Romanesque and the Past: Retrospection in the Art and Architecture of Romanesque Europe

The nineteen papers collected in this volume explore a notable phenomenon, that of retrospection in the art and architecture of Romanesque Europe. They arise from a conference organised by the British Archaeological Association in 2010, and reflect its interest in how and why the past manifested itself in the visual culture of the 11th and 12th centuries. This took many forms, from the casual reuse of ancient material to a specific desire to re-present or emulate earlier objects and buildings. Central to it is a concern for the revival of Roman and early medieval forms, spolia, selective quotation, archaism and the construction of histories.

 

The individual essays cover a wide range of topics and media: the significance of consecration ceremonies in the creation of architectural memory, the rise of pictorial concepts in 12th-century chronicles, the creation of history in the Paris of Hugh of St-Victor, and the appeal of the works of Bernward of Hildesheim and of Hrabanus Maurus in the centuries after their deaths. There are studies of buildings and the ideological purpose behind them at Tarragona, Ripoll, Cluny, Pannonhalma (Hungary), La Roccelletta (Calabria), and Old St Peter’s, comparative studies of Trier, Villenauxe and Glastonbury, and of Bury St Edmunds, Rievaulx and Canterbury, and wide-ranging papers on the tantalising evidence for an engagement with an overseas past in Ireland, an Anglo-Saxon past in England, and a Milanese past among the aisleless cruciform churches of Augustinian Europe. The volume concludes with an assessment of the very concept of Romanesque.

CONTENTS

 

INTRODUCTION

 Veteres statuas emit Rome: Romanesque Attitudes to the Past

GERHARD LUTZ Memorising Bernward of Hildesheim in the 12th Century. A Contribution to High Medieval Imitatio

LUCY DONKIN Making an Impression: Consecration and the Creation of Architectural Memory

RICHARD GEM St Peter’s basilica in Rome c.1024-1159: A Model for Emulation?

KAI KAPPEL Architecture as a Visual Memento? La Roccelletta in Calabria

JILL FRANKLIN Iconic Architecture and the Medieval Reformation: Ambrose of Milan, Peter Damian, Stephen Harding and the Aisleless Cruciform Church

CLAUDE ANDRAULT-SCHMITT Archaism or Singularity: The Nave Clerestory in Romanesque Architecture between the Loire and Dordogne

NEIