearly point out how their visual research objects were related to ritual action. We would also like to stress that the aim of the articles in this collection is not to theorise about ritual as a performative act or about performative acts. Rather, we looked for contributions in which the scholars would (¿rst of all) explore and situate images and objects and their potential for conveying meanings and evoking emotions. Here, however, let us distance ourselves from the frameworks mentioned above and discuss some of the theoretical views on ritual and the visual. Inevitably, some historiographical depth of theoretical analysis, which has its roots in the early twentieth century, will be sacri¿ced but, luckily, one can make up for this with additional reading, which is becoming more and more voluminous.4 Today, in the post-performative-turn period, the theories and research regarding rituals are fruitfully connected with the theories and research of performativity and, after the pictorial turn and the material turn, art history has linked up with the theories and research on visual and material culture. All of the turns in the ¿eld of the humanities in the late twentieth century are interdisciplinary; now we are witnessing the next phase of fusion and “crossfertilisation” between the disciplines. In the context of the present collection, we can speak of a “transdisciplinary turn”; it is dif¿cult to draw a boundary between pictorial and visual culture studies and performativity studies. This is neither necessary nor possible as, in practices that are characterised as rituals, performativity, visuality and materiality are all present and inextricably linked. Their co-existence was recognised in the language long before the phenomena were exhaustively studied: let us think of the Latin words speculatio 3 Edward Muir, Ritual in Early Modern Europe, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 15. 4 When the editors of the collection Bild und Ritual used the Google Search to look for the notion “ritual,” 32 900 000 results were found in November 2008; in December 2012 the number appeared to be 161 000 000.

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

3

(observation) and spectaculum (a show), which are related to the English word “spectacle,” as well as to the German Spektakel. It is also meaningful that the same stem (spectare, “to view, watch”) is present in the word speculum—“a mirror,” but also as a reÀection and as an image. In German, as well as in Estonian, the native language of the editors, a frequent epithet and/or synonym of ritual is designated with a precise compound phrase: Schauspiel in German, and vaatemäng in Estonian. The meaning of the ¿rst part in these compounds is “a look, a view,” which points to the fact that something is to be looked at or viewed, that there is a visual object. The fundamental idea of any ritual practice—hence the difference from some other performative practices, for example from the personal practice of devotion—is that “it is done to be seen.”5 The second part of the word, “a play,” points to the idea that we are not dealing with something that belongs to the daily routine, but with something that is performed, in which the participating subjects and material objects (as well as sounds and light effects, for example) are related to each other within the space of this particular event in a special mode. This mode can be described as a reÀective practice,6 in which visual symbols and signs—although visible— “hint at something invisible that is, however, no less real than the visible things at hand.”7 Thus rituals as entities are, at the level of all of their components, cultural “sites of memory”—lieux de mémoire—where the human psyche, consciousness, society and culture interact.8 It can be said that society explains itself to itself by showing itself and constructing itself, as after a ritual event it is no longer the same. Thus a ritual, as with any performative practice, is also an identity formation practice.9 Ronald R. Grimes, “Performative Theory and the Study of Rituals,” in New Approaches to the Study of Religion, vol. 2, Textual, Comparative, Sociological, and Cognitive Approaches, ed. Peter Antes, Armin W. Geertz, and Randy R. Warne (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2004), 112. 6 Klaus-Peter Klöpping, Bernhard Leistle, and Michael Rudolph, “Introduction,” in Ritual and Identity: Performative Practices as Effective Transformations of Social Reality, ed. Klaus-Peter Klöpping, Bernhard Leistle, and Michael Rudolph (Berlin: Lit, 2006), 16. 7 Bernhard Giesen, “Performing the Sacred: A Durkheimian Perspective on the Performative Turn in the Social Sciences,” in Social Performance: Symbolic Action, Cultural Pragmatics, and Ritual, ed. Jeffrey C. Alexander, Bernhard Giesen, and Jason L. Mast (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 331. 8 Jan Assmann, Religion und kulturelles Gedächtnis: Zehn Studien, 3rd ed. (Munich: Beck 2007), 18. 9 See Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990); Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” (New York: Routledge, 1993). 5

4

Introduction

Ritualised events do not happen on their own; at least in the medieval and early modern times, ritual practices, which are examined in this collection, did not automatically take place. Rituals are planned and arranged by someone whose world-view and interests they reÀect and these, in turn, are expressed and reaf¿rmed by rituals. As Jeffrey C. Alexander has convincingly argued, rituals as performative acts are initiated by “social actor(s), who present themselves as being motivated by and towards existential, emotional, and moral concerns, the meanings of which are de¿ned by patterns of signi¿ers whose referents are the social, physical, natural, and cosmological worlds within which actors and audiences live.”10 In order to perform an event—according to Alexander a “cultural text”—the social actors need mundane material things that make it possible to have a symbolic projection, and allow the objective of the initiator—the effectiveness of the event—to be ful¿lled: “They need objects that can serve as iconic representations to help them dramatize and make vivid the invisible motives and morals they are trying to represent.”11 To recapitulate, Alexander points to the elements needed for any cultural performance: actors (performers and attenders, audiences), the means of symbolic production (visuals and objects, participants’ clothing etc.), mise-en-scène (an ensemble of physical and verbal gestures, put into a scene), and social power (which always establishes an external boundary).12 Further on, he looks at cultural performances in connection with historical dynamics and shows that in highly strati¿ed and literate societies they are characterised by both greater arti¿ce and planning: performative action becomes more achieved and less automatic.13 In highly strati¿ed societies, elites seek, ¿rst of all, the legitimation of their positions, so that they can serve and perpetuate their interests (and enhance their bene¿ts). To be able to do this, they must convince people of the need to maintain a state of affairs and must make them believe that this corresponds to their interests: both in religious rituals and secular ceremonial acts, the initiators aim to demonstrate their authority in interpreting the world. At the same time, this attempt shows that elites perceive the power of the other side: the audience. Hence there is careful planning to ensure the effectiveness of rituals, including their form, i.e. performance in all its individual components. In art history, the idea of pictures and objects as “co-actors” in ritual events is not new. It is suf¿cient to refer to Aby Warburg, who noted their symbolic and emotional functions in the rituals of the Pueblo Indians, describing them 10 Jeffrey C. Alexander, “Cultural Pragmatics: Social Performance between Ritual and Strategy,” in Alexander, Giesen, and Mast, Social Performance, 33. 11 Ibid., 35. 12 Ibid., 36. 13 Ibid., 45.

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

5

as “demoniac mediators between man and nature.”14 Even before Warburg, several art historians (Vischer, Fechner and Riegl) reÀected on the emotionality and associativeness of art. However, this line of research was not actively pursued until the last quarter of the twentieth century. Only after the object of art historical research itself—the work of art—was problematised was it possible to pay attention to different visual phenomena that existed in the societies of the past. This (re-)recognition of them as “symbolic practices” (Laclau and Bourdieu), i.e. the inclusion of sociological and anthropological knowledge in the interpretation of visual objects, led to the interpretation of the socially constructed meaning of the visual ¿eld (visual studies), but also to the formulation of the new picture theories mentioned above and a new discipline called Bildwissenschaft. The latter focuses on the question of the power of the image,15 i.e. on the speci¿c nature of the medium of the visual and its impact on human experience. In retrospect, one can say that, since the 1990s, there have emerged competing—semiotic and phenomenological—discourses in art history.16 The performative turn, which occurred at about the same time, provided a good opportunity to overcome the oppositions, because—as mentioned above, and quite obviously—performative acts, and rituals in particular, can be conceived of as models of particular societies, which, to paraphrase Bruno Latour, assemble the social and the cultural.17 Images and objects in this model are clearly observable and provide new opportunities to study the roles assigned to them, as well as how they are realised. In this context, the views of Louis Marin, who has undeservedly fallen into oblivion in the Anglo-American and the German language areas, merit attention. In particular, Marin used the example of ritual practice to discuss art practices more generally and to explain his own vision of “critical semiotics.” Inspired by Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of practice and Hubert Damisch’s theory of the cloud, Marin argues that the principles of a practical coherence of Bourdieu’s symbolic systems are supplied with the logic of their genesis and their functioning. This means that in practice both the symbolic systems themWarburg’s lecture at the Kreuzlingen sanatorium, 1924. See Aby M. Warburg, Images from the Region of the Pueblo Indians of North America, trans. Michael P. Steinberg (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995), 6. 15 We have borrowed the title of David Freedberg’s now classical work The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989). 16 Beat Wyss, Vom Bild zum Kunstsystem, vol. 1 (Cologne: König, 2006), 10; Keith Moxey, “Visual Studies and the Iconic Turn,” Journal of Visual Culture 7, no. 2 (2008): 131–46. 17 Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). 14

6

Introduction

selves and objective conditions are taken into account. Borrowing from Jeffrey C. Alexander, we can conclude that the cultural pragmatism18 characteristic of humanity leads to the manipulation of symbolic systems (images, pictures and objects—eds.), the nature of which allows for multiple interpretations. Marin stresses the ambivalent nature of symbolic systems: “In the ritual practice . . . , the symbols that are at once instruments of its manipulations and objects of its activity, simultaneously indeterminate and overdetermined, are grasped in relations of global resemblance, but at the same time used under a particular aspect of analogy, so that when they are put into practice by the ritual, that particular aspect continues to bene¿t, under various modalities, from all the other aspects of the resemblance.”19 The symbolic representations in sets of rituals are determined by both their (familiar, traditional) meaning, which is intentionally written into their scripts, and by the indeterminateness of their impact or effect. Marin stresses that “pictorial writing” is an “open and constantly decentered system, postulated simultaneously by the polythetic logic of practice and the polysemy of the elements and mechanisms that it puts to work historically.” The task of a researcher is “to systematically explore the diversity and heterogeneity of the processes and their entities, the effects of symbolic overdetermination that these heterotopies provoke, by bringing to light both the historical constants that are indicated in them and the invariants that are attached to a speci¿c practice and that refer to the material entities that ultimately shape it.”20 Marin himself followed this in his article “Establishing a Signi¿cation for Social Space: Demonstration, Cortege, Parade, Procession (Semiotic Notes),” conducting an analysis of space-constructing and performative aspects of ritual acts and their effectiveness.21 The articles in this collection deal with particular ritual events, with the purpose of contributing to the study of performative practice, which is also pictorial and/or material practice, in medieval and early modern times. We can see different environments—church, town and castle—and ambitions: the demonstration of faith, power or self, performed for others as well as for oneself. The articles included in the ¿rst part of this collection analyse the role of pictures and material objects in religious ritual practices. Gerhard Jaritz emphasises the need to consider the transformation and variability of (medieval) ritual practices, which are also reÀected in visual culture. He studies Alexander, “Cultural Pragmatics,” 29–90. Louis Marin, “Theoretical Field and Symbolic Practice,” in On Representation, trans. Catherine Porter (Stanford: Stanford University Press: 2001), 31–32. 20 Ibid., 36. 21 Louis Marin, “Establishing a Signi¿cation for Social Space: Demonstration, Cortege, Parade, Procession (Semiotic Notes),” in On Representation, 38–53. 18 19

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

7

these aspects in connection with the content, function and uses of late medieval religious images, by discussing some Central European paintings on the Journey and Adoration of the Magi, the Last Judgement and the Virgin of Mercy. He points out that humorous ¿gures and details added, for example, to the entourage of the Three Magi and depicted at the eye level of the beholder motivated the beholder’s gaze and “participation” in the religious story, increased the closeness between the image and its viewers, and thus assisted them in learning and memorising the spiritual message. Visual representations of well-known themes had many variations, depending, among other things, on the social position of the donor and the prospective beholders. Jaritz points out that, although the religious message to be perceived was the same, the way it was perceived was realised with the help of different means of construction and performance, mainly dependent on the social differences in late medieval society. Stability and variation, repetition and mutability did not contradict but supplemented each other, and thus inÀuenced the ritual sign language and the representation of ritual actions. Andrew Spicer examines consecration crosses, which were a visual reminder of the religious rites that transformed the church building into a sacred space and set it apart from the secular realm. Recent research into the decoration and appearance of medieval churches suggests ways in which scholars might be able to gain greater insight into how these crosses were perceived by church-goers. He stresses that consecration crosses, like wall paintings, were more than ecclesiastical decoration, and that their role in late medieval devotional practice needs to be reassessed in relation to the period’s understanding of sight and vision. Stina Fallberg Sundmark, dealing with Swedish late medieval artworks and theological texts, investigates how the rosary and the wounds of Christ were related to each other in Christian iconography and what role this combination played in late medieval liturgy and devotional practices. Her starting point is that ecclesiastical rituals have to be understood more broadly than solely as liturgical acts performed by the priest, that rituals also include acts performed by the laity, during the mass as well as in private worship and meditation. Visual representations of the rosary with the wounds of Christ were used in different ways as instruments of prayer and devotion. The purpose of these representations was by no means merely decorative; on the contrary, they had a distinctive function as visual and material instruments of prayer and meditation. In the liturgical setting of the church building, these motifs, either separately or combined, also had strong connections with the Eucharist. Martin Wangsgaard Jürgensen, in his article, challenges the earlier understanding of the role of pictures in the Lutheran church, which was

8

Introduction

based on the principles of Martin Luther and the Formula Concordiae (1577), according to which images in the church were to “adorn, remind, admonish and instruct.” Jürgensen demonstrates that, in addition to this instrumental approach to images, a much more ambitious and emotional function is revealed in the practice of the Eucharist in which the Last Supper altarpiece “participates.” This is connected with the Lutheran doctrine of the Real Presence. During the sacrament of the Eucharist, the Last Supper altarpiece acquires a ritual quality, characterised by the idea of the union of time, space and the partaker of the sacrament. Jürgensen shows how the sacrament of the Eucharist is emotionally enforced by pictorial means, which, during the communion ritual, meet the hearts of partakers who are well prepared by the pastor. Aivar Põldvee’s article also focuses on the Lutheran pictorial practice. The author examines the way God’s word was taught to children of local peasants in a small village church—the Lutheran congregation of Keila in Estonia—in the 1680s. Catechism classes, offered after the service every Sunday, became a ritual. During the class, children stood in front of a large picture which depicted two scenes: Jacob wrestling with the angel, and Jacob’s dream, based on the Icones Biblicae by Matthäus Merian. The article attempts to untangle the iconographic additions—those of local landscape and memory—to the famous scenes, which were to serve as complementary “study aids”; they are juxtaposed with passages from the catechism textbook by the pastor Anton Heidrich. This pedagogical practice caused an iconoclastic controversy that reached the Estonian Consistory, which, among other things, throws some light on the fear of images that the conservative wing of the Lutherans still had. A large number of the articles explore the events of ritual character that were initiated by secular rulers. All of them are united by one aim: to inculcate the notion that power was sacred, predetermined and, consequently, inevitable. Giedrơ Micknjnaitơ focuses on the signi¿cance of ritual viewing and analyses how the iconography of the Byzantine wall paintings which adorned the medieval residence of Lithuanian grand dukes and the parish church in Trakai manifested the sacred and secular power of the rulers. She also discusses the reasons for the atypical (southward) orientation and location of the original church building and concludes that it was deliberately chosen to create a visual bond between the castle and the parish church, to suit the gaze of the founder, Grand Duke Vytautas, who could symbolically look from the palace onto the main altar of the church. By the end of the ¿fteenth century, when the grand dukes no longer resided in the castle and the latter was turned into a prison, this visual bond lost its meaning and the church building was turned eastwards. However, the wall paintings with the donor scene and the icon of the Mother of God, which, according to a legend, was a present to Vytautas, incorporated

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

9

the memory of the grand ducal founder and strengthened his image as a true Christian prince. Kersti Markus provides an overview of the ¿rst coronations of kings in twelfth-century Denmark, and suggests that the pictorial programme of two contemporary baptismal stones reÀected the rituals performed on these occasions in Ringsted Cathedral. She discusses the possible ideological messages conveyed through the images depicted on these stones, and states that they can be linked with the ambitions of King Valdemar I of Denmark to consolidate his own power and that of his son Canute. The visual language of the baptismal stones emphasised the notion that the king was Christ’s deputy on earth. Juliette Roding and Nico Hijman provide insight into the iconographic programme of the tomb monument (1542) of Reinoud III van Brederode, the Lord of Vianen, and his wife. Its study reveals the details of the artistic and anatomical depiction of the ruler’s “two bodies,” the allegorisation of kingly virtues and the different forms of their commemoration in the monument. The authors also show how the chapel, containing different objects—a monument, a retable and a crypt, separated from the rest of the church by a screen—was used. The chapel was not only a place for the funeral service as a rite of passage, but also a place for personal or familial commemorative and devotional practices; it was a meeting place which centred on the visually present ¿gures of the father and mother of the family, on the core values of life sanctioned by them, and conveyed allegorically through them. Hugo Johannsen in his contribution looks at the portals in two Danish kings’ residences: the Kronborg Castle and Frederiksborg Palace, dating from 1585 and 1610, respectively. Both portals feature extremely rich iconography, which, according to Johannsen, was designed to af¿rm the hereditary right of the Danish kings and its divine origin. This was, as Johannsen shows, a performative practice (quite common in Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries), or performative rhetorics cut in stone, which aimed to challenge the elective character of Danish monarchy as regulated by law. The ¿gures of biblical kings (in Kronborg Castle) and historical Christian kings of Denmark (in Frederiksborg Palace) on the chapel portals of the royal residences were to act as memory stimuli, as permanent lieux de mémoire. The iconography of the Frederiksborg portal also served to perpetuate the coronation of Christian IV. Birgitte Bøggild Johannsen examines the re-enactments of historical rituals in Denmark in the eighteenth century, the ¿rst of which (1749) was arranged on the occasion of the coronation of Christian I, the ¿rst of the Oldenburg dynasty, in 1449, and the second (1760) was connected with the law, mentioned in Hugo Johannsen’s article, which transformed the elective monarchy into the hereditary monarchy; a hundred years ago, in 1660, absolutism

10

Introduction

was introduced in Denmark. In addition, two more events are dealt with: the celebrations of the Lutheran Reformation and the two-hundredth anniversary of the Danish Reformation, which were intended to af¿rm the creed, but also demonstrated the sacred nature of royal power. Johannsen analyses how, by using different media simultaneously, a magical presence was achieved in of¿cially sanctioned re-enactments. By referring to Karl-Siegbert Rehberg, she differentiates between body symbols, spatial and object symbols, temporal symbols and textual symbols that stimulate presence, and demonstrates that their concrete applications were intended to reactivate communal memory. This memory was meant to serve the aim of social unity, of which royal power and evangelical faith were legitimate warrants. The means of creating the magical presence of royal power in Tallinn (Ger. Reval) during celebrations on the occasion of taking an oath of allegiance to King Charles XI of Sweden in 1690 are explored by Krista Kodres. The festivities, without the king present, were organised in view of the need to convince local estates, whom the king had harmed with his policies, of royal power being above earthly authority, as being bestowed by God, and as having absolute justi¿cation. The surviving documents of the Tallinn City Council reveal how the events were planned and carried out. Among other things, the sources describe the objects, the images and the texts, as well as the meanings given to them by the organisers. The magni¿cent scenography of the events and the participation of the estates in the preparations for them guaranteed that the ceremony of taking the oath was like a “blessing of heaven” and that “when the drums and trumpets sounded and cannons roared, not only those who were in the castle, but people everywhere and everyone in the houses and streets had fun all night long.”22 In the last part of this collection, some performative practices, which can be regarded as either personal or corporate ritual acts, are explored. They contain one-time or repeated demonstrative self-af¿rmation: reminding oneself and the public of one’s status and position. On these occasions, images and objects also served as active “co-actors.” Emilia Jamroziak studies the self-representation of late medieval Cistercian abbots, focussing on art commissions in Bukowo Morskie Abbey in Pomerania in the late ¿fteenth and the early sixteenth centuries, particularly on the altarpiece containing the image of the donor, Abbot Henry Kresse (1510/13–35). She draws attention to the changing nature of the abbatial of¿ce in the late Middle Ages, which, in turn, brought about changes in the Christian Kelch, LieÀändische Historia, oder Kurtze Beschreibung der Denckwürdigsten Kriegs- und Friedens-Geschichte Esth- Lief- und Lettlandes (Reval: Johann Mehner, 1695). 22

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

11

visual culture of the abbeys: abbots used various visual means (seals, tombs, altarpieces and other liturgical objects) to emphasise the status of their of¿ce and of themselves, their family lineage and personal qualities. Abbots began to be represented in a manner resembling that of lay benefactors. She argues that this development was linked to different forms of engagement with the laity, the new form of the abbatial of¿ce and the reform movement shaping the Cistercian order in this period. Anu Mänd approaches the topic of memoria and pious donations from the gender perspective, by studying the commemorative strategies of lay women in medieval Livonian cities. First she explores the role of women in guilds and confraternities, particularly in the rituals of burial and commemoration. Then she discusses the opportunities of women of different social, economic and marital status to establish their own memoria by, for example, endowing a chantry or donating a liturgical object. Although women played a far more modest role in public life than men, they had the opportunity to inÀuence the sacred space through their commemorative bequests and, to some extent, even “feminise” it. Eucharistic vessels, church furnishings and tombstones commissioned by women or for women, and provided with their coats of arms or with proper inscriptions, functioned as bearers of collective memory. Mänd also points out that women, unlike men, had multiple identities: they could visually identify themselves as members of their natal or marital families. Jürgen Beyer looks at Lutheran churches and the problem of the interior lighting of a sacred space. By giving examples from several churches in northern Europe, he refutes the claim that the role of chandeliers and the aims of donating chandeliers did not change with the Reformation. Beyer shows that when the masses and the side altars (together with altar candelabra) disappeared, evangelical churches became relatively dark and the role of lighting in the liturgy was reduced. Lutheran nobles donated chandeliers and candelabra in connection with the commemoration of the dead and these objects functioned similarly to epitaphs, especially when associated with the places where the dead were buried. They may have played a certain role in funeral rites, which took place mainly at night. The chandeliers were also used to mark a corner of a church belonging to guilds and other corporations, who donated them to be hung near their pews. The chandeliers were types of ritual gifts, which were donated at the consecration of churches, as well as gestures of gratitude for escaping harm or gestures seeking forgiveness after sinful deeds. The article also includes a discussion of Lutheran church economics: direct orders by donors regarding how to use the chandelier money and the candle wax leftovers. Ruth Mohrmann’s article deals with Samuel Pepys, an English MP and a man of letters, the son of a tailor, who kept a diary for ten years (1660–70)

12

Introduction

in which he recorded daily events that had some signi¿cance for him. Among these were his (very) frequent theatre visits, which can be seen as a personal ritual for Pepys, constantly repeated and clearly performative. Mohrmann discusses the causes of Pepys’s passion and, through close reading of his diaries, she reaches the conclusion that for Pepys going to the theatre was not simply an act of watching a play, but an act of “being seen,” being present as a digni¿ed member of the audience, which also gave him an opportunity to show off. Pepys participated in other elitist social rituals as well; in addition to going to the theatre, Mohrmann mentions newspaper reading in coffee houses, concert attendance etc. These new rituals provided an opportunity for Pepys to participate and to perform in the role of a character (wearing expensive clothing he could ill afford), the logic of which dictated that he had a utopian view of himself: he played the aristocrat game, though he was not a member of the aristocracy. Stephan Hoppe, in his article on German Renaissance palaces, explains how certain rooms were created in order to perform certain repetitive actions and how the architectonic framework of the rooms made the ritualization of these actions possible. Based on the results of the building archeology of early modern residence palaces in Central Europe, as well as on textual sources and images, he analyzes the phenomenon of the Herrentafelstube, a room meant for the private dining of the lord of the castle which came into existence in the early sixteenth century and was located on the upper Àoor of a palace. One of the ¿rst such rooms was probably built for Emperor Maximilian I in the hunting lodge of Wellenburg; a similar room was also established by King Vladislaus II in his Prague Castle. Characteristic of the Tafelstube, which was common in German courts, were panoramic views of surrounding natural and man-made environments, in the ideal case in three directions. As such, the room enabled the ruler and his retinue, seated at the table in hierarchical order, to somewhat distance themselves from court ceremonies, and allowed them to enjoy food as well as magni¿cent views similar to those described by Pliny the Younger in his villa letters. At the same time, the phenomenon of Tafelstube can also be interpreted as a daily exercise of power: the controlling gaze of a ruler over his estates and subjects.

PART I IMAGES AND OBJECTS IN RELIGIOUS RITUALS

LATE MEDIEVAL IMAGES AND THE VARIABILITY OF RITUALS GERHARD JARITZ Ritual studies have been trendy since the 1970s and 1980s. There have been many new and important results of research, but also a number of problems have arisen, which generally happens when new interests are developing in speci¿c study areas. Research into rituals has emerged as a wide ¿eld covering many aspects of the cultural and social disciplines. Thus, as early as 1977, Jack Goody expressed scepticism when he stated that the concept had become global in a way which made it rather unusable.1 In 1993, Richard Schechner saw ritual as something that “means very little because it means so much.”2 In 1997, Edward Muir remarked that one knows what rituals are when one sees them; if asked to de¿ne them, however, one might be confronted with very different replies.3 Therefore, rituals and ritual studies speak with many voices.4 This means that one generally has to cope with multiplicity, variety and sometimes even heterogeneity.5 Since Émile Durkheim, the famous French * This article was written under the auspices of the EUROCORECODE Programme’s grant „Symbols that Bind and Break Communities” of the European Science Foundation. 1 Jack Goody, “Against ‘Ritual’: Loosely Structured Thoughts on a Loosely De¿ned Topic,” in Secular Ritual, ed. Sally F. Moore and Barbara G. Myerhoff (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1977), 25–35. 2 Richard Schechner, The Future of Ritual: Writings on Culture and Performance (London: Routledge, 1993), 228. 3 Edward Muir, Ritual in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 3. 4 Ibid., 5. 5 See, generally, Axel Michaels, “‘Le rituel pour le rituel’ oder wie sinnlos sind Rituale?” in Rituale heute: Theorien – Kontroversen – Entwürfe, ed. Corina Caduff and Joanna Pfaff-Czarnecka (Berlin: Reimer, 1999), 23–47; Christoph Wulf and Jörg Zirfas, “Performative Welten: Einführung in die historischen, systematischen und methodischen Dimensionen des Rituals,” in Die Kultur des Rituals: Inszenierungen, Praktiken, Symbole, ed. Christoph Wulf and Jörg Zirfas (Munich: Fink, 2004), 7–45; Burckhard Dücker, Rituale: Formen – Funktionen – Geschichte; Eine Einführung in die Ritualwissenschaft (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2007), passim.

16

Late Medieval Images and the Variability of Rituals

sociologist of religion, stated in 1912 that “ritual is the totality of practices concerned with sacred things,”6 much has changed. In spite of various doubts and critics, research into rituals contains concepts that can lead to approaches that are particularly important for any ¿eld of historical studies. Asked for a common de¿nition, one can, in my opinion, use the one by the American cultural anthropologist Conrad Kottak, who sees rituals as “behavior that is formal, stylized, repetitive, and stereotyped, performed earnestly as a social act.”7 For medieval studies, the de¿nition given by the German historian Gerd Althoff has proved inÀuential. He recognises rituals as “chains of actions of a complex nature [that] are repeated by actors in certain circumstances in the same or similar ways, and, if this happens deliberately, with the conscious goal of familiarity.”8 In spite of the fact that much has changed since Durkheim, the sphere of religion still represents one of the most important areas of research, although the range of “ritual” has broadened from mainly religious emphasis to a social and cultural study ¿eld covering more or less any aspect of human life.9 Research into rituals also can clearly show how religious and secular space intermingle frequently. Some multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary studies have dealt with the transformation of ritual practices during the Middle Ages and have stated that ritual and its performativity are to be seen as a process.10 One has to be aware that rituals are generally not static and unchangeable,11 concerning their de¿6 William S. F. Pickering, ed., Durkheim on Religion: A Selection of Readings with Bibliographies and Introductory Remarks (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975), 88. 7 Conrad Phillip Kottak, Cultural Anthropology, 9th ed. (Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2002), 228. 8 Gerd Althoff, “The Variability of Rituals in the Middle Ages,” in Medieval Concepts of the Past: Ritual, Memory, Historiography, ed. Gerd Althoff, Johannes Fried, and Patrick J. Geary (2002; repr., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 71. 9 Ibid., 71–87. 10 See, e.g., Nils Holger Petersen et al., eds., The Appearances of Medieval Rituals: The Play of Construction and Modi¿cation (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), passim. See also the research of the German Sonderforschungsbereich 619 “Ritualdynamik” (Collaborative Research Centre 619 “Ritual Dynamics”), founded in 2002, representing a large interdisciplinary research collective that exclusively deals with rituals, their dynamics, variation, transformation and change (http://www.ritualdynamik.de/index. php?id=1&L=1). 11 See Catherine Bell, Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 210: “Part of the dilemma of ritual change lies in the simple fact that rituals tend to present themselves as the unchanging, time-honored customs of an enduring community,” and ibid., 211: “Despite … evidence for change, it is nonethe-

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

17

nition as well as the emphasis of the interest in them, and with regard to the studied actions and practices themselves.12 The transformation and variability of rituals and ritual studies has to be considered in any research. My contribution intends to deal with such aspects of the variability of rituals in connection with late medieval images: • on the one hand, with regard to their content; • on the other hand, concerning their function and usage (although closely connected with content).13 I will concentrate on images from religious space and will use Central European visual evidence, in particular. Studying the perception and use of late medieval religious images, one is confronted with different levels of the beholders’ experience of closeness to the images’ contents,14 a closeness that made it easier to connect with the images15 and that “vivi¿ed the interaction between human beings and their spiritual destiny,” as Marilyn Aronberg Lavin emphasised in her The Place of Narrative.16 Such integration of well-known or recognisable types of objects, situations and actions familiar to the beholder out of her or his own life or environment less quite true that ritual activities generally tend to resist change and often do so more effectively than other forms of social custom.” 12 See ibid., 252: “No ritual stands by itself. It is always embedded in a thick context of traditions, changes, tensions, and unquestioned assumptions and practices. Ritual is a way that people can act in the world.” 13 With regard to the iconography of ritual see, in particular, Johannes Bilstein, “Zur Ikonographie des Rituals,” in Wulf and Zirfas, Die Kultur des Rituals, 318–39, which deals with images in rituals, as well as with rituals in images; Andrea Löther, “Rituale im Bild: Prozessionsdarstellungen bei Albrecht Dürer, Gentile Bellini und in der Konzilschronik Ulrich Richenthals,” in Mundus in imagine: Bildersprache und Lebenswelten im Mittelalter; Festgabe für Klaus Schreiner, ed. Andrea Löther, Ulrich Meier, and Norbert Schnitzler (Munich: Fink, 1996), 99–123. Concerning the context of images, ritual and their function in daily life, see recently Gerhard Jaritz, ed., Ritual, Images, and Daily Life: The Medieval Perspective (Münster: Lit, 2012), passim. 14 See, generally, Gerhard Jaritz, “Nähe und Distanz als Gebrauchsfunktion spätmittelalterlicher religiöser Bilder,” in Frömmigkeit im Mittelalter: Politisch-soziale Kontexte, visuelle Praxis, körperliche Ausdrucksformen, ed. Klaus Schreiner (Munich: Fink, 2002), 331–46. 15 “… Vorteil von Nähe, wie sie ein Bildnis suggeriert, und jenen einer detailreichen Erzählung, die der Betrachter nachvollziehen kann.” Hans Belting, Das Bild und sein Publikum im Mittelalter: Form und Funktion früher Bildtafeln der Passion (Berlin: Mann, 1981), 208. 16 Marilyn Aronberg Lavin, The Place of Narrative: Mural Decoration in Italian Churches, 431–1600 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 221.

18

Late Medieval Images and the Variability of Rituals

certainly involved different realisations and, therefore, different types and meanings of closeness. This has to be analysed in consideration of distinct artists, patrons, beholders, and their ways of participation in the visual message. I would like to offer some examples of visual constructions and representations of ritual actions, which I think clearly show differences, modi¿cations and variability. I understand these ritual actions in terms of the above-mentioned de¿nition of Gerd Althoff: “chains of actions of a complex nature . . . repeated by actors in certain circumstances in the same or similar ways, . . . with the conscious goal of familiarity.” If one is thus aware of the repetitive character of ritual actions, but also aware of ritual dynamics, transformation and variability, one certainly has to ask to what extent both of these statements can ¿t together without losing their relevance. To deal with this problem, I would like to concentrate on aspects of visual representation and participation in religious space, with the help of three examples of ritual action that are regularly depicted in and presented by late medieval art: (1) the Journey and Adoration of the Magi, (2) the Last Judgement, and (3) the search for protection under the cloak of the Virgin of Mercy. I see these themes and their visual representations as constructions of perseverative ritual actions, which are generally familiar and close to the beholders, ask, to some extent, for their participation, and inÀuence their behaviour and lives. My interest does not lie in the particular representations, “but in their essential signi¿cance and their relative positions within ceremonial wholes—that is, their order.”17 One of the most important aspects is connected with the beholder’s direct and indirect participation in the performance and ritual.18

Arnold van Gennep, The Rites of Passage, trans. Monika B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. Caffee (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), 191. Concerning rituals and order in the world, see the short contribution by Gerald Schwedler, “Rituale und die Ordnung der Welt,” in Rituale und die Ordnung der Welt: Darstellungen aus Heidelberger Handschriften und Drucken des 12. bis 18. Jahrhunderts, ed. Carla Meyer, Gerald Schwedler, and Karin Zimmermann (Heidelberg: Winter, 2008, published in conjunction with the exhibition shown at the Heidelberg University Library), 9–12. 18 See Klaus Schreiner, “Texte, Bilder, Rituale: Fragen und Erträge einer Sektion auf dem Deutschen Historikertag (8. bis 11. September 1998),” in Bilder, Texte, Rituale: Wirklichkeitsbezug und Wirklichkeitskonstruktion politisch-rechtlicher Kommunikationsmedien in Stadt- und Adelsgesellschaften des späten Mittelalters, ed. Klaus Schreiner and Gabriela Signori (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2000), 12: “Kontextualisierte Bilder geben Aufschluß über ihre lebensweltliche Pragmatik.” 17

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

19

The Three Magi We are used to visual representations of the Three Magi19 that show them adoring the baby Jesus and offering their presents, as in an Upper Austrian example from the end of the ¿fteenth century (¿g. 1). The Magi represent worldly powers abasing themselves to venerate the newborn King. The image offers the beholder a better comprehension of the story from the Gospel. The entourage of the Kings may increase the strength and effect of the ritual action’s message (¿g. 2). This rich entourage might be seen as a kind of basis for another type of visual representation of the Journey of the Magi and the Adoration, which offers a different, additional and stronger type of closeness than these two prestigious panels from winged altarpieces. One comes across a modi¿ed Journey and Adoration of the Magi which increases the impact of the message for, and the participation of, lower class beholders. One ¿nds the most impressive examples of this type in rural churches in today’s Slovenia. The Kings still represent the same worldly powers abasing themselves. But their entourage has increased. It includes not only the traditional richly equipped servants and escort, but also such different ¿gures as a hunter with his horn and lance, and a ¿sherman with his rod (¿g. 3). In following the Three Kings, along with the rich members of the entourage, they offer a contrast that can be recognised as very close to rural beholders, as “you and me,” who are on our way to adore the baby Jesus. They are mostly presented at the eye level of the beholder standing in the church. There are a number of such examples of this kind in the wall painting of the Magi’s Journey and Adoration in the ¿lial church of the little village of Hrastovlje in northern Istria. Below the Kings and their rich entourage, there is, for instance, a peasant carrying eggs as a present for the baby Jesus (¿g. 4).20 At Gradišþe pri Divaþi, a cook takes part in the journey (¿g. 5). Sometimes, one can ¿nd humorous or satirical details in depictions of this type of lower class escort which, on the one hand, can increase closeness and, on the other hand, augments the variety of people who join the Magi to adore the newborn Lord: offering the message that everybody is taking part in the performance. Two hunters with their hares can be found at Hrastovlje; a dog wants to steal one of the hares, which results in a fart by the hunter who is See, generally, Richard C. Trexler, The Journey of the Magi: Meanings in History of a Christian Story (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), passim. 20 Concerning the fresco cycle in Hrastovlje, see Marijan Zadnikar, Hrastovlje: Romanska arhitektura in gotske freske [Hrastovlje: Romanesque architecture and Gothic frescoes] (Ljubljana: Družina, 1988). 19

20

Late Medieval Images and the Variability of Rituals

Fig. 1. Adoration of the Magi, end of the ¿fteenth century, panel painting. Kremsmünster (Upper Austria), gallery of the Benedictine abbey. All ¿gures of this chapter: courtesy of Institut für Realienkunde, Krems an der Donau (Austria).

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

21

Fig. 2. Adoration of the Magi, with large entourage. Journey and Adoration of the Magi, ca. 1490, panel painting. Klosterneuburg (Lower Austria), museum of the Augustinian abbey.

22

Late Medieval Images and the Variability of Rituals

Fig. 3. Accompanying hunter and ¿sherman. Journey of the Magi and Their Entourage, 1440, wall painting (detail). Sredna vas Prisencu (Slovenia), ¿lial Church of St. Radegund. carrying the animal (¿g. 6). At Gradišþe pri Divaþi, two jesters are depicted (¿g. 7), one of them showing his naked buttocks to the other, again visualising humorous aspects that certainly could motivate the beholder’s gaze and “participation,” and, as a result, also make the spiritual message more accessible to the beholder. This type of indirect participation in the Journey and the Adoration, constantly repeated, not just once a year, broadens the context, involving every living being: also disabled humans, wild women and men, and animals. Comparing the images representing mainly or only the Kings abasing themselves to adore the newborn Lord with those that present a concentration on everybody joining the journey to the baby Jesus, particularly also from the beholders’ environment, i.e. you and me, demonstrates the following: • the same general (spiritual) message for any beholder; • the realisation of the message in distinct ways, by the visual representation of a different type of participation. The latter still occurs in other ways, for instance, by the portrayal of the participation of recognisable members of leading groups of society, i.e. by personalisation. One well-known example of this kind is a panel painting from a winged altarpiece most probably produced at the end of the ¿fteenth century for the ruling Habsburg family. There, the decisive element of participation is presented in an individualised and personalised way: Emperor Maximilian I is

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

Fig. 4. Accompanying peasant. John of Kastav, Journey of the Magi and Their Entourage, 1490, wall painting (detail). Hrastovlje (Slovenia), ¿lial Church of the Holy Trinity.

Fig. 6. Accompanying hunter disturbed by a dog. John of Kastav, Journey of the Magi and Their Entourage, 1490, wall painting (detail). Hrastovlje (Slovenia), ¿lial Church of the Holy Trinity.

23

Fig. 5. Accompanying cook. John of Kastav, Journey of the Magi and Their Entourage, 1490, wall painting (detail). Gradišþe pri Divaþi (Slovenia), ¿lial Church of St. Helen.

24

Late Medieval Images and the Variability of Rituals

Fig. 7. Accompanying jesters. John of Kastav, Journey of the Magi and Their Entourage, 1490, wall painting (detail). Gradišþe pri Divaþi (Slovenia), ¿lial Church of St. Helen. one of the Three Kings and, behind him, his late father, Emperor Frederick III, is portrayed as a leading member of the entourage (¿g. 8).21 A further modi¿cation of the ritual action’s visual representation and the aspects of participation is also realised in those cases in which donors had themselves depicted in the image. In this way, they became both beholders and indirect participants in the Adoration.

The Last Judgement Another example of the recurring visual representation of a ritual action, its relevant message, and its variability concerning the depiction of its participants is the path to heaven or to hell at the Last Judgement.22 See Elfriede Baum, Katalog des Museums Mittelalterlicher Österreichischer Kunst (Vienna: Schroll, 1971), 146–47; see also Trexler, Journey of the Magi, 163. 22 Concerning the iconography of the Last Judgement see, in particular, David Bevington et al., Homo, Memento Finis: The Iconography of Just Judgment in Medieval Art and 21

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

25

Fig. 8. Emperor Maximilian I and Emperor Frederick III. Master of the Habsburgs, Adoration of the Magi, ca. 1500, panel painting (detail). Vienna, Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, inv. no. 4870. On the one hand, one can recognise this as a situation in which everybody confronting it is initially equal, meaning that all people go or are led naked to heaven or to hell (¿g. 9). The only difference is that the passage to heaven happens in an orderly manner, in contrast to the path to hell, which is disorderly: the chaos of entering the jaws of hell versus the orderliness when entering heaven. The chaos in the jaws of hell is made even clearer and more understandable by letting some of the depicted ¿gures show their deadly sins (¿g. 10): the murderer being killed by a devil, the gambler with the backgammon board, the drinker with his jug, and the unchaste girl having a bath in boiling oil. In other examples, one also ¿nds gossiping, gluttony and vanity, symbolised by the mirror being held by a woman. On the one hand, the nakedness is a sign of the initial equality of everyone being called to the Final Judgement. On the other hand, the worldly hierarchy and its visual representation can play an important role. In this context, one Drama (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1985); Yves Christe, Das Jüngste Gericht, trans. Michael Lauble (Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner, 2001).

26

Late Medieval Images and the Variability of Rituals

Fig. 9. Equality by nakedness. Last Judgement, 1469, panel painting (detail). Güssing (Burgenland), Draškoviü Castle. comes across the distinction of the saved ones being dressed be¿tting their rank and entering heaven in the God-given hierarchical order, versus the naked, condemned ones on their way to the jaws of hell (¿g. 11). Another modi¿cation of the latter representation is realised by visualising the social af¿liation of some of the naked condemned ones by providing them with their de¿ning headgear or attributes. This is mainly done for members of the highest ranks of society condemned to hell (¿g. 12): in this case, a pope, an emperor, and a bishop, together with a criminal in a wooden pillory. Occasionally, one comes across a situation where being led to heaven and to hell are visualised similarly, with both the saved and the condemned in worldly attire and ranked in social order (¿g. 13). While in the ¿rst shown and more frequent form of representation the fact that everybody has to face the Last Judgement was realised by indicating the equalising nakedness of all affected persons, the latter example shows another way to visualise the fact that nobody escapes: the explicitly recognisable worldly hierarchy of the persons of all social af¿liations, in some way comparable to the images of the Dance of Death. All in all, one is again confronted with a spiritual message of a path that leads to the same end, but realised by the distinct visual representation of ritual actions, i.e. different types of participation.

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

27

Fig. 10. The gambler, drinker, murderer and unchaste girl in the jaws of hell. Last Judgement, ca. 1480, wall painting (detail). Rain (Swabia), parish Church of St. John the Baptist.

Fig. 11. Worldly hierarchy of the saved versus nakedness of the condemned. Last Judgement, ca. 1450, panel painting (detail). Freising (Bavaria), museum of the diocese, inv. no. P250.

28

Late Medieval Images and the Variability of Rituals

Fig. 12. A pope, an emperor, a bishop and a criminal as representatives of the naked condemned. Last Judgement, 1530s, wall painting (detail). Sveti Peter nad Begunjami (Slovenia), ¿lial Church of St. Peter.

Fig. 13. The condemned and the saved in worldly social order. Last Judgement, end of the ¿fteenth century, panel painting (detail). Heidenreichstein (Lower Austria), castle museum.

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

29

The Virgin of Mercy A third example showing a similar situation of variability in visually represented actions that can be recognised as ritual or ritualised is again connected with social aspects: the Virgin of Mercy and the people seeking shelter under her outspread cloak.23 The Virgin offers this protection to everybody. The ritual of seeking shelter, however, was visualised in different ways, being comparable to the instances of the Three Magi and the Last Judgement. The protection of everybody could be represented by using the explicit portrayal of the worldly hierarchy of a large number of depicted persons (¿g. 14). This order, frequently divided into secular and clerical space, mostly starts from the top of the social order, with the emperor and the pope, descending to monks and nuns, as well as burghers and their wives, and ending in many similarly covered heads. There are a large number of similar representations. Sometimes the present ruler is included, as in the wall painting of the Virgin of Mercy at a Carniolan pilgrimage site, where one ¿nds Emperor Maximilian I seeking shelter (¿g. 15). The visual representation of everybody looking for protection from the Virgin could again be realised by showing no, or little, social or hierarchical differences between the people under Mary’s cloak. One ¿nds this solution primarily in earlier, fourteenth- and early ¿fteenth-century wall paintings. There, however, the particularly large quantity of equal ¿gures represents the Virgin’s protection of everybody (¿g. 16).24 One also has to consider that the idea of everybody seeking shelter under the Virgin’s cloak may have had distinct meanings and may, therefore, have led to differences and modi¿cations in the represented ritual action. Thus, if the image of the Virgin of Mercy was just meant for upper class members of society, then the people portrayed under the cloak could be limited only 23 For the iconography of the Virgin of Mercy see, in particular, Leopold Kretzenbacher, Schutz- und Bittgebärden der Gottesmutter: Zu Vorbedingungen, Auftreten und Nachleben mittelalterlicher Fürbitte-Gesten zwischen Hochkunst, Legende und Volksglauben (Munich: Beck, 1981); Christa Belting-Ihm, “Sub Matris Tutela”: Untersuchungen zur Vorgeschichte der Schutzmantelmadonna (Heidelberg: Winter, 1976); Nancy J. Hubbard, Sub Pallio: the Sources and Development of the Iconography of the Virgin of Mercy (PhD diss., Northwestern University, 1984; facsimile, Ann Arbor, MI: University Micro¿lms International, 1989); Catherine Oakes, Ora Pro Nobis: The Virgin as Intercessor in Medieval Art and Devotion (London: Miller, 2008). 24 See Beatrix Gombosi, “Köpönyegem pedig az én irgalmasságom …”: Köpönyeges Mária ábrázolások a középkori Magyarországon / “Mein weiter Mantel ist meine Barmherzigkeit …”: Schutzmantelmadonnen aus dem mittelalterlichen Ungarn (Szeged: Néprajzi és Kulturális Antropológiai Tanszék, 2008), 168–70.

30

Late Medieval Images and the Variability of Rituals

Fig. 14. The Virgin of Mercy offers shelter for the clerical and secular members of society. Virgin of Mercy, end of the ¿fteenth century, panel painting. Kremsmünster (Upper Austria), gallery of the Benedictine abbey.

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

Fig. 15. Emperor Maximilian I under the cloak of the Virgin of Mercy. Virgin of Mercy, 1504, wall painting (detail). Sveti Primož nad Kamnikom (Slovenia), ¿lial Church of St. Primus and Felician.

31

32

Late Medieval Images and the Variability of Rituals

Fig. 16. The Virgin of Mercy offers shelter for everybody, represented by a large number of people without any labelling of their social status. Virgin of Mercy, beginning of the ¿fteenth century, wall painting. KĘszeg (Hungary), parish church.

to these social strata. And such a “limitation” could even be intensi¿ed by a concentration on the protection of the members of only one family, who then represent all. The epitaph of the Lower Austrian nobleman Hans Dachspeck of Greilenstein and his wife Petronella is one example of this group (¿g. 17): under the cloak of the Virgin, there are only members of his family. It needs to be emphasised that the ritual action of seeking shelter under the cloak of the Madonna was again represented differently, mainly depending on the social positions of the patrons or donors, and the expected beholders: from all members of late medieval society to all relevant members of a family.

Conclusion What I wanted to show with these examples is that there was variability in the visual representation of ritual actions in late medieval religious space. This variability, transformation and dynamics did not detract from the generally repetitive character of the ritual and its performance. The three cases (and many other examples could be offered) were meant to demonstrate that the submitted spiritual message to be perceived and the aim to be reached was the same, but that the method of achieving that aim was realised with the help of different forms of construction and performance, mainly dependent on social differences in late medieval society. Stability and variation, repetition and mutability were not contradictions but supplemented each other and, thus, also inÀuenced the ritual visual language and the representation and sequences of ritual actions.

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

33

Fig. 17. The Virgin of Mercy offers shelter for the members of the noble Dachspeck family. Virgin of Mercy with St. John the Evangelist and St. Andrew, epitaph of Hans Dachspeck of Greilenstein and his wife, 1499, panel painting. Castle of Greilenstein (Lower Austria).

“TO SHOW THAT THE PLACE IS DIVINE”: CONSECRATION CROSSES REVISITED ANDREW SPICER The medieval parish church stood out within the landscape as often the largest and sometimes the only stone building in the community. It was de¿ned as a sacred space, but within it there were gradations of holiness that increased from the churchyard to the church and then to the chancel, where at the altar Christ became manifest in the consecrated elements at the celebration of the parish Mass. The churchyard, church and altar became sacred sites through the act of consecration, which appropriated them for religious uses and set them apart from the secular realm. While the sanctity of the building was understood by the community, it nonetheless remained intangible to them and was de¿ned in terms of access and accepted forms of behaviour that were enforced by the church and its courts. Furthermore the holiness of the building could be imperilled through an act of desecration and the spilling of blood or other bodily Àuids. In such instances, the celebration of the Mass was suspended and the interment of the dead in the churchyard ceased until the building could be reconciled.1 There was, however, one constant visual reminder of the rites that had set the church apart from the world, the series of crosses which had been anointed by the bishop during the rite of consecration. The consecration might have taken place earlier than the living memory of the congregation, but the crosses on the internal and external walls of the church symbolised this rite and the designation of the church as a holy place. This understanding of sacred space was rejected at the Reformation, which also dismissed the ritual of consecration as “superstitious and lucrative.” When a new Protestant rite emerged in the early seventeenth century, it did not include the asperging and anointing of church walls.2 Consecration crosses are, therefore, a relic of the sanctity of medieval churches. See Daniel E. Thiery, Polluting the Sacred: Violence, Faith and the “Civilizing” of Parishioners in Late Medieval England (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 41–54. 2 Walter Howard Frere, ed., Visitation Articles and Injunctions of the Period of the Reformation, vol. 2, 1536–1558 (London: Longmans, Green, 1910), 104; Andrew Spicer, “‘God Will Have a House’: De¿ning Sacred Space and Rites of Consecration in Early Seventeenth-Century England,” in De¿ning the Holy: Sacred Space in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Andrew Spicer and Sarah Hamilton (Aldershot: 1

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

35

Although there are some common features, the appearance and artistic form of consecration crosses can vary from one church to another. Some crosses are carved in stone, while others are incised into the stone or plaster; many others, perhaps the majority of surviving crosses, are painted. The crosses can differ in size; some can be particularly elaborate and decorative while others are relatively simple. Consecration crosses, therefore, not only commemorate the ritual sancti¿cation of the church, but are also a small but distinctive form of religious art. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, short notices and articles relating to the crosses found in particular churches or counties were published in local antiquarian and archaeological journals.3 These reports were generally limited to brief descriptions of the consecration crosses and their locations. However, two authors provided different perspectives on consecration crosses. In a short article published in 1885, John Henry Middleton looked at some thirty churches with consecration crosses and suggested a rough classi¿cation of the different types of crosses.4 A number of surviving consecration crosses were examined and considered in their ritual context in two articles by Edward Samuel Dewick, a London clergyman and liturgical scholar.5 The Ashgate, 2005), 207–30; Vera Isaiasz, “Early Modern Lutheran Churches: Rede¿ning the Boundaries of the Holy and the Profane,” in Lutheran Churches in Early Modern Europe, ed. Andrew Spicer (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), 17–37. 3 E.g., “Extracts from the Proceedings of the Committee,” Norfolk Archaeology 7 (1872): 352; “Mural Paintings in Sussex Churches,” Sussex Archaeological Collections 43 (1900): 220–48; E. Marshall, “Consecration Crosses in Churches,” Oxfordshire Archaeological Society Reports (1899): 25–27; G. E. Pritchett, “Early Consecration Crosses in St. Leonard’s Church, Southminster,” Transactions of the Essex Archaeological Society, n.s., 4 (1893): 284–85; T. D. Atkinson, “On Some Consecration Crosses in East Anglian Churches,” Proceedings of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society 11 / n.s., 5 (1903–6): 255–62; Atkinson, “Some Consecration Crosses,” Proceedings of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society 15 / n.s., 9 (1910–11): 143–49; A. Whitford Anderson, “Throcking Church Consecration Crosses,” Transactions of the East Hertfordshire Archaeological Society 7 (1924): 117–18; Francis C. Eeles, “Consecration Crosses on Somerset and Dorset Churches,” Proceedings of the Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society 76 (1930): 22–27. 4 John Henry Middleton, “On Consecration Crosses, with Some English Examples,” Archaeologia 48 (1885): 456–64. 5 Edward S. Dewick, “Consecration Crosses and the Ritual Connected with Them,” Archaeological Journal 65 (1908): 1–34; Dewick, “Notes on Consecration Crosses,” Transactions of the St. Paul’s Ecclesiological Society 7 (1911–15): 177–93. The latter article was delivered as a paper in 1890 and revised for publication in 1915. Although the content of the two articles overlap, some of the principles outlined in the ¿rst published article are developed further in the second piece.

36

“To Show That the Place Is Divine”

notes, photographs and rubbings of consecration crosses on which Dewick’s articles were based, together with the papers of Francis Carolus Eeles on the same subject, were deposited at the Society of Antiquaries in London during the 1960s.6 Middleton’s and Dewick’s articles formed the principal sources for later studies of consecration crosses in medieval England.7 Recent research into sacred space has concentrated more on the delineation or creation of sacred space, in particular considering the demarcation between the sacred and the profane, the religious and the secular. Further studies have considered the desecration and destruction of sacred space, particularly through the iconoclastic assaults associated with the Reformation, as well as the re-conceptualisation of the sanctity of religious buildings in the early modern period.8 This research has not examined the symbolism of consecration crosses; even within the broader ¿eld of the material culture of medieval and early modern religion, they have not been the focus of attention.9 Consecration crosses have been considered brieÀy by some architectural historians; they are noted, for example, in the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments’ inventories as church ¿ttings, but do not appear in Nikolaus Pevsner’s Buildings of England series.10 Research has been undertaken by art historians as part of the wider iconographic and schematic studies of medieval wall paintings.11 There has, therefore, not been any attempt to research consecration crosses per Society of Antiquaries, London, SAL/MS/972, 973. See, e.g., John Charles Cox, Churchwardens’ Accounts from the Fourteenth Century to the Close of the Seventeenth Century (London: Methuen, 1913), appendix; Raymond W. L. Muncey, A History of the Consecration of Churches and Churchyards (Cambridge: Heffer & Sons, 1930), ch. 7. 8 Barbara A. Hanawalt and Michal Kobialka, eds., Medieval Practices of Space (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000); Will Coster and Andrew Spicer, eds., Sacred Space in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Spicer and Hamilton, De¿ning the Holy; Lawrence Besserman, ed., Sacred and Secular in Medieval and Early Modern Cultures: New Essays (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). 9 See, e.g., Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, c. 1400–c. 1580 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992); Robert Whiting, The Reformation of the English Parish Church (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 10 See, e.g., Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (England), An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in Essex, 4 vols. (London: HMSO, 1916–23), 1:xxx, 2:xxxiv, 4:xlii. 11 Ernest W. Tristram, English Medieval Wall Painting, 2 vols. (London: Oxford University Press, 1944–50); Tristram, English Wall Painting of the Fourteenth Century, ed. Eileen Tristram (London: Routledge & Paul, 1955); Roger Rosewell, Medieval Wall Paintings in English and Welsh Churches (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2008). 6 7

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

37

se, in spite of the renewed focus on sacred space. The intention of this essay is therefore to reconsider the artistic form and signi¿cance of consecration crosses, in relation to ecclesiastical rituals and traditions. It draws upon the earlier research of Dewick and Middleton, but it is also based on extensive ¿eld work, revisiting and reassessing their examples but also identifying other consecration crosses. Although consecration crosses are found on the continent, this preliminary essay will focus solely on the surviving examples and evidence from pre-Reformation England.

I During the Middle Ages a complex ritual of consecration had developed, which included a number of particular ceremonies that were intended to purify the new church and sanctify it for religious use. The key elements included: the puri¿cation of the building through using hyssop branches to asperge both the internal and external walls with holy water, the symbolic taking possession by the bishop knocking three times on the door and entering the building, prayers and litanies for the sancti¿cation of the church, the abecedarium, or writing of the Greek and Latin alphabets, in ashes in two diagonal lines across the Àoor of the building, the consecration of the altar and the burial of relics, the anointing of the walls with chrism, and ¿nally the celebration of the Mass. There were a number of variants to this rite but, in the late thirteenth century, the service compiled by the papal administrator and liturgist Guillaume Durand, the bishop of Mende, from earlier sacramentals and ponti¿cals came to be recognised as the authoritative form of consecration.12 A revised version was published in 1485 as the Liber Ponti¿cales and, ultimately, as the Ponti¿cale Romanum it was enjoined on the whole Catholic Church by Pope Clement VIII in 1596, providing a single form of ceremonies to be used by bishops.13 Dewick’s close examination of the English ponti¿cals demonstrated that there was one signi¿cant difference from the rites that were employed on the continent. From the eleventh century onwards, the English ponti¿cals required 12 For an overview, see Didier Méhu, “Historiae et imagines de la consécration de l’église au Moyen Âge,” in Mises en scène et mémoires de la consécration de l’église dans l’Occident médiéval, ed. Didier Méhu (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), 15–28; Michel Andrieu, Le ponti¿cal romain au Moyen-Âge, vol. 1, Le ponti¿cal romain du XIIe siècle (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1938), 17–18. 13 Pierre de Puniet, The Roman Ponti¿cal: A History and Commentary, trans. Mildred B. Harcourt (London: Longmans, Green, 1932), 44–51; Thaddeus S. Ziolkowski, The Consecration and Blessing of Churches: A Historical Synopsis and Commentary (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1943), 22–24.

38

“To Show That the Place Is Divine”

the bishop not only to anoint the internal walls with chrism in twelve places, which was the usual continental practice, but also the external walls. This divergence in liturgical practice was con¿rmed in a late fourteenth- or early ¿fteenth-century ponti¿cal of London, which recorded two forms for consecrating a church, one according to the Roman use and the other in the manner of the English Church. By this date, the rites had evolved from the simple anointing of the walls to the painting of consecration crosses before this could take place. English ponti¿cals stipulated that twelve equally-spaced crosses were to be painted on the internal walls and a similar number on the external walls. These crosses were to be anointed by the bishop with chrism and then censed. The London ponti¿cal stated that these crosses were to be painted red and each was to have an iron branch for a candle. By the sixteenth century, the Roman ponti¿cal required the crosses to be painted at a height of ten palms, 7.5 feet (2.3 m), off the ground. This meant that a ladder was required for the bishop to reach the consecration cross and anoint it with holy oil; this was depicted in a woodcut that accompanied a 1520 printed edition of the ponti¿cal.14 Surviving consecration crosses indicate that liturgical practice broadly conformed to the ordinances speci¿ed in the ponti¿cals. Antiquarian accounts and surviving examples provide some insight into the form and pattern of external consecration crosses. There is evidence to suggest that these were sometimes painted on the outside walls. In the late nineteenth century, a Norfolk antiquarian noted that there were twelve patches of plaster on the external walls of the Newton St. Faith’s Church and apparently still traces of colour on similarly plastered sections at Shotesham. Middleton remarked that, at North Repps in the same county, there were patches of stucco on the walls of roughly cut Àint; there were twelve of them, each four foot (1.2 m) square, onto which consecration crosses would have been painted.15 Such simple external crosses were probably commonplace but, as at North Repps, have subsequently been lost through church restoration and rebuilding. Discs on which consecration crosses were painted remain at the east and west ends of the Holbrook church in Suffolk, inside of which there were apparently three internal crosses at the west end, but these are now covered by a noticeboard and only two others are visible.16 The surviving examples of external conDewick, “Consecration Crosses,” 5–11; Walter Howard Frere, ed., Ponti¿cal Services: Illustrated from Miniatures of the XVth and XVIth Centuries, 4 vols. (London: Longmans, Green, 1901–8), 1:49–50, 88, 4:38–39. 15 Middleton, “On Consecration Crosses,” 458; “Extracts from the Proceedings,” 352; Dewick, “Consecration Crosses,” 21n2. 16 H. Munro Cautley, Suffolk Churches and Their Treasures, 5th ed. (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1982), 196, 297. 14

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

39

secration crosses tend to be either carved or incised examples. At Uf¿ngton in Berkshire, eleven of the twelve external roundels with traces of consecration crosses remain, with three at the east and west ends of the church and the rest distributed along the north and south walls.17 There appears to have been a similar arrangement of incised consecration crosses at Yetminster in Dorset, where eleven are still evident.18 There appear to be fewer relatively complete series of internal consecration crosses. At Throcking, Hertfordshire, twelve painted internal crosses were discovered and recorded in the early twentieth century, although they were subsequently concealed. The twelve crosses were unevenly distributed along the north and south walls of the church; their height from the ground varied between 3 feet 2 inches (97 cm) and 6 feet 9 inches (2.1 m).19 The lowest consecration cross was located in the chancel and a similar distinction in height can be seen elsewhere, such as with the surviving consecration crosses at Inglesham in Wiltshire. The arrangement and height of the surviving consecration crosses in Henry VII’s chapel at Westminster Abbey accorded more closely with the rubrics. Dewick identi¿ed nine crosses, three crosses of similar size on both the south and north aisle walls and three larger crosses on the west wall; he also found possible traces of two other crosses at the east end of the two aisles. The aisle crosses were all at a height of nearly eight feet, as required by the Roman ponti¿cal.20 Only the repainted west wall crosses now remain; the much smaller aisle crosses, which would have been painted within the narrow spaces of intricate wall tracery, have been lost. Small holes above modern wall lighting in three locations in both aisles appear to be at the right height to be the remains of these smaller consecration crosses. At the Exeter Cathedral, there is an example of an un¿nished consecration cross cut into the wall of the south aisle with a completed cross above it. The lower cross was abandoned, presumably because it was not at the requisite height for a consecration cross.21 In many churches, the number of extant consecration crosses are too few to get a clear sense of whether they were equally distributed around the church interior or placed at the requisite height, but from the examples that do survive it is clear that actual practice varied markedly. The symbolism of these crosses was discussed in Durand’s commentary on his ponti¿cal, the Rationale divinorum of¿ciorum. Composed in 1286, 17 18 19 20 21

Dewick, “Consecration Crosses,” 17. Eeles, “Consecration Crosses,” 26–27. Whitford Anderson, “Throcking Church Consecration Crosses,” 117. Dewick, “Consecration Crosses,” 19–20. Ibid., 18–19.

40

“To Show That the Place Is Divine”

it became one of the most widely circulated medieval liturgical treatises. According to Durand: These crosses are painted, in the ¿rst place, to terrify the demons, so that when the demons that have been expelled from there see the sign of the cross, they will be terri¿ed and not presume to return there. In the second place, they are signs of triumph, for the crosses are battle standards of Christ and the signs of His triumph. It is right, therefore, that crosses be painted there to show that this place is subjected to the dominion of Christ. Third, so that they reÀect on the Passion of Christ, by which He Himself consecrated His Church, and that faith in the Passion will be implanted in their memory.22

This discussion of the symbolism of consecration crosses was also incorporated into another popular medieval work, the largely hagiographical Golden Legend, which asserted that there are “painted the crosses for to show that the place is divine, subject to God.” Besides the crosses themselves, lights were placed in front of them to “represent the twelve Apostles, which by their faith of god cruci¿ed, they enlumined [illuminated] all the world.”23 The crosses were also important as a tangible reminder that the church had been consecrated in the past. Discussing the circumstances in which reconsecration should take place, Durand argued that it was doubtful that a church had been previously consecrated if “there is no text or picture or sculpture treating this event.”24 The anniversary of the building’s dedication or consecration was an important feast in the parish’s liturgical year. Some of the English ponti¿cals even called upon the bishops to remind the congregation at the time of consecration to mark the date so that the anniversary could be kept as a special feast, which occasionally also came to be included in ecclesiastical calendars. In some dioceses, it was ordered that the date of the feast of dedication should be recorded in the church. The occasion was also associated with parish pardons, indulgences which were granted by local bishops to those who attended these anniversary services.25 The indulgences were publicly advertised, perhaps with The Rationale Divinorum Of¿ciorum of William Durand of Mende: A New Translation of the Prologue and Book One, trans. Timothy M. Thibodeau (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 69. 23 Jacobus de Voragine, Here begynneth the legende in latyn legenda aurea that is to saye in Englysshe the golden legende. …, 2 pts. (Westmynster: Wynkyn de Worde, [1498]), 2: fol. 37v. 24 Rationale Divinorum Of¿ciorum, 70. 25 Nicholas Orme, “Indulgences in Medieval Cornwall,” Journal of the Royal Institution of Cornwall, n.s. ii, 1, pt. 2 (1992): 150–51; Orme, English Church Dedications: 22

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

41

the date of consecration, through being painted on the church walls. At Mildenhall in Suffolk, for example, a papal rather than episcopal pardon appears to have been carved into or painted on the wall of the church.26 According to the Golden Legend, “the dedication of the church is solemnly hallowed among the other feasts of the church. And because that it is double church or temple, that is to wit, material and spiritual.”27 The liturgy for the occasion reminded the faithful that “this is the house of God; this is the gate of Heaven.”28 John Mirk’s collection of sermons included one for the feast of dedication which called upon the congregation to “come to church to worship God, having in mind the causes why the church is hallowed: one for the church cleansing, and for devout praying, and for the dead burying.”29 Dewick argued that, while on the continent candles were burnt before the consecration crosses at these feasts, he could neither ¿nd references in English liturgical works for the practice nor evidence in churchwardens’ accounts for additional expenditures for the setting up of lamps at dedication feasts, or that the cost of candles was greater than for other major feast days. While acknowledging the celebration of the feast, he concluded that “I am disposed to think that in most cases the crosses received no annual cult in England.”30 Although further research needs to be undertaken, not least a close look at a range of churchwardens’ accounts, Dewick’s assertion is questionable and has been challenged by Tristram.31 From an archaeological perspective, beneath or sometimes in the centre of surviving consecration crosses, there are holes which would have been used for a branch to hold a candle or for ¿xing a sconce. These are particularly evident below the external crosses at Edington in Wiltshire, and in the centre of some of the crosses at Barwick (Somerset) and Yetminster. In some cases, such as Ottery St. Mary, iron stumps of these With a Survey of Cornwall and Devon (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1996), 8; Robert N. Swanson, Indulgences in Late Medieval England: Passports to Paradise? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 504–5. 26 Nicholas Orme, “Indulgences in the Diocese of Exeter, 1100–1536,” Reports and Transactions of the Devonshire Association 120 (1988): 21; Judith Middleton-Stewart, ed., Records of the Churchwardens of Mildenhall: Collections (1446–1454) and Accounts (1503–1553) (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2011), xxxiii, lxvii, 85. 27 De Voragine, Golden legende, 2: fol. 34v. 28 The Sarum Missal in English, trans. Frederick E. Warren, 2 vols. (London: A. R. Mowbray, 1913), 1:414. 29 John Mirk, Mirk’s Festial: A Collection of Homilies, ed. Theodor Erbe, vol. 1 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1905), 277–78. 30 Dewick, “Notes on Consecration Crosses,” 180. 31 Tristram, English Medieval Wall Painting, 1:62.

42

“To Show That the Place Is Divine”

former lamp brackets still remain protruding beneath the crosses.32 While candles would have been lit before these crosses as part of the rite of consecration, it seems unlikely that they would not have been lit on other occasions, such as dedication festivals. In fact, at Hessett in Suffolk, one of the church’s consecration crosses is stained by scorch marks, which suggests that these lamps were used more than once.33 That they were used for dedication festivals is also suggested by the protest made to the consistory court of Wells by the churchwardens of Carhampton, Somerset, in ca. 1528. They complained that there were “no crosses on the doors of the church before which candles should be lit on the feast of the dedication.”34 This fragmentary evidence does imply that the consecration crosses were part of the annual feasts of dedication, and therefore an important reminder of the sanctity of the building.

II One of the problems in examining consecration crosses is the loss of so many examples as a consequence of the religious changes associated with the Reformation. The requirement to purge church interiors of religious imagery led to the whitewashing of wall paintings and with them consecration crosses. By the time William Dowsing came to visit and destroy any surviving religious imagery in East Anglian churches during the 1640s, most consecration crosses had probably been painted over. Amidst his destruction of cruci¿xes and external crosses, such as on the church gable, porch or tower, there are a few references in his journal to what might have been remaining consecration crosses. At Offton in Suffolk, Dowsing found “some crosses on the outside of the church, and chancel; and we gave order to deface them” and at Darmsden he found “three crosses in the chancel, on the wall.”35 Besides the ideological destruction of the Reformation, further losses occurred in the nineteenth century as a result of the restoration of medieval churches, during which plaster was stripped from church interiors, and exterior walls were refaced with new stone. It was this later destruction that in part led Dewick and others to record the surviving examples, but their notes also reveal instances where the crosses John Neale Dalton, ed., The Collegiate Church of Ottery St. Mary: Being the Ordinacio et Statuta Eecclesie Sancte Marie de Otery Exon. Diocesis, A.D. 1338, 1339 (Cambridge: University Press, 1917), 21; Dewick, “Consecration Crosses,” 23. 33 Rosewell, Medieval Wall Paintings, 152. 34 Aelred Watkin, ed., Dean Cosyn and Wells Cathedral Miscellanea ([Frome]: printed for subscribers only [by Butler & Tanner], 1941 [i.e. 1943]), 158. 35 Trevor Cooper, ed., The Journal of William Dowsing: Iconoclasm in East Anglia during the English Civil War (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2001), 100, 237, 309–10. 32

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

43

were subsequently lost due to the actions of restorers.36 Keyser noted some seventy-nine crosses in his gazetteer of medieval wall paintings, while Dewick identi¿ed 170 parish churches where they remained.37 This seems likely to be an underestimate, as Dewick’s research appears to have been largely based on published sources and examples sent to him by correspondents rather than extensive ¿eldwork. Several examples included in this paper, such as Inglesham, are not on his lists.38 Furthermore, as another antiquarian noted, “there are few subjects as to which more blunders have been made in the past than that of consecration crosses.” Confusion has also arisen over incised crosses inside doorways, which were not consecration crosses, as well as instances where a cross was used merely as a form of decoration.39 This is particularly true of the Àint used to decorate and embellish some East Anglican churches. At Blythborough, the two elaborate quatrefoil Àint crosses beneath the east window of the church were identi¿ed by Middleton as consecration crosses; in the centre is an undecorated weathered stone. The same quatrefoil design, however, is repeated on the lower parts of aisle buttresses, where they seem more likely to be decorative than an indication of past religious rites.40 The artistic form of consecration crosses varied markedly, but by the ¿fteenth century the English ponti¿cals had become more prescriptive, requiring crosses to be painted red and to be enclosed by circles. Some crosses were painted green or ochre, but these seem to have been amongst the earlier forms.41 The most common and simplest form of cross was incised into the plaster using a compass to form a cross pattée (where the arms at the centre of the cross are narrow but wide at the end), within a circle or circular border, as can be seen at Inglesham (¿g. 1) and Kenton (Suffolk) (¿g. 2). In his attempt to classify these crosses, Middleton described this form as Type A. However, as his examples illustrated, within this conventional form it was possible to vary the size and shape of the cross, such as having curved or straight arms, or developing more complicated geometric designs. A second artistic form of cross can also be 36 Middleton, “On Consecration Crosses,” 457–58; Dewick, “Consecration Crosses,” 1. See also “Mural Paintings in Sussex Churches,” 220–48. 37 Charles E. Keyser, A List of Buildings in Great Britain and Ireland Having Mural and Other Painted Decorations. …, 3d ed. (London: HMSO, 1883), 352–53; Dewick, “Consecration Crosses,” 21n1. 38 Society of Antiquaries, London, SAL/MS/972. 39 Dewick, “Consecration Crosses,” 29–33; Cox, Churchwardens’ Accounts, 350–51. See also Pritchett, “Early Consecration Crosses,” 284–85. 40 Middleton, “On Consecration Crosses,” 463, plate XXXVII ¿g. 23; Dewick, “Notes on Consecration Crosses,” 188. 41 Tristram, English Wall Painting of the Fourteenth Century, 29; “Mural paintings in Sussex Churches,” 231, 242.

44

“To Show That the Place Is Divine”

Fig. 1. Consecration cross at the church of Inglesham, Wiltshire. Photo by the author.

Fig. 2. Consecration cross at the church of Kenton, Suffolk. Photo by the author.

identi¿ed. Again formed within a circle, this type of cross was simpler and the arms were all the same thickness. The two surviving consecration crosses at St. Mary’s Church, Ashby near HerringÀeet, Suffolk (¿g. 3), for example, are very thin, but each arm ends in a trefoil. A further variation can be found at IfÀey, Oxfordshire, where the painted straight arms of the cross extend beyond the roundel. As these few examples illustrate, within the ritual requirements of the ponti¿cal, the appearance of consecration crosses could be subtly or signi¿cantly different. Besides the crosses themselves, the roundels could be further embellished with decorative garlands. At Carleton Rode in Norfolk, this took the form of a stylised chain or interwoven circles, but they could be much more elaborate. At Westhall, Suffolk (¿g. 4), there is a simple cross with crude trefoil termini, which is surrounded by an ochre circle from which shoot off sprigs with leaves and Àowers in the same colour. Even more impressive Àoral garlands can be seen surrounding a number of the extant consecration crosses at Bale, Norfolk (¿g. 5). The elaborate swirls of these garlands mean that some of these consecration crosses are four feet wide. The elaborate, decorative forms of these crosses make them appear more important and prominent than the simple roundels painted on the church walls. These more elaborate forms would seem to challenge Dewick’s argument that consecration crosses were often neglected in England or covered by medieval wall paintings. Although he did not change his opinion, he later admitted that a payment of three pence made by the churchwardens of St. Michael’s Church, Bath for seven new crosses may have been to replace those

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

Fig. 3. Consecration cross at St. Mary’s Church, Ashby near HerringÀeet, Suffolk. Photo: Evelyn Simak.

45

Fig. 4. Consecration cross at the church of Westhall, Suffolk. Photo by the author.

Fig. 5. Consecration cross at the church of Bale, Norfolk. Photo by the author. obliterated when the church was whitewashed.42 Further research needs to be undertaken into the relationship between wall paintings and consecration crosses. At Thornham Parva, Suffolk, the crosses appear beneath the depiction of the martyrdom and miracles of St. Edmund, and at Inglesham the consecration cross at the east end appears against a background of painted drapery. In other instances, the cross appears amidst or even superimposed on the wall Dewick, “Consecration Crosses,” 14; Dewick, “Notes on Consecration Crosses,” 180–81; Charles B. Pearson, ed., “The Churchwardens’ Accounts of the Church and Parish of St. Michael without the North Gate, Bath, 1349–1575,” Proceedings of the Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society 23–26 (1877–80): 82. 42

46

“To Show That the Place Is Divine”

Fig. 6. Consecration cross at the church of Yetminster, Dorset. Photo by the author.

Fig. 7. Consecration cross at the church of Nether Compton, Dorset. Photo by the author.

paintings rather than being covered over by new decorative schemes. This would suggest that consecration crosses could be a part of the broader visual programme of the church interior. Furthermore, the signi¿cance of some crosses appears to have been enhanced by painted inscriptions emphasising the sanctity of the church. The popularity of such inscriptions increased during the fourteenth century.43 In Norwich, two crosses which were recorded on the east wall of the chancel of St. Saviour’s Church bore the words “et porta celi [sic]” and “et aula vocabitur dei” ([This is] the gate of heaven; and it shall be called the court of God), words which came from the of¿ces for the consecration of the church, as well as for the anniversary of its dedication.44 Crosses in other churches in the city similarly once bore religious inscriptions asserting the sanctity of the building. At St. John de Sepulchre, one bore the legend “Adorabo sanctum tuum dominie” (I will worship in thy holy temple, O Lord), while at St. Peter Mancroft painted scrolls above the crosses stated “Domum tuam domine decet sanctitudo” (Holiness becometh thy house, O Lord) and “Beati qui habitant in domo tua domine” (Blessed are they that dwell in thy house, O Lord).45 Outside the city, there are traces of black letter inscriptions associated with the crosses at Worstead.46 Further a¿eld in Devon, in the crosses Àanking the west door of the church of Ottery St. Mary, each has a dressed stone beneath the crosses 43 44 45 46

Tristram, English Wall Painting of the Fourteenth Century, 29. Sarum Missal, 1:414; “Extracts from the Proceedings,” 352. “Extracts from the Proceedings,” 352. Rosewell, Medieval Wall Paintings, 150–52.

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

Fig. 8. Consecration cross at the church of Chedzoy, Somerset. Photo by the author.

47

Fig. 9. Consecration cross at the church of Moorlinch, Somerset. Photo by the author.

of equal width, which may have also been intended to bear an inscription or perhaps a record of the consecration.47 Besides the painted crosses, another artistic type were those carved in stone or incised into the existing church wall. At Yetminster (¿g. 6), there are ten external crosses which are carved into the walls, in some instances across several courses of masonry. An eleventh cross at the apex of the west door is much smaller but stylistically similar to the other crosses, so it may well be an eleventh consecration cross rather than a decorative detail. Stylistically, there is a clear resemblance to the carved crosses at nearby Nether Compton (¿g. 7). There are a further ¿ve churches in this area of West Dorset where there are similarly carved external and internal consecration crosses.48 Eeles identi¿ed a series of carved consecration crosses at several Somerset churches, which are stylistically different from the Dorset crosses.49 At Chedzoy (¿g. 8), the medieval consecration crosses are carved in relief within a roundel; the centres and ends of the arms are decorated with roses. Those at Moorlinch (¿g. 9) resemble painted crosses with slender arms ending in trefoils, but whether these are medieval is questionable. The external stonework of the chancel appears to have been refaced, possibly at the same time as the restoration of the interior, and the surviving consecration crosses might be of a similar date, Dalton, Collegiate Church of Ottery St. Mary, 21. Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (England), An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in Dorset, vol. 1, West (London: HMSO, 1952), xli, 28, 101, 124, 134, 168, 250, 271. 49 Eeles, “Consecration Crosses,” 25; Dewick, “Notes on Consecration Crosses,” plate 3. 47 48

48

“To Show That the Place Is Divine”

Fig. 10. Consecration cross at the church of Cannington, Somerset. Photo by the author.

Fig. 11. Consecration cross at the church of Ottery St. Mary, Devon. Photo by the author.

perhaps replacing medieval stones.50 The seventeen carved chunky crosses at Cannington (¿g. 10), with bold trefoils at the end of each arm but not within a roundel or circle, are particularly puzzling. These are carved square stones inserted into the red sandstone walls and, while some of them are placed where one might expect to ¿nd consecration crosses (such as three at the east end), their number far exceeds the required twelve. Furthermore, some of these carvings are relatively crisp and do not seem to have been subject to more than ¿ve centuries of weathering. They may have been inserted during the nineteenth-century restoration of the church, perhaps replacing earlier crosses, their number being increased to ornament the external walls. Although the form of a carved cross in a roundel is the predominant type of consecration cross, there are two examples where the design is much more elaborate. At Ottery St. Mary (¿g. 11), which was rebuilt by Bishop Grandisson of Exeter in 1337, roundels are carved into square stone panels. The interior of the roundel is carved as a quatrefoil in which there is a half-length ¿gure of an angel bearing a cross. Although some are badly eroded and others have been restored, there are now thirteen such crosses on the exterior of the church and a further six inside, although heavily restored in the nineteenth century by William Butter¿eld.51 At St. George’s Chapel, Windsor (¿g. 12), there is a similarly elaborate form, which incorporates a crown and the rose-en-soleil A History of the County of Somerset, vol. 8, The Poldens and the Levels, ed. Robert W. Dunning (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2004), 133. 51 Dalton, Collegiate Church of Ottery St. Mary, 21–22; Dewick, “Notes on Consecration Crosses,” 186. 50

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

49

Fig. 12. Consecration cross at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, Berkshire. Photo by the author.

badge of Edward IV. The cross, now eroded from this example, was originally at the centre of the design, but it is overshadowed by royal iconography. There are no holes or spikes below the crosses which could have held brackets for candles and, as there are only eight extant, it is possible that the scheme may be incomplete and that the chapel was not consecrated.52 Dewick has questioned whether these were actually consecration crosses, perhaps merely intended to be decorative.53 A later evaluation concluded that due to variations in their height, and the lack of evidence of spikes, and also because their iconography was very different from other consecration crosses, that these were in fact royal badges or emblems.54 There is no doubt that the crosses at Ottery St. Mary are consecration crosses, even though they are markedly different from the norm. The diversity of English consecration crosses and also the distribution of those at St. George’s make it more credible that they are consecration cros52 William H. St. John Hope, Windsor Castle: An Architectural History, 2 vols. (London: Country Life, 1913), 2:408; Maurice F. Bond, “The Cruci¿x Badges of St. George’s Chapel,” Annual Report of the Friends of St. George’s (1954): 8–9. 53 Dewick, “Notes on Consecration Crosses,” 187. 54 Bond, “Cruci¿x Badges,” 11–12.

50

“To Show That the Place Is Divine”

Fig. 13. Consecration cross at Salisbury Cathedral, Wiltshire. Photo by the author.

Fig. 14. Consecration cross at the priory church of Edington, Wiltshire. Photo by the author.

ses rather than badges. This particular case reÀects the dif¿culties that arise in identifying original designs for a consecration cross. Nonetheless, as the examples of St. George’s Chapel and Ottery St. Mary demonstrate, it was not necessary for the simple painted form of the cross to be used in what were high status building projects. From as early as the thirteenth century, there was a move away from incised and painted crosses to a further elaborate form. These were inlaid brass crosses, a technique which was also sometimes employed for the smaller marks of consecration on altars.55 At the Salisbury Cathedral (¿g. 13), the remains of nine external crosses can be seen, although the brass appears to have disappeared by the seventeenth century. These take the form of a carved stone disc, each of which has an indentation for a Àoriated brass cross; fragments of lead remain in the holes of the dowels that would have held them in place. These discs must have been inserted at the time of the construction, as the brass crosses could only have been attached when the stones were in a horizontal position. This has led to the conclusion that the crosses were in place for the consecration of the cathedral on 28 April 1220.56 This form of consecration cross was repeated at other churches in the diocese. At Uf¿ngton, there are eleven external crosses dating from the mid-thirteenth century with similar circular discs and holes for 55 Tim Tatton-Brown, “The Salisbury Cathedral Consecration Crosses,” Transactions of the Monumental Brass Society 16 (1998): 116. 56 W. J. Blair, “The Consecration-Cross Indents of Salisbury Cathedral,” Transactions of the Monumental Brass Society 12 (1975): 16–20; Tatton-Brown, “Salisbury Cathedral Consecration Crosses,” 113–16.

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

51

attaching crosses. The priory church of Edington (¿g. 14) was consecrated in 1361 by Robert Wyville, the bishop of Salisbury; the consecration crosses are a variation of the Salisbury indents. Instead of a roundel, the indents indicate that not only the cross but also the surrounding circle were of brass. The internal crosses took a similar form, but before the nineteenth-century restoration of the church it was noted that “the four quarters formed by the cross being painted blue and red alternately.”57 Most of the internal crosses have been restored; the brass insets serve as late nineteenth- and twentieth-century memorials, with brackets holding lights beneath them. According to the Churches Conservation Trust, the small twelfth-century church at Upper Eldon in Hampshire boasts nine consecration crosses.58 These also bear markings that demonstrate that there were originally metal crosses attached to them, and there are also traces of paint. However, not all of the crosses appear to be in situ (one appears inside a “squint” at the west end, for example) but, as the building was derelict by the early eighteenth century and also served as a cowshed, some alterations during restoration are perhaps not surprising.

III New approaches towards understanding church interiors and devotional practices also offer the potential for a better understanding of how these crosses were regarded by members of the congregation. Although they could be decorative in form, consecration crosses were reminders of the ritual that in the past transferred the building into the church’s possession and sancti¿ed it as a place of worship, through the bishop’s anointing the church walls with holy oil. Recent research by archaeologists into the decoration and appearance of medieval churches suggests ways in which we might be able to gain greater insight into how these crosses were regarded by church-goers. In particular, drawing upon medieval understandings of sight and vision, Kate Giles has called for a reconsideration of the role of wall paintings in the devotional life of the parish church. Medieval treatises considered seeing as being akin to touching and that the object of attention radiated a light back to the viewer. Furthermore, “visual mnemonics” was seen as an important aspect of the art of memory in the late medieval period. Wall paintings were therefore more than ecclesiastical decoration; their role in late medieval devotional practice 57 Tatton-Brown, “Salisbury Cathedral Consecration Crosses,” 116; J. E. Jackson, “Edingdon Monastery,” The Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine 20 (1882): 295, 301. 58 John E. Vigar, Church of St. John the Baptist, Upper Eldon, Hampshire (London: Churches Conservation Trust, 2006).

52

“To Show That the Place Is Divine”

needs to be reassessed in relation to the period’s understanding of sight and vision.59 This approach was taken further by Pamela Graves, who argued that “the concept of sensory environment should be particularly useful when it comes to analysing in a more anthropological sense, the relationship between the physical form and decoration of churches and the religious practices that took place within them.”60 Although often painted on church walls, consecration crosses were distinct from the visual imagery of wall paintings, but this new approach might also provide a better understanding of their location and how they were perceived. This essay has provided an overview of the current state of research on consecration crosses and a reappraisal of the work of some earlier studies, but it has also revealed a number of new avenues for research. Even within the narrow limits de¿ned by the ponti¿cal, there was clearly a range of different artistic styles employed for consecration crosses. Further systematic recording of them and their appearance would help to develop a fuller sense of their artistic variation and the evidence with which to challenge some of the more questionable identi¿cations of consecration crosses. Although fraught with dif¿culties, this might also help in establishing a chronology for their developing artistic style. Undoubtedly these crosses were an important element in the rite of consecration, but their subsequent ritual signi¿cance in the devotional life of the parish needs to be explored further. Evidence is needed to challenge Dewick’s assertion that crosses did not have a role in annual dedication services; the close examination of churchwardens’ accounts might provide further insight on this matter. In spite of these limitations, it is clear that consecration crosses were an important artistic reminder of an earlier religious ritual. Furthermore, they visually de¿ned and demarcated the church as a sacred place. As a shaft of sunlight caught the brass indents of the consecration cross, or perhaps a candle Àickered beneath another form, the church’s sanctity and the holiness of the building literally shone out in the surrounding landscape.

59 Kate Giles, “Seeing and Believing: Visuality and Space in Pre-Modern England,” World Archaeology 39 (2007): 105–21. 60 C. Pamela Graves, “Sensing and Believing: Exploring Worlds of Difference in Pre-Modern England; A Contribution to the Debate Opened by Kate Giles,” World Archaeology 39 (2007): 524.

THE ROSARY AND THE WOUNDS OF CHRIST: DEVOTIONAL IMAGES IN RELATION TO LATE MEDIEVAL LITURGY AND PIETY STINA FALLBERG SUNDMARK The rosary and the wounds of Christ were relatively common motifs in the late medieval world of images, and appear in many different settings and techniques. Both belong to the category of motifs which one does not perhaps always pay the greatest attention to, as they are sometimes parts of a larger visual, liturgical and theological context. Here, I will focus on Swedish late medieval images and objects where these two motifs are combined. The ¿rst main issue is to clarify how the rosary and the wounds of Christ are related to each other in medieval iconography. The second issue is what role that combination played in Eucharistic liturgy and devotion. A related question is how the motif and related liturgy can be explained theologically. To answer those questions, I will investigate the motif in images and objects of different techniques and relate them to texts preserved from medieval Sweden. The overarching theme of this publication is art and ritual. In research from the greater part of the twentieth century and earlier in particular liturgy, ecclesiastical ritual was understood to be the content of such liturgical books as manuals and missals. Since the instructions in that kind of material were intended for those who led the service, ritual came to be understood in relation to priests. More recent research, though, has tended to focus more on the liturgical situation as something that had many different agents, both ordained and lay.1 Therefore ritual has to be understood as more than the liturgical acts performed by the priest. The de¿nition of liturgy must be broader and also include acts performed by the laity, during the Mass for instance. In ecclesiastical ritual, one also has to include the laity’s more private worship and meditation outside the Mass.

See, e.g., Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400–1580 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992); Derek A. Rivard, Blessing the World: Ritual and Lay Piety in Medieval Religion (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009). 1

54

The Rosary and the Wounds of Christ

The rosary as an instrument for prayer The Virgin Mary, the mother of God, was very popular during the late Middle Ages. This was expressed in different ways, through texts in, for example, prayer books, as well as through images and objects used in different techniques.2 The Virgin Mary was considered to be the foremost intercessor among the saints, and people willingly addressed her. As intercessors, the saints were links between God and man. It is important to point out that people did not worship the Virgin Mary and the other saints—only God could be the object of worship—but people would venerate them and appeal to them for intercession.3 This might be compared to how people could ask a relative or a close friend to pray for them. The saints were therefore considered to be friends whose central function was to assist others. The most central Marian prayer was the Hail Mary. The ¿rst part, “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus,” consisted of the archangel Gabriel’s greeting to Mary in Luke 1:28 and of her relative Elisabeth’s exclamation to her in Luke 1:42. The phrase “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death” was formally included during the sixteenth century.4 The Hail Mary, along with the Pater Noster and the Creed, belonged to the corpus of knowledge of every Christian during the Middle Ages. It was the responsibility of godparents and parents to teach children these articles of faith.5 They constituted a central part of the collective bank of knowledge in medieval Christian society and were, in many ways, the lowest common 2 See, e.g., Miri Rubin, Mother of God: A History of the Virgin Mary (London: Allen Lane, 2009). 3 See, e.g., the explication in Homo conditus by Magister Mathias, Magistri Mathiae canonici Lincopensis opus sub nomine Homo conditus vulgatum, ed. Anders Piltz (Stockholm: Svenska fornskriftsällskapet, 1984), 141–42. See also, e.g., Thomas B. Scannell, “Intercession (Mediation),” in The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 8 (New York: Appleton, 1910), col. 70–72. 4 Anne Winston-Allen, Stories of the Rose: The Making of the Rosary in the Middle Ages (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997), 2. 5 For an overview of the education and learning of the articles mentioned, not least in a Swedish context, see Bengt Ingmar Kilström, Den kateketiska undervisningen i Sverige under medeltiden (Lund: Gleerup, 1958), 80–108, 163–92; from an English perspective, see Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 53–87; Robert N. Swanson, Religion and Devotion in Europe, c. 1215–c. 1515 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 62–63; Norman Tanner and Sethina Watson, “Least of the Laity: The Minimum Requirements of a Medieval Christian,” Journal of Medieval History 32 (2006): 399–403.

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

Fig. 1. Altarpiece in the Odensala church in Sweden, 1514. Photo: Lennart Karlsson.

55

56

The Rosary and the Wounds of Christ

denominator for people’s identity as Christians during this period, no matter whether you were a priest, a member of a monastic or other religious order, or a lay person, man or woman, high or low, young or old. The Pater Noster and Hail Mary were frequently used alone, or together with other prayers, in a larger context. One of those prayer contexts was the rosary, which consisted of a certain number of Hail Marys, Pater Nosters and Gloria Patris, as well as meditations over central events, so called mysteries, in the lives of Christ and his Mother, the Virgin Mary. To keep count while praying one could use prayer beads on a thread, also called a rosary. Smaller beads represented Hail Marys and larger ones Pater Nosters. This prayer form became increasingly popular during the late Middle Ages and was widely used by the laity.6 At the centre of the rosary was, in one sense, the Virgin Mary, as she, as mentioned earlier, was considered to be the foremost intercessor among all the saints.7 The great importance of the Virgin Mary, the Hail Mary and the prayers of the rosary in late medieval piety is not only con¿rmed through preserved textual sources, but also visually in a variety of ways. One of the motifs which is fairly common in medieval art is the representation of the Virgin Mary as the apocalyptic Madonna (Rev. 12:1) with the Christ child, surrounded by a rosary.8 It occurs, for instance, in the corpus of the altarpiece from 1514 from the Odensala church (¿g. 1),9 and on a choir stall from around 1500 in the Nederluleå church (¿g. 2).10 In the porch of the Holy Trinity Church in Uppsala, there is a mural painting with the apocalyptic Madonna and Child represented in full human size painted by Albertus Pictor during the latter part of the ¿fteenth century (¿g. 3).11 In all three representations, the rosary consists, not of beads, but of smaller and larger roses. 6 On the varying performance and function of the praying of the rosary in medieval piety, see Winston-Allen, Stories of the Rose. 7 See, e.g., Mathias, Homo conditus, 141–42. 8 For preserved Swedish examples, search the database “Medeltidens bildvärld” (Medieval imagery) on the website of the National Historical Museum in Stockholm, http://medeltidbild.historiska.se/medeltidbild/. 9 Today in the National Historical Museum in Stockholm, inv. no. 4510. See also Aron Andersson, Medieval Wooden Sculpture in Sweden, vol. 3 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1980), 245; Andersson and Monica Rydbeck, Medieval Wooden Sculpture in Sweden, vol. 4 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1975), 196–98. 10 See also Lennart Karlsson, “Träskulpturen,” in Signums svenska konsthistoria, vol. 4, Den gotiska konsten, ed. Jan-Erik Augustsson (Lund: Signum, 1996), 252–53. 11 On this rosary and others in mural paintings, see Anna Nilsén, Program och funktion i senmedeltida kalkmåleri: Kyrkmålningar i Mälarlandskapen och Finland 1400–1534 (Stockholm: Kungl. Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets Akademien, 1986), 384–89. On

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

Fig. 2. Choir stall in the Nederluleå church in Sweden, ca. 1500. Photo: Lennart Karlsson.

57

58

The Rosary and the Wounds of Christ

Fig. 3. Albertus Pictor, mural painting in the Holy Trinity Church in Uppsala, Sweden. Late ¿fteenth century. Photo: Jan von Bonsdorff. The purpose of these visual representations was not merely decorative; they, in fact, had a distinctive function as visual and material instruments of prayer and meditation. Let us look more closely at the composition of the rosary in the Holy Trinity Church. In looking at pictures in connection with different kinds of ritual, one should make note of what is going on outside of the central motif of the apocalyptic Madonna in the rosary. To the left and to the right there are different ¿gures kneeling before the Virgin and Child. To the right (from the viewer’s perspective) is a woman who is holding a rosary with larger yellow or golden Pater Noster beads and smaller ones for the Hail Marys (¿g. 4; perhaps also the bishop to the left is holding one). Her kneeling position and use of a rosary indicate that the woman is in a position of prayer. For those people who entered the porch and looked at these paintings during the late Middle Ages, the woman’s actions must have acted as a reminder and Albertus Pictor’s paintings in the Holy Trinity Church in Uppsala, see Herman Bengtsson, “Albertus Pictor i Uppsala,” in Uppland: Årsbok för medlemmarna i Upplands fornminnesförening och hembygdsförbund (2003): 41–46; Christina Sandquist Öberg, Albertus Pictor: Målare av sin tid, vol. 2, Samtliga bevarade motiv och språkband med kommentarer och analyser (Stockholm: Kungl. Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets Akademien, 2009), 138–49.

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

59

Fig. 4. Albertus Pictor, detail of the mural painting in the Holy Trinity Church. Photo: Jan von Bonsdorff.

request to pray kneeling and with the help of the rosary. Rosaries could be made of precious metals, stone or bone. Not everybody could however afford such an elegant rosary as the woman in the painting, and rosaries could also be made of cheaper material, such as wood or even berries and pits from, for example, cherries.12 But even those who did not possess a rosary of their own could use their ¿ngers and knuckles to keep count of the prayers.13 In addition, a carved or painted image of a rosary could in itself work as a common prayer aid for the person in front of it, as he or she could follow the beads with his or her eyes during prayer.

The wounds of Christ as objects of devotion In most visual representations of a rosary, the larger Pater Noster beads consist of plain roses.14 In the Odensala altarpiece (¿g. 1), on the choir stall in Nederluleå (¿g. 2) and on the mural painting in the Holy Trinity Church in For pictures of rosaries made of boxwood, jasper and bone from ¿fteenth- and sixteenth-century Germany, see Winston-Allen, Stories of the Rose, 114–15. For an example of a rosary made of berries from eighteenth-century Germany, see Claudia Maria Melisch, Der erste katholische Friedhof Berlins: Archäologie – Anthropologie – Geschichte (Petersberg: Imhof, 2011), 80. 13 On using the ¿ngers when praying the Pater Noster and Hail Mary, see Pil Dahlerup, Sanselig senmiddelalder: Litterære perspektiver på danske tekster 1482–1523 (Århus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 2010), 246. 14 Some Swedish examples are the mural painting in the Gökhem church, Västergötland, the altarpiece in the Husby-Långhundra church, Uppland, and the altarpiece in the Ullånger church, Ångermanland. 12

60

The Rosary and the Wounds of Christ

Uppsala (¿g. 3), the Pater Noster beads are, in contrast, shown as larger roses bearing Christ’s hands, feet and heart, each distinctly marked with a wound. The wounds of Christ—especially those on his hands, feet and side, the latter sometimes represented by his heart—played a central part in late medieval liturgy and piety. There was a special Mass dedicated to the ¿ve wounds of Christ and prayers were directed at his wounds. The wounds also appeared alone, or in a larger context of different motifs in, for instance, illuminations in manuscripts, mural paintings and wooden sculptures. Examples of these kinds of images are the triumphal cruci¿x and the Man of Sorrows.15 Visual representations of the rosary with the wounds of Christ were used in different ways as instruments of prayer and devotion. Apart from praying the whole rosary in front of such images, people could direct their prayers solely to the wounds of Christ and the wounds could then work as focal points during meditation over the passion mystery of Christ. Naturally it is not possible to tell exactly what people prayed and with what formulations, but some prayers in Old Swedish directed to the ¿ve wounds of Christ have been preserved, and can give us an indication. The prayers address the right hand, the left hand, the right foot, the left foot and the side in turn. In the prayers, the wounds of Christ serve as concrete reminders of the painful death of Christ for humanity. Common to the prayers is the praying person’s plea for forgiveness for deadly sins, protection from the assaults of the devil, and gaining eternal life and the joy of heaven.16 The objects of the prayers are thus related to central questions of salvation for the soul of the person praying. That is further emphasised by the fact that, according to the different introductions to the prayers, the one who prays to the wounds of Christ was, with a reference to Pope Gregory the Great, promised an indulgence of ¿ve thousand days, or more than ¿ve thousand years, respectively.17 The promise of such an enormous amount of indulgence indicates that the wounds, as the results of Christ’s sacri¿ce for humanity, played an important role in late medieval piety.18 Marita Lindgren-Fridell, “Kristi fem sår,” in Kulturhistoriskt lexikon för nordisk medeltid, vol. 9 (Malmö: Allhem, 1964), col. 320–23. 16 Robert Geete, ed., Svenska böner från medeltiden: Efter gamla handskrifter (Stockholm: Norstedt, 1907–9), 180–86; Jan Carlquist and Jonas Carlquist, eds., Nådig Fru Kristinas andaktsbok – möte med en bannlyst kvinnas fromhetsliv (Örebro: Libris, 1997), 107–8. 17 Geete, Svenska böner, 180; Carlquist and Carlquist, Kristinas andaktsbok, 107. 18 On the role of indulgence in the late Middle Ages in general, see Robert N. Swanson, Indulgences in Late Medieval England: Passports to Paradise? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); for examples of different ways of counting the amount of promised indulgence in relation to images of the Man of Sorrows and the Mass of St. Gregory, see, in particular, ibid., 262–63. 15

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

61

There were probably no rules concerning when and where such prayers were to be said. Presumably they could be said in a more individual situation of devotion and meditation, perhaps in front of various images. Prayer could take place whenever the church or, in the case of the painting in the Holy Trinity Church, at least the porch was open.

The rosary, the wounds of Christ and the Eucharist The rosary could also be used for individual prayer within the scope of a service such as the Mass.19 The Mass was at the very centre of medieval church life. Even in a small parish church, the Mass was celebrated every day. Only on Sundays and larger feast days were the laity obliged to participate. On ordinary weekdays, the priest celebrated Mass on his own or with the help of an assistant.20 The focus here is to look at some examples of the function and meaning of images and objects, including the rosary and the wounds of Christ, in a Eucharistic context. I will continue with the painted motifs in the porch of the Holy Trinity Church in Uppsala. Directly opposite the west wall with the painting of the rosary and the wounds, there is, on the east wall, a large niche with a depth of about 30 cm (¿g. 5). Considering that the niche contained a mural painting with a Eucharistic motif, such as the Man of Sorrows, it is probable that the porch housed a Corpus Christi altar.21 This indication of an altar in the near vicinity of the painting with the rosary and the wounds shows that the Mass was understood as being related to that motif. Winston-Allen, Stories of the Rose, 4, 29. For Swedish circumstances, see Sven Helander, “The Liturgical Pro¿le of the Parish Church in Medieval Sweden,” in The Liturgy of the Medieval Church, ed. Thomas J. Heffernan and E. Ann Matter (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2005), 150–51. For partly different, English circumstances, see Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 98–100; Swanson, Religion and Devotion, 98–102. 21 On altars in Swedish medieval porches—not the one in the Holy Trinity Church in Uppsala, though—see Ingalill Pegelow, “Kalkmåleriet i uppländska kyrkors vapenhus: En ikonogra¿sk inventering” (undergraduate thesis, Dept. of Art History, Stockholm University, 1974), 3; Nilsén, Program och funktion, 385. An inventory of the Holy Trinity Church from 1519—the only one preserved from a Swedish parish church— does not mention any altars, not even the high altar. On the probability of a Corpus Christi altar, see Olle Ferm, “‘Kalk, missale och många andra ting, som är nödvändiga i Herrens hus’: Trefaldighetskyrkans inventarier i början av 1500-talet,” in Från Östra Aros till Uppsala: En samling uppsatser kring det medeltida Uppsala, ed. Nanna Cnattingius and Torgny Nevéus (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1986), 221, 231, 246, 284n76. 19 20

62

The Rosary and the Wounds of Christ

Fig. 5. Albertus Pictor, mural painting in the Holy Trinity Church in Uppsala, Sweden. Late ¿fteenth century. Photo: Jan von Bonsdorff.

The painting with the Man of Sorrows showing his wounds—and on the ground a chalice which has probably collected blood from these wounds—is not an isolated motif in the room, but echoes the wounds in the rosary on the opposite wall. The wounded body parts in the rosary show only fragments of Christ’s body, while one sees the wounds put into context with the whole body of Christ in the painting with the Man of Sorrows. The Eucharistic meaning of the Man of Sorrows and the wounds of Christ in the rosary are fully understood in the context of the celebration of the Eucharist, as Christ’s sacri¿ce was brought to the fore whenever the Mass was celebrated on the altar. The Eucharistic relevance of a rosary with the wounds of Christ is perhaps even more obvious in an altarpiece such as the one in the Odensala church (¿g. 1). The altarpiece placed on the high altar came, in a highly visible way, into immediate contact with the Eucharistic liturgy performed there. The rosary and the wounds may possibly have functioned as focal points during the Mass, above all for the priest, who had the wounds very close before his eyes, but perhaps also for the laity, since the parts of the body are portrayed on a large scale and, therefore, are also visible from the nave. At the elevation part of

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

63

the Mass, the priest lifted the Host and the chalice so that the body and blood of Christ were seen in the middle of the rosary, and in a sense joined the body parts with Christ’s wounds into a whole body of Christ. As shown here, certain altarpieces, wooden sculptures and mural paintings could, through their functions and meanings, have close connections with the Eucharist. Among the material objects in a church, those liturgical objects—the chalice, paten, pyx, ciborium and monstrance—which came into direct contact with the body and blood of Christ under the consecration of bread and wine, were most highly related to the Eucharistic liturgy and were thus called holy (vasa sacra).22 The wounds of Christ are common on medieval patens from the later Middle Ages. One example is a paten from the fourteenth century in the BrunÀo church (¿g. 6). On the brim are four circles, with Christ’s head and hands and feet marked with wounds. On a paten from 1523 in the Folkärna church (¿g. 7), one sees, however, not only the wounds, but a whole rosary with six parts representing the larger Pater Noster beads and between them many smaller Hail Mary beads.23 The larger parts consist of depictions of Christ’s head, hands, feet and heart with the side wound. The illusion of the body parts being large beads in a rosary is emphasised by the fact that the thread of the rosary is threaded through the wounds of the hands and feet. This also highlights the focus on these wounds. In the same way as the elevated Host can be regarded as joining together the parts of Christ’s body in the Odensala altarpiece, a whole intact body of Christ appeared when a Host was placed in the middle of the paten during the Mass. The parts of Christ’s body on the brim were then put into a larger context and received a deeper meaning when the paten was used for this purpose.24 On Eucharistic vessels, see Joseph Braun, Das christliche Altargerät in seinem Sein und in seiner Entwicklung (Munich: Hueber, 1932). On examples of vessels for the consecrated Host in the paintings of Albertus Pictor in relation to late medieval liturgy and theology, see Stina Fallberg Sundmark, “Heliga kärl i Albertus Pictors värld: Några teologiska aspekter,” in Den mångsidige målaren: Vidgade perspektiv på Albertus Pictors bild- och textvärld, ed. Jan Öberg, Erika Kihlman, and Pia Melin (Stockholm: Sällskapet Runica et Mediaevalia, 2007), 137–43, 203. For the function of the ciborium and other vessels for the Host in the liturgy of the Communion of the sick, see Stina Fallberg Sundmark, Sjukbesök och dödsberedelse: Sockenbudet i svensk medeltida och reformatorisk tradition (Skellefteå: Artos, 2008), 70–72, 95–98, 172. 23 See also Ingalill Pegelow, “Kristi lekamen för dig utgiven: Om bilder på svenska medeltida patener,” in Ting och tanke: Ikonogra¿ på liturgiska föremål, ed. Ingalill Pegelow (Stockholm: Kungl. Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets Akademien, 1998), 198–99. 24 It should be mentioned here that the representations in the middle of the paten of the Scandinavian kings Olaf and Erik—who became martyrs and were venerated as 22

64

The Rosary and the Wounds of Christ

Fig. 6. Paten in the BrunÀo church in Sweden, fourteenth century. Image reproduced by permission of the AntiquarianTopographical Archives at the Swedish National Heritage Board, Stockholm.

Fig. 7. Paten in the Folkärna church, Sweden, 1523. Image reproduced by permission of the Antiquarian-Topographical Archives at the Swedish National Heritage Board, Stockholm.

saints—point to the idea that saints died as a consequence of their faith in Christ. His sacri¿ce became a model for their own martyrdom. Christ’s sacri¿ce and the saints’ merits gave the church a surplus of good deeds, which were counted as the treasure of the church (thesaurus Ecclesiae). People could have a part in this treasure through prayers to Christ or by appealing to the saints for intercession. For thesaurus Ecclesiae, see Clement VI, jubilee bull “Unigenitus Dei Filius,” 27 January 1343, in Enchiridion Symbolorum: De¿nitionum et Declarationum de Rebus Fidei et Morum, ed. Heinrich Denzinger and Adolf Schönmetzer, 33rd ed. (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1965), 301.

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

65

ReÀecting on the engraving on the brim of the paten, one might ask why there is a rosary with the wounds on a paten and who was supposed to see it. The one who came closest to the paten was, of course, the priest when he celebrated Mass. But there are also pictures which indicate that engravings like this one could be seen by the laity at Communion, such as in a German woodcut printed by Konrad Dinckmut, in Ulm in 1483 (¿g. 8). In the image, the priest is holding a paten under a layman’s cheek to prevent crumbs from the Host from falling to the Àoor. Of course the Host, and not the paten, was supposed to be the main focus for the layman at the moment of Communion. Perhaps he or she did not even catch a glimpse of the motifs of the paten. But the point here is that images on this kind of vessel were not visible solely to the priest, but could act as a reminder and request for prayer for the laity as well as priests. A person who prayed a rosary addressed the Virgin Mary, as shown here, by praying a larger number of Hail Marys. There are medieval accounts which tell us that the invocation of the Virgin Mary, the praying of the rosary and even the prayer beads themselves were looked upon as protectors from illness and sudden death. There were people who slept with a rosary around their necks or wished to hold one at the moment of death to receive help from the Virgin Mary.25 The rosary itself seems to have been seen as a representation of Mary, or even Mary personi¿ed. In that sense, one can see the rosary on the brim as a representation of the Virgin enclosing her son in the Host placed on the paten. This is further con¿rmed by the idea of the Eucharistic vessels themselves as images of the Virgin Mary. As the Virgin carried the body of the Christ child in her own body during her pregnancy, so it was considered that through the Eucharistic vessels she continued to carry Christ’s body and blood, sacramentally present in the consecrated bread and wine.26 The Swedish theologian Magister 25 On protection in different situations with the help of prayer beads, see Winston-Allen, Stories of the Rose, 27–28, 116. 26 Aron Andersson, “Medeltida nattvardssilver i Uppland,” in Upplands kyrkor: Konsthistorisk vägledning, ed. Ingeborg Wilcke-Lindqvist, vol. 4 (Uppsala: Stiftsbyrån, 1953), XV; Mereth Lindgren, “Liturgiska kärl,” in Tanke och tro: Aspekter på medeltidens tankevärld och fromhetsliv, ed. Olle Ferm and Göran Tegnér (Stockholm: Riksantikvarieämbetet, 1987), 104. For further theological interpretations of the ciborium and its relation to the Mass, with a point of departure in texts and motifs on ciboria, see Stina Fallberg Sundmark, “Dolda bilder i det heligas närhet: Motiv i svenska medeltida ciborier,” in Bilder i marginalen: Nordiska studier i medeltidens konst / Images in the Margins: Nordic Studies in Medieval Art, ed. Kersti Markus (Tallinn: Argo, 2006), 235–42; Stina Fallberg Sundmark and Alf Härdelin, “Kristus och hans heliga i Härnevi: Helgon i senmedeltida bild, teologi och fromhetsliv,” in Härnevi: Kyrkan

66

The Rosary and the Wounds of Christ

Mathias (d. ca. 1350) referred to the Virgin Mary as a tabernacle for God27 and, in a late medieval explanation of the Mass in Old Swedish, the virginal womb is compared to an immaculate sacristy.28 The Virgin Mary was thus associated with the Eucharistic vessels and thereby with Christ’s sacri¿ce, which was represented in every Mass. In the Old Swedish text Jungfru Marie psaltare from 1534 (the Swedish version of Alanus de Rupe’s Psalter of the Virgin Mary), the Virgin herself explains that she is spiritually with her son in the sacrament on the altar. She says that, in the same way as she stayed with Christ as he hung on the cross, she is with him in the sacrament with ineffable joy.29

Conclusion To conclude, the article focuses on some images and objects displaying motifs which were developed during the late Middle Ages, namely the rosary and the ¿ve wounds of Christ. The central issue has been, with a point of departure in Swedish late medieval material and scriptural sources, to investigate how the rosary and the wounds of Christ are related to each other and what role that combination played in Eucharistic liturgy and piety. Visually, they are combined in such a way that one wound is placed as representing a Pater Noster bead of the rosary. The motifs that include the rosary and the wounds of Christ could, separately or combined, work as focal points for veneration, prayer and devotion, in a situation of individual meditation within or outside of the Mass. In the liturgical setting of the church building, the rosary with the wounds of Christ naturally has strong connections with the Eucharist when the motif is found in close connection to the liturgy of the Mass. All references given here to objects and texts about the relation between the rosary and the ¿ve wounds, and between Christ, the Virgin Mary and the Eucharist point to the two central focal points in Christian theology, namely the incarnation, in which God became man through Christ, and the passion, when Christ suffered and died for humanity. The incarnation was the fundamental prerequisite for the passion and these moments played crucial parts in the divine plan for salvation.

och lokalsamhället under medeltiden, ed. Olle Ferm (Stockholm: Sällskapet Runica et Mediaevalia, 2012), 18–21. 27 Mathias, Homo conditus, 131. 28 Carlquist and Carlquist, Kristinas andaktsbok, 123. 29 Robert Geete, ed., Jungfru Marie psaltare (rosenkrans) af Alanus de Rupe: Öfversättning från latinet, efter den enda kända handskriften, från 1534 (Uppsala: Svenska fornskriftsällskapet, 1923–25), 146–47.

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

Fig. 8. Konrad Dinckmut, woodcut printed in Ulm, 1483. Reproduced from Albert Schramm, Die Drucke von Konrad Dinckmut in Ulm (Leipzig: Hiersemann, 1923).

67

IMAGE, TIME AND RITUAL: THE MOTIF OF THE LAST SUPPER IN LUTHERAN CHURCHES MARTIN WANGSGAARD JÜRGENSEN During the seventeenth century, new images were produced and iconography reinterpreted for Lutheran churches on a hitherto unknown scale. Within this Àurry of artistic endeavour, the motif of the Last Supper quickly became one, if not the most, frequent image displayed on the altarpieces of evangelical communities, apparently in close competition only with the popular depictions of the Cruci¿xion (¿g. 1). In the period of Lutheran orthodoxy, the central scene of the altarpiece or the predella on the altar would thus very often show Christ and his disciples gathered around a table, celebrating the Paschal Dinner, as recorded in the Bible narrative.1 The iconography of the Last Supper has a long history and can be traced back at least to the ¿fth century in Italy.2 In the Middle Ages, the scene is regularly found in pictorial renditions of the life of Christ or the Passion narrative. In large mural programmes, the scene is frequently present, not however placed in a key position and only rarely in direct connection with the altar. The biblical scene is also a common motif in the decoration of the refectories of monasteries, where it more poignantly serves to mirror the act of communal eating, in Christ sharing food with his disciples. Perhaps the most famous example of this is Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper in the refectory of the Dominican Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, completed in 1498. Nevertheless, despite the regularity of the motif prior to the Reformation, it was only in the Lutheran sphere that it became common to employ the Last Supper as a key scene on the altar, where it is still present in those churches where older retables have remained in use, unchallenged by changes in the taste and style of later centuries.3 In these churches, the motif serves Matt. 26:17–29; Mark 14:12–25; Luke 22:7–23; John 13:18–30; 1 Cor. 17:34. For an overview of the iconographic developments of the Last Supper motif from late antiquity to the early modern period, see Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie, vol. 1 (Rome: Herder, 1968), s.v. “Abendmahl”; Gertrud Schiller, Ikonographie der christlichen Kunst, vol. 2, Die Passion Jesu Christi (Gütersloh: Mohn, 1968), 35–51. 3 The role of the Last Supper motif on pre-Reformation altarpieces can be found discussed in Barbara G. Lane, The Altar and the Altarpiece: Sacramental Themes in Early Netherlandish Painting (New York: Harper & Row, 1984). 1 2

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

69

Fig. 1. Retable showing the Last Supper, ¿nished 1644. Undløse church, Zealand (Denmark). Photo by the author.

70

Image, Time and Ritual

as a direct visual link between the parishioners gathered in front of the altar, partaking in the Communion, and the biblical institution of the ceremony by Christ. Martin Luther himself probably spurred on the popularity or reinvention of the Last Supper image, when in his commentary on Psalm 111 from 1530 he wrote: If one ever wanted to put retables on the altars, one should have them painted with the Last Supper and these two verses . . . [surrounded by] large gilded letters. 4

Luther goes on to discuss the contents of the writing on the retable, which evidently is to be considered a necessary component if the altarpiece is to function or appear properly—that is, of course, if one wishes to have an altarpiece on the altar in the ¿rst place, as Luther points out. To Luther in 1530, the text was equal to, if not more important than, the image. This notion struck a chord and led to the development of pure text or “catechism” retables, where the visual qualities of the ornately written word are celebrated as the primal expression of altar decorations.5 Gradually, however, during the ¿rst part of the seventeenth century, the emphasis on the accompanying text diminished or disappeared completely, while the use of the Last Supper motif was retained and stayed popular into the nineteenth century. In research on Protestant art, and Lutheran altarpieces in particular, the immediate connection between the image and the Communion rite is often stressed, and advanced as the main rationalisation for the sudden popularity of the Last Supper motif. Or stated more simply, the image is explained as showing how the congregation does what Christ and his disciples are doing in the image. But the motif as such is rarely discussed further, very likely due to what might appear to be the straightforward intention: the image simply shows the why and how of the Lutheran Communion rite. Instances of this line of thinking are the otherwise insightful articles by Hermann Oertel, discussing 4 “Wer hie lust hette, tafeln auf den altar lassen zu setzen, der solte das abendmal Christi malen und diese zween vers … [surrounded by] grossen guelden buchstaben.” Martin Luther, D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe; Schriften, 61 vols. (1883–1983; repr., Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 2003–7), 31/1:415. 5 A discussion of and further references to the relation between text and image on retables in the sixteenth century can be found in Dietrich Diederichs-Gottschalk, Die protestantischen Schriftaltäre des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts in Nordwestdeutschland: Eine kirchen- und kunstgeschichtliche Untersuchung zu einer Sonderform liturgischer Ausstattung in der Epoche der Konfessionalisierung (Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner, 2005); Martin Wangsgaard Jürgensen, “The Arts and Lutheran Church Decoration: Some ReÀections on the Myth of Lutheran Images and Iconography,” in The Myth of the Reformation, ed. Peter Opitz (Zurich: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013), 356–80.

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

71

the genesis and spread of the Last Supper iconography within the Lutheran sphere.6 Joseph Leo Koerner, in his volume The Reformation of the Image, is one of the few and most recent to have broken away from this general interpretative pattern and to have attempted to analyse and insert the Last Supper motif into a broader elucidation of post-Reformation art.7 However, he too ultimately ends up following Luther’s statement from the Psalm exposition of 1530, interpreting the image as a mirror reÀecting back on the community for the sake of remembrance and con¿rmation “so that the heart ponders and even the eyes, through the reading, must praise and thank God.”8 Martin Luther’s few, scattered expositions of the role of pictures in the church and the theological status of the image have been quoted repeatedly and taken as constants in the later Lutheran attitude to images in particular but also to paraphernalia or materiality in general.9 However, while the second or third generation of evangelical theologians paid close attention to Luther’s writings, the interpretation and reception of his words gradually changed. This may not be apparent from the textual sources, but when looking at the way in which the Last Supper image was used and developed after the Reformation, clearly elements are in play which Luther does not mention. What was relevant during the ¿rst part of the sixteenth century was not necessarily a topic of relevance in the seventeenth century, and this also goes for Luther’s remarks concerning images. Subtle changes apparently took place, which can only be fully grasped if combined with a close reading of altar images and theological texts.

Hermann Oertel, “Die Abendmahlsbilder in Walkenried und Osterode/Uehrde und ihre niederländischen Vorbilder,” Braunschweigisches Jahrbuch 53 (1972): 148–58; Oertel, “Das protestantische Abendmahlsbild im niederdeutschen Raum und seine Vorbilder,” Niederdeutsche Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte 13 (1974): 223–70; Oertel, “Die protestantischen Bilderzyklen im niedersächsischen Raum und ihre Vorbilder,” Niederdeutsche Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte 17 (1978): 102–32. 7 Joseph Leo Koerner, The Reformation of the Image (London: Reaktion Books, 2004). 8 “… damit das hertz dran gedecht, ja auch die augen mit dem lesen, gott loben und dancken músten” (Luthers Werke, 31/1:415). 9 Luther’s longest and clearest exposition of his views on images are found in Martin Luther, Wider die himmlischen Propheten, von den Bildern und Sakrament, in Luthers Werke, 18:62–125. See also Luther, “Eyn brieff an die Fürsten zu Sachsen von dem auffrurischen geyst,” ibid., 15:210–21. 6

72

Image, Time and Ritual

The agenda The aim of this article is to look at the Last Supper motif in its post-Reformation contexts, referring to the discussion from the sixteenth century and into the eighteenth. This is done in order to show that when looking beyond the immediate Reformation period of the 1500s and into the reception of Luther’s writings in ensuing centuries, there is more to be said about the motif than merely con¿rming its typological quality. I hope thus to broaden the scope of a prominent type of altar images in Lutheran churches beyond their role as commemorative pictures intended to stimulate meditation and the impressions (Einbildung) of the congregation, and point to the spatial implications of these altar images. The main argument is that the perception of time and space within the Communion rite played a crucial role in the way the image of the Last Supper came to be understood.10 My proposition is that in order to understand the complex nature of the Last Supper images, which lies underneath the evident connotations between altar image and ritual, we need to approach the motif through a close reading of the theological, as well as what I de¿ne as the experiential or phenomenological, qualities invested in the Communion ceremony by those whose business it was to acquire images for churches. Over the following pages, the relation between ritual and image—the altarpiece with depictions of the Last Supper and the Lutheran Communion rite—is thus presented not from the etic approach very commonly employed in research on rituals, but from an emic angle, in order to present what the ritual ideally was believed to facilitate or realise for the participant, according to commonplace seventeenth-century theological thinking. I am, of course, aware of the lessons that Catherine Bell, in her volume Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice of 1992, and others have taught us in recent decades. The dif¿culties or even impossibility of de¿ning the experience of a speci¿c ritual as equal and shared by all the participants in it is thus by no means to be attempted here.11 Nevertheless, I will argue that we need to approach and accept the early modern theologians’ stance on the Communion rite as normative authorities if we are to understand why certain images were deemed more suitable than others. Thus, this article proposes an interpretation of what the altar image Among the most recent surveys of the Lutheran Communion ritual is Susan C. KarantNunn, The Reformation of Ritual: An Interpretation of Early Modern Germany (London: Routledge, 1997), 91–137. 11 Catherine Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), esp. pt. 1. See also the ¿rm methodological warnings of Philippe Buc, The Dangers of Ritual: Between Early Medieval Texts and Social Scienti¿c Theory (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001). 10

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

73

and Communion rite were believed to do or promote when combined. However, how these things were actually felt or experienced by participants in the Communion rites is beyond our grasp and knowledge.

Liturgy, time and images Before I move on to our main topic, a few words concerning liturgy, time and imagery prior to the Reformation are in order, to show the tradition in the light of which the Last Supper motif will be interpreted. Much of what is here stated has been elucidated in several studies and can, to a certain extent, be considered elementary, but these considerations are not without relevance to the ensuing argumentation and are thus repeated brieÀy here. By the late Middle Ages, it had become common to understand the liturgy of the Mass as a rememorative recounting of the Passion of Christ, an allegorical reading which we ¿nd expressed at its earliest fully formulated stage in the Liber of¿cialis of Amalarius of Metz, his most inÀuential treatise on the Mass and rewritten three times between 821 and 835.12 Step by step the movements and words of the priest and his helpers would, in this line of thinking, be considered mimetic actions referring to the biblical account of the ¿nal hours of Christ. The introit ceremonies, for example, were read as the entry into Jerusalem, and the Elevation of the Host, accordingly, as the Cruci¿xion. Through words and motions, the priest took on the similitude of Christ. And if we now recall that the Passion was the most common representation on church walls and on the high altar, we ¿nd a double representation taking place during the Mass. On one level, the Gospel story is retold through artistic means. On another, the Passion takes place in front of the congregation, including and surrounding them as participants and witnesses. Time and space, in other words, gradually merged, and were united during the dramatic culmination of the ritual, the Consecration and Elevation of the Host, as the words “Hoc est enim corpus meum” assured the congregation that the Saviour was present in the Àesh among them. When the priest lifted the wafer and the chalice into the air, he not only drew attention to the Eucharist but also directed the gaze of his Àock towards the great rood soaring above their heads. At this moment of sacri¿ce, the congregation was transposed to the Calvary mount, Josef Andreas Jungmann, Missarum Sollemnia: Eine genetische Erklärung der römischen Messe, vol. 2, Opfermesse, 3rd ed. (Vienna: Herder, 1952); Osborne B. Hardison, Christian Rite and Christian Drama in the Middle Ages: Essays in the Origin and Early History of Modern Drama (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1965). Concerning Amalarius of Metz speci¿cally, see Allen Cabaniss, Amalarius of Metz (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1954). 12

74

Image, Time and Ritual

all gathering at the foot of the cross. The historical space of the Bible and the present moment in the church blended; a thought perfectly illustrated in the central panel of the well-known altarpiece The Seven Sacraments by Rogier van der Weyden, produced in 1445–50. Here the Mass, Cruci¿xion and church are shown as a continuum.13 In some churches we even ¿nd sculpted angels holding chalices, Àocking around Christ, demonstrating how the blood was collected and transferred from the cruci¿ed Christ into the lifted chalice of the priest at the altar. Every single Mass would thus obviate time and place, performing the Passion anew in front of all present. But it was not only the Mass that was understood as a re-enactment of Christ’s sacri¿ce. The entire church calendar could be seen as a careful retelling of the life of Christ from birth to Resurrection, with Holy Week as the turning-point. Every feast day added to the narrative, building up the mythos towards its climactic culmination. The biblical past was always present and always re-enacted. The motions and words of the ceremonies thus became representative actions in complete synchronicity with the biblical past, like a mirror reÀecting what is in front of it. Through this, everyone in the congregation became part of salvation history. The sacri¿ce of Christ on the cross for the sake of each individual was repeated over and over again. Thus, while the grand cycle unfolded, each individual feast at the same time celebrated the memory of speci¿c events in time and place, enabling the congregation to relive and participate in them.

Liturgy, time and images after the Reformation The character of this relation between liturgy, time and images changed after the Reformation, when the sacri¿cial interpretation of the Mass was replaced by an understanding of it as a feast celebrating the once and for all sacri¿ce of Christ for mankind. But as the Real Presence in the Eucharistic elements was retained in the Lutheran Church, time and space can be understood to merge during the divine service in a manner very similar to the pre-Reformation situation described above.14 At least this is what the theologians of the seventeenth The altarpiece is kept in the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp. For a description of the retable, see Caterina Limentani Virdis and Mari Pietrogiovanna, Great Altarpieces: Gothic and Renaissance, trans. Daniel Wheeler (New York: Vendome Press, 2002), 71–82. 14 Luther’s exposition on the Eucharist and studies on Luther’s writings can be found in Martin Luther, Vom Abendmahl Christi, Bekenntnis, in Luthers Werke, 26:241–508; Werner Elert, Morphologie des Luthertums, vol. 1, Theologie und Weltanschauung des Luthertums hauptsächlich im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert (Munich: Beck, 1931), 263–79; 13

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

75

century proposed, when they again and again described the Communion as a meeting with Christ or becoming one with his Àesh, as the theologian Niels Heldvad states in 1622: “When we break the bread, is that not the community with the body of Christ? Then it is a bread which makes into one large body, just as we all are part of one bread.”15 And this is exactly the point around which the following revolves. While the hermeneutical understanding of church rites had more or less changed after the Reformation, the persistence of the notion of Real Presence in the Eucharist maintained the idea of time transcended by Christ. Indeed, Protestant theologians of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries would go to great lengths in order to show the sacramental presence, by stressing its manifestation through both word and matter. For instance, it is stated in the church ordinance of Brandenburg from 1540: And the verba consecrationis are also to be sung or spoken publicly, as it has been commonly done throughout ages in the churches. As Chrysostom says, one is not alone to behold the sacrament with the eyes; one is also to know the words.16

It is here underscored that the Real Presence was to be perceived through the eyes, as well as the ears, during the rite—that is, something which is to be taken in visually and at the same time aurally, whereby it is internalised and then ¿nally understood. While the written, preached, sung and spoken word may have precedence in Protestant theology and culture, surpassing visible Helmut Feld, Das Verständnis des Abendmahls (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1976); Albrecht Peters, Realpräsenz: Luthers Zeugnis von Christi Gegenwart im Abendmahl, 2nd ed. (Berlin: Lutherisches Verl.-Haus, 1966); Paul Althaus, Die Theologie Martin Luthers, 6th ed. (Gütersloh: Mohn, 1983), 318–38; Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, vol. 4, Reformation of Church and Dogma (1300–1700) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 158–61; Albrecht Peters, Kommentar zu Luthers Katechismen, ed. Gottfried Seebaß, vol. 4, Die Taufe, das Abendmahl (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993), 129–87. 15 “Das Brodt das wir brechen / ist das nicht die Gemeinschafft des Leibs Christi? Dann ein Brodt ists / so sind wir viel ein Leib / dieweil wir alle eines Brodts theilhafftig seyn.” Nicolaus Helduaderus, Amphitheatrum Fidei Catholicae, & Ceremoniarum Ecclesiae Jesu Christi … (Hamburg: Michael Hering, 1622), 256. 16 “Es sollen auch verba consecrationis nach der prefation offentlich gesungen oder gesprochen werden, wie denn solchs von alters in der kirchen auch ublich gewesen, wie Chrysostomus sagt, das man nicht allein dis sacrament mit augen anschauen, sondern auch die wort wissen soll.” Emil Sehlig, ed., Die Evangelischen Kirchenordnungen des XVI. Jahrhunderts, vol. 3, Die Mark Brandenburg, die Markgrafenthümer OberLausitz und Nieder-Lausitz, Schlesien (Leipzig: Reisland, 1909), 67.

76

Image, Time and Ritual

and tangible manifestations, the Eucharist was something which could be seen and which took up space in the church. Simon Gedicus describes this presence in his Von Bildern und Altarn of 1597 as: The holy revered sacrament of the Eucharist is composed of two parts, a terrestrial and a heavenly, or the visible terrestrial element and the invisible body and blood of Christ, as the old church of the true faith has always been teaching.17

These two components of the sacrament, the invisible, immaterial part and the visible, tangible part made it dif¿cult to put an end to all aspects of the direct pre-Reformation veneration of the Host. For instance the bishop of Lund in Scania, southern Sweden, could in 1631 state that, especially in rural churches, the minister and parish clerk still held a towel or piece of cloth underneath the chin of the communicants to avoid crumbs and drops falling on the Àoor.18 Other examples of such a liturgical veneration of the Eucharist might be the retention of the Elevation of the Host, or the ringing of bells just before the words of institution were spoken. In his “Deutsche Messe” of 1526, Luther wrote concerning the Elevation: “We do not want to abolish but keep the Elevation.”19 However, in 1542 this practice was abandoned in Wittenberg. And this is what happened with most of these ceremonial expressions of veneration, which in the words of the Danish theologian and composer of psalms Hans Thomissøn were to be considered “theatrical and idolatrous.”20 Thus, these customs gradually disappeared during the late sixteenth century, leaving the altarpiece as one of the main references to Christ’s actual, physical presence in the Communion rite. But how, we may then ask, was this realised and reÀected in the altar decorations? Our case is that the representations of the Last Supper on the altars of the Lutheran churches are to be understood as more than mere commemorative references to the biblical “do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19) spoken 17 “Das heilige Hochwirdige Sacrament des Nachtmals bestehet aus zweyen dingen / einem irrdischen vnd Himlischen / oder aus den sichtbaren irrdischen Elementen / vnd dem vnsichtbaren Leib vnd Blut Christi / wie die alte recht gleubige Kirche je vnd allwege dauon gelehret.” Simon Gediccvs, Von Bildern vnd Altarn Jn den Euangelischen Kirchen Augspurgischer Confession … (Magdeburg: Johan Francken, 1597), p. 3 of ch. “Von dem Heiligen Abendmahl.” 18 Holger F. Rørdam, “Forslag fra Danmarks og Norges Biskopper om Tillæg til Kirkeordinansen (1631),” Kirkehistoriske Samlinger, 3rd ser., 2 (1877–80): 97. 19 “Das auffheben wollen wir nicht abthun sondern behalten” (Luthers Werke, 19:99). 20 These words are found in Hans Thomissøn’s notes from 1568 or 1569 and pertain to the Elevation. The full quotation reads: “Mos elevandi theatricus et idolatricus, sicubi usque viget, prorsus est abrogandus.” Andreas E. Erichsen, “Optegnelser af salmedigteren Mag. Hans Thomesen,” Kirkehistoriske Samlinger, 4th ser., 1 (1889–91): 447.

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

77

Fig. 2. Text retable with depictions of Paschal Feasts on the predella, dated 1622. Nørre Dalby church, Zealand (Denmark). Photo by the author.

by Christ or, in other words, a passive reception to be given effect in a memorial rite. While this certainly was a part of it, it was only one of the functions this motif ful¿lled, or at least came to ful¿l, during the seventeenth century. But, on a much more profound level, these images served as expressions of a fundamental confessional understanding of the sacrament, and how the communicants were able to comprehend this understanding.

78

Image, Time and Ritual

The Last Supper motif in a Lutheran context First of all, it is important to point out ways in which the Lutheran Last Supper motif, from an early date, alluded to time-transcending elements. By this is meant iconographic details which somehow relate to time or the fusion of the present and the biblical past. Two examples of this may suf¿ce. The ¿rst is an altarpiece from the small rural church of Nørre Dalby on Zealand in Denmark, inscribed with the date 1620 and most likely also donated to the church in that year (¿gs. 2–3).21 On the predella, the Jewish Paschal Feast, representing the Old Testament, is juxtaposed to the Last Supper, representing the New Testament. The main part of the retable is sectioned into four panels decorated with the words of institution in Danish and Latin, written in ornate golden letters. The altarpiece, as a whole, maps out a stretch of time reaching from the Old Testament through Christ, and is extended from the altarpiece and into the congregation by means of the Communion rite taking place in front of the altar, consolidating the direct link between the biblical past and the present. It is of interest that at least the Jewish Paschal scene on the predella is in all probability based on a woodcut by Hans Hager, taken from the title page of Ulrich Zwingli’s Eyn klare underrichtung vom nachtmal Christi of 1526, which is somewhat ironic given the pronounced differences in the understanding of the Eucharist between Luther and Zwingli, the latter ¿rmly denying any form of Real Presence (¿g. 4).22 The other example is a woodcut by Hans Weigel, accompanying Ein tröstliche vermahnung zu der empfahung des Heiligen Sacraments nach Nürnbergischer Ordnung, written ca. 1560 by the proli¿c theologian and Protestant reformer Johann Brenz (¿g. 5). The woodcut shows a Lutheran Communion with men and women approaching, separately from two sides, the ministers who distribute the Eucharist. The ceremony is not taking place by the altar itself but at a table placed in front of the chancel area. Extended above the table is a gallery on which the biblical Last Supper is in progress, and thus synchronous with the ceremony proceeding in the church below. Hans Weigel’s woodcut illustrates the link which was missing from the previous example, 21 A thorough description of the altarpiece and the church itself can be found in Erik Moltke et al., Danmarks kirker: 3, Københavns amt, vol. 2 (Copenhagen: Gad, 1946), 1225–36. 22 The subtleties and political implications of these differences are unravelled in Walther Köhler, Zwingli und Luther: Ihr Streit über das Abendmahl nach seinen politischen und religiösen Beziehungen, 2 vols. (Leipzig: Heinsius, 1924; Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1953). See also Eberhard Grötzinger, Luther und Zwingli: Die Kritik an der mittelalterlichen Lehre von der Messe – als Wurzel des Abendmahlsstreites (Zurich: Benziger, 1980).

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

Fig. 3. Details from the altarpiece in Nørre Dalby: the Jewish Paschal Feast (above), the Last Supper (below). Photos by the author.

79

80

Image, Time and Ritual

Fig. 4. Woodcut from the title page of Ulrich Zwingli’s Eyn klare underrichtung vom nachtmal Christi, 1526. the altarpiece in Nørre Dalby, by directly communicating the unity between past and present which was only implied in the retable. In the woodcut, a subtle detail is of importance to this interpretation. Christ and his apostles are separated ¿rmly from the action taking place in the church below, but one of the apostles is resting on the banister of the gallery and his entire lower arm penetrates the biblical space of the image and protrudes into the sphere of the Communion taking place beneath. A hand reaching from one space and into another is a not uncommon iconographic detail of the period and occurs in a wide range of different images but, to my mind, in this particular context, this feature can be understood to entail a meaning or have connotations which were fully realised only in the seventeenth century. I shall return to more concrete examples of this element below. The overt meaning of the Last Supper scene as a mnemonic device, referring to the biblical institution of the Communion ritual, is of course always to be kept in mind. However, this was only one function ful¿lled by the image when it was placed on the altar. Once positioned in the centre of the Communion rite, it also made a major visual contribution to the ceremony as a whole. Its didactic role would thus seem to have lessened during the ritual and been superseded by the meanings and impressions aroused by the ritual as it took place. To understand this shift in the role of the image, the importance of the Real Presence in the experience of the Communion rite should be stressed. The Communion presented itself as a way in which the participants in the ceremony experienced a direct encounter with Christ: an encounter and sensing of the Eucharist which was outside the historical, biblical time of the past, but also outside the everyday time of the present. The ceremony established the basis for this encounter or shaped the framework believed to enable this encounter. One could say that the Eucharistic ritual offered a “liturgical present,” separated from any terrestrial chronology. By enactment of the ceremony, contempora-

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

81

Fig. 5. Woodcut by Hans Weigel, accompanying Ein tröstliche vermahnung zu der empfahung des Heiligen Sacraments nach Nürnbergischer Ordnung, written ca. 1560 by the proli¿c theologian and Protestant reformer Johann Brenz. neity was achieved in a timeless present or “now,” existing solely within the speci¿c moment of the rite. The mental preparation for this encounter was facilitated by the sermon, or perhaps rather the Gospel word. It was the word, preached or read, which furnished/equipped the congregation with the speci¿c mindset to appreciate the ritual and its contents. The pro me aspect of Luther’s theology can thus be taken as the basic condition for the establishing of the full understanding of the ritual.23 It was by stressing the personal relation between Christ and the individual members of the congregation that the emotional engagement in the Eucharist was kindled. The word made Christ present and the ritual act of Communion con¿rmed this presence, gave it form and made it intelligible. Luther describes this personal bond between man and Christ in Von der Freyheyt eynes Christen Menschen (1520) as: The incomparable grace of faith is this, that it unites the soul to Christ, as the wife to the husband; by which mystery, as St. Paul teaches, Christ and the soul are made one Àesh. Now if they are one Àesh, and if a true marriage, nay, by Martin Luther employs the term pro me or “for me” when explaining and underscoring that Christ was and is, for the sake of each individual Christian, bonded through faith. This thought can be found in its briefest form in Von der Freyheyt eynes Christen Menschen of 1520 (Luthers Werke, 7:20–38).

23

82

Image, Time and Ritual far the most perfect of all marriages, is accomplished between them, then it follows that all they have becomes theirs in common, as well good things as evil things; so that whatsoever Christ possesses, that the believing soul may take to itself and boast of as its own, and whatever belongs to the soul, that Christ claims as his.24

The Gospel word united the faithful with Christ and the sermon did the same; it established the context for the encounter while the ritual framed it. But what did the motif of the Last Supper represent when placed on the Lutheran altar? How are we to understand the image in a Lutheran context? Since the early Middle Ages, the church has struggled with the attempt to inÀuence or control the experience of the sacraments by way of a wide range of means and methods, which includes what we may refer to as the arts.25 This continued throughout the Reformation and the motif discussed here, the Last Supper, is a part of this age-old ambition of controlling exactly what and how the teachings of the church were to be understood. It must be the case that the image is placed on the altar to do something, to serve a function in relation to that which takes place in front of it. One could thus say that the Last Supper motif represents an aestheticising of the Communion rite and its elements, but not aestheticising for the pleasure of sheer ornament, although that certainly must be part of it. I have stated that, once positioned on the altar, the image became part of the rite, contributing to the shaping of the experience of the ritual. As I will show, an awareness of this certainly existed. Hence, it can be said that the Last Supper image represented a means to strengthen the internal experience of the communicant at the moment of the ceremony when the verbal means to guide or inÀuence individual members of the congregation/him was limited. During the ritual, the rite could not be explained, and in order to ensure a proper “Nit allein gibt der glaub ßovil, das die seel dem gottlichen wort gleych wirt aller gnaden voll, frey und selig, sondernn voreynigt auch die seele mit Christo, als eyne brawt mit yhrem breudgam. Auß wilcher ehe folget, wie S. Paulus sagt, das Christus und die seel eyn leyb werden, ßo werden auch beyder gutter fall, unfall und alle ding gemeyn, das was Christus hatt, das ist eygen der glaubigen seele, was die seele hatt, wirt eygen Christi. So hatt Christus alle guetter und seligkeit, die seyn der seelen eygen. So hatt die seel alle untugent und sund auff yhr, die werden Christi eygen” (Luthers Werke, 7:25). 25 This theme is discussed in Michal Kobialka, This Is My Body: Representational Practices in the Early Middle Ages (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999); Nils Holger Petersen, “Biblical Reception, Representational Ritual, and the Question of ‘Liturgical Drama,’” in Sapientia et Eloquentia: Meaning and Function in Liturgical Poetry, Music, Drama, and Biblical Commentary in the Middle Ages, ed. Gunilla Iversen and Nicolas Bell (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), 163–201. 24

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

83

absorption of the proceedings, visual help to enable the correct experience was employed. Through careful schooling and preparation, the communicants were mentally equipped to step into the Communion rite with a speci¿c awareness and expectation of what that rite was, what it should do and what it promised. With this knowledge, they were set free in the ritual proceedings. It was a demanding task and it required attention to enter the ritual, a moment when the individual had to understand and reÀect on his or her position in time and how this related to Christ.26 As Simon Gedicus formulates it: “So that also the pious become encouraged to test themselves more thoroughly and approach this secret with great solemnity and preparation of the heart.”27 It was with “great devotion” and a “prepared heart” that the ritual was to be approached. With the certainty taught to them, they knew within the set framework of the rite that the mundane structure of time and space was momentarily replaced, for the duration of the ritual, by the speci¿c time-space of the sacrament. With the knowledge gained by the Gospel word, what the communicant physically beheld made room for an awareness of the otherwise incomprehensible presence of Christ. The chancel of the church as a setting or space, and the altarpiece as an allusion to time, can be understood to speak into each other and connect through liturgy. The chancel offered or made a space for the encounter with time: the biblical past, the present and the end of time, the Judgement Day. And the altarpiece with the Last Supper gave form or focus to time, gave it the past, present and future body which intersected the space. What kept all this together, what it all revolved around, was the certainty that Christ was present in the space and at the moment of the ritual. The intersection of time and space in the Communion rite also offered a speci¿c, unique setting in which it became possible to partake in Communion feasts with individuals of the past, present and future: for instance with the important ¿gures of the early Reformation, as is famously shown on the altarpiece from the Cranach workshop in the Stadtkirche in Wittenberg, made around 1547, in which Luther himself and other Wittenberg notables are apparently 26 The complex dialectic between the position of the individual in time and the meeting with Christ in the different sections of salvation history is an important theme in Lutheran theology. A sense of how this reÀection came to be expressed can be seen in Luther’s very early sermon “Eyn Sermon von der Betrachtung des heyligen leydens Christi” of 1519 (Luthers Werke, 2:136–42). 27 “Dadurch denn auch die Gottesfúrchtigen werden auffgemuntert / sich selbst mit mehrerm Àeiß zu prúfen / vnd mit grosser andacht vnd Herzens vorbereitung diese geheimnússen zugebrauchen” (Gediccvs, Von Bildern vnd Altarn, p. 3 of ch. “Von dem Heiligen Abendmahl”).

84

Image, Time and Ritual

depicted.28 The same could also be understood to happen with donors or dead relatives, as in the perhaps less prominent but no less striking examples of the many “epitaph” altars.29 Here the donor, often accompanied by a spouse, is shown painted, or more conspicuously as a free-standing sculpture, kneeling in front of the altarpiece. Not only are the deceased thus shown in perpetual prayer while awaiting Judgement, they are also integrated into the Communion ritual and remain a part of the congregation. An even stronger expression of the ideas discussed here can be found among the altarpieces of the eighteenth century. On the retable, dating from the ¿rst part of the 1700s, in the parish church of Dalby in the Swedish province of Scania, the altarpiece contains an arm, sculpted in the round, extending a chalice towards the congregation.30 It is positioned somewhat awkwardly at the top of the retable, but the idea is unmistakable. It displays the coalescing of time and space in the Communion rite. This can be found illustrated even more clearly on an altarpiece from the second half of the 1700s in the Hästveda parish church, also in Scania (¿gs. 6–7). Here Christ is rendered in bas-relief and, as in the altarpiece from Dalby, his hand in full three-dimensional form holds out a chalice from the retable towards the congregation.31 The hand breaks out of the aetiological biblical past and offers the Eucharistic elements to the parishioners in the present. Christ and his disciples can here be understood to form a half-circle around the table, facing the minister and communicants. The circle would consequently be completed by the altar and the parishioners gathering in front of it, and in the case of the seventeenth-century retables at Dalby and Hästveda kneeling on a hassock. Christ, the disciples and congregation come to constitute a complete, unbroken circle, established across time. The parishioners assemble in the present, together with the historical Christ of the past on the opposite side of the altar. Together they frame or encircle the timeless liturgical “now,” existing in the rite and revolving around the distribution of bread and wine. The combination of ritual and image in this way becomes a means to address and add yet another aspect to Luther’s juxtaposition of the revealed See the thorough investigations of this altarpiece in Koerner, Reformation of the Image; and Bonnie Noble, Lucas Cranach the Elder: Art and Devotion of the German Reformation (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2009). 29 A seminal introduction to this particular type of inventory can be found in Kurt Pilz, “Epitaphaltar,” in Reallexikon zur deutschen Kunstgeschichte, vol. 5 (Stuttgart: Druckenmüller, 1967), col. 921–22. 30 Concerning the church, see Siegrun Fernlund, Kyrkor i Skåne: En kulturhistoria (Lund: Signum, 1980), 12–21. 31 A short introduction to the church and its furnishings can be found in Fernlund, Kyrkor i Skåne, 74–75. 28

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

85

Fig. 6. Retable in the Hästveda church, Scania (Sweden), carved in 1774 by the local master Johan Ulberg. Photo by the author. God and the hidden God: Deus absconditus. A God whose true nature is only grasped through faith alone, but who is still revealed in forms contradictory to his nature, i.e. through human nature, frailty and folly,32 and of course, most importantly, summarised in Christ’s suffering for mankind on the cross. By this we also come to grips with the question of what the Last Supper motif does on the altar, how it works. The ritual as a setting for the Communion, and the allusion to time in the image, give form to everything Christ is not. He is not See Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation (1518): “Id est, humanitas, in¿rmitas, stulticia” (Luthers Werke, 1:362).

32

86

Image, Time and Ritual

Fig. 7. Detail from the Hästveda retable: Christ holding the chalice. Photo by the author. in the image and he is not in the ritual, yet he is present and he is graspable through the faith of the congregation. Thus, the matter, the physical presence of the Eucharist and the setting of the Communion ritual encircle a vacant or empty point of experiential space. They surround an in-between where the communicants are to insert their meditation and encounter with Christ. It might of course be argued, and with truth, that the reception of the Eucharist would work or do the same without the altarpiece, but we still need to acknowledge the insistence on having retables in Lutheran churches during the early modern period and, in my view, we need to follow along the lines suggested above, in order to appreciate fully the interactions between rite and image. Clearly the interpretation presented here has moved away from Luther’s strictly commemorative remarks concerning the Last Supper motif and towards a different approach, which considers images to be active when placed in a ceremonial or ritual context. This implies an understanding of images as more than adjuncts which are to be seen, understood and remembered. We must, of course, differentiate between those images and objects which are employed directly through handling, or are addressed speci¿cally during the rite, and those which, like the Lutheran retables, merely stand within the proximity of the ritual setting. While the inclusion of the Lutheran altarpiece in the ritual

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

Fig. 8. Altarpiece in the Halk church, Southern Jutland (Denmark). The retable dates from ca. 1650 and incorporates a Cruci¿xion scene from the late ¿fteenth century. The clock was added in 1815 and removed again in 1931. Photo: Kristian Hude, 1906.

87

88

Image, Time and Ritual

can be seen as indirect or irrelevant to the rite as such, I would argue that images such as the Last Supper motif come to constitute focal points which contribute to the hermeneutical universe of the ceremony. The image becomes the other end of a cognitive chain linked to ideas unfolded elsewhere in the church—the pulpit for instance. It becomes the place whence these ideas can rebound and con¿rm or reassure the participants in the ceremony that they indeed are sensing or experiencing what they should be sensing and feeling.

Concluding remarks As the motif of the Last Supper evolved during the seventeenth century within the Lutheran tradition, it became a powerful confessional demarcation, not solely because it was an image placed on the altar, but because of what it alluded to. It represents a speci¿c Lutheran sacramental understanding which is not contained or shown in the iconography of the image as such, but exists in the ritual which the image, together with the rite, spatially frames. The temporal aspect of the Last Supper motif is thus deeply embedded within Lutheran religious culture, as became manifest in the period of “orthodoxy”; it retained its connotations to time far into the eighteenth century, until the preferences in composition and artistic articulation changed track and found new means of expression. A striking ¿nal example in this context is the retable from the rural church of Halk in Southern Jutland, Denmark, where time is made manifest through the perhaps most obvious symbol of all, the clock (¿g. 8).33 The retable is a composite piece, the frame dating to 1638, with a Cruci¿xion-scene from the late ¿fteenth century inserted as the central panel. The Last Supper at the bottom of the altarpiece and the other painted images all belong to a restoration done in 1768, while the clock itself was added in 1815, and later removed and repositioned in the church porch. However, all of these details are of lesser importance in our context. What may be noted is the fact that, in Halk, the Last Supper, the Cruci¿xion and time were tangibly melted together in a form which had several practical concerns and meanings, but also very clearly addressed a theme by then old in the art of Lutheran churches.

33 See the church and retable presented in Erik Moltke and Elna Møller, Danmarks kirker: 20, Haderslev amt, vol. 2 (Copenhagen: Gad, 1955), 449–74.

MORIAN AND MERIAN. WORD AND IMAGE: A PAINTING USED IN TEACHING THE CATECHISM IN THE KEILA CHURCH (1669) AIVAR PÕLDVEE The Lutheran Church as a teacher of Estonian peasants One of the most important tasks of the Lutheran Church in the seventeenthcentury Swedish Baltic sea provinces was the furtherance of the Christian education of peasants. Long-lasting wars and the Counter-Reformation in Livonia had created a situation where the religious understandings of the people were a mixture of of¿cial doctrine, superstition and fragments of Catholicism. Church discipline was far from good and there were almost no vernacular ecclesiastical writings. The church authorities were, in essence, facing the completion of the Reformation, which started in the sixteenth century.1 In the pedagogical aspects of the Reformation, the examples of Lutheran Germany and Sweden were followed in Estonia. In the preparation of clergymen, Wittenberg and Rostock Universities were role models and, in the transformation of church organisation and uni¿cation, Swedish church management was set as an example. In Sweden, a church manual from the year 1614 established detailed regulations for conducting the church service.2 As the centre of a Lutheran service is the word, the establishment of religious instruction in Estonian was necessary. * This article was written under the auspices of research projects nos. SF0050037s10 and SF0130038s09, the Estonian Science Foundation grant no. ETF7744, and the EuroCORECODE programme’s grant “Cuius Regio” of the European Science Foundation. 1 Aleksander Loit, “Reformation und Konfessionalisierung in den ländlichen Gebieten der baltischen Lande von ca. 1500 bis zum Ende der schwedischen Herrschaft,” in Die baltischen Lande im Zeitalter der Reformation und Konfessionalisierung: Livland, Estland, Ösel, Ingermanland, Kurland und Lettgallen; Stadt, Land und Konfession 1500–1721, ed. Matthias Asche, Werner Buchholz, and Anton Schindling, 4 vols. (Münster: Aschendorff, 2009–12), 1:49–215. 2 Göran Malmstedt, Bondetro och kyrkoro: Religiös mentalitet i stormaktstidens Sverige (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2002), 29–33.

90

Morian and Merian. Word and Image

The ¿rst Estonian church manual was published in the years 1632–38, and the ¿rst Estonian language grammar in 1637. More ef¿cient control over church services in the vernacular and over catechism teaching was established in the 1640s, under the direction of Bishop Joachim Jhering, the former pastor and dean of Nyköping. In 1641 Jhering published the ¿rst Estonian language primer and compiled instructions for teaching the catechism in 1645. That catechising order included the teaching of the catechism every Sunday and at church feasts. Special attention was given to young people, to whom after the service ¿ve chapters of the catechism and other of its more important parts had to be read out in a clear voice and always in the same wording. The pastor was helped by a sexton, who had to teach the young people while the pastor was examining and conducting confession in the choir room. Once a year, the pastor and the sexton had to undertake a local visitation and, during it, also check the knowledge of Christianity in the villages.3 So the teaching of the catechism turned into a ritual that accompanied every service. All of the teaching was oral and based on reading out, after repetition and rote learning of the text. Also, the primer that included a shorter version of the catechism was designed principally for reading out, primarily in manors.4 That teaching method was time consuming and tedious, so many peasants could not properly learn even the Lord’s Prayer and, during local visitations, it often happened that the village people Àed from the pastor into the forest. It was not possible to achieve greater success with catechism teaching without the ability to read, a prerequisite of which was the establishment of schools. The network of parish schools only came into being in the 1680s, after which the ever-increasing ability to read converted the peasants into the principal target group of Estonian books.5 Another opportunity to make teaching more interesting and effective was the use of pictures, but the ¿rst illustrated catechism in Estonian appeared in print only in 1694.6 The use of pictures in teaching the catechism was at that time a relatively new phenomenon even in Germany, where one of the pioneers was the picture catechism of Sigismund Evenius 3 Catechism teaching proposal of the bishop and consistory of Estonia, 27 June 1645, Swedish National Archives, Livonica II: 641. 4 Aivar Põldvee, “Esimene eestikeelne aabits,” Keel ja Kirjandus, no. 8/9 (2011): 588–99. 5 Aivar Põldvee, “Peasant schools in Estland and Livland during the last quarter of the 17th century,” in Common Roots of the Latvian and Estonian Literary Languages, ed. Kristiina Ross and PƝteris Vanags (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2008), 61–99. 6 Martin Luther, Önsa Lutri Katekismus, Ehk Laste öppetus (Riga: Johann Georg Wilcken, 1694).

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

91

(Jena, 1636).7 Binding together the picture and the word in the teaching of the Estonian peasants remained very rare until the end of the seventeenth century. Krista Kodres has treated that question based on the pictorial and textual programme of the pulpit of the Karja church on the island of Saaremaa.8 The only documented case is known from the Keila (Ger. Kegel) church in northern Estonia, but so far it has only been treated from the aspect of words.9 In this article, the same case is investigated from the perspective of visual culture studies.

Panel painting at Keila church and its iconographic context Art historians have not paid much attention so far to the panel painting at the Keila church that is of interest in this article. From this lack of attention, it can be concluded that it is not a distinguished piece of art, although it is of a considerable size: approx. 151 x 198.5 cm (¿g. 1). The painting has been regarded as of such little value that in 1889 it was put away in a chest, where it stayed for more than two decades. In 1921 the painting was found under a pile of rubbish in a chapel of a churchyard by the pastor Ado Köögardal. In 1926 the lady of the Kumna manor, Baroness von Meyendorff, cleaned up the painting, which was in bad condition, and in 1979 it was restored by Erik Põld at the Art Museum of Estonia. In 1996 the painting was recognised as a piece of cultural heritage, and in the National Registry of Cultural Monuments it is listed as the oil painting Jacob’s Dream, under the number 3593. An explanation is added: “Taken under heritage protection as a unique religious pictorial composition of high cultural interest, of an artistic realisation style that characterises its time period of the seventeenth-century Baroque era.”10 Bettina Bannasch, Zwischen Jakobsleiter und Eselsbrücke: Das “bildende Bild” im Emblem- und Kinderbilderbuch des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts (Göttingen: V&R unipress, 2007), 272–73, 282. 8 Krista Kodres, “Kirchliche Kunst in den von Esten bewohnten Gebieten im Zeitalter der Reformation und Konfessionalisierung,” in Asche, Buchholz, and Schindling, Die baltischen Lande, 2:41–59; Kodres, “Ich wil mit deinem Munde sein, vnd dich Lernen was du sagen sollest: Pilditähenduse loomine luterlikus kirikus,” in Lugemise kunst / The Art of Reading, ed. Piret Lotman (Tallinn: Eesti Rahvusraamatukogu, 2011), 37–59. 9 Aivar Põldvee, “Paar rännakut eesti kirjandusloo koiduhämaruses,” pts. 1 and 2, Keel ja Kirjandus, no. 9 (1989): 552–57; no. 10 (1989): 604–11; Kai Tafenau, “Ex Ignorantia Linguae Ridiculus Sensus: Eestikeelsete tekstide kriitikast 17. sajandi lõpul,” in Lotman, The Art of Reading, 123–50. 10 “Mälestised: 3593, maal ‘Jakobi unenägu,’ 1669 (õli, lõuend),” Kultuurimälestiste riikliku registri andmebaas (online database of the National Registry of Cultural 7

92

Morian and Merian. Word and Image

Fig. 1. Unknown author, oil painting in the church of Keila, northern Estonia, 1669. Photo by the author. The original location of the picture is unknown but it may have been the same place as now: on the northern wall of the choir room, between the pulpit and the altar. In the seventeenth century, this painting was an important visual element in the church, and conveyed coded messages to the congregation. As a historian, I will attempt to expose the context of the painting and analyse the people and events related to it, because only words—the texts found on the painting and in the historical records—help us to reconstruct its actual multilayered content and iconography. The sources of the article are the minutes of the Estonian Consistory, acts and correspondence, the publications of the seventeenth century and obviously the painting in question. The panel was painted in 1669. The author is unknown and probably will remain a mystery. Possible candidates should be searched for amongst the painters who were active in Tallinn (Ger. Reval) at that time. Information about Monuments), accessed 1 May 2012, http://register.muinas.ee/?menuID=monument& action=view&id=3593.

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

93

them is offered in Pia Ehasalu’s monograph on painting in Tallinn in the Swedish era.11 In the painting, two biblical scenes from Jacob’s life are represented. The writing below in the right corner of the painting says: Ebr: 13. Gedenket an eure Lehrer! Der weyland wollehrwürdiger Herr M. EBERHARduS MORIAN ist Ao 1658 d. 8 APRIL in CHRISTO Selig entschlaffen. nach dem Er hi zu S. MICHAELIS oder Kegel. 9. Jahr PASTOR gewesen (Heb. 13[:7]. Remember your former leaders. Former venerable Mr. M[agister] Eberhardus Morian fell asleep in year 1658 on the 8th of April blissfully in Christ when he had been a pastor here at St. Michael’s or Keila [church] for nine years.)

It has been assumed that Jacob, who is depicted lying down in the corner of the painting above the text, represents Eberhard Morian himself.12 This allows us to treat the painting as an epitaph, but it is not as unequivocal as that. The motif of Jacob’s dream (Jacob’s Ladder, Gen. 28:10–19) is derived from the biblical illustrations (Icones Biblicae, 1625–27) of Matthäus Merian (1593–1650).13 From “Merian’s Bible” has also been copied the second motif of the painting: Jacob’s wrestling with the angel (Gen. 32:23–33) beside the Jabbok River, depicted in the left corner of the painting (see ¿gs. 2–3). Merian’s engravings were widely used in Europe as examples for paintings. In Tallinn these kinds of pictures, painted in 1660, are in the Town Hall, and in the lofts of the Church of the Holy Spirit;14 they were also in St. Nicholas’ Church (not preserved). Amongst the pictures in St. Nicholas’ Church were both scenes of our interest that depicted Jacob and, according to descriptions, were painted by using Merian’s engravings.15 Those series of pictures also played the part of the “Poor Man’s Bible” in the church. But, in the Keila Pia Ehasalu, Rootsiaegne maalikunst Tallinnas (1561–1710): Produktsioon ja retseptsioon / Painting in Tallinn during the Swedish Period (1561–1710): Production and Reception (Tallinn: Eesti Kunstiakadeemia, 2007), 321–34. 12 Ado Köögardal, Keila kihelkonnaloost (Tallinn: Tallinna Eesti Kirjastus-Ühisus, 1924), 25–26. 13 Matthäus Merian, Icones Biblicae: Praecipuas Sacrae Scripturae Historias eleganter & graphice repraesentantes … / Biblische Figuren: Darinnen die Fürnembsten Historien in Heiliger unnd Göttlicher Schrifft begriffen … an Tag geben und verlegt Durch Matthaeum Merian von Basel … (Frankfurt am Main, 1625–27), 55, 59; Matthaeus Merian (the Elder), Great Scenes from the Bible: 230 Magni¿cent 17th-Century Engravings (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2002). 14 Ehasalu, Painting in Tallinn, 88–105, 144–45. 15 Eugen von Nottbeck and Wilhelm Neumann, Geschichte und Kunstdenkmäler der Stadt Reval: Zweiter Band, Die Kunstdenkmäler der Stadt (Reval: Franz Kluge, 1904), 77–79. 11

94

Morian and Merian. Word and Image

painting these two scenes in particular were bound together into a uni¿ed composition. In addition, in the Keila painting there are some details that Merian’s engravings lack: hell in contrast to angels on the ladder to heaven, storks on both margins of the picture and texts that bind the biblical images with the local people, events and landscape. The artist also painted decorative animals in the picture: deer, ducks on a river, a fox and a jumping rabbit. The latter has a particularly amusing and naïve effect, as it has a white coat despite the fact that it is summer (and taking into consideration the proportions, it is much bigger than a sheep).

Personalia and the local context The clue that helps to explain the meanings of the picture is the symbolum in the lower left corner. The symbolum (motto) was a slogan with which intellectuals of the era of humanism identi¿ed themselves, following the example of nobles.16 In the picture, there is a text under Jacob, who is wrestling with an angel: “Ohn dir AH IESU nicht!” Its letters put together make the name of Ant(h)on(ius) Heidrich, who was the next Keila pastor after Eberhard Morian. OHNDIRAHIESUNICHT ANTHONIUSHEIDRICH

In consequence, there are reasons to assume that one of Jacob’s scenes refers to Eberhard Morian and the other to Anton Heidrich. Eberhard Morian was born in Tallinn, obtained his master’s degree from the University of Rinteln and became the ¿eld preacher of the Swedish forces in Germany. In 1647 he married Hedwig Sidonia Wagner in Lemgo, Westphalia. Hedwig was born in 1628 in Leipzig, a member of a respected and educated family. Her father was a bookseller and the bibliothecarian of the University of Rinteln. In 1649 Morian was named the pastor of Keila and moved to Estonia with his wife and young daughter. In Keila, two more daughters and his son Christian Eberhard Morian (1658–1736) were born. His son later became a professor of poetry and the rector of the Tallinn Gymnasium. In the funeral sermon of Hedwig Sidonia Wagner (1686), it is written that Eberhard Morian died in 1658. His death was tragic. There was a ¿re in the parsonage and the pastor was burned so badly while trying to save the lives of others that he died sixteen 16 For further information, see Kristi Viiding, “Haritlaste tunnuslaused 17. sajandi Eesti- ja Liivimaal: allikad ja kasutusviis,” in Lotman, The Art of Reading, 220–71; about Heidrich’s symbolum, see ibid., 240–42, 257–58.

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

95

Figs. 2–3. Matthäus Merian, Jacob Wrestling with the Angel and Jacob’s Ladder, 1625. Images courtesy of the online Project on the Engraved Sources of Spanish Colonial Art, http://colonialart.org/.

96

Morian and Merian. Word and Image

hours later, fully conscious according to the records.17 Examining the dates, it becomes clear that on the same day, 8 April 1658, his son Christian Eberhard was born.18 So we can imagine Morian carrying his pregnant wife out of the ¿re and giving his son the gift of life. It was undoubtedly a memorable event that was etched indelibly in the minds of the members of the congregation and offered an educative example of the behaviour of a true Christian. This is also emphasised by the Bible citation on the painting: “Gedenket an eure Lehrer!”, reÀecting the meaning: “Remember your former leaders, who spoke God’s message to you. Think back on how they lived and died, and imitate their faith” (Heb. 13:7). Anton Heidrich was a son of a Tallinn merchant who was born in 1636. Heidrich studied law at Tartu, Greifswald and Königsberg Universities, but chose to become a clergyman. On 10 May 1659 Heidrich married Morian’s widow, who was twelve years his senior. From that marriage, ¿ve children were born: two sons and three daughters. For that reason, there are storks above both Jacobs in the painting, which symbolise the children born from both marriages. On the left, on the “Heidrich side,” there is also a stork’s nest with nestlings. The picture was painted in 1669, ten years after Anton Heidrich’s wedding. In 1674 Heidrich became the assessor of the Estonian Consistory and the dean of Lääne-Harju, and became one of the most inÀuential clergymen in Estonia. When Heidrich died in 1692, the pastor Abraham Winkler chose Jacob’s wrestling with the angel as the topic of his funeral sermon.19 Caspar Coster, Strophiolum Jesu, Sanfftes, Lieb- und Trohst-volles Wisch-Tüchlein Jesu, … Fr. Hedwig Sidonia Wagnerin, Des … Herren Anthonii Heiderichs, Wolverdienten Pastoris zu Kegel, Praepositi in West-Harrien, und Adsessoris des Königl. Ober-Consistorii in Reval, Hertzlichgeliebten Eheschatzes, Da Ihr Entseelter Cörper mit Christ-gebührlichen Ceremonien Anno 1686. den 22. Septembris in der Kegelschen oder St. Michaelis Kirchen, bestätiget wurde. Der Wohlsehligen Fr. Prohbstin zu Ehren … von M. Casparo Costero, Pastor zu Hakeris (Reval: Christoff Brendeken, [1686]), D4r–E3v. 18 Eric von Born, “Ätten von Morians öden,” pts. 1 and 2, Genos: Sukutieteellinen aikakauskirja / Tidskrift för släktforskning 9, no. 3/4 (1938): 104–114; 10, no. 2 (1939): 33–54. Christian Eberhard Morian died in a ¿re at the Varudi (Ger. Neuwartz) manor, 8 July 1736. 19 Abraham Winkler, Unsterbliches Ehrengedächtniss eines gesegneten Gottes-Lehrers, nach Genes. XXXII, v. 26. Ich lasse dich nicht, du seegnest mich dann. Bey Christlicher hochansehnlicher Leichbegängniss Des weiland HochWohlEhrwürdigen, GrossAchtbahren und HochWohlgelahrten Hn. Anthonii Heiderich, … der verblichene Cörper aber den 12. Octobr. in die Kegelsche Kirche St. Michaelis, in sein Ruhe-Kämmerlein des Grabes versetzet worden, Vorgestellet von Abraham Winkler, Pastori zu Rappel (Reval: Christoff Brendeken, [1692]). 17

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

97

Fig. 4. Axell Holm, map of the Keila manor at the end of the seventeenth century (detail). Image courtesy of the Estonian Historical Archives.

There is no doubt that Heidrich was the person who put together the programme of the painting. It is also possible that the animal ¿gures and local colour were added by the painter. It must have been clear to the viewer of the picture that Jacob, the forefather of the people of Israel, symbolised Morian in one scene of the composition and Heidrich in the other. The Jabbok River, which Àows between them, represented the Keila River. The Jabbok River, nowadays the Zarqa River, Àows in the hills of the Middle East, but in Merian’s pictures Central European landscapes can be recognised. In the painting, the local landscape can be distinguished. On the Keila River, there is a holm near the church, on which there was a manor house in the seventeenth century made of stone, which may have been quite similar to the one depicted in the painting. We can also see it on the map of the Keila manor that was drawn at the end of the seventeenth century (see ¿g. 4).20 During the time of high water in spring, the river Àooded the adjacent meadows, converting them into a big lake, as in the painting. What is even more interesting is that, in the background of the 20 Map of the Keila manor, end of the seventeenth century, Estonian Historical Archives in Tartu, collection (coll.) 1, inventory (inv.) 2, no. C-II-5.

98

Morian and Merian. Word and Image

picture, the artist has painted a silhouette of a town with gothic towers similar to the famous panorama of Tallinn by Adam Olearius, published in his widely circulated travelogue21 (see ¿g. 5). Matthäus Merian engraved the panorama of Tallinn by following the example of Olearius and published the view in his Topographia Germaniae (1642–88). But why does hell appear in the painting, with a frightening lion and a serpent? This only becomes clear after consulting written sources.

Heidrich’s catechism and teaching method Heidrich used that painting as a visual aid to teach his catechism. He wrote an Estonian catechism with the title Der richtigste Weg zum Himmel (The most direct path to heaven [. . . a biblical picture of the catechism, or repentance, or easy preparation for further teaching of the catechism]), of which the script has been preserved at the Estonian Historical Archives.22 On the title page of the catechism is the same motto that is on the painting: “Ah Jesu nicht ohn dier!” (see ¿g. 6). The text consists of two parts: (1) religious instructional songs and (2) thirty catechising questions with short answers. In the introduction, there is an explanation of the method, where it is stated that the picture facilitates the teaching of religious principles and makes it easier for the common people (Estonians) to ask questions. All of the images conveyed in the words of the songs are also depicted in the painting and vice versa. For the children of the peasants, the teaching here was through “seeing, hearing and singing easily and clearly” what they “recite in the public examination in front of the pulpit joyfully and devotedly” before the ¿rst Communion. The picture was very helpful for those who did not understand everything by reading a book, as the picture shows everything that frightened and consoled clearly in front of their eyes. The nucleus of the teaching involved demonstrating that people had two paths: to go to heaven through religion and repentance, or to sin and go to hell. The only right path was to follow Jesus and his words “Tuht Buße!” which means: “Turn away from your sins, because the kingdom of heaven is Adam Olearius, Offt begehrte Beschreibung Der Newen Orientalischen Reise, So durch Gelegenheit einer Holsteinischen Legation an den König in Persien geschehen. … Durch M. Adamum Olearium, Ascanium Saxonem, Fürstl. SchleßwigHolsteinischen Hoff-mathemat (Schleswig: Jacob zur Glocken, 1647). 22 Heidrich’s cathecism has been preserved in two manuscripts (one of them being divided between two archival documents): Estonian Historical Archives in Tartu, coll. 1187, inv. 2, no. 373, fols. 23–41v; ibid., no. 736:2, fols. 4–22v; ibid., no. 5323. The latter document also includes materials on the polemic about the cathecism. 21

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

99

Fig. 5. Tallinn’s silhouette from the painting in the Keila church (above) and Adam Olearius’ panorama of Tallinn, 1647 (below, detail). The latter image reproduced from Olearius, Offt begehrte Beschreibung. near!”23 Jacob’s wrestling in the picture symbolises a person’s choice when he comes to a crossroads, and the same is emphasised by the verses of Heidrich: O jnnimen A Wahta tehl, Mis on so Ello ilma pehl, Sa ollet kui üks Wandri-Mees, Kaks Teed sihn seiswad keikil ees, Ehks Pörgko leht ehk Taiwa pohl.

23

Oh human being, look out on your path, What is your life on this earth. You are like a traveller, Two paths in front of everyone. Might go to hell or might go to heaven.

Põldvee, “Paar rännakut eesti kirjandusloo koiduhämaruses,” 556–57.

100

Morian and Merian. Word and Image

Fig. 6. The title of the manuscript of Anton Heidrich’s catechism, in which the year 1687 has been hidden as a chronogram. Image courtesy of the Estonian Historical Archives.

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

101

Heidrich’s catechism created a great deal of controversy in his time and met heavy criticism in 1687, which is why the content of the catechism is quite well documented, although the book itself has not been preserved. It is possible that it never made it into print, but it is known that Heidrich offered his method for wider use. In some churches, the method was practised. Heidrich’s colleague Gabriel Herlin, who established very good peasant schools in the neighbouring parish of Harju-Madise and in Risti, was one of the opponents. Herlin said that he liked the teaching but hated the picture—“Das Information liebe ich, das Bild hasse ich!”—because, according to church law, children should be taught to read from a book: “Some teaching based on a picture or painting (nach Bilde oder Gemälde) is not approved here.”24 Herlin was referring to the new Swedish church law, which had just been adopted (1686), but which, in fact, did not mention anything about the use of pictures in teaching Christianity. However, in His Majesty’s foreword, there were warnings about haughty and vexing ceremonies and about worshipping and honouring pictures and dead saints (Anbetung und Verehrung der Bilder und verstorbenen Heiligen).25 Although the use of pictures as explanatory and mnemonic teaching aids could be perceived as innovative in the pedagogical context, the conÀict between Heidrich and Herlin was actually between teaching based on oral tradition and the new tradition of literacy.26 Heidrich’s catechism was also attacked from another side. As Heidrich was one of the defenders of the German-style Estonian orthography, he was criticised by the young, angry men Adrian Virginius and Johann Hornung, who wanted to simplify Estonian orthography and make it more approachable for the common people. Virginius called Heidrich Bildzüchtiger Himmelsführer, referring to his teaching method. The battle was over the translation of the Bible, but it was easy for them to mock the awkward language of Heidrich’s catechism.27 But this involves the history of Estonian literature, language and education, which is beyond the scope of this article.

Ibid., 557. Kirchengesetz und Ordnung, so der Grossmächtigste König und Herr, Herr Karl der Eilfte, der Schweden, Gothen und Wenden König etc. im Jahr 1686 hat verfassen und im Jahr 1687 im Druck ausgehen und publiciren lassen (Mitau: Johann Friedrich Steffenhagen, 1796), 3. 26 For more detailed information about this topic, see Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (London: Methuen, 1982). 27 Tafenau, “Ex Ignorantia Linguae Ridiculus Sensus,” 132–40. 24 25

102

Morian and Merian. Word and Image

Conclusion Although the panel painting in question is modest, not to mention dilettantish, in its artistic value, it was an important visual element in the Keila church in the second half of the seventeenth century, an element which the teaching of the catechism and the examining of the members of the congregation were bound up with as actions repeated every Sunday. While in Lutheran theology the triple function of images (decoration, memory and study aid) 28 was formulated at the end of the sixteenth century, the Keila painting also had a fourth function: it was also an epitaph that linked the Word of God with local people and the landscape. That combination of four elements in one made it more affordable for those who ordered the painting. In addition, the picture, which presented, in addition to instructive Bible stories, the actions and the tragic death of a self-sacri¿cing local pastor, helped to make Christian teaching and values clearer to the peasants more clearly than through abstract words. The Keila picture was composed after the model of two of Matthäus Merian’s engravings from his series of biblical images (Icones Biblicae, 1625–27). The use of Merian’s engravings as an example for paintings was widespread in Europe and such examples can also be found in seventeenth-century Tallinn. However, the Keila picture is the only one in Estonia that is known to have been used in the active teaching process as an illustrative teaching tool. The motifs and symbols depicted in the painting were also present in the catechism composed by the pastor Anton Heidrich, Der richtigste Weg zum Himmel, binding together words, pictures and local memories. Heidrich tried to improve the oral, memory-based teaching method through the use of pictures, but the establishment of schools, which began in the 1680s, brought about a new method of teaching the catechism based on the ability to read. The criticism that was directed against the picture used in the Keila church was based on these innovations. Such examples as the painting in question help us better understand the early modern age person, and the spiritual and visual space that was shared by Matthäus Merian and Eberhard Morian, Anton Heidrich and the peasants of Keila. The painting in the Keila church, whose meanings have long been hidden, is now becoming an object of investigation and a source for not only visual culture and rituals, but for the history of pedagogy, literature and linguistics, just as written sources help to understand works of art. Thomas Kaufmann, “Die Bilderfrage im frühneuzeitlichen Luthertum,” in Macht und Ohnmacht der Bilder: Reformatorischer Bildersturm im Kontext der europäischen Geschichte, ed. Peter Blickle (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2002), 407–54; Kodres, “Ich wil mit deinem Munde sein,” 42–45.

28

PART II VISUAL CULTURE AND THE PERFORMANCES OF POWER

THE GAZE OF POWER, THE ACT OF OBEDIENCE: INTERPRETING BYZANTINE WALL PAINTINGS IN TRAKAI, LITHUANIA GIEDRƠ MICKNjNAITƠ Trakai, the medieval residence of Lithuanian grand dukes, is celebrated for its two castles and picturesque landscape, as the town lies on a peninsula between three lakes (¿g. 1). The political and cultural importance of the town attracts visitors and researchers. Thus far, most attention has been dedicated to the urban history and political signi¿cance of the town.1 This inquiry, although relying on previous research, focuses on lesser known aspects: the Byzantine wall paintings that in the ¿fteenth century adorned the walls of the grand ducal residence in the island castle and those of the parish church. While the paintings in the castle are known from visual documentation and descriptions from throughout the nineteenth and ¿rst half of the twentieth century,2 the ones in the church were mentioned in written sources in the seventeenth century, but discovered only in 2006. The inquiry into the style and iconography of the unveiled paintings3 has raised broader questions about the expression of sacred and secular power in the townscape of Trakai. The fragmented visual, written and archaeological evidence makes this research a kind of self-producing chain of puzzles, the solutions to which are gained from retrospective knowledge and the concepts of myth and ritual. Herein, I follow de¿nitions provided by structural anthropologists: a myth is a narrative explaining the contradiction * This chapter is part of the project “The Trakai Parish Church in the Fifteenth Century: Reconstruction of Architecture and Wall Paintings” supported by the Research Council of Lithuania grant no. LIT-6-4. 1 The most exhaustive study on Trakai is Algirdas Baliulis, Stanislovas Mikulionis, and Algimantas Miškinis, Trakǐ miestas ir pilys: Istorija ir architektnjra (Vilnius: Mokslas, 1991). 2 For an analysis of these paintings, see Giedrơ Micknjnaitơ, Making a Great Ruler: Grand Duke Vytautas of Lithuania (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2006), 52–62. 3 For iconographic research, see Giedrơ Micknjnaitơ, “Maniera Graeca in Europe’s Catholic East: Byzantine Paintings in the Parish Church of Trakai, Lithuania,” in “East Meets West: At the Crossroads of Early Modern Europe,” ed. GraĪyna Jurkowáaniec and Jeannie J. àabno, special issue, Ikonotheka 22 (2009): 41–53.

106

The Gaze of Power, the Act of Obedience

Fig. 1. The historical plan of Trakai: roads, major buildings and sites. Adapted and translated from Baliulis, Mikulionis, and Miškinis, Trakǐ miestas ir pilys.

between belief and reality, and a ritual is a performance of a known repertoire leading to a new known condition. Applied to artworks, these de¿nitions explain, for example, how a building, through an act of consecration, becomes a church: physically unchanged it enters the condition of the sacred, which is maintained through narrative and behaviour. In the case of a church, the liturgy constantly recon¿rms the transformation of a building into a house of God. Based on an exchange, which in many cases is a mental rather than physical act, recognised by participants and/or observers of a ritual, the condition of the sacred is maintained. In this article, I concentrate on vision as performative body language, and the visual as material stimuli and the object gazed upon. I project and test this scheme in this case study, consisting of four interrelated puzzles derived from the iconography of the newly discovered paintings and leading to the examination of rituals of power, as expressed in the townscape of Trakai in the ¿fteenth and later centuries.

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

107

The church and the paintings On 24 May 1409 Grand Duke Vytautas / Witold / Vitovt (r. 1392–1430) issued the foundation privilege for the parish Church of the Visitation of the Virgin Mary and St. John the Evangelist in Trakai.4 It is unknown when the church was built, but its ¿rst priest, Michael, was mentioned in 1419;5 therefore, it is logical to conclude that the building had been constructed and consecrated by this time. As to the wall paintings, their ¿rst mention comes from the history of the Trakai church written by Priest Symon Mankiewicz and published in 1645. Mankiewicz states that the walls of the church “gifted with the miracles of the Most Holy Mother of God” had previously been entirely covered with “Greek” images. However, after the porch was built (ca. 1610),6 the paintings in the naves were whitewashed. Mankiewicz adds that at the time of his writing, some “Greek” paintings were still extant in the choir.7 Given the chronology of the reconstructions of the church in the seventeenth century, it is likely that the paintings were completely plastered over during the renovation of the building after the 1655–61 war with Muscovy. Sources from the eighteenth and later centuries mention only a whitewashed interior, although reminiscences of the “Greek” paintings survived longer.8 In 2006, during the restoration of the church, fragments of Byzantine wall paintings were discovered in the nave. A lower part of the painted drapery, clearly distinct from the paintings in the nave, was found along the church apse. However, an investigation of brickwork revealed that the entire apse was built around 1500;9 obviously, the paintings cannot precede this date. The fact that Mankiewicz called the decoration of the choir “Greek” is confusing; however, its examination lies beyond the scope of the current inquiry. 4 Jerzy OchmaĔski, ed., Vitoldiana: Codex Privilegiorum Vitoldi Magni Ducis Lithuaniae, 1386–1430 (Warsaw: PaĔstwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1986), 27–28, no. 21. 5 Vytautas Ališauskas et al., Lietuvos katalikǐ dvasininkai XIV–XVI a. (Vilnius: Aidai, 2009), 286, no. 1605. 6 Ibid., 88, no. 248. 7 “… iakoĪ i sam koĞciol byá wßytek z staroswiecka po Grecku malowany. Teraz babiniec robiąc poáowĊ malowania wapnem zatarto, a chor sam s takimĪe malowaniem zostaá.” KoĞcioá farski trocki, cudami Przenaswetszey BogarodĪice Panny Maryey obiaĞniony a prez xiĊdza Symona Mankiewicza biskupstwa Zmudzkiego dyocesiana nowo na Ğwiat wystawiony (Wilno: W Drukarni Ojcow Bazylianow, 1645), A3r. 8 E.g., Wáadysáaw Syrokomla, Wycieczki po Litwie w promieniach od Wilna, vol. 1, Troki, Stokliszki, Jezno, Funie, Niemiez, Miedniki etc. (Wilno: Nakáadem ksiĊgarza A. Assa, 1857), 42. 9 I am grateful to the researcher of brickwork Robertas Zilinskas and the archaeologist Olegas Fediajevas for sharing the results of their investigations.

108

The Gaze of Power, the Act of Obedience

Judging from the fragments of paintings unveiled from under the plaster, this red-brick Roman Catholic church was decorated with Byzantine murals typical of contemporary Orthodox churches. The paintings were arranged in registers, two of which can be identi¿ed today: the ¿rst showing a drapery and the second containing full-size ¿gures. As to the iconography, thus far only the ¿gure of the Patriarch Jacob has been identi¿ed, from the Cyrillic inscription above the painted ef¿gy (¿g. 2a). The patriarch is depicted seated under a vine tree; on his chest one sees ten or more almost identical faces whose implied bodies are enveloped in Jacob’s mantle and held by his crossed hands. This representation is from no direct reference in the Bible, but is an expansion of the parable of Lazarus and Dives (Luke 16:22). The parable contrasts the afterlife of poor Lazarus, whose soul goes to the bosom of Abraham, and the fate of the rich Dives, thrust into the ¿res of hell. Christianity not only inherited the motif of Abraham’s bosom from Judaism, but also elaborated upon it. In the seventh and eight centuries, Near Eastern Christian thought provided the other two Old Testament patriarchs, Isaac and Jacob, with bosoms for the souls of the just. From that period, Coptic prayers indicating all three patriarchs as intercessors for the souls of the dead are known. By the eleventh century, images of the patriarchs with the souls of the righteous appear in representations of the Last Judgement in Syria and Palestine. The most celebrated piece is said to have adorned the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, from which the crusaders brought this iconography to the West; the Byzantines then spread it across the Orthodox world.10 Looking at the paintings of the Trakai church with the iconography of the Last Judgement in mind,11 one notices that the fragment of a vine tree, similar to the one above Jacob, and a group of saints marching in the patriarch’s direction might also ¿t this iconographic scheme as a tree of Paradise and the Procession of the Elect (¿gs. 2b, 2c). This credible iconographic identi¿cation of the three fragments of the wall paintings as parts of one composition of the Last Judgement becomes doubtful when the location of the paintings within the church architecture is considered (¿g. 3): the patriarch is painted on the western wall, but the vine tree and the For an overview of the Near Eastern tradition, see Erica Cruikshank Dodd et al., The Frescoes of Mar Musa al-Habashi: A Study in Medieval Painting in Syria (Toronto: Ponti¿cal Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2001), 85–90; for the medieval representations of the Last Judgement in the Eastern and Western traditions, see Valentino Pace, ed., Alfa e Omega: Il Giudizio Universale tra Oriente e Occidente (Castel Bolognese: Itaca, 2006). 11 For an iconographic scheme based on the Orthodox tradition, to which the Trakai paintings belong, see Konrad Onasch, Lexikon Liturgie und Kunst der Ostkirche unter Berücksichtigung der alten Kirche (Berlin: Union, 1993), 134. 10

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

a

109

b c

Fig. 2. Byzantine wall paintings in the Trakai church: Patriarch Jacob (a), a vine tree (b), and marching saints (c). Photos: KĊstutis Stoškus, 2008.

110

The Gaze of Power, the Act of Obedience

marching saints appear on the northern one. Cases in which Last Judgement compositions occupy more than one wall of a church are found when this complex and strict iconography is executed in small spaces.12 However, a problem occurs when one mentally projects the Last Judgement scheme onto the western wall of the Trakai church. Despite confessional differences, all medieval Last Judgements follow a standard arrangement: the image of God is in the centre on top, Paradise is on God’s right and Hell on God’s left. Viewed with this scheme in mind, the location of Paradise in the Trakai church is reversed. While one might disregard the fact that the images joined here into Paradise are spread on western and northern walls, the fact that Paradise is situated on God’s left violates the essential principles of the Christian hierarchy of virtue and vice. An alternative solution would be to ¿t the iconographic scheme of the Last Judgement into the surviving fragments of the paintings. In this case, the principal composition would occupy the northern wall, its “virtuous” part would occupy the north-western corner and the “vicious” one the north-eastern one, i.e. it would be located closest to the main altar in the apse.13 Either the iconographic attribution of the Patriarch Jacob and the adjacent fragments is wrong, or there is some other explanation. To solve this confusion between the iconography of the paintings and the architecture of the parish church, I will re-examine the latter. The ground-plan of the Trakai church (¿g. 3) shows the building composed of an irregularly shaped rectangle, to which an oblong apse on the eastern side and a rectangular porch on the western side are added. The apse is Àanked by the narrow rectangular sacristy in the north and a slightly wider chapel in the south. This usual structure of the church deviates from the tradition of Gothic architecture, when the sizes of its naves are considered. The inner measurements of the naves are the following: the western wall—23.3 m, the eastern part—21.8 m, the southern wall—17 m and the northern—16.4 m. Hence, the width of the naves is about six metres longer than their length, and this makes the Trakai church the sole building of such a shape among Gothic churches in E.g., T. S. Shcherbatova-Sheviakova, Nereditsa: Monumental’nye rospisi tserkvi Spasa na Nereditse (Moscow: Galart, 2004), pp. 204, 208, ¿gs. 205–6 and pp. 206–7, ¿g. 209; also see the graphic reconstruction of the wall paintings interwoven throughout the book. 13 A good comparison is offered by the mid-fourteenth-century wall paintings of the Last Judgement in the church of Svinica in Slovakia, where the composition occupies the southern wall, so that the representation of paradise is located closest to the altar. Zdisáaw KliĞ, Paruzja: Przedstawienie Sądu Ostatecznego w sztuce Ğredniowiecznej Europy ĝrodkowej (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Papieskiej Akademii Teologicznej, 1999), 262, no. B.2, ¿g. 86. 12

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

111

Fig. 3. The Trakai church, ground-plan: dots indicate locations of the Byzantine wall paintings, and characters a, b and c point to the location of paintings reproduced in ¿gure 2.

the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.14 What is more, the entrance into the naves was located in the middle of the northern wall, in between the eastern and western pillars (¿gs. 3, 4a, and 4b). Opposite this entrance, in the southern wall, there is a protrusion (¿g. 3). During the excavations performed in the churchyard in 2008, the foundations of an annex of a rectangular shape were found near the protrusion (¿g. 5). These foundations have been labelled a chapel, and the protrusion in the southern wall identi¿ed as its remnants. While such an interpretation is logical given the current shape of the church, it must be taken into consideration that no source mentions any chapel at the Trakai church before 1700, when the Römer family built one at the southern wall of the apse. Hence, the silence of written sources, the unusual width of the naves, and the discovered foundations, together with the fact that the brickwork of the current apse has been dated to 1500, lead to the hypothesis that the liturgical axis of the Trakai church from 1419 was oriented southwards. If this reasoning is correct, 14 Algơ Jankeviþienơ, “Gotikiniǐ bažnyþiǐ kompozicija: Bendrieji ir saviti bruožai”, in Lietuvos Didžiosios Kunigaikštystơs gotika: sakralinơ architektnjra ir dailơ, ed. Algơ Jankeviþienơ (Vilnius: Vilniaus dailơs akademijos leidykla, 2002), 13–32.

112

The Gaze of Power, the Act of Obedience

Fig. 4. The bricked-up entrance in the northern facade of the Trakai church: exterior (a) and interior view (b). Photos by the author, 2010. the main entrance into the church was situated in the middle of the northern wall, and the nave divided by the four pillars had the shape of an irregular rectangle, the eastern and western sides of which were longer than the northern and southern ones. The recently discovered foundations might have belonged not only to a chapel, but perhaps also to an early ¿fteenth-century apse (¿g. 6). Written evidence provides additional support for this reasoning: documents of the Vilnius Diocese note major building activities in the Trakai church in 1497.15 In all likelihood, this relates to the construction of the apse on the eastern side of the church. These construction projects must have also involved an expansion of the churchyard: archaeological excavations from 2008 have revealed ¿fteenth-century burials under the foundations of today’s apse. Moreover, in the southern part of the churchyard, ¿fteenth-century graves have been found just 50 cm deep, while those in the north-eastern part are 350 cm deep.16 This evidence suggests that around 1500 the churchyard On 8 July 1497 the bishop of Vilnius signed an agreement for the reconstruction of the Trakai church (Ališauskas et al., Lietuvos katalikǐ dvasininkai, 27, no. 58). 16 Olegas Fediajevas, “Trakǐ Švþ. Mergelơs Marijos Apsilankymo bažnyþia ir šventorius”, Archeologiniai tyrinơjimai Lietuvoje 2008 metais (2009): 269–84. 15

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

Fig. 5. Foundations by the protrusion of the southern facade of the Trakai church. Photo: Olegas Fediajevas, 2008.

Fig. 6. The Trakai church, ground-plan: the engraved contour indicates the hypothetical plan of the church building from 1419, dots indicate locations of the Byzantine wall paintings, and characters a, b and c point to the location of paintings reproduced in ¿gure 2.

113

114

The Gaze of Power, the Act of Obedience

was expanded eastwards to accommodate the new apse. These considerations are also supported by the topographical evidence: the churchyard is most spacious on the northern side, where the main gate is located. The plot on the western side is the narrowest and there is no access to the churchyard from the west, as it lies on a mound arti¿cially reinforced with boulders. Hence, the inquiry into the iconography of the Patriarch Jacob with the souls of the elect offers the following scenario of the church and its “Greek” paintings. The ¿rst church building from before 1419 was oriented southwards. The Last Judgement was painted opposite the main altar and occupied the northern and, at least parts of, the western walls (¿g. 6). At the end of the ¿fteenth century, the new apse was added on the eastern side of the church; therefore, the “hell” part of the Last Judgement must have been destroyed (no remnants of paintings have been found in the north-eastern part of the nave). Although the proposed scenario provides a logical explanation for the available data, it does not provide reasons for the west-south orientation of the ¿rst church building. I will search for these reasons outside the churchyard.

The paintings, the church and the castle The Trakai church was founded by Grand Duke Vytautas, whose favourite residence was in the nearby palace of the island castle. The exact year of the construction of the palace is unknown; however, the grand duke’s itinerary makes it clear that Vytautas resided in Trakai regularly after 1409,17 the year of the foundation of the parish church. Moreover, both the church and the castle were painted with murals in the Byzantine style and an examination of their plaster has led to the attribution of them to the same masters or workshop.18 Although the paintings in the palace are almost lost, their visual documentation might shed light on the parish church and its architecture. In 1822, the Vilnius artist Wincenty Smokowski (1797–1876) visited the ruins of the Trakai island castle and sketched the surviving fragments of the Jerzy Purc, “Itinerarium Witolda wielkiego ksiĊcia Litwy, 17 lutego 1370 roku – 27 pazdziernika 1430 roku”, Zeszczyty Naukowe Uniwersytetu im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu: Historia 11 (1971): 89–109. 18 I am grateful to Elvyra Telksnienơ at the Cultural Heritage Centre, who did an analysis of plaster samples from the church and matched the results with samples taken from the palace. The attribution of the paintings to the same masters or workshop is reliable, because the two samples exhibit an unusual quantity of casein and do not contain any ¿bre traditionally included in the grounding for mural painting. 17

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

115

Fig. 7. Wincenty Smokowski, wall paintings in the island castle of Trakai: scene no. 10, detail of a lithograph, 1841 (a), and detail of the sketch, 1822, pencil on paper (b). wall paintings.19 In 1841, Smokowski published his notes on the visit and a lithograph made after the sketches.20 Scene no. 10 of the lithograph (¿g. 7a) is described as showing a couple kneeling by a road-side chapel.21 While such an interpretation of the scene seems logical for a nineteenth-century viewer, it must be remembered that the building of road-side shrines was a post-Tridentine invention related to the establishment of calvaries and was unknown in medieval Lithuania. Moreover, the sketch (¿g. 7b) of the same scene made in situ contains no tree, just two ¿gures kneeling by a structure with a gable roof. In examining these images previously, I argued that they show not a scene of prayer, as Smokowski and his followers suggested, but donors with a church model. Examination of the iconography of other paintings in the chamber and the palace, written evidence and the functional arrangement of residential castles led to the conclusion that the south-western chamber of the palace, in which the donor scene had been documented, once served as a chapel.22 I am extending this interpretation herein. The extension is based on a simple visual experiment: a glimpse through the southern window of the south-western chamber of the palace into the town of Trakai. The building one sees best is the parish church, more precisely its northern facade. The projection of today’s visual experience onto the ¿fteenth century should be Wincenty Smokowski, [“Sketches of wall-paintings in the Trakai island-castle”], 1822, pencil on paper, Lithuanian State Historical Archives, F. 1135, B. 19, s.v. 74, fols. 12r/v–13. 20 Wincenty Smokowski, “Wspomnienie Trok w 1822 r.,” Athenaeum: pismo poĞwiĊcone historyi, ¿lozo¿i, literaturze, sztukom i krytyce 5 (1841): 157–83. 21 Ibid., 172. 22 Micknjnaitơ, Making a Great Ruler, 61. 19

116

The Gaze of Power, the Act of Obedience

made with reservations: ¿rstly, the general transparency of medieval glass was much poorer and, secondly, archaeological ¿nds of the island castle suggest that the palace might have had stained-glass windows.23 Therefore, it is doubtful that a medieval viewer would have clearly seen the church building across the lake. However, viewed from an anthropological perspective, association rather than good visibility is the principle of recognition. Hence, even if a viewer in the south-western chamber could not see the church across the lake and the donor scene painted on the wall simultaneously, the painting stood as a substitute and reinforcement for the known view from the island castle. The fact that the gaze from the palace is directed at the northern facade of the church matches aptly with the arguments that the liturgical axis of the ¿rst church was directed southwards. The church was built on the same visual axis as the palace. This is a typical topographical relation between the secular and the sacred known throughout the Middle Ages and well into the modern period. Most frequently, a road emphasised this axial relation; however, in Trakai the axis goes not along the ground, but across the lake. Hence, Grand Duke Vytautas could symbolically look from the palace onto the main altar of the parish church he had founded. The grand ducal gaze also explains the rather unusual location of the parish church within the town of Trakai, which also had an image of Vytautas.24 As a rule, parish churches were built near market places; however, in Trakai the church stands on a mound (¿g. 1), which in the ¿fteenth century was separated from the market square by a marshy plot.25 Thus, the erection of the church on a mound accessible only from the north and south can be explained not by the needs of churchgoers, but rather by the need of the church founder to make the power relations between the castle and the church manifest. This visual bond was stronger than the traditional east-west orientation of a church, expressed in the townscape and con¿rmed in the painting with the donors kneeling by the simple structure with a gable roof, a model that schematically matches the appearance of surviving fourteenth-century churches in Lithuania.26 Tadas Adomonis and Klemensas ýerbulơnas, Lietuvos TSR dailơs ir architektnjros istorija, vol. 1, Nuo seniausiǐ laikǐ iki 1775 metǐ (Vilnius: Mokslas, 1987), 81. 24 “… quadem apud Trocos in templo depictus vidimus.” “Martini Cromeri De Origine et Rebvs Gestis Polonorvm Libri XXX,” in Polonicae Historiæ Corpvs: Hoc est, Polonicarvm Rervm Latini Recentiores & Ueteres Scriptores, quotquot Extant, Uno Volumine Compræhensi Omnes, & in Aliquot Distributi Tomos; Ex Bibliotheca Ioan. Pistorii Nidani, 2 vols. [Basileæ: Henricpetri, 1582], 2:687. 25 Baliulis, Mikulionis, and Miškinis, Trakǐ miestas ir pilys, 22, ¿g. 2. 26 The closest example would be the Church of St. Nicholas in Vilnius, built in the densely built-up part of the city and therefore surviving without major extensions to 23

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

117

This explanation of the visual expression of grand ducal power in the townscape of Trakai offers a persuasive scenario of the early architecture of the church and reasons for the building’s atypical location and orientation. However, it does not answer the question of why the liturgical axis of the church was turned eastwards at the very end of the ¿fteenth century.

The church and the town The ¿fteenth century can be justly labelled the age of the penetration of the Christian faith into Lithuania. Therefore, the enlargement of churches at the century’s end seems logical for the buildings constructed in the ¿rst decades after Lithuania’s conversion in 1387. However, an increase in parishioners required a larger nave, while an extension of the apse usually signalled changes in the status of the church (e.g., its transfer to a monastic order) or in the liturgy (as happened after the Council of Trent). Hence, it is necessary to answer the question: what prompted the construction of the new apse of the Trakai church at the close of the ¿fteenth century? Initially, I attempted a prosopographical inquiry, thinking that reasons for such transformations might be found in the theological rigidity of the clergy; however, I failed to attain any satisfactory results. An inquiry into the economic standing of the church gave better results: while records are silent about the church’s income, the fact that from 1479 onwards the Trakai clergy appeared as witnesses in various documents of higher nobility27 signals its growing prestige. One may also assume that vast and rich plots allocated to the Trakai church by the foundation privilege also contributed to the accumulation of wealth.28 However, these facts and assumptions can be seen only as means for transformations in the church architecture, not as its reasons. To ¿nd those, I will once again leave the church building and consider the history of the town. Politically a centre of the palatinate, Trakai started sinking into economic decline and political oblivion in the late ¿fteenth century. Castles lost their military and residential signi¿cance, and Grand Duke Alexander (r. 1492–1506) installed an archive in the island castle, and a prison functioned there by this day. Lietuvos architektnjros istorija, vol. 1, Nuo seniausiǐ laikǐ iki XVII a. vidurio, ed. Jonas Minkeviþius (Vilnius: Mokslas, 1987), 121–23, no. 62. 27 Jan Fijaáek and Wáadysáaw Semkowicz, eds., Codex Diplomaticus Ecclesiae Cathedralis necnon Dioeceseos Vilnensis / Kodeks dyplomatyczny Katedry i Diecezji WileĔskiej, vol. 1, 1387–1507 (Kraków: Nakáadem Polskiej Akademii UmiejĊtnoĞci, 1948). 28 Upon the foundation of the church, it was given the Bezdezh district near Pinsk, in today’s Belarus (OchmaĔski, Vitoldiana, 27–28).

118

The Gaze of Power, the Act of Obedience

1503.29 The economic decline of the town meant fewer parishioners and the conversion of the island castle into an archive and a prison meant that there was no need for the visual bond between the church and the palace. Hence, by turning the liturgical axis eastwards, the church turned away from the abandoned castle towards God.30 This poetic explanation is not that unreasonable when one looks at the history of the Trakai church retrospectively. It might be inferred that, by the end of the ¿fteenth century, the Trakai church accumulated resources necessary for a major reconstruction. Sources are silent regarding whether the building of the ¿rst church was somehow damaged and I managed to ¿nd only a symbolic explanation, but symbolic does not mean biased. So the church was turned eastwards, thus cutting the visual link with the no-longer-present viewer in the island castle, and assuming a liturgically correct, but topographically awkward, position in the town. However, the fact that the church could be accessed only from the north and south (as it is today) did not mean that the extension of the building eastwards by adding the large apse was a pure whim. The newly built apse was as long as the nave (considering today’s ground-plan, ¿g. 3) and its width was almost half of that of the nave. In my opinion, the necessity for such a big apse can be explained by two factors. Firstly, the visual perception of interior space of the turned church required the space to provide both light and visibility for the congregation in the broad nave. Secondly, there might have been liturgical reasons behind the reconstruction. The declining town meant fewer churchgoers; hence, the church might have searched elsewhere for visitors, and these required an additional attraction. The extraordinarily large apse ¿t this purpose well, and the advantage of hindsight suggests an explanation.

The place for miracles Today, the Trakai church is a popular pilgrimage site, with its miracle-working image of the Mother of God, called Our Lady of Trakai. The earliest information about this panel painting comes from the history by Mankiewicz, who says that the image, dating to the reign of Grand Duke Vytautas, had previously shown the full-size Virgin with Child; however, the bottom part of the panel was cut Baliulis, Mikulionis, and Miškinis, Trakǐ miestas ir pilys, 64. The only other example of a turning of the liturgical axis that I know of is the case of the Cathedral of St. Sophia in Polotsk, in today’s Belarus. There the liturgical axis of the former Orthodox church was turned from the east towards the north after the building was transferred to the Catholics of the Greek rite in the aftermath of the Union of Brest-Litovsk, signed in 1596. The foundations of the ¿rst church, oriented eastwards, can be seen in the basement and through the opening made in the nave. 29 30

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

119

Fig. 8. Our Lady of Trakai, sixteenth–early seventeenth century. Oil on lime-wood panel, carving, gilding, 127 x 110 cm. Silver setting by Friedrich Szamnicki, 1723–24. Photo: KĊstutis Stoškus, 2009.

to ¿t the new altar.31 Since then, the Virgin has been shown seated (¿g. 8). Famous for its miracles and mercies, the painting received papal wreaths and was pompously crowned in 1718. In all likelihood, it was the coronation that prompted the inscription of the story of the painting’s origins on the back of the panel. The inscription states that Our Lady of Trakai is a Byzantine icon presented to Grand Duke Vytautas by Emperor Manuel II Paleologos (r. 1391– 1425).32 The restoration of this painting, undertaken in 1994, revealed that KoĞcioá farski trocki, A3r. The inscription in black oil reads: “Imago haec B.V. Mariae, miraculis in Li / tuania in civitate Troki celebris ab Emmanuele II imperatore orientis Alexandro Vitoldo Magno Duci Li / tuaniae nuper ad sanctam ¿dem catholicam converso / et circa annum domini 1382 baptizato donatus est. / Ferunt hanc esse ipsam imaginem cuius ope Joannes Cononaeus imperator orientis hunnos et persas vicit, obtentisque hisce victoriis vehiculo argenteo tracto a quator equis albi Constantinopolim solemniter invexit in proprioque loco posuit.” For the history of this image in English, see Giedrơ Micknjnaitơ, “The Merging of Orthodox and Catholic Artistic Traditions in the Painting of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (Two Case Studies),” in Litauen und Ruthenien: Studien zu einer transkulturellen Kommunikationsregion (15.–18. Jahrhundert) / Lithuania and Ruthenia: Studies of a Transcultural Communication Zone (15th–18th Centuries), ed. Stefan 31 32

120

The Gaze of Power, the Act of Obedience

originally it showed a Beautiful Madonna typical of the late Gothic period.33 Although the dendrochronology of the lime panel of the painting has not been established, its initial appearance as a Beautiful Madonna suggests that the oil painting dates to around 1500. Moreover, over-painted holes in the panel seem to indicate that votive plates were ¿xed to it even before the Madonna was refashioned into a pseudo-Byzantine Mother of God.34 I interpret this information in two ways. First, Beautiful Madonnas were especially popular in late medieval east-central Europe. Hence, it might be that the new apse was constructed for this painting with the aim of attracting pilgrims to the image and the parish church. However, this reasoning does not explain the refashioning of the miracle-working image into a pseudo-Byzantine icon. The second scenario stems from the legend inscribed on the panel’s back. While its story does not relate to this particular image, it might well be that Vytautas had an icon of the Mother of God, perhaps even as a gift from Byzantium.35 It is also credible that this icon was given to the Trakai church and started working miracles there, thus prompting the construction of the new apse at the turn of the ¿fteenth century. This icon either perished or appeared too small36 for the church renovated in the post-Tridentine spirit around 1610 and, hence, was replaced by the Gothic Madonna recast to ¿t the Byzantine legend. To conclude, the location and orientation of the ¿rst building of the parish church in Trakai was chosen to suit the grand duke’s gaze, to emphasise the link between the secular and the sacred. It manifested Vytautas as a truly Christian prince and the church was a functioning result of, and a vehicle for, his Christian deeds. Wall paintings featuring the donors in the palace and the portraying of the founder in the church reinforced this mutual exchange of recognition. By the century’s end, this set of relations was no longer valid: grand dukes did not reside in the castle, which, having been turned into a prison, lost the meaning of its secular power. What is more, the visual bond between the prison and the church seems to have become a burden for the clergy. Hence, the building Rohdewald, David Frick, and Stefan Wiederkehr (Wiesbaden: Harassowitz, 2007), 355–58. 33 Arnjnas Bơkšta and Dalia Panavaitơ, “Paveikslo Trakǐ Madona tapybos technikos tyrimas,” Lietuvos dailơs muziejaus metaštis 4 (2001): 186–97. 34 Ibid. 35 Micknjnaitơ, Making a Great Ruler, 177–80. 36 The inventory of the treasury of the Trakai church from 1631 lists several images of the Virgin Mary, kept together with curtains in liturgical colours that suggest their high reputation. One of these images might be the Byzantine icon of the Mother of God related to Vytautas. “Inwentarz Trocki: Inwentarz skarbu koĞcioáa Trockiego PrzenayĞwietszey Bogarodzice Mariy Panny …” [17 September 1630], Vilnius University Library, Manuscript Department, F. 57, B. 53, R. 854, fols. 1–7.

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

121

was turned eastwards. However, this liturgically correct orientation not only turned the church into a pilgrimage site, but also incorporated the memory of the grand ducal founder. The latter abandoned the ritual of viewing and entered the realm of the myth. Importantly, both the ritual and the myth relied on images of “Greek” style. In the ritual exchange of the gaze, wall paintings replaced the absent grand ducal viewer. The truth of the myth was embedded in the image of the Mother of God, and strengthened by rites performed by those who came for the mercies and miracles of Our Lady of Trakai, either in its lost medieval appearance or in its early modern pseudo-Byzantine look.

BAPTISM AND THE KING’S CORONATION: VISUAL RHETORIC OF THE VALDEMAR DYNASTY ON SOME SCANIAN AND DANISH BAPTISMAL FONTS KERSTI MARKUS The king’s anointment and coronation were, undoubtedly, among the most memorable rituals in medieval society, where the aesthetic experience provided by the ecclesiastical space was blended with the musical one, forming a background of sound and visuals to the unravelling liturgical-theatrical spectacle.1 To stage such a performance, a person had to have had a clear vision of the existing traditions and patterns of behaviour, as well as the ritualistic and visual arsenal of political manipulation. To what extent can we examine such manipulations in twelfth-century Scandinavia, on the periphery of Europe in those days, where pagan traditions were still full of vitality? Such a question is provoked by the extraordinarily rich visual culture of the Romanesque period in Denmark, expressed in elaborately executed murals and stone carvings in churches. Among the latter, a form of media—baptismal fonts—stands out. Was the aim of the complicated pictorial programmes to strengthen ecclesiastical authority by explaining the meaning of and the link between the two main sacraments—the Eucharist and baptism—by using visual means, being the visible representation of the invisible,2 or can we also speak of secular ambitions to strengthen one’s power through church rituals? This article analyses the ¿rst church coronations in Denmark, the possible message of the rituals, and the conveyance of the message and the changes through time on two baptismal fonts. This reveals an aspect, which has not yet been dealt with, of the ambitions of King Valdemar the Great (r. 1157–82) to strengthen his power.3 1 Therese Bruggisser-Lanker, “Krönungsritus und sakrales Herrschertum: Zeremonie und Symbolik,” in Riten, Gesten, Zeremonien: Gesellschaftliche Symbolik in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, ed. Edgar Bierende, Sven Bretfeld, and Klaus Oschema (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2008), 289–319. 2 Harriet Margrethe Sonne de Torrens, “De Fontibus Salvatoris: A Liturgical and Ecclesiological Reading of the Representation of the Childhood of Christ on the Medieval Fonts from Scandinavia,” 2 vols. (PhD diss., University of Copenhagen, 2003). 3 On the link between the motif of Majestas Domini and the ideology of Valdemar’s era, see Søren Kaspersen, “Majestas Domini – Regnum et Sacerdotium (II): Das Leben

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

123

God’s anointed According to a widespread claim in Danish historical writing, the ¿rst Christian royal consecration in Denmark took place on 25 June 1170 in Ringsted, when Valdemar had his son, the seven-year-old Canute (VI), crowned king. Simultaneously, Valdemar’s father Canute Lavard, murdered in 1131, was canonised.4 The chief source on this ceremony is Gesta Danorum by Saxo Grammaticus. The chronicler writes that King Valdemar received a letter from Rome, permitting him to canonise his father Canute Lavard. Immediately after receiving the letter, he summoned the Danish nobles to Ringsted for St. John’s Day (i.e. the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, 24 June) to simultaneously honour his father as a saint and his son as a king, as “this would help to promote his own honour and fame.” The ceremony was conducted by the archbishop of Lund, who placed the remains of Valdemar’s father on the altar and his seven-year-old son Canute on the throne, consecrated as king and dressed in purple. Saxo emphasises that these rituals were performed with dignity worthy of the occasion.5 To a person knowing little about Scandinavian history, the above information would seem contradictory: how can a king crown his son as his co-regent without having had an ecclesiastical consecration himself? Since in the case of earlier kings Saxo only speaks of electing, not coronation, one might conclude that until the Ringsted ceremony all the kings had been inaugurated following old Viking Age traditions. According to Saxo, the king had been elected since ancient times at the Isøre thing,6 which took place next to a harbour of the same name on the Rørvig Peninsula in North Zealand. The harbour had an excellent strategic location regarding the three areas of Denmark—Jutland, Zealand and Scania—offering a safe haven to all ships expecting fair wind and also serving as a sea gate to Roskilde, which had been a trading centre in Zealand since the Viking Age and later became the centre of the des Motivs in Skandinavien während der Kirchenkämpfe unter besonderer Berücksichtigung Dänemarks im 12. Jahrhundert,” Hafnia: Copenhagen Papers in the History of Art 10 (1985): 24–72. 4 Per Beskow, “Kröning,” in Kulturhistoriskt lexikon för nordisk medeltid, vol. 9 (Malmö: Allhem, 1964), col. 498–99; Erich Hoffmann, “Coronation and Coronation Ordines in Medieval Scandinavia,” in Coronations: Medieval and Early Modern Monarchic Ritual, ed. János M. Bak (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 125–51. 5 Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum / Danmarkshistorien, ed. Karsten Friis-Jensen, trans. Peter Zeeberg, 2 vols. (Copenhagen: Gad, 2005), bk. 14, ch. 40:1, 12. 6 Ibid., bk. 3, ch. 3:1.

124

Baptism and the King’s Coronation

diocese.7 Before the Isøre thing, the regional things, ruled by local nobility, had proposed their candidates.8 In accordance with an old tradition, a candidate for king was placed on a high rock and the people would express their opinion by either clapping or raising their hands.9 The supposed location of the Isøre thing forms an amphitheatre-like landscape with huge rocks, and written sources have called the slope on the coast “a hill.” Therefore, parallels have been drawn with the general assembly of Iceland, the Althing, where the Lawspeaker would stand on the Law Rock.10 Instead of Isøre, however, Valdemar summoned the nobles to Ringsted, the location of the supreme assembly of Zealand, the Landsthing. In place of a sacred natural location, the ritual was performed in the church where his father’s remains were kept. The rock was replaced by a throne, the vote of the people by the ceremony of anointment and coronation, conducted by the archbishop, and the one crowned was the son of the ruling king, not the ruler himself. Such changes must have been extremely radical to the Danish nobility, so radical that it would make such a course of events dif¿cult to envisage. Danish and Swedish historians only give particular attention to a single aspect of the 1170 ceremony: the transition from the old Germanic / ancient Danish elective monarchy to the Christian hereditary one.11 This, however, does not mean that it was only in 1170 that the ¿rst Christian royal consecration took place in Denmark. The transition from the Viking Age ceremony to the ecclesiastical consecration must have occurred earlier. 7 Troels Brandt, “Isøre Havn og Ting,” in Mellem Kattegat og Isefjord: Rørvigs natur og kulturhistorie, ed. Bo Bræstrup and Kurt Sørensen (Rørvig: Rørvig Naturfredningsforening, 2001), 32–55. 8 Saxo, Gesta Danorum, bk. 14, ch. 3:1; Erich Hoffmann, Königserhebung und Thronfolgeordnung in Dänemark bis zum Ausgang des Mittelalters (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1976), 94–95. 9 Elisabeth Vestergaard, “A Note on Viking Age Inaugurations,” in Coronations: Medieval and Early Modern Monarchic Ritual, ed. János M. Bak. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 119–23. 10 Brandt, “Isøre Havn og Ting,” 51; “Isøre Havn og Ting,” the website of Rørvig Naturfredningsforening (the Rørvig Society for Nature Conservation), accessed 6 March 2013, http://www.rnf-info.dk/ting.html. 11 See more in Henrik Janson, “Danmarks 1100-tal och andra perspektiv: ReÀektioner kring nya problem och gammal forskning,” in Ett annat 1100-tal: Individ, kollektiv och kulturella mönster i medeltidens Danmark, ed. Peter Carelli, Lars Hermanson, and Hanne Sanders (Gothenburg: Makadam, 2004), 340–67, here 347.

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

125

In 1985, the art historian Søren Kaspersen, in his two articles,12 pointed to the appendix to the Roskilde chronicle, composed in Lund at the beginning of the thirteenth century, stating that Archbishop Eskil anointed and crowned Valdemar in 1157.13 Since the claim is not corroborated by any other source, historians consider it an unreliable addition from the times of Valdemar II.14 Yet it would have been unthinkable, in Kaspersen’s opinion, for Valdemar’s son to be the anointed king while he himself was not. In such a case he would have had himself anointed as well in Ringsted. Kaspersen justi¿ably points to Saxo’s comments on the Ringsted festivities: nothing made Valdemar more joyful than passing the signs of kingship on to his son in his lifetime.15 Valdemar became the sole king of Denmark after the victorious battle of Grathe (Grey) Heath, near Viborg, on 23 October 1157. The civil war and the period of three kings in Danish history had come to an end. According to the Knytlinga saga, Valdemar was given power over Denmark based on the decision of all the Danish nobles.16 It is remarkable that Saxo’s chronicle says nothing about Valdemar being declared the king. Neither source mentions Canute’s anointment at his coronation,17 but it is announced in Annales Lundenses: “Kanutus in regem inungitur.”18 The incomplete written sources make one turn to the visual ones. Let us ¿rst, however, view the coronation ceremony of 1170 a little closer. Valdemar summoning the nobles on the feast of St. John the Baptist and Saxo’s comment on it being celebrated around the summer solstice19 are 12 Søren Kaspersen, “Muren om Israels hus: Kritiske bemærkninger og betragtninger i anledning af en disputats,” Dansk teologisk tidsskrift 48, no. 3 (1985): 199–212, here 210; Kaspersen, “Majestas Domini,” 62–63. 13 “Post hec gloriosus Valdemarus, ¿lius sancti Kanuti ducis et martyris, ¿lij Herici regis Boni, a cunctis optimatibus Danie in regnum assumptus atque ab Eskillo archipresule in regem unctus et purpuratus et diademate gloriosissime coronatus atque in regni solio honori¿ce collocatus est anno dominice incarnacionis .M.C.LVII.” Martin C. Gertz, ed., Scriptores Minores Historiae Danicae Medii Aevi, vol. 1 (Copenhagen: Gad, 1917), 33. 14 Jørgen Olrik, trans., Den ældste Danmarkskrønike (Roskildekrøniken) (Copenhagen: Karl Schønberg, 1898); see more in Kaspersen, “Majestas Domini,” 62–63. 15 Saxo, Gesta Danorum, bk. 14, ch. 40:1; Kaspersen, “Majestas Domini,” 61–62. 16 Carl Christian Rafn, trans., Jomsvikinga Saga og Knytlinga: Tilligemed Sagabrudstykker og Fortællinger vedkommende Danmark (Copenhagen: Andreas Seidelin, 1829), 331–34. 17 Saxo does not use the verb ungere, “to anoint.” 18 “Annales Lundenses,” in Danmarks middelalderlige annaler, ed. Erik Kroman (Copenhagen: Selskabet for Udgivelse af Kilder til Dansk Historie, 1980), 58–59. 19 Saxo, Gesta Danorum, bk. 14, ch. 40:1.

126

Baptism and the King’s Coronation

noteworthy. Gatherings on St. John’s Day were not common, and required an explanation by the chronicler, aided by a traditional pagan holiday, celebrated either on 20 or 21 June. The translation of the relics of Canute Lavard and the coronation of the young Canute only took place on 25 June. There were two churches in Ringsted at that time: a Benedictine priory church consecrated to the Virgin Mary (from the late Middle Ages to St. Bendt), which was built of stone around 1080 next to the thingstead, and a parish church consecrated to St. John the Baptist (St. Hans), which was given to the priory by the bishop of Roskilde Peder Sunesøn (r. 1191–1214). After having been murdered near Ringsted on 7 January 1131, Canute Lavard was buried at the main altar of St. Mary’s Church, which turned it into a destination for pilgrimages. In 1146, Valdemar, together with his cousin Sven Grathe, made the ¿rst attempt to have his father canonised, taking his remains out of the tomb and placing them into a reliquary. This private initiative failed due to the opposition of Bishop Eskil.20 Around 1160 Valdemar started the reconstruction of the church. A magni¿cent eastern extension made of bricks, temporarily connected with the old nave, was constructed for the coronation.21 A stretched transept with a spacious chancel apse and small chapel apses Àanking it followed the rich building tradition of the Benedictines. It was both a pilgrimage church—Canute Lavard became a patron saint of the church next to St. Mary’s22—and a burial church for Valdemar’s family. As the remains of the new patron saint were “given to the altar,”23 we can assume that the ceremony of the consecration of the church was joined with the coronation ceremony. The complicated rite of consecrating a church was perfected during the reign of the Ottonian dynasty in the Holy Roman Empire in the tenth and eleventh centuries, when festive coronation ceremonies took place during the consecration of most important churches, giving the ruler a chance to show himself as a representative of Christ on earth and his leading role in the church.24 It is very likely that by the twelfth century the RomanoGermanic rite had replaced or pushed aside the shorter Roman rite; it can, Victor Hermansen and Poul Nørlund, Danmarks kirker: 5, Sorø amt, vol. 1 (Copenhagen: Gad, 1936), 109–10, 182; see more in Carsten Breengaard, Muren om Israels hus: Regnum og sacerdotium i Danmark 1050–1170 (Copenhagen: Gad, 1982). 21 Danmarks kirker: 5, Sorø amt, 1:128. 22 “1197: ecclesia b. Mariae et s. Kanuti martyris.” Ibid., 110. 23 “Et patris eius ossa arĊ traduntur.” Saxo, Gesta Danorum, bk. 14, ch. 40:12. 24 Karl Josef Benz, Untersuchungen zur politischen Bedeutung der Kirchweihe unter Teilnahme der deutschen Herrscher im hohen Mittelalter: Ein Beitrag zum Studium des Verhältnisses zwischen weltlicher Macht und kirchlicher Wirklichkeit unter Otto III. und Heinrich II (Kallmünz: Lassleben, 1975). 20

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

127

therefore, be assumed that the consecration of the Ringsted priory church followed that rite.25 All participants—the archbishops of Lund and Uppsala, the bishop of Oslo representing Norway, the nobility of the country (“nobilitas Danica”), all the bishops, prominent members of the clergy and a large crowd26—gathered in the morning in the vicinity of the church, probably on the thingstead, where a tent had been set up. As the bishop of the diocese held the right to conduct the rite of the consecration of the church, in Ringsted it was to be carried out by Valdemar’s good friend Absalon, the bishop of Roskilde. He was likely assisted by other heads of the church who were present. The sancti¿cation of water was conducted in the tent, accompanied by exorcism prayers, after which the procession carrying the relics headed to the northern portal of the new eastern extension. The thingstead was located on that side, while the convent building lay to the south. The bishop walked round the church three times, sprinkling holy water on it. Then he and his assistants entered the church. It was common for all laymen to stay behind the door with the other members of the clergy. However, Karl Josef Benz has pointed out in his research that the sovereign entered together with the bishops, thus demonstrating his involvement in the ecclesiastical community.27 A cross of ashes ran diagonally across the Àoor of the church. The bishop started in the left corner of the eastern part and wrote the Latin alphabet on the ashes with his crosier, ¿nishing in the right corner of the western part. He then went to the right corner of the eastern part and wrote the Greek alphabet onto the other diagonal. Simultaneously, the people present were singing the Song of Zechariah. This is a hymn of a priest, celebrating the coming of Christ into the world. The high priest (bishop) was preparing the location for the coming of the Lord, writing in the letters used to write down the Gospels. The form of the cross of ashes—the Greek letter Chi—also refers to Christ.28 The next part of the rite started in front of the altar, where the bishop sancti¿ed water and salt, accompanied by exorcism prayers. The sancti¿cation of the ashes followed. He then mixed the salt and ashes, divided this mixture into three portions and, marking it with a cross, poured them into the water. Lastly, wine was added. Singing, the bishop took the holy water to the main altar. Dipping his thumb into the water, he made signs of the cross in the middle of 25 Per Ström, Paradisi Recuperatio: Den romersk-germanska kyrkoinvigningens form och innebörd (Uppsala: Uppsala University, 1997). I would like to thank Per Ström for this comment. 26 “Annales Lundenses,” 59; Saxo, Gesta Danorum, bk. 14, ch. 40:1, 12. 27 Benz, Politische Bedeutung der Kirchweihe, 112. 28 Ström, Paradisi Recuperatio, 111–19.

128

Baptism and the King’s Coronation

the altar stone and in its four corners; he then sprinkled the altar with water, walking around it seven times, and sprinkled the walls, going around the church three times. Finally, he made a cross with holy water across the entire Àoor, this time in an east-west and a north-south direction. The centre of the cross coincided with the centre of the diagonal cross.29 The culmination of the whole rite was the anointment of the altar, which, as a “living stone,” embodied Christ, the head of the church. Initially, the bishop made signs of the cross with holy oil in the middle and the four corners of the altar stone; then he repeated them using chrism. At the same time, one of the assistants went round the altar with a censer. From the altar, the bishop moved into the church and made crosses with chrism with his thumb in twelve spots on the wall, marked with candles. He eventually anointed the altar again with holy oil.30 This was followed by the festive entrance into the church of all the invited guests, the placing of the relics on the altar, and a solemn Mass.31 The coronation likely occurred prior to the Mass, as was customary when crowning a sovereign during church holidays. This part of the rituals was conducted by Archbishop Eskil.32 A justi¿ed question might arise based on this reconstruction: whether it is correct to draw parallels between Canute’s coronation and the ceremonies in European courts of emperors and royal houses. This question can be answered in the af¿rmative. Arnold of Lübeck said that the Danes followed the customs and traditions of the Germans,33 and Saxo’s chronicle reveals a concealed admiration for the courts of Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony, and Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. On a twelfth-century Scandinavian ruler such a ceremony of consecration would have had a completely different effect than on the European rulers of the time, since for the latter taking part in similar rituals would have been fairly common. This was, after all, the ¿rst time that the rite of consecration of a church was conjoined with the coronation ceremony. The rite of consecration bears a remarkable resemblance to the rite of baptism,34 which, in the borderlands of Christian civilisation, manifested the victory and the new coming of Christ, drawing obvious parallels through anointment between Christ and the ruler. This would explain why baptismal fonts became the most widespread form of visual medium during the reigns of Ibid., 121–27. Ibid., 141–49. 31 Ibid., 177–89. 32 Saxo, Gesta Danorum, bk. 14, ch. 40:12. 33 Die Chronik Arnolds von Lübeck, trans. Johann C. M. Laurent (Berlin: Besser, 1853), bk. 3, ch. 5. 34 Ström, Paradisi Recuperatio, 130, 225–26. 29 30

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

129

Valdemar and Canute. One should try to imagine the shocking experience that the Danish nobility received when they entered, in the context of their time, the exceptionally elaborate space, where the Àoor was covered with the sign of Christ, the ruler of the world, and where a ceremony was conducted with rituals showing the divine origin of their ruler and his family. Written sources support the above contention. Saxo’s description of Valdemar’s journey to honour Frederick Barbarossa in 1162 is the most expressive one. When Valdemar travelled through Germany, mothers came with their children and had the king touch them, believing that the children would thereby become healthy and successful.35 This episode demonstrates that similar powers of bringing good luck and health were attributed to Valdemar as to the kings of France and England: the will of God was expressed through the touch of the sovereign. The king received these miraculous powers through coronation, being anointed with oil of unearthly origin. In his research on magic-working kings, Marc Bloch has shown how ruling dynasties used the healing powers attributed to them to curtail the power of feudal lords, since their supernatural powers placed them outside the system of feudal law.36 This legend presents a strong argument in favour of the truthfulness of the Roskilde chronicles, as such supernatural powers could not have been attributed to an unanointed king of Denmark. The visit to the emperor took place ¿ve years after receiving the title of Sole King. The typological parallel, from Saxo’s chronicle, between Christ and Valdemar, drawn by Thomas Riis, is also signi¿cant. Just as the events in the Old Testament prophesied the events of the New Testament, it is possible to divide the sixteen books of Gesta Danorum into two or even four parts, and see in the events of the ¿rst books prophesies of the events of the later books. Thus the birth of Christ in the ¿fth book and the birth of Valdemar in the thirteenth book can be viewed as parallels.37 Also, the fact that Valdemar was born on the eighth day after the murder of Canute Lavard is noteworthy.38 The “history” of the Valdemar dynasty, Ordinale sancti Kanuti ducis et martyris,39 compiled for the canonisation and coronation ceremonies, also Saxo, Gesta Danorum, bk. 14, ch. 28:13. Marc Bloch, Die wundertätigen Könige, trans. Claudia Märtl (Munich: Beck, 1998), 24–25, 220–21. Orig. publ. as Les rois thaumaturges: Étude sur le caractère surnaturel attribué à la puissance royale particulièrement en France et en Angleterre (Strasbourg: Istra, 1924). 37 Thomas Riis, Einführung in die Gesta Danorum des Saxo Grammaticus (Odense: University Press of Southern Denmark 2006), 23. 38 Saxo, Gesta Danorum, bk. 13, ch. 7:3. 39 Martin C. Gertz, ed., Vitae Sanctorum Danorum (Copenhagen: Gad, 1908–12), 171–241. 35 36

130

Baptism and the King’s Coronation

relies on typological parallels with the New Testament and includes two legends. In the Passion legend, Canute Lavard is compared to the Lamb led to slaughter, and his murderer Magnus is claimed to have become an accomplice to Judas’ betrayal through the kiss of peace. In the opinion of Tue Gad, these are not ordinary legends of saints, but rather a biography of rex iustus. Equally extraordinary is also the legend of the Translation. It does not speak of miracles, as would be expected, but rather of Valdemar’s role in the process of translation and his patronage in the welfare of his country, and can, therefore, be considered a hymn to both the living Valdemar and the dead Canute. Gad suggests that the entire ordinale may have been intended to be presented on the day of translation and coronation, i.e. 25 June.40 Riis goes even further in drawing typological parallels, viewing the successive feasts as days dedicated to forerunners: St. John the Baptist was the precursor of Christ, just as Canute Lavard was the precursor of Valdemar. This also corresponds to the royal ideology expressed in Gesta Danorum: while in the case of the earlier twelfth-century Danish kings it was stressed that they imitated the emperor, with Valdemar the imitation of Christ is included.41 Proceeding from the above, it can be assumed that the people summoned for the feast of St. John the Baptist were prepared for the coming of the “Messiah,” and that different methods of propaganda, including visual ones, were used to bring the message home to them.

The king’s advent There is a baptismal font in St. Bendt’s Church in Ringsted, the appearance of which has suffered from having been exposed to the elements for a long time; the reliefs have partly faded, yet the pictorial programme is still readable. The baptismal basin presents the following scenes: the Annunciation, Visitation, Nativity, Adoration of the Magi, Dream of the Magi, Flight to Egypt and Entry into Jerusalem. The baptismal font is a part of a group of twenty-three fonts made on the island of Gotland.42 The basin of one of these fonts in the Aakirkeby Tue Gad, Legenden i dansk middelalder (Copenhagen: Dansk Videnskabs Forlag, 1961), 163–66. 41 Riis, Einführung in die Gesta Danorum, 159, 161. 42 Five baptismal fonts are located in Gotland, three in Denmark, one in northern Germany, two in Scania, and the rest in other counties of Sweden. Jan Svanberg, “Stenskulpturen,” in Signums svenska konsthistoria, vol. 3, Den romanska konsten, ed. Lennart Karlsson (Lund: Signum, 1995), 117–227, here 205; Johnny Roosval, Die 40

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

131

church on the island of Bornholm has a Gotlandic runic inscription: “Look straight at this—Master Sigraif [made this].” 43 They mostly depict motifs from the childhood of Christ (scenes with the Three Kings are dominant), together with a few episodes from the Passion, but the most signi¿cant feature on the fonts made by Sigraf (or his workshop) is the announcing angel with a palm in his hand. According to Mia Åkestam, this motif is not found on any other baptismal font. 44 She claims that the announcing angel with the palm is used as a reference to the crusade and mission in the Baltic region, in which the island of Gotland played a crucial strategic role.45 As St. Bendt’s Church in Ringsted was a royal funerary church and Aakirkeby on Bornholm (the island on the crusade route) the archbishop’s church, it is well justi¿ed to see the whole production of Sigraf in a bishopric and royal context. Åkestam suggests that the baptismal fonts of the churches in Ringsted and Aakirkeby are the oldest ones, dating from between 1170 and 1177.46 On this basis, it is interesting to note that only one of Sigraf’s fonts, the one in Ringsted, features the scene of the Entry into Jerusalem. It presents Christ entering Jerusalem on a donkey, being met by a man who throws his coat on the ground before the approaching donkey. Associated with this, Mia Åkestam has offered a parallel to the Copenhagen Psalter, which presents Christ entering Jerusalem, being met with a palm frond and a coat spread at his feet. Above Christ’s head is an enormous cross, carried by an angel descending from the sky.47 According to the research by Patricia Stirnemann, English masters were involved in illustrating the Psalter; it was, however, most probably made in the Abbey of Saint-Victor in Paris. Since the manuscript included the alphabet and the Pater Noster, it was most likely meant for a young person to learn to read. Stirnemann is of the opinion that the manuscript was commissioned Steinmeister Gottlands: Eine Geschichte der führenden Taufsteinwerkstätte des schwedischen Mittelalters, ihrer Voraussetzungen und Begleit-Erscheinungen (Stockholm: Fritze, 1918), 169–88. 43 Sonne de Torrens, “De Fontibus Salvatoris,” 2:3. 44 Mia Åkestam, Bebådelsebilder: Om bildbruk under medeltiden (Stockholm: Sällskapet Runica et Mediaevalia, 2010), 100–41, ¿g. 36. 45 Ibid., 133–41; see more about crusade and mission in Kersti Markus, Från Gotland till Estland: Kyrkokonst och politik under 1200-talet (Kristianstad: Mercur Consulting, 1999); John H. Lind, Carsten Selch Jensen, Kurt Villads Jensen, and Ane L. Bysted, Danske korstog – krig og mission i Østersøen (Copenhagen: Høst & Søn, 2004). 46 Åkestam, Bebådelsebilder, 136. 47 Ibid., 129–30.

132

Baptism and the King’s Coronation

speci¿cally for the coronation festivities mentioned above, the young person being Canute.48 The entry of Christ into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday became a prototype for the reception of medieval rulers, e.g. upon their entry into towns or convents, and in the course of this rite upon the ruler was bestowed the likeness of Christ. This is an ancient ritual with roots in antiquity.49 Ernst H. Kantorowicz has called this “historical” adventus. However, in the context of the present treatment, the second type of adventus, the “eschatological,” becomes far more important. “It responds with the verse ‘Ecce mitto angelum meum…,’ which is still prescribed in the present Ponti¿cale Romanum as an antiphon for the reception of emperors. . . . And, ever since the tenth century, it serves as an Introitus in Orders of Royal and Imperial Coronations.” According to Kantorowicz, the verse refers to St. John the Baptist, who, as God’s messenger, prepared for the coming of Jesus. “As St. John the Baptist, who compares with an angel, is the precursor of the Lord, so is the angel of God visualized as the forerunner—or quite precisely as the cursor—of the Messianic king [rex justus].”50 The illustration of the Copenhagen Psalter appears to deliver the same message. On the Ringsted font, the Entry into Jerusalem is depicted right after the scene of the Flight to Egypt (¿g. 1), creating extremely clear visual ties between the two compositions and thereby emphasising Christ’s triumphant entry as Lord and King.51 It is noteworthy that of all the baptismal fonts made in Sigraf’s workshop, only this one features, in the scene of the Nativity, a broad stream of light falling upon the reclining Virgin from the cradle of the Christ child above her. Harriet Sonne de Torrens thinks that this represents a direct reference to the chant Lumen Christi, which ushers in the beginning of the Easter Vigil, the time of baptism. “Let too our mother the Church be glad, ¿nding herself adorned in the radiance of so great a light.”52 What should be observed, however, is that the picture in question next features the Three Kings, who, in terms of the correct sequence of scenes, should move from left to right to lay Patricia Stirnemann, “Københavnerpsalteret,” in Levende ord & lysende billeder: Den middelalderlige bogkultur i Danmark, ed. Erik Petersen (Copenhagen: Det Kongelige Bibliotek, 1999), 67–77. 49 Ernst H. Kantorowicz, “The ‘King’s Advent’ and the Enigmatic Panels in the Doors of Santa Sabina,” The Art Bulletin 26 (1944): 207–31; Gerd Althoff, Spielregeln der Politik im Mittelalter: Kommunikation in Frieden und Fehde (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1997), 230. 50 Kantorowicz, “King’s Advent,” 217. 51 Sonne de Torrens, “De Fontibus Salvatoris,” 1:195–96. 52 Ibid., 271–72. 48

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

133

Fig. 1. Flight to Egypt and Entry into Jerusalem. Baptismal font of St. Bendt’s Church in Ringsted, 1170. Photo: Thomas W. Lassen. gifts for the Son of God in the lap of the enthroned Mary, just as it has been depicted on all of Sigraf’s other fonts. Yet they are approaching from the right to bear gifts to the Christ child in the Nativity scene, from which light radiates. The two scenes have been visually joined and their interpretation matches the beginning of the Gospel of John, “That [i.e. Christ] was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world” (1:9). On Romanesque fonts, the scene of the Annunciation traditionally points to the idea of the Incarnation of Christ;53 the Visitation that follows it is a popular scene on Gotlandic and Scanian baptismal fonts, but does not appear on fonts outside Scandinavia. Sonne de Torrens treats the concurrence of both scenes as a visual reference to the Gospel readings for the Advent season. In the twelfth century, these would include the events regarding St. John the Baptist and his prophecies.54 In the case of baptismal fonts, however, we could consider another option as well: a work commissioned for a special occasion. The subject matter of all seven reliefs on the Ringsted font is the delivering of the message of the coming of the Messiah and his triumphant entry into Jerusalem. The Archangel Gabriel brings the message to the Virgin Mary 53 54

Ibid., 207. Ibid., 119.

134

Baptism and the King’s Coronation

and, when she greets her relative, St. John the Baptist moves in Elisabeth’s womb, recognising the Son of God. The three kings bear gifts to the luminous Christ child and receive a message from an angel in their sleep to return home and talk about what they have witnessed. And then Christ enters as the Lord and King. The iconographic programme of the Ringsted baptismal font, therefore, matches the message of the written sources, heralding the coming of the Messiah mentioned above. It is not quite clear whether the baptismal font was initially commissioned for the priory or for St. John’s Church. In 1571 the abbey55 was turned into a parish church and the furnishings of St. John’s Church were relocated there.56 In reality, the church was under the convent’s patronage as early as the twelfth century and, since the Benedictine convents held the right to baptise, cases of the baptismal font being located in the abbey rather than the parish church are not rare.57 Considering the message of the rituals of 25 June, the priory church would, nevertheless, be the most probable location. It is likely to have been located in the transept at the northern portal,58 on a high pedestal, as was characteristic in Scandinavia.

Christ in Majesty The baptismal font of the Tryde church in Scania bears four pairs of high relief ¿gures. Two pairs are embracing each other: a woman and a man affectionately, touching each other’s chins (¿g. 2), and two men less affectionately, one of them wearing the headdress of a German duke, the other a lily-shaped crown of a king (¿g. 3). The third pair depicts a young boy holding a sword in one hand and with the other touching the imperial crown with arches, held by an older man (¿g. 4). The fourth pair is comprised of two old men, holding vessels for ointments in their hands (¿g. 5). There is an obvious reference to the anointment during the coronation; however, why are there two vessels? Is it just a coincidence, an artistic effect, since all the other ¿gures are presented in pairs? In his article on the political theology of the age of Otto III, Robert Deshman has pointed out the fact that on the images of coronation in the Warmund Ringsted priory became an abbey in the mid-thirteenth century. Danmarks kirker: 5, Sorø amt, 1:186. Before its demolition in the eighteenth century, St. John’s Church was described as a simple structure without decor or a tower. 57 John Gordon Davies, The Architectural Setting of Baptism (London: Barrie and Rockliff, 1962), 53–58. 58 In the rural churches of Scandinavia, baptismal fonts were mostly located in the middle of the nave but, since Ringsted was an abbey, the access of the people to the entire church space had to be limited. 55 56

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

Fig. 2. The marital embrace on the Tryde baptismal font. Photo: Per Bergström.

135

Fig. 3. King Valdemar I and Duke Henry the Lion on the Tryde baptismal font. Photo: Per Bergström.

Sacramentary a man is holding two small containers of holy oil, although only one, holding chrism, is required for anointment. He comes to the conclusion that using two containers symbolically points to a double anointment: coronation unction and baptismal anointing. It combines the anointment of kings in the Old Testament with the baptism of Jesus in the River Jordan. “Although the king at his coronation was salved only once, the two ampullae . . . indicate that this unction, like that of baptism, embues the sovereign with sacerdotal as well as royal power. . . . In other words the assimilation of a ruler’s coronation to baptism is a guise for his assimilation to Christ.”59 The baptismal font clearly conveys this message: between the ¿gures of the king, wearing a lily-shaped crown, and the two old men with vessels, there is a low relief scene showing the image of the Lord enthroned in majesty on a rainbow within a mandorla supported by two angels, i.e. Majestas Domini (¿g. 6). 59 Robert Deshman, “Otto III and the Warmund Sacramentary: A Study in Political Theology,” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 34 (1971): 1–20, here 11, 14.

136

Baptism and the King’s Coronation

Fig. 4. Canute (VI) and a man holding a crown on the Tryde baptismal font. Photo: Per Bergström.

Fig. 5. Men holding vessels for ointments on the Tryde baptismal font. Photo: Per Bergström.

The iconographic programme of the baptismal font from Tryde has aroused the interest of several researchers.60 The most exhaustive study has been published by Jan Svanberg, who links the ¿gures to the coronation ceremony in Ringsted. In his opinion, the young boy with the sword represents Canute, who is wearing a crown with arches on his seal (¿g. 4). The two men embracing each other could be Canute Lavard, who was the Duke of Schleswig, and his son Valdemar I, who is depicted on coins wearing a lily-shaped crown (¿g. 3). The second embracing pair is not mentioned in the interpretation.61 The connection between the ¿gures and the coronation ceremony seems obvious, though Canute Lavard should, in that case, have been depicted with a Johnny Roosval, Sveriges och Danmarks östliga konstförbindelser under medeltiden (Stockholm: Konsthistoriska Sällskapet, 1917), 7–10; Torkil Eriksson, “Fridolinslegenden i Tryde,” Ale: Historisk tidskrift för Skåneland, no. 3 (1968): 1–15. 61 Jan Svanberg, “The Legend of Saint Stanislaus and King Boleslaus on the 12th Century Font in Tryde, Sweden,” Folia Historiae Artium, n.s., 5/6 (1999–2000): 25–42. 60

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

137

Fig. 6. Majestas Domini motif between two pairs of high relief ¿gures. Baptismal font of the Tryde church, Scania. Photo: Per Bergström.

138

Baptism and the King’s Coronation

halo instead of a German duke’s crown, which after the conquering of Rügen would no longer have been appropriate for the political image of Denmark. Even though the king of Denmark was the vassal of the Holy Roman emperor, emphasising one’s independence became an important matter after military victories and coronation. However, Valdemar had a friend, the German Duke Henry the Lion. Saxo was not fond of him, contrary to Valdemar. In 1159 Henry and Valdemar concluded a pact of friendship62 and, to strengthen the pact, Valdemar’s one-year-old son Canute was betrothed in 1164 to Henry’s daughter Richenza, and after her death to her sister Gertrud, with the wedding taking place in February, 1177, in the Lund Cathedral.63 Despite Valdemar’s ties through his mother to the families of the grand princes of Russia and through his wife So¿a to the royal family of Poland, creating bonds through wedlock to Henry the Lion was special. Being married to Matilda, the daughter of the English King Henry II, the Duke of Saxony was part of the European elite.64 If one of the embracing pairs was the expression of the friendship pact between the king and the duke, then the second pair (fig. 2) would be reminiscent of the depictions of Christ and the Virgin Mary as sponsus and sponsa in the Song of Solomon.65 Yet, since both lack halos, it can not be the mythical bride and bridegroom on the baptismal font from Tryde. The man’s position in the heraldic dexter also speaks against it, as in the present context the space should have been reserved for the Virgin Mary. The style of dress of both ¿gures, different from the others—clad in similar close ¿tting tunics with narrow embroidered sleeves, Àoor length coats and the woman’s low headdress66—refers to the Byzantine tradition. Moreover, the depictions of Byzantine imperial couples always show the man on the heraldic dexter and Helmolds Slavenchronik, ed. Bernhard Schmeidler, 3rd ed. (Hannover: Hahn, 1937), bk. 1, ch. 87. 63 Saxo, Gesta Danorum, bk. 14, ch. 30:1; Rafn, Jomsvikinga Saga og Knytlinga, 348–49; Johannes C. H. R. Steenstrup, “Gertrud,” in Dansk biogra¿sk Lexikon, ed. Carl F. Bricka, vol. 6, Gerson – H. Hansen (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1892), 10. 64 Joachim Ehlers, Heinrich der Löwe: Eine Biographie (Munich: Siedler, 2008), 185–97. 65 “His left hand is under my head, and his right hand doth embrace me” (Song of Sol. 2:6); e.g., the Ratmann Sacramentary from St. Michael’s in Hildesheim, 1159, DomMuseum in Hildesheim, inv. no. DS 37; the Bible from the Augustinian convent of Hammersleben, ca. 1180, Domschatz in Halberstadt, MS 1. 66 Melita Emmanuel, “Hairstyles and Headdresses of Empresses, Princesses, and Ladies of the Aristocracy in Byzantium,” Deltion of the Christian Archaeological Society 17 (1994): 113–20, ¿g. 13g. 62

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

139

the woman on the heraldic sinister side.67 The topic could, therefore, well have been marriage, not in its earthly meaning, but rather referring to spiritual love. Both Bernard of Clairvaux and Hugh of Saint-Victor considered spiritual friendship the highest form of love. While Bernard, above all, referred to friendship between men, Hugh stressed the love between a man and a woman, as “woman was given to man as a comrade, not a servant or a mistress.”68 For Hugh, marriage was a sacrament, but only when both spouses were Christians, since there could be no redemption without baptism. Even a virgin could be in an ideal marriage, as the biggest mystery was the union of two souls, not carnal love. The best example of an ideal marriage for the supporters of this idea was the Holy Family. Theological debates over the sacrament of marriage brought about a more humane attitude to it and inÀuenced Pope Alexander III (r. 1159–81) to carry out a fundamental change in the marriage law: a marriage would be valid only when it was the free will of the bride and groom, not forced upon them by their families. However, Alexander believed that it was possible to annul an unconsummated marriage.69 The head of the church in Denmark must have been well informed of the theological discussions on the sacrament of marriage, since St. Bernard was a good friend of Bishop Eskil of Lund and, during his years of exile (1161–67), Eskil visited Alexander III in Sense as well as at the Abbey of Saint-Victor in Paris.70 It is also remarkable that the spiritual union of Mary and Joseph is one of the most widespread motifs on Scanian and Gotlandic Romanesque baptismal fonts,71 which could be viewed as an attempt by the church to explain the essence of the sacrament of marriage on the local scale. To Danish landlords of noble origin, this new marriage law of the church was de¿nitely unacceptable, as it contradicted the provincial laws and granted women too many rights, including the legally valid right to inherit.72 According to the words of Arnold of Lübeck, Gertrud and Canute were known for their piety and virtue,73 corresponding fully to the Victorine view of a model of ideal marriage. The depiction of the marital embrace on the baptismal font from Dena Marie Woodall, “Sharing Space: Double Portraiture in Renaissance Italy” (PhD diss., Dept. of Art History and Art, Case Western Reserve University, 2008), 118. 68 Christopher N. L. Brooke, The Medieval Idea of Marriage (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1989), 267. 69 Ibid., 268–69, 277–80. 70 Lauritz Weibull, “Ärkebiskop Eskil av Lund och klostret St. Victor i Paris,” Scandia: Tidskrift för historisk forskning 13, no. 2 (1940): 158–70, here 158–59. 71 Sonne de Torrens, “De Fontibus Salvatoris,” 1:242–65. 72 Birgit Sawyer, “Saxo – Valdemar – Absalon,” Scandia: Tidskrift för historisk forskning 51, no. 1 (1985): 33–60, here 50. 73 Die Chronik Arnolds von Lübeck, bk. 3, ch. 5. 67

140

Baptism and the King’s Coronation

Tryde sets in a new light the idea presented by a number of researchers that, besides Valdemar, his queen Sophia could have been the commissioner of the font.74 To summarise the entire pictorial programme of the baptismal font from Tryde, the double chrismatory refers to the cult of the ruler: “Baptismal unction into spiritual kinship with Christ assumed the character of a coronation unction, assimilating the king in his terrestrial of¿ce to the heavenly ruler Christ.”75 The couple holding the vessels for ointments are placed between the scenes depicting Valdemar and Canute, which conveys a message of Valdemar aiming to make his divine right as a king hereditary in his family. The depiction of a married couple on the font may be a reference to the sacrament of marriage, but may also be a reference to the new married couple and the royal donor pair. The representation of the Danish royal family members and the Duke of Saxony on the baptismal font express the rulers’ hope for eternal life. The idea most likely came from Henry the Lion. Such an assumption is substantiated by the dedication text by Henry and his wife Matilde in the Gospel Book (dated between 1175 and 1188), which was made for the duke on commission at the Benedictine abbey in Helmarshausen, intended for the altar of the Virgin Mary in the Brunswick Cathedral: This Book of God unites the noble couple. . . . Their generosity exceeds all glorious deeds of their predecessors. . . . One of their gifts is this gold-gleaming book, which is solemnly offered to you, Christ, in the hope of eternal life. May they be received in the ranks of the Righteous!76

The dedication picture of the Gospel Book also shows high self-esteem: Henry and Matilde are led by St. Blasius and St. Aegidius to the Virgin Mary and the Son of God on the throne in heaven, as well as the scene of heavenly coronation, where Christ places crowns on their heads as a reference to spiritual coronation. The ecclesiastical reform of Pope Gregory VII (r. 1073–85) took the sacred aura away from secular rulers, and the aforementioned pictures, Svanberg, “Legend of Saint Stanislaus,” 40; Per Beskow, “Drottningar och helgondråpare: Skånska dopfuntar med historiska scener,” in Förbistringar och förklaringar: Festskrift till Anders Piltz, ed. Per Beskow, Stephan Borgehammar, and Arne Jönsson (Lund: Skåneförlaget, 2008), 84–89. 75 Robert Deshman, The Benedictional of Aethelwold (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), 212. 76 “Dieses Buch Gottes vereint das edle Liebespaar. … Ihre Freigebigkeit übertrifft alle ruhmreichen Taten ihrer Vorgänger. … Eines ihrer Geschenke ist dieses von Gold glänzende Buch, das dir, Christus, in der Hoffnung auf das ewige Leben feierlich dargebracht wird. Mögen sie in die Schar der Gerechten aufgenommen werden.” Ehlers, Heinrich der Löwe, 313. 74

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

141

therefore, represent the idea of the tenth- and eleventh-century rulers and their relation to power, rather than the understandings of the time.77 Very high self-esteem is also displayed in the pictorial programme of the baptismal font in the Tryde church. An unexpected parallel in style connects the Duke of Saxony and the baptismal font in Tryde. One of the old men, holding the vessel for ointment, has his hair and beard arranged in small ball-shaped locks. The same hairstyle can be seen on an illustration of Henry the Lion’s Psalter, where the old Simeon recognises in Jesus, presented in the temple, the one anointed by God and holds him. The Psalter has been dated between 1168 and 1189.78 An inevitable question arises when analysing the iconographic programme of the Tryde baptismal font: why was it necessary to declare such a message on a Scanian font? This can be explained thus: through marriage, Canute received the title of King of Scania and Halland.79 Tryde was situated six kilometres from the royal estate (kungsgård) of Nedraby, at the intersection of important roads. Considering the imposing appearance and rich furnishings of the church, demolished in the nineteenth century, it could have been Canute’s dowry. While Jutland had been the centre of royal power for centuries and Zealand became a centre in Valdemar’s time, for Scania royal power was far away. It seems, therefore, that it was Valdemar’s aim to bring the royal power closer to the people of Scania through a co-regent. The motif of Majestas Domini forwarded a message understood by all: the king of Denmark was God’s vice-regent on earth.

Conclusion The ceremony of the inauguration of a ruler by anointing and coronation made the king’s sacral dignity perceivable to everybody present. The divine atmosphere of the solemn event left nobody indifferent. But since inauguration was merely a single occasion, the sovereign had to make sure that the sacral glory would not fade. Therefore, festive entries into towns and convents, church services on major ecclesiastical holidays with a symbolic coronation of a king and weddings served that purpose extremely well.80 The Ringsted ceremony was probably the ¿rst event in Denmark comparable to the rituals of other European royals. However, it could not have been Ibid., 314. Ibid., 313. 79 “Annales Lundenses,” 59. 80 Franz-Reiner Erkens, Herrschersakralität im Mittelalter: Von den Anfängen bis zum Investiturstreit (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2006), 166–72. 77 78

142

Baptism and the King’s Coronation

the ¿rst church coronation of a king. It can rather be interpreted as a signi¿cant link in the process of Valdemar claiming divinity by showing his descent from a saint and consolidating the power within his family. Søren Kaspersen has demonstrated that the motif of Majestas Domini appeared on the Danish murals long before 1170, becoming, however, the dominant topic during the reigns of Valdemar (1157–82) and Canute VI (1182–1202). In western Europe, the emergence and spread of the motif coincides with the introduction of theocratic royal ideology, i.e. from the era of the Carolingians until the end of the eleventh century.81 The parallel development becomes obvious in the documents of the royal chancellery. The term maiestas is mentioned for the ¿rst time in the arengas of Danish royal diplomas during the ¿rst years of Valdemar’s rule. During the reign of Canute VI, a change in the nature of royal power can be observed: the king, by the grace of God, has become a king who passes judgement and punishes like God.82 A similar change is obvious in the iconography of the two baptismal fonts: while the Ringsted font presents the solemn entry of Christ as Lord and King, becoming a symbolic parallel to the festive entry of sovereigns, the baptismal font from Tryde depicts the rulers themselves in the company of Christ as Judge. The choice to present such a message on a baptismal font was directly connected with associating the rituals of baptism and coronation. Both objects were apparently meant to “save” the events, as well as to “memorialise” them forever in the minds of the Danish people. Interpreting historical events from the point of view of a single discipline raises the danger of remaining one-sided. Fragmentary written sources and extreme source criticism can lead to results which distort our general understanding of society. Art historians’ focus on objects alone can also be problematic, as this leaves the study of context to historians. In the Middle Ages, man was inÀuenced by numerous rituals, which were part of everyday life and represented important state ceremonials, which in their uniqueness left a permanent trace in the participant’s mind. Such events rarely found expression in written sources, or were just mentioned brieÀy. At the same time, because of their importance, they were often reÀected in many different ways, and therefore “reconstructing” and focusing on them might help us both interpret works of art and view the existing historical sources in a different light.

Kaspersen, “Majestas Domini,” 58; Kaspersen, “Muren om Israels hus,” 212. Nanna Damsholt, “Kingship in the Arengas of Danish Royal Diplomas 1140–1223,” Mediaeval Scandinavia 3 (1970): 66–108, here 84–85, 99. 81 82

IN BETWEEN THE SECULAR AND THE RELIGIOUS: ART, RITUAL AND SCIENCE IN THE FUNERAL CHAPEL OF REINOUD III OF BREDERODE, LORD OF VIANEN (1491–1556), AND HIS WIFE, PHILIPOTTE DE LA MARCK (D. 1537), IN THE REFORMED CHURCH OF VIANEN

JULIETTE RODING AND NICO HIJMAN In the Netherlands, a few free-standing funeral monuments from the sixteenth century demonstrate how local noblemen and lords, in the wake of Renaissance royals, deliberately chose new memorial practices and rituals to show the world the fame of their families in the past and present, their piety, their knowledge of history and their awareness of current movements in art and science.1 These monuments were erected in semi-partitioned private chapels, which became the family nucleus for generations. The chapels, with their freestanding monuments, altarpieces, elaborate wooden rood screens, paintings and stained-glass windows, once encompassed, in a sometimes open, sometimes hidden rhetoric, references to the social status of the founder, his family members and his forefathers. Whenever possible, the body of each deceased person of the family in later times was transferred to the chapel, where it was put on a lit de parade, close to the funeral monument, in a temporary tableau of family coats of arms, banners and draperies, before it was put in the family crypt. In this way, the relationship between the deceased relative and the person(s) shown on the monument, the altar, triptych etc. became clear to all those who were allowed to enter the chapel to celebrate Mass or a service. It was the family’s most important lieu de mémoire and a ritual centre that was taken care of as long as possible.2

Krista de Jonge, “Antikisches und Antikisierendes im hö¿schen Kontext: Adelsarchitektur in den südlichen Niederlanden im frühen 16. Jahrhundert,” in Wege zur Renaissance: Beobachtungen zu den Anfängen neuzeitlicher Kunstauffassung im Rheinland und in den Nachbargebieten um 1500, ed. Norbert Nußbaum, Claudia Euskirchen, and Stephan Hoppe (Cologne: SH-Verlag, 2003), 187–209. 2 See Truus van Bueren, ed., Care for the Here and the Hereafter: Memoria, Art and Ritual in the Middle Ages (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005); for recent literature on the theory of rituals, see the contribution of Birgitte Bøggild Johannsen in this volume. 1

144

In Between the Secular and the Religious

In this article, we will concentrate on the chapel with the funeral monument that Reinoud III of Brederode, Lord (Seigneur) of Vianen (1491–1556), erected for himself and his wife, Philipotte de la Marck (d. 1537), in the wing on the north side of the Reformed Church of Vianen, a small town south of Utrecht in the Netherlands (¿g. 1).3 First we will shed light on some important historical events that took place around the time the monument was erected. Then we will brieÀy describe the funeral monument in the context of the chapel and the church. Following this, we will consider the political, social and cultural backgrounds, and the ambitions of Reinoud III of Brederode, to ¿nd explanations for the design and the symbolic content of the funeral monument and the chapel as a whole.

Historical context In 1540, Charles V held triumphal entrées in some major towns in the northern part of the Netherlands to suppress the anti-Habsburg sentiments in these regions. He visited Dordrecht, Rotterdam, Delft, The Hague, Haarlem, Amsterdam, Utrecht, Gorinchem, ’s-Hertogenbosch, Breda and Bergen op Zoom, as well as many smaller towns and villages. From 14 to 18 August the most magni¿cent “Joyous Entry” of all was held, in Utrecht. The presence of the emperor was a unique event for the Dutch towns; the temporary triumphal arches in Renaissance style and his building commissions, for instance for the modernisation of the town hall in Utrecht, proved to be major stimuli for the spread of what is called the “sincere” Renaissance style in the Netherlands.4 On 10 August 1540 a huge ¿re raged through Vianen, destroying the southern part of the town and also the major part of a church that had its origins in 3 Jos A. L. de Meyere, Het grafmonument van Reinoud III van Brederode in de Grote Kerk te Vianen: Een meesterwerk van de Utrechtse beeldhouwer Colyn de Nole (Utrecht: Matrijs, 2010). 4 See Derk P. Snoep, Praal en propaganda: Triumfalia in de Noordelijke Nederlanden in de 16de en 17de eeuw / Pomp and Propaganda: Pageantry in the Northern Netherlands in the 16th and 17th Century (Alphen aan den Rijn: Canaletto, 1975); Wouter Th. Kloek, Willy Halsema-Kubes, and Reinier J. Baarsen, Art Before the Iconoclasm: Northern Netherlandish Art, 1525–1580 (’s-Gravenhage: Staatsuitgeverij, 1986, published in conjunction with the exhibition shown at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam); Bob van den Boogert, “De triomfen van de keizer: De verheerlijking van Karel V en de toepassing van antieke motieven in de Nederlandse kunst,” in Bob van den Boogert and Jacqueline Kerkhoff, Maria van Hongarije: Koningin tussen keizers en kunstenaars, 1505–1558 (Zwolle: Waanders, 1993, published in conjunction with the exhibition shown at the Rijksmuseum Het Catharijneconvent in Utrecht and the Noorbrabants Museum in ’s-Hertogenbosch), 220–33.

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

145

Fig. 1. Funeral monument of Reinoud III of Brederode and Philipotte de la Marck, 1542. Reformed Church of Vianen. Photo: Nico Hijman. the fourteenth century.5 Only part of the tower survived the Àames. Eight days later, on 18–19 August, Emperor Charles V visited “Vyanne” on his way from Utrecht to Gorinchem. He and his extensive court and a caravan of mules stayed the night at the castle of Reinoud III, Batenstein, less than a mile away from the town. Here supper was served.6 We do not know if Charles V—as he did in similar cases—donated money for the rebuilding of the town, but the fact is that Reinoud III at once started on the restoration of the town and the church. He decided that the northern wing of the choir would become the Brederode family chapel, and ordered a large and free-standing funeral monument for himself and his wife Philipotte, who had died three years earlier in childbirth. The monument was erected in the chapel in 1542, the year that is mentioned above the entrance door in the delicate wooden rood screen that separates the chapel from the church. De Meyere, Het grafmonument, 25–26, 173–74. Chrétien Dehaines et al., eds., Inventaire sommaire des Archives départementales antérieures à 1790, Nord: Archives civiles, Série B; Chambre des Comptes de Lille, 9 vols. (Lille: L. Danel, 1863–1908), 7:345; Anne Doedens and Henk Looijesteijn, eds., De kroniek van Henrica van Erp, abdis van Vrouwenklooster (Hilversum: Verloren, 2010), 158–59. 5 6

146

In Between the Secular and the Religious

The funeral monument The free-standing funeral monument of Vianen, sculpted in Baumberger and Avender stone, is a “double decker” monument. On the granite upper deck, we see Reinoud III and his wife as gisants, dressed in long robes, their faces resting on pillows and turned towards the east. Their eyes are closed, and their mouths are half open. Their hands are lying loosely crossed over one another. The knees of both Reinoud and Philipotte are slightly bent. Their depicted age corresponds with their real age: Philipotte at the time of her death, Reinoud as a ¿fty-year-old man, but their physiognomy is highly idealised (¿g. 2). Philipotte, whose garment is draped over her head, looks like a classical goddess or empress, and it should be noted that her breasts and nipples are shown very clearly through the fabric (¿g. 3). The artist paid a great deal of attention to her hands, which are both big and delicate. At the corners of the monument, there are four erotoi, each with one hand holding up the family coats of arms while the other hand holds a torch in an upside down position. At the front and the rear of the upper deck, there are two pairs of angels, holding on to a huge candelabrum or a column topped with an oil reservoir and a Àame (¿g. 4). The angels, which have a quite hermaphrodite-like appearance (“neutral” face, no breasts), are not wearing classical garments like Philipotte’s, but ¿ne dresses with sleeves that imitate contemporary Italian fashion. Their mouths are slightly open. The angel at the head of Reinoud is wearing a crown of laurel leaves. The angels seem to represent victory over death. They neutralise the death symbolism of the four erotoi on the corners of the monument. What is barely noticeable—and therefore probably not mentioned in recent Dutch publications—is that there are two pairs of medallions with classical heads concealed behind the heads and feet of Reinoud and Philipotte, on the inner sides of the richly adorned pedestals, on which the angels are standing. Under the couple, on the lower granite deck, there is a life-size transi, a half rotten cadaver, that—like the couple—is lying on a stone death mattress carved to resemble straw. Oversized worms are crawling out of the cadaver. Like the couple above, the transi has his knees bent (¿g. 5). The faces of Reinoud and his wife and those of the transi are directed towards a small stone altar, on which Reinoud and his sons and Philipotte and her daughters are represented alive. The altar stands—heavily damaged—some two meters away from the feet of the gisants. We do not know for sure what was in the main niche, but the composition with one central triumphal arch Àanked by two smaller triumphal arches, and the whole context in which it functions, seem to refer to a representation of the Resurrection. The two reliefs

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

Fig. 2. Detail: Reinoud III van Brederode and Philipotte de la Marck as gisants. Photo: Nico Hijman.

147

Fig. 3. Detail: head and breast of Philipotte de la Marck. Photo: Nico Hijman.

underneath represent the gift of Melchisedek and the rain of manna falling from heaven in the desert: two scenes from the Old Testament that predict the Eucharist and the Last Supper.7 The real body of Philipotte was buried in a new crypt under the chapel. The remnants of other family members who had previously been buried in a crypt under the central nave of the church were also transferred by Brederode to the new resting place. The chapel was originally separated completely from the church by a richly decorated wooden rood screen with a door that could be locked. Visitors could gain a glimpse of the monument through the wooden bars, but not come close to it. There were two possible ways for the family to attend a private Mass or (part of a) funeral ritual in their chapel: by grouping around the monument, sharing the view towards the priest and the See De Meyere, Het grafmonument, 137–53, and Trudi Brink, “Zorg voor levenden en doden: Het retabel in de kapel van de familie Van Brederode in de Grote Kerk te Vianen” (master’s thesis, School of Art History, Utrecht University, [2010]).

7

148

In Between the Secular and the Religious

altar with the gisants, or, even more isolated from the crowd in the church and at the same time more passively, by watching the service through several square openings in the side wall on the left side, where a small comfortable room with a ¿replace was located between the outer wall of the church and the chapel (now a reconstruction).8 Although Reinoud III seems to have been faithful to Catholicism all his life, he had a humanist curiosity for the new developments in religious matters: in his library we ¿nd books by Luther, Calvin and Menno Simons.9 There is no mention in the archives of the artist who made the funeral monument. Currently, the monument and the altar are generally attributed to the sculptor Colijn de Nole (1500–45/48) from Cambrai, who settled in Utrecht in 1530. The attribution is based on stylistic similarities with the only documented work of Colijn de Nole: the chimney breast in the town hall of Kampen, which was made shortly after the Brederode monument, in 1543–45.10

Technical details Some technical details of the funeral monument should be mentioned: between the lower and the upper decks, there were originally ten small stone balusters, of which fragments are kept in a box in the church. Originally, one column was placed on each short side and four on each long side. At some point, these ten stone balusters were replaced by fourteen wooden replicas. So, originally— even when standing outside the chapel—one had a better view of the transi. The stone erotoi and the angels have wooden wings. These wooden wings are not original but date back to the neo-Gothic restoration in 1877 by the architect Lucas H. Eberson (1822–89).11 We know that before that time the wings were made of plaster. It might be that these were remnants of an earlier restoration. This might also explain the wooden Àames and oil reservoirs, of which one was positioned upside down at a later date by mistake. 8 No will was left, and so unfortunately we do not know what orders Reinoud III gave in regard to masses and memorial services to be held in the new chapel, nor are we informed about other “good works” he had in mind. See Truus van Bueren and Wilhelmina C. M. Wüstefeld, Leven na de dood: Gedenken in de late Middeleeuwen (Turnhout: Brepols, 1999), 27–33. 9 Reinoud III’s half-sister Yolande had contacts with Calvin and corresponded with him (De Meyere, Het grafmonument, 74–75). 10 Trudi Brink, “Spiegel voor stadsbestuur nader onderzocht: Over de schouw van Colijn de Nole in Kampen,” Bulletin KNOB 108, no. 5/6 (2009): 183–93. Nico Hijmans discovered on the gable of Korte Nieuwstraat 2 in Utrecht Renaissance ornaments that are very similar to those on the rectangular bases on the corners of the funeral monument. 11 De Meyere, Het grafmonument, 119–31.

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

Fig. 4. Detail: erotoi and angels. Photo: Nico Hijman.

149

150

In Between the Secular and the Religious

Fig. 5. The transi on the lower deck of the funeral monument of Reinoud III and Philipotte de la Marck. Photo: Nico Hijman.

But changes and repairs may well have been made long before the nineteenth century. The year 1566 was the year of the Iconoclasm. On 25 September 1566 the son of Reinoud, Henry, Lord of Brederode (1531–68), gave orders to strip the church in Vianen of everything that was symbolic of the Catholic faith. He must, however, have made an exemption for the family chapel and had the most valuable objects (including the altarpiece) brought to Batenstein Castle before the attacks on religious objects began. We know from archival sources that, deep inside, like his father, Henry remained true to the Catholic faith all his life.12 Real damage to the chapel and the monuments undoubtedly occurred at other times. The late 1560s and 1570s, in many ways, were a troublesome period for Vianen. On 5 May 1567 Eric of Brunswick occupied the town. His soldiers partly demolished the forti¿cations and the walls, and started a spate of plundering. Henry took refuge in Amsterdam, leaving behind his men, who also joined in the plundering. Then Margaret of Parma decided that Brunswick had to leave Vianen, as she wanted to give the town to Charles, Count of Mansfeld. Shortly afterwards, the Count of Megen occupied Vianen. In 1577 the troops of William of Orange (a.k.a. William the Silent, 1533– 84), due to a heritage issue (Henry of Brederode died childless), successfully 12 Ibid., 107; Jos A. L. de Meyere, De N. H. Kerk te Vianen: Van kapel tot mausoleum der Brederodes (Vianen: Stichting Stedelijk Museum Vianen, 1990), 42; Albertus van Hulzen, De Grote Geus en het falende Driemanschap (Hilversum: Verloren, 1995), 63.

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

151

besieged Vianen and managed to occupy the town until 1584. It is said that, at this time, severe damage was inÀicted, but there is no archival evidence of this. Finally, in 1795 the French sans-culottes might have done their share of damage. But in all these cases we have no proof of what exactly happened. Of all the people mentioned, Eric of Brunswick is most likely to have damaged the chapel. He hated Brederode and tried to demolish as many of his enemy’s possessions as possible.13

Reinoud III of Brederode and Philipotte de la Marck We saw how, in 1540, Emperor Charles V and his court stayed the night at Batenstein Castle. Reinoud III of Brederode, although not of noble stock, was a high of¿cial at the court of Charles V. In 1517, at the age of twenty-six, he was a member of the group of noblemen and other of¿cials that escorted the emperor on his travels from the Netherlands to Spain. In 1521 Reinoud III married Philipotte de la Marck, the daughter of the French nobleman Robert II de la Marck, Lord of Sedan and Duke of Bouillon, and Catharina de Croy. Philipotte was a lady-in-waiting of Margaret of Austria, the governor of the Netherlands, in Mâlines. The noble couple had ¿ve daughters and four sons. The family mostly lived at Batenstein Castle. In 1531 Reinoud III became a member of the Privy Council of Charles V and a knight in the Order of the Golden Fleece (which is shown on one of the weapon shields on the funeral monument); Charles V tried, in this way, to strengthen the ties between himself and Reinoud. There were several quarrels between the two men about Vianen, which was still a “free town” within the Empire, and in 1533 Charles V even offered Reinoud III a county in exchange for Vianen, but Reinoud refused to accept the offer.14 Reinoud III and his wife obviously belonged to circles through which the new Renaissance culture was spreading quickly in the northern part of the Netherlands. The uncle of Philipotte de la Marck, Prince-Bishop of Liège Erard de la Marck, was one of the ¿rst to embrace the new style.15 Although Reinoud III is generally known for his bad behaviour (for which he almost lost his head and later his membership in the Order of the Golden Fleece), he should be given credit for amassing a ¿ne collection of books—many of them by classical writers—as well as coins and 13 14 15

Van Hulzen, De Grote Geus, 107–8. Ibid., 49–77. Ibid., 65–77.

152

In Between the Secular and the Religious

gems.16 In 1550, he commissioned a large woodcut, which shows his nineteen forefathers, the ¿rst of whom was a famous Trojan hero; this ancestry was a way of giving the Brederode family roots in antiquity.17 In the same period, Reinoud must have commissioned the oldest equestrian portrait in the northern Netherlands, which still hangs in the town hall of Vianen.18 It is based on Titian’s equestrian portrait of Charles V at the Battle of Mühlberg (1548).19 One should notice that in Brederode’s rather stiff portrait the horse’s equipment is far more colourful and luxurious than in Titian’s painting, which can be seen as an example of aemulatio. There were close contacts between Reinoud III and the famous painter Jan van Scorel (1495–1562), who lived in Utrecht.20 Jan van Scorel and Colijn de Nole certainly knew each other well. The portrait of Reinoud III from ca. 1545 is generally attributed to Van Scorel.21 In 1552 Reinoud III of Brederode and Jan van Scorel, together with the brother of the humanist writer Johannes Secundus, started a consortium for the construction of dikes in the Zijpe area, in order to create new land where Van Scorel wanted to build a Nova Roma. Although this event took place some ten years after the construction of the chapel and its works of art, several authors have drawn the conclusion that Van Scorel (who had been in Venice, Jerusalem and Rome from 1519 to 1524) must have been involved in the overall design of the Brederode chapel.22 Brederode was thus apparently deeply involved with humanist culture. 16 Jean J. Salverda de Grave, “Twee inventarissen van het Huis Brederode,” Bijdragen en Mededeelingen van het Historisch Genootschap 39 (1918): 1–172, available online at http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/_bij005191801_01/_bij005191801_01_0005.php. See also Dirk Schoenaers and Hanno Wijsman, “De librie van Batestein: Het boekenbezit van de Brederodes in de vijftiende en zestiende eeuw,” in Yolande van Lalaing (1422–1479), kasteelvrouwe van Brederode, ed. Elizabeth den Hartog and Hanno Wijsman (Haarlem: Kastelenstichting Holland en Zeeland, 2009), 69–98. 17 De Meyere, Het grafmonument, 50–57. 18 Ibid., 60 (ill.). 19 Titian, Portrait of Charles V on Horseback (1548), oil on canvas, 332 x 297 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid. 20 “Information from the Catalogue of Early Netherlandish Paintings in the Rijksmuseum,” the website of the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, accessed 11 September 2012, http:// www.rijksmuseum.nl/collectie/SK-A-1619/portret-van-reinoud-iii-van-brederode-heervan. 21 Formerly attributed to Cornelis Anthonisz; presently held at the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, inv. no. SK-A-1619. 22 De Meyere, Het grafmonument, 97–102. On Van Scorel in general, see Molly A. Faries, “Jan van Scorel, His Style and Its Historical Context” (PhD diss., Bryn Mawr College, PA, 1972). According to Godefridus J. Hoogewerff (“Jan van Scorel, zijn leven en persoonlijkheid,” Onze Eeuw 15 [1915]: 400), Jan van Scorel lived in the same house in Utrecht where Wolfert van Brederode used to live.

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

153

Fig. 6. Detail: head and neck of the Vianen transi. Photo: Peter Rosekrans.

Reinoud III and his wife too must have been very aware of the strong ritual and symbolic power of a family chapel with a free-standing funeral monument. Philipotte’s uncle, Erard de la Marck, had erected a funeral monument for himself in the Cathedral of Liège, made by Italian artisans ca. 1520. Unfortunately it has not survived. More recent examples that were located not far from Vianen were the sepulchral monument of Engelbrecht II of Nassau and Cimburga of Baden in the Grote Kerk (Great Church) or Our Lady of Heavenly Assumption in Breda (1533), and the tomb of Charles of Egmond in the St. Eusebius Church in Arnhem (1540).23 But they must also have had knowledge of the late Gothic funeral monuments that Margaret of Austria (for whom Philipotte worked—as mentioned above—as a lady-in-waiting) had commissioned from the sculptor Conrad Meit (1516) in the abbey church of Brou (Bourg-en-Bresse) for herself and her husband Philibert II, Duke of Savoy. The monuments of Margaret and Philibert have a transi on the lower deck, while in Breda, Engelbrecht and Cimburga themselves are shown as transi.

For the funeral monument in Breda, see Ethan M. Kavaler, “Being the Count of Nassau: Re¿guring Identity in Space, Time and Stone,” in Beeld en zelfbeeld in de Nederlandse kunst, 1550–1700 / Image and Self-Image in Netherlandish Art, 1550–1700, ed. Reindert Falkenburg and Elisabeth de Jong-Crane (Zwolle: Waanders, 1995), 13–51; also Gerard van Wezel, De Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekerk en de grafkapel voor Oranje-Nassau te Breda (Zeist: Rijksdienst voor de Monumentenzorg, 2003); for Arnhem, see A. G. Schulte, De Grote of Eusebiuskerk in Arnhem: Ijkpunt van de stad (Utrecht: Matrijs, 1994). 23

154

In Between the Secular and the Religious

The Vianen transi According to a recent medical examination, the transi of Vianen might very well have been a man aged between forty and sixty years, an age that matches the state of his teeth, of which many are missing. Although transi were popular from the late fourteenth century onwards, this one deserves attention because of its extraordinary anatomically correct detailing. We know that Margaret, for her transi, ordered a body of a person that had passed away only eight days before, but the transi in Vianen shows the body of a man who has been dead for some two years.24 So Brederode’s artist made drawings based on a rather decayed body, very probably that of a dead criminal or a pauper in Utrecht, a town that was famous for its institutions for the sick and poor. The body is rendered in an anatomically correct way, but with a highly artistic overtone. Much attention is paid to the neck, of which we can see the muscles, tendons and part of the skeleton. The muscles of the cadaver are rendered in a very “lively” way. Because of the state of the body, there could hardly be any organs left, so their absence from the transi is realistic. The transport of the cadaver and the fact that the head was placed on a cushion or something similar to raise it probably caused the strangely pronounced cervical spinal column (¿g. 6). The transi originally was painted in a brownish colour, while the exaggerated worms that creep out of the body were gold.25 The high interest the artist shows in the muscles of the transi immediately reminds us of the famous treatise on anatomy by Andreas Vesalius (1515–64), De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem, which was published in 1543, the year after the monument was completed.26 In this book, as with the transi, the anatomy of the skeleton and the muscles are shown as the most important elements of the human body. Although the treatise postdates the creation of the Brederode monument, it is known that drawings by Vesalius circulated in Europe before the book was printed.27 What is more important is that over the years there had been close contacts between the Brederode and Vesalius De Meyere, Het grafmonument, 68; we are indebted to Peter Rosekrans, Leiden, for the detailed anatomical information on the Vianen transi. 25 Brink, “Zorg voor levenden en doden,” esp. ch. “De transi, het raadsel van Vianen.” Brink suggests that the transi at Bossu was meant for the funeral monument in Vianen as well. But from measurements we can conclude that there is not enough room for a second transi. Moreover, the Bossu transi—like the one in Vianen—is the body of a man. This would not ¿t within the scheme of the monument. 26 Andreas Vesalius, De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem (Basel: Johann Oporinus, 1543). 27 Robrecht van Hee, ed., Ziek of gezond ten tijde van Keizer Karel: Vesalius en de gezondheidszorg in de 16de eeuw (Ghent: Academia Press, 2000). 24

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

155

families. The father of Vesalius was the apothecary to Charles V before becoming the court physician in 1543. While Vesalius was a student in Louvain, he lived in the same house as the future husband of Reinoud’s daughter Helena.28 By depicting the transi, which has the function of a memento mori, as a “muscle man” according to the teachings of Vesalius, the humanist Brederode was demonstrating his af¿nity with the newest trends in anatomical science.

The four medallions We mentioned previously that there are four medallions with classical heads on the inside of the funeral monument that have been overlooked in some way or another. Stylistically, they show similarities with the four heads on the chimney breast in Kampen. The four men have individual traits (hairstyles, noses, positions of the eyes, beards and moustaches) and have laurels or fruit garlands around their heads. There are no attributes or inscriptions that indicate who they are. We have already noted that Brederode, like his superior Charles V, was a collector of gems and coins, something that in the Renaissance period was seen as a sign of princely virtù. By collecting and studying coins, a ruler could acquire the values of the people represented on the coins. In the second half of the sixteenth century, after the funeral monument was erected, many books appeared with portraits of classical rulers, their wives and other famous persons, with illustrations that were based on coins, other visual and literary sources and, if necessary, a degree of imagination as well. A very early example was the Illustrum Imagines by Andrea Fulvio, Jacopo Sadoleto and Ugo da Carpi (Rome, 1517), which shows highly individualised portraits of rulers on medallions placed on pedestals that exhibit a funerary context.29 The four rulers represented on Brederode’s monument seem to have been taken from the Nine Worthies. Behind the gisants of Brederode and Philipotte are Charlemagne (the only one with a large nose and Gaulish drooping moustache) and Alexander the Great, with the typical knot on his forehead, the anastolè. Behind the feet of the couple we see Julius Caesar, showing his well-known pro¿le, and (very probably) the bearded Godfrey of Bouillon (¿g. 7). They are the four historical rulers of the Nine Worthies. Alexander the Great is placed opposite to Julius Caesar, and Charlemagne opposite to Godfrey of Bouillon, according to their chronological positions, and the two different De Meyere, Het grafmonument, 92. John Cunnally, Images of the Illustrious: The Numismatic Presence in the Renaissance (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999); Andrea Fulvio, Illustrium Imagines (Rome, 1517; facsimile, Portland, OR: Collegium Graphicum, 1972); on Charles V as a collector of coins, see Cunnally, Images of the Illustrious, 40–41.

28 29

156

In Between the Secular and the Religious

Fig. 7. Detail: medallions with Julius Caesar (left) and Godfrey of Bouillon (right). Photo: Juliette Roding. categories within The Nine Worthies to which they belong: the classical and the Christian rulers. At the same time, Alexander the Great and Charlemagne, and Caesar and Godfrey of Bouillon are looking towards each other. The four rulers seem to here represent the four cardinal virtues of Prudence (Alexander the Great), Justice (Charlemagne), Fortitude (Julius Caesar) and Temperance (Godfrey of Bouillon).30 The idea of incorporating four famous rulers was not new. In around 1530–33 Engelbrecht III ordered and erected, in the Nieuwe Herenkoor (New Choir of the Lords) for the Orange-Nassau family in the Great Church in Breda, a funeral monument for his uncle, Engelbrecht II, and aunt, Cimburga of Baden. Here, four life-size classical heroes, dressed all’antica, bear the upper deck of the monument on which the various pieces of Engelbrecht’s armoury are arranged in the way they were carried in the funeral procession.31 The idea of 30 Heidy Böcker-Dursch, “Zyklen berühmter Männer in der bildenden Kunst Italiens, ‘Neuf Preux’ und ‘Uomini Illustri’: Eine ikonologische Studie” (PhD diss., Munich, 1973). The authors are indebted to Ruurd Halbertsma, Bouke van der Meer (Leiden) and Ina Isings (Utrecht) for their valuable remarks. 31 Kavaler, “Count of Nassau,” 27–28.

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

157

incorporating four famous rulers goes back to the Triumphal Arch of Constantine.32 It also occurs in a print attributed to Jörg Breu the Elder, The Rendering Homage to the Habsburg Rulers Albrecht II, Frederik III, Maximilian I and Charles V from ca. 1530.33 In Vianen, the four cardinal virtues surround the gisants of Brederode and Philipotte. The way the breasts, nipples and hands of Philipotte are shown here suggests that—even in death—she represents the most important of the three Christian virtues, Charity.

The author of the monument Generally, it is Colijn de Nole who is thought to have made the monument, based on a design by Jan van Scorel, who had been in Rome in 1522–24.34 His style can be described as rather static. The garments of Philipotte and, especially, the angels with their elongated necks and exalted movements seem to represent a much younger, more mannerist approach to art. Jos de Meyere suggests that, besides Van Scorel, also Dirck Volckertsz Coornhert (1522–90) may have had an inÀuence on the design of the monument.35 Coornhert, who in 1542 was only twenty years old, became Brederode’s private secretary after a journey through Spain and Italy in 1538–39. But he soon gave up the position and moved to Haarlem, where he started his own business in engravings and prints. Brederode and Coornhert remained friends, and in later life Reinoud would often ask him for help and advice.36 From 1547 onwards there was a close collaboration between Coornhert and the painter Maarten van Heemskerck (1498–1574), who was a student of Jan van Scorel.37 Van Heemskerck was in Italy in 1532–37, where he spent the ¿rst years in Rome. There, he made sketches based on famous monuments, sculptures and reliefs from the Roman Constantine, Trajan, Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius. See Ethan M. Kavaler, “Tournai’s Renaissance Jubé: Art as Instrument of Empowerment,” in In His Milieu: Essays on Netherlandish Art in Memory of John Michael Montias, ed. Amy Golahny, Mia M. Mochizuki, and Lisa Vergara (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006), 193–207. The form of the Vianen altar is very similar to that of the Arch of Constantine. 33 See Van den Boogert, “De triomfen van de keizer.” 34 De Meyere, Het grafmonument, 96–103. 35 Ibid., 74–77. 36 See his biography Eerste deel der Wercken Dirck Volckaerts Coornhert: Handelende van schriftuerlijcke ende veel leerlijcke saken, seer stichtelijck ende dienstigh voor alle liefhebbers der waarheyt (Gouda: Jasper Tournay, 1612). 37 Ilja M. Veldman, “Coornhert en de prentkunst,” in Dirck Volckertszoon Coornhert: Dwars maar recht, ed. Hendrik Bonger et al. (Zutphen: De Walburg Pers, 1989), 143–45, 178–79. 32

158

In Between the Secular and the Religious

period.38 His sketch of two female ¿gures on the pedestal of the Column of Trajan are very similar to the angels on the Brederode monument.39 After his years in Rome, Van Heemskerck stayed for some time in Mantua, where he had good contacts with Giulio Romano, the ¿rst assistant of Rafael, who in turn was a good friend of Francesco Mazzola, alias Parmigianino.40 There are clear resemblances between the way Parmigianino rendered his Madonna with the Long Neck (1534) and the ¿gure of Philipotte.41 The drapery of their garments is almost identical. But an even more obvious feature is the resemblance between the Madonna’s famous long neck and the necks of the four angels. Parmigianino’s sketch of a head with an elongated neck and halfopen mouth corresponds even more strongly to the heads of the angels on the Vianen monument.42 Van Heemskerck also made designs of candelabra, while the motif of an erotos with wings and an upturned torch was used by him as late as 1570, on the grave monument for his father, who died in 1535.43 The (co-) authorship of Van Heemskerck also would explain the high number of very early, good quality grotesques on the funeral monument (even on the original balusters) and on the rood screen in Vianen. From 1537 onwards there were close contacts between Van Heemskerck and Cornelis Bos.44 Ilja M. Veldman, Maarten van Heemskerck and Dutch Humanism in the Sixteenth Century, trans. Michael Hoyle (Maarssen: Gary Schwartz, 1977), 12. 39 Christian Hülsen and Herman Egger, eds., Die römischen Skizzenbücher von Marten van Heemskerck im Königlichen Kupferstichkabinett zu Berlin, vol. 1 (Berlin: Julius Bard, 1913), fol. 17. 40 Veldman, Van Heemskerck and Dutch Humanism, 12. 41 Parmigianino, Madonna del Collo Lungo, 1534, oil on wood, 216 x 132 cm, Palazzo Pitti, Florence; see Elizabeth Cropper, “On Beautiful Women, Parmigianino, Petrarchismo, and the Vernacular Style,” The Art Bulletin 58, no. 3 (1976): 374–94. 42 Achim Gnann, Parmigianino: Die Zeichnungen, 2 vols. (Petersberg: Imhof, 2007), 1:242, 2: no. 254. 43 Veldman, Van Heemskerck and Dutch Humanism, 144–55, ¿g. 97. 44 Sune Schéle, Cornelis Bos: A Study of the Origins of the Netherland Grotesque (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1965), 21. Schéle states that Bos had mastered the grotesque style in 1532–37, in France. Although no independent prints with grotesques by Bos are known of from before 1546, he must have had grotesques—by other artists—at his disposal much earlier. He certainly came into contact with them in 1538, when he made the engravings for Coecke van Aelst’s publication of Serlio (edition of 1539). This edition contains a number of illustrations with grotesques. The Italian edition of Serlio, dating from 1535, which Coecke van Aelst possessed, contains many ornamental designs for ceilings, featuring a lot of grotesques. These designs were ¿rst incorporated in a later edition, in 1549, but Cornelis Bos must have seen them earlier. The carvings on the northern rood screen exhibit many similarities with the ornamental 38

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

159

The wooden rood screen Part of the wooden rood screen that originally separated the Brederode chapel from the church has survived. As mentioned, above the entrance we ¿nd the year 1542, Àanked by the heads of two wild boars and two texts: “La dieu . tue” and “Ung . me tout” (The farewell kills; One [=God] is everything for me) (¿g. 8).45 The lower part of the rood screen shows ¿ve pairs of panels; on each of the outer pairs we ¿nd the heads of a man and a woman facing each other. Symmetry is preserved by putting the woman’s head of the left-hand pair on the left side of her partner. In this way, the overall symmetry of the screen is ensured. The two pairs of panels next to the entrance door show the heads of some rather rough men. Like the other couples, these men are also facing each other. Above and below the heads, there are continuous rows of masks. The rood screen very probably was executed in Utrecht.46 Just like the portrait medallions of the funeral monument, the heads of men and women have their own speci¿c physiognomy. On the left, we can discern Mary of Hungary (with a widow’s bonnet) and her husband Louis II of Hungary (1506–26), and on the right Emperor Charles V himself with his second wife, Isabella of Portugal (¿g. 9).47 These couples Àank what appear to be typological renderings of inhabitants of the Habsburg countries that had to be civilised. The masks designs for ceilings by Serlio/Coecke van Aelst. The authors will address this issue in a subsequent article. 45 After “ung,” one can discern a small image of a shining sun with a face, representing the One/God. The same text can be found on the wooden benches in the choir of the St. Bavo Church in Haarlem, around the nine coats of arms of men and women of the Brederode family, of which the one of Reinoud II is the oldest. The Brederode family owned the Brederode Castle near Haarlem. 46 See Herman A. van Duinen, De koorbanken van de Grote- of Onze Lieve Vrouwekerk te Dordrecht (Leiden: Primavera Pers, 1998), 17. Many rood screens were “readymades” imported from Flanders. In the case of the Vianen rood screen, though, there are close stylistic connections with the oak organ gallery of the Buurkerk (1543–45) and the sacristy door of the Janskerk (still existing and also shown in a drawing from 1855 by the architect J. N. van Lokhorst, Het Utrechts Archief, cat. no. 37235), both in Utrecht. In general, there are close stylistic connections between the Vianen chapel and works of art in Utrecht that were designed by Jan van Scorel. They were executed by the town master builder Willem van Noort, the sculptor Colijn de Nole, the master carpenter Jan van Oey and the woodcarvers Rijck Hendriksz and Peter van Cranendonck (research since 1998 by Nico Hijman). 47 There is a double portrait of Charles V and Isabella of Portugal in Gaasbeek Castle. There are also medallions with portraits of the couple on the northern choir bench of the Great Church or Our Lady’s Church in Dordrecht (1539); see Van Duinen, Koorbanken, 24.

160

In Between the Secular and the Religious

Fig. 8. Wooden rood screen in front of the grave chapel of Reinoud III of Brederode, 1542. Photo: Nico Hijman. above and beneath seem to represent the winds of the four corners of the world, and with this Charles V’s motto Plus oultre. The presence of Charles V on a rood screen was quite common in the period after his travels through the Netherlands.48 The difference from other cases is that Charles V was Brederode’s employer for many years, in good and bad times. It might therefore be logical to also ¿nd references to the emperor inside the chapel. For this, we return to the four angels. The way they are holding on to the candelabrum is not the way angels in this period usually carried a torch. It reminds us much more of the way heraldic lions hold on to the Columns of Hercules in the coat of arms of Charles V.49 These columns often have the same forms as those on the funeral monument of Brederode, topped with a crown or an eternal Àame. Also, in this way, a reference to the emperor as the successor of the rulers shown on the medallions would be appropriate. The candelabra therefore can have a double symbolic meaning, referring both to eternal Christian life and to the unlimited worldly power of the emperor. Imperial symbols might even See Kloek, Halsema-Kubes, and Baarsen, Art before the Iconoclasm. For example, on the title page of Gestorum Caroli V (1531), featuring King David, the Virgin Mary and Charles V, which was in the possession of Erard de la Marck, the uncle of Philipotte (today in the Bibliothèque Royale Albert I, Brussels), as well as on the ornamental bricks that were fashionable for ¿replaces in Den Briel. 48 49

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

161

Fig. 9. Detail: portraits of Charles V and Isabella of Portugal. Photo: Nico Hijman.

have been stuck onto the candelabra, but removed in later times when this symbolism was less appropriate, for example in 1795, when many banners were also removed from the church.50

Conclusion The programme of the funeral chapel of Reinoud III of Brederode in Vianen can only be understood if one also studies the relationships between all its constituent parts: the funeral monument, the crypt, the altar and the rood screen. Even then one has to bear in mind that the chapel is no longer complete and that alterations may have been made at various times. During the masses and rituals in the semi-private atmosphere of the chapel, Philipotte and her husband were the trait d’union between the past and present of the Brederode family. They are represented as dead persons on the funeral monument looking eastwards to the altar on which they are depicted alive and where they participate with their children in the wonder of the Resurrection. Rows of coats of arms witness both their descent and present position in society. This was in line with the custom of the time of distinguishing between the real 50

De Meyere, Het grafmonument, 108.

162

In Between the Secular and the Religious

body of a ruler, which could die, decompose and become dust, and the political body, which remained alive forever.51 Therefore, in most contemporary funerary chapels there was a “life” image of the ruler present. In Breda, the ruler, his wife and forefathers were depicted in the central section of a row of stainedglass windows;52 in Arnhem there is still a life-size wooden statue of a praying Edmond in a box high up in the church, looking down on his own dead body. As in Breda, there are four historical rulers present, not as life-size ¿gures, but far more hidden inside the monument, behind the heads and feet of Reinoud and Philipotte. They are the historical classical and Christian kings of the Nine Worthies: Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Charlemagne and Godfrey of Bouillon. They represent the four cardinal virtues. The images are partly based on coins, and partly on books. We know that Brederode, just like his superior Charles V, collected coins himself, by which he could show his virtù. In other ways, Reinoud III also presents himself as a humanist prince. The transi on the lower deck, which is part of an older funeral tradition as a memento mori, is at the same time a specimen of the latest discoveries in the ¿eld of human anatomy, based on the knowledge of Vesalius. Reinoud III wanted to demonstrate the latest fashion, including in artistic matters. We have already mentioned that he commissioned the ¿rst equestrian portrait in the northern Netherlands. He therefore asked—possibly with Coornhert or Van Scorel as intermediary—Maarten van Heemskerck, who had come back from Rome and Mantua only three years earlier, to make the designs for the monument. It is even possible that the two men met each other in Rome, in 1535 when Brederode was on his way back home from Tunis.53 The impressive ¿gure of Philipotte, in particular, seems to be based on Van Heemskerck’s drawings of classical statues and garments. She is represented here as Charity, the main Christian virtue. The angels with robes in the Italian fashion also seem to derive from Van Heemskerck’s Roman sketches, while in their mannerist serpentinata pose and elongated necks we can perceive the inÀuence of Van Heemskerck’s stay in northern Italy, and especially of Parmigianino. On the wooden rood screen, with its rather profane character, we ¿nd Mary of Hungary (as a widow) with her early deceased husband, Louis of Hungary, Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957). 52 Kavaler, “Count of Nassau,” 20. 53 See Inventaris van bescheiden van de Heeren van Brederode en latere bezitters van de heerlijkheid Vianen: Berustende in het Fürstliches Haus- und Landes-Archiv te Detmold ([’s-Gravenhage], [ca. 1910]), 14, no. 78, where Reinoud III declares that he “tegen den Turk zou gaan” (would go and ¿ght against the Turks); Salverda de Grave, “Twee inventarissen,” 32. 51

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

163

and Charles V with his second wife, Isabella of Portugal. In between the couples, there are heads representing the inhabitants of the various countries of the Habsburg Empire. It is possible that the column-like candelabra the angels are holding not only symbolise life triumphant over death, but that they at the same time represent the Columns of Hercules, as a tribute to Reinoud III’s superior. In 1655, a hundred years after Reinoud III van Brederode’s death, a wooden canopy in Classicist style, its dimensions in line with the rules of Scamozzi, was erected above the monument to protect it from dust and dirt and to modernise it.54 This shows how important the chapel and the works of art it contained were to the descendants of Reinoud III and his wife, as the centre for important family rituals. The authors of the article hope that this Renaissance monument will receive international attention among art historians, which may inÀuence the possibilities of a serious restoration.

According to Nico Hijman, who recently researched the wooden canopy. See also De Meyere, Het grafmonument, 155–57. The design of the canopy is not by Jacob van Campen, as De Meyere suggests, but by the Utrecht master carpenter Ghijsbert Thönisz van Vianen (1612–1707). 54

IMAGES OF HEREDITARY SUCCESSION HUGO JOHANNSEN The focus of this chapter is an analysis of three church portals that can be considered to be monuments in stone arguing for hereditary succession of power by right of primogeniture, equally sanctioned by religion. The cases to be analysed are the entrances of two Danish palace chapels—at Kronborg (ca. 1585) and Frederiksborg (ca. 1610)—to be compared with the western portal (1613–18) of the Church of St. Mary in Wolfenbüttel, the main evangelical church of the Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg and burial place of the ducal family. Prominently on all three portals are free-standing ¿gures of rulers, represented by fathers and sons: David and Solomon (Kronborg), Eric the Child and Canute the Little, two legendary Danish kings known from the medieval chronicler Saxo’s Gesta Danorum1 (Frederiksborg), and the dukes Henry Julius and Frederick Ulrich (Wolfenbüttel). Signi¿cant in this context is the demonstration of the concept of hereditary succession, presented by paradigms or examples, starting with the Old Testament, progressing to the national history and ending with present-day rulers. The relevant issue in relation to the aim of the present volume—creating a link between art and ritual—is how the imagery of such portals, at least the Danish examples, can be regarded in connection with contemporary ceremonies of paying homage and coronation, and how they convey an impression of the indicated rituals.

Rituals of succession in Renaissance Denmark By way of introduction, the political status of the Kingdom of Denmark should be brieÀy outlined. After the death of Frederick I (r. 1523–33), civil war broke out, but in 1536 his son Christian III (r. 1536–59) emerged victorious and enforced a decisive change in religion, making Luther’s evangelical creed the of¿cial and only tolerated state religion.2 During his reign, Frederick I had 1 See the latest edition by Karsten Friis-Jensen, ed., Saxo Grammaticus: Gesta Danorum / Danmarkshistorien, trans. Peter Zeeberg, 2 vols. (Copenhagen: Gad, 2005). 2 A recent introduction in English is Paul Douglas Lockhart, Denmark, 1513–1660: The Rise and Decline of a Renaissance Monarchy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); on the Lutheran Reformation, see Birgitte Bøggild Johannsen and Hugo Johannsen, “Reforming the Confessional Space: Early Lutheran Churches in Denmark, c. 1536–1660,”

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

165

broken with subordination to Rome and the international Catholic Church and, after Christian’s ascension to the throne, the king became head of the national church, with responsibility for securing justice and the true religion. Constitutionally, Denmark was a monarchia mixta, an elective monarchy with co-regency of the king and the estates, the latter primarily represented by the high nobility of the Council of State. Thus, upon his coronation and ascension to the throne, the king had to accept and swear to keep the statutes of a coronation charter that secured the rights of the estates and the extended privileges of the high nobility. This aspect was strongly underlined during the coronation ceremony in the Church of Our Lady in Copenhagen, where the king was “transformed” through anointment and investiture.3 Thus on his way from the castle to the church, the most eminent members of the Council of State accompanied him, carrying the symbols of power (the crown, sword, sceptre and orb). In the church they assisted the bishop of Zealand in handing these insignia to the king and participated in other parts of his investiture, e.g. his shift to royal dress and attire. Last, but not least, the coronation charter was read aloud and the king swore by solemn oath, and with his hand on the New Testament, to keep its statutes. On the other hand, the whole liturgy and symbolism of this “rite of passage” strongly stressed the idea of a theocratic kingdom, whose prince by divine right ruled over his subjects, obedience to the monarch thus being a religious duty. Ritually, this was illustrated by the placement of the symbols of power on the altar and handing them from God’s table to the king and, verbally, by endless readings from the Bible, stressing such notions as “There is no power but of God” (Rom. 13:1), “He removeth kings, and setteth up kings” (Dan. 2:21) and “Thanks . . . for kings, and for all that are in authority” (1 Tim. 2:1–2). The religious framework also gave expression to the idea of pious, God-fearing kings being rewarded by hereditary succession (see below). Even though royal power in Denmark was hereditary in practice, monarchy still remained elective. For this reason, the of¿cial con¿rmation of the ¿rstborn son as the designated heir to the throne was of paramount importance to the Kingdom of Denmark. Thus the birth of Prince Christian in 1577 was in Lutheran Churches in Early Modern Europe, ed. Andrew Spicer (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), 241–76. 3 For the coronations of Christian III, Frederick II and Christian IV, see Gudmund Boesen, Danmarks riges regalier (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1986); the most recent analysis of the ideology of the Danish coronation ceremony with references to older literature is Sebastian Olden-Jørgensen, “Historien om et ritual: De danske kongekroninger fra Christian III (1537) til Christian IV (1596),” Trans¿guration: Nordisk tidsskrift for kunst og kristendom 3, no. 1 (2001): 83–99.

166

Images of Hereditary Succession

celebrated with lavish festivities in Copenhagen,4 and a few days before the diet in Odense in 1580 (¿g. 1), when the dukes of Schleswig, Hans and Adolph, received their territories as ¿efs from the Danish king, the Council of State accepted the young prince as the successor to the throne on condition that their rights were to be con¿rmed when he was crowned.5 The actual presentation and acclamation of the prince elect was staged in 1584 at the four old regional law-courts (Viborg, Odense, Ringsted and Lund). When the son of Christian IV, Prince Christian (V), was acclaimed successor to the throne in 1608 and again in 1610 in Copenhagen, the former rituals were repeated, in all cases with homage enacted on a richly decorated tribunal like the one in Odense.6 It should be noted that the inherent dichotomy of an elective constitution versus hereditary succession was present in all acclamations. The former was personi¿ed by members of the Council of State carrying and presenting the symbols of power, the latter through repeated references to King David being succeeded by his son Solomon, while Denmark was compared to the realm of Abraham and Israel. In Viborg, even a play, Kong Salomons Hylding (The Acclamation of King Solomon) by Hieronymus Justesen Ranch, was performed in 1584 as an illustration of the biblical paradigm of hereditary succession.7

“Succession” portals of Danish palace chapels After these introductory remarks, the portals themselves shall be presented, with a speci¿c focus on how they were designed as visual arguments for God-given rule and hereditary succession. The ¿rst example is the entrance portal of the chapel at Kronborg Castle at Elsinore, where the Danish king collected tolls from the intense maritime traf¿c through the sound. In the years 1574–86 Frederick II (r. 1559–88) transformed the medieval castle of Eric of Pomerania into See Karen Skovgaard-Petersen and Peter Zeeberg, eds., Erasmus Lætus’ skrift om Christian IVs fødsel og dåb (1577) (Copenhagen: Reitzel, 1992). 5 Laurs Laursen, ed., Kancelliets brevbøger vedrørende Danmarks indre forhold: 1580–1583 (Copenhagen: Reitzel, 1903), 68 (24 April). 6 On the Danish acclamation ceremonies, see the recent survey in Birgitte Bøggild Johannsen, “Visual Strategies for Staging a coup d’état: Ritual and Pictorial Communication of the Absolutist Revolution in Denmark 1660,” in Die Bildlichkeit symbolischer Akte, ed. Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger and Thomas Weissbrich (Münster: Rhema, 2010), 313–50, esp. 329–31. 7 Hieronymus Justesen Ranch, Kong Salomons Hylding: En ny lystig oc nyttig Comoedi aff Kong Davids oc Kong Salomons Historier … (Copenhagen: Matz Vingaard, 1585); S. Birket Smith, ed., Hieronymus Justesen Ranch’s danske Skuespil og Fuglevise (Copenhagen: Samfundet til den danske Literaturs Fremme, 1876–77), 1–134; Justesen Ranch, Kong Salomons Hylding, ed. Allan Karker (Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1972). 4

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

167

Fig. 1. Frans Hogenberg, Diet in Odense, 3 May 1580. Engraving originally published in Gaspar Ens, Rervm Danicarvm Friderico II. . . . (Frankfurt: Peter Fischer, 1593). Reproduced from Birgitte Bøggild Johannsen and Hugo Johannsen, Danmarks Kirker: 9, Odense Amt, vol. 1 (Herning: Kristensen, 1990). a modern fortress, with bastions shielding a sumptuous palace, which presented itself as the supreme power symbol of the Kingdom of Denmark.8 The chapel was inaugurated in 1582, after having been under construction since 1578. However, the portal (¿g. 2) and the altar were renewed after the inauguration, the portal in 1585 and the altar two years later, both being compositionally closely related.9 The present condition of the sandstone portal is thoroughly marked by subsequent restorations, both in the 1730s and most recently in 1922–24, when the free-standing statues of Moses, David and Solomon were re-created, along with almost all decorative details and inscriptions. See Hugo Johannsen, “Kronborg,” in Danmark og renæssancen 1500–1650, ed. Carsten Bach-Nielsen et al. (Copenhagen: Gad, 2006), 290–99, for further reference. 9 The fundamental description of the chapel is Erik Moltke and Elna Møller, Danmarks kirker: 2, Frederiksborg amt, vol. 1 (Copenhagen: Gad, 1964), 562–636. 8

168

Images of Hereditary Succession

Apart from one single detail,10 the iconography, however, seems unaltered and the triumvirate of Moses, David and Solomon still presents itself as a perfect illustration of the ideology of a rule founded on biblical paradigms. The above-mentioned play by Justesen Ranch, The Acclamation of King Solomon, published in 1585, has been pointed out as the primary source for the programme of the Kronborg portal11 but, even without this obvious parallel, the informed onlooker would have had more than suf¿cient background for an understanding of its meaning in the ceremonies of homage and coronation.12 In the coronation ceremonies of 1559 and 1596, the ordaining bishop cited the “law of kings” (Deut. 17:14–20) as one of the fundamental Old Testament utterances on kingdom, stressing its God-given nature, the obligations of kings to follow God’s law and the reward of hereditary succession (“That he may prolong his days in his kingdom, he, and his children, in the midst of Israel”).13 Even more explicit, the words of the dying David to his son and successor Solomon (1 Kings 2:1–4) were cited in the coronation of Christian IV, admonishing him to keep the statutes of God, the law of Moses and to take care that his children walk before God with all their hearts and souls. Then “there shall not fail thee . . . a man on the throne of Israel.”14 Another contemporary example of the importance of this way of thinking is the collection of biblical sentences on secular authority, a biblical mirror of princes, published in 1567 by Niels Nielsen Kolding, the court preacher of During the restoration in 1922–24, the capital letter “D” on the pedestal of David was altered to “F” as an allusion to the initials of the royal couple, Frederick and Sophia, the “S” beneath Solomon being there from the start. It should be mentioned that he admonitions of Hezekiah cited on the pedestal of the statue to the right (see below) led the royal architect Lauritz de Thurah, who doesn’t mention the letters “D” and “S,” to identify this statue with Hezekiah. See [Lauritz de Thurah], Den Danske Vitruvius …, vol. 2, Indeholder alle Kongelige Slotte … (Copenhagen: Berling, 1749), 73. 11 Vilhelm Wanscher, Kronborgs Historie (Copenhagen: Fischer, 1939), 60. 12 When Prince Christian (V) was acclaimed successor to the throne in Copenhagen in 1610, the idea of hereditary succession as illustrated by the paradigms of David and Solomon was repeatedly mentioned; see Stormectige oc høybaarne Førstis, Her Christian den Femtis … Hylding … vdi Kiøbenhaffn … Anno M. DC. X. den XIV. Martij (Copenhagen: Henrich Waldkirch, n.d.). 13 See Christian Bruun, “Kong Frederik den Andens Kronings og Salvings Akt, den 20de August 1559, samt Ceremoniellet for Dronning Sophies Kroning og Salving, den 21de Juli 1572,” Danske Samlinger for Historie, Topographi, Personal- og Literaturhistorie, 1st ser., 4 (1868–69): 147; August Erich, Klarlige oc visse Beskriffuelse, Om den Stormectige … Christians den Fierdis … Kongelige Kroning … vdi Kiøbenhaffn, den 29. Augusti, Anno 1596 (Copenhagen: Henrich Waldkirch, 1598), F. 14 Erich, Christians den Fierdis Kroning, Fii. 10

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

Fig. 2. Portal of the chapel at Kronborg Castle, ca. 1585. Photo by the author.

169

170

Images of Hereditary Succession

Frederick II.15 Often referred to, its title page shows King Frederick as an alter ego of Moses, carrying the tablets of the law and upholding law and justice, symbolised by the sword and a pair of scales (¿g. 3). On the portal itself, inscriptions corroborated the visual message. Thus on the pedestal of David his gratitude to God for mercy and grace was cited: Psalm 103. Barmhertzig und Gnedig ist der Herr, Geduldig und von groȕer Güte. Er wird nicht immer haddern, noch Ewiglich zorn halten. Er handelt nicht mit uns nach unsern sünden, und vergilt uns nicht nach unser Missethat, den so hoch der Himmel über der Erde ist, lässet er seine Gnade walten über die so ihn fürchten.16

Beneath Solomon, the inscription relates the words of Hezekiah admonishing the people of Israel: 2 buch der cronica, Ezechias 30 Cap. Seit nicht halstarrich, sondern gebet Ewer handt den Herrn, und komet zu seinem Heiligthum und dienet dem Herrn ewrem Gott, so wird sich der grim seines zorns sich von euch wenden, den der Herr ewer Gott ist gnedig und barmhertzig und wirt sein Angesicht nicht von euch wenden, so ir euch zu Im bekeret.17

In accordance with this programme, the interior of the chapel itself—a threeaisled pillared hall—was probably also meant to elicit associations with Solomon’s temple. Moreover, the gallery pews had passages from the Proverbs of Solomon and of Jesus ben Sirach painted on its friezes: quotations collected by the king himself and published in two books from 1583 and 1586, respectively.18 These also manifestly demonstrated the piety of Frederick II, Niels Nielsen Colding, De Besynderligste Historier, Sententzer oc Exempler, som ¿ndis i den Hellige Scrifft, om Øffrighedz Kald, Regiment oc Bestilling … (Copenhagen: Laurentz Benedicht, 1567). 16 “Psalm 103. The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy. He will not always chide: neither will he keep his anger for ever. He hath not dealt with us after our sins; nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him.” 17 “Second book of the Chronicles, ch. 30 of Hezekiah. Be ye not stiffnecked, but yield yourselves unto the Lord, and enter into his sanctuary and serve the Lord your God, that the ¿erceness of his wrath may turn away from you, for the Lord your God is gracious and merciful, and will not turn away his face from you, if ye return unto him.” (The translation of both inscriptions follows the King James Version of the Bible. In the translation of the second inscription, the text of that source has been modi¿ed to accommodate to the incomplete reproduction of the Bible passage on the pedestal.) 18 See Hugo Johannsen, “The Writ on the Wall: Theological and Political Aspects of Biblical Text-Cycles in Evangelical Palace Chapels of the Renaissance,” in Masters, Meanings & Models: Studies in the Art & Architecture of the Renaissance in Denmark; 15

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

171

Fig. 3. Frederick II as guardian of the tablets of the law. Woodcut by Lorentz Benedict, published in Nielsen Colding, De Besynderligste Historier. Reproduced by permission of the Royal Library, Copenhagen.

presented as a dedicated reader of the Bible, following in the footsteps of his father, Christian III. Theocratic rule and hereditary succession are thus visually demonstrated by the chapel portal. But nowhere in the same castle was the paramount importance of kingdom and dynastic rule more present than in the Great Hall above the chapel, which King Frederick had adorned with a magni¿cent series of tapestries, woven in the years 1581–85 by Flemish weavers, led by the court painter, Hans Knieper from Antwerp.19 On the more than forty tapestries, of which fourteen have survived, a hundred Danish kings, from the mythical King Dan of biblical times to the present ruler, were represented. The last tapestry (¿g. 4), showing King Frederick and the prince elect Christian (IV), would also bring the ceremonies of homage of 1584 to the mind of the spectator. And this is only one of several possible examples demonstrating the care which King Frederick bestowed on the cultivation of dynasty, equally reÀected in the Essays Published in Honour of Hugo Johannsen, ed. Michael Andersen, Ebbe Nyborg, and Mogens Vedsø (Copenhagen: National Museum of Denmark, 2010), 62. 19 See Ulrik Reindel, The King Tapestries: Pomp & Propaganda at Kronborg Castle (Copenhagen: Palaces and Properties Agency, 2011), for further reference.

172

Images of Hereditary Succession

Fig. 4. Frederick II and Prince Christian (IV) in front of Kronborg and the old Frederiksborg. Tapestry by Hans Knieper, from the series woven in 1581–85 and hung in the Great Hall of Kronborg. Image reproduced by permission of the National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen. necropolis of the Roskilde Cathedral and in the restoration of other churches housing tombs of Danish kings and queens.20 The dynastic message of the Kronborg tapestries was taken up at Frederiksborg Castle (1602–23). Frederick II had, in 1560, acquired a manor house in the vast woodlands of North Zealand and had transformed it into a hunting See Hugo Johannsen, “Dignity and Dynasty: On the History and Meaning of the Royal Funeral Monuments for Christian III, Frederik II and Christian IV in the Cathedral of Roskilde,” in Andersen, Nyborg, and Vedsø, Masters, Meanings & Models, 117–49; Birgitte Bøggild Johannsen, “Back to the Future: Renovating Royal Funeral Monuments during the Reign of Frederick II, King of Denmark (1559–1588),” in Monuments and Monumentality in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Michael Penman (Farnham: Ashgate, forthcoming). 20

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

Fig. 5. Portal of the chapel at Frederiksborg Castle, ca. 1610. Photo by the author.

173

174

Images of Hereditary Succession

retreat. Christian IV (r. 1596–1648) was born there in 1577 and, soon after his ascension to the throne in 1596, he embarked on a grand project, replacing his father’s Frederiksborg by a prestigious castle, meant to surpass not only the existing one, but also that of Kronborg.21 The entrance portal to the chapel (¿g. 5), which was grander and more sumptuous than any former palace church in Denmark and probably elsewhere in the evangelical world, echoes the triumphal arch erected in honour of the king’s coronation festivities in 1596, with its bandstand Àanked by Roman warriors and an angel soaring down to crown the king during his passage.22 The most interesting aspect of the Frederiksborg portal in the present context are the two statues Àanking the top piece with the arms of the realm, surrounded by musical trophies and crowned by an angel (Victory) holding a palm branch and a laurel wreath. According to inscriptions on pedestals, they represent, to the left, “Erich Z, der I christlich König” (Eric II, the ¿rst Christian king) and, to the right, “Knud der I, der kleine, Erichs s[ohn]” (Canute I, “the Little,” Eric’s son). The choice of these legendary kings has to be seen in connection with the exterior decoration of the west wing of the main castle, whose window pediments are adorned with heads of old Danish kings, modelled after the representations of the Kronborg tapestries. The meaning of the Frederiksborg portal is self-evident.23 The reason for selecting King Eric is stated in the inscription: that he was the ¿rst Christian king in Denmark. Moreover, he is looking towards Canute the Little, his son and heir to the throne. So Christianity has long been closely intertwined with monarchy, and its power is transmitted from father to son. However, for the reader of Saxo a problem remained. Although Eric allegedly was converted to Christianity by the German missionary Ansgar ca. 826 and built the ¿rst Danish church in Ribe, his son Canute turned away from Christianity and died a heathen! Obviously, it was not the intent of Christian IV and his advisers that the onlooker 21 The fundamental description of the castle is still Francis Beckett, Frederiksborg, vol. 2, Slottets Historie (Copenhagen: Hagerup, 1914). A recent treatment, with further reference, is Steffen Heiberg, ed., Christian 4. og Frederiksborg ([Copenhagen]: Aschehoug, 2006). 22 The basic description of the chapel is provided by Hugo Johannsen, Marie-Louise Jørgensen, and Elna Møller, “Frederiksborg Slotskirke,” in Danmarks kirker: 2, Frederiksborg amt, vol. 3 (Copenhagen: Gad, 1970), 1673–926; see also Hugo Johannsen, “The Protestant Palace Chapel: Monument to Evangelical Religion and Sacred Rulership,” in Andersen, Nyborg, and Vedsø, Masters, Meanings & Models, 33–53. 23 The present interpretation of the Frederiksborg portal follows Hugo Johannsen, “Regna Firmat Pietas: Eine Deutung der Baudekoration der Schloȕkirche Christians IV. zu Frederiksborg,” Hafnia: Copenhagen Papers in the History of Art 3 (1974): 67–140.

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

175

Fig. 6. Door leaf of the portal of the chapel at Frederiksborg Castle, ca. 1610. Image reproduced by permission of the National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen.

should reÀect too much on this temporary lapse, especially since Canute’s son, Frodo VI, reinstated Christianity in Denmark. Thus, for reasons of content and composition, Canute is not modelled on the representation of the Kronborg tapestry, but simply mirrors the ¿gure of his father and, like him, carries a sceptre with the cross of Christ.24 At Frederiksborg, the concept of hereditary succession was thus “updated” from the paradigm of Israel to national history and the Christian religion, which was cultivated and protected in the realm of Denmark. The choice of ¿gures and symbols of the Frederiksborg portal, moreover, implies an unbroken line of kings from the introduction of In the Kronborg tapestries, Canute was shown in a long cloak—see the reconstruction of the lost tapestry, showing Eric, Canute and Frodo, in Reindel, King Tapestries, 62. The head of Canute represented in one of the window pediments, however, is true to the representation of the tapestry; see Johannsen, “Regna Firmat Pietas,” 121. 24

176

Images of Hereditary Succession

Christianity to the present rule, symbolised by the arms of the realm and the monograph of Christian IV. The programme of the sandstone portal is supplemented by that of the well-preserved wooden door leaf (¿g. 6). The central representation here is the Baptism of Christ, Àanked by the apostles Peter and Paul, who will spread the Gospel according to the command of baptism (Matt. 28:19). A top medallion showing the Last Judgement constitutes a promise that the reign of Christ shall continue until the end of times, when true Christians will enter God’s heavenly dwellings, as prophesied by the Àanking ¿gures of Moses and John the Baptist and the crowning representation of Christ as Salvator Mundi.25 The iconography was certainly appropriate for an entrance to a church, baptism being a precondition for joining the Christian community. But there may be other layers of meaning. As the composition mirrors that of the frame—or vice versa—the onlooker is invited to make comparisons: ¿rstly, Eric was baptised by Ansgar and this conversion was for his people too—at least according to the Protestant understanding of the king being head of the church (cuius regio, eius religio). This new Christian kingdom was then passed on to his son and through centuries of successors to the present king, Christian IV. Secondly, the medallion of the Last Judgement and the circular arrangement of the arms of the realm constitute another parallel, indicating that the Kingdom of Denmark as a Christian state shall be preserved until the end of times.

The “succession” portal of the main church of the Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg in Wolfenbüttel The last portal to be scrutinised in this chapter is the entrance to the Church of St. Mary—Beatae Mariae Virginis—in Wolfenbüttel. Unlike the two former examples, it is not a palace chapel but, nevertheless, as the main church of the Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg and the burial place of the ducal family, it is highly relevant as a symbol of evangelical rule in the duchy.26 The See Deut. 32 and Luke 3:16–17. Paul J. Meier and Karl Steinacker, eds., Die Bau- und Kunstdenkmäler des Herzogtums Braunschweig, vol. 3, sec. 1, Die Bau- und Kunstdenkmäler der Stadt Wolfenbüttel (Wolfenbüttel: Zwissler, 1904), 37–80; Friedrich Thöne, Wolfenbüttel: Geist und Glanz einer alten Residenz (Munich: Bruckmann, 1963), 61–68, 207–10; Hans-Herbert Möller, ed., Die Hauptkirche Beatae Mariae Virginis in Wolfenbüttel (Hameln: Niemeyer, 1987); Barbara Uppenkamp, Das Pentagon von Wolfenbüttel: Der Ausbau der wel¿schen Residenz 1568–1626 zwischen Ideal und Wirklichkeit (Hannover: Hahn, 2005), 81–88, 241–45. 25 26

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

Fig. 7. West portal of the Church of St. Mary, Wolfenbüttel, ca. 1616. Photo: Jürgen Beyer.

177

178

Images of Hereditary Succession

church was planned in 1604, after drawings by Paul Francke (d. 1615), and in 1608 the foundation stone was laid. When the reigning duke, Henry Julius (1564–1613), died, the building was far from ¿nished and much remained to be done, mostly in the interior, when building operations came to a standstill in 1626, due to the religious wars. Of interest in this context is the west front, with its dedicatory inscription bearing the year 1616 (“Henr. Jul. dei gr. d. B. e L. / hoc opus incoepit et Frid. / Ulr. ¿lius perfecit anno 1616 et aliquot seqq.”), and its portal (¿g. 7), richly ornamented and with statues carved before 1618 by a stone mason from Lübeck, Heinrich Gottes.27 The present programme of the portal is expressed by statues on three levels: below, Moses (left) and Aron (right) Àanking the entrance to the church. Then follows the attic-like upper part, showing the dukes Henry Julius (left) and his son Frederick Ulrich (right), both clad in armour, but bare-headed. They are turned towards each other, Àanking a cartouche with the inscription “Soli Deo Gloria.” The crowning statue represents Christ as Salvator Mundi. The whole composition is like an altarpiece, conveying to the visitor the relevant message that this church has been built to the glory of Christ by the dukes Henry Julius and Frederick Ulrich, protecting the true evangelical religion, founded on the law of the Old Testament. The vertical axis indicates that they are God’s earthly representatives with a power from above, passed on from father to son. The programme of the portal, however, seems to be a revision of the original design. The project drawings of Paul Francke have not survived, but are partly known from reproductions in three woodcuts by Elias Holwein.28 His rendering of the west front (¿g. 8) shows that originally only one armour-clad statue, Henry Julius, was envisaged. Moreover, the statues Àanking the entrance should represent David (left) and Moses (right), whereas only one of the two statues Àanking the duke can be identi¿ed, possibly as John the Baptist (?).29 The decision to alter the programme and turn it into a “succession” portal was most probably taken shortly after the death of Henry Julius (see the dedication inscription). The founder of the church probably felt no need for a public demonstration of hereditary succession, as the duchy was absolutist in the sense that the reigning ruler chose his successor without needing the consent of the Thöne, Wolfenbüttel, 242. Holwein’s woodcut of the west front bears the date 1613 (“ANNO DO[MIN]I MDCXIII”) and the name of the architect “Paul Franck / Inventor” above the initials of Holwein, “EH.” A lengthy poem, Àanking the spire, states that the sheet was printed anew in 1625. The original project drawing, reÀected in the woodcut, presumably precedes the date 1613, which honours the founder, who died that year. 29 Meier and Steinacker, Bau- und Kunstdenkmäler, 51. 27 28

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

179

Fig. 8. West portal of the Church of St. Mary, Wolfenbüttel. Detail of Elias Holwein’s woodcut, 1613, reÀecting the original project drawing by Paul Francke. Reproduced by permission of Niedersächsisches Landesarchiv, Wolfenbüttel.

estates.30 The precise time and details of the change in the portal’s programme are unknown, as no written documentation has been found. But it is tempting to assume that Frederick Ulrich’s mother, the dowager Duchess Elizabeth, was inÀuential in this matter. She was a daughter of Frederick II and sister to Christian IV, who often visited the duchy and his family. She married Henry Julius in 1590 in the palace church of Kronborg, with its portal stressing the importance of hereditary succession and, of course, knew Frederiksborg, the new sumptuous prestige castle of her brother, well. In fact, in 1617, when the palace church of Frederiksborg was taken into use, she was the donor of the famous Compenius organ to her brother’s church: a truly princely gift for the centennial of Luther’s Reformation.31 30 Hilda Lietzmann, Herzog Heinrich Julius zu Braunschweig und Lüneburg (1564– 1613): Persönlichkeit und Wirken für Kaiser und Reich (Braunschweig: Braunschweigischer Geschichtsverein, 1993), 29. 31 See Povl Eller, “Compenius-orgelets historie,” Dansk årbog for musikforskning 17 (1986): 7–51; on the Danish celebration of the centenary of Luther’s Theses in 1617, see Birgitte Bøggild Johannsen’s contribution in this volume.

180

Images of Hereditary Succession

On the European perspective of the three “succession” portals To conclude, it seems relevant to ask if the line of development sketched here—visual arguments for hereditary rule, in particular, and dynastic continuity, in general, on church portals, progressing from biblical paradigms via national history to contemporary ones—is to be found elsewhere. Even though such church portals seem to be rare, they are de¿nitely not unique. A related iconography is well-known from medieval architecture, ¿rst of all represented by the galleries of kings on French cathedrals.32 Progressing to early modern times, an eminent, contemporary parallel to the Kronborg portal still exists in the magni¿cent Escorial (1563–82) of Philip II of Spain.33 In the middle of the 1570s, the king decided to erect ¿ve statues of Old Testament kings above the entrance to the church, dedicated to St. Laurence. The chosen kings—Josaphat, David, Solomon, Josias and Manasses—were all ancestors of Christ (Matt. 1:1–16) and, especially Solomon, were responsible for the erection and protection of God’s temple in Jerusalem. No doubt, Philip wanted to be seen as the new Solomon, creating a contemporary model of the Solomonic temple, but the succession aspect must also have been part of the programme. The programme of the Frederiksborg portal, with its two legendary kings, father and son, following each other on the throne, seems to be rather unique. The closest parallel may be found in the Friedrichsbau (1601–7) in the castle of Heidelberg, containing a chapel beneath princely rooms on the upper Àoor.34 The facade facing the courtyard is adorned with sixteen life-size statues, representing the ancestors of the house of Wittelsbach, from Charlemagne to the present ruler of the Palatinate, Elector Frederick IV (r. 1592–1610). The subtlety of the programme, combining dynastic ancestry (including emperors and kings) with the of¿ce as elector and with the ruler’s virtues, can be compared to that of the west wing at Frederiksborg, but the use of the church as an argument for hereditary succession is more directly present in the Danish castle.35 The princely genealogy presented on the facade in Heidelberg is a parallel to a Johann Georg Prinz von Hohenzollern, Die Königsgalerie der französischen Kathedrale: Herkunft, Bedeutung, Nachfolge (Munich: Fink, 1965). 33 Cornelia von der Osten Sacken, San Lorenzo el Real de el Escorial: Studien zur Baugeschichte und Ikonologie (Mittenwald: Mäander Kunstverlag, 1979), 228–34. 34 The fundamental description of the castle, reprinted several times, is Adolf von Oechelhaeuser, ed., Die Kunstdenkmäler des Amtsbezirks Heidelberg (Kreis Heidelberg) (Tübingen: Mohr, 1913), 362–505. 35 For an interpretation of the genealogical programme, see Franz Schlechter, Hanns Hubach, and Volker Sellin, Heidelberg: Das Schloss / The Castle (Heidelberg: Braus, 1995), 25–29. 32

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

181

series found in the interiors of nearly all European princely residences—in Heidelberg itself as well as at Kronborg. Finally, the use of contemporary ruler images seen in Wolfenbüttel had in fact long been anticipated in the ephemeral architecture of entry ceremonies,36 but found a monumental follower when St. Paul’s Cathedral in London was renewed from the middle of the 1630s after designs by Inigo Jones. This work, however, came to a standstill in 1642, due to the outbreak of the Civil War, and the church was eventually, after the Great Fire of London in 1666, replaced by Christopher Wren’s cathedral.37 A special element in the classical garb in which Jones encased the medieval core was a magni¿cent west portico with Corinthian columns. It was ¿nanced by the king and on the balustrade stood statues of James I and his son Charles I.38 The dimensions and architectural quality, surpassing anything north of the Alps, was meant to rival St. Peter’s in Rome and glorify the golden age of the Stuart monarchy. As such, it became an intolerable affront in the eyes of the Puritans and the new republican government, who in 1650—a year after the beheading of King Charles—ordered the royal statues to be torn down and smashed to pieces. The fate of the royal statues on the portico of St. Paul’s is a dramatic demonstration of the power of images meant to communicate a political and religious strategy. In England, the opposition to King Charles’ absolutist government resulted in the Civil War and eventually his execution. In Denmark, the course of events went differently. We have seen two portals promoting hereditary succession through arguments from the Old Testament and national history. Most likely, their iconography was meant to advocate hereditary government without interference from the estates, playing down the fact of electoral 36 Of the four temporary triumphal arches erected in Vienna in 1563, on the occasion of the entry of Emperor Maximilian II into the city after his coronation as a glori¿cation of the house of Habsburg, one showed representations of Emperor Ferdinand transferring the rule of the empire to his son, Maximilian; see Marina Dmitrieva, “Ephemere Architektur in Krakau und Prag: Zur Inszenierung von Herrschereinzügen in ostmitteleuropäischen Metropolen,” in Krakau, Prag und Wien: Funktionen von Metropolen im frühmodernen Staat, ed. Marina Dmitrieva and Karen Lambrecht (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2000), 263–64. I am indebted to Birgitte Bøggild Johannsen for drawing my attention to this paper. 37 On Inigo Jones and the renewal of St. Paul’s, see, most recently, Vaughan Hart, Inigo Jones: The Architect of Kings (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011), 210–25. 38 The medieval rood screen of St. Paul’s interior was, furthermore, embellished with statues of the Saxon kings who had been founders or benefactors of the church, stressing the age-old contract between the church and kings. On his new rood screen for Winchester Cathedral (1637–38), Jones also included statues of James I and Charles I, Àanking the entrance to the sanctuary, see Hart, Inigo Jones, 219.

182

Images of Hereditary Succession

monarchy. In that sense, history proved them to be successful. In 1660, after devastating wars with Sweden and the near annihilation of the Kingdom of Denmark, the electoral constitution was suspended by a coup d’état in favour of absolute monarchy, with the king, Frederick III (r. 1648–70), being solely responsible to God, and hereditary succession acknowledged as God’s model of governance.39 It is my assertion that such portals as those presented here were, besides numerous other “political” arguments in art and rituals, as well as in literature, instrumental during this process and mentally paved the way for change. The hard realities, however, were an impoverished land and a nobility that had failed to defend king and country. Accordingly, the need for strong government was more pressing than ever. Now coronations were superÀuous, as the new king was invested with all royal powers the very instant his father expired. The ascension to the throne became marked only by an anointment ceremony, during which the king, who had previously placed the crown on his own head, laid the symbols of power down before the altar in respect to his overlord, God, before being anointed by the bishop of Zealand.40

See Bøggild Johannsen, “Visual strategies” and, most recently, Birgitte Bøggild Johannsen, “Til minde om et statskup – om den visuelle iscenesættelse af Statsomvæltningen 1660,” Historiske meddelelser om København (2011): 81–132. 40 See Boesen, Danmarks riges regalier, 109–17. 39

MAGIC OF PRESENCE: THE CEREMONY OF TAKING AN OATH OF ALLEGIANCE IN 1690 IN TALLINN (REVAL) KRISTA KODRES Between 1687 and 1690, the towns of Estonia, Livonia and Ingria took an oath of allegiance to Charles XI, the king of Sweden (r. 1660/72–97). Christian Kelch, who worked as a pastor in Estonia, described the three oaths in his comprehensive History of Livonia, published in 1695.1 In Riga the oath was sworn in 1687, in Narva in 1688, and in Tallinn (Ger. Reval) in 1690. Although no visual sources have survived, the description of the event in Tallinn is very lively and detailed. It seems as if the learned pastor had been there in person. However, this appears not to have been the case: Kelch used the town council’s minutes as a source.2 The description reveals that for the chronicler the magni¿cent ceremony constituted the climax of the history of Estonia. The description of the activities in 1690 contains several elements that are of interest. Firstly, in the seventeenth century taking the oath was a political performance with a long tradition and thus the event in Tallinn allows for a comparison with events of the same kind. Secondly, the ceremony in Tallinn raises the issues of how and why the speci¿c, temporal and local framing, i.e. the occasion shifted the content and form of the ritual. Vast numbers of illustrated books of festivals of different kinds have been printed in Europe since the sixteenth century, and they reveal details of these * This article was written under the auspices of research project no. SF0130019s08. 1 Christian Kelch, LieÀändische Historia, oder Kurtze Beschreibung der Denckwürdigsten Kriegs- und Friedens-Geschichte Esth- Lief- und Lettlandes; … Theils aus Ein- und Ausländischen Geschicht-Schreibern, theils aus glaubwürdigen, noch ungedruckten Urkunden, und selbst-eigener Erfahrung zusammen getragen, und in fünff Büchern abgefasset, Von Christiano Kelchen, Pastore zu St. Johannis in Jerwen, im Hertzogthum Esthland (Reval: Johann Mehner, 1695). 2 “Ratsprotokolle,” Tallinn City Archives (Estonian Tallinna Linnaarhiiv, abbr. TLA), collection (coll.) 230, inventory (inv.) 1, no. Ab 124; Eugen von Nottbeck and Wilhelm Neumann, Geschichte und Kunstdenkmäler der Stadt Reval: Erste Lieferung, Die Geschichte der Stadt bis zum Beginn der Schwedenherrschaft, Burg- und Stadtbefestigung (Reval: Franz Kluge, 1896), 195. Unless indicated otherwise, my descriptions of the Tallinn oath-taking ceremony rely on the town council’s minutes.

184

Magic of Presence

Fig. 1. Frontispiece and front page of Christian Kelch’s LieÀändische Historia, 1695.

important events.3 Like all ceremonies, the Tallinn oath-taking was characterised by a high level of theatricality and aesthetics.4 I am interested in both the iconographic and aesthetic aspects of the oath-taking, which supported and synthesised one another through relevant objects. However, focusing on how the visual side was created and how it operated illuminates just one side of the ceremony. Evidently, this political ritual was a multimedia form of symbolic communication,5 in which the semiotic, the visual, the audial and the performative aspects were combined, in order to convey messages to the society in question. I intend to show that the Tallinn ritual’s crucial aim was to See “Festival Culture Online—17th Century German Imprints of Baroque Festival Culture,” the website of the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel, accessed 15 May 2012, http://www.hab.de/bibliothek/wdb/festkultur/index-e.htm; “Early Modern Festival Books Database,” the website of the University of Oxford, accessed 15 May 2012, http://festivals.mml.ox.ac.uk/. 4 The generalisation is from Jacques Chiffoleau (1990), quoted from Werner Paravicini, “Zeremoniell und Raum,” in Zeremoniell und Raum, ed. Werner Paravicini (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1997), 14. 5 See Peter Burke, “State-Making, King-Making and Image-Making from Renaissance to Baroque: Scandinavia in a European Context,” Scandiavian Journal of History 22, no. 1 (1997): 1–8. 3

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

185

impart and reproduce social values,6 particularly the virtue of obedience to the supreme power, the Swedish king. I will try to establish how in the oath-taking ceremony the power-obedience relations were visually presented and performed in order to inÀuence the social ranks of one province of the Swedish kingdom.

The Tallinn event The social ranks in Estonia were informed in early August 1690 of the royal decree to prepare for the oath of allegiance. On 8 September the governor general, Count Axel Julius de la Gardie, had the herald in Tallinn announce that the oath was to be sworn the next day. At dawn, the soldiers of the Toompea (Ger. Domberg) Castle garrison were lined up in the courtyard of the vice regent’s residence, and the guards of the forti¿cations were doubled; companies of the queen’s bodyguard regiments and cavalry companies of Estonian nobility were positioned on both sides of the castle. The knights then rode “in a neat row and ¿ne uniforms” into the castle, followed by land councillors in their carriages. Together with the governor general, they then proceeded to the cathedral and back to the castle after the service. A stage with a throne was set up in the middle of the courtyard. In front of the nobility on horseback, the governor general took off his hat and made a speech on behalf of the king, inviting the participants to carry on with juramentum ¿delitatis. After the trumpets and Àutes played for a while, the different social ranks stepped forward, one after the other, and swore the oath with raised hands. Next, drums and trumpets sounded again, several salutes were ¿red and the governor general left the stage. The oath-swearing ceremony continued in the lower town a parte. First, the procession from the lower town went to Toompea Hill to collect the governor general. It consisted of the members of the Tallinn Black Heads,7 with banners, drums and trumpets, the burgomaster and the members of the city council in their carriages. The streets connecting the lower town and the Toompea Hill were lined with soldiers and townspeople. In the lower town, the governor Miloš Vec, Zeremonialwissenschaft im Fürstenstaat: Studien zur juristischen und politischen Theorie absolutistischer Herrschaftsrepräsentation (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1998), 139–44; Peter-Michael Hahn and Ulrich Schütte, “Thesen zur Rekonstruktion hö¿scher Zeichensysteme in der Frühen Neuzeit,” Mitteilungen der Residenzen-Kommission der Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen 13, no. 2 (2003): 19–47, available online at http://resikom.adw-goettingen.gwdg.de/MRK/ MRK13-2.pdf; Edward Muir, Ritual in Early Modern Europe, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 250–60. 7 The Brotherhood of the Black Heads united journeyman merchants and unmarried merchants. 6

186

Magic of Presence

Fig. 2. Bird’s-eye view of Tallinn, showing the Toompea Castle (in front). Photo: Peeter Säre.

general made a speech on the Town Hall Square, after which an oath of allegiance was taken. For that occasion, two triumphal arches and a podium had been erected on the Town Hall Square. The ceremony was concluded by music and a salute. The governor general returned to Toompea, and a fountain began spewing wine on the square. When the governor general arrived at Toompea, a wine fountain began Àowing there as well. The whole event ended with a celebration in the specially decorated courtyard of the castle and, in the evening, in the town hall, a special reception took place.

The oath of allegiance as a juridical and political event In 1720, the German lawyer, historian and man of letters Johann Christian Lünig wrote about the “discourse” of an oath of allegiance. Lünig characterised an oath of allegiance as a tradition with unchanging content, but varying form.8 In 1991 André Holenstein published a monograph on the oath of allegiance as a signi¿cant phenomenon in European legal culture and state administration between 800 and 1800. He stated that it was an act whose legitimacy for the public was mediated by its ritualised form, even in the seventeenth–eighteenth centuries, when the legal power of an oath was diminishing.9 The ritual itself 8 Johann Christian Lünig, Theatrum Ceremoniale Historico-Politicum, Oder Historisch- und Politischer Schau-Platz Aller Ceremonien, Welche bey Päbst- und Käyser-, auch Königlichen Wahlen und Crönungen … Ingleichen bey Grosser Herren und dero Gesandten Einholungen … beobachtet werden, vol. 2 (Leipzig: Weidmann, 1720), 821. 9 André Holenstein, Die Huldigung der Untertanen: Rechtskultur und Herrschaftsordnung (800–1800) (Stuttgart: Fischer, 1991), 434.

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

187

naturally changed during its long history or, as Holenstein states in aptly calling the oath of allegiance “a political party”: “When the politics changed, so did the party.”10 Holenstein claims that the ritual of swearing allegiance reached its third, absolutist phase in the late seventeenth century. Amongst other things, this was characterised by abandoning the oath as a contract between the ruler and the public, and the ceremony itself became a “baroque party.”11 Other scholars, however, argue that the public ceremony was always about mutual obligations.12 I will try to establish whether and to what extent these generalisations were valid in the case of Tallinn. First, a brief overview of the political situation in Sweden and Estonia at the end of the seventeenth century is in order. Sweden’s rise to the role of major power in Europe started at the end of the sixteenth century, reaching its heyday in the following century during the reign of Gustav II Adolf, Queen Christina and Charles XI. The latter ¿nally secured peace for the country. Charles XI refused to share power with the representation of the nobility, the Privy Council of Sweden (1682) and the Swedish Parliament; in 1686 the church was subjected to the king as well. One means of Charles XI’s absolutist politics was the con¿scation13 of manors for the crown, proclaimed in 1680 and extended to the provinces of Estonia and Livonia. This caused bitter discontent amongst the local nobility, partly because the decision was passed without their approval: the overseas provinces were not represented in the Swedish Parliament. Two-thirds of the land belonging to the nobility in Livonia was taken over by the Swedish crown; in Estonia the share was thirty-six percent. The con¿scation was carried out during the second half of the 1680s and, as a result, the Swedish treasury in the best years received one quarter of its entire income from the overseas provinces.14 In 1692 the land marshal of Livonia, Johann Reinhold von Patkul, compiled an anti-con¿scation petition, and was sentenced to death by a Stockholm court-martial in absentia. Ibid., 435; see also Gerd Althoff, Die Macht der Rituale: Symbolik und Herrschaft im Mittelalter (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2003), 171. 11 Holenstein, Huldigung der Untertanen, 433. 12 Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly, “General Introduction,” in Europa Triumphans: Court and Civic Festivals in Early Modern Europe, ed. James R. Mulryne et al., 2 vols. (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 1:5. 13 Referred to as Reduktion in contemporary Swedish and German documents. 14 Mati Laur, Eesti ajalugu varasel uusajal, 1550–1800 (Tallinn: Eesti Entsüklopeediakirjastus, 1999), 70–71; Nils Erik Villstrand, “Stormaktstidens politiska kultur,” in Signums svenska kulturhistoria, vol. 3, Stormaktstiden, ed. Jakob Christensson (Lund: Signum, 2005), 48. 10

188

Magic of Presence

The con¿scation should be regarded as the essential political context of swearing allegiance in Estonia, Livonia and Ingria. It should be emphasised that it was actually the ¿rst time that the king demanded such a ceremony: when Charles XI had acceded to the throne in 1672, a special ceremony of oath-taking in Sweden’s overseas provinces had not taken place.15 Why did it take place in 1690, almost twenty years later? The ceremonies initiated by the king in Riga, Narva and Tallinn were supposed to con¿rm the relations between the monarch and his subjects. It was also a demonstration of power, in the context of a newly tense political situation. Let us examine whether and how the political content was reÀected in the ceremony in Tallinn. An obvious indicator of the political tension was the message publicly conveyed the previous day by the governor general, saying that “as long as the festiviteet lasts, quarrelling and ¿ghting are forbidden, under pain of death.” Moreover, on the day itself, a considerable number of soldiers were positioned on Toompea Hill, including six companies of the queen’s bodyguards.16 The next step was to strengthen the oath-taking event’s ef¿cacy by the sermon in the cathedral. The sermon Kelch referred to relied on the First Letter of St. Peter (1 Pet. 2:13–14), which clearly demanded: “Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake: whether to the king, as supreme; or to governors, as to them that are sent by him for the punishment of evil-doers, and for the praise of them that do well.”17 The reason for the oath of allegiance was then most ¿rmly stated in the courtyard of the Toompea Castle, where Governor General de la Gardie said how necessary, useful and, ¿nally, how fairly mild the con¿scation actually was, how the king had ful¿lled his obligations to the country by waging wars for it, and how “supreme justice demands that the subjects of this particular dukedom will also in the future (as has so far commendably happened) stay faithful and obedient.” It is immediately obvious that the representative of the king did not con¿rm the old privileges during the ceremonies on Toompea, an act which was part of the oath of allegiance in the Middle Ages and the beginning of the modern period.18 Nor did he con¿rm the privileges in the lower town, which was ruled according to Lübeck town law from 1248 onwards. The delegation of the town council, referring to the alte Gewohnheiten der Ceremonien, asked for the con¿rmation multiple times during the negotiations with the governor general in 15 During the negotiations with the governor general, the city authorities referred to the ceremony of taking the oath to Queen Christina in 1651 as the previous one. 16 Kelch, LieÀändische Historia, 630. 17 The minutes and the chronicler put it brieÀy: “Fürchtet GOTT / ehret den König” (Kelch, LieÀändische Historia, 631). 18 Holenstein, Huldigung der Untertanen, 93–95.

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

189

August 1690.19 From the point of view of the city, however, a serious symbolic victory was achieved, since the original plan of the king (through his governor general) was to arrange the ceremony “in one piece” in Toompea Castle,20 and not to have two separate events. It is worth mentioning here that the city of Tallinn had a long history of quarrelling with the Swedish crown; for instance, it refused to accept the councilman of justice (Justizbürgermeister) appointed by the king. In 1680 the city ¿nally had to accept the post. For more than four hundred years all the members of the city council had been appointed by the city alone. In 1691 the ancient right of appointing bishops was also forbidden by the crown, and in 1692 the new Swedish church law came into force all over Estonia.

“Stage design” and iconography How were political ideas expressed in a ritual and how were they mediated? David Kertzer has pointed out that the most characteristic feature of political rituals was their schematic nature: everything was simpli¿ed and easily understandable.21 This also included the form of the ritual, which for the sake of better communication had to meet the expectations of the public; due to its repetitive nature, the code had to be culturally familiar.22 On the other hand, rituals have been seen as symbolic acts, essentially characterised as transition rites: they mark the end of a situation, and a transitional moment into a new situation, as well as the arrival of the new situation.23 It has also been argued that not all rituals are meant to fundamentally change the society but to con¿rm and maintain it.24 The history of rituals proves that this ambivalent character was expressed in the structure and visual design of rituals. “Ratsprotokolle,” fols. 96–220. Ibid., fols. 96–97, 142. 21 David I. Kertzer, Ritual, Politcs, and Power (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988), 175. 22 Louis Marin, “Establishing a Signi¿cation for Social Space: Demonstration, Cortege, Parade, Procession (Semiotic Notes),” in On Representation, trans. Catherine Porter (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 41; Hahn and Schütte, “Thesen zur Rekonstruktion hö¿scher Zeichensysteme,” 32. 23 Arnold van Gennep, The Rites of Passage, trans. Monika B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. Caffee (orig. publ. 1909, translated into English 1960; repr., London: Routledge, 2004), 3–5. 24 Ronald L. Grimes, “Performance Theory and the Study of Ritual,” in New Approaches to the Study of Religion, vol. 2, Textual, Comparative, Sociological, and Cognitive Approaches, ed. Peter Antes, Armin W. Geertz, and Randi R. Warne (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2004), 116. 19 20

190

Magic of Presence

Fig. 3. Bird’seye view of Tallinn, showing the Town Hall Square (in front). Photo: Peeter Säre.

There is a description of the rituals of swearing allegiance in seventeenthcentury Europe, for example, in the above-mentioned book by Christian Lünig, Theatrum Ceremoniale, which contains more than sixty descriptions of the ceremony.25 The description of the Tallinn ceremony clearly shows that the oath-taking was not structurally extraordinary, as it had all the elements of other oath-taking ceremonies elsewhere in Europe at that time. These were: a procession, church service, public address of the sovereign, taking the oath with a raised hand and a lavish party. However, the Tallinn event had quite a few modi¿cations. For example, there was no adventus, a festive entry into town at the beginning. Repetition and modi¿cation—old and new—also appear in the visual design of the Tallinn ceremony. The seventeenth-century visual rhetoric elsewhere also contained triumphal arches and pyramids, emblems and mottoes, allegorical ¿gures and pictures. In his book Einleitung zur Ceremoniel-Wissenschafft der großen Herren (1733), Julius Bernhard von Rohr gave a general description of the tradition of designing the visual milieu of oath-taking as follows: Before taking the oath, the streets are lavishly decorated. Grand triumphal arches and gates are set up in central squares and streets, pictures and tapestries are hung on the houses and oriels, the streets are adorned with green spruces, orangeries, Àowers, perspective pictures and other such things. The burghers and guilds turn up in clean clothes and with good weapons. . . . Town halls and other public buildings are provided with prettiest illuminations, coats of arms, emblems (Sinnbilder), inscriptions, chronodistich [occasional poetry— K. K.] and other inventions. . . . A throne is provided for the sovereign or his 25

Lünig, Theatrum Ceremoniale Historico-Politicum, 821–935.

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

191

Fig. 4. Tallinn town hall. Photo: Peeter Säre.

deputy, but if he is not there in person, a life-size portrait of Serenissimus is displayed. . . . Salutes are ¿red after the oath and all bells are rung. . . . Food and drink is offered to the masses, and wine fountains are opened.26

The Er¿ndungen mentioned by Rohr indicates that the rhetorical, including the visual design of the performance, could be “invented,” whereas the structural frame and many core elements of the event remained unchanged. Thus the stage design and the iconography served as means to express the singularity of the particular ritual. Let us now take a closer look at both the stage design and iconography in Tallinn. As I mentioned in the introduction, in the chronicle the learned pastor Kelch was relying on detailed descriptions written by the town’s secretary. Julius Bernhard von Rohr, Einleitung zur Ceremoniel-Wissenschafft der großen Herren, Die in vier besonderen Theilen Die meisten Ceremoniel-Handlungen, so die Europäischen Puissancen überhaupt, und die Teutschen Landes-Fürsten insonderheit, … zu beobachten pÀegen, Nebst den mancherley Arten der Divertissemens vorträgt, … und … aus dem alten und neuen Geschichten erläutert. … Neue AuÀage (Berlin: Rüdiger, 1733), 661–81. 26

192

Magic of Presence

Remarkably, he left out some details, including the secretary’s comments that revealed the meaning (Deutung) of each particular visual depiction. As mentioned above, a stage (Bühne, by Lünig identi¿ed as Theatrum27) was erected in the middle of the courtyard of the Toompea Castle for the ceremony. It was covered with red baize, and on the stage stood a throne adorned with golden fabric and carpets for the governor general. Hence, here nothing extraordinary was added to the traditional: red and gold were the most common colours for expressing noble character; here, together with the throne, they represented the missing king. In the lower town of Tallinn, red and white marbled triumphal portals with Corinthian columns were set up on the Town Hall Square. On the top of the ¿rst portal, two heroes (Helden) stood holding shields bearing a crown with palm leaves and the king’s name. The central ¿eld of a painting under the architrave of the portal depicted the king on his throne, and next to him cavaliers and halberdiers, a few cannons with infantry and cavalry, “over which the surface of the sea was sparkling, together with the battle Àeet with its sails lowered and cannonade; rays from the opening sky fell on the king’s crown and reÀected on the troops standing around him.” The picture had a caption: “Fac numen timeas & nomen regis honores. Die Gottesfurcht verlasset nicht / Den König ehrt nach euer PÀicht” (Be afraid of God’s order and honour the king’s name). In the minutes, the picture was denoted as Huldigungs Gemählde (painting of allegiance) and it was lit all over by lamps.28 The two 2.5 m tall pyramids on the base of the portal had many emblems (Sinnbilder) with slogans. The ¿rst emblem showed a king bee with a hive: those who followed the king, managed to get to the beehive, but those who went their separate way were attracted by water and drowned in it. The motto of the emblem was: “Durch sein Geleit / In Sicherheit” (Through his guidance, one is secure), meaning the happiness of the subaltern living under the rule of such a king who protects his country and people, and punishes the rebels.29 The other emblem depicted a saddled horse and the text: “Zum Fried und Streit / Ist diss bereit” (He is ready for peace and battle), meaning the tirelessness of His Majesty in serving the kingdom in peace and war. The third had a garland of Àowers with three crowns (from the Swedish coat of arms) braided into it and the text: “Der Tugend Crantz / Mehrt seinen Glanz” (The crown of virtues multiplies his glory), meaning the non-enumerable qualities of our hero. The Lünig, Theatrum Ceremoniale Historico-Politicum, 844. “Ratsprotokolle,” fols. 212v, 215v. 29 Italicised phrases from here to the end of the next paragraph represent comments in the town council’s minutes that were omitted by Kelch. See “Ratsprotokolle,” fols. 212–16, 215–20. 27 28

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

193

Fig. 5. Reconstruction of the arrangement of architectural objects in front of the Tallinn town hall, erected and decorated for the oath-taking ceremony in 1690. Drawing: Emil Urbel. fourth emblem showed a lion standing in front of the king’s camp, holding a crown and a sceptre in his left hand, and a sword in his right hand; the text read: “Der Tapfre Held / Beschützt sein Held” (The brave hero protects his heroes), meaning the hero’s valour to conserve his state. The next emblem depicted an old and a young lion with the text: “Der Held erklährt den Stamm / Von Löwen kommt kein Lamm” (The hero heralds his kith and kin; the lion can’t beget a lamb), meaning the heroic family of our monarch. Next came a picture of the world surrounded by stars: “Der Tugend Preiss / Beschleutzt sein Kreis” (The price for virtue is the perfect circle), the stars meaning the famous virtues of His Majesty known to all Europe. On the seventh emblem, there was depicted a crowned rock amidst stormy seas followed by the text: “Kein Wellen-Stoss / Bricht diesen loss” (No breaker breaks this bond), meaning the steadfast magnanimity of our hero. The last emblem on the pyramids showed a bee who was sucking honey from a Àower, and the text: “Der muntere Fleiss / Bringt süssen Preis” (Diligence brings sweet reward), which refers to the fruitful state of things. The stage in between the portals was covered by a baldachin supported by Corinthian columns. In the centre of the stage stood a throne with gilded legs and covered with carmine velvet. On top of the baldachin was a gilded crown and, on top of the crown, an orb. The sides of the baldachin were decorated with four pictures with slogans. The emblem in front showed a crown intertwined with thunderbolts and the text: “Der Hoheit Pracht / Blickt vor mit Macht” (The magni¿cence of dignity shines in power), signifying the high

194

Magic of Presence

power. The other picture also showed a crown, but in the middle of the sun, surrounded with red colour, with the text: “Der Freuden-Schein / Muss um Ihn seyn” (The glittering of joy shall be around him), meaning the happiness of people that are closely related to His undertakings. In the third picture the sun was shining above Sweden, and in the background a shadowless sceptre and the title: “Des Scepters Licht / Den Schatten bricht” (The light of the sceptre breaks the shadow), meaning the indisputable reputation of our Swedish Lord. The last emblem depicted land and sea, with palm leaves and two crowned sceptres above them. The text read: “Land und Meer / Geben Her” (The land and the sea give here), signifying His strength and power over water and land. What follows in the town council’s document is a detailed description of wine fountains erected on the Town Hall Square. This description was not included in the chronicle, obviously because the learned pastor considered the content of the emblems and devices to be too vulgar. To offer wine to town citizens, a special pavilion was built. On the green roof of the pavilion, the city’s coat of arms with lions on both sides was placed. Under a barrel of white wine, there was a picture of a hand squeezing wine from grapes into a beaker and the motto: “Trauben Safft giebt Krafft” (Juice of grapes gives strength). The emblem under a barrel of red wine depicted a hand holding wine made of red grapes and the device: “Trauben bluth machet Muth” (Blood of grapes encourages). The pavilion was decorated with arches covered with seashells, and it had two entrances covered with Àowers that created a sense of perspective (“. . . die durch ihre perpektivische art eine Scene gleichsam repräsentierte”).30 The description of the evening reception given by the town council of Tallinn was also not repeated by the chronicler. On that occasion, the hall of the councillors in the town hall was covered with tapestries. The special vessel for serving the wine was decorated with two grey pillars with two Choren (caryatids), and the inscription “Vivat XI.”31 Various emblems both outside and inside the Toompea Castle were naturally also intended to be signi¿cant, although neither the document nor the chronicle explain their meaning. First, the ¿gure of Fame at the top of the drinking pavilion is mentioned: she is ready to soar aloft and holds a tablet with the slogan “Vivat Carolus rex Sueciae.” Life-size ¿gures of Mars and Pallas wearing crowns and a wine fountain adorned with dolphins were mentioned.32 The ¿gures served as allegories of the king, particularly as exempla of the king’s virtues. Fame must have indicated the honour and reputation of 30 31 32

“Ratsprotokolle,” fol. 219. Ibid., fols. 219–20. Kelch, LieÀändische Historia, 647.

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

195

the king, Mars the king as a powerful warrior, and Pallas—probably Pallas Athena—his wisdom. In addition to these, the king himself was “present” as well—in his “particularly artistically produced life-size portrait.” Also, a special structure was built on one of the castle walls, with two big grillworks, artistic discs on both sides. These were lit up from behind so that it was possible all through the night to see the name intertwined with the king’s crown, together with the sword, sceptre, orb, key and the caption: “Vivat protector patriae.” As is obvious, all of the pictorial representations and accompanying inscriptions of the oath-taking ceremony are laudatory. They introduced the king as the most exemplary person33 by using rhetorical and visual metaphors, wellknown decorum of his social standing: the symbols of power and governing, such as the sun, lion, bee, rock, crown, sceptre and sword. The identi¿cation of Charles XI with the sun god Apollo began as early as the 1670s, probably the idea of the king’s court architect Nicodemus Tessin the Elder, who had visited France and had even had an audience with Louis XIV.34 “Le Soleil est le Roy de corps,” as it was put by Pierre le Moyne, the famous author of the book De l’art des devises.35 The meaning of the lion repeatedly seen in Tallinn’s emblems is primarily associated with the idea of dynastic continuity, the translatio imperii: from Gustav II Adolph onwards, the “Nordic lion” was a symbol of the Swedish kings.36 Notably, in the portrait painted by the court painter David Klöcker Ehrenstrahl, Charles XI was also accompanied by a lion. But also, and in the context of the confessional wars in Europe, Swedish “lion” kings regarded themselves as guardians of true Christian faith. Charles XI was identi¿ed as David or Solomon, as “God’s salve” on earth, ful¿lling his rule over the “Nordic Israel.”37 Thus, every symbolic representation of the king was supposed to convey this meaning. Vec, Zeremonialwissenschaft im Fürstenstaat, 56. Allan Ellenius, “Visual Culture in Seventeenth-Century Sweden: Images of Power and Knowledge,” in The Age of New Sweden, ed. Arne Losman, Agneta Lundström, and Margareta Revera (Stockholm: Livrustkammaren, 1988), 53; Peter Burke, The Fabrication of Louis XIV (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992), 170; Ragnar Josephson, L’architecte de Charles XII, Nicodème Tessin, à la cour de Louis XIV (Paris: Van Oest, 1930), 99. 35 Pierre le Moyne, De l’art des devises. Par le P. le Moyne. … Avec divers recveils de Devises du mesme Autheur (Paris: Sebastien & Sebastien Mabre Cramoisy, 1666), 426. Louis XIV was for the ¿rst time publicly presented as the Sun King in 1653. 36 Kekke Stadin, “The Masculine Image of a Great Power: Representations of Swedish Imperial Power, c. 1630–1690,” Scandinavian Journal of History 30, no. 1 (2005): 61–82. See also Lena Rangström, “Certamen Equestre: The Carousel for the Accession of Karl XI in 1672,” in Mulryne et al., Europa Triumphans, 2:292–96. 37 Villstrand, “Stormaktstidens politiska kultur,” 81. 33 34

196

Magic of Presence

In addition to pictures, emblems and ¿gures, the architectural solution of both oath ceremonies was quite telling. It was marked by the triumphal arches, the pyramids/obelisks on the Town Hall Square, and the design of the state chamber in the Toompea Castle: “It was painted and arranged after architecture with pilasters, arches and garlands put together with all variety of fruit.”38 Reputedly, using Roman triumphal arches in state rituals had started in the late Middle Ages, continued during the Renaissance in Italy and Burgundy, and became common in the sixteenth century. The arches stood for the concept of the everlasting transfer of imperial power and culture.39 Due to the constant use in performances of power rituals, the triumphal arch became a very strong rhetorical ¿gure. In Sweden, the translatio imperii concept started, at the latest, with Gustav II Adolf, who identi¿ed himself with Caesar Augustus. Great Rome was conquered by the brave Goths, alias the Swedes, and Stockholm was considered to be a Second Rome. The ¿rst grand triumphal arch, imitating the arch of the Roman emperor Constantine, was erected in Stockholm for the celebrations of Queen Christina’s ascension to the throne in 1650,40 and in 1672, to celebrate Charles XI’s accession to the throne, a triumphal arch was erected as well.41 In Tallinn, the triumphal arch was not used as a passage, but as an “ephemeral gate,”42 thus functioning as a pure monument celebrating the magni¿cence of state power. The other historically strongly loaded motifs—pyramids and obelisks—were obviously erected to refer to the sovereign’s eternal life43 and as symbols of his glory.44 It is also quite telling that in the description the style Kelch, LieÀändische Historia, 647. Jacques Le Goff, La civilisation de l’Occident médiéval (Paris: Arthaud, 1984), 239. 40 Villstrand, “Stormaktstidens politiska kultur,” 57. 41 David Klöcker Ehrenstrahl, Das große Carrosel Und Prächtige Ring-Rännen: Nebst dem, Was sonsten FürtreÀiches zu sehen war, Alß … Carl der Eÿlffte, Die Regierung seines Väterlichen Erb-Königreichs Anno M. DC. LXXII. den XVII.den Decembris In seiner Königlichen Residentz zu Stockholm Antratt (Stockholm: Eberdt, 1672), 4, available online at http://diglib.hab.de/drucke/gs-2f-14/start.htm; Doris Gerstl, Drucke des hö¿schen Barock in Schweden: Der Stockholmer Hofmaler David Klöcker von Ehrenstrahl und die Nürnberger Stecher Georg Christoph Eimmart und Jacob von Sandrart (Berlin: Mann, 2000); Rangström, “Certamen Equestre,” 292–323. 42 Ulrich Schütte, “Stadttor und Hausschwelle: Zur rituellen Bedeutung architektonischer Grenzen in der frühen Neuzeit,” in Paravicini, Zeremoniell und Raum, 307–19. 43 Mårten Snickare, Enväldets riter: Kungliga fester och ceremonier i gestaltning av Nicodemus Tessin den Yngre (Stockholm: Raster, 1999), 136. 44 As interpreted by Cesare Ripa, Iconologia overo descrittione di diverse imagini cavate dall’antichità, et di propria inventione (1603; repr., Hildesheim: Olms, 2000), 190, where the pyramid signi¿ed Gloria de’ prencipi. 38 39

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

197

Fig. 6. David Klöcker Ehrenstrahl, portrait of Charles XI, the king of Sweden, 1670 (?). Tallinn town hall. Reproduced by permission of the Tallinn City Museum.

of the architectural objects is stressed. The Corinthian style was semanticised in the sixteenth century by Sebastiano Serlio, who used it for the highest rank of buildings, church buildings, houses of God. In his proposals for scenography, the scene for tragedies—the highest of all theatrical genres—had to be designed by only using buildings of noble character, such as triumphal arches, pyramids and obelisks.45 Thus, according to architectural theory, the Corinthian style and certain types of buildings were regarded as a parallel to the genre of rhetoric, genus demonstrativum (or genus laudativum), which was to be used for speeches on the most sublime subjects. In sum, the “antique side” of the architectural and pictorial programme also presented a glori¿cation of Charles XI as a sovereign; it was a visual panegyric to him as a political body46 (incidentally, Charles XI as a person was modest and shy, and allegedly had dif¿culties with reading and writing47). The Sebastiano Serlio, Tutte l’opere d’architettura et prospetiva: … Diviso in sette libri … Libro Secondo (Venice: Giacomo de’ Franceschi, 1619), fol. 44. 46 See Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology (1957; repr., Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997). 47 Ellenius, “Visual Culture in Seventeenth-Century Sweden,” 54. 45

198

Magic of Presence

arrangement of the king’s signum in the dark of the night established a visual climax of the event on Toompea. Here the image of power was emotionally dramatised and illumination enabled it to appear as a parallel to divine revelation. In the lower town, in parallel to the Toompea event, each house had an illuminated paper lamp with the initials of the king, and a crown surrounded by palm leaves and the inscription “Vivat.”48

Aesthetic means One should also examine other elements of the ritual that contributed to the whole. Besides iconography, other visual means played an important role. The contemporary aesthetic theory, originating in Leon Battista Alberti’s treatment of art, saw art as a rhetorical, i.e. pragmatic, means of communication.49 Jutta Held has examined how Louis XIV’s academicians regarded art. She demonstrates how the aesthetic theory construed in the Sun King’s courtly-academic environment shifted from emphasising purely picturesque means to stressing the role of disposition (in rhetoric—organising arguments, in art—composition) and story (historia). The concept of “economy”—the “wise choice”— also borrowed from the theory of rhetoric, was linked with disposition and story, whose mutual intelligent collaboration was supposed to produce an ideal work of art. The aim of such a work of art was to produce effects that would cause a sense of truth in people. Constructing veracity (vraisemblance) relied on both actual topical interests and aesthetic preferences.50 Aesthetics was thus seen as a conceptual means, where the ¿nal aim was to convince, to dramatise truth via “circumstances,” which would also make these circumstances, i.e. the message conveyed in the narrative, credible. No matter what narrative was depicted, the state sovereign‘s and God’s mercy was the uni¿ed and ultimate reason for any artwork. A good piece of art was thus supposed to be able to create positive social virtues, i.e. to function as a vehicle for the legitimation of social order.51 It is remarkable that the concepts of union and concordia, used in the French absolutist era theory of aesthetics, were borrowed from the theory of state and the teaching of morals.52 Jutta Held has showed how such “Ratsprotokolle,” fol. 96v. See Rensselaer W. Lee, Ut Pictura Poesis: The Humanistic Theory of Painting (New York: Norton, 1967). 50 Jutta Held, Französische Kunsttheorie des 17. Jahrhunderts und der absolutistische Staat: Le Brun und die ersten acht Vorlesungen an der königlichen Akademie (Berlin: Reimer, 2001), 128–29. 51 Ibid., 176–78. 52 Ibid., 137, 170. 48 49

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

199

an aesthetic concept with a new emphasis changed the pictorial representation: more attention to the organisation of space and the hierarchy of the elements that resulted in the clear visual emphasis of the central theme. Charles Le Brun and André Félibien, theoreticians of Louis XIV’s rule, tackled painting in their writings. It seems to me, however, that the rituals and celebrations of the Sun King and the monarchs who admired him reveal the aesthetic viewpoints which were brieÀy presented above. The visual design of the ceremony in Tallinn also strove to demonstrate the unity and concordance of power and aesthetic magni¿cence. Grand architectural objects53 were key elements in creating the effect. Via their arrangement, the hierarchisation of public space in the lower town and in the courtyard of the Toompea Castle, as well as in the state chamber, was visually and materially created. Thus, they formed a scene-picture for the theatrical act, to be performed in front of the general audience, the burghers. In the scenography, the spatially-visually higher and most central positions were reserved for the missing king, who was represented by thrones on high standing stages, and visual allegories. Thus the centre of the event—the power of the sovereign—was made visually perceivable. The arrangement by social ranks of the oath-taking representatives, who had to stay below the level of the monarch’s representations, also contributed to the hierarchical spatial organisation. The position of each group in the social hierarchy was made visible by the place they were supposed to occupy during the oath-taking ceremony: the socially higher ranks were situated nearer the centre, i.e. nearer the king. Further on, the supposed effect was enhanced by other ritual-speci¿c visual means: the choice of colours (red and gold), banners, garlands, lanterns, illuminations and the clothes of the cortege. The effect of the visual whole was increased by the acoustic design of the ceremony, i.e. music and salutes. Such an expressive staging was a common model of absolutist ceremonies.54 The pictorial compositions, portraits, allegories of the antique, emblems and inscriptions contributed in this multimedia scenography to the main narrative. André Félibien, the court historian and publisher of books of ceremonies and inscriptions stated: “The loftiest subjects of pictures are fable, allegory or history.”55 All these were used in the Tallinn oath-taking ritual to rhetoThe height of triumphal arches is not mentioned but, considering that the pyramids were 2.5 m high, they must have been around 5–6 m tall. 54 See, e.g., the descriptions in Ehrenstrahl, Das große Carrosel; in Lünig, Theatrum Ceremoniale Historico-Politicum; and in Karl Möseneder, Zeremoniell und monumentale Poesie: Die “Entrée solennelle” Ludwigs XIV. 1660 in Paris (Berlin: Mann, 1983), 55–73. 55 André Félibien, “Preface to Seven Conferences, 1667,” in Art in Theory, 1648–1815: An Anthology of Changing Ideas, ed. Charles Harrison, Paul Wood, and Jason Gaiger (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), 113. 53

200

Magic of Presence

rically elaborate the message. They might be seen as the means of this great visual rhetorical act, whose effect was to be guaranteed by “demonstrating by repeating,” by ampli¿catio of the visual exempla of the king’s virtues. The vast number of emblems contributed to the same goal, making sure that the meaning of the pictures reached the audience who had the chance to see and read them already before the day of the oath-taking, since the triumphal arches and pyramids were executed and painted on the spot. It is remarkable that the inscriptions of emblems were not in noble Latin but in German, the language of the local elite, thus being at once understandable. In the ritual environment, the idea of power—majestas, magni¿cence—was naturally presented in a more schematic and simpli¿ed way than in painting, since it had to be easily understandable. Who was responsible for the libretto and the design of the ceremonial event in Tallinn? Unfortunately (and quite typically) the author of the visual concept is mentioned neither in the documents nor by Kelch. In my opinion, it could have been the Swedish “scientist of rituals,” the royal architect Nicodemus Tessin the Elder, known as a keen admirer of the French court and a possessor of a collection that contained 138 descriptions of grand entrances of sovereigns, starting from the ¿fteenth century, from all over Europe, descriptions of ¿reworks and illuminations mostly in Rome and Paris, forty-two seventeenth-century drawings of triumphal arches, etc.56 Undoubtedly, he shared Louis XIV’s understanding of public festivities, aimed at “showing the right way to people who do not understand the real reasons of things and rely on the external,”57 and used this also in planning the representations of his own master in Sweden.58 As is evident from the documents of the town council, in Tallinn the preparations for the oath-taking ceremony followed a “project” by the governor general (“Königlich General-Gouverneur verfasste project wegen der Huldigung”).59 Does this mean the arrangement of the content and the schedule of the event only, or did the project also include suggestions for design? In fact, the repertoire of objects erected in Tallinn appears to have been very similar to what was used in royal ceremonies in Sweden. For Tessin, in particular, pyramids with emblems seem to have been a favourite motif of ceremonies. Snickare, Enväldets riter, 33–34. Möseneder, Zeremoniell und monumentale Poesie, 36. 58 This material was introduced by Mårten Snickare in his dissertation Enväldets riter; see also Snickare, “Shaping the Ritual Space: Nicodemus Tessin the Younger and Swedish Royal Ceremonies,” in Baroque Dreams: Art and Vision in Sweden in the Era of Greatness, ed. Allan Ellenius (Uppsala: Uppsala University Press, 2003). 59 “Ratsprotokolle,” fol. 193v. 56 57

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

201

The craftsmen of Tallinn’s lower town were involved in manufacturing the objects prescribed for the ceremony. The governor general particularly demanded “people with knowledge,” who would be prepared for such a task (“. . . umb einige Leute, die an gute wissenschaft hetten solche zierathen anzugeben und zu machen”).60 Carpenter Christoph Neyman was paid for building the triumphal arches and pyramids.61 In the papers of the town council, there are also accounts of the painters Hans Beckmann and Steffen von Kölln, who both arrived in Tallinn in the early 1680s from Hamburg. Beckmann painted the eight emblems on pyramids and thirty-two initials of the king surrounded with palm leaves. He also covered with paint two hundred Pomerantzen, two hundred lemons, and ¿fty-two grapes, and marbled the triumphal arches.62 Steffen von Kölln painted the four emblems on the throne stage, as well as gilding with his own gold the throne and the crown, and did other minor work. In all probability, both painters relied on a prescribed programme and emblems.63 Remarkably, neither of the craftsmen painted the valuable “painting of allegiance”; the most esteemed painter in Tallinn, Ernst Wilhelm Londicer, may have painted it. He was trained in Germany and Holland and had gotten a letter from Charles XI which con¿rmed him to work in Tallinn as a “free artist,” and not a member of the local guild of painters. During the last decades of the seventeenth century he was occupied with producing portraits for both bourgeois and noble customers.64

Conclusion The central issue in the oath ceremony in medieval and early modern Europe was always the question of power. The ceremony of swearing allegiance in Reval in 1690 was an event initiated by Charles XI, and had both political and social aims. I do not tackle the latter in any detail here, but I would just Ibid., fol. 97. TLA, coll. 230, inv. 1, no. Ba 35 III, fol. 350. 62 Ibid., fol. 349v; This work was brieÀy mentioned in Pia Ehasalu, Rootsiaegne maalikunst Tallinnas (1561–1710): Produktsioon ja retseptsioon / Painting in Tallinn during the Swedish Period (1561–1710): Production and Reception (Tallinn: Eesti Kunstiakadeemia, 2007), 102, 142. 63 The emblems used in Tallinn could not be found in published books of emblems. Apparently, as in the case of other ceremonies held in Sweden, the emblems were specially produced or modi¿ed for this occasion. To decorate the triumphal arch for the entrée of Queen Ulrika Eleonora into Stockholm in 1680, some emblems from Cesare Ripa and Saavedra were used by Tessin. See Snickare, Enväldets riter, 48–50. 64 Wilhelm Neumann, Ernst Wilhelm Londicer: Ein Revaler Maler des 17. Jahrhunderts (Reval, 1895); Ehasalu, Painting in Tallinn, 257–59. 60 61

202

Magic of Presence

mention that some idea of the social aims are contained in the description: it introduced the social hierarchy of the oath of allegiance and processions, listing the order in which the social ranks took their oath. For each social rank, a special formula of oath they had to perform was given. The scenario, including each role in the ritual, was probably prescribed in the project that was negotiated before the event started; in this way, the risk of failure was believed to have been prevented.65 The order of the ritual reÀected, and was supposed to con¿rm, the hierarchy, i.e. it had to mark, stabilise and reproduce the existing social order.66 The legitimate guarantee of the latter was the sovereign monarch. The oath ceremony was visually conceptualised as a “baroque party” if we accept that this metaphor was used, as it obviously was by Holenstein, as “WölfÀian.” Reputedly, Heinrich WölfÀin considered the impression of the overwhelming sublime to be “the nerve of the baroque.”67 However, the event also contained a traditional contractual aspect that was characteristic to earlier oath-taking ceremonies.68 This is proved by the mere fact that the ceremony was organised in the ¿rst place. After all, the ulterior motive behind the ritual must have been the fear that someone might not agree with the exercise of power.69 What was feared was the reaction to the king’s politics, particularly to the draconian con¿scation carried out by the sovereign. Thus the ceremony was meant to be a performance of social harmony,70 and it certainly was designed to de-escalate the situation by offering a staged proof of the king’s magni¿cence and good will toward his subalterns. To the latter, the sweet feeling of participation and belonging, under the rule of the great guardian, was offered and mediated. In this regard, one could argue that despite the demonstration of absolutist power, which perhaps overshadowed the character of oath-taking as a mutual agreement between the king and his people, the Tallinn ritual contained a traditional promise of a safe and prosperous future. Of course, the main precondition for this to be realised was the obedience and allegiance of local nobility and town citizens. In the selection of the emblems for the See Renate Schlesier and Ulrike Zellmann, eds., Ritual als provoziertes Risiko (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2009). 66 See also Althoff, Die Macht der Rituale, 200. 67 Heinrich WölfÀin, Renaissance und Barock: Eine Untersuchung über Wesen und Entstehung des Barockstils in Italien (Munich: Ackermann, 1888), 72. 68 Holenstein, Huldigung der Untertanen, 12–13. 69 See also Nicholas Howe, “Introduction,” in Ceremonial Culture in Pre-Modern Europe, ed. Nicholas Howe (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), 12. 70 Muir, Ritual in Early Modern Europe, 252–53. 65

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

203

oath-taking ceremony in Tallinn, the wish to present the king as a victorious ¿ghter against his enemies was evident. It is clear that, although the absolute monarch was not physically present, he was still the focus of the whole undertaking. Simulatio majestatis,71 the “magic”72 of Charles XI’s presence, with the emphasis on the king as political body, was realised and mediated in the ceremony primarily visually, via its architectural and pictorial programme. Architecture and pictures were meant to specify, ¿x and memorise the event’s temporal and eternal aspects. This was done in a speci¿cally ritual fashion, using architectural and pictorial representations, which due to their huge size and richness of design and iconography were supposed to guarantee the effectiveness of the ceremony. The role of the visual programme in the oath ceremony thus reveals the faith of its producers in the rhetorical and aesthetic power of objects, pictures and other visual media,73 which were obviously regarded as omnipotent symbolic capital that was supposed to be convertible back into the political and social capital of the king, i.e. the Swedish state. As a result, to the educated members of society, the oath ritual offered—at least as appears from the tone of Christian Kelch’s “reportage”—captivating emotional enjoyment, the noble emotion of the sublime. As to Kelch, he as a Lutheran pastor naturally shared the fundamental pathos of the whole undertaking: the beautiful order that the oath con¿rmed was set by God himself. Nevertheless, the persuasive power of the oath ceremony did not last very long: in 1711 the social ranks of the city were to welcome a new ruler, Peter the Great, the tzar of Russia.

71 Von Rohr, Einleitung zur Ceremoniel-Wissenschafft, 2; Vec, Zeremonialwissenschaft im Fürstenstaat, 147. 72 Karl-Siegbert Rehberg, “Präsenzmagie und Zeichenhaftigkeit: Institutionelle Formen der Symbolisierung,” in Zeichen – Rituale – Werte: Internationales Kolloquium des Sonderforschungsbereichs 496 an der Westfälischen Wilhelms-Universität Münster, ed. Gerd Althoff (Münster: Rhema, 2004), 19–36. 73 Allan Ellenius, “Introduction: Visual Representations of the State as Propaganda and Legitimation,” in Iconography, Propaganda, and Legitimation, ed. Allan Ellenius (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 1–7; Hahn and Schütte, “Thesen zur Rekonstruktion hö¿scher Zeichensysteme,” 24; Thomas Weller, Theatrum Praecedentiae: Zeremonieller Rang und gesellschaftliche Ordnung in der frühneuzeitlichen Stadt; Leipzig, 1500–1800 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2006), 42–52; Udo J. Hebel and Christoph Wagner, “Introduction,” in Pictorial Cultures and Political Iconographies: Approaches, Perspectives, Case Studies from Europe and America, ed. Udo J. Hebel and Christoph Wagner (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011), 8.

BETWEEN ACT, IMAGE, AND MEMORY: RITUAL RE-ENACTMENTS IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY DENMARK BIRGITTE BØGGILD JOHANNSEN One of the current issues of post-modern cultural studies is the interaction between rituals, or performativity in general, on one hand, and images, or visuality, on the other.1 As stated by, among others, Claus Ambos in Bild und Ritual: Visuelle Kulturen in historischer Perspektive (2010), rituals are not, as often supposed, rigid and inÀexible, but represent acts of incessant change, having in themselves independent essence as icons or images, also involving all kinds of visual (and audial) media. Nor should visual stimuli be regarded as passive and transparent conveyors of information. They are equally important agenda setters, “die das Dynamische an Ritualen erkennbar machen und dem Betrachter vor Augen führen.”2 In this context, the focus will be precisely on the dynamic potentials of rituals and related images, being reshaped or remediated when activated for commemorative purposes.3 Along the present lines, I shall discuss a selection of political or religious anniversaries from eighteenth-century Denmark or, to be more precise, reenactments of former ritual performances. In his seminal Les lieux de mémoire (1984–92), Pierre Nora included historical events marked by particular rituals, During the last decade, the focus on these issues has been reÀected within various interdisciplinary turns or discourses, e.g., the “pictorial,” the “visual,” the “iconic” and the “performative”; for a survey of the extensive literature, see also Birgit Emich, “Bildlichkeit und Intermedialität in der frühen Neuzeit: Eine interdisziplinäre Spurensuche,” Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung 35, no. 1 (2008): 31–56. 2 Claus Ambos, “Vorwort,” in Bild und Ritual: Visuelle Kulturen in historischer Perspektive, ed. Claus Ambos et al. (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2010), VII. See also Gerd Althoff et al., eds., Spektakel der Macht: Rituale im alten Europa 800–1800 (Darmstadt: Primus, 2008, published in conjunction with the exhibition shown at the Kulturhistorisches Museum in Magdeburg); Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger and Thomas Weissbrich, eds., Die Bildlichkeit symbolischer Akte (Münster: Rhema, 2010). 3 See Astrid Erll, “Remembering across Time, Space, and Cultures: Premediation, Remediation and the ‘Indian Mutiny,’” in Mediation, Remediation, and the Dynamics of Cultural Memory, ed. Astrid Erll and Ann Rigney (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2009), 109–38. 1

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

205

to which in retrospect might be attributed a changed paradigmatic meaning. Consequently, he regarded a reactivated ritual as a shared site of memory or a meaningful entity of a real or imagined kind, which might become a symbolic element for a given community as a result of human will or the effect of time.4 In How Societies Remember (1989), Paul Connerton classi¿ed these as “commemorative ceremonies,” pointing out how social memory might be organised and legitimised via bodily practices, as well as via ritualised activities, which basically share the formalism and performativity of other rituals or ceremonies.5 Yet, commemorative acts are, in particular, distinguished by the fact that they explicitly refer to prototypical persons and events, whether historical or mythological. Furthermore they possess the distinctive feature “of ritual re-enactment, . . . a quality of cardinal importance in the shaping of communal memory.”6 However, Connerton did not explicitly discuss the transformative qualities of commemorative rituals, nor did he refer to images or visual media in general and their dynamic potentials, as shall be the aims of this contribution. A few preliminary points should be emphasised. Notable is the frequent calendrical character of commemorative ceremonies, a quality shared with religious or liturgical feasts. Not only do they possess, during their performance, a structure of repetition, but the very moment of reiteration, basically reÀecting the annual recurrence of the seasons, constitutes in itself a matrix for religious festivals and for political commemorations, the latter prospering in this way from the aura of the sacred calendar, as noted by Aleida Assmann.7 Crucial, as well, are the triple functions of anniversaries: giving occasion for interaction and participation during the performance of repetition and reactivation, for the “we-staging” (Wir-Inszenierung) of imagined communities of every kind and for the opportunity for reÀection, eventually over time transforming history into myth.8 Accordingly, commemorative ceremonies or reactivated rituals in themselves are always open to negotiation, or they may be annihilated, forgotten and reformulated, even being replaced by others, as shall also be shown. The article will refer to three late medieval or early modern rituals of state, a coronation and a royal wedding (1449), as well as a ritual paying of homage Pierre Nora, Les lieux de mémoire, 3 vols. ([Paris]: Gallimard, 1984–92), esp. vol. 3, ch. “L’ère de la commemoration,” 975–1012. 5 Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), esp. 41–71. 6 Ibid., 61. 7 Aleida Assmann, Der lange Schatten der Vergangenheit: Erinnerungskultur und Geschichtspolitik (Munich: Beck, 2006), 232–33. 8 Ibid., 233–34. 4

206

Between Act, Image, and Memory

(1660), all as lieux de mémoire staged anew during two commemorative jubilees in 1749 and 1760, and all equally exploited as “empowering interactions,”9 serving the consolidation of the absolutist government in Denmark. To be included as well, by way of comparison, are the two Reformation bicentenaries of 1717 and 1736. It shall be discussed how these re-enacted rituals and their visual staging through architecture, real or ephemeral, and images of every kind had an active or dynamic status in themselves, generating legitimacy and consensus from the viewpoint of the authors and their agents yet, from the perspective of the audience, being invested with more layers of meaning, open to different readings and likely to be transformed or even neglected during later replays.

A century of commemoration By way of introduction, the antecedents and their commemoration should be brieÀy presented. On 28 October 1449 the coronation of King Christian I of Oldenburg (1426–81) and his marriage to Dorothea of Brandenburg (ca. 1430–95), the widow of his predecessor, Christopher of Bavaria (1416–48), were celebrated. The rituals, of which we have only very scant written information and no contemporary images, were performed in the Church of Our Lady in Copenhagen.10 Probably the procedure was performed in a way similar to later traditions, involving a festive procession between the church and the royal castle of Copenhagen, and including visual magni¿cence, which during the following centuries was markedly increased, on a par with contemporary European standards.11 The felicitous events in 1449 would, however, acquire far-reaching importance, marking the accession to the throne of the—as it turned out—fertile Oldenburg dynasty, which, after three ruptures in the agnatic succession of the royal line during the late fourteenth and early ¿fteenth century, reigned for more than four hundred years, until 1863. On 28–30 October 1749 the commemoration of this moment as a promising omen became the See Wim Blockmans, André Holenstein, and Jon Mathieu, eds., Empowering Interactions: Political Cultures and the Emergence of the State in Europe 1300–1900 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009). 10 See Arild Huitfeldt, Danmarks Riges Krønike, vol. 4, Christian I’s Historie (1599; facsimile, Copenhagen: Rosenkilde & Bagger, 1977), 16–17; see also Erich Hoffmann, Königserhebung und Thronfolgeordnung in Dänemark bis zum Ausgang des Mittelalters (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1976), 163–64; Gudmund Boesen, Danmarks riges regalier (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1986), 18–20. 11 On royal Danish festivals during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, basically, Mara R. Wade, Triumphus Nuptialis Danicus: German Court Culture and Denmark; The “Great Wedding” of 1634 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1996). 9

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

207

Fig. 1. Johann Christoph Holtzbecher, ephemeral decoration, presented by the magistrate of Copenhagen at the Oldenburg jubilee in 1749. Engraving by Jonas Haas, ca. 1755. Royal Library, Copenhagen. Reproduced from Bøggild Johannsen, “Felicitas Temporum.”

208

Between Act, Image, and Memory

occasion for three days of festivities, celebrated everywhere in the Danish realms (¿g. 1).12 A rite de passage of no less signi¿cance was performed on 18 October 1660, the paying of homage to the hereditary king by the estates in front of Copenhagen Castle. The ritual mainly followed the traditional ceremony celebrated at different localities at the election of the royal successor, prior to his coronation. However, the rite of 1660 proved to be particularly momentous.13 For the ¿rst and only time in Danish history, the changed status of the king was proclaimed, now declared hereditary instead of electoral. Yet, having far greater implications were the political effects of this event, in reality introducing absolutism by way of a coup d’état. Although the of¿cial declaration of absolutism (“Enevoldsarveregeringsakten”) was only issued three months later, on 10 January 1661, subsequent commemorations, including pictorial (¿g. 2), would place a stigma on 18 October and the immediate preceding days, in particular 16 October, the day of the annulment of the former royal coronation charter, as the “magic moments,” i.e. the birth of absolutism, accordingly playing down the memory of 10 January. The ¿rst—and last—centenary of absolutism was celebrated for three days, 16–18 October 1760 (¿g. 3). Of course, commemorative feasts, marking important royal rites of passage, such as birthdays, coronations, weddings and funerals, had previously been celebrated in Denmark with festivities and the issuing of medals or panegyrics, in particular, beginning in the late seventeenth century, being activated at lustra, every ¿ve years, in parallel with a praxis in imperial Rome,14 but de¿nitively none of these compare to the two above-mentioned in terms of performative and visual richness. Two jubilees, celebrated in the ¿rst half of the eighteenth century, should, however, be included as precedents or even paradigms of the previous events, the two bicentenaries in 1717 of the Lutheran Reformation and in 1736 of the related, of¿cial introduction of the Danish Reformation. Whether de¿ned as ritual acts or as semi-ritual moments of major political 12 On the celebration of the 1749 jubilee in Copenhagen, see Birgitte Bøggild Johannsen, “Felicitas Temporum: Studies in Temporary Decorations and Political Allegories from the Reign of Frederick V,” Hafnia: Copenhagen Papers in the History of Art 10 (1985): 105–27. 13 For discussion of the visual staging of the paying of homage on 18 October 1660 and its far-reaching political implications, see Birgitte Bøggild Johannsen, “Visual Strategies for Staging a coup d’état: Ritual and Pictorial Communication of the Absolutist Revolution in Denmark 1660,” in Stollberg-Rilinger and Weissbrich, Bildlichkeit symbolischer Akte, 313–50. 14 See the survey related to the issuing of commemorative medals in Georg Galster, “Danske Jubilæumsmedailler,” in Jubilæumsbogen (Copenhagen: Dansk Presse-Forlag, 1931), 9–30.

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

209

Fig. 2. Wilhelm Andreas Müller, Paying Homage to the Hereditary King Frederick III by the Estates in front of Copenhagen Castle, 18 October 1660. Engraving made after a drawing by Johan Martin Preisler, ca. 1761, based upon Wolfgang Heimbach’s oil painting, 1666. Reproduced by permission of the Royal Library, Collection of Prints and Photographs, Copenhagen or religious range, the ¿rst-mentioned was commemorated in Denmark, and throughout Protestant Europe, as a pompous festival, glorifying for the second time the centenary of the birth of the Reformation, Martin Luther’s momentous nailing of his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg on 31 October 1517. In Denmark, the event provided an occasion for eight days of festivities, 31 October–7 November 1717.15 It followed in the wake of the ¿rst centenary of 1617, to which was added a yearly church service, or Jubilaeus evangelicus, celebrated since the second and third decades of the 15 For the Danish 1717 jubilee, see Hans Olrik, “Reformationens 200-års Jubilæum i Danmark 1717,” Kirkehistoriske Samlinger, 4th ser., 1 (1889–91): 268–94. A contemporary survey of the bicentenary in German-speaking countries, including Denmark, is Ernst Salomon Cyprian, Hilaria Evangelica, Oder Theologisch-Historischer Bericht Vom Andern Evangelischen Jubel-Fest, 3 vols. (Gotha: Weidmann, 1719), comprising descriptions of the Danish festivals in Copenhagen and the provinces, as well as related texts (1:1–92). See also Harm Cordes, Hilaria Evangelica Academica: Das Reformationsjubiläum von 1717 an den deutschen lutherischen Universitäten (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006).

210

Between Act, Image, and Memory

seventeenth century on the very nailing day.16 Though in its essence it was a religious and academic festival, the Reformation jubilee also had the status of a royal or state occasion, the Danish king since the Lutheran Reformation being the head of the national church (¿g. 4). The commemoration of the of¿cial institutionalising of the Danish Reformation referred to the meeting of the National Assembly in Copenhagen at the Old Market (Gammeltorv) in front of the town hall on 30 October 1536. Here, from his seat on a wooden dais, King Christian III (1503–59) recited a statement of the previous political events, announcing the imprisonment of the Catholic bishops, and issuing a proposition which delineated the forthcoming ordinance of the new evangelical church.17 Though not a state ritual in the normal sense, these acts indeed had an empowering effect and in their essence bore a close likeness to the ritual of paying homage, the king offering an oath of loyalty to the gathered members of the nobility, the citizenry and the peasantry, and being answered by an utterance of consent. The outcome of the meeting, indeed a most radical constitutional and religious change, was stated at the issuing of a recess or royal charter on the same date, as well as the very document upon which the king swore his coronation oath the following year.18 In parallel with the homage of 1660, the act of 30 October 1536 represented a consensus-creating and pacifying rite, transforming the virtual coup d’état accomplished by the king and a circle of fellow conspirators into law. Though the of¿cial conclusion of the Reformation process only took place the following year, in August and September 1537, at the crowning of the king, the election of the new Lutheran superintendents and the reopening of the university, the date 30 October 1536 would henceforward be institutionalised as the birthday of the Danish Reformation. No contemporary illustration of the event exists19 and it was only indirectly memorialised in the recreated tomb monument for Archbishop Absalon (d. 1202) in Sorø from ca. 1537, proclaiming in an act of continuity the year 1536 as the meaning-laden turning point between the 16 Bjørn Kornerup, “Reformationsjubilæet i Danmark 1617,” Kirkehistoriske Samlinger, 6th ser., 2 (1936–38): 33–83, esp. 52. 17 Basically on the Danish Reformation, see Martin Schwarz Lausten, Die Reformation in Dänemark, trans. Lise Miller Tönnies ([Gütersloh]: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2008). 18 For the coronation charter, see Caspar F. Wegener, ed., Aarsberetninger fra det Kongelige Geheimearchiv, indeholdende Bidrag til dansk Historie af utrykte Kilder, 7 vols. (Copenhagen: Reitzel, 1852–82), 2:82–89. On the coronation, see Hoffmann, Königserhebung, 165–66; Boesen, Danmarks riges regalier, 22–37, also for further reference. 19 On a modern (1943) monument erected in the wake of the quadricentenary in 1936, see Martin Schwarz Lausten, “Den danske reformations monument,” Kristeligt Dagblad, 29 October 2011, 17.

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

211

Fig. 3. Johann Christoph Holtzbecher, ephemeral decoration, projected by the magistrate of Copenhagen for the centenary of absolutism, 16–18 October 1760. Engraving by Wilhelm Andreas Müller. Royal Library, Copenhagen. Reproduced from Bøggild Johannsen, “Felicitas Temporum.”

212

Between Act, Image, and Memory

Fig. 4. Ephemeral decoration, presented in the Aalborg city hall during the bicentenary of the Reformation, 3 November 1717. Anonymous engraving. Reproduced from Cyprian, Hilaria Evangelica.

old and the new constitutions.20 However, it was extensively memorialised with festivities in 1736 at its bicentenary during an eight-day festival from 30 October to 6 November, thus almost overlapping the great Reformation festival. A hundred years earlier, in 1636, this particular celebration apparently had been overshadowed by the effusions of gratitude a few years earlier in the wake of the Treaty of Lübeck, 12 May 1629, concluding the fatal Danish involvement in the Thirty Years’ War.21 Evaluating the four eighteenth-century jubilees, a comment upon the motivations behind the several commemorations of the century may be allowed for, though the jubilees should in no way be compared with the recent upsurge 20 Birgitte Bøggild Johannsen and Hugo Johannsen, “Re-forming the Confessional Space: Early Lutheran Churches in Denmark, c. 1536–1660,” in Lutheran Churches in Early Modern Europe, ed. Andrew Spicer (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), 249–51. 21 J. Oskar Andersen, “Jubelfesten 1736 for den danske Kirkes Reformation,” Dansk Kirkeliv (1935): 13–44, esp. 18–21.

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

213

of almost fetishistic global memorialisation since the 1970s, as emphasised, among others, by Pierre Nora.22 In his opinion, the latter should partly be regarded as a reaction to the growing uncertainty about an unpredictable future, equally nourished by major political and economic ruptures and crises. Yet, in contrast to previous eras, the current memory culture is marked by an expressive democratisation, the memory process allowing for the inclusion of minority groups and being no longer solely directed by the authorities, nor exclusively represented as the monopoly of historians. The two Reformation centenaries can be seen as a part of a similar pattern of crisis therapy, the 1717 jubilee being performed during the Great Northern War (1700–20), while the 1736 bicentenary should be regarded in the context of furthering a stabilising strategy during moments of internal disruptions between different religious groupings, pietists, separatists and the conservative supporters of orthodox Lutheranism.23 As to the rationale behind the Oldenburg and the absolutism jubilees, glorifying the continuity and strength of the sovereign and the absolutist constitution, both might be evaluated as activist efforts, although not unanimously accepted (see below), serving the rearmament around the monarchy at a moment when the throne was occupied by a comparatively weak ruler, King Frederick V.24

Visualising memory: Body, place and time It goes without saying that the commemorative replay of the four rituals, or historical events, as to the actual staging, only presented a super¿cial similarity to their point of origin. Of course, the coincidence in date was imperative, though not in relation to geography. The repeated ceremonies were not limited to the scene of the original acts, which in 1449, 1536, and 1660 were two public squares and the Church of Our Lady, all in Copenhagen. Due to royal orders, the commemorations were repeated at various localities all over the Danish Realm, involving parallel performances in different institutional contexts. See Pierre Nora, “Reasons for the Current Upsurge in Memory,” Eurozine, 19 April 2002, http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2002-04-19-nora-en.html. See also Richard Crownshaw, Jane Kilby, and Antony Rowland, eds., The Future of Memory (New York: Berghahn Books, 2010), emphasising how twenty-¿rst-century memory and memory studies also must be future-orientated, allowing for a critical distance on the present and its historicisation (Rick Crownshaw, “The Future of Memory: Introduction,” ibid., 3–4). 23 Johannes Pedersen, “Pietismens tid 1699–1746,” in Den danske Kirkes Historie, ed. Hal Koch and Bjørn Kornerup, 8 vols. (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1950–66), 5:61–63, 165–66. 24 Bøggild Johannsen, “Visual Strategies,” 347ff. 22

214

Between Act, Image, and Memory

Preferred stages were churches, courts and cities. The jubilees were, from beginning to end, framed by church services, introduced by bell tolling, and included sermons, as well as vocal and instrumental music expressing gratitude for God’s benevolence. The royal residences, preferably in the metropolis of Copenhagen and its nearest surroundings, were to constitute the setting for banquets, equally forming the point of departure for royal processions, while the University of Copenhagen and major institutions of higher education would provide the background for public lectures, eulogies and learned exegeses on the past event and its message to the present and posterity. The elitist approach, however, was counterbalanced by various entertainments for the common audience, including cannonades, the ¿ring of guns, processions, the casting of medals, theatre or musical performances, public meals, ¿reworks and the creation of ephemeral architecture and illuminations, richly decorated with emblems, as well as the issuing of printed images and texts in prose or poetry. In short, by a multiplicity of medial communication, the past was represented, replayed or retold, or rather, it was reincarnated and brought into concrete existence, basically a precondition for the persuasive powers of the re-enacted ritual. Recently, Karl-Siegbert Rehberg discussed the magic of presence (Präsenzmagie) in relation to political rituals and its importance for the creation of institutions, pointing precisely to the crucial value of images, symbols and signs that create presence.25 In his analysis, he focuses on four categories: (1) body symbols (Leib-Symbole), staging the charismatic authority (in Max Weber’s sense) of the political or religious leaders through direct participation or indirect representation, (2) symbols of places or objects (Raum- und Ding-Symbole), emphasised as elements of reference, (3) symbols of time (Zeit-Symbole), materialising chronological orders and individual historical events, and (4) symbols of texts (Text-Symbole), pointing out relevant texts, sacred books, charters of constitutions or law codices. In the following, I shall refer speci¿cally to the ¿rst three categories, activated and visualised in images and architecture. It should be added that the distribution of medals and mints as important commemorative media was effectuated in the direct royal presence during processions and at festival banquets at court. As to the Reformation jubilees, the images of Martin Luther and Johannes Bugenhagen, Germanorum (et) Danorum apostoli (the two apostles of the Germans and the Danes) constituted, together with representations of the king, Karl-Siegbert Rehberg, “Präsenzmagie und Zeichenhaftigkeit: Institutionelle Formen der Symbolisierung,” in Zeichen – Rituale – Werte: Internationales Kolloquium des Sonderforschungsbereichs 496 an der Westfälischen Wilhelms-Universität Münster, ed. Gerd Althoff (Münster: Rhema, 2004), 19–36. 25

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

215

Fig. 5. Christian Wineke, commemorative medal, issued at the occasion of the Reformation bicentenary in 1717, showing on the obverse King Frederick IV and on the other side Martin Luther and Johannes Bugenhagen. Royal Collection of Coins and Medals of the National Museum, Copenhagen. Images reproduced from Galster, Danske og norske Medailler. all-dominant body symbols, a most meaning-laden triumvirate (¿g. 5).26 It was preferable that portraits of the present kings, Frederick IV (1671–1730) and Christian VI (1699–1746), decorate the medals and mints produced on the two occasions, while the idealised portraits of the two “Reformation kings,” Frederick I and Christian III, in one case dominated an ephemeral decoration: embellishing the city hall in Aalborg in Northern Jutland (¿g. 4).27 Accompanied by obelisks or pyramids, carried by lions and richly decorated with foliage and eulogising mottoes, the two kings Àanked an altar, in front of which a ministering priest with a candle and a pen illuminated and protected the Bible. Images of Luther decorated the lower zone, on the right nailing his Theses to the church door and on the left tipping the tiara from the pope’s head by See also Georg Galster, Danske og norske Medailler og Jetons ca. 1533–ca. 1788 (Copenhagen: Selskabet til Udgivelse af danske Mindesmærker, 1936), 183–85, 228–29. 27 Cyprian, Hilaria Evangelica, 38–39, 59–65, illustration on p. 64. The extraordinary celebration in Aalborg apparently was organised by Bishop Frands Thestrup (1653–1735), whose sons, Matthias (1688–1769) and Christian Thestrup (1689–1750), then, respectively, assistant principal and headmaster of the local cathedral school, both gave learned orations during the jubilee. On 3 November 1717 a banquet for the local authorities was given in the city hall, accompanied by cannonades. 26

216

Between Act, Image, and Memory

means of giant quills emanating from his scriptures. The negative body sign of the pope was also reactivated during the celebrations in Aalborg, his image being placed outside the door at a solemn ceremony in the cathedral school, while Luther’s portrait clearly was included in the noble society gathered in the assembly hall (!).28 During the royal jubilees of 1749 and 1760, several medals, paintings and prints were produced, together with ephemeral decorations and illuminations (¿gs. 1 and 3), parading portraits and mottoes of the reigning king, Frederick V (1723–66), while referring back to the Oldenburg dynasty, whose monarchs from Christian I to Frederick V made up the ideal symbolic number of twelve.29 The presence of the king and his queen in the residential city of Copenhagen played a conspicuous role during the celebrations in 1749, distributing medals and taking part in banquets or processions during city visits, even exploring chosen decorations during private visits.30 The most magni¿cent invention, an octagonal temple of memory, glorifying the Saturnine reign of the king, the future prosperous Age of Happiness, and the venerable past of the predecessors, was erected by the Copenhagen magistrate in front of the city hall. The public reactions at the solemn ceremony in 1749 were reÀected in a profusion of illuminations made by public institutions, court of¿cials, members of the nobility or private citizens, not only in Copenhagen, but also in major cities throughout the realm.31 A remarkable anticlimax, as to the vital importance of the charismatic presence of the monarch himself and as a rupture with previous traditions, was witnessed, however, during the centenary of absolutism in 1760, which, according to the poet Charlotte Dorothea Biehl, bore a greater likeness to a mourning ceremony than to the festival of rejoicing of the previous one.32 For unknown reasons, the king chose to be absent and stayed at his private residence, Fredensborg Castle, in North Zealand.33 Accordingly, royal orders to strike and distribute medals were abandoned and only a limited selection of memorial medals was produced, ¿nanced by individuals or institutions, including the medal made at the instigation of the privy councillor, Adam Olrik, “Reformationens 200-års Jubilæum,” 285. See Galster, Danske og norske Medailler, 239–41, 246–47, 256, 272–73, 294–96, 334–36, 349–50; Bøggild Johannsen, “Felicitas Temporum.” 30 Svend Cedergreen Bech, ed., Brev fra Dorothea: Af Charlotta Dorothea Biehls historiske breve (Copenhagen: Politiken, 1975), 94–96. 31 See Kiöbenhavns Post-Rytter, nos. 86–88 (27 October–3 November 1749). 32 See Cedergreen Bech, Brev fra Dorothea, 128–29. 33 Peter F. Suhm, “Anmærkninger over Høitidelighederne ved Jubelfesten 1760,” Nye Samlinger til den danske Historie 3 (1794): 65–71. 28 29

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

217

Gottlob Moltke, placed in the base of the equestrian monument for the king, ¿nanced by the Asian Company and situated in the centre of Amalienborg Square in front of the recently completed Frederick’s Church.34 It is superfluous to add that the Copenhagen magistrates also gave up their large project of an ephemeral monument to absolutism (¿g. 3). However, it should be mentioned that the vindictive feelings raised in the public by the unsuccessful accomplishment of the event, which as a further negative omen drowned in heavy rains, gave occasion for the exhibition of a number of decidedly antiaristocratic illuminations, critically exposing members of the nobility, who were blamed for having ruined the celebration by keeping the king away from his loyal residence city.

Composite or transformative images The above-mentioned irregularities should not, however, conceal the fact that a rich production of eulogies, historical treatises and engraved images was the legacy of the 1760 centenary. Issued, among other items, was a large print (¿g. 2) engraved after the very icon of Danish absolutism, the large bird’s-eye view from 1666 by Wolfgang Heimbach, displaying the estates paying homage to the hereditary king in 1660 and originally the centrepiece of the Great Hall at the Royal Residence in Copenhagen. In contrast to the customary code for state portraits or images of momentous historical events, the key ¿gures of the act, the king and the royal family, do not particularly stand out by virtue of size or placement in the crowd and are only given focus by compositional devices, particularly by the pictorial light. A ray of sun leads the eyes of the observer to this compositional centre, symbolically expressing divine intervention and consent. It is tempting to assume that this composition of the oil painting and its later remediation were deliberately chosen in order to present a composite image or a double-coded vision, illustrating the common unity, harmony and consensus among the king’s subjects, voluntarily giving their support to the coup d’état and at the same time accepting the supremacy of the sovereign, his coup d’état even being blessed by God. A contemporary parallel to this composite view is the well-known engraving ascribed to Abraham Bosse that decorates the frontispiece of Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan (1651), presenting the body politic of the state as both a composite multitude of people and its ¿gurative integration into one large body, the sovereign, armed with crown, 34 Galster, Danske og norske Medailler, 294–95; Emma Salling, “Frederiks Plads: J. F. J. Salys ryttermonument for Frederik V,” Architectura: Arkitekturhistorisk Årsskrift 21 (1999): 49–76.

218

Between Act, Image, and Memory

sceptre and sword.35 However, in contemporary and later illustrations of the birth of Danish absolutism from the second half of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, this ambiguous image of the people’s voluntary assignment of power to the king was abandoned in favour of a more traditional hierarchical composition, with the dominant ¿gures of the king and his family placed in the foreground.36 A symbol of place, i.e. a monumental reference of no less transformative connotations, was St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.37 In the 1717 illumination (¿g. 4), Martin Luther is signi¿cantly nailing two tablets to a church, its spire being struck by lightning. Figuratively, the structure referred to the Roman temple which in the very year 1517 was struck from heaven, as the pope, in order to procure money, had in one day appointed thirty-one cardinals. One of the tablets reads: “VerbVM DeI Vere ferIt” (The word of God verily strikes), chosen letters of the motto forming the year 1517. The decidedly negative symbolic meaning, an anti-image of the true evangelical church, was illustrated in 1736 by a medal struck on the occasion of the Danish Reformation bicentenary (¿g. 6), featuring the ¿gure of a beautiful young woman with eyes upturned towards heaven, while behind her is represented a prospect of the baroque St. Peter’s together with a number of popish, i.e. Catholic, paraphernalia thrown to the ground. The motto appropriately reads: “De domo servientium liberavi te” (I have liberated you from the home of the slaves).38 Horst Bredekamp, Thomas Hobbes, Der Leviathan: Das Urbild des modernen Staates und seine Gegenbilder, 1651–2001, 3d ed. (Berlin: Academie Verlag, 2006); Dario Gamboni, “Composing the Body Politic: Composite Images and Political Representation, 1651–2004,” in Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy, ed. Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005, published in conjunction with the exhibition shown at the Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe), 162–95. 36 Birgitte Bøggild Johannsen, “Til minde om et statskup – om den visuelle iscenesættelse af Statsomvæltningen 1660,” Historiske meddelelser om København (2011): 111–17. 37 For the memorial potentials of architecture in prospect as well as in retrospection, see Wolfram Martini, “Prospektive und retrospektive Erinnerung: Das Pantheon Hadrians in Rom,” in Architektur und Erinnerung, ed. Wolfram Martini (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000), 19–44. 38 Galster, Danske og norske Medailler, 228–29. Similar negative references to St. Peter’s as the image of the Roman Catholic Church, built upon slippery sands, are represented in an engraving from 1707, opposing this with the image of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, erected upon the ¿rm rocky ground of Christ (¿g. 7). Both form the terminus of a number of Catholic and evangelical church fathers, see Paul Drews, Der evangelische Geistliche in der deutschen Vergangenheit (Jena: Diederichs, 1905), ¿g. 87. St. Peter’s equally incarnates evil Babylon in the frontispiece of Johannes H. Manné, Nauwkeurige zo theologise als historise aanmerkingen … (Haarlem: Mozes van Hulkenroy, 1719), 35

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

219

Fig. 6. Georg Wilhelm Wahl, commemorative medal, issued at the occasion of the Danish Reformation bicentenary in 1736, showing on the reverse side the Evangelical Church of Denmark-Norway, liberated from the slavery of the Catholic Church, represented by the anti-image of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Royal Collection of Coins and Medals of the National Museum, Copenhagen. Images reproduced from Galster, Danske og norske Medailler. These negative statements should be contrasted to the projects produced during the jubilees of 1736 and 1749 for erecting a grandiose memorial church in the northern part of Copenhagen, the chosen architectural type being a cupola church of a centralised plan, among other ideals expressively following the Roman paradigm.39 The commemoration of the Danish Reformation apparently was at stake in 1736, when King Christian VI in a letter of 27 October to his entrusted Secretary of State, Johan Ludvig Holstein, introduced the idea of building a church while discussing the upcoming bicentenary.40 For unknown reasons, the project was not realised. However, the plans were revitalised during the Oldenburg jubilee in 1749 and, notably, the laying of the foundation stone took place on the very memorial day of the Danish Reformation, 30 October,41 see Andrew Spicer, “‘Hic coeli porta est, hic domus ecce dei’: Lutheran Churches in the Dutch World, c. 1566–1719,” in Spicer, Lutheran Churches, 445ff. 39 Victor Hermansen et al., Danmarks kirker: 1, København, 6 vols. (Copenhagen: [various publishers], 1945–88), 5:554–58, esp. 556; Birgitte Bøggild Johannsen, “Kongens tempel: Frederikskirken som religiøst og politisk symbol,” Architectura: Arkitekturhistorisk Årsskrift 21 (1999): 140–43. 40 Danmarks kirker: 1, København, 6:284–87. 41 Ibid., 5:473–74.

220

Between Act, Image, and Memory

the ministering bishop of Zealand, Peder Hersleb, emphasising that this act accomplished the previous project by the king’s father.42 Yet, it is important to note that the paradigmatic meaning of the new church as a Reformed church—in contrast to the emphasis given to that moment at the rebuilding of the church in the late nineteenth century43—was not expressively reÀected in the early imagery of the structure, in contrast to another memorial to the Lutheran Reformation, openly highlighted as such in contemporary discourses, the Frauenkirche in Dresden. Here, a copy of the Confessio Augustana was placed in the foundations, and during the eighteenth century the church was eulogised as das wahre Ebenbild, eine glückliche und treue Nachahmung or une copie ¿dèle of St. Peter’s.44 Although the of¿cial aim of Frederick’s Church (¿g. 8), founded in 1749, was to function as a votive or memorial church, celebrating God’s blessings on the Oldenburg dynasty during three hundred years and glorifying, as a monumental body symbol, the reigning king who lent his name to the new structure,45 it also epitomised, according to Bishop Hersleb, “how the Oldenburg kings have built, ordained and organised for the growth of the reign of God, the establishment of the evangelical religion and the purity of public religious worship in the realms.”46

Epilogue: Renegotiating rituals Sites of memory, including the eighteenth-century commemorative ceremonies of 1717, 1736, 1749 and 1760, should not be regarded as mere ¿xed points of reference for communities, when recalling their shared past. They are—as well as being related images and monuments—ever-changing stepping stones in the current of time, incessantly open for renegotiation at later moments. Conversely, they may be annihilated and ¿guratively overgrown with grass, 42 Peder Hersleb, “En kort Jubel-Tale …,” in Rigernes almindelige Jubel-Glæde over Guds besynderlige Under-Tegn og Naade mod den Kongelige Oldenborgske Stamme … (Copenhagen: Berling, [1749]), 116. 43 In the church, completed in 1894, a statue of Martin Luther was prominently placed on the exterior, while the primordial motto of the Lutheran Reformation, “Verbum Domini Manet in Aeternum,” was situated above the main entrance. On the church as a monument to the Reformation, see Carsten Bach-Nielsen, “Grundtvigs og Tietgens Marmorkirke: Den danske Sammenhængskraft?” (forthcoming). I thank the author for giving me access to his work. 44 See Hans-Joachim Kuke, Die Frauenkirche in Dresden:“Ein Sankt Peter der wahren evangelischen Religion” (Worms: Werner, 1996), 64. 45 Bøggild Johannsen, “Kongens tempel.” 46 Hersleb, “En kort Jubel-Tale,” 29.

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

221

Fig. 7. Allegory of the Unevangelical Papacy, 1707, presenting the terminus for major evangelical and Catholic teachers—the Lutheran Church (left), founded upon rock, as opposed to the Roman Catholic Church in the shape of St. Peter’s Basilica (right), built upon sand. Engraving. Collection of Prints, Drawings and Photographs, Dresden. Reproduced from Drews, Der evangelische Geistliche.

222

Between Act, Image, and Memory

as the collective memories of their origin fade away or they lose their raison d’être under altered political and social conditions. This was, up to a certain point, the destiny of Frederick’s Church, the ambitious colossus to be constructed in solid marble to the memory of the royal dynasty, the king and absolutism, as well as in commemoration of the Reformation. For almost a century, the church was left un¿nished, only to be completed in 1894 by a private citizen, the banker and ¿nancier Carl Frederik Tietgen, who bought from the government the un¿nished ruin, virtually concealed in vegetation. At that time, the previous motives were rather irrelevant, the Oldenburg dynasty having been replaced in 1863 by the Glücksburg line, while absolutism was replaced in 1849 by a democratic, constitutional monarchy.47 Thus, of¿cial celebrations of the Oldenburg kings and absolutism were exchanged for a new and still active jubilee, instituted in the wake of the ritual proclamation of the new constitution (“Grundloven”) on 5 June 1849.48 King Frederick VII (1808–63) would henceforward be glori¿ed with monuments in several Danish cities,49 though the king was now rede¿ned as the gracious giver of the new constitution. The ritual commemorations of 1449 and 1660 have not been totally extinguished, although their living message for posterity has been limited to the self-referential production of cultural history in writings, lectures and exhibitions, recently witnessed at the 350-year jubilee of absolutism, celebrated in October 2010.50 Yet, as commemorative ceremonies to be re-enacted by the government, the political or cultural establishment or the reigning monarch, they had indisputedly lost their raison d’être in contrast to the celebrations related to two military victories during the Dano-Swedish War (11 February and 14 November 1659), recently of¿cially marked in 2009 with, among other things, an indirect reference to Denmark’s current military achievements in the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars.51 In relation to the national church of evangelical confession, it goes without saying that the Reformations of 1517 and 1536 remain active as sites of memory. Accordingly, the impending jubilee of 2017 has been publicly declared by the Ministry of Gender Equality and Ecclesiastical Affairs as an occasion to promote—under the protection of Queen On the temporary dismantling and later completion of the church, see Danmarks kirker: 1, København, 5:571–771. 48 Anette Warring, Historie, magt og identitet: Grundlovsfejringer gennem 150 år (Århus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 2004). 49 Inge Adriansen, Erindringssteder i Danmark: Monumenter, mindesmærker og mødesteder (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanums Forlag, 2010), 215–20. 50 Bøggild Johannsen, “Til minde om et statskup,” 122. 51 For references, see Bøggild Johannsen, “Til minde om et statskup,” 83–84, 122. 47

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

223

Fig. 8. Nicolai Eigtved, elevation (1754) of the projected Frederick’s Church, founded on Reformation Day, 30 October 1749. Drawing. Royal Archive, Copenhagen. Reproduced from Danmarks kirker.

224

Between Act, Image, and Memory

Margaret—the understanding of an act of cardinal importance to “the Danish society, the Danish church, Danish identity and national consciousness,”52 once more preparing visual performances of a re-enacted ritual, intended to ful¿l its ultimate purpose of creating community and consensus, stability, identity, commemoration, healing and unity during inevitable moments of crisis and unrest.53

“500 års jubilæet for Reformationen fejres i 2017,” the website of the Ministry for Gender Equality and Ecclesiastical Affairs of Denmark, accessed 10 October 2012, http://miliki.dk/kirke/nyhedsarkiv-kirke/nyhed-om-kirke/artikel/500-aars-jubilaeetfor-reformationen-fejres-i-2017/. 53 Christoph Wulf and Jörg Zirfas, “Performative Welten: Einführung in die historischen, systematischen und methodischen Dimensionen des Rituals,” in Die Kultur des Rituals: Inszenierungen, Praktiken, Symbole, ed. Christoph Wulf and Jörg Zirfas (Munich: Fink, 2004), 17–24. 52

PART III RITUAL AND SELF-REPRESENTATION

THE SELF-REPRESENTATION OF THE LATE MEDIEVAL CISTERCIAN ABBOT: THE CASE OF HENRY KRESSE OF BUKOWO MORSKIE EMILIA JAMROZIAK In the visual splendour of their of¿ce, the Cistercian abbots in the late Middle Ages came to resemble other high ranking prelates, especially bishops. This new status was largely manifested through rituals and the commissioning of objects that emphasised abbatial importance above that of the community and alluded to their spiritual and ecclesiastical powers. In this, the Cistercian abbot did not depart from some mythical austerity, which was supposed to characterise white monks in the twelfth century, but followed a path typical of all other monastic orders in the late Middle Ages. As the appearance of Cistercian churches in the High Middle Ages was inÀuenced by the desires of lay benefactors, who were frequently commemorated through visual means—on stained glass, liturgical objects and tombs—in the late Middle Ages, the inÀuence of the abbots on the appearance of monastic churches came to resemble that of benefactors. The monastic leaders commissioned cult objects, especially altarpieces and liturgical manuscripts, but also new buildings and changes to existing structures. This was motivated by a complex mixture of piety, and personal, family and institutional pride, as well as a desire for individual commemoration. This development was linked to the different forms of engagement with the laity, the new shape of the abbatial of¿ce and the reform movement shaping the Cistercian order in this period. There never was a Cistercian “programme” of austerity, and the appearance of Cistercian churches was always highly regionalised and clearly reÀected their relationship with the outside world. Cistercians were never “against art”; on the contrary, the willingness of abbots to spend large amounts of money on beautifying liturgical spaces was highly valued by the monastic communities.1 Moreover, the late medieval piety focusing on the Virgin Mary and the Terryl N. Kinder, Cistercian Europe: Architecture of Contemplation (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002), 13–26, 374–88; Diane J. Reilly, “Cistercian Art,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Cistercian Order, ed. Mette Birkedal Bruun (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 125–39. 1

228

The Self-Representation of the Late Medieval Cistercian Abbot

suffering of Christ typical of Cistercian spirituality required devotional objects, especially images, as an emotional focus.

The changing position of the medieval abbot Historically, the role of the abbots was central to the nature of medieval monasticism. The key founding texts of cenobitic tradition associated with the Desert Fathers stressed the spiritual and mentoring role of the leaders of the hermits living in the deserts of Egypt and Palestine. The early monastic rules, the Rule of the Four Fathers, the Second Rule of the Fathers, the Rule of Macarius and the Oriental Rule, all created in the ¿fth and early sixth centuries, were an important step in the institutionalisation of the monastic movement and developed the concept of the single person presiding over a group of monks. The power and authority of the abbot was most fully developed and codi¿ed in the Rule of Benedict, which came to dominate Western monasticism for many centuries.2 For Cistercians, who closely followed the Rule of Benedict, the role of the abbot was central to maintaining strict observance. The abbot, the father of the community, was elected by the community under the supervision of the father superior—from the mother house—or another senior Cistercian abbot appointed by the general chapter. First, the abbot-elect took an oath in the chapter house, then the father superior vested him with the symbol of his of¿ce, and the new abbot received obedience from his community. Finally, the diocesan bishop consecrated the new abbot. The sign of the abbatial of¿ce was traditionally, in the Benedictine and Cistercian houses, the crosier and a ring worn on the middle ¿nger of the right hand. The crosier—a symbolic pastoral staff—was frequently depicted on the tombs of abbots as a central symbol of their of¿ce. Whilst the crosier embodied the leadership and pastoral authority of the abbot, the ring was the sign of the spiritual marriage of the abbot to his community.3 By the later Middle Ages the position of the abbot as the head of the monastic community in all strands of Benedictine traditions, including Cistercians, had evolved signi¿cantly. Although he was still the spiritual and practical leader of the community, the nature of the of¿ce was very different in the fourteenth and ¿fteenth centuries than it was in the twelfth century. The abbatial of¿ce 2 Marilyn Dunn, The Emergence of Monasticism: From the Desert Fathers to the Early Middle Ages (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), 85–87, 118. 3 Marek Stawski, “Benedykcja opata cysterskiego w Ğredniowieczu,” in Pelplin: 725 rocznica powstania opactwa cysterskiego; Kulturotwórcza rola cystersów na Kociewiu, ed. Dariusz Aleksander DekaĔski (Pelplin: Bernardinum, 2002), 361–84.

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

229

became very outward looking, separated from the rest of the community and surrounded by complex rituals. This shift was emphasised by the fact that the abbots became physically removed from the monks and resided separately from the rest of their communities in impressive abbatial residences. These residences were frequently used as spaces for entertaining important guests and tended to be equipped with the latest inventions in domestic architecture, such as more effective heating stoves and ornate glassed windows, and they were often richly furnished. The abbots became much more concerned with the external affairs of their monasteries and much less involved in “mundane” matters, and they were often absent for extensive periods of time. Abbots of large Cistercian abbeys, as senior ecclesiastical ¿gures and powerful landowners, were in many regions of Europe often delegated by lay and church authorities to go on various missions. As a result, the prior substituted for the abbot in many internal, especially pastoral, functions. Traditionally, these characteristics of late medieval abbots were considered to be symptoms of the decline of the Cistercian order and the failure to live up to the original ideal. However, these assumptions rest on the arti¿cial concept of the Cistercian ideal as a codi¿ed set of twelfth-century norms that were supposed to have characterised the life of white monks for the rest of the order’s history. Not only was the formation of the order a much more complex and prolonged process than previously assumed, but the monks were always products of the society they came from, and thus the changes in the wider society in the later Middle Ages were reÀected in the late medieval transformations of the monastic orders. The inÀuence of the universities, the impact of the Great Schism, the social and economic consequences of the Black Death and the changing ideas of comfort, privacy and status all inÀuenced how the Cistercian communities lived.

Cistercian abbots in the later Middle Ages As historians began to abandon the interpretational framework of the “monastic decline,” new questions emerged. Over the last few years, the changing nature of the abbatial of¿ce between the fourteenth and early sixteenth centuries has begun to be examined in a more systematic way.4 Historians’ attention has Martin Heale, “Mitres and Arms: Aspects of the Self-Representation of the Monastic Superior in Late Medieval England,” in Self-Representation of Medieval Religious Communities: The British Isles in Context, ed. Anne Müller and Karen Stöber (Berlin: Lit, 2009), 99–122; Heale, “‘Not a Thing for a Stranger to Enter Upon’: The Selection of Monastic Superiors in Late Medieval and Early Tudor England,” in Monasteries and Society in the British Isles in the Later Middle Ages, ed. Janet Burton and Karen Stöber (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2008), 51–68. 4

230

The Self-Representation of the Late Medieval Cistercian Abbot

turned towards examination of the late medieval changes in the status of the abbot’s of¿ce, especially various symbolic and practical means of shaping it. These changes occurred on two levels. Firstly, it was the status of the individuals, especially their family lineage and personal qualities, such as piety and learning, that became emphasised. Secondly, the status of the of¿ce itself, as the embodiment of the glory of the abbey, became elevated. Visual means were the key methods of establishing these two dimensions of status: seals, tombs, various church furnishings, inscriptions on buildings and devotional images. A very important element of the elevation of the status of the abbots was the privilege of the ponti¿cal: the right to wear the liturgical vestments of the bishop and perform some of his functions, such as the consecration of churches. This privilege was much desired by abbots, but expensive to obtain, as it required signi¿cant payments to the papacy, in addition to the cost of special liturgical vestments. Many valuable ponti¿cal sets of vestments were frequently recorded in the inventories of late medieval Cistercian abbeys.5 The abbots who acquired the privilege could display it on their abbatial seals, the iconography of which included such signs of the abbot’s eminence as ponti¿cal ceremonial robes and a ¿gure enclosed by an architectural frame indicating elevated status.6 Among the symbols of ponti¿cal status, the mitre was most important and was used on seals as a “shorthand” sign for the ponti¿cal privilege.7 It was also frequently displayed on buildings.8 Moreover, abbots, as members of important local families and holders of elevated ecclesiastical of¿ces, began to be represented in a manner resembling benefactors. New building projects, especially towers, were identi¿ed, usually by inscriptions, as the achievements of speci¿c abbots. One of the best examples is the ¿fteenth-century tower of Fountains Abbey in North Yorkshire. More importantly, the inscriptions on the tower are extracts from Wolfgang Lehner, Die Zisterzienserabtei Fürstenfeld in der Reformationszeit 1496–1623 (Weißenhorn: Konrad, 2001), 254–55. 6 Marek Derwich, “Rola opata w koronacjach królów polskich,” in Imagines Potestatis: Rytuaáy, symbole i konteksty fabularne wáadzy zwierzchniej; Polska X–XV w. (z przykáadem czeskim i ruskim), ed. Jacek Banaszkiewicz (Warsaw: Instytut Historii PAN, 1994), 39. 7 Paweá StróĪyk, “Symbole wáadzy opata w przestrzeni klasztoru cysterskiego,” in Ingenio et Humilitate: Studia z dziejów zakonu cystersów i KoĞcioáa na ziemiach polskich, ed. Andrzej M. Wyrwa (Katowice: Biblioteka ĝląska, 2007), 50, 56. 8 Abbot Robert Chamber of Holm Cultram Abbey, who received the right to the ponti¿cal in 1508, promptly incorporated it into his coat of arms displayed on the new western portal of the abbey church. C. J. Ferguson, “St. Mary’s Abbey, Holme Cultram,” Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society, o.s., 1 (1874): 263–75. 5

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

231

Cistercian Sunday of¿ces and some of these quotes were altered to express devotion to the Holy Name of Jesus, an important late medieval development adopted by the Cistercians.9 In another example, Abbot Peter von Gomaringen of Bebenhausen Abbey in Swabia was depicted in an early ¿fteenth-century fresco in the choir of the abbey’s church presenting the Virgin Mary with a large model of a bell tower, which was erected during his time in of¿ce.10 The towers were not only very prominent structures, but also the bells were important for the maintenance of the Of¿cium Divinum, calling the community to their liturgical duties. Since strictness of observance was at the core of late medieval reforms of the Cistercian order, the bell towers built by the abbots could be seen as a contribution to their commitment to maintain observance in their abbeys. Indeed, Abbot Marmaduke was one of the leading ¿gures of the Cistercian reform amongst the English houses involved in inspections on behalf of the chapter general, improvements in the Cistercian college at Oxford and the defence of the independence of Cistercian nunneries.11

The case of Bukowo Abbey A case which embodies, particularly well, several aspects of the ritual of the abbatial of¿ce and the role of art comes from the Cistercian abbey of Bukowo Morskie (Ger. Buckow) in Pomerania, a daughter house of Dargun Abbey in Mecklenburg, founded by Duke ĝwiĊtopeák II of Eastern Pomerania in 1259.12 9 Michael Carter, “The Tower of Abbot Marmaduke Huby of Fountains Abbey: Hubris or Piety?” Yorkshire Archaeological Journal 82 (June 2010): 269–86. 10 Ursula Schwitalla and Wilfried Setzler, eds., Die Zisterzienser in Bebenhausen (Tübingen: Kulturamt, 1998, published in conjunction with the exhibition shown at the Bebenhausen Abbey), 17, ¿g. 11. 11 Charles H. Talbot, ed., Letters from the English Abbots to the Chapter at Cîteaux 1442–1521 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1967), no. 74; David N. Bell, “A Treasure-House for Monks? The Cistercian General Chapter and the Power of the Book from the Twelfth Century to 1787,” Cîteaux: Commentarii Cistercienses 58 (2007): 118; Elizabeth Freeman, “Cistercian Nuns in Medieval England: Unof¿cial Meets Of¿cial,” in Elite and Popular Religion, ed. Kate Cooper and Jeremy Gregory (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2006), 114–19. 12 Barbara Popielas-Szultka and Kazimiera Kalita-SkwierzyĔska, “Bukowo,” in Monasticon Cisterciense Poloniae, ed. Andrzej Marek Wyrwa, Jerzy Strzelczyk, and Krzysztof Kaczmarek, vol. 2, Katalog mĊskich klasztorów cysterskich na ziemiach polskich i dawnej Rzeczypospolitej (PoznaĔ: Wydawnictwo PoznaĔskie, 1999), 35. The date 1259 refers to the ¿rst reference to the abbey in the Statuta, but the founder gave substantial grant to Dargun Abbey for the purpose of the new foundation in 1248. Josephus M. Canivez, ed., Statuta Capitulorum Generalium Ordinis Cisterciensis ab

232

The Self-Representation of the Late Medieval Cistercian Abbot

It was a successful institution bene¿ting from extensive grants and privileges granted by the dukes of Western Pomerania (Ger. Vorpommern), Eastern Pomerania (Ger. Pommerellen) and Rügen, margraves of Brandenburg, as well as bishops of KamieĔ (Ger. Kammin) and local knights. Although it did not establish any daughter houses, it played an important role in the regional Cistercian networks. Bukowo’s last three abbots—Dietrich (1493–1502), Valentine Ladewica (1502–13) and Henry Kresse (1510/13–35)—clearly very able managers and administrators of the monastic estates, were also typical examples of late medieval Cistercian abbots who used various visual means to emphasise the status of their of¿ce and of themselves. The few surviving items associated with new forms of ritualisation of the abbatial of¿ce show that the abbots of Bukowo represented the tendency which became typical in the last decades before the onset of the Reformation. The wooden, baldachined and polychromed abbatial throne was made by the monk Borchardt in 1476 for the monastic church. The author and date are recorded on the carved, minuscule inscription on the back of the seat.13 Although the abbot’s seat was always different from that of the choir monks, both in the chapter house and in the presbytery, the abbatial thrones emphasised the superior position of the abbot in relation to the rest of the community. Such late medieval abbots’ seats were also an allusion to the bishops’ thrones in their cathedrals, which embodied their auctoritas.14 Moreover, the gesture of Abbot Valentine, who in 1507 donated to the abbey a chalice, encompasses a number of important features of late medieval religious culture. The Eucharistic cults were very important in the Cistercian houses of northern Germany.15 Since the liturgical vessels were central to the performance and the power of the Mass, the donor, through his act of generosity, was forever to bene¿t eschatologically from his gift. Abbots as donors to their own communities Anno 1116 ad Annum 1786, vol. 2, Ab Anno 1221 ad Annum 1261 (Leuven: Bureaux de la Revue, 1934), yr. 1259, no. 56. 13 The object is now known only from drawings and late nineteenth-century photographs as it disappeared after 1945; for the images and description see Adolf Stubenrauch, “Der Abtstuhl von See-Buckow,” Monatsblätter der Gesellschaft für Pommersche Geschichte und Altertumskunde 16 (1902): 165. 14 For a late medieval example of a bishop’s throne see Charles Tracy, “The St David’s Cathedral Bishop’s Throne and Its Relationship to Contemporary Fourteenth-Century Ecclesiastical Furniture in England,” Archaeologia Cambrensis: The Journal of the Cambrian Archaeological Association 137 (1988): 113–18. 15 Caroline Walker Bynum, Wonderful Blood: Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Germany and Beyond (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 51, 55, 59, 62, 75.

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

233

further emphasised the elevated position of the monastic leaders in relation to the monastic community. However, the most important devotional object in this category is a late Gothic pentaptych containing the depiction of Abbot Henry Kresse.16 He was the last head of Bukowo Abbey and even continued to live in the monastery after its suppression in 1535. The pentaptych, dated to ca. 1515–20, incorporated as its central element an alabaster sculpture of the Virgin Mary, which must have been in the abbey’s possession for some time.17 The fashion for large altarpieces in northern Europe reached many Cistercian abbeys in the late thirteenth century and by the ¿fteenth century these complex structures incorporated sculptures, painted scenes, cruci¿xes and relic containers. Many had the Virgin Mary as their central ¿gure. A good example of such monumental structures, frequent in the Cistercian houses, is the high altar in Doberan Abbey (ca. 1300).18 The central element of the Bukowo altar, the alabaster Madonna holding the infant Christ with an apple, is dated to ca. 1440 and came, most probably, from a workshop in Holstein.19 Originally, this ¿gure was surrounded by polychromed oak ¿gures of two St. Johns—the Evangelist and the Baptist—St. Benedict, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, St. Augustine and St. Francis of Assisi, as founders of religious orders, and then St. Margaret, St. Catherine of Alexandria, St. Paul the Hermit and St. Anthony the Hermit.20 All these sculptures were made by a local, Pomeranian workshop and placed within the ornamented arcades of the inner part of the altar. The composition of this inner, holiest part of the altar, incorporating the Virgin Mary, contained ¿gures directly associated with the earliest hermitic and monastic tradition, on which the Cistercian order based I would like to thank Dr. Monika Jakubek-Raczkowska from the Nicolaus Copernicus University in ToruĔ for her kind help in locating literature concerning the altar. 17 Dated to 1515 by Zo¿a Krzymuska-Fa¿us and more recently to 1520 by Jerzy Domosáawski. 18 Annegret Laabs, Malerei und Plastik im Zisterzienserorden: Zum Bildgebrauch zwischen sakralem Zeremoniell und Stiftermemoria 1250–1430 (Petersberg: Imhof, 2000), 21. 19 Zo¿a Krzymuska-Fa¿us, “Elementy wyposaĪenia wnĊtrz obiektów cysterskich na Pomorzu Zachodnim,” in Dziedzictwo kulturowe cystersów na Pomorzu, ed. Kazimiera Kalita-SkwirzyĔska and Maágorzata Lewandowska (Szczecin: Regionalny OĞrodek Studiów i Ochrony ĝrodowiska Kulturowego, 1995), 79–80. 20 The ¿gures were stolen from the Bukowo church after 1945, hence they are now known only from pre-1939 photographs. See the image on the website of Wojewódzki Urząd Ochrony Zabytków w Szczecinie (Regional Of¿ce for the Protection of Monuments in Szczecin), accessed 2 February 2013, http://www.wkz.szczecin.pl/kradzieze/ bukowo_morskie/img_1.jpg. 16

234

The Self-Representation of the Late Medieval Cistercian Abbot

its legitimacy and spirituality.21 Such motifs were very characteristic of the late medieval monastic reform movement, which emphasised a return to the roots of the early monastic tradition, as well as wide proliferation of the imagery of Bernard of Clairvaux. His texts, copied frequently within and outside the Cistercian context, gained new popularity, as his emotive spirituality had many connections to devotio moderna.22 It was in the period post-1300 when St. Bernard became identi¿ed as the patron of the order. Indeed, sources within and outside of the Cistercian structures used the term “the order of St. Bernard” as a synonym for the Cistercian order.23 The two layers of wings closing the pentaptych created two further programmes reÀecting both important themes of Cistercian spirituality and Abbot Henry’s personal commemoration. The ¿rst pair of wings contains six painted scenes (oil on wood), two of which exemplify the most important and typical, for the Cistercian tradition, late medieval representations of St. Bernard of Clairvaux. In the bottom row, two central images depict the Lactatio and Amplexus Bernardi. The Lactatio combines the special devotion to the Virgin with the growth of depictions of St. Bernard as a saint, a father of the Cistercian order and a mystic. The most spectacular of these shows the miracle of lactation, in which St. Bernard, identi¿ed by his Cistercian habit, abbatial staff and saint’s halo, is kneeling in front of the Virgin Mary holding the infant Christ, whilst a ¿ne stream of milk shoots from Mary’s breast towards St. Bernard.24 Zo¿a Krzymuska-Fa¿us, “PóĨnogotycki pentaptyk z koĞcioáa pocysterskiego w Bukowie Morskim fundacji opata Henryka Kresse,” in “Dzieje, kultura artystyczna i umysáowa polskich cystersów od Ğredniowiecza do koĔca XVIII wieku,” ed. Jerzy Strzelczyk, special issue, Nasza PrzeszáoĞü 83 (1994): 480; Krzymuska-Fa¿us, “Elementy wyposaĪenia wnĊtrz,” 83. 22 Adam S. Labuda, “Malarstwo tablicowe na Pomorzu Zachodnim i Ziemi Lubuskiej,” in Malarstwo gotyckie w Polsce, ed. Adam S. Labuda and Krystyna Secomska, vol. 1, Synteza (Warsaw: DiG, 2004), 368–69; Berndt Hamm, Frömmigkeitstheologie am Anfang des 16. Jahrhunderts: Studien zu Johannes von Paltz und seinem Umkreis (Tübingen: Mohr, 1982), 11–12; Patrick Brian McGuire, “Bernard and the Embrace of Christ: Renewal in Late Medieval Monastic Life and Devotion,” in The Dif¿cult Saint: Bernard of Clairvaux and His Tradition (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1991), 227. 23 Elizabeth Freeman, “Houses of a Peculiar Order: Cistercian Nunneries in Medieval England, with Special Attention to the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries,” Cîteaux: Commentarii Cistercienses 55 (2004): 266n80; Carolus De Smedt et al., eds., Acta Sanctorum Novembris, vol. 3, Quo Dies Quintus, Sextus, Septimus et Octavus Continentur (Brussels: Apud Socios Bollandianos, 1910), 184. 24 See an example from Esrum Abbey. Kaspar Elm, ed., Die Zisterzienser: Ordensleben zwischen Ideal und Wirklichkeit [vol. 1, catalogue] (Cologne: Rheinland-Verlag, 1980, published in conjunction with the exhibition shown in Aachen), 545. 21

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

235

It was not based on a speci¿cally Cistercian textual tradition, but refers to the older symbolism of milk and honey from the Old Testament, especially the Song of Songs. There was also a widespread theme of the healing power of the Virgin’s milk recorded in many collections of Marian miracles, which Cistercian communities were familiar with. Lactatio images emphasised the humanity of Christ and the mystery of the incarnation.25 The imagery of nursing was typical not just in the Cistercian context, but also in wider lay, especially female spirituality; it sometimes took the form of visions of giving milk to the infant Christ. There was also a clear link between milk as nourishment and the blood of Christ feeding the souls of believers in the Eucharist.26 In this way, this type of depiction of St. Bernard of Clairvaux combines not only key themes of the Mario- and Christocentric spirituality of the white monks, but also attitudes typical of the sensibilities of pious laity. The second scene from the Bukowo altar involving Bernard is also a speci¿cally Cistercian depiction of Christ on the cross embracing Bernard of Clairvaux. The scene had its roots in the saint’s Vita prima, which narrated a miracle witnessed by a monk of Mores Abbey. It tells the story of Bernard praying in the monastic church when suddenly the ¿gure of Christ lowered himself from the cross and embraced the future saint. From this textual basis, a very popular iconographic model grew, known as Amplexus Bernardi, and spread very widely through the medium of woodcut, but also became frequently depicted in altarpieces, dramatic free-standing sculptures, manuscript illuminations, stained glass and wall paintings.27 The composition of images of the second pair of wings has been described as reÀecting the personal piety of the founder, Abbot Henry Kresse, but there are several other aspects of this composition which shed light on the nature of the late medieval abbatial of¿ce and the use of art in creating the status of the of¿ce.28 Abbot Henry Kresse began his monastic career as a monk of Kolbacz Abbey, the oldest and largest Cistercian house in Pomerania. Typically for a late medieval abbot, he was a university graduate, having studied at Leipzig.29 James France, Medieval Images of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 2007), 205–7, 236–37. 26 Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Signi¿cance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 270–71. 27 Franz Posset, “Amplexus Bernardi: The Dissemination of a Cistercian Motif in the Later Middle Ages,” Cîteaux: Commentarii Cistercienses 54 (2003): 251–54, images on pp. 279–399. 28 Jerzy Domasáawski, “Gotyckie malarstwo tablicowe Pomorza Zachodniego i ziemi lubuskiej,” Materiaáy Zachodnio-Pomorskie 41 (1995): 354. 29 Krzymuska-Fa¿us, “PóĨnogotycki pentaptyk,” 492–95. 25

236

The Self-Representation of the Late Medieval Cistercian Abbot

He is directly depicted on the second wing of the altar, which he commissioned. The programme on the outer wing of the altar contains four scenes: at the top there is the Apocalyptic Virgin surrounded by rays of sunlight and next to her there is St. Andrew, with obvious local connotations as the patron of ¿shermen. Below him, there is an image of the repentant Mary Magdalene and, under the Virgin’s depiction, there is the key image here: St. Barbara with Abbot Henry. As these images are on the outermost layer of the pentaptych, they would have been seen most frequently by the choir monks, as the altar would have been open only on certain occasions. In this way, the image of the abbot-donor was seen as protecting the holiest, inner images and usually remained visible to the Bukowo community. The composition of the abbot’s representation reÀects some of the most important characteristics of the prominence of the late medieval abbatial of¿ce and, through ritual gestures, objects and the structure of the composition, it projects an image of Abbot Henry both as a pious individual in his own right and as the leader of the monastic community. Abbot Henry Kresse is depicted kneeling, holding a rosary and a crosier—making it apparent that he is an abbot and a pious individual. He is further identi¿ed by a scroll reading “frater hinricus kresse, ora pro eo.” The much larger ¿gure of St. Barbara is standing behind the abbot in a protective manner. She is holding a tower, her usual attribute, in her left hand, above Henry’s head. Zo¿a Krzymuska-Fa¿us stresses that the other attribute of St. Barbara, the sword, depicted in her right hand, may act here as a symbol of the defence of the monastery against injustice and attacks. Moreover, as she was a protector against sudden death, especially of travellers on the sea, and defended against dangers of natural forces, especially storms, the image may also denote protection of the monastery and its abbot from any outside dangers. In many ways, the representation of the abbot of Bukowo Abbey is typical of the images of donors common in late medieval art, both in large altarpieces and stained glass or wall paintings, as well as in manuscript illuminations, and as such it would have been immediately understood by the contemporary audience that Abbot Henry was the one commemorated in this altarpiece.30 The Brigitte Dekeyzer, “For Eternal Glory and Remembrance: On the Representation of Patrons in Late Medieval Panel Paintings in the Southern Low Countries,” in The Use and Abuse of Sacred Places in Late Medieval Towns, ed. Paul Trio and Marjan De Smet (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2006), 71–101; Nigel Morgan, “Patrons and Devotional Images in English Art of the International Gothic c. 1350–1450,” in Reading Texts and Images: Essays on Medieval and Renaissance Art and Patronage in Honour of Margaret M. Manion, ed. Bernard J. Muir (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2002), 93–121; Corine Schleif, “Hands that Appoint, Anoint and Ally: Late Medieval Donor Strategies for Appropriating Approbation through Painting,” Art History 16 (1993): 1–32. 30

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

237

posture of kneeling, hand clasped in prayer with a rosary is the core gesture denoting a pious donor in late medieval art.31 At the same time, the audience of monks and very selected lay visitors, if allowed in the proximity of the high altar (a very rare privilege), would know that this donor was also the abbot, as he is depicted in a Cistercian habit holding the most obvious symbol of abbatial authority: the crosier.32 The purpose of the scroll was not only to identify the donor clearly, but also to urge future generations of monks to pray for the soul of their former abbot. Having a depiction of the abbot on the altar as a donor is also linked to several wider developments in Cistercian spirituality and liturgical practices. First of all, late medieval Cistercian monks were also priests, unlike their predecessors in the twelfth century, who were rarely ordained. The desire for priestly ordination had been seen as an expression of vanity and a general chapter regulation of 1192 tried to limit the aspirations of monks to the holy orders to preserve their humility.33 Conrad of Eberbach, the author of the very popular Exordium magnum (completed in 1215), included a chapter on the topic “How dangerous it is to seek Holy Orders.”34 Things were very different by the late Middle Ages, when the majority of Cistercian monks were priests and thus able to celebrate the Mass, hence the need for additional altars in monastic churches. The late medieval order was much more sacerdotal than in the twelfth or thirteenth century. The presence of so many more priests and altars in Cistercian churches provided a much greater opportunity for individual commemorations, very much desired by the laity.35 All of these tendencies ¿nd Truus van Bueren, “Care for the Here and the Hereafter: a Multitude of Possibilities,” in Care for the Here and the Hereafter: Memoria, Art and Ritual in the Middle Ages, ed. Truus van Bueren (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), 22. 32 On the importance of depicting insignia and clothing identifying status, see Wim Blockmans, “The Feeling of Being Oneself,” in Showing Status: Representation of Social Positions in the Late Middle Ages, ed. Wim Blockmans and Antheun Janse (Turnhout: Brepols, 1999), 13–14. 33 Chrysogonus Waddell, ed., Twelfth-Century Statutes from the Cistercian General Chapter: Latin Text with English Notes and Commentary (Brecht: Citeaux, Commentarii cistercienses, 2002), yr. 1192, no. 14. 34 Bede K. Lackner, “Early Cîteaux and the Care of Souls,” in Noble Piety and Reformed Monasticism, ed. E. Rozanne Elder (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1981), 57. 35 There is no systematic study of the Cistercian practice of commemoration. For the Cistercian lay burials regulations, see Jackie Hall, “The Legislative Background to the Burial of Laity and Other Patrons in Cistercian Abbeys,” in “Sepulturae Cistercienses: Burial, Memorial and Patronage in Medieval Cistercian Monasteries,” ed. Jackie Hall and Christine Kratzke, special issue, Cîteaux: Commentarii Cistercienses 56 (2005): 364–69; Hall, Sheila Sneddon, and Nadine Sohr, “Table of Legislation 31

238

The Self-Representation of the Late Medieval Cistercian Abbot

their exempli¿cation in the altarpiece of Abbot Henry, in which he appears as both an abbot and a pious benefactor. By providing the altarpiece, placed at the centre of the Mass, the abbot contributed to the intercessory function of the community and secured personal commemoration. As his predecessor had donated a chalice to Bukowo Abbey, Abbot Henry provided a very impressive setting for High Mass on the main altar of the monastic church and hence helped to ensure a ¿tting liturgical observance in the abbey.

Conclusion The elaborate ceremony surrounding late medieval abbots and its manifestation though art and architecture was not a symptom of the corruption of late medieval monasticism, but a part of the process of wider changes in late medieval society, from which Cistercian monks were recruited. The abbots in their status as prelates started to resemble lay benefactors in the desire to be individually commemorated. In the art commissioned by the abbots, especially altarpieces, they employed established imagery of status and piety. But it would be wrong to dismiss this as simply a self-aggrandising gesture. Many of the abbots who built impressive towers, and commissioned chalices, liturgical manuscripts and altarpieces were the same Cistercian leaders who were active in reforms meant to strengthen observance within their communities. The art which they brought to their monasteries was at the centre of the liturgy, with the altars and the bells in bell towers calling the communities to pray. As the Cistercians were also priests in the later Middle Ages, the number and role of altars grew proportionally and the gesture of the abbots of commissioning images for the high altar remained a sign of contributing to the central role of the monastery.

(Latin, French, English, German),” ibid., 373–418; for liturgical commemorations, see Joachim Wollasch, “Neue Quellen zur Geschichte der Cistercienser,” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 84 (1973): 188–232; for a range of visual commemorations, see Christine Sauer, Fundatio und Memoria: Stifter und Klostergründer im Bild 1100 bis 1350 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993). For the overview of the subjects, see Emilia Jamroziak, The Cistercian Order in Medieval Europe: 1090–1500 (Harlow: Pearson, forthcoming), ch. 3.

MEMORIA AND SACRAL ART IN LATE MEDIEVAL LIVONIA: THE GENDER PERSPECTIVE ANU MÄND Monuments and works of art to honour the dead have been created in all ages. In the Middle Ages many different types of monuments, which marked real or symbolic burial sites, were dedicated to the memory of the deceased: they were chapels, tombstones or memorials, altarpieces, stained glass windows, or other items which are classi¿ed as sacral art today. Images in church interiors (or sometimes on exteriors), decorated with the portraits of donors, their coats of arms, house marks or inscriptions of their names, functioned as stimuli of communal memory. Works of art donated to the church, as well as their spatial and liturgical contexts, expressed both the religious and secular ambitions of their commissioners and perpetuated their names for posterity. Liturgies or other commemorative rituals were held at these memorial monuments. For this reason they can be regarded as bridges between the living and the dead.1 Memoria is a historical and research concept; in its narrow sense, it means the liturgical remembrance of the dead. As a concept of research, memoria has been expanded to cover the culture of memory as a whole, including texts in honour of the dead, as well as works of art and religious and secular commemorative rituals. Memoria is a phenomenon which was linked to all domains of life and all strata of society; this was the means by which individuals and social groups enhanced their identities.2 * This article, as part of the European Science Foundation EUROCORECODE Programme (grant “Symbols that Bind and Break Communities”), was supported by funds from the Estonian Science Foundation and from the target-¿nanced project no. SF0130019s08. This is a modi¿ed version of my article published in Estonian: “Naised, memoria ja sakraalruum hiliskeskaegsel Liivimaal,” Tuna 3 (2012): 6–29. 1 Elizabeth Valdez del Alamo and Carol Stamatis Pendergast, “Introduction,” in Memory and the Medieval Tomb, ed. E. Valdez del Alamo and C. S. Pendergast (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), 1. 2 Otto Gerhard Oexle, “Memoria als Kultur,” in Memoria als Kultur, ed. O. G. Oexle (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1995), 10, 18–19, 39; Arnoud-Jan A. Bijsterveld, Do ut des: Gift Giving, Memoria, and ConÀict Management in the Medieval Low

240

Memoria and Sacral Art in Late Medieval Livonia

In recent decades, increasingly more attention has been paid to the signi¿cance of memoria in late medieval society.3 The majority of research in this ¿eld in Western Europe has focused on the commemorative practices of the aristocracy and the higher ranks of the clergy. Sources regarding other strata, especially lower strata of society, are scarce and, as a result, they have been considerably less studied. A relatively recent development in memoria research links it with gender studies: women’s deeds that would help them to obtain salvation and perpetuate their memory have been little studied and scholars have usually looked at women of high rank and extraordinary power, such as queens, duchesses and other high-born women.4 In this article, I will analyse memoria as practised by women in late medieval Livonia, mainly in two cities: Tallinn and Riga. I will predominantly focus on the higher and middle strata of the urban population and on lay women: the wives and widows of merchants and craftsmen. However, I will also give some examples of noble families who lived in urban centres and donated to churches there. I will ¿rst provide a brief overview of the rituals of burial and commemoration in guilds and point out the role of female members of guilds. Then I will explore the opportunities that women as individuals had for perpetuating their memories (endowment of chantries, commission of masses for the dead, donations of material objects to the church, etc.), while also investigating whether it is possible to ¿nd any gender-speci¿c behavioural patterns, i.e. whether women’s practices in commemorating themselves or their families differed from those of men. It should be stated in advance that, because of the scarcity of sources, these issues cannot be analyCountries (Hilversum: Verloren, 2007), 9–10, 158–68; Truus van Bueren and Rolf de Weijert, “MeMO Project Plan: Summary Medieval Memoria Online (MeMO)” (2009), 3–5, available online at http://memo.hum.uu.nl/pdf/MeMO_project-plan.pdf. 3 E.g., Otto Gerhard Oexle, “Memoria und Memorialbild,” in Memoria: Der geschichtliche Zeugniswert des liturgischen Gedenkens im Mittelalter, ed. Karl Schmid and Joachim Wollasch (Munich: Fink, 1984), 384–440; Dieter Geuenich and Otto Gerhard Oexle, eds., Memoria in der Gesellschaft des Mittelalters (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1994); Truus van Bueren, ed., Care for the Here and the Hereafter: Memoria, Art and Ritual in the Middle Ages (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005); Caroline M. Barron and Clive Burgess, eds., Memory and Commemoration in Medieval England (Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2010). 4 E.g., Barbara J. Harris, “The Fabric of Piety: Aristocratic Women and the Care of the Dead, 1450–1550,” Journal of British Studies 48 (2009): 308–35; Erin L. Jordan, Women, Power, and Religious Patronage in the Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006); Pamela King, “‘My Image to be Made All Naked’: Cadaver Tombs and the Commemoration of Women in Fifteenth-Century England,” The Ricardian: Journal of the Richard III Society 13 (2003): 294–314.

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

241

sed thoroughly; these are just some examples of how the study of different sources may open up more opportunities for exploring the gender perspective in medieval memoria.

The guild sisters and their commemoration Female members, the guild sisters, are mentioned both in the statutes of major (i.e. “occupational” guilds of merchants and craftsmen) as well as minor (i.e. devotional) guilds and confraternities. In the major guilds, “guild sisters” mainly referred to the wives and widows of guild brothers.5 Women did not, however, possess equal rights with the male members: they did not participate in the administrative or decision-making processes. As can be seen from the festival regulations and accounts of the major guilds in Riga and Tallinn, women were not even present on all of the days of the social highlights of the year, e.g. the two-week drinking feasts (Low German drunke) at Christmas and Shrovetide. They were invited to the guild hall only on those days which were dedicated to dancing and when administrative matters were not discussed.6 In minor religious guilds, women seem to have been engaged in the social life to a much larger extent: the statutes of the Virgin Mary’s Guild (active on Cathedral Hill in Tallinn) indicate that the guild sisters participated in the annual drinking feast (which, unlike in major guilds, lasted only a day or two), in assemblies and in processions, and that a woman was appointed from among the sisters to serve other female members at the table during the drinking feast.7 In general, there are very few stipulations in the statutes which mention women, and these concern mainly burials and commemoration. A widespread stipulation was the obligation of every guild brother and sister to participate in the funeral ceremony of their fellow members, as well as in vigils and masses 5 See, e.g., the statutes of the Table Guild in Riga (1425) in Wilhelm Stieda and Constantin Mettig, Schragen der Gilden und Aemter der Stadt Riga bis 1621 (Riga: Häcker, 1896), 661, § 2: “Desgeliiken mogen erbare vrouwen sustere hyrinne werden, se sin wedewen edder hebben man.” At the beginning of the same stipulation, it is stated that only a member (brother) of the Great Guild can be admitted to the Table Guild. 6 Women and maidens were invited to the festivals, i.e. also daughters of the guildsmen. See Anu Mänd, Urban Carnival: Festive Culture in the Hanseatic Cities of the Eastern Baltic, 1350–1550 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), 60, 62, 75, 78–80; Mänd, “Suurgildi ajalugu kuni Liivi sõjani,” in Ivar Leimus et al., Tallinna Suurgild ja gildimaja (Tallinn: Eesti Ajaloomuuseum, 2011), 58–59. 7 Friedrich Stillmark, “Der älteste Schragen der Dom- oder Mariengilde zu Reval,” Beiträge zur Kunde Estlands 18, no. 1 (1932): 37–39, § 7–8, § 11–14.

242

Memoria and Sacral Art in Late Medieval Livonia

for their souls.8 Absentees were ¿ned. The statutes of the Great Guild in Tallinn specify that if a guild sister was absent, her husband had to pay the ¿ne.9 Thus, men were responsible for the well-mannered behaviour of their wives and the participation of the latter in the guild’s traditions. Guilds and confraternities played an important role in the funeral rites of their members: they organised the night watch, carried the corpse to the church in the funeral procession and afterwards to the grave. During the ceremony, the guild’s candles (gilde lichte) were used, and the association paid for a vigil and three masses for the soul. Among the symbolic objects was also a cof¿n cover, usually made of some precious cloth and decorated with the coat of arms or the patron saint of the association. The use of the corporate cof¿n cover was a great honour for the deceased. Members who for some reason had fallen into disgrace were not permitted to use it.10 The guild members also assembled in a memorial ceremony when a fellow member had died and had been buried elsewhere. The statutes of the aforementioned Virgin Mary’s Guild state that if a guild brother or a sister died outside of Tallinn, a memorial service would be held for him/her in the cathedral in the same way as for those who died in the city.11 Membership in a guild also guaranteed a decent funeral in accordance with one’s status for an impoverished member. In addition to mandatory attendance at these collective rituals, some guilds obliged their members to individually contribute to the salvation of the soul of the departed. In the Tallinn Table Guild (Ger. Tafelgilde, a charitable sub-organisation of the Great Guild12), each brother had to order a Mass for the soul of a deceased member.13 In the Virgin Mary’s Guild, each brother and sister had to say thirty Lord’s Prayers and thirty Hail Mary prayers for those who had just been buried, as well as for all the deceaAnu Mänd, “Church Art, Commemoration of the Dead and the Saints’ Cult: Constructing Individual and Corporate Memoria in Late Medieval Tallinn,” Acta Historica Tallinnensia 16 (2011): 5–11. 9 Eugen von Nottbeck, Die alten Schragen der Grossen Gilde zu Reval (Reval: Kluge & Ströhm, 1885), 44, § 35. 10 Ibid., 43, § 30; Mänd, “Church Art,” 5–6. The Virgin Mary’s Guild also rented out its cof¿n cover and candles to people who were not members of the guild; the price depended on the social status of the person. Stillmark, “Der älteste Schragen,” 40, § 28–30. 11 Stillmark, “Der älteste Schragen,” 40, § 27. 12 The craftsmen in Riga and Tallinn also formed their Table Guilds, but their statutes have not been preserved. Therefore, when in the following I refer to the Table Guild, I mean that of the Great Guild. 13 Nottbeck, Die alten Schragen, 66, § 14. 8

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

243

sed members, and every priest belonging to this guild had to conduct a vigil and a Mass.14 The solemnity of the funeral ceremony and the number of mourners was an indicator of the social position of the deceased. It can be assumed, however, that the burials of the guild sisters were not as grand as those of the male members. This is indicated by the fact that for a woman’s burial less money was paid to the church. According to a price list of St. Nicholas’ Church in Tallinn from the second half of the ¿fteenth century, the burial of an adult cost three marks and of a child one mark, and the tolling of all the bells at the funeral cost four marks.15 However, from the account book of the wardens of the same church, it is clear that occasionally the expenditure for a woman’s burial was only one mark or ¿ve ferdings (1¼ marks) and such a woman was not always of lesser social status.16 Unfortunately, no guild documents have been preserved that would enable us to compare how much money was spent on the burials of brothers and how much on sisters. The bond between the living and the dead did not cease to exist after the funeral: another binding ritual was the liturgical remembrance in the church and the annual commemoration ceremony in the guild hall. Major guilds had patronage over several altars where masses and prayers were said for the living and the dead. The Great Guild of Tallinn paid for the monthly singing of the masses for the soul in both parish churches (St. Nicholas’ and St. Olaf’s) and in the Dominican church. In addition, the parish priests and the prior were paid to commemorate the guild sisters and brothers throughout the year from the pulpit (“vor suster vnde broder dat jar ouer to denkende vp dem predickstole”), which probably included the reading of the names of the deceased.17 The Table Guild paid for the remembrance of its members in the Holy Spirit Church. The Table Guild in Riga commissioned prayers for dead brothers and sisters every Sunday.18 The wealthier the association, the more it invested in the liturgical remembrance of its members. The regulations of the Table Guild in Riga (1425) and Tallinn (early sixteenth century) indicate that guild sisters played a special role in the ceremony following the Mass. In Riga, the guild assembled at the memorial Mass in St. Peter’s Church on the second Sunday after Michaelmas. During the offering, the wives of the two guild wardens had to proceed at the front Stillmark, “Der älteste Schragen,” 41, § 34–35. Tallinn City Archives (Est. Tallinna Linnaarhiiv, abbr. TLA), collection (coll.) 31, inventory (inv.) 1, no. 216, fol. 3r. 16 TLA, coll. 31, inv. 1, no. 216, e.g. fols. 40v (1474), 68r (1490), 69r (1490). 17 Mänd, “Suurgildi ajalugu,” 82–83; Mänd, “Church Art,” 6–7. 18 Stieda and Mettig, Schragen, 663, § 15. 14 15

244

Memoria and Sacral Art in Late Medieval Livonia

of the line, each carrying a candle for the soul (selelicht) of half a pound of wax, and they were followed by other guild sisters.19 The details of the ritual are not described in the regulations; therefore, the route of the guild sisters’ procession is not clear, nor do we know where exactly they placed these candles. In Tallinn, a similar ritual was performed on the second Sunday after Easter in the Holy Spirit Church. When a memorial Mass was over, the wife of the warden of the Table Guild had to offer a candle for the soul, and she was assisted by the wives of the warden’s assistants.20 Apparently, the leading role in this ritual was not entrusted to just any guild sisters: it was a privilege of the wardens’ spouses. The carrying of the candles for the soul seems to have been a ritual act associated predominantly with women, because women were also paid to do this in associations which had no female members— as in the Brotherhood of the Black Heads (a confraternity of journeyman merchants).21 The secular commemoration was carried out in the guild halls where, at the end of the main annual assemblies, the names of the dead were written down and read aloud. The scenario for this ritual can be found in the statutes of the Table Guild in Riga: after the Mass and the subsequent festive meal, the steward of the guild had to ring a bell and to announce the names of the dead brothers and sisters. Thereafter, a collection was made: each member had to pay one artig for each deceased. For this sum, the guild ordered as many masses as there were priests in the city.22 The lists of deceased members have been preserved only for the Tallinn Table Guild, which kept records of them and carried out the commemoration ceremony usually once a year, shortly after Easter. In some years, especially during plague epidemics, when more members died than usual, the names were also written down at Christmas and Shrovetide, i.e. at the main festivals of the Great Guild. The lists from the years 1448–1549 have been preserved (with gaps) and they include only the names of male members.23 There is no evidence that the guild kept records of the deceased female members as well. It is also not known if the Great Guild (or any other association) presented the priests with the names of all the deceased, or if women were merely remembered as a nameless group of “sisters.” Ibid., 662, § 8. Nottbeck, Die alten Schragen, 68, § 3 (Low German text: 100, § 3), 71, § 7 (Low German text: 103, § 7). 21 Dokumentesammlung des Herder-Instituts in Marburg/Lahn, coll. 120, no. 5, pag. 20 (1441): “It. soe leit ik maken 12 seillicht, die kosten 11 s., vnd den frouwen die to drogen 4 s.” 22 Stieda and Mettig, Schragen, 662–63, § 13. 23 TLA, coll. 191, inv. 2, no. 1, passim. 774 names have been recorded in 1448–1549. 19 20

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

245

It is likely that for women, who, because of their gender, could not participate in the guild administration, the main reasons for joining a guild or a confraternity were the common religious rituals, the opportunity to practice charity, and the guarantee of a decent funeral and intercessory prayers. Whilst for the wives of merchants and craftsmen the ¿rst (though certainly not the only) choice was their husband’s occupational guild, the main prospect for maidens and other lower status women were devotional guilds and confraternities, which were socially more varied. For instance, among people who were admitted to the Tallinn Corpus Christi Guild in 1428, there were some burgher’s wives, a housemaid named Gertrude, a certain Ma[r]grete from the convent (most likely referring to the Cistercian Convent of St. Michael) and a lady called Katharina Lode, whose name indicates that she was from a wellknown Livonian noble family.24 In the confraternity of the beer carriers in Riga, which, despite its name, united people of different status, occupation and gender, there were married women and maidens, both of high and low rank: noble women, wives and sisters of city councillors, beguines, housemaids and so forth.25 In 1495, the confraternity of the beer carriers and the Cistercian convent in Riga agreed that the entire convent, with the abbess at its head, would enter the said confraternity. At the burials of all members, including sisters, the cof¿n cover and the candles of the beer carriers had to be used and, in return, all the deceased had to be commemorated in the convent with vigils and masses for the soul.26 Although the Cistercian nuns were predominantly of noble German origin, and the founders of the confraternity, the beer carriers, belonged to the lower strata and were mainly non-Germans,27 the aforementioned contract and the data on the members seem to indicate that the intercessory prayers played 24 Friedrich Georg von Bunge et al., eds., Liv-, Est- und Curländisches Urkundenbuch, 12 vols. (Reval: Kluge & Ströhm, 1853–1910; hereafter LUB), vol. 1, no. 593, col. 768; Tiina Kala, “Keskaegse Tallinna väikekorporatsioonid ja nende usuelu normatiivsed vormid,” Tuna 2 (2010): 14. 25 Constantin Mettig, “Die Bücher der Rigaschen Bierträgergilde,” Sitzungsberichte der Gesellschaft für Geschichte und Altertumskunde der Ostseeprovinzen Russlands aus dem Jahre 1890 (1891): 123. Among the male members, there were, in addition to beer carriers, city councillors and clerics, including the future Archbishop of Riga, Jasper Linde. 26 Ibid., 123–24; Leonid Arbusow, ed., Liv-, Est- und Kurländisches Urkundenbuch, 2nd ser., 3 vols. (Riga: Deubner, 1900–14; hereafter LUB 2), vol. 1, no. 252. 27 The confraternity of the beer carriers and the craft (amt) of the same name were not identical. Nevertheless, as the name of the confraternity indicates, the beer carriers must have been the dominant group among the members. In Riga, the beer carriers were chieÀy Latvians, and in Tallinn, Estonians. Stieda and Mettig, Schragen, 119–20,

246

Memoria and Sacral Art in Late Medieval Livonia

such a signi¿cant role in late medieval society that occasionally even social and ethnic barriers were not as rigid as would be expected. In addition to entering guilds and participating in their commemorative rituals, women also had a chance to individually express their piety and to take measures to perpetuate their memories. The opportunities to ful¿l one’s religious and earthly aspirations were largely dependent on the social, economic and marital status of a woman; however, the religious and social context of the time, which shaped the patterns of behaviour and inÀuenced the community’s expectations towards people of a certain rank, should also be taken into consideration.

The endowment of chantries Among the means to attain salvation, but also to demonstrate one’s wealth and social status, were pious donations to churches, either given in one’s lifetime or left in a will. One of the widespread practices among the upper social layers was to establish an altar and a chantry in honour of one’s favourite saint or to endow a chantry at an already existing altar. A chantry had a double function: it was endowed for the glory of God and for the salvation of the donor. Without discussing the different ways of funding a chantry,28 I think it is suf¿cient to say that in late medieval Livonian cities a certain amount of money was usually donated to a church, the annual interest of which (normally six per cent) covered the pay of the chantry priest and operating costs (the liturgical supplies, e.g. wax and Eucharistic wine and bread). The foundation charters, contracts between the church and individuals and other similar documents show that, in the majority of cases, the endowment of a chantry belonged to the “male sphere,” i.e. it was conducted by the head of the family. However, the contracts often reveal that a chantry was established for the sake of the souls of the founder, his wife and all members of the family. For example, in 1390 the knight Vicke von Wrangel founded a chantry for 150 Riga marks in St. Wenceslas’ Church (i.e. the Cistercian convent) of Tallinn for the souls of himself, his mother, his wife and his ancestors.29 In 1411, the knight Diderick von Vitinghof founded an eternal Mass at the altar of St. Anthony in the Dominican church, which was to be celebrated daily cf. 114; Paul Johansen, “Tallinna keskaja õllekandjate ajaloost,” Ajalooline Ajakiri 5 (1926): 91–100. 28 See, e.g., Wolfgang Prange, Vikarien und Vikare in Lübeck bis zur Reformation (Lübeck: Schmidt-Römhild, 2003), 10–12, 73–86. 29 Dieter Heckmann, Revaler Urkunden und Briefe von 1273 bis 1510 (Cologne: Böhlau, 1995), 73, no. 49.

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

247

for the sake of his soul, as well as that of his wife Anna, his deceased wife Adelheid, and all the living and the dead in his and his wife’s family. Once a week, preferably on Sunday, the Mass was to be sung, and the names of the departed read aloud from the ambo.30 It was mostly people who were ¿nancially well off—aristocrats, wealthy burghers and clergy—who could afford to endow chantries. In 1378 two Tallinn town councillors, the executors of the will of their colleague Johan Duderstadt, who had died in the same year, and the guardians of his widow testi¿ed that according to the last wishes of the departed a hundred marks was to be used to establish a daily Mass. After the death of Duderstadt’s widow, the endowment was to be augmented so that a Mass for both of their souls could be held twice a day, keeping two priests in service for this purpose.31 It is not clear from the document where the chantry was located, but later entries from the 1390s show that there were two chantries in memory of Duderstadt and his wife: one at the altar of the Holy Cross of Lucca in St. Barbara’s Chapel at St. Nicholas’ Church, and the other at the altar of St. Matthias in the Church of the Holy Spirit.32 The will of the Riga city councillor Conrad Visch in 1425 mentions two perpetual chantries in St. Peter’s Church. One of them, at the chapel located at the south side of the new chancel, was endowed by Visch for the salvation of himself, his wife and children. The altar was provided with all the necessities: three liturgical vestments, a chalice, a book (probably a missal), silver altar cruets (ampullae), altar cloths and candlesticks. In addition, he left an endowment of two hundred marks; the interest on the money was to be paid for the service of the priest. Visch had endowed another chantry, which was at the altar of St. Anne, in remembrance of his deceased colleague Arnd Plaggal (burgomaster 1393), his wife and children. It is not clear from the document whether Plaggal was Visch’s relative or a good friend.33 In all the cases described above, women played a passive role. The North German sources also indicate that, compared to men, women rarely endowed chantries. For example, 207 chantries are known to have been endowed in medieval Lübeck, but only ¿ve of them were endowed by women, by wealthy Ibid., 134–35, no. 89. Ibid., 60, no. 39. 32 Arthur Plaesterer, ed., Das Revaler Pergament Rentenbuch 1382–1518 (Tallinn: Tallinna Eesti Kirjastus Ühisus, 1930), no. 1405 (1398), nos. 1421–22 (1393?). 33 LUB, vol. 7, no. 372; Anu Mänd, Kirikute hõbevara: Altaririistad keskaegsel Liivimaal (Tallinn: Muinsuskaitseamet, 2008), 43. For Plaggal, see H[einrich] J[ulius] Böthführ, Die Rigische Rathslinie von 1226 bis 1876, 2nd ed. (Riga: Deubner, 1877), 81, no. 216. 30 31

248

Memoria and Sacral Art in Late Medieval Livonia

widows, to be more precise.34 No comparable statistical information is available for Tallinn or Riga, and therefore I will merely point out a few cases in which women endowed chantries or participated in the endowments. In 1399 members of the noble family of Wrangel gave two hundred marks for a perpetual chantry in Tallinn, which had been established by the noble widow Ludgard von Mekes, the wife of the late Hincke Thuve (Taube).35 In 1453, Fromhold Lode, the lord of Kukruse manor, founded—“according to the wishes of his wife Elsebe and by her consent” and “for redeeming his sins”—a chantry at the Virgin Mary’s altar in Jõhvi church (Viru County), with the purpose of having masses and memorial masses held for him and Elsebe, their parents and their legitimate offspring.36 It was necessary to comply with Elsebe’s “wishes” and seek her “consent” because, on the one hand, it was about the use of the joint property of the married couple and, on the other hand, it cannot be excluded that it was his better half who was behind the idea of endowing the chantry. In 1447 a group of people—the Riga Cathedral provost Theodericus Nagel, Andreas Seppelbeke, Hinrik Harnsch, the priest Georgius Dazeberch and lady Anna von Alen—endowed a perpetual chantry, a Mass for the dead at St. Joseph’s altar in the Riga Cathedral. Anna and the children donated a hundred old or twenty-¿ve new marks, as well as a gilt chalice for the altar.37 What connected these people is not known. The Alens were a local vassal family; in 1495 Dorothea von Alen was a resident in the Riga Cistercian convent; her namesake, also a nun, died on 1 June 1544 at the Birgittine convent at Pirita, located near the city of Tallinn.38 In 1494 the Tallinn merchant Hans Potgeter39 and his wife Katharina donated seventy marks and ten Rhenish guilders to St. Nicholas’ Church. With this sum, a perpetual chantry at St. Matthew’s altar in the new Chapel of St. Matthew was established and a tombstone placed in front of the 34 Prange, Vikarien und Vikare in Lübeck, 161, no. 31, 173, nos. 66 and 2, 180, nos. 9–10. 35 LUB, vol. 4, no. 1489; cf. Plaesterer, Pergament Rentenbuch, no. 1442. It is not mentioned in which church the chantry was founded. 36 Friedrich Georg von Bunge and Robert von Toll, eds., Est- und Livländische BrieÀade: Eine Sammlung von Urkunden zur Adels- und Gütergeschichte Est- und Livlands, pt. 1, vol. 1 (Reval: Kluge & Ströhm, 1856), no. 214. 37 LUB, vol. 10, no. 297. 38 LUB 2, vol. 1, no. 252; Paul Johansen, “Kalendrikatkend Pirita kloostrist,” Vana Tallinn 3 (1938): 27. 39 He became burgher in 1476 and entered the Great Guild in 1479. Otto Greiffenhagen, ed., Das Revaler Bürgerbuch 1409–1624 (Tallinn: Tallinna Eesti Kirjastus Ühisus, 1932), 32; TLA, coll. 191, inv. 2, no. 1, fol. 40v.

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

249

altar.40 (It was a fairly widespread custom in those days that the urban elite had tombstones erected in their lifetimes, thus securing prestigious places for themselves.) In addition, Katharina donated seven guilders, which made up half of the money used for building a cupboard between the altars of St. Matthew and St. Anthony (valuable objects and books for serving at both altars must have been kept in there). The Potgeters provided, and promised to provide in the future, the altar with all the necessities, such as vestments for the Mass, chalices, altar cloths and missals. In autumn 1494 Katharina donated another sum of ten Rhenish guilders and, in August of the next year, she added seventy marks to it.41 Hans Potgeter died in 1499,42 leaving behind an undated will.43 He tried to secure the continuation of his chantry: according to the will Katharina was to pay twenty-four marks of annual rent on the Potgeter house in the Old Market to St. Nicholas’ Church and, after his wife’s death, the house would be left to the church to cover the expenses. Although the couple had endowed the chantry together and the instalment that Katharina had paid for the cupboard was mentioned separately in the account books of St. Nicholas’ Church, in his will Hans called the altar and chantry his and not “ours” (“to myner fyckeryge, to mynen altare”).44 The chantry at St. Matthew’s altar, at which Katharina kept four priests in service, is last mentioned in about 1525, i.e. shortly after the Reformation.45 After her husband’s death, Katharina became a notably wealthy widow, lived for more than thirty years and never married again.46 No children are mentioned in the wills of either Hans or Katharina; as a result, Katharina had a free hand with her estate. In 1508, about nine years after her husband’s death, she decided to found another chantry, at St. Barbara’s Chapel outside the city wall: the interest on the sum of 150 marks would pay for a Mass held each Monday for the souls of her blessed husband, Katharina herself, her parents 40 TLA, coll. 31, inv. 1, no. 216, fols. 20v–21r, 81v; Tiina Kala, “Tallinna linnaelu kajastumine raehärra Hans Rotgersi märkmetes,” in Ajalookirjutaja aeg / Aetas Historicorum, ed. Piret Lotman (Tallinn: Eesti Rahvusraamatukogu, 2008), 33. 41 TLA, coll. 31, inv. 1, no. 216, fol. 81v. 42 Ibid., fol. 87v. In 1500, on the anniversary of his death, he was commemorated with the tolling of bells (ibid., fol. 90r). His commemoration in the Table Guild began, for unknown reasons, only in 1503. TLA, coll. 191, inv. 2, no. 1, fol. 53r. 43 Roland Seeberg-Elverfeldt, Revaler Regesten, vol. 3, Testamente Revaler Bürger und Einwohner aus den Jahren 1369 bis 1851 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1975), no. 87 (incorrectly dated to ca. 1505). 44 TLA, coll. 230, inv. 1-IIIb, no. 60; inv. 1, no. BN 1, H. Potgeter. 45 TLA, coll. 230, inv. 1, no. Aa 15a, fol. 19v. 46 Her will is dated 4 March 1533. TLA, coll. 230, inv. 1-IIIb, no. 88; coll. 230, inv. 1, no. BN 1, K. Potgetersche; Seeberg-Elverfeldt, Testamente, no. 148.

250

Memoria and Sacral Art in Late Medieval Livonia

and other Christians.47 (Intercessory prayers were sometimes said on Mondays, as it was believed that Sunday was a holiday in purgatory and the suffering of the souls began again on Monday.)48 What motivated Katharina to endow a chantry at this relatively unimportant house of worship is not known.49 As mostly the poor, strangers, the homeless and inhabitants of the outskirts of the town, who belonged to the lower strata of society, were buried in the graveyard of St. Barbara’s Chapel, it cannot be excluded that her wish was to support the most miserable and thus secure for herself the intercessory prayers of the poor, i.e. those closest to God. But this is merely speculation: to be remembered in the prayers of the sick and poor, a hospital chapel with more regular inmates and attenders would have been a better choice. Katharina’s connection with her parish church of St. Nicholas continued as well. In 1510 she gave three hundred marks to the church wardens, stipulating that from the interest on this money she should be paid an allowance of eighteen marks per year until the end of her life.50 The fact that Katharina was able to operate with such big sums within only a few years leads us to the conclusion that she may have, at least partly, continued her husband’s businesses. Katharina Potgetersche has repeatedly been mentioned in historiography as an example of a devoted and pious Catholic, although mainly in the context of Reformation events: the widow remained loyal to her faith during the evangelical movement, by allowing the Dominicans to visit her house and by hiding books and other property of the friary in her cellar.51 As may be surmised, Katharina was not only wealthier than average, but also more learned. Katharina’s actions show that she tried as much as possible to secure for herself, and for her deceased husband, the shortest possible stay in purgatory, but she also wished to perpetuate her own and her husband’s memory through her material donations. Whether and to what extent Katharina was exceptional LUB 2, vol. 3, no. 302. Peter Vollmers, Die Hamburger Pfarreien im Mittelalter: Die Parochialorganisation der Hansestadt bis zur Reformation (Hamburg: Verein für Hamburgische Geschichte, 2005), 244. 49 For the chapel, see Rasmus Kangropool, “Püha Barbara kabel ja kalmistu,” Vana Tallinn, n.s., 2 (1992): 6–15. 50 TLA, coll. 31, inv. 1, no. 216, fol. 21r. 51 Leonid Arbusow, Jr., Die Einführung der Reformation in Liv-, Est- und Kurland (Leipzig: M. Heinsius Nachfolger, 1921), 289, 368; Kadri-Rutt Hahn, “Kirchliche und karitative Legate: Revaler Testamente in den ersten Jahrzehnten nach der Reformation (1524–1560),” in Seelenheil und irdischer Besitz: Testamente als Quellen für den Umgang mit den “letzten Dingen”, ed. Markwart Herzog and Cecilie Hollberg (Konstanz: UVK-Verl.-Ges., 2007), 134. 47 48

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

251

among contemporary burghers’ wives is dif¿cult to say; she may stand out partly because there is, luckily, more source material about her. Katharina lived for about ten years after the new evangelical faith had been adopted, making her will in March 1533. This document is a good example of the “telling silence” in some post-Reformation wills: if we didn’t know anything about the widow’s past, we might take her for an exemplary Lutheran because big sums of money were bequeathed, as was the custom in those days, to education and the poor.52 After the abolition of her chantries and the demise of old patterns of behaviour, Katharina chose to direct a large part of her inheritance to the poor (to the sick in the almshouses and to the poor-table in St. Canute Guild), thus targeting the group she had provided for earlier.

Donations in women’s wills that shaped sacred space One of the best ways to track pious donations is to study people’s wills. Much more effective than leaving a sum of money to a church without specifying its purpose was to donate a work of art or some other object which would be visible to all, would show the social position of the donor and help not only to attain salvation, but also serve to adorn the church and thus shape sacred space as a public space. Admittedly, the donation of a material object was not the only way to represent oneself socially; a similar effect was achieved by establishing a Mass or some other type of service (i.e. the canonical hours), or donating money for a saint’s ¿gure or the illumination of the sacrament—i.e. the memory of the donor could be kept alive by objects, words, music and songs, or lighting. About 160 wills have been preserved from Catholic Tallinn, more precisely, from the period 1341–1524 (i.e. from the oldest known surviving will to the iconoclastic riots in September 1524).53 Only twelve of them were women’s,54 and the earliest of them was not made until 1474 (see Seeberg-Elverfeldt, Testamente, no. 148; Hahn, “Kirchliche und karitative Legate,” 134. 53 Kadri-Rutt Hahn, “Revaler Testamente im 15.–16. Jahrhundert” (PhD diss., University of Göttingen, 2008), appendix 1. No testaments have been preserved from the last quarter of 1524; the earliest post-Reformation testament dates from January 1525. 54 The numbers differ from those presented in the PhD thesis by Kadri-Rutt Hahn. For example, she dates the will of the housemaid Mayse to ca. 1500, but it originates from the 1540s or 1550s; she dates the will of Birgitte Julick to 1521, but it originates from 1527; she dates the will of Margarete Snitker to ca. 1510, but it originates from between 1492 and 1496. See Hahn, “Revaler Testamente,” appendix 1, appendix 8, no. 3; cf. Mänd, “Naised, memoria ja sakraalruum,” 14n60. 52

252

Memoria and Sacral Art in Late Medieval Livonia

Table).55 Considerably more wills have been preserved from the decades after the Reformation: from the period 1525–60, we have about 175 wills, of which ¿fty were made by women and three by married couples.56 As a result of reforms carried out in autumn 1524 and the following year, the content of the Tallinners’ wills changed very quickly; after the iconoclastic riots in September 1524 there were usually no Catholic donations (e.g. chantries, masses for the dead or saints’ statues),57 so I will not go into the post-Reformation wills. It would be wrong to assume that the attitudes and the beliefs of all the inhabitants in cities changed overnight, but under the strict control of the city council the endowment of chantries and other Catholic services were abolished and their funds were directed into the Gemeine Kasten; consequently, it was not sensible to include any instructions in a will that would not have been ful¿lled under the new conditions. Among the twelve female testators were representatives of different social strata, and their marital status varied. The majority of the testators were widows, two were married women (Nystad and Katvick) and one widow remarried after making her will (Sauier).58 Typically, in the women’s wills, the material culture of their main ¿elds of activity was reÀected: relatives and friends, as well as churches, were bequeathed clothes, jewellery, bed linen, tableware and kitchen utensils. Some women also had cash or silver at their disposal, and for this the church had to obtain certain objects or use cash or silver for certain liturgical purposes. I will discuss the speci¿c donations that are found in the wills that can be associated with the commemorative culture and which, in one way or another, shaped the interiors of Tallinn churches. Not all of the twelve wills contained such donations (see Table). 55 In the registers published by Seeberg-Elverfeldt, most of the women’s wills are not included. Of the twelve pre-Reformation wills, there are only four: Elsebe Kremersche (1509), Margarete Snitker (incorrectly dated to ca. 1510), Elizabeth Triss (1511) and Magdalene Sauier (incorrectly dated to ca. 1525). Seeberg-Elverfeldt, Testamente, nos. 94, 100, 106, 130. 56 Hahn, “Revaler Testamente,” appendix 1; see also Hahn, “Kirchliche und karitative Legate,” 125. 57 There are very few exceptions, see, e.g., Seeberg-Elverfeldt, Testamente, no. 159 (1536). For the changes in the content of the wills after the Reformation, see Hahn, “Kirchliche und karitative Legate,” 125–37. 58 For the sake of convenience, here and in the following, women are referred to by the family names of their husbands. In practice, some of them kept their own family names: this was widespread not only in noble families but also among burghers. Some women began to be called by their husband’s family names (with the ending -sche or -s) after they were widowed.

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

253

Kathrine, the wife of the merchant Bernd Nystad59 (1474), donated—by her husband’s consent—¿fty marks to St. Nicholas’ Church; the interest on this sum was to go towards illumination the Holy Sacrament.60 As it was in the same year that a large silver gilt monstrance was completed by the goldsmith Hans Ryssenberch,61 in which the consecrated Host (the body of Christ) was displayed to the people, Kathrine’s donation may have been motivated by this event. Fifty marks was a fairly large sum of money in those days, an indicator of the afÀuence of the woman; late medieval donations to the church were usually in the range of ten marks.62 The merchant Lutke Losseke’s widow Margarete63 (1519) donated her ¿rst ¿fty marks to the Cathedral of the Virgin Mary; it was to support the illumination of the sacrament and, according to the will, Margarete was continuing the traditions of her ancestors.64 Next, she donated a sum of ¿fty marks to St. Olaf’s Church, and its interest was to fund commemorative masses held each year to save her soul. It is worth noting that, in making these donations, Margarete did not mention the liturgical commemoration of her deceased husband Lutke or his endowment of a chantry at the altar of St. Adrian in St. Olaf’s Church;65 she seemed to only intend to ensure her own salvation and, by supporting the illumination of the sacrament, to emphasise the continuation of an ancestral tradition. Although the funds at Margarete’s disposal were not comparable to Bernd Nystad (Nyestat) appears in the lists of the Black Heads from the Christmas feast of 1451/52 to the Shrovetide of 1464; he became a burgher in 1463. He is not found in the lists of the new members of the Great Guild, but this may be because no records were kept during the long plague of 1464–65. TLA, coll. 87, inv. 1, no. 20, pag. 26, 123; Greiffenhagen, Bürgerbuch, 23. 60 TLA, coll. 230, inv. 1, no. BN 1, K. Nyestad. 61 Mänd, Kirikute hõbevara, 101, ¿g. 90. 62 See Hahn, “Revaler Testamente,” appendix 4. 63 Her ¿rst husband was the merchant Andreas Kruse (d. 1497 or 1498), and her second husband Lutke Losseke originated from Werden, became a burgher in Tallinn and member of the Great Guild in 1501, made his will in December 1511, and died some time before Easter 1515. Torsten Derrik, Das Bruderbuch der Revaler Tafelgilde (1364–1549) (Marburg: Tectum, 2000), micro¿che, 396–97, 390; Greiffenhagen, Bürgerbuch, 38; TLA, coll. 191, inv. 2, no. 1, fol. 52r; coll. 230, inv. 1, no. BN 1, L. Losseke. 64 TLA, coll. 230, inv. 1, no. BN 1, M. Losseke, fol. 1v. 65 TLA, coll. 230, inv. 1, no. BN 1, L. Losseke. Lutke gave three hundred marks to a chantry at St. Adrian’s altar, the largest donation to the church in his will. He did not specify that prayers for his soul or masses should be carried out at this altar, but this may have been taken for granted, so that it was not necessary to write it down. The second largest donation, two hundred marks, was to fund the Hours of the Virgin Mary (apparently also in St. Olaf’s Church; see TLA, coll. 230, inv. 1, no. Aa 15a, fol. 14r). 59

between 1492 and 1496

30.04.1505

6.05.1509

Margarete, widow of Pawel Snitker

Lippesche

Elsebe Kremersche

Probably a merchant’s widow

Probably a merchant’s widow

Pawel Snitker was perhaps a woodcarver

28.06.1499

Margareta, wife of Diderick van Katvick

HS: 5 mk., coral and silver rosary to the Virgin Mary’s statue N: 3 mk. D: 3 mk.

HS: 50 mk. from her house (shop) for alms

D: clothes, bed linen, kitchen utensils (3 tin dishes, 4 tin plates, 11 tankards, 3 iron tripods) Cistercians in Padise: 1½ last of rye

N: 200 mk. for 2 heritages, 3 mk. of silver for a chalice, 5 guilders C: 5 guilders O: 5 guilders D: 5 guilders for two times 40 masses

Daughter of a petty merchant; 1st husband Clawes van der Sittow (d. 1482) was a painter and woodcarver; 2nd husband Diderick van Katvick was a painter and glazier

Donations to churches N: 50 mk. for the illumination of the Sacrament

26.05.1474

Kathrine, wife of Bernd Nystad

Social status, husband’s occupation Bernd Nystad was a merchant

Will

Name

Abbreviations: N – St. Nicholas’ Church, O – St. Olaf’s Church, HS – Holy Spirit Church, C – Cathedral, D – Dominicans, B – Birgittines, G – St. Gertrude’s Chapel, mk. – Riga mark

Table. Donations to the church in women’s wills from medieval Tallinn

254 Memoria and Sacral Art in Late Medieval Livonia

17.04.1511

12.04.1518

29.05.1518

11.03.1519

30.07.1519

3.09.1522

before Sept 1524

Elizabeth, widow of Wilhelm Triss

Margareta, widow of Laurens Becker

Kathrina Kulmes

Katherina, widow of Jurgen Meler

Margarete, widow of Lutke Losseke

Meighe Kreigenwengersche

Magdalene, widow of Sauier

1st husband Andreas Kruse was a merchant, 2nd husband Lutke Losseke (d. 1515) was a merchant Widow of a son(?) of the merchant Dirick Kreigenvenger (d. 1482) Probably the widow of Martin Sawyarge (d. 1519); after making her will, married the craftsman Kersten Holm

J. meler was the painter and woodcarver Jurgen Dreger (d. 1519)

D: headgear for the Virgin Mary’s statue

–

C: 50 mk. for the illumination of the Sacrament O: 50 mk. for annual masses

D: a black cloak for a friar B: a roll of best linen cloth N: 5 mk. B: 10 mk. for 40 masses and vigils, a panel for the painting of the St Gregory’s vision D: 10 mk. for 40 masses G: statue of St. Mary, the Queen of Heaven St. Peter’s Chapel in Sweden (Finland): statue of St. Mary and 4 pounds of wax for the candles in front of it

O: 10 mk. to St. Mary’s Chapel, 5 mk. to the church B: 10 mk.

L. becker was either the baker Laurens Bonien (d. ca. 1499) or Laurens Becker, an alderman of the Virgin Mary Guild on Cathedral Hill Probably a widow of a wealthier craftsman

HS: silver tankard, rosary and dress adornments to the Virgin Mary’s statue N: 33 mk. for vigils and masses on every anniversary; silver jewellery etc for 4 statues of the Virgin Mary; armour of 40 mk. N, HS: dishes and clothes that are left over from heirs O: silver drinking vessel to the Virgin Mary’s statue D: coral rosary, 2 guild tankards, 5 silver buttons of a hood to the Virgin Mary’s statue B: 2 large guild tankards

1st husband Clawes Schorlink (d. 1494) was a craftsman and alderman of St. Canute Guild 1489–92(?); 2nd husband Wilhelm Triss (d. 1503 or 1504) was a merchant

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices 255

256

Memoria and Sacral Art in Late Medieval Livonia

the hundreds of marks which Lutke donated in his will, they show the wealth and inÀuence that the widow had. This is proved by the fact that Margarete appointed ¿ve executors of her will, all well-known merchants; two of them became city councillors a couple of years later.66 Katherina, the widow of the painter and woodcarver Jurgen Dreger,67 who drew up her will only a few months after the death of her husband (1519), had at her disposal cash and wooden sculptures, a legacy from her husband.68 She bequeathed a ¿gure of the Virgin Mary, depicted as the Queen of Heaven, for St. Gertrude’s Chapel at the Great Coast Gate. She donated another ¿gure of the Virgin Mary for St. Peter’s Chapel in Sweden (probably in today’s Finland),69 adding to it four pounds of wax, to be made into candles to light before the ¿gure. For the Birgittine convent at Pirita, Katherina bequeathed a “plain panel” for painting St. Gregory’s vision (Sunte Gregories apenbaringe, i.e. the Mass of St. Gregory). Paul Johansen thinks that Katherina chose the subject of the painting because she made her will on the eve of the feast of St. Gregory (12 March), but this may not have been the case: the Mass of St. Gregory, which visualises the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist wine and bread, was a frequent motif in late ¿fteenth- and early sixteenth-century art. As the account (1522) of the executors of Katherina’s will has been preserved, according to which “Michel” was paid ¿fteen marks for a picture, it has been supposed that this must have been the picture painted for the Pirita convent and that the artist was Michel Sittow, who was believed to have been the teacher of Katherina’s husband.70 The works of art donated by Dreger’s widow embellished the interiors of three religious buildings and helped to keep the memory of the generous donor alive. Unlike some other testators, Katherina had the advantage of having these holy ¿gures at home, as her husband had Mänd, “Naised, memoria ja sakraalruum,” 19n107. In Katherina’s testament he is referred to as Jorgen meler, i.e. the painter. For him, see Rasmus Kangropool and Mai Lumiste, “Tallinna maalijad ja puunikerdajad 14. ja 15. sajandil,” Kunstiteadus, Kunstikriitika 4 (1981): 168–69, no. 34. 68 TLA, coll. 230, inv. 1, no. BN 1, K. Meler. 69 Based on a record from 1522 (TLA, coll. 230, inv. 1, no. Aa 7, fol. 181v), Johansen suggested that this place was the parish of Heinlaks (Heinacksock) in Finland, which was probably the birth place of Katherina, as her brother lived there. Paul Johansen, “Meister Michel Sittow, Hofmaler der Königin Isabella von Kastilien und Bürger von Reval,” Jahrbuch der Preußischen Kunstsammlungen 61 (1940): 31. However, there was no such place in Finland. Perhaps he referred to the village of Heinlahti (Swed. Heinlax) in Pyhtää. 70 Ibid., 31–32; TLA, coll. 230, inv. 1, no. Bt 1, fol. 27v: “Nigen Michel 15 mk. vor eyn bilde to malen.” 66 67

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

257

been a craftsman; nevertheless, her choices are noteworthy, especially as to her wish to decorate the chapel at her birthplace in Finland. Katherina, a member of the St. Nicholas’ congregation, wished to be buried in the graveyard there and donated ten marks for the funeral, the tolling of the bells, vigils and memorial masses. In addition, she commissioned memorial services from the Birgittines and the Dominicans, leaving each convent ten marks to hold forty masses, vigils, memorial masses and prayers for her soul. Although Katherina and Jurgen had a child, mother and daughter bearing the same name, the widow seems to have been rich enough to both secure the child’s future and take care of her own soul in the hereafter. Margareta van Katvick (her will dates from 1499), who died in 1501 and was the wife of the glazier and painter Diderick van Katvick, was a comparatively rich woman; in Estonian historiography, she is mainly known as the mother of the artist Michel Sittow. She had inherited two houses in Rataskaevu Street after the death of her ¿rst husband, Clawes van der Sittow.71 Margareta was a member of the St. Nicholas’ congregation, so it is no wonder that the largest sums were donated to this church: ¿rst she donated two hundred marks for two “inheritances” (erffnisse) on behalf of herself and her husband Diderick, which probably means that masses for both of their souls were to be held.72 Margareta left ¿ve guilders to the Dominicans for the arrangement of two rounds of forty masses. She donated three marks (ca. 624 grams) of silver to St. Nicholas’ Church for a chalice to be made. Although Diderick broke the conditions of the marriage contract repeatedly, by appropriating houses and Clawes’s workshop and suing Michel over his lawful inheritance, he at least acted honourably in Margareta’s case: according to the account book of St. Nicholas’ Church he not only gave a gilt chalice, but also a paten, a corporal and an old missal to the church in 1501.73 In the wills dealt with so far, there is very little which can be identi¿ed as a gender-speci¿c behavioural pattern; the men bequeathed similar heritages for liturgical commemoration or for chalices and other sacred objects. However, there are donations that can be considered as speci¿c to women: See the marriage contract between Margareta and Diderick (1485). TLA, coll. 230, inv. 1, no. Aa 7, fol. 48r (the value of one house was 350 marks, of the other, 150 marks). See also Johansen, “Meister Michel Sittow,” 5, 20. For Margareta’s two husbands, see also Kangropool and Lumiste, “Tallinna maalijad,” 159–60, 163–64, no. 17, 166, no. 27. 72 TLA, coll. 230, inv. 1, no. BN 1, M. Katvick. The will was written by Diderick, who most probably came from Katwijk and whose language reminds one of Dutch. 73 TLA, coll. 31, inv. 1, no. 216, fol. 7r; Mänd, Kirikute hõbevara, 44, 205. 71

258

Memoria and Sacral Art in Late Medieval Livonia

some wills included gifts of clothes or jewellery or other items of precious metals for St. Mary’s ¿gures. Clothes and jewellery were very clear status symbols. A comparison with German sources shows that these were donated mainly for the ¿gures of female saints (especially for the Virgin Mary) and the Christ child, and that the donors were predominantly women, and occasionally women with their spouses.74 These donations were not only designated for the “general welfare” of a certain ¿gure (e.g. giving it prominence by a festive or permanent lighting) but also for the adornment of the ¿gure, i.e. to clothe the ¿gure. Researchers have emphasised the horizontality of such donations, i.e. gifts from “a woman to a woman.” In adorning a saint with a piece of clothing or jewellery, the women formed a kind of intimate link with the saint.75 There is information from Livonian churches about the Virgin Mary and the infant in her lap having several crowns or other head ornaments, several cloaks and dresses of different colours, which were changed according to the liturgical calendar, and a great deal of jewellery, which was fastened to the cloaks (brooches and buttons) or hung around the neck of the ¿gure (pearls and rosary beads).76 It is apparent from the account books of St. Nicholas’ Church that a special maid was hired (“unser leven vrowen maget”) to take care of the ¿gure(s) of the Virgin Mary and for dressing it (them).77 In the wills of Tallinn women, there are three such donations. Elsebe Kremersche (1509) donated her rosary of coral and silver stones for a Virgin Mary’s ¿gure in the Holy Spirit Church.78 Rosaries are considered to be donations typical of women;79 the cost of the materials points directly to Elsebe’s Gabriela Signori, “Stadtheilige im Wandel: Ein Beitrag zur geschlechtsspezi¿schen Besetzung und Ausgestaltung symbolischer Räume am Ausgang des Mittelalters,” Francia: Forschungen zur westeuropäischen Geschichte 20, no. 1 (1993): 49–53. 75 Ibid., 53–55. See also Stefanie Rüther, “Spiegel der Frömmigkeit: Die Testamente bürgerlicher Frauen der Stadt Lübeck in vorreformatorischer Zeit,” OTIVM 4, no. 1–2 (1996): 45. 76 Mänd, Kirikute hõbevara, appendix 2, 180–83, 185–89, 191, 203, 207, 212, 214–19, 223–24. 77 Richard Hausmann, “Der Silberschatz der St. Nikolaikirche zu Reval,” Mitteilungen aus dem Gebiete Liv-, Est- und Kurlands 17 (1900): 245–47; Kala, “Tallinna linnaelu kajastumine,” 28. 78 TLA, coll. 230, inv. 1-IIIb, no. 64: “myn pater noster van corallen vnd suluerstene.” The corals were likely to be used to make a string of ten beads for the Hail Mary prayers, and the “silver stones” were the ¿ve large silver balls (with hollow insides), which were for Lord’s Prayers. 79 Signori, “Stadtheilige im Wandel,” 50. 74

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

259

high social status.80 A similar gift was made by Magdalene Sauier81 (1524), who bequeathed her headgear (huuengesmide) for a St. Mary’s ¿gure at the Dominican Church of St. Catherine. The most generous bequests for the ¿gures and altars of the Virgin Mary were left by the merchant’s widow Elizabeth Triss (1511),82 for whom the Virgin may have been the patron saint. She made donations to the statues of Our Lady in four different churches.83 She bequeathed her largest silver drinking vessel (drynckschale), a silver rosary and her dress ornaments (probably of silver, too) for the ¿gure of St. Mary in the Holy Spirit Church. In St. Nicholas’ Church, she made donations for four ¿gures of Our Lady. She left the decorations (most likely made of silver) of another dress for a St. Mary’s ¿gure at the old Holy Cross altar. She gave another ¿gure near the chancel her silver belt. The standing ¿gure of St. Mary at the altar of the city councillor Heise Patiner was given six silver In the will of Kremersche, her husband’s name was missing. Kremer might indicate the trade of a retail merchant, but not necessarily, as the surname was quite widespread: men with this surname were recorded in the Great Guild and St. Canute’s Guild in the late ¿fteenth and the early sixteenth centuries (TLA, coll. 191, inv. 2, no. 1, fols. 41r, 50v, 58r; coll. 190, inv. 1, no. 60, fols. 12r, 62v–63v, 75r). As Elsebe’s will was relatively expensive (written on parchment) and its executors were the city councillor Johan Hardensten and the merchant Tonnis van Werden, it is likely that Elsebe’s husband was a member of the Great Guild; the merchant Hinrick Kremer, who had died by Easter 1498, ¿ts chronologically. TLA, coll. 191, inv. 2, no. 1, fol. 50v. 81 Magdalene’s ¿rst husband was most likely Martin Sawyarge. Paul Johansen and Heinz von zur Mühlen, Deutsch und Undeutsch im mittelalterlichen und frühneuzeitlichen Reval (Cologne: Böhlau, 1973), 309. Martin’s will has been preserved (1519) and it contains the name of his wife, Magdalene (Seeberg-Elverfeldt, Testamente, no. 119). In her will (TLA, coll. 230, inv. 1, no. BN 1, M. Sauier), Magdalene is referred to as the widow of Sauier, but the document also reveals that a certain Kersten Holm, who was the main bene¿ciary, had promised to marry her. Magdalene must have indeed lived long enough to marry Kersten, because in the verso of the will she is referred to as Magdalene Holm. Kersten Holm was a craftsman, possibly a coppersmith (Mänd, “Naised, memoria ja sakraalruum,” 18). 82 Her ¿rst husband, the craftsman Clawes Schorlink, was the alderman of St. Canute Guild in 1489–92(?) and died in 1494 (TLA, coll. 230, inv. 1, no. Aa 7, fol. 69r; no. Aa 35b, fol. 158r; coll. 31, inv. 1, no. 216, fol. 79r [1494]; Anu Mänd, “Tallinna Kanuti gild ja selle oldermannid keskajal,” Vana Tallinn, n.s., 16 [2005]: 140). Her second husband Wilhelm (Wylm) Triss became burgher in 1496, entered the Great Guild in 1498 and died in 1503 or 1504 (Greiffenhagen, Bürgerbuch, 37; TLA, coll. 191, inv. 2, no. 1, fol. 50v; coll. 31, inv. 1, no. 216, fol. 94r). 83 TLA, coll. 230, inv. 1, no. BN 1, E. Triss; Mänd, “Church Art,” 21–22. 80

260

Memoria and Sacral Art in Late Medieval Livonia

buttons.84 Patiner was one of the executors of Elizabeth’s will and was mentioned as a good friend, so there may have been some motives of a more personal kind behind it. The cult of the Virgin may have been something that provided a bond between them. Elizabeth also donated ¿ve silver buttons, a silver cross and an embroidered table-cloth for the Virgin Mary’s ¿gure at the altar of St. Canute Guild. In St. Olaf’s Church, she bequeathed a silver drinking vessel decorated with precious stones for either the ¿gure or the altar of St. Mary. She donated ¿ve hood buttons for a small ¿gure of St. Mary in the Dominican church. She commemorated another female saint in the same church, leaving Saint Catherine her coral rosary. In addition, both the Dominicans and the Birgittines were left two guild tankards (her husband may have used them at feasts in the Great Guild or the Table Guild). Elizabeth’s will stands out for its rich detail. It is clear that the wealthy merchant’s widow worshipped the Virgin and her strategy was to donate to as many ¿gures of St. Mary as possible so that she could seek the intercession of the Blessed Virgin, considered to be the most inÀuential saint in the Middle Ages, and ensure herself a place in paradise. The donations in the form of costly jewellery, buttons and rosary beads decorated holy ¿gures, and shaped the sacred space as a whole. (We should note that donations to fund the decorations for holy ¿gures, including those of female saints, were not only made by women, but also by men. For example, in 1519 the merchant Hans Bower bequeathed a silver rosary, a button containing musk, and a gold ring for the ¿gures of Our Lady and St. Anne in St. Nicholas’ Church, to be hung around the saints’ necks, and his armour for St. George—evidently a ¿gure of St. George—in St. Gertrude’s Chapel; the last could be classi¿ed as a typically male donation.)85 The donations by Elizabeth Triss were not con¿ned to gifts for the Virgin Mary; she wished to ensure her own commemoration as well. Although her last resting place was to be in the Holy Spirit Church, she gave thirty-three marks to her parish church of St. Nicholas, so that a “permanent rent” on this sum (two marks annually) would fund vigils and masses for the blessing of 84 This was an altar in the Chapel of St. George, dedicated to the Compassion, or the Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary: thus the St. Mary’s ¿gure there may have been either Mater Dolorosa, with seven swords piercing her heart, or the Pietà. 85 TLA, coll. 230, inv. 1-IIIb, no. 75. For him, see Anu Mänd, “Hans Bouwer, kaupmees,” in Tiina Kala, Juhan Kreem, and Anu Mänd, Kümme keskaegset tallinlast (Tallinn: Varrak, 2006), 60–89; Mänd, “The Richest Bachelor in Late Medieval Reval,” in Rund um die Meere des Nordens: Festschrift für Hain Rebas, ed. Michael Engelbrecht, Ulrike Hanssen-Decker, and Daniel Höffker (Heide: Boyens, 2008), 175–87.

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

261

the souls of herself, her friends and relatives.86 Elizabeth did not specify for which altar she had endowed her chantry; she must have left this decision to the priests or executors. No children were mentioned in her will, and it can be concluded that she did not have any or they had died by the time the will was made. Here it should be stressed again that costly donations to churches not only showed the piety, economic and social status of women, but that the existence of children, especially under-age children, also played a role. The interests of the offspring were protected by the city law and parents’ care. For example, Meighe Kreigenwengersche (1522) was by no means poor, considering the sums of money and silver items mentioned in her will, but she bequeathed all her property to her child and her brother-in-law, so that the latter would bring up the child as his own.87 Meighe did not leave anything to a church. Kathrina Kulmes (1518) promised to donate ¿ve marks to St. Nicholas’ Church if her child should die.88 Thus, it was mainly childless merchants’ widows, such as Katharina Potgetersche and Elizabeth Triss, who could afford to make generous donations.

Liturgical vessels donated by married couples and women In addition to wills, information about donations can be obtained from church wardens’ account books and by means of surviving objects. The most prestigious (and the most frequent) gift to a church was a chalice to hold Christ’s blood, the most important of the liturgical vessels. As a rule, wardens recorded the material of which the object was made, its weight and the donor’s name; this was not only to distinguish between donated objects, but also to perpetuate the donor’s name, and by this to commemorate the benefactor and the good For her friends and relatives, see Mänd, “Church Art,” 22–23. TLA, coll. 230, inv. 1, no. BN 1, M. Kregenwengersche. The only Kreigenwenger (Kreyenfenger, Kreyewengener) in Tallinn sources was a merchant named Dirick, who became a member of the Great Guild during the Christmas feast in 1472/73, and who died in 1482 (commemorated at Easter 1483). TLA, coll. 230, inv. 1, no. Aa 35b, fol. 258r (1482); coll. 191, inv. 2, no. 1, fols. 37r, 42v. As Meighe in 1522 assigned custody of her under-age child to her brother-in-law, Dirick cannot have been the child’s father. It is possible that Dirick had a son who was married to Meighe. 88 TLA, coll. 230, inv. 1, no. BN 1, K. Kulmes, fol. 1v. Her husband was not mentioned in the will; of the three executors of her will, two were craftsmen—the goldsmith Hans Holtappel and Hinrick Krakemaker (collar maker)—and the third was the merchant Evert Bels. Thus, it is quite likely that Kathrina’s husband was a wealthy craftsman. 86 87

262

Memoria and Sacral Art in Late Medieval Livonia

deed. The same purpose was served by engravings and coats of arms that were added to items. The gilt silver chalice (1496) from Kiviloo castle has an inscription: “biddet got vor bernt zegefrit, vor sine vrowe, vor er beyder geslechte” (Pray to God for Bernt Zegefrit, his wife and for both of their families).89 This is a typical call for intercession, which is found on medieval tombstones, Communion vessels and other sacred objects. Liturgical vessels might be engraved with only the names of the donors: this was suf¿cient to perpetuate their names and obtain intercessory prayers. For example, there were two chalices from the ¿fteenth century that were lost during World War II: one from St. Mary’s Church in Pöide had an engraving on its foot—“dvssen kellik hevet g’even tile troster vnde sin wiv katerine” (This chalice was donated by Tile Troster and his wife Katerine)—and the other chalice from St. Elizabeth’s Church in Lihula had the engraving “hinrick vogeler maddilena sin huis frwve” (Hinrick Vogeler and his wife Magdalena).90 No known records have survived about either of these couples, and it is impossible to know what their social background was. In 1495 the widow Magdalena Wymansche donated a gilt chalice to St. Nicholas’ Church in Tallinn. This was one of the few medieval Communion vessels which was still extant in the church until World War II (¿g. 1).91 A curious story is connected with this chalice or, to be more precise, with the inscription. A text is engraved on the foot of the chalice, designating it for the Corpus Christi Mass in St. Nicholas’ Church (“desse kelk hort to des hilghe[n] lichame missen to sunte niclawes”). However, in the church wardens’ account book, Wymansche is said to have donated the chalice for the high altar; it was a man called Bartold Bart who had the misleading text engraved on the vessel (“God forgive him,” added the warden who made the entry).92 Bart was a merchant of the Great Guild, and is known to have been the warden of the Corpus Christi Mass in St. Nicholas’ Church around 1517 (perhaps even earlier).93 Thus we can suppose that he attempted to evade ful¿lling the widow’s last wish and Mänd, Kirikute hõbevara, 85–86, ¿g. 68. Ibid., 72–73, ¿g. 52, 84, ¿g. 67. 91 Ibid., 80–81, ¿g. 60–61. 92 Ibid., 80, 204; TLA, coll. 31, inv. 1, no. 216, fol. 7r: “Anno [14]95 8 dage vor wienachten gaff Magdalene Wymansche eynen vorguldet kelk, dar vnder steken eynen staff vnd de vp scrifft holt: to des hilgen lichams misse. Dat is vnrecht screuen, vnd dar woeren welke losgeters by, men dusse kelk gaff se to der kerken to deme hogen altar to bliuende, men Bartolt Bart leth dat vnrecht schriuen, dat vorgeue em Got.” 93 Bart entered the Great Guild in 1481 and became burgher in 1488 (TLA, coll. 191, inv. 2, no. 1, fol. 41v; Greiffenhagen, Bürgerbuch, 34). He is mentioned as a warden of the Corpus Christi Mass in 1517 (TLA, coll. 31, inv. 1, no. 216, fol. 21v). According 89 90

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

263

Fig. 1. Chalice donated in 1495 by Magdalena Wymansche to St. Nicholas’ Church in Tallinn. Photo from 1943. Reproduced from Mänd, Kirikute hõbevara.

shift the precious gift into his “sphere of interest” (to promote “his own” Mass). It has usually been thought that donors had inscriptions engraved on vessels, but the case described here points to the fact that this may have been arranged by a warden responsible for an altar or a Mass and he may have deliberately misinterpreted the donor’s ¿nal wishes and interests. There is no information as to the husband of Magdalena Wymansche, who donated the chalice, but in all likelihood she was a wealthy and, apparently, childless merchant’s widow. When she died in 1505, she bequeathed her house to St. Nicholas’ Church, and the wardens sold it for six hundred marks.94 to Hausmann, Bart acted as a warden of this Mass already in 1493 (Hausmann, “Der Silberschatz,” 242). 94 TLA, coll. 31, inv. 1, no. 216, fols. 14r, 15v. According to the Lübeck city law, real estate could not be bequeathed to the church; it had to be sold and the money donated (see Tiina Kala, Lübecki õiguse Tallinna koodeks 1282 / Das Revaler Kodex des lübischen Rechts 1282 [Tallinn: Tallinna Linnaarhiiv, 1998], 214–15, § 154), but there were some donations of real estate (see above, the case of Potgeter). It is possible that Wymansche had agreed with the wardens earlier that she would leave the sale of the house to them.

264

Memoria and Sacral Art in Late Medieval Livonia

The donation of a silver chalice (or some other liturgical vessel or vestment) was, without doubt, something that only prosperous people could afford and into which the donor’s religious and secular ambitions were projected. The vessel, which was in daily use during the Mass, was visible to God and the saints, as well as to the priest and the congregation members, adding social capital to the donor and enhancing his or her chances of attaining salvation and eternal life. Although there were considerably fewer women than men donors, more afÀuent women commissioned vessels from goldsmiths themselves or left money and silver to churches for acquiring particular objects (see Margareta Katvick’s will above).

The memorial complex of Gertrud Wrangel I will now proceed to look at a particular case which gives us a comprehensive picture of the ¿nal wishes of a noble lady as to her funeral, commemoration and the sacred objects donated by her. This is Gertrud Wrangel, from a well-known and inÀuential aristocratic family, who married Jacob Deken, the owner of the Harmi and Uuemõisa estates in 1478 and became a widow in 1492. For Jacob, this was the second marriage and it seems to have been childless.95 Gertrud must have spent her widowhood in Tallinn. In about 1511 she made a contract with the wardens of the Holy Spirit Church, donating to the church a very large sum: eight hundred marks in silver and two hundred marks in gold.96 The interest on this money was designated to fund the services dedicated to the Virgin Mary: each day the liturgy of the Hours of the Virgin was to be sung and a Mass in honour of her with organ music held. A large stained glass window was to be installed on the north side of the church, near St. Mary’s altar, depicting the patron saint of Gertrud—the apostle Andrew—and her, i.e. the Wrangels’, coat of arms. In addition, a tombstone made of brass was to be placed in front of St. Mary’s altar, and also decorated with the ¿gure of St. Andrew and Gertrud’s coat of arms. The widow instructed that all the bells be tolled at her funeral, her body covered with a ¿ne golden cloth and that she be commemorated with vigils and masses for the repose of the soul. The contract Georges von Wrangell, Geschichte der Wrangel zur dänischen und Ordenszeit (Dorpat: [s.n.], [1927]), pt. 1, 48, no. 158, 54, no. 190, pt. 2, 255–56. Gertrud’s father was Wolmar Wrangel, the owner of three manors. 96 TLA, coll. 230, inv. 1, no. Aa 11, fol. 39v. The contract (or, more precisely, its draft) is undated, but the entry on the previous page (fol. 39r) is dated March 1511. Initially the total was 1100 marks, but this was crossed out. At the end of the document there was a clause that if the lady fell into poverty—“God forbid”—the church wardens had to refund the money. 95

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

265

Fig. 2. Side support of a pew (1513) of Gertrud Wrangel in the Holy Spirit Church of Tallinn. Photo: Stanislav Stepashko.

shows that Gertrud had a clear idea what her memorial complex should look like, how she as a donor would be identi¿ed on the objects (by the coat of arms of her natal family) and how she should be buried and commemorated. The stained glass window and Gertrud’s tombstone in the Holy Spirit Church have not been preserved. However, the carved end of a pew (attached to a newer pew) with the ¿gure of the apostle Andrew identi¿ed by his attribute, the X-shaped cross, the Wrangel coat of arms and the date 1513 can be seen in the chancel (¿g. 2). Although the contract does not mention a pew, the decorative elements point to the fact that it was part of Gertrud’s memorial complex. It is possible that the widow had the pew made somewhat later. There is no doubt that Gertrud wished for her donation to be related to the second most important altar after the high altar, and that a corner of her own be shaped around it. As the north aisle of the church was usually dedicated to the Virgin Mary and Mary’s altar was located in the east end of the north

266

Memoria and Sacral Art in Late Medieval Livonia

aisle, it must have been the same in the Holy Spirit Church.97 St. Mary’s altar is mentioned in sources starting from the last decades of the fourteenth century,98 but there is no information that any other member of the Wrangel family had supported the altar. Gertrud’s date of death is not known. The sources record the date of her will as 1515, and in 1537 she was mentioned as being dead; consequently, she must have passed away during this period.99 Even if she died soon after she had made the will, she must have been able to enjoy the results of her generous donation: go to the Holy Spirit Church, sit on her pew, admire her window, participate in the Mass funded by her, and pray to her favourite saints: the Virgin Mary and the apostle Andrew. If she died after the iconoclastic riots in September 1524, and the subsequent reforms, she must have witnessed the removal of St. Mary’s altar and the abolition of the Mass, although her pew, window and tombstone survived, being the visual witnesses of the high status of the widow. Gertrud Wrangel played an active role in shaping her memorial complex, giving exact instructions about what it should look like. Both the donated objects and the festive liturgy emphasised the widow’s noble birth, her high status and her wealth. An important cultural code was hidden in her decision to adorn the window, the tombstone and the pew with the coat of arms of her natal family, and not of her marital family. Admittedly, the Dekens were not as well-known and powerful as the Wrangels. Gertrud’s donations were an important contribution to shaping the sacred space. Her coats of arms on the objects made visible to everybody who the benefactor was and perpetuated the memory of this lady. Both the objects and the liturgy had to ensure that inÀuential saints—the Virgin and the apostle Andrew—would intercede on her behalf. And ¿nally, the fact that she chose the Holy Spirit Church as her last resting place was of no less importance, because Gertrud’s hope was that not only the priests, but also all those attending the church, especially the inmates of the hospital—the sick and poor—would say intercessory prayers for her.

Burial places and tombstones of women In studying the commemoration of women and the shaping of sacred space, we cannot ignore their burial sites and tombstones. Barbara J. Harris, who has thoroughly analysed the wills of English aristocratic women from the 97 For the probable location of the altar and the window, see Mänd, “Church Art,” 24–26, ¿g. 9. 98 Plaesterer, Pergament Rentenbuch, no. 55 (1396), no. 96 (1387). The right of patronage belonged to the city council. 99 Wrangell, Geschichte der Wrangel, pt. 1, 73, no. 312, 97, no. 439, pt. 2, 255–56.

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

267

period 1450–1560 (ca. 280 have survived), emphasises the independence of these ladies in choosing their last resting places and shaping their tomb monuments. She concentrated on women who had multiple marriages: many of them had even married three or four times. It turned out that most often the women wished to be buried with their ¿rst husbands or with the father of their ¿rst-born child (especially if it was a son): often the ¿rst husband was the father of the ¿rst-born. Sometimes they chose to be buried alongside the husband whose family was the most famous or with whom they had cohabited the longest. The wills do not give any evidence of the feelings towards one or another husband, but it may be surmised that love and affection played a certain role. Instead of their husbands’ burial places, the women may have preferred the burial places of their parents or natal kin. Among the decisions that a widow had to take was whether to establish a monument for herself and her husband, or solely for herself, and whether to express her identity through her husband’s family, by using his coat of arms, or whether to emphasise her own family and adorn the monument with the coat of arms of her natal family, and a corresponding inscription.100 The data that have survived from medieval Livonia are not extensive enough to enable us to carry out a statistical overview of the women’s wishes about their last resting places. The twelve wills which were mentioned above included only two such arrangements. Katherina (1519), the wife of the painter and woodcarver Jurgen Dreger, who wrote her will soon after her husband’s death, requested to be buried alongside her husband in the graveyard at St. Nicholas’ Church.101 However, the merchant’s widow Elizabeth Triss (1511), whose husbands Clawes and Wilhelm had been buried in St. Nicholas’ Church,102 wished to be buried in the Holy Spirit Church.103 Why Elizabeth did not want to be buried with her husband is not known, and we can only speculate about why she preferred the Church of the Holy Spirit. Firstly, her parents may have been buried there. Secondly, the church may have been attractive because the inmates of the hospital would intercede on her behalf. Elizabeth’s confessor, Thomas Ulrici, was active as a chantry priest in the churches of St. Nicholas and the Holy Spirit, so it may have been his inÀuence.104 The widow must have felt an af¿nity with her confessor as she left him a bequest of one of her Harris, “The Fabric of Piety,” 308–35. TLA, coll. 230, inv. 1, no. BN 1, K. Meler: “upp sunte Nicholaus kerchhoff by Jorgen meler.” 102 TLA, coll. 31, inv. 1, no. 216, fols. 79r, 94r. 103 TLA, coll. 230, inv. 1, no. BN 1, E. Triss; Seeberg-Elverfeldt, Testamente, no. 106. 104 Leonid Arbusow, Livlands Geistlichkeit vom Ende des 12. bis ins 16. Jahrhundert, 3rd addition (Mitau: Steffenhagen, 1913), 221; Kala, Kreem, and Mänd, Kümme 100 101

268

Memoria and Sacral Art in Late Medieval Livonia

two larger silver goblets, two silver spoons and an amulet pendant bearing the Lamb of God (Agnus Dei), one side of which was covered with mother-of-pearl. Only about sixty medieval tombstones or their fragments have survived from the ¿ve Tallinn churches (St. Nicholas’, St. Olaf’s, Holy Spirit, the cathedral and the Dominican church). To this one can add tombstones from the Pirita convent, of which thirteen bear inscriptions.105 Only four of the tombstones can be identi¿ed as women’s. The oldest of them originates from the Dominican friary and is nowadays attached to the south exterior wall of the church (¿g. 3): this commemorates a burgess woman named Kune Schotelmund, who, as the text around the stone says, died on 27 April 1381 (“na der bort gvodes / m ccc in deme lxxxi iare des anderen / su[n]aue[n]des na pashhe / do starff kvne schotelmvndes bidde vor d[e] sel[e]”). Kune’s husband was the burgomaster Gosschalk Schotelmund.106 In documents, he is recorded as alive for the last time in October 1398; thus Kune died many years before her husband. The tombstone depicts a female ¿gure, whose clothing and the two small dogs at her feet express her high status, her belonging to the urban elite. The stone has no family mark or coat of arms, but the name of the deceased is recorded in the inscription. This is the only known surviving tombstone of a burgher’s wife in Livonia. The three remaining tombstones belong to aristocratic women and have been preserved at the Birgittine convent at Pirita, being attached to the west wall of the church today. They are tombstones of the wives of Harju-Viru vassals who supported the convent, or widows who spent their last years there. The most important aspect of these stones is how the women were identi¿ed. The oldest stone commemorates Elisabet Hake, who died in 1420: this is decorated with the coat of arms of the Hakes (three hooks) and a Latin inscription. Earlier researchers considered Elisabet to be the widow of the Danish-born nobleman Albert Hake, who had his estates in northern Estonia, and Elisabet was thought to have come from the inÀuential Putbus family.107 In recent years, it has been pointed out that, ¿rstly, Albert’s name was not mentioned keskaegset tallinlast, 81, 172. In 1511 when Elizabeth made her will, Ulrici no longer served in the Holy Spirit Church. 105 Mari Loit, “Keskaegsest surmakultuurist ja hauatähistest reformatsioonieelse Tallinna kirikutes ja kloostrites,” Vana Tallinn, n.s., 17 (2006): 52–56, 62–64, 69–70, 73–77, 86–87, 92–96. 106 He became a member of the Great Guild in 1377, was elected a city councillor in 1373, and a burgomaster in 1381. TLA, coll. 191, inv. 2, no. 1, fol. 1v; Derrik, Bruderbuch, 251–52. 107 Villem Raam and Jaan Tamm, Pirita Convent: The History of the Construction and Research (Tallinn: Eesti Entsüklopeediakirjastus, 2006), 63–64, ¿g. 113.

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

269

Fig. 3. Tombstone of Kune Schotelmund (d. 1381). Photo: Stanislav Stepashko.

on the tombstone108 and, secondly, Elisabet, the widow of Albert Andersen Hake, died considerably later than 1420, namely 1445.109 The Elisabet who passed away in 1420 has not been identi¿ed. The date on the tombstone tells us that Elisabet Hake must have been one of the ¿rst to be buried in the new, prestigious church, which had been recently constructed (or was still under construction). She is identi¿ed by the coat of arms of her marital family, either at her own or the family’s wish. 108 The name is somewhat damaged and dif¿cult to read, but it seems to begin with “i” and ends with “[n]is.” Possibly, it is Johannes. Inscription: “an[n]o d[omi]ni m / cccc xx in die augustine [sic] obiit / elisabet vx[or] / ioh[ann]is hake orate pro ea.” 109 Juhan Kreem and Kersti Markus, “Kes asutas Pirita kloostri?” Kunstiteaduslikke Uurimusi / Studies on Art and Architecture 16, no. 4 (2007): 68–69.

270

Memoria and Sacral Art in Late Medieval Livonia

Fig. 4. Tombstone of Helena Mekes (d. 1473) in the Birgittine church at Pirita. Photo: Stanislav Stepashko.

The same can be said of Gertrud, who died in 1455. Her maiden name is not known, and her husband Bartolomeus Virks had his estates in Viru County.110 Gertrud’s tombstone is decorated with the coat of arms of her husband’s family and an inscription in Low German: “Int iar vnses he/re[n] m cccc lv des mydweke[n]s vor ma/thie ap[osto]li starf / gertrud husfrowe bartholomei virkes // biddet got vor de sele.” The third tombstone is that of Helena Mekes (née Lode), who died in 1473. She had been married to Hinrik Mekes, who died a score of years earlier than his wife and had estates in Järva and Harju Counties, and probably also in Viru County.111 It is quite likely that Helena chose the convent church for her burial because it was a very prestigious religious house that her family had supported 110 111

Raam and Tamm, Pirita Convent, 64–65, ¿g. 115. Ibid., 66–67, ¿g. 119.

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

271

Fig. 5. Drawing of the tombstone of Helena Mekes. Reproduced from Mänd, “Naised, memoria ja sakraalruum.”

(and would support in future).112 Helena’s tombstone has two coats of arms, of the Lode and the Mekes family, and the Lode coat of arms is heraldically to the dexter side, i.e. in a more important place (¿gs. 4–5). The inscription reads as follows: “[Int] iar vnses / heren m cccc lxxiii vp sunte annen dach / starf vruwe helena / hinrik mekes husvrowe der got genade ——.”113 It was of symbolic value on which side the coats of arms of natal and marital families were: also it was a cultural code easily understood by contemporaries. Although the number of women’s surviving tombstones is minimal, they give us some idea whether the women wanted to emphasise their identity through their natal as well as marital family or only through the latter, and what means were used to emphasise whose family was more respected and more inÀuential. 112 113

Kreem and Markus, “Kes asutas Pirita kloostri,” 70. The last word must be si.

272

Memoria and Sacral Art in Late Medieval Livonia

Conclusion The role of women in granting donations and perpetuating their memories has inevitably been more hidden than that of men. Still, the data from the late Middle Ages, especially from the late ¿fteenth century and the ¿rst decades of the sixteenth century, suggest that wealthy women, both aristocratic and burgher women, endowed—similarly to their husbands (or together with them)—chantries, commissioned intercessory prayers and masses for the soul, donated works of art and made arrangements regarding their burial and commemoration. All these were means to emphasise their status, wealth and social position, keep their own and their families’ memories alive and help attain salvation. Wealthy widows, especially those without children, had more freedom than others to do as they wished with their property and they were able to give generous donations. Rich and inÀuential widows actively participated in shaping their own memoria: they determined what should be depicted on their tombstones or on works of art, where they should be located, at which altars the donated objects (e.g. a chalice) would be used, how to fund the illumination of the Holy Sacrament, for which saints to hold a Mass and at which altar, on which feasts or weekdays to have intercessory prayers, etc. They made arrangements for their funeral ceremonies, ordered liturgical remembrance on the anniversaries of their deaths, and intercessory prayers and “perpetual” masses for the salvation of their souls. Unlike men, married women and widows had more than one identity: they could identify themselves through their natal family or their marital family. They could decide whether to be buried alongside their husbands or, for example, on the burial sites of their parents. Aristocratic widows were able to choose whether to be identi¿ed on their tombstones and donated objects by the coats of arms of their own families, their husbands’ families, or both. The commemoration of ancestors was considered very important: intercessions were commissioned on their behalf and family traditions upheld. All these decisions and choices provide valuable knowledge about women’s world-views and values, their religious convictions, their need to represent themselves and their desire for social prestige. Less wealthy women had much more limited means to keep their memories alive. One possibility to have a digni¿ed Christian funeral and intercessory prayers was to join a religious guild or a confraternity, where these rituals were emphasised and care was provided for both the wealthy and poor members. Although the role of women in public life was much more modest than that of men, they were able—through pious donations—to shape the church interior as a public space and to make some parts of it more “feminine.” The

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

273

donations characteristic of women were bequests of clothes, rosaries, jewellery and silver plate, especially when donated ornaments or pieces of clothing were designated to decorate a ¿gure of the Virgin Mary or another female saint—in this case, it was a very personal gift of “a woman to a woman”. The chalices and other liturgical vessels donated by women were used for celebrating masses; the stained glass windows, pews and tombstones decorated with their coats of arms or suitable inscriptions perpetuated their names and functioned as bearers of communal memory.

THE RITUAL CONTEXT OF CHANDELIERS AND SCONCES IN EARLY MODERN LUTHERAN CHURCHES JÜRGEN BEYER In some Lutheran churches, for instance in Sweden, early modern chandeliers and sconces are still put to liturgical use. Their candles are only lit on the main feast-days of the ecclesiastical year and thus serve to underline the solemn character of these days. Is this a tradition going back to the time when the chandeliers and sconces were produced? The current chapter1 attempts to answer this question and to illuminate which other ritual functions these light ¿ttings2 had and why so many chandeliers and sconces were placed in Lutheran churches during the early modern period. Medieval light ¿ttings certainly had liturgical functions; they could, for instance, be placed before side-altars and be lit in honour of a certain saint or for the bene¿t of a soul on speci¿ed days or at certain hours. The donation of chandeliers and sconces for these purposes ceased with the Reformation, leaving churches rather dark during the night. That, however, was not a major problem, as the main services took place during daylight. Surprisingly, then, we ¿nd that most Lutheran churches, going back to the early modern period, are ¿lled with chandeliers and sconces from the postReformation period, while those churches lacking such sources of lighting have lost them in the last one and a half centuries due to ¿res, wars or—sometimes with even worse effects—restorations. Many chandeliers and sconces survived adaptations to gas in the nineteenth century and to electricity in the twentieth, For the most part, this chapter is based on Jürgen Beyer, “Stiftung, Plazierung und Funktion von Wand- und Kronleuchtern in lutherischen Kirchen,” Zeitschrift für Lübeckische Geschichte 92 (2012): 101–50, providing further references. The area covered roughly corresponds to Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia and northern Germany. The research has been supported by the project SF0180040s08. 2 Contrary to popular assumptions, English is, alas, a language of limited vocabulary. There seems to be no good English term corresponding to the German Leuchter or Estonian lühter and applicable to both Kronleuchter/kroonlühter (chandelier) and Wandleuchter/seinalühter (sconce). Therefore, light ¿tting has been chosen as a general term, well knowing that it primarily refers to electrical appliances. 1

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

275

Fig. 1. Chandelier in Lübeck Cathedral. Translation of the inscription from German: “On 15 February 1661 Arent Sieggelavw died. [He was] a shopkeeper and donated this chandelier to the honour of God and the decoration of the cathedral as a perpetual memorial.” In his will, Sieggelavw set up an endowment to provide for candles in perpetuity (Baltzer and Bruns, Kirche zu AltLübeck, 281). Photo by the author.

but in a number of churches these more ef¿cient ways of lighting led to the replacement of early modern chandeliers and sconces. The few medieval light ¿ttings preserved in Lutheran churches today only endured for such a long time because they were put to new uses during the early modern period.3 Despite their medieval form, they came to function in the same way as early modern light ¿ttings. Readers interested in the stylistic history of chandeliers and sconces need not read on, as the present chapter is not interested in the art history, but rather in the social history, of light ¿ttings. For that reason, there is no need to discuss whether light ¿ttings should be considered pieces of art or craftsmanship. Most light ¿ttings are not signed by their makers, but in a number of cases there is at least some external evidence for the provenance of light ¿ttings. Many light ¿ttings carry inscriptions informing about the donor and sometimes about the background of the donation. In the case of chandeliers, the inscription was normally placed on the large sphere below (¿g. 1), while Lübeck Cathedral, for instance, houses some examples of this kind; see Johannes Baltzer and Friedrich Bruns, Kirche zu Alt-Lübeck, Dom, Jacobikirche, Ägidienkirche, vol. 3 of Die Bau- und Kunstdenkmäler der Freien und Hansestadt Lübeck (Lübeck: Nöhring, 1920), 273–75, 283–84. 3

276

The Ritual Context of Chandeliers and Sconces

the explanatory text for sconces was usually put on a plate made of the same material as the sconce itself, but it can also be found on the wall ¿tting or on the plate holding the candle. Sconces, and even more so chandeliers, were costly items. Mostly they were made of brass. Only a few chandeliers made of silver exist; those I have encountered were donated to churches by members of the Swedish high nobility during the seventeenth century.4 Beginning in the eighteenth century, chandeliers made of crystal found their way into churches, but most of them have been removed in recent decades—unlike their brass counterparts. Apparently they are no longer considered suitable for churches. Light ¿ttings of less expensive materials, such as wood, iron or pewter, were rather widespread, especially in rural churches, but only a few of them have survived to the present day. The metal value of the brass chandeliers was enormous. Not surprisingly, therefore, light ¿ttings were—and still are—frequently stolen from churches. An inventory of St. John’s Church in Tartu (Ger. Dorpat), in Livonia, probably compiled during the second quarter of the nineteenth century, is rather telling in this context. Unlike earlier inventories, it assigned a monetary value to every item on the list and, unlike later inventories, the age and the artistic quality of the furnishing did not seem to inÀuence the price. The “¿ve metal chandeliers” (unfortunately, this is not speci¿ed any further) were stated to have a value of 1600 rubles, i.e. an average of 320 rubles per chandelier. No other item in the church was estimated to have a value this high.5 At the time, the church still retained most of its early modern furnishings, which were disposed of later during the nineteenth century or were destroyed during World War II.6 Let us return, though, to the question of how chandeliers and sconces were put into churches in the ¿rst place. There were two principle forms of acquisition.

Herman Bengtsson et al., Uppsala domkyrka, pt. 5, Inredning och inventarier, vol. 231 of Sveriges kyrkor (Uppsala: Upplandsmuseet, 2010), 167–68; Sigurd Curman and Johnny Roosval, S. Nikolai eller Storkyrkan i Stockholm, vol. 1 of Sveriges kyrkor: Stockholm (Stockholm: Svenska Bokhandelscentralen, 1924), 460, 475–76; [Martin Olsson,] Riddarholmskyrkan, vol. 2 of Sveriges kyrkor: Stockholm (Stockholm: Generalstabens Litogra¿ska Anstalt, 1937), 332–35. 5 “Inventarbuch der St. Johanniskirche …,” 1827–52, Estonian Historical Archives in Tartu, collection (coll.) 1253, inventory (inv.) 2, no. 28, fol. 6v: “Fünf metallene Kronleuchter.” 6 Kaur Alttoa et al., Tartu Jaani kirik (Tallinn: Muinsuskaitseamet, 2011). 4

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

277

Fig. 2. Sconce in the church of Havdhem (Gotland). Translation of the inscription from Latin: “The children of Wilhelmus Petraeus [Villum Pedersen] placed this sconce in memory of their father, who died in 1580.” Photo by the author.

Acquisition of light ¿ttings Corporations, such as guilds—but also student nationes, lawyers at a certain court, etc.—would have chandeliers and sconces set up in churches. In return, they might receive the right to use certain pews or burial places, but they would also have to promise to regularly supply their light ¿ttings with candles. The candles would be paid for out of the corporations’ income at regular intervals and would, at least until the eighteenth century, be handed over to the church in kind. If the church or the corporation ceased to ful¿l its obligations, the other party was no longer bound by its promises. The light ¿ttings would typically be placed near the pews where the members of the corporation were seated and where the former members were buried. Individuals would donate chandeliers and sconces on much the same terms as corporations. However, while corporations would pay for the candles regularly from their income, this obviously would not have been a sustainable arrangement after a donor’s death. Privately donated light ¿ttings were therefore normally accompanied by an endowment in cash, the interest of which would pay for the candles in perpetuity, as well as for the maintenance of the chandelier or sconce. The location of a light ¿tting would rarely be the pew of the donor—after all, husband and wife would not be seated together—but near the grave, often acquired during the donor’s lifetime. In the grave, obviously, donor and spouse would keep each other company. Donations of light ¿ttings were also made by heirs in memory of a deceased person (¿g. 2). Sconces might be placed to cast light on the donor’s epitaph, which in turn would be located near the grave.

278

The Ritual Context of Chandeliers and Sconces

Fig. 3. Detail of a chandelier in the church of Rønne (Bornholm). Text of the inscription: “Christina Niemans [coat of arms] Clawes Hartwich.” Photo by the author.

While the inscriptions on some chandeliers explicitly mention that the donor is buried below, a chandelier in St. John’s Church in Riga carries a very brief inscription: “Claweß Harmeß Vnd Sein Eruen. .1609.” (Claus Harms and his heirs. 1609.) Such a wording can also be found on many a gravestone, marking the ownership of a grave but not referring to the death of a speci¿c person.7 Many chandelier inscriptions are even shorter, consisting only of the names of the donor(s) and possibly the date (¿g. 3). For contemporaries, however, such minimal inscriptions contained the essential information. Everyone would know that the persons named donated the chandelier, that the couple was buried below and that they had made an endowment to provide for candles. Similarly, corporations might limit the inscription on donated light ¿ttings to the name of the corporation and possibly a symbol for the guild (¿g. 4). For contemporaries, it would be obvious that the corporation was supplying the candles. Private donations of light ¿ttings obviously were made by the more wellto-do layers of society but, beginning in the second half of the seventeenth century, donors from other walks of life can occasionally be observed: tailors, ¿shermen, peasants etc. See Jürgen Beyer, “Gravmindevandring i Skt. Petri tyske kirke,” Kirkehistoriske Samlinger (2013; forthcoming).

7

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

279

Fig. 4. Inscription plate of a sconce in Visby Cathedral (Gotland). Translation from Low German: “The shoemakers’ sconce.” Photo by the author.

Light ¿ttings not donated by corporations or individuals were purchased from church funds, if lighting was necessary at a certain place in the church (e.g., on the pulpit), and no donor was in sight. This is true of probably much less than one-¿fth of all light ¿ttings in early modern Lutheran churches. Apart from the regularity with which corporations provided candles for their light ¿ttings, there probably was no continuity from medieval practices concerning chandeliers and sconces. Lutheran donations of light ¿ttings were not made for the bene¿t of one’s soul. They seem to have been monumenta vanitatis rather than monumenta pietatis. As there was no lack of vanity, churches abounded in chandeliers and sconces. Since donations from the early decades of the Reformation are comparatively poorly documented, it is dif¿cult to characterise donations from this transition period. It appears, however, that there were no donations of light ¿ttings for a few decades, until a new and truly Lutheran culture of donations had developed. The transmission from one culture of donations to another might possibly be studied in selected parishes that have rich written sources from the 1520s to the 1550s. The surviving light ¿ttings, however, do not form a suf¿cient basis for such research.

280

The Ritual Context of Chandeliers and Sconces

The use of candles in Lutheran churches As can be gathered from the preceding paragraphs and con¿rmed by parish accounts,8 churches received the overwhelming majority of the candles necessary for their chandeliers and sconces for free, either supplied regularly by corporations or paid for out of the endowments set up by individuals. Surprisingly, then, one can read in a recent article by Bonnie B. Lee on the use of church space in Lübeck: “This was a costly undertaking: in a 1609 inventory, the single largest expense of the Jakobikirche in Lübeck was Wachskerzen, which amounted to an incredible 1,275 Lübeck Marks. The second largest expense was the pastor’s annual salary, which amounted to a mere 390 Lübeck Marks and 12 Shillings in comparison.”9 Inspecting the record quoted by Lee did not reveal how she arrived at her conclusion, but it at least showed what the record was actually dealing with: indeed, the head pastor of St. James’ Church was paid 390 Lübeck marks and 12 shillings, and the annual sum of 1275 Lübeck marks also appears in the list, but this money was used for the salary of the parish’s four other pastors! Candles are not mentioned at all in this record.10 Quite contrary to Lee’s alarming statement, donations of light ¿ttings normally entailed no substantial costs for the church, as these would be covered by revenues from endowments or by the regular payments of corporations. As stated at the outset, chandeliers and sconces are still put to liturgical use in some Lutheran churches, but this appears to be a fairly recent development, due to the revival of the use of candles in Lutheran liturgy.11 This new custom would make an interesting case study of the invention of traditions.12 In early modern Lutheran churches, the only candles in liturgical use were found on the altar, normally two candles, but some Lutheran territories even did without “Leuchter und Lichter, 1: Van den Missinges Armen,” 1581 (also containing lists from later years), Municipal Archives of Lübeck, archive of St. Marien, P; “Nachrichten über die St. Marien Kirche,” ibid., archive of St. Marien, IV, 8, fol. 80v–81v; “Vorsteher Protokoll von 1743 bis 1832,” ibid., archive of St. Marien, IV, 14, fol. 78r–79r. 9 Bonnie B. Lee, “Communal Transformations of Church Space in Lutheran Lübeck,” German History 26 (2008): 149–67, here 155. 10 “Inventarien: Dat ganse corp[u]s vñ ynuentarium Sante Jacobes Karke … vp Cantate anno 1609 per me Hÿnrick Hÿnckeldeÿ,” Municipal Archives of Lübeck, archive of St. Jacobi, IX, 2), b), fol. 13r. Several other peculiarities of Lee’s methodology are discussed in Beyer, “Stiftung, Plazierung und Funktion.” 11 See Otto Böcher, “Licht und Feuer,” in Theologische Realenzyklopädie, vol. 21 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1991), 83–119, here 112–18. 12 See Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (1983; repr., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). 8

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

281

Fig. 5. Eastern wing of the grave chapels adjacent to St. Peter’s German church in Copenhagen. Three chandeliers now hanging in the church were in all likelihood originally placed there around 1700 (in the location of the cannonballs dating from the English bombardment in 1807). Photo by the author.

these.13 Such an observation might disappoint readers of a book on art and ritual, but the absence of an early modern ritual context for objects presently enshrouded in ritual is an important scholarly result, too. In village churches, divine services took place on Sundays during daylight. There was also no real need for light ¿ttings since until the middle of the seventeenth century only a few parishioners would have been able to sing from a hymnal. In towns, literacy was more advanced, but in urban settings divine services and catechism classes were also held on weekdays, beginning rather early. However, during the winter it would still be dark at this hour. Paul Graff, Geschichte der AuÀösung der alten gottesdienstlichen Formen in der evangelischen Kirche Deutschlands, 2 vols. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1937 [2d ed. of vol. 1], 1939 [1st ed. of vol. 2]), 1:101, 2:65, 147, 268; Nils-Arvid Bringéus, Den kyrkliga seden (Stockholm: Carlsson, 2005), 155–56, 161–66.

13

282

The Ritual Context of Chandeliers and Sconces

In the 150 years following the Reformation, funerals were rather public events. A procession with the corpse would move through the town or the village, and anyone might join in. From the end of the seventeenth century onward, socially elevated families preferred to have their dead buried at night, excluding the broader public from participation in the event. These nightly funeral services were de¿nitely in need of candlelight. Therefore, we ¿nd light ¿ttings also in grave chapels where no divine services were held (¿g. 5).14 Despite the large amount of capital invested in light ¿ttings, the amount of reading light to be derived from them was actually fairly limited. One large chandelier with candles gives roughly as much light as a modern desk lamp, but most of the light disappears upwards into the vaults. Candlelit Easter night services in Swedish churches in our days can give a good impression of how poor the lighting actually was, even with all of the candles burning. Admittedly, early modern church-goers probably were not as demanding concerning reading light as present-day ones, but anyone wanting to read from the hymnal would have had to take his or her own candle along, as many parishioners appear to have done. The provision of reading light does not seem to have been a major concern for donors, since they preferred to place sconces below epitaphs and chandeliers above graves. The proximity to pews does not appear to have played any decisive role.

Rituals connected to light ¿ttings The deeds of many donations and inscriptions on light ¿ttings make provisions for the period during which candles should be lit. Quite exceptional is the donation of a chandelier to the village church of Hattstedt near Husum in the Duchy of Schleswig in 1644, explicitly mentioning that the candles should be lit on the high feast days of Easter, Pentecost and Christmas.15 It 14 Victor Hermansen, Aage Rousell, and Jan Steenberg, Danmarks kirker: 1, København, vol. 1 (Copenhagen: Gad, 1945–58), 697–98; Beyer, “Gravmindevandring.” 15 Erdmute Beate Mascher, “Kronleuchter: ‘Lux ad Illuminandas Gentes’; Studien zu Schaftkronleuchtern aus Messing des 16. bis 18. Jahrhunderts in Norddeutschland,” 2 vols. (PhD diss., Kiel, 2004), 1:83, 184, quoting archival records. (For the chandelier itself, see Heinrich Brauer, Wolfgang SchefÀer, and Hans Weber, Die Kunstdenkmäler des Kreises Husum, vol. 1 of Die Kunstdenkmäler der Provinz Schleswig-Holstein [Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1939], 88.) However, Mascher’s next reference, “A. Jessien, Diplomatarium des Klosters Preetz (1838), S. 187 f.,” does not contain evidence for the use of a chandelier only on a few feast days. While Mascher apparently used an offprint with another pagination, the deed for a donation of 1594 can more easily be traced in Adam Jessien, ed., “Diplomatarium des Klosters Prez,” in Urkundensammlung

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

283

was much more common to prescribe the use of candles at the darkest time of year, for instance the time from All Saints to Candlemas (1 November to 2 February), from Martinmas to Candlemas (11 November to 2 February) or simply all through the winter.16 The period of use thus followed practical considerations rather than ceremonial demands but, as this contributed to structuring the shift of the seasons, it can be seen as a ritual nonetheless. The same applies to the use of candles during an important rite of passage, the burial, as mentioned above.17 There were further rituals connected to light ¿ttings. For some churches, there is evidence of chandeliers—and church interiors in general—being decorated with Àowers or with greenery on feast days in spring.18 In Denmark, it was customary to reserve part of the endowment’s interest for a strøkone (strew-woman)—a woman paid to sweep the grave on Sundays and feast days and to strew it with Àowers.19 It remains unclear, however, whether she was also required to do something to the light ¿tting, but one may imagine that she polished it on certain occasions. The recycling of candle ends—constituting, in fact, a signi¿cant ¿nancial value—might be regulated by local rules, with the possibility of this developing into a ritual. In Tartu, for instance, the town council in 1741 put an end to a dispute among church employees by declaring that after funerals the candle der Schleswig-Holstein-Lauenburgischen Gesellschaft für vaterländische Geschichte, vol. 1 (Kiel: in Commission der Akademischen Buchhandlung, 1839–49), 189–445, here 375–76; excerpts of the deed are also quoted in Mascher, “Kronleuchter,” 1:183–84. 16 Hans de Hofman, ed., Samlinger af Publique og Private Stiftelser, Fundationer og Gavebreve, som fore¿ndes udi Danmark og Norge …, 11 vols. (Copenhagen: Niels Lihme / Ludolph Henrich Lillies Enke / Godiches Arvinger, 1755–80), 6/2:94; Johannes Baltzer, Friedrich Bruns, and Hugo Rahtgens, Die Klöster, die kleineren Gotteshäuser der Stadt, die Kirchen und Kapellen in den Außengebieten, Denk- und Wegekreuze und der Leidensweg Christi, vol. 4 of Die Bau- und Kunstdenkmäler der Freien und Hansestadt Lübeck (Lübeck: Nöhring, 1928), 359; Erik Moltke, Elna Møller, and Vibeke Michelsen, Danmarks kirker: 21, Tønder amt (Copenhagen: Gad, 1957), 60. 17 See Iris Gareis, “Ritual,” in Enzyklopädie der Neuzeit, vol. 11 (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2010), col. 297–306, here col. 298. 18 Danmarks kirker: 1, København, 1:268; August Wilhelm Hupel, Topographische Nachrichten von Lief- und Ehstland, 3 vols. (Riga: Johann Friedrich Hartknoch, 1774–82), 2:82–83.; K[arl] K[oppmann], “Abschaffung der P¿ngst-Maibüsche in den Kirchen,” Beiträge zur Geschichte der Stadt Rostock 4, no. 2 (19[04]–07): 112; L[udwig] Kr[ause] and E[rnst] D[ragendorff], “P¿ngst-Maibüsche in den Kirchen,” Beiträge zur Geschichte der Stadt Rostock 7 (1913): 122; Bringéus, Den kyrkliga seden, 195–99. 19 De Hofman, Samlinger, 2:48–50, 58, 61; J[ohannes] T[holle], “Strøblomster,” in Nordisk illustreret Havebrugsleksikon, ed. A. Pedersen, vol. 3, 5th ed. (Copenhagen: Gad, 1948), 532.

284

The Ritual Context of Chandeliers and Sconces

ends were to be divided in the following way: candle ends from the altar, the pulpit and the chandeliers would go to the pastor, while those from elsewhere in the church and from the pews belonged in equal shares to the sexton and the clockmaker, and the candle ends from the galleries, ¿nally, were to be divided between the bell-ringers and the arithmetician.20 Most private donations seem to have been made by elderly individuals, often in connection with their own death or the death of a spouse. Such a donation might refer back to a provision in a will, but it would ¿rst take effect with the death of the donor. Other occasions for donations were consecrations of new churches or the re-opening of a church after renovation. Occasionally, the donation of a light ¿tting served as a public expression of thanks, for a rescue from distress at sea,21 as in the case of a chandelier given by a Lübeck shipmaster to the church of Svaneke (Bornholm) in 1673,22 or for unusually good luck, as in the case of a chandelier donated by the commander of a whaling ship to the church on his North Frisian home island of Amrum in 1671, after having killed sixteen whales in the preceding season (¿g. 6).23 On a different note, the church in Keila (Ger. Kegel), Estonia received a chandelier in 1659 as compensation for a manslaughter committed by an Estonian member of the parish, as the High German inscription informs spectators (¿g. 7).24 Even when the donation of a light ¿tting was prompted by the death of the donor or his or her spouse, the donated light ¿tting does not seem to have played a particular role in the burial ritual, since the time span between the death and the burial was normally too short to have a light ¿tting produced and shipped to its ¿nal destination. The relocation of a light ¿tting from the home of the deceased to the church would not take place that quickly either, since the burial would normally not wait for the necessary procedures, such 20 “Protokolle” (minutes of the Tartu town council), 1741, Estonian Historical Archives in Tartu, coll. 995, inv. 1, no. 311, fol. 48r. 21 See also Jürgen Beyer, “Donations by Strangers to Lutheran Churches During the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” Journal of Social History 47 (forthcoming). 22 Otto Norn, C. G. Schultz, and Erik Skov, Danmarks kirker: 7, Bornholm (Copenhagen: Gad, 1954), 104. 23 Wanda Oesau, Schleswig-Holsteins Grönlandfahrt auf Wal¿schfang und Robbenschlag vom 17.–19. Jahrhundert (Glückstadt: Augustin, 1937), 213, 301; Georg Quedens, “Zwei Kronleuchter und ihre Geschichte,” Der kleine Amrumer (2009): 10–12, here 11. 24 Aivar Põldvee (Tallinn), a native of Keila, kindly provided me with a transcription and photos.

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

285

Fig. 6. Detail of a chandelier in the church of Nebel (Amrum), with indications of where to continue reading in the next line. Translation of the inscription from Low German: “This chandelier was donated by Boye Karstens to the honour of God and the decoration of this church as a token of thanks for this year full of blessing, [the donor being] thirty-seven years old, having sailed the seas for twenty-three years, currently captain operating in the Greenland Sea for the sixth time through the grace of God. May God alone be honoured for everything. Year 1671.” Photo by the author.

as the reading of the will, to be carried out. The donation of used chandeliers from private homes, by the way, probably accounts for the sometimes rather worldly motifs in the decorations of ecclesiastical light ¿ttings.

The crafting of inscriptions A fair number of inscriptions—especially in the case of artisan donors from the Low German area—reveal a limited mastery of the standard language.25 The inscriptions are therefore often awkwardly worded, but their production must have been preceded by a number of carefully made decisions, e.g. how much text could reasonably be placed in the available space in order that the letters were still legible from the church Àoor. Writing in circles around a sphere meant that the text eventually would reach the spot where it had started, calling for a solution to indicate where to switch to the next line (¿g. 6). A decision was 25 See also Jürgen Beyer, “Den så kallade stenmästargravstenen från 1570-talet i Vamlingbo kyrka på Gotland: Text, tolkning och bakgrund,” Fornvännen: Journal of Swedish Antiquarian Research 106 (2011): 113–26.

286

The Ritual Context of Chandeliers and Sconces

Fig. 7. Detail of a chandelier in the church of Keila (Estonia). Translation of the inscription from German: “In 1659, when Anthonius [Anton] Heidrich, a native of Tallinn, became pastor here, Kohna Iahn [Koona Jaan] had to give this chandelier to the church of Keila, also known as St. Michael’s Church, because he had inadvertently killed Lambapeh Iurr [Lambapää Jüri]. [The chandelier was given] to the honour of God and to the memory of the killed [der Entleibte].” Photo: Aivar Põldvee. also made as to whether inscriptions in the vernacular were written in Latin or Gothic script (the latter being at the time much more intelligible to people at large), and whether upper- or lower-case letters should be used. The choice of language was often not obvious either. Latin was mostly chosen for inscriptions commissioned by or for pastors (¿g. 2) or by corporations conducting their affairs primarily in this language (lawyers, students etc.), but also, somewhat surprisingly, by a Visby town councillor. This inscription, of 1679, used Latin except for a single Greek word designating the chandelier itself.26 This donation might have been made by a very learned gentleman, but I suspect that Latin was chosen in order to avoid trouble. Denmark had ceded Gunnar Svahnström and Karin Svahnström, Visby Domkyrka: Inredning, vol. [11/2] of Sveriges kyrkor: Gotland (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1986), 56, 151, offering a conjecture for the Greek word even though it is clearly legible.

26

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

287

Fig. 8. Detail of a chandelier in the Finnish Church in Stockholm. Translation of the inscription from German and Swedish: “[In German:] Godtf[r]idt Jönisch and his wife Gerdttrhu[d] Wlunde [sic] donated this chandelier to the honour of God and the decoration of this church in the year 1693. [In Swedish:] This chandelier has become the property of Frederick’s Church through transfer from the late councillor Lur’s heirs [and through] royal con¿rmation of 7 March 1734. The church itself paid for the improvement of the chandelier.” The German text dates from the chandelier’s original location in Nyen (present-day St. Petersburg), and the Swedish text was added in Stockholm. Presumably the German inscription was copied during the “improvement” of the chandelier in 1734, since it uses the same letters as the later inscription and contains rather many spelling errors. Photo by the author.

Gotland to Sweden in 1645, but was not too happy about this loss. In one of its next wars with Sweden, it seized the opportunity to occupy the island from 1676 to 1679. A Danish inscription used in 1679 might quickly become obsolete, while opting for Swedish might render the donor’s family suspicious to the authorities in power. Writing in Latin, therefore, in this case offered a way to avoid taking sides. Crafting vernacular inscriptions also involved choices, illustrating that the term vernacular can hardly serve as an analytical tool for scholars. This is not only the case in terms of its inÀationary use in folkloristics (such as vernacular architecture, in the sense “folk building styles”) but also for its received use as “spoken language as opposed to Latin.” Should the German language chosen for inscriptions on light ¿ttings donated by Estonians and Latvians be considered a vernacular (¿g. 7)? Are Swedish inscriptions in the Finnish church

288

The Ritual Context of Chandeliers and Sconces

in Stockholm written in the vernacular (¿g. 8)? The same question may be asked regarding Low German inscriptions by speakers of North Frisian (¿g. 6) or—and this concerns huge numbers of donations—High German inscriptions in areas that communicated orally in Low German (¿g. 1). Questions concerning the language of inscriptions (and the mistakes they often contain) are, unfortunately, dif¿cult to sort out for the modern historian, since we have the ¿nal products but not the drafts. We, therefore, do not know the parts played by the donors, by the craftsmen and by possible intermediaries, such as scribes.

Concluding remarks The traditions of what kind of inscription to put on light ¿ttings differed in various places in the Baltic Sea area. On Bornholm, for instance, it was common to write the names of the donors only, while in Lübeck provisions for the supply of candles were often mentioned, and Rostock stands out for including biblical verses in inscriptions. This might call for a folkloristic study, since folklorists are concerned with traditions available in variation. Similarly, the shape of light ¿ttings followed regional traditions—a subject obviously of interest to art historians. However, the basic customs and rituals connected to these items seem to have been fairly uniform throughout the area. In the course of many centuries, light ¿ttings—as well as other items of church furnishings—have frequently been moved to different places in churches. It would be a worthwhile task of future restorations to gather all items commemorating the same donor at their original place again, i.e. his or her grave. Furthermore, early modern light ¿ttings should be, where this has not yet been done, re-adapted for the use of candles, since nowadays so many other ways of illuminating churches with electric light are available. This would enable parishes to create new rituals, such as lighting the candles on high feast days. It would also make it possible to revive some of the rituals connected with light ¿ttings during the early modern period. During the last 150 years, these rituals have faded into oblivion, with chandeliers and sconces considered to be no more than light ¿ttings in need of adaptation to modern demands for illumination. A critical analysis of the history of these items would thus provide opportunities for usage closer to the donors’ intentions and for creating new rituals, while leaving the actual lighting of churches to modern and more ef¿cient technologies.

THE ART OF RITUALS: HOW SAMUEL PEPYS USED HIS EYES AND EARS RUTH-E. MOHRMANN Then my wife and I by coach, ¿rst to see my little picture that is a-drawing, and thence to the Opera and there saw Romeo and Julett, the ¿rst time it was ever acted. But it is the play of itself the worst that ever I heard in my life, and the worst acted that ever I saw these people do; and I am resolved to go no more to see the ¿rst time of acting, for they were all of them out more or less. (1 March 1662) And after dinner . . . my wife and I abroad to the King’s play-house. . . . Here we saw Flora’s Figarys: I never saw [it] before, and by the most ingenuous performance of the young jade Flora, it seemed as pretty a pleasant play as I ever saw in my life. (8 August 1664)1

Who was the man who made these entries in his diary and made such a sharp judgement of Shakespeare’s nowadays immortal play and such an extraordinarily positive one of a nowadays rather unknown play? He was no less than the most quoted Englishman after William Shakespeare and Samuel Johnson—Samuel Pepys (¿g. 1). A tailor’s son, he had, due to inÀuential relatives and his impressive talent, an outstanding career. He became chief secretary to the admiralty and a member of parliament beginning in 1673. He was the president of the Royal Society and a highly educated friend of hundreds of intellectuals, among them Isaac Newton and Christopher Wren. He spoke and read French, Italian and Spanish and made his name immortal through his diary, written in shorthand, which he started in 1660 at the age of twentyseven and kept for the following ten years. It includes the famous accounts of Robert Latham and William Matthews, eds., The Diary of Samuel Pepys: A New and Complete Transcription, 11 vols. (London: Bell & Hyman, 1970–83). As there are a lot of different editions, I only quote by year and date. The ¿rst complete German translation did not appear until 2010: Samuel Pepys, Die Tagebücher 1660–1669: Vollständige Ausgabe in neun Bänden nebst einem “Companion,” ed. Gerd Haffmans and Heiko Arntz, trans. Georg Deggerich et al. (Frankfurt am Main: Haffmans bei Zweitausendeins, 2010). 1

290

The Art of Rituals

the coronation of Charles II in 1661, of the Plague in London in 1665 and of the Great Fire of 1666.2 Pepys’ diary is a fascinating picture of the decade and its life in all its colours. When he was still a rather young man, Samuel Pepys reached an outstanding position in the political, social and scienti¿c life of London and was known as an excellent speaker. He was extremely well informed, not least about all the scandals and gossip of the nobility, and always had ¿rst-hand information about everything that seemed important—information acquired at the Royal Exchange, in coffee houses, tobacco bars and especially in theatres. This chapter will deal with Samuel Pepys’ fascination with the theatre and the opera. Performances on stage, as artistic events, were a never-ending attraction for Pepys and he learned to enjoy them through very individual, speci¿c rituals. The entries in his diary regarding theatre and opera are often highly detailed and allow for thorough interpretations. Samuel Pepys was a great a¿cionado of theatre and music. To go to the theatre was so essential for him that sometimes he even went twice a day. And he loved music: he liked to sing and could play such instruments as the lute, the violin and the spinet, and even wrote some compositions; “and music is the thing of the world that I love most” (30 July 1666). To go to the theatre and the opera was, for Samuel Pepys, not only a part of his cultural and social life but also a form of consumerism, which seems a bit strange at ¿rst glance. But he knew that he was “a very great spendthrift in all manner of respects” (31 December 1661). And so he often made “a solemn oath about abstaining from plays and wine” (ibid.).

Samuel Pepys as a consumer Thus it seems necessary to look ¿rst at Samuel Pepys as a consumer. Pepys’ main goal was to live like the gentry. It was a strong precept for Pepys to be well dressed, for the “rule for a gentleman [is] to spare in all things rather then in that” (19 October 1661). The clothes of a gentleman and what a gentleman was supposed to do he often knew better than the gentlemen themselves, and he followed their rules precisely. If gentlemen—including the king—failed to follow these rules, Pepys’ remarks were merciless and scornful. “So rude a dirty family I never saw in my life,” he wrote in his diary after a visit to the house 2 There are at least two important biographies on Pepys: Richard Ollard, Pepys: A Biography (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1974), and Claire Tomalin, Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self (London: Viking, 2002). Both make little mention of Pepys’ special liking of theatre and music (Ollard, Pepys, 109–10; Tomalin, Samuel Pepys, 30–31, 130–31).

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

291

Fig. 1. John Hayls, portrait of Samuel Pepys, 1666. Reproduced by permission of the National Portrait Gallery, London.

of Lord Oxford (4 January 1665). The extremely fashion-conscious Pepys was even willing to spend more money than he had at the time: “But I ¿nd that I must go handsomely, whatever it costs me; and the charge will be made up in the fruits it brings” (21 October 1664). During the whole decade of which we know so much, he tried hard to follow his own strong rules of gentility. Pepys as a consumer let us know just about everything about his everyday life: what he was eating and drinking, how he dressed and his personal hygiene, what clothes, books and home decorations he bought, and even the jewellery and gifts he bought for his wife and his numerous mistresses. Pepys had formulated his motto by the age of twenty-nine: “But though I am much against too much spending, yet I do think it best to enjoy some degree of pleasure, now that we have health, money and opportunities, rather then to leave pleasures to old age or poverty, when we cannot have them so properly” (20 May 1662). Was Pepys a typical consumer?

292

The Art of Rituals

Pepys’ “pursuit of gentility” was not the simple addiction to imitation “to look like the gentry” which his contemporary Daniel Defoe denounced. Samuel Pepys tried to do more than that. At the age of twenty-nine he declared to his wife “what I could and would do if I were worth 2000 pounds—that is, be a knight and keep my coach” (2 March 1662). The later highly respected naval administrator, whom even the king knew by name, was never knighted, but the early object of his desire, a coach, he ¿nally did acquire. In the years before this big acquisition, it was a fascinating event for Samuel Pepys to ride with noblemen such as Lord Brouncker in a four- or six-in-hand coach to Hampton Court or Highgate. “But Lord, what staring to see a nobleman’s coach come to town—porters everywhere bow to us and such begging of beggars” (5 January 1666). Pepys hated to ride in a rented coach, peculiarly when he was seen and recognised. But when he succeeded in purchasing his own coach, the social climber Pepys at ¿rst lost his otherwise precise awareness of not doing too much or too little: “And thence to Hide-park, the ¿rst time we [Pepys and his wife] were there this year, or ever in our own coach—where with mighty pride rode up and down; and many coaches there, and I thought our horses and coach as pretty as any there, and observed so to be by others” (18 March 1669). When he learned some days later of the gossip about his ¿ne horses and splendid coach and received the good advice “to avoid being noted for it,” Pepys “was vexed to hear taken notice of [that], it being what I feared” (10 May 1669). Pepys knew very well the sensitive balance of symbols of status between higher and lower positions and was immediately prepared to change his behaviour and the symbols he displayed. What seemed as necessary for Samuel Pepys as eating and drinking was the reading of books, including plays. He constantly bought new books, received them from friends and read them in the early morning or late evening. Sometimes reading aloud occurred at social events, with his wife Elizabeth, and with his maid servants or guests. His comments on books were short and precise and often he mentioned discussions of the key issues contained in new books. The handling of his books was very typical of Pepys’ re¿ned manners. Paying his bookbinder a visit—sometimes directly before or after a visit to the theatre—is rather often mentioned in his diary and he found it “now a pleasant sight to me, to see my whole study almost of one binding” (5 February 1665). In 1666 he started refurnishing his study and decided to gild all the spines (31 August 1666). There is a drawing from ca. 1693 showing an elegant closet with book-cases which Pepys had designed himself. Nowadays, his library of three thousand books is the greatest treasure of Magdalene College in Cambridge, where Pepys studied as a young student. It was bequeathed under stipulations that ensure that its contents remain intact and unaltered. The books are still

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

293

in the order arranged by Pepys and his nephew, John Jackson—“from No. 1 (the smallest) to No. 3,000 (the largest)”3—and include the diaries as well. It is obvious that Pepys was not only a collector of books: he was an intensive reader and was well-read. But the handling of his books was also a part of his pursuit of gentility. When he was setting up his books and hanging his maps and pictures in his new study, he noted in his diary: “That is . . . to my most extraordinary satisfaction. So that I think it will be as noble a closet as any man hath” (24 August 1666), and of course such a man could only be a gentleman. But conspicuous consumption, in the sense of Thorstein Veblen,4 was not Samuel Pepys’ main goal. Since as a consumer he never reached the level of the nobility surrounding him in London theatres, one can only regard his theatre addiction and the spending of a lot of time and money on theatre as a very deep wish to be as close to the nobles as possible. But he never really became a gentleman of leisure. His work and the money he earned through it was too important in the everyday life of Samuel Pepys. To earn more and more money was for Samuel Pepys a sensual experience and to have pieces of gold in his hands was really overwhelming to him.5 He saw coins not only as a means of exchange for the pleasant things of life in pursuit of gentility but as “things that talk.”6

Samuel Pepys as theatregoer The Restoration of the monarchy in 1660—which Pepys devoted a lot of space to in his diary—also brought about the re-establishment of permanent London theatres. Charles II issued two theatrical patents, one to Sir William Davenant and the other to Sir Thomas Killigrew, which led to the foundation of two companies, the Duke’s Company and the King’s Company. The ¿rst buildings used after 1660 were the Red Bull and the Duke’s House. Both buildings “The Pepys Library,” the website of Magdalene College, University of Cambridge, accessed 21 January 2013, http://www.magd.cam.ac.uk/the-pepys-library/. 4 Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study in the Evolution of Institutions (New York: MacMillan, 1899). 5 Ruth-E. Mohrmann, “‘… hielt nach vergleichbaren Pferden und Kutschen Ausschau, fand aber keine’: Ding und Bedeutung in Samuel Pepys’ Lebenswelt,” in Medien popularer Kultur: Erzählung, Bild und Objekt in der volkskundlichen Forschung; Rolf Wilhelm Brednich zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Carola Lipp (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 1995), 465–73. 6 Ruth-E. Mohrmann, “Können Dinge sprechen?” Rheinisch-westfälische Zeitschrift für Volkskunde 56 (2011): 9–24. 3

294

The Art of Rituals

were rather intimate and sometimes called “tennis court theatres” due to the original use of the buildings. The King’s House, under Killigrew, opened in May 1663. Between June 1665 and November 1666 the public theatres were closed due to the Plague and the Great Fire. It was not until the mid-1670s that spectacular staging became the norm. In the time of Charles II (r. 1660–85) the theatre existed in the narrow ambit of the court. The king and many nobles were often to be found among the audience. The most famous actor of this time was Thomas Betterton, a member of the Duke’s Company. A novelty of the Restoration theatre was the introduction of women as actresses.7 Samuel Pepys went to the King’s House with his wife as early as “the second day of its being opened. The house is made with extraordinary good contrivance; and yet hath some faults, as the narrowness of the passages in and out of the pit, and the distance from the stage to the boxes, which I am con¿dent cannot hear. But for all other things it is well. Only, above all, the Musique being below, and most of it sounding under the very stage, there is no hearing of the bases at all, nor very well of the trebles, which sure must be mended” (8 May 1663). Theatre as performative action is characterised by the place and the time of the play, by the actors, spectators and promoters who act in common in a speci¿c concrete reality. The Àeeting live performances of historical plays cannot be analysed in the same way that literature can, but only by other sources8, and Samuel Pepys’ diary is a very good source. To examine the rituals of the theatre at that time, I mostly follow the de¿nition of performance by Erika Fischer-Lichte and of ritual by Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger. According to Fischer-Lichte, performances embody different states of being in-between. Whatever the performers do affects the participating spectators. And whatever the spectators do affects the performers and other spectators. Thus, a performance comes into being only as it is occurring. It arises from the interaction of performers and spectators, the bodily co-presence of those who perform and those who look on. The emergence of a performance is an art event in its own right.9 7 James Knowles, “Drama in England,” in Spectaculum Europaeum: Theatre and Spectacle in Europe (1580–1750) / Histoire du spectacle en Europe (1580–1750), ed. Pierre Béhar and Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1999), 212–16. 8 Christel Meier and Angelika Kemper, eds., Europäische Schauplätze des frühneuzeitlichen Theaters: Normierungskräfte und regionale Diversität (Münster: Rhema, 2011), 9. 9 Erika Fischer-Lichte, The Transformative Power of Performance: A New Aesthetics, trans. Saskya Iris Jain (London: Routledge, 2008); Fischer-Lichte, “New Concepts of Spectatorship: Toward a Postmodern Theory of Theatricality,” Semiotica 101, no. 1/2

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

295

Following Stollberg-Rilinger’s de¿nition of rituals, the ef¿cacy of rituals is essentially based on the personal presence of all participants, who through their participation in the ritual reciprocally commit themselves to what they perform there. A ritual is an act or sequence of acts that is standardised in its outward form, performative in character (staged or enacted demonstratively) and symbolic in the sense that rituals point to something beyond themselves.10 But let us now have a look at Samuel Pepys as a spectator at London theatres in the 1660s. Pepys was an avid theatregoer and in his diary he mentioned more than three hundred visits. Let us start with a very individual part of Samuel Pepys’ hobby of theatre visits: his oaths. As mentioned above, Pepys swore solemn oaths not to spend too much money on going to the theatre; he himself analysed his addiction to the theatre this way: “Much against my nature and will [my wife and I] to Theatre (yet such is the power of the Devil over me I could not refuse it)” (25 September 1661), or some weeks later: “Against my judgement and conscience to the opera (which God forgive, for my very heart knows that I offend God in breaking my vows herein)” (21 October 1661). Some months later he noted “the very effect of my late oaths against wine and plays. . . . For now my business is a delight to me and brings me great credit, and my purse encreases too” (28 June 1662). Pepys made entries on his oaths in a small book, which he always had with him, and read them rather often (20 June 1662). But having made new oaths did not mean that Pepys followed God and not the devil. In January 1663 he resolved “to set up my rest as to plays till Easter, if not Whitsuntide next, excepting plays at Court” (8 January 1663). But one week later he went with a colleague to the Duke’s playhouse and after the “very ¿ne play” to “the China ale house and there drank a bottle or two” (17 January 1663). The rituals of Pepys’ oath-making and oath-breaking could be enlarged in curious ways: sometimes he “borrowed” a visit from his wife who had not gone the last time and knew of his vows: “So my vow is not broken at all” (8 August 1664). Or concerning the Theatre Royal, which opened in May 1663 and where he went the second day of its being opened: “My oath against going to plays doth not oblige me against this house, because it was not then in being” (8 May 1663).11 Against tricks like these, even the devil was helpless! (1994): 113–23; Robert Weimann, Shakespeare und die Tradition des Volkstheaters: Soziologie, Dramaturgie, Gestaltung (Berlin: Henschel, 1967), 40–47. 10 Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger, “Much Ado about Nothing? Rituals of Politics in Early Modern Europe and Today” (24th Annual Lecture of the German Historical Institute, Washington, DC, 11 November 2010), available online at http://www.ghi-dc.org/¿les/ publications/bulletin/bu048/bu_48_009.pdf. 11 See also the entries of 2 January 1664 and 8 March 1664.

296

The Art of Rituals

Let us now have a look at the performance times and places and the people Pepys liked to attend plays with. Samuel Pepys mostly went to the theatre “after dinner,” seldom alone, preferably with his wife Elizabeth (¿g. 2), but sometimes even with his servants, and often with friends who had been at his home for dinner or with other friends with whom he made special arrangements. Sometimes he even went to a play at about eleven o’clock in the morning (17 November 1662) and once he saw one play three times in one week (25 October 1661). His preferred theatres were the King’s House (Theatre Royal Drury Lane) and the Duke’s House (Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre), but the Red Bull Theatre is also mentioned. There were days on which he started with a play at the Duke’s House—“the play hath little good in it”—and then went by coach to the King’s House, but there “it was ill acted and the play so poor a thing as I never saw in my life almost. . . . The King did not seem pleased at all, . . . nor anybody else” (23 February 1663). About the King’s House, it is known that performances usually began at three in the afternoon to take advantage of the daylight: the main Àoor for the audience, the pit, had no roof so the light could come in. From Pepys’ home in Seething Lane, both theatres were less than four kilometres away, a distance he often covered “by water,” but he preferred to go by coach. Sometimes he went early so that he had time to go see friends, to visit his bookbinder or to buy something. Sometimes he went too late, and when the theatre was already overcrowded he went—a little bit angry—to another theatre. Another time he went “out by water to the Royal Theatre but they not acting today; then to the Duke’s house,” where “the play is not very excellent, but is well acted” (29 May 1663). Pepys hated to be seen in situations which he found ungentlemanly, e.g. he was troubled to be seen during a play by of¿ce clerks who were sitting in more expensive places than he himself (19 January 1661). After the end of a play, he often went with friends to a tobacco shop or a bar to drink “ale a good while” (8 June 1661; 17 January 1663). An important part of the ritual of a theatre visit for Samuel Pepys was to look at other spectators and to be recognised by others. Theatre-going was as much about socialising and “being seen” as about the play itself. In the more than three hundred entries in his diary about his pleasure in going to plays, Samuel Pepys almost always made remarks about other spectators—the king himself quite often attended the plays at the Theatre Royal, often accompanied by the queen, other “¿ne ladies” (29 September 1662; 17 November 1662) and his mistresses. Pepys observed these very special spectators very closely: “Nor did the King or Queene once smile the whole play” (1 December 1662). Samuel Pepys adored one of the king’s mistresses, and he even dreamt of her; this was Lady Castlemaine, the former Mrs. Palmer, who was famous for her

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

297

Fig. 2. John Hayls, portrait of Elizabeth Pepys, 1666. Stipple engraving by James Thomson after the original painting (now destroyed). Reproduced by permission of the National Portrait Gallery, London.

beauty, and ¿ve of her six children were acknowledged by the king as his. When Samuel Pepys was sitting close to her—which happened more than once—he was perhaps more keen to have a look at this lady than to watch the play (23 July 1661). “The sight of the ladies endeed was exceeding noble, and above all my Lady Castlemayne” (29 October 1666). Once at the Duke’s playhouse, when Macbeth was performed and where the king and the court, including “my Lady Castlemayne,” were present, Samuel Pepys was very proud of his wife Elizabeth, who “appeared I think as pretty as any of them . . . and the King and Duke of York minded me, and smiled upon me at the handsome woman near me” (21 December 1668). Once during a play which “is, as it is acted, the best comedy in the world I believe,” Pepys “chanced to sit by Tom Killigrew” who was the director of the Theatre Royal. Killigrew told him that he was going to build a new house

298

The Art of Rituals

in Moore ¿elds, “where we shall have the best Scenes and Machines, the best Musique and everything as Magni¿cent as it is in Christendom, . . . and hath sent for voices and painters and other persons from Italy” (2 August 1664). The whole conversation took place during the play and shows us that Pepys was rather familiar with the director of the Theatre Royal. Once Samuel Pepys happened to sit next to the dramatist Sir Charles Sidly during a play “which is so dull and so ill acted, that I think it is the worst I ever saw or heard in all my days.” Pepys was impressed by the “very witty man, . . . [who] did at every line take notice of the dullness of the poet and badness of the action, and that most pertinently” (4 October 1664), which clearly reveals that both had spoken all through the play! Samuel Pepys never simply mentioned that he had gone to see a play or opera, but always passed judgement on the plays and the performers—he judged the performers with the same enthusiasm or devastation as he did the plays themselves. The most famous performer of his time, Thomas Betterton, who “is called by us both [Pepys and his wife] the best actor in the world” (1661 November 4), played “above all . . . [Hamlet’s] part beyond imagination,” he noted on 24 August 1661.12 Some days later a French comedy “was so ill done and the scenes and company and everything else so nasty and out of order and poor, that I was sick all the while in my mind to be there” (30 August 1661). Often Pepys’ judgements were ambivalent: either the play was good and the scenes and the performers were bad or vice versa. “And then alone to the King’s House and there saw The Custom of the Country, the second time of its being acted, wherein Knipp does the widow well; but of all the plays that I ever did see, the worst, having neither plot, language, or anything in the earth that is acceptable. Only Knipp sings a little song admirably. But fully the worst play that I ever saw or I believe shall see” (2 January 1667). Although Pepys loved Betterton as Hamlet and also found the “scenes very well” (24 August 1661), his judgement on the next play of Shakespeare’s that he saw was negative: “Midsummers nights dreame . . . is the most insipid ridiculous play that I ever saw in my life” (29 September 1662). Concerning Shakespeare’s plays, Pepys admired Hamlet the most and once even spent a Sunday afternoon with his wife indoors, “getting a speech out of Hamlett ‘To bee or not to bee’ without book” (13 November 1664). Macbeth was “a most excellent play in all respects” (7 January 1667); on the other hand, The Merry Wives of Windsor “did not please me at all—in no part of it” (15 August 1667). And Pepys had no problem in disagreeing with the majority opinion: “And here [at the Duke’s House] saw the so much cried-up play of Henry the 8th—which, though I went with resolution to like it, is so simple a thing, made 12

See also the entry of 28 May 1663.

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

299

up of a great many patches, that, besides the shows and processions in it, there is nothing in the world good or well done. Thence, mightily dissatis¿ed, back at night” (1 January 1664). But Samuel Pepys was not only interested in noting well- or badly acted plays, the best or worst actors, the most beautiful, fascinating or boring cospectators, he was also very interested in the scenes and the backstage area. More than once he had the opportunity to have a look there. “But to see their clothes and their various sort, and what a mixture of things there was, here a wooden leg, there a ruff, here a hobby-horse, there a Crowne, would make a man split himself to see with laughing. . . . But then again, to think how ¿ne they show on the stage by candle-light, and how poor things they are to look now too near-hand, is not pleasant at all. The machines are ¿ne, and the paintings very pretty” (19 March 1666). As Samuel Pepys knew one of the performers at the Theatre Royal, Mrs. Knepp, rather well, he once happened to walk with her and his wife “all up and down the house above, and then below into the Scene-room. . . . But Lord, to see how they [the female performers] were painted make a man mad, . . . and what base company of men comes among them, and how lewdly they talk—and how poor the men are in clothes, and yet what a show they make on the stage by candle-light, is very observable” (5 October 1667). All of the everyday rituals which Samuel Pepys followed as a theatregoer can be seen, in keeping with Michel de Certeau, as individual strategies of freedom in the early consumer society of the seventeenth century.13 Pepys’ process of acquisition of ritual-like habits was a never-ending process of inventing, always in a new manner, everyday practices. Pepys followed new social rituals, such as reading papers in coffee houses, discussing scienti¿c innovations and—not least—attending public concerts and going to theatres. All these everyday practices were part of the early English consumer society and consumer boom. But as we now know, this revolution had its roots not in Paris or London but in ¿fteenth-century Italy.14

13 Michel de Certeau, L’invention du quotidien, vol. 1, Art de faire (Paris: Union Générale d’Editions, 1980). Translated by Steven Rendall as The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984). 14 Evelyn S. Welch, Shopping in the Renaissance: Consumer Cultures in Italy 1400– 1600 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), 2–4.

300

The Art of Rituals

Conclusion To summarise the main points of Samuel Pepys’ special liking of theatre and music, it is necessary to differentiate the individual, personal aspects from common ones typical of other theatre visitors as well. Samuel Pepys knew well that he really was addicted to theatre and invented very special kinds of oaths. It must have sometimes been dif¿cult for him to communicate to his friends his displeasure with himself for going to the theatre, as only his wife Elizabeth knew about his vows. One of the main reasons for such a handling of his theatre addiction was Pepys’ fear of spending too much money. He was a spendthrift and, in combination with other aspects such as his clothes, books, house decoration, eating and drinking, he was an early member of a consumer society. And as his main goal was to live like the gentry, it must have been rather dif¿cult for the young Pepys at the beginning of his career to ful¿l his high requirements. It was typical of the time of Charles II that “being seen” at the theatre was at least as important as the play itself. Socialising at the theatre was often a bigger part of theatre-going than the pleasure of the artistic event. And, of course, Samuel Pepys was a vain young man who often enjoyed the social part of the theatre more than the cultural side, particularly when he was not amused by the “worst play he had ever seen in his life.” But his judgement on plays, performers and scenes showed him often as a connoisseur who had sometimes read the plays in advance. And with his often sharp judgement on Shakespeare’s plays, Pepys was not alone in his time. The fascination of theatre-going after the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660 was a great pleasure for the king and the court, and even clerks and apprentices often attended plays. The ritual of attending artistic events at the theatre and the opera had for Samuel Pepys a symbolic meaning as well. Pepys saw himself as being close to the nobility, even though he never became a member of the peerage, as he had hoped, but he knew their rituals and handled them with knowledge and with style. In that way he was (almost) a gentleman.

WINING AND DINING IN STYLE: ARCHITECTURAL INNOVATIONS AS A SOURCE FOR RITUAL CHANGE IN GERMAN RENAISSANCE PALACES STEPHAN HOPPE

The present paper not only seeks to present a speci¿c source group and object focus for questions salient to research on courtly ritual events of the early modern period but also addresses a methodological problem. One very speci¿c feature of ritual is that, in its repetition, it often pro¿ts more from physical and material conditions than from explicit references in written texts. That is especially the case where architecture has played a signi¿cant role in the shaping and continuation of a particular ritual phenomenon. In such instances, it is sometimes possible to refer to scattered textual and image source materials, but often the main extant material heritage of the former complex of a ritual action consists of those physical architectural constellations that are preserved or still amenable to reconstruction. In recent years, various disciplines have made decisive progress in the ¿eld of the functional structural analysis of historical buildings. Traditionally, archeology and building archeology (Bauforschung) have often been forced to make do without any written source materials. As a consequence, they have had to develop special methods in order to generate a functional interpretation of construction details.1 The present study investigates a special ritual phenomenon in Renaissance court culture by referring to speci¿c building structures, namely the spatial separation, over the course of the sixteenth century, of the princely dining 1 See Jean Guillaume, ed., Architecture et vie sociale: L´organisation intérieure des grandes demeures à la ¿n du Moyen Âge et à la Renaissance (Paris: Picard, 1994); Joseph Maran, ed., Constructing Power: Architecture, Ideology and Social Practice / Konstruktion der Macht: Architektur, Ideologie und soziales Handeln (Hamburg: Lit, 2006); Cord Meckseper, “Nutzungsstrukturen baulicher Raumsysteme an hochmittelalterlichen Herrschaftssitzen,” in Deutsche Königspfalzen: Beiträge zu ihrer historischen und archäologischen Erforschung, vol. 7, Zentren herrschaftlicher Repräsentation im Hochmittelalter: Geschichte, Architektur und Zeremoniell, ed. Caspar Ehlers, Jörg Jarnut, and Matthias Wemhoff (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007), 197–219.

302

Wining and Dining in Style

table in German residential castles. This process of separation is among those phenomena that can be grasped solely in a very selective manner utilizing only textual sources, but they reveal a coherent history through the prism of a structural analysis of the appropriate architectural tradition. At least in this case, we have available several historical observations as the point of departure for our study. It has long been known, thanks in signi¿cant measure to the pioneering work of the British art historian Mark Girouard, that as early as the fourteenth century in English court life a process had begun that acted to split the highly ritualized common meal of a princely court, leading to the removal of the lordly dining table from the main assembly hall and its placement in a separate room in the upper story.2 Originally, the princely bedroom on the upper Àoor had served as a personal room. This upstairs room was now expanded in function as a dining chamber (the great chamber) for an inner circle of persons at court. Although this process of the restructuring of a daily ritual in English court culture is quite clear and comprehensible, the situation in princely courts in Central Europe has until recently remained shrouded in darkness. In the 1930s, the sociologist Norbert Elias studied the connections between spatial structures and social phenomena, presenting his inÀuential theses on social disciplining through princely ritual and architectural construction at the French baroque court.3 Following this major work, it was long assumed that the architectural conditions and realities in Central Europe were a more or less direct reÀection of the situation prevailing in the West. Today, after quite a number of newer studies, it is generally recognized that such an equating of Western and Central European princely courts is a far too simple picture of reality.4 In many ways, the imperial court of the Habsburgs stressed other values, and its rituals were a distinctive hybrid, a diverse mixture of Central European, Burgundian and Spanish elements and stimuli. In addition, in the Holy Roman Empire, beginning in the ¿fteenth century, there were ever more princely court administrations of lower rank (prince electors, dukes and landgraves) which were very familiar from Western and Southern paradigms of increased status by means of cultural consumption. Yet these courts had to Mark Girouard, Life in the English Country House: A Social and Architectural History, multiple printings (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1978 and later). 3 Norbert Elias, The Court Society, trans. Edmund Jephcott, ed. Stephen Mennell (Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2006), orig. publ. as Die hö¿sche Gesellschaft: Untersuchungen zur Soziologie des Königtums und der hö¿schen Aristokratie (Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1969). 4 Aloys Winterling, Der Hof der Kurfürsten von Köln 1688–1794: Eine Fallstudie zur Bedeutung “absolutistischer” Hofhaltung (Bonn: Röhrscheid, 1986). 2

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

303

discover their own paths depending on political orientation, cultural ties and the material resources available to them. So it is no accident that from the 1470s on ever more costly and magni¿cent residence palaces built by princes and some counts came into being in Germany. Here we will mention only the buildings of the Renaissance period, which today can still be directly experienced in Meissen (Albrechtsburg, 1470–90), Ingolstadt (1483–89), Heidelberg (numerous alterations after about 1510), Torgau (1533–44), Neuburg an der Donau (from 1534), Dresden (from 1548) and Munich (from 1568); they serve as examples for many others.

The Hofstube as a traditional communal dining room in German court culture However, only after the 1990s did it become common to investigate the function of spatial structures in detail in this area as well.5 Not until this research context emerged was it possible to answer questions regarding the concrete location and architectonic context of the regular noon and evening meals in the form of a strictly regulated ritual at a princely court. Of course, some details were already known about this ceremonial highpoint in the course of a day in the court as a result of relevant passages in individual court regulations and lists of court members. It should be recalled that around 1500 it was still customary practice at princely courts in Central Europe for the entire male retinue to come together, seated according to rank at tables in a large hall-like room. The Gotische Halle at Gottorf Castle from shortly after 1492 is one of the still existing examples (¿g. 1). As a rule, the ceremonial apex of the room was the table of the lord of the house on a raised stage, where the lord was seated with a small number of high-ranking family members and guests. The location of these meals was a room that is designated in the German sources by various terms, such as Hofstube, Hofdornse, Dürnitz and Türnitz. The structural-analytic reconstruction of Central European residence palaces has shown that almost always these rooms were situated on the castle’s ground Stephan Hoppe, Die funktionale und räumliche Struktur des frühen Schlossbaus in Mitteldeutschland: Untersucht an Beispielen landesherrlicher Bauten der Zeit zwischen 1470 und 1570 (Cologne: Abt. Architekturgeschichte, 1996); Hoppe, “Der Raumtypus des ‘Prunkappartements’ als Träger symbolischen Kapitals: Über eine räumliche Geste der zeremonialen Gastfreundschaft im deutschen Schloßbau der beginnenden Neuzeit,” in Zeichen und Raum: Ausstattung und hö¿sches Zeremoniell in den deutschen Schlössern der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. Peter-Michael Hahn and Ulrich Schütte (Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2006), 229–51. 5

304

Wining and Dining in Style

Àoor, in marked contrast with the equally large German festive halls (Tanzsäle) on the upper Àoor. Structurally, these partially resembled the English halls on the ground level mentioned above. In contrast with the German festive halls, which in wintertime it was hardly possible to heat, such a Hofstube in Central Europe—according to the data from existing preserved structures, as well as textual and image source materials—always possessed one or more stoves that provided smoke-free heat and were denoted by the term Stube. For the international reader, we should point out here that until the seventeenth century in Central Europe, there was a fundamental distinction between rooms heated by a smoke-free rear loader stove or another ¿replace accessible from the outside, and those rooms that remained unheated or were heated only by a small ¿replace. Up to about the mid-seventeenth century, the ¿rst room type was called a Stube (a room with a stove, a dialectal variant of which was Dornse),6 while the other types of rooms bore the designation Kammer (“chamber,” a small sitting room or bedroom) or Saal (“hall”). Since these are terms closely associated with the typical regional scenarios of use and technical details, it is dif¿cult to give a precise English equivalent. In Middle English and early Modern English, up to the eighteenth century, the word “stove,” cognate with German Stube, was often used to designate a sweating-room, an enclosed heated space or small heated sitting room or bedroom.7 Beginning in the fourteenth century, it was customary in Central Europe for princely residential quarters in palaces to be laid out in a series of rooms like apartments, consisting of one (heatable) Stube for public and daily use, and an adjacent bedroom without a stove.8 Thus, here too the technical design, furnishings and functional differentiation went hand in hand, and the construction details of the Stube can be utilized today as a source for reconstructing functional aspects of the layout. But let us return to the dining table ceremony in German princely courts. The building features that can be reconstructed in princely palaces from the last third of the ¿fteenth century, such as Meissen (the Electorate of Saxony), Joachim Hähnel, Stube: Wort- und sachgeschichtliche Beiträge zur historischen Hausforschung (Münster: Aschendorff, 1975). Cf. Konrad Bedal, “Wohnen wie zu Dürers Zeiten: Stuben und Wohnräume im süddeutschen, insbesondere fränkischen Bürgerhaus des späten Mittelalters,” in Das Dürer-Haus: Neue Ergebnisse der Forschung, ed. G. Ulrich Großmann and Franz Sonnenberger (Nuremberg: Germanisches Nationalmuseum, 2007), 27–60. 7 See the Oxford English Dictionary. 8 Tomáš Durdík, “Wohneinheiten der böhmischen Königsburgen PĜemysl Otakars II,” in Burgenbau im späten Mittelalter, vol. 2, ed. Christine Müller (Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2009), 213–20. 6

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

305

Fig. 1. Gottorf Castle, the dining hall—Hofstube (Gotische Halle), shortly after 1492. Photo: user Florian-Zet, image licensed under Wikimedia Commons license CC-BY-SA-3.0.

Ingolstadt (the Duchy of Bavaria-Landshut), Burghausen (the Duchy of Bavaria-Landshut) and Wittenberg (the Electorate of Saxony), prove that for the meals of most males in court society, who comprised some ninety percent of the persons engaged there, all that was available at that time was a large stove-heated hall on a lower Àoor (Hofstube). The rooms were quite elaborate in their ¿ttings, as the Gottorf example shows, and were impressive at the time in terms of size; however, they were clearly separated from the princely living quarters on the upper Àoors. A special magni¿cent room for separate dining for the lord, as in the English palaces, did not exist here. Only in the case of the female retinue (Frauenzimmer), which in any event tended to be under supervisory control and separated from general court life, did various courts early on create separate dining rooms.9 Stephan Hoppe, “Bauliche Gestalt und Lage von Frauenwohnräumen in deutschen Residenzschlössern des späten 15. und des 16. Jahrhunderts,” in Das Frauenzimmer: Die Frau bei Hofe in Spätmittelalter und früher Neuzeit, ed. Jan Hirschbiegel and Werner Paravicini (Stuttgart: Thorbecke, 2000), 151–74. 9

306

Wining and Dining in Style

The prince dines separately Consequently, when instructions appeared in the German court regulations for a separate dining room for the prince, this was evidence of the unfolding of a process that was virtually revolutionary. A somewhat later regulatory instruction from 1553 from the court regulations for the Electoral Saxon palace in Torgau reads in translation as follows: Service Maintenance for Persons at Court The princes, counts, gentlemen and nobles at court are to appear daily between eight and nine in the morning, and in the afternoon between three and four before our dining room. They should wait there for our services until we have sat down and taken water. They should also do the same at breakfast and supper time, or when we have foreign guests, councilors, diplomats or other of¿cial persons visiting, or involved in audiences or other important activities. Our lords in waiting and nobles, to whom we provide meals, should not sit down at table until we have been seated. And those who are instructed to serve at our table or for other duties should be prepared daily at the right time so that it is not necessary, as has often occurred in the past, to have to look laboriously and wait for each and every person. . . . When visiting gentlemen or guests are present, the water should be served by counts or aristocrats. If for a justi¿able reason they should not be on hand, then noblemen should perform this task.10

Clearly expressed in this excerpt is the ceremonial character of the meal and the importance of high-ranking service on important occasions in a room called the “dining room,” which was not the ground Àoor dining hall (Hofstube). Accordingly, the same court regulations also emphasized the special princely status of this room: No menials, bodyguards, lackeys, errand runners, boys or other common servants at court are to be permitted to enter our princely dining room. And our servants should, especially on these premises, behave with propriety, virtue and the necessary obeisance, doing so as servants of their nobleman in such a manner as to bring honor to their noble master and fame to themselves. But no one should enter into the second chamber where We (the Prince) reside when not dining, unless such a person is so summoned or thus ordered.11 “Churfürst Augusti Original-Hoff-Ordnung f. d. Torgau den 30. Okt. 1553,” Sächsisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Dresden, Loc. 32436, Nr. 3, fols. 4v–5r.; for the German original, see Hoppe, Funktionale und räumliche Struktur, 423–24. 11 “Churfürst Augusti Original-Hoff-Ordnung,” fols. 4v–5r. 10

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

307

What these texts initially seem to contain are only indications pointing to a process of change, since without knowledge of the concrete architectural circumstances, it is scarcely possible from the text to arrive at more extensive conclusions regarding the location and architectonic design of the rooms concerned. Only in recent years have building archeology and structural-analytical architectural research been able to identify and reconstruct a sizable number of the rooms relevant for the princely dining table. The change in the daily dining ceremony was ¿rst manifested in the appearance of a new spatial constellation. Beginning in the early sixteenth century, we can identify a new type of mediumsized room, as a rule on the ¿rst upper Àoor, which was heated by a rear loader stove, but in constructional terms was not a part of the residential apartment. Although in the source texts various names, such as Essstube, Essgemach, Saalstube, Ritterstube and Tafelstube, appear, for reasons of scienti¿c operationability this room type will be designated here as a Tafelstube (dining chamber), or more precisely a Herrentafelstube (dining chamber of the lord of the castle). This designation is employed especially in the Saxon sources, utilizing which it became possible to describe this room type scienti¿cally in the 1990s for the ¿rst time by describing the then oldest example from 1533 at Torgau.12 Since then, we have been able to determine generally the earlier process in which this fundamental change in courtly life spread, even though we still remain quite far from a conclusive ¿nal description.

Early architectonic traces of the separate princely meal It is still unclear when this material process began in Central Europe and precisely where. There is now evidence that Emperor Maximilian I had such separate dining chambers, one being at the imperial hunting lodge Wellenburg near Augsburg, begun in 1507, now lost but reconstructed on paper.13 It is likely that there were other and older ones, as this castle clearly was not the center of his court life. Perhaps a Western or Burgundian inÀuence may have played a decisive role in this. A regal or imperial paradigm seems likely, given the fact that the ¿rst example of a princely dining chamber in Central Europe, still well preserved, stems from the royal sphere of a ruling king. In Prague, beginning in 1503, King Vladislaus II of Hungary and Bohemia (1456–1516) altered and expanded the slightly older festivity hall of the Prague Castle (Hradþany) by Hoppe, Funktionale und räumliche Struktur, 420–27. Nicole Riegel, Die Bautätigkeit des Kardinals Matthäus Lang von Wellenburg (1468–1540) (Münster: Rhema, 2009), ¿g. 63: “grosse stueben” (more likely the corner room on the east side), also p. 106. 12 13

308

Wining and Dining in Style

the addition of a residential wing extending far out into the valley, the Ludwig Wing (Ludvíkovo kĜídlo, LudwigsÀügel; ¿g. 2).14 At the level of the festivity hall, there was a magni¿cently appointed apartment, consisting of an antechamber, a living room (Stube) and a bedroom at the end on the valley side. Two splendid stairways led up to the next (uppermost) Àoor (¿g. 2a), where the basic area of the entire Àoor is occupied almost completely by a large stove-heated room, rising with three windowed fronts over the historical Old Town and the Lesser Town. Since the Prague palace was heavily damaged by a ¿re in 1541, it has to be investigated based on construction archeology as to whether the large room as it exists today actually stems from the ¿rst phase of construction. But if that is indeed the case, and there are many indications it is, then the typical features of a princely dining chamber have been preserved here. This includes not just the separation from the residential apartments, but also the staging of a multiple, fan-like prospect of the cultivated surroundings of a residential castle, in the ideal case in three directions (¿g. 3). The fundamental social and aesthetic prestige of such a multiplication of the view in the context of Central European court architecture was captured, for example, in an engraving in 1500 by the Munich engraver Matthäus Zasinger (¿g. 4).15 This fan-like view, along with stove heating and in part quite extravagant design, adorned with decorated vaults or paneling, was the characteristic distinctive feature of this new type of princely room (Tafelstube). It is striking that it corresponds to a passage from the villa letters of Pliny the Younger (61/62–113/115), where he describes the view from the dining hall of his Villa Laurentinum south of Ostia:

14 We do not have a current treatment of the functions of the rooms in the Prague Castle complex. The Ludwig Wing was certainly not constructed for the prince of the same name, since he was not born until 1506. Rather, the wing was probably planned as additional royal living quarters for the period when the king, who resided mainly in Hungary, came to stay in Prague. Götz Fehr, Benedikt Ried: Ein deutscher Baumeister zwischen Gotik und Renaissance in Böhmen (Munich: Callwey, 1961); Dobroslava Menclová, ýeské hrady, vol. 2, 2nd ed. (Prague: Odeon, 1976); Franz Bischoff, “Benedikt Ried: Forschungsstand und Forschungsproblematik,” in Die Länder der böhmischen Krone und ihre Nachbarn zur Zeit der Jagiellonenkönige (1471–1526): Kunst – Kultur – Geschichte, ed. Evelin Wetter (Ost¿ldern: Thorbecke, 2004), 85–98. 15 On Zasinger’s work in connection with the Munich court, see Andreas M. Dahlem, “The Wittelsbach Court in Munich: History and Authority in the Visual Arts (1460– 1508)” (PhD diss., University of Glasgow, 2009), 74, 86, 192.

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

309

Fig. 2. Prague Castle, the Ludwig Wing (1503), with the location of the former dining chamber (Tafelstube) shown on the upper Àoor (a). Photo by the author.

Facing the middle of the cloisters is a cheerful inner court, then comes a dining room running down toward the shore, which is handsome enough for anyone, and when the sea is disturbed by the southwest wind the room is just Àecked by the spray of the spent waves. There are folding doors on all sides of it, or windows that are quite as large as such doors, and so from the two sides and the front it commands a prospect, as it were, of three seas.16

We know that from the late ¿fteenth century on, Pliny’s villa letters were being read again at princely courts in the northern Alpine region. But it is not necessary to construct such a philological derivation in order to describe the intentional and ideological nexus between the architectural staging of the view and the princely understanding of the persons wining and dining in the new dining chamber of the lord of the castle (Herrentafelstube). Even more important as a factor than the aesthetic motivation based on the paradigm of the Roman imperial era was probably the striking parallel between the new Pliny the Younger, “XVII to Gallus,” in The Letters of the Younger Pliny, trans. John B. Firth (Rockville, MD: Wildside Press, 2008), 108.

16

310

Wining and Dining in Style

Fig. 3. Comparison of the angles of view from the dining chambers in Prague (1503, above) and Heidelberg (ca. 1520, below). Drawing by the author.

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

311

Fig. 4. Mathias Zasinger, Dancing Party at the Bavarian Court, 1500, copperplate.

experience of the vista afforded by the Tafelstube location with the older, daily experience of the surveillance-like overview monitoring the court, which made this architectural motif such a popular and desired feature.17 The location of the older court room (Hofstube) provided the prince with a view of his subservient court members from a slightly higher elevation. That view, along with its practical aspects, was doubtless also connected with its symbolic signi¿cance. Now in the new dining chamber (Tafelstube), once again elevated and given an enhanced, pronounced location, the view of the court members was in a sense supplanted by the possibility of a wider-angle view of an important part of the princely territory, the residential city. Less involved Stephan Hoppe, “Wie wird die Burg zum Schloss? Architektonische Innovation um 1470,” in Von der Burg zum Schloss: Landesherrlicher und adeliger Profanbau in Thüringen im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert, ed. Heiko Laß (Bucha bei Jena: QuartusVerlag, 2001), 95–116; Hoppe, “Das renaissancezeitliche Schloss und sein Umland: Der architekturgebundene Fächerblick als epochenspezi¿sche Herrschaftsgeste,” in Die Vielschichtigkeit der Strasse: Kontinuität und Wandel im Mittelalter und der frühen Neuzeit, ed. Kornelia Holzner-Tobisch, Thomas Kühtreiber, and Gertrud Blaschitz (Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2012), 303–29. 17

312

Wining and Dining in Style

here was some practical aspect of design, since it is likely that people dined in this new chamber without having a direct view from the artistically multiplied windows. But the further history of the Herrentafelstube in Central European palace construction shows that the constitutive element here was not a more panoramic vista of surrounding nature, but rather a better view in the direction of the subjects below.

The innovation is copied One of the most prominent and impressive direct appropriations of the Prague paradigm was the architecture, largely destroyed in 1689 and 1693, of the Heidelberg Castle.18 In 1509, Prince Elector Louis V (Ger. Ludwig V, r. 1508–44), from the electoral line of the house of Wittelsbach, visited Prague shortly after assuming the throne. Although there is no written evidence for a direct borrowing of constructional innovations from Prague, the construction measures introduced by Louis V in subsequent years in Heidelberg show striking structural similarities with Prague in regard to the architectonic staging of the princely dining table. Initially, around 1510/15, a new Hofstube was constructed on the ground Àoor of the “women’s wing” at the western side of the courtyard (Frauenzimmerbau), probably built as a new addition by the court architect Lorenz Lechler,19 a hall-like room with an area of approx. 580 m2.20 The platform for the electoral dining table, elevated by stairs, must have been located at the northern narrow end on the side facing the Neckar River. The special feature of this court dining hall was its architectural enrichment with bay windows on all four sides, a constructional motif for which, in this context, there are no known parallels from the Central European area. This is highly reminiscent of the bay windows on the sides of the high tables in English or Scottish palaces, such as the Great Hall (1501/4) in the royal residence in Stirling Castle. In 18 Stephan Hoppe, “Die Architektur des Heidelberger Schlosses in der ersten Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts: Neue Datierungen und Interpretationen,” in Mittelalter: Schloss Heidelberg und die Pfalzgrafschaft bei Rhein bis zur Reformationszeit; Begleitpublikation zur Dauerausstellung der Staatlichen Schlösser und Gärten Baden-Württemberg, ed. Volker Rödel, 2nd ed. (Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner, 2002), 183–90. 19 Anneliese Seeliger-Zeiss, Lorenz Lechler von Heidelberg und sein Umkreis: Studien zur Geschichte der spätgotischen Zierarchitektur und Skulptur in der Kurpfalz und in Schwaben (Heidelberg: Winter, 1967). 20 Many of the designations in Heidelberg of individual buildings stem from a later period and thus do not reÀect the original functions of these structures. They are used here for orientational purposes. The room was destroyed in 1689 and not restored to its original state, as it exists today, until the 1930s.

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

313

Heidelberg, this meant that the princely dining table was located in front of or even within the bay that opened to the north, with three sides toward the Neckar Valley. At that time, the small protruding structure was still freely situated on the facade, unlike its positioning today, and it facilitated a fan-like wide-angle view similar to that described in the Prague Ludwig Wing. Even today, the remainder of the bay windows vault evinces a special design, since the ribs were embellished with branch tracery, blossoms and bird motifs. In this embellished design, we ¿nd the bay window described by the Electoral Palatinate secretary Peter Harer in a poem in popular language composed on the occasion of the courtly wedding of Count Palatine Frederick and Dorothea of Denmark in 1535, where the architecture of the Hofstube is compared to the Holy Grail temple: There were three princely dining tables: / the most important one / was within the oriel above, / which was so artfully embellished / that I do believe, even the temple on Montsalvat / which Titurel had built / was not equal to this work: / one beholds reliefs of animals, vines and numerous ornaments, / fashioned with supreme artistry, / the vault is highly decorative in its ornamentation, / adorned with beautiful colors. / No efforts were here spared.21

It can be assumed that in constructing this particularly magni¿cent dining hall of the Heidelberg electoral court, the underlying pattern was still a common court meal, in keeping with the paradigm of the ¿fteenth century. Only a short time later, probably around 1520, this table ritual at the Heidelberg court must have undergone a fundamental change. Directly to the south of the new Hofstube, a tower-like structure was built on elaborate substructions on three sides extending out over the old building line as a whole.22 The ¿rst upper Àoor of this tower-like addition consisted almost entirely of a four-bay vaulted chamber (¿g. 5). This room was partially destroyed in 1693 by the French army. But its two completely preserved remaining external walls, and walls partially preserved on the other sides prove that there were large round-arched windows in this vaulted chamber overlooking the valley in three directions, and beneath them lay the vista of the city of Heidelberg and the Neckar River, with its important stone bridge. The fact that this impressive and signi¿cant view from the castle was blocked just a few years later is another story: following the Peasants’ War, shortly after 1525, a massive artillery wall was constructed on this side out in front. At the time of its construction, the vista from the new

German original poem cited in Marc Rosenberg, Quellen zur Geschichte des Heidelberger Schlosses (Heidelberg: Winter, 1882), 97. 22 Hoppe, “Architektur des Heidelberger Schlosses.” 21

314

Wining and Dining in Style

Fig. 5. Heidelberg Castle, ruins of the dining chamber (Tafelstube), ca. 1520. Photo by the author.

room of the Heidelberg prince elector strikingly resembled the view from the princely dining chamber in the Prague Castle complex. If the direct link here forged between Prague and Heidelberg is indeed correct, then the Palatinate Prince Elector Louis V, from the house of Wittelsbach, would have been among the very ¿rst in the empire to borrow and adapt a new imperial-regal dining table ceremony and its architectural semiotic embodiment on the next lower rank in the princely hierarchy, namely that of a prince elector (Kurfürst) of the empire, of which then there were but seven representatives. Perhaps it is signi¿cant here that the Wittelsbach house had already provided two emperors to the Reich, among whom Rupert of the Palatinate (r. 1400–10) was one of the direct ancestors of the Heidelberg builder.

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

315

Family connections as a network of cultural transfer At the present time, only architectural remnants point to this possibility. Unfortunately, the archives of the Electoral Palatinate were decimated and scattered by later historical turmoil, so that numerous details of courtly life have left no documentary trace. That is why it is important to also point out here that future observations of construction and new ¿nds in relevant source materials will doubtless provide even more precise insight into the separation of the princely dining tables. Two residential structures of other branches of the house of Wittelsbach suggest that the social contextualizing in the spheres of one of the highest-ranking families in the empire, with certain aspirations to kingship, is probably not fortuitous. In the wake of the Bavarian Landshut War of Succession (1503–5), it was decided that in future Bavaria should be ruled by only one member of the ducal line of the house of Wittelsbach, from the Munich line. This meant that the two male descendants of the Wittelsbach family branch from Lower Bavaria, defeated in the war, Otto Henry (Ger. Ottheinrich, 1502–59) and Philip (1503–48), both still minors, were to be compensated by retaining a small principality, Palatinate-Neuburg, on the Danube. Once the older of the two brothers, Count Palatine Otto Henry, reached full legal age, he began to lavishly remodel the old fortress at his residence in Neuburg an der Donau, the new capital of the principality.23 In the mid-1520s, the plan was still for a common dining table in the traditional manner in the Hofstube. The court regulations of the young count palatine stated in 1526: Sitting at table. Item: our view is that ¿rst none should take his seat himself. Rather, ¿rst our table will be seated, and then all the councilors, through the bailiff, and then afterward the nobles, the chancellery scribes and the mercenary soldiers appointed for life (Ainspennige), then our servants, then those of the Fritz Grosse, Image der Macht: Das Bild hinter den Bildern bei Ottheinrich von der Pfalz (1502–1559) (Petersberg: Imhof, 2003); Stephan Hoppe, “Antike als Maßstab: Ottheinrich als Bauherr in Neuburg und Heidelberg,” in Von Kaisers Gnaden: 500 Jahre Pfalz-Neuburg, ed. Suzanne Bäumler, Evamaria Brockhoff, and Michael Henker (Augsburg: Haus der Bayerischen Geschichte, 2005, published in conjunction with the exhibition shown in Neuburg an der Donau), 211–13; Reinhard H. Seitz, “Die Repräsentationsbauten von Pfalzgraf Ottheinrich für das Schloss zu Neuburg an der Donau und ihre Vollendung durch Pfalzgraf Wolfgang,” in Kurfürst Ottheinrich und die humanistische Kultur in der Pfalz, ed. Hans Ammerich (Speyer: Verl. der Pfälzischen Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften, 2008), 73–149. 23

316

Wining and Dining in Style

Fig. 6. Neuburg an der Donau Castle, reconstruction of the original ground plan of ca. 1560. Drawing by the author.

majordomo, those of the councilors and, last of all, other servants and menials . . . with some eight persons to be seated at each table.24

A new architectonic framework had to be created in order to depart from this common court dining arrangement and to provide the prince with new prestige by distinction. Between 1534 and 1538, a compact, three-story structure was built above the gate to the Danube, on the northern side of the palace courtyard, with a bath on the ground Àoor, residential apartments on the upper Àoors and a roof garden as its most spectacular embellishing detail (¿g. 6). The form of this garden clearly alluded to contemporary conceptions of imperial classical architecture, such as the Palatine Hill. At the time of the construction of his new wing, Otto Henry had not only visited the palace of his relatives in Heidelberg but had also traveled to Spain, Burgundy, the Netherlands, northern Italy and the Holy Land. He was thus well acquainted ¿rst-hand with the European and neighboring cultures of the nobility. “Hofordnung des Pfalzgrafen Ottheinrich (1526),” in Deutsche Hofordnungen des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts, ed. Arthur Kern, 2 vols. (Berlin: Weidmann, 1905–7), 2:162–84, here 168.

24

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

317

Fig. 7. Neuburg an der Donau Castle, the dining chamber (Tafelstube), 1534–38. Photo by the author. The new Neuburg wing from the 1530s with the hanging garden also provided two of the new dining chambers, one over the other, presumably intended for Otto Henry (¿g. 6a) and the princely household of his spouse Susanna, from the Munich line of the house of Wittelsbach. The lower Tafelstube for the count palatine is still well-preserved, in a state virtually identical to that in the sixteenth century (¿g. 7). Even now, the Neuburg north wing is strangely separated in the palace grounds. Connected only at two corners to the neighboring wings, it stands free, with all four facades, three of which point away from the palace. Originally, there were also two bay windows on the narrow sides; these repeated recursively on a small scale the three-sided free positioning of the structure. A room like the new Tafelstube of Otto Henry thus possessed three main sides with windows and three additional secondary windowed walls in the bay window, opening out toward the upper part of the city. Today, even after a later alteration, one can still experience, in particular, the view afforded by the central window of the oriel down into the streets below. Here too, the view from the new princely dining chamber, in a visual gesture of sovereign rule, looks out directly over the lifeline of the city, beneath the palace.

318

Wining and Dining in Style

There were two additional early Wittelsbach princely dining chambers: one is the still completely preserved dining facility on the ¿rst upper Àoor of the Grünau hunting lodge (Jagdschloss), which Count Palatine Otto Henry had constructed in 1530 some ¿ve kilometers from his residential palace in Neuburg an der Donau.25 A second is the long gone dining chamber constructed around 1540 by the Wittelsbach ducal line in the Neuveste palace in Munich (the predecessor of the present-day residence).26 It was built on an older artillery bastion upon a horseshoe-shaped foundation, extending out on several sides on the eastern side of the palace into the fortress moat. It offered a typical set of fan-like views into the Renaissance garden on the external side of the moat, with its famous pleasure pavilion.27 The structure has long since vanished, but its architectural features suggest an interpretation as a princely dining chamber along the lines we have reconstructed elsewhere.

Additional German courts follow suit These new types of dining chambers were also constructed at that time at other German courts. When the Elector of Saxony, John Frederick (the Magnanimous, 1503–54), a supporter of Luther and one of the leaders of the Protestant estates of the empire, began construction in 1533 of a new representative wing on the eastern side of his residential palace in Torgau on the Elbe River, the Hartenfels Castle, its ¿rst upper Àoor also contained a dining chamber with now familiar features (¿g. 8). The Torgau Tafelstube was a room of approx. 13.5 x 11 m with an unsupported Àat ceiling. It was generously illuminated on three sides by windows, and also possessed a rounded oriel window on the edge facing the Elbe River and the electorial bridge there (¿g. 8a). An inventory of the palace from 1610 describes the interior furnishings of this dining chamber, a substantial proportion of which probably still reÀected the original construction, and also precisely reÀected the function of this room: Uwe Albrecht, “Princes et bourgeois à la campagne dans l’Allemagne du Sud: Les cas de Grünau et de Nuremberg,” in Maisons des champs dans l’Europe de la Renaissance, ed. Monique Chatenet (Paris: Picard, 2006), 181–90; Sigrid Gensichen “Le château de chasse de Grünau en Bavière,” in Chasses princières dans l’Europe de la Renaissance, ed. Claude d’Anthenaise (Arles: Actes Sud, 2007), 327–42. 26 Otto Meitinger, Die baugeschichtliche Entwicklung der Neuveste: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Münchener Residenz (Munich: Verl. des Historischen Vereins von Oberbayern, 1970). 27 Adrian von Buttlar and Traudl Bierler-Rolly, eds., Der Münchner Hofgarten: Beiträge zur Spurensicherung (Munich: Süddeutscher Verlag, 1988). 25

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

319

Fig. 8. Torgau, Hartenfels Castle, reconstruction of the functional room structure of ca. 1547: the ground Àoor (Erdgeschoß) and the upper Àoors (Obergeschoß). Drawing by the author. At the entrance of the room: A door enclosed with molding, One high, massive iron stove with iron-colored tiling on a pedestal made of stone with four sculpted pillars, All around benches attached to the wall (with a bar out in front), One longer and one shorter table made of pine on their stands (= trestles on which the table plates are placed), Three tables, one painted in green, Two benches for sitting, and two benches with armrests, 16 high windows with glass panes, 32 window shutters (with rings and crowns = hinges) and 20 shelves,

320

Wining and Dining in Style Eight large and small oil paintings by Lucas Cranach the Elder; in the ¿rst portrait, Prince Elector John Frederick with electoral sword and rounded frame, and in the second, Lucretia; the third is a portrait of the brother of Elector John Frederick, the fourth is a Madonna with Child, the ¿fth shows the raising of Lazarus, the sixth a “Gospel story” (John described in the 8th), and pictures 7 and 8 show Adam and Eve, where both can be folded together; all the frames of these pictures are gilded; Four water colors on linen, the ¿rst two have portraits of prince electors, the third is a portrait of the pope and the fourth depicts the ascension of Christ. One wooden Àoor; the wooden ceiling of the room (inserted) is embellished with gilded molding and carved rosettes, on the protruding stones jutting out there are carved angels (putti), and everything is also “beautifully painted.” The bay window is vaulted and decorated with protruding cornices, in blue and gold, and embellished with golden rosettes (inv. 1610).28

In 1548, John Frederick was forced to relinquish the Torgau palace to his cousin Maurice of Saxony, ruling in Dresden and the new prince elector, so that one can assume that the court regulations for this room already mentioned also corresponded to the situation in the Dresden palace. There, in the extensive remodeling from 1548, there were also plans for a dining chamber, presumably in one of the large corner rooms on the ¿rst or second upper Àoor, at the northern end of the western wing adjacent to the palace chapel, which had two windowed walls and a corner oriel.29 In Torgau, Prince Elector John Frederick had arranged for the construction of a further princely dining chamber in 1544, on the second upper Àoor of the then newly constructed “bottle tower,” the “bottle chamber” (Flaschenstube).30 This was a room with a circular foundation plan and an inside diameter of some eleven meters (¿g. 8b). It was illuminated over a bit more than half of its interior by four double windows, which provided a broad panoramic view of the surroundings of the palace. In contrast with the older Àat-ceiling rooms, and almost all other palace rooms, the dining chamber in the tower had an elaborate rib-vault ceiling. A special functional feature of this dining chamber was the bottle elevator in the center of the round tower, today destroyed, which had given the room and its tower their name. Using this elevator contraption, one could send bottles of wine directly up from the cellar, wining and dining in style, so that servants were not necessary. Inventory of the Torgau Castle, 1610, Sächsisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Dresden, Rep. A 25 a I, I, Nr. 2343; see Hoppe, Funktionale und räumliche Struktur, 171–72. 29 Hoppe, Funktionale und räumliche Struktur, 424–25. 30 Ibid., 211–12. 28

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

321

Dining chambers can also be identi¿ed in other German regions in the second half of the sixteenth century. Thus, on the ¿rst upper Àoor of the Türnitz Wing in the residential palace in Stuttgart, remodeled beginning in 1553, on the western side next to the ducal apartment there was a “knight’s room,” i.e. a dining chamber, measuring approx. 7 x 8 m. In the Güstrow residential palace of the Mecklenburg dukes, remodeled after 1558, there was a corner room originally approx. 11 x 11.5 m, with two windowed walls facing the town and the garden.31 As the use of separate princely dining chambers, in addition to the traditional Hofstube, became ever more common over the course of the sixteenth century, rooms that had also been laid out originally as a public part of a residential apartment comprising several rooms were restructured as dining chambers or Tafelstuben, pure and simple. As a consequence, the associated bedrooms lost their function or could now only be used as subordinate individual sleeping quarters. At the latest in 1536/39, for example, the room in Wittenberg on the ¿rst upper Àoor of the Electoral Saxon palace, conceived in 1489 as part of a residential apartment with large windows on three sides and decorated with rich carvings (Geschnitzte Stube), was now used secondarily as a Tafelstube.32 Another such dining facility had been set up in a former sitting room on the second upper Àoor for the meals of the governing successor. We also have evidence that in the Albrechtsburg Castle above Meissen an inventory from 1566 substantiates that the former large sitting room was converted, along with the Hofstube with its windows on three sides, to a dining chamber.33 We cannot de¿nitely establish that there was a similar process underway in the hunting lodge and early form of a villa of Prince Elector Frederick III the Wise (1463–1525) near Torgau in Lochau. In any event, in 1546 the administrator 31 Stephan Hoppe, “Die ursprüngliche Raumorganisation des Güstrower Schlosses und ihr Verhältnis zum mitteldeutschen Schloßbau: Zugleich Beobachtungen zum ‘Historismus’ und zur ‘Erinnerungskultur’ im 16. Jahrhundert,” in Forschungen zu Burgen und Schlössern, vol. 5, Burgen und frühe Schlösser in Thüringen und seinen Nachbarländern, ed. G. Ulrich Großmann (Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2000), 129–48; Carsten Neumann, Die Renaissancekunst am Hofe Ulrichs zu Mecklenburg (Kiel: Ludwig, 2009); Kornelia von Berswordt-Wallrabe, Kristina Hegner, and Regina Erbentraut, eds., Schloss Güstrow: Prestige und Kunst 1556–1636 (Schwerin: Staatliches Museum, 2006, published in conjunction with the exhibition shown at the Schloss Güstrow). 32 Hoppe, Funktionale und räumliche Struktur, 92–94; Anke Neugebauer, “Wohnen im Wittenberger Schloss: Zur Nutzung und Ausstattung der fürstlichen Gemächer, Stuben und Kammern,” in Das ernestinische Wittenberg: Stadt und Bewohner, ed. Heiner Lück et al. (Petersberg: Imhof, 2013), 315–34. 33 Hoppe, Funktionale und räumliche Struktur, 57.

322

Wining and Dining in Style

there mentioned in a letter “the stove in His Electoral Majesty’s dining room,”34 so that here too we have evidence of the use of a room as a Tafelstube. Thus, in the second half of the sixteenth century at the latest, according to the cited examples and written sources, a Tafelstube or dining chamber, in addition to the traditional Hofstube, was part of the indispensable inventory of a larger princely palace. Quite naturally, the size and details of the furnishings and interior appointment varied, while the stove, essential to the Stube by de¿nition, was standard. In addition, in the case of many of these princely dining chambers, even in those created later on, one can discern the intention of furnishing them with a prominent visible location within the palace complex. Many of the rooms mentioned above were illuminated naturally through several windowed walls, and at the same time offered a fan-like view of the surroundings of the palace, sometimes further heightened by oriels and bay windows. Even the secondary large Wittenberg dining chamber, as well as the secondary Meissen dining chamber, had similar more prominent locations than the rooms designed from the beginning as more customary Tafelstuben. Evidently these details were of great importance even in the subsequent conversion of room use.

Conclusion Hopefully, the descriptions here, although they are necessarily selective, have succeeded in showing that the development sketched here can only be seen as a signi¿cant process of ritual changes if viewed as a combination of various source genres mutually supplementing one another. Although individual passages in the court regulations substantiate that, beginning in the early sixteenth century, various different rooms were available for the partaking of court meals, based solely on this textual evidence, it would not have been possible to investigate what concrete architectonic framework these rooms formed, what their size and location were, and what constructional appointments and furnishings they possessed. On the other hand, without utilizing documentary sources, the preserved constructional remnants alone would hardly have been able to enlighten us as to how the rooms were integrated into the functional structure of daily life at court. 34 Letter of the steward in Lochau Jheremias Lachnicht to Prince Elector John Frederick, 1546, Thüringisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar, Ernestinisches Gesamtarchiv, Reg. S, fols. 4–7, Nr. 11, fol. 40. On the Lochau lodge, see also Stephan Hoppe, “Anatomy of an Early ‘Villa’ in Central Europe: The Schloss and Garden of the Saxon Elector Frederick the Wise in Lochau (Annaburg) according to the 1519 Report of Hans Herzheimer,” in Chatenet, Maisons des champs, 159–70.

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

323

Moreover, a holistic view is also necessary in order to best discern the spectacular staging of a speci¿c category of splendid views and prospects, and the virtual canonical attention afforded this detail in designing princely dining chambers in Central Europe. We cannot provide a ¿nal and conclusive picture here of the phenomenon of princely dining facilities in the Renaissance. Nonetheless, perhaps it is possible that the knowledge available today will prove useful in assisting us to further interpret constructional observations and text passages more comprehensively. The phenomena described here can be classi¿ed under two developments in courtly architecture across Europe and their utilization schemes. There was an ever intensifying progressive process of differentiation of the functional structures of a princely palace or castle. This involved the royal living room and bedroom (Kammer, chambre, camera), to which wardrobe compartments and study rooms (estude, studiolo, Schreibstube) were attached in the course of the later medieval period, and the technical innovation of the Stube as a living room was added in the colder climate prevailing in Central Europe. In the midsixteenth century, this was supplemented by the antechamber used in reception ceremonies. This process of differentiation can likewise be discerned in connection with the utility areas, when for example a main kitchen was supplanted by an array of separate kitchen utility areas for the regent, the nobility and the lower-ranking members of the court. As in the case of numerous phenomena, this process unfolded at differing rates of change in various different cultural circles and social niveaus within royal court households and, for this reason, it would be instructive to make a comparative study of these developments on the basis of a large number of individual observations. In addition, it is important to note here the increasing visual integration of a royal palace into its topographical surroundings. While into the sixteenth century the predominant elements in creating a meaningful linkage were in the main differing architectonically staged relations between views and vistas from the royal rooms out into the surrounding natural and man-made environment (gardens, cities and rivers), this function was increasingly taken over later on by geometric features of the ground plan, such as path axes, garden geometries, aisles and canals. In the early sixteenth century, the examples mentioned from Prague, Heidelberg and Neuburg evince a pleasure in experimentation within the dynamic interaction between innovative ritual use and architectonic staging, although this soon faded once again into oblivion as a result of the more recent geometric planning methods employed.

CONTRIBUTORS Jürgen Beyer is Senior Research Fellow at the Tartu University Library. He has published widely on the cultural history of early modern Lutheranism, including the history of church furnishings and donations. E-mail and webpage: [email protected], http://www.ut.ee/~jbeyer Nico Hijman is a well-known restorer of old furniture and other wooden objects. Over the years he has received major commissions from the boards of important castles, churches and museums in the Netherlands. He has also worked for the Royal Palace in Amsterdam (Paleis op de Dam). E-mail: [email protected], [email protected] Stephan Hoppe is Professor of Art History at the Ludwigs-MaximiliansUniversität in Munich. He is a co-editor of several volumes dedicated to the Northern Renaissance, e.g. Stil als Bedeutung (Regensburg 2008), and has published a textbook on Baroque architecture and town planning. His main ¿elds of interest are the architecture and court culture of Central Europe in the early modern period. He is currently working on architectural representations, such as drawings, town plans, scale models and digital visualisations. A special focus of Hoppe’s is the interaction between architecture and the pictorial arts. In 2009 he co-founded the private eHumanities think tank and the agency pausanio.com, and he is an expert on Digital Art History. He is a board member of the research project “Residenzstädte im Alten Reich (1300–1800)” at the Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen. E-mail and webpage: [email protected], http://stephan-hoppe.de Emilia Jamroziak is Senior Lecturer in Medieval History in the School of History, University of Leeds. She is the author of three monographs on various aspects of Cistercian studies and two collected volumes on the relationship between monasticism and the wider world. Her research focuses on British and European religious history between the twelfth and early sixteenth centuries and her current project addresses the role of the cult of saints in late-medieval Cistercian communities. E-mail: [email protected]

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

325

Gerhard Jaritz is Professor of Medieval Studies at the Central European University in Budapest and Senior Research Fellow at the Institut für Realienkunde des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit, Krems, University of Salzburg. Since 2006 he has been a co-director of the M(edieval) A(nimal) D(ata Network) project at the Central European University, and since 2010 he has been a principal investigator in the EuroCORECODE/CULTSYMBOLS project of the European Science Foundation. He has published extensively on the visual culture, daily life and material culture of the late Middle Ages. In recent years he has edited: Ritual, Images, and Daily Life: The Medieval Perspective (Berlin, 2012), Angels, Devils: The Supernatural and Its Visual Representation (Budapest, 2011), Violence and the Medieval Clergy, with Ana Marinkovic (Budapest, 2011), and Isolated Islands in Medieval Nature, Culture and Mind, with Torstein Jørgensen (Budapest, 2011). E-mail: [email protected], [email protected] Birgitte Bøggild Johannsen is an editor at the corpus Danmarks Kirker (Danish Churches), published by the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen. She is the author of several monographs on Danish churches, as well as monographs and articles in periodicals, conference publications, anthologies and encyclopedias, Danish and international, on late medieval and early modern memorial culture, Protestant art and architecture, court history and rituals of power. She is a member of the research or steering committees of Medieval Memoria Online (MeMo) (http://memo.hum.uu.nl), Mémoire monarchique et construction de l’Europe (http://chateauversailles-recherche.fr/français/ recherche-et-formation) and PALATIUM. Court Residences as Places of Exchange in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, 1400–1700 (www. courtresidences.eu). E-mail and webpage: [email protected], http://danmarkskirker. natmus.dk/ Hugo Johannsen is an editor at the corpus Danmarks Kirker (Danish Churches), published by the National Museum of Denmark. His main research interests are medieval and early modern art and architecture. For a bibliography, see Masters, Meanings & Models. Studies in the Art and Architecture of the Renaissance in Denmark (National Museum of Denmark 2010). E-mail: [email protected]

326

Contributors

Martin Wangsgaard Jürgensen is an editor at the corpus Danmarks Kirker (Danish Churches), based at the National Museum of Denmark. He has published on medieval and early modern church furnishings, saints’ cults and public devotion. The volume Changing Interiors: Danish village churches c. 1450 to 1600 will be published by Brepols in the autumn of 2013. He is currently working on a survey of medieval Danish shrines and their role in pilgrimage and devotion. E-mail: [email protected] Krista Kodres is Professor at the Institute of Art History of the Estonian Academy of the Arts and Senior Researcher at the Institute of History of Tallinn University. She has published widely on Early Modern art and architecture in Estonia and in the Baltic region. Her monograph Presenting Oneself. Architecture, Décor and Furnishings of Dwelling Houses in Early Modern Reval/ Tallinn will be published in 2013. Her research interests include the theory and methodology of art history. She is editor-in-chief of the ongoing project of the six-volume History of Estonian Art. E-mail: [email protected] Anu Mänd is Senior Researcher at the Institute of History of Tallinn University. She has published several monographs, including Urban Carnival: Festive Culture in the Hanseatic Cities of the Eastern Baltic, 1350–1550 (Brepols, 2005), based on her Ph.D. thesis. Recently she edited Art, Cult and Patronage: Die visuelle Kultur im Ostseeraum zu Zeit Bernt Notkes, with Uwe Albrecht (2013). Sincehas been aHer main research interests are the social and cultural history of medieval Livonian towns. She is currently working on guilds, gender and memoria. E-mail: [email protected] Kersti Markus is Associate Professor of Art History at the Institute of History of Tallinn University. She has published widely on medieval church architecture, including Från Gotland till Estland. Kyrkokonst och politik under 1200-talet (1999), based on her Ph.D. thesis. Her main research interests are the medieval visual culture and politics of Scandinavia and Estonia. She is currently working on Romanesque sculpture in Scania (Sweden), on Birgittine art, and on the impact of the crusades on Gotlandic and Livonian architecture. E-mail: [email protected]

Images and Objects in Ritual Practices

327

Giedrơ Micknjnaitơ is Associate Professor at the Department of Art History and Theory of the Vilnius Academy of Arts. Her research and publications, including Making a Great Ruler: Grand Duke Vytautas of Lithuania (Budapest, 2006), inquire into the relationship of textual, pictorial and mental imagery in the late medieval and early modern periods. Currently, she is working on the project “Maniera Graeca in Europe’s Catholic East”, on the import and reception of Byzantine and pseudo-Byzantine images. E-mail: [email protected] Ruth-Elisabeth Mohrmann is Professor Emeritus of Ethnology at the Institute of European Ethnology at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster. She has published and edited several books and articles. Her main research interests are the history of daily life, material culture, social and cultural history in the early modern times, and visual culture. E-mail: [email protected] Aivar Põldvee is Senior Researcher at the Institute of History of Tallinn University and at the Institute of the Estonian Language, Tallinn. His main research interests are the early modern history of Estonian culture, education and language. His Ph.D. thesis (2010) was on Bengt Gottfried Forselius, a reformer of the Estonian written language and the author of an innovative ABC-book. He is currently working on interdisciplinary research on the roots of Estonian culture in the seventeenth century. E-mail: [email protected] Juliette Roding is Lecturer in Art and Architectural History at Leiden University. Her research focuses on the cultural interactions between the Netherlands and the North Sea and Baltic Sea areas in the period 1550–1800. Her publications include Christiaan IV van Denemarken (1588–1648). Architectuur en stedenbouw van een Luthers vorst (1991, dissertation), The North Sea and Culture (1550–1800) (co-editor, Verloren, 1996) and Pieter Isaacsz (1568–1625). Court Painter, Art Dealer and Spy (co-editor, Brepols, 2007). At present, she is preparing, with an international group of researchers, a publication on the Dutch-Danish court painter Karel van Mander III (1609–1670). E-mail: [email protected]

328

Contributors

Andrew Spicer is Professor of Early Modern European History at Oxford Brookes University. He co-edited Society and Culture in the Huguenot World (2002), Sacred Space in Early Modern Europe (2005), De¿ning the Holy. Sacred Space in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (2005), Public Opinion and Changing Identities in the Early Modern Netherlands (2007), and Ritual and Violence. Natalie Zemon Davis and Early Modern France (2012), edited Lutheran Churches in Early Modern Europe (2012) and is the author of Calvinist Churches in Early Modern Europe (2007) and ConÀict and the Religious Landscape. Cambrai and the Southern Netherlands, c. 1566–1621 (Brill, forthcoming). E-mail: [email protected] Stina Fallberg Sundmark, Dr. Theol. and MA in art history, is a researcher at the Faculty of Theology, Uppsala University. In 2008 she defended her doctoral thesis Sjukbesök och dödsberedelse. Sockenbudet i svensk medeltida och reformatorisk tradition (English summary: “The Visitation of the Sick in Swedish Medieval and Reformation Traditions”). In an ongoing research project, she is investigating the handbook Summula from the early fourteenth century, which contains instructions for parish priests and their duties and way of living. She also works on the function and meaning of medieval ecclesiastical art. E-mail: [email protected]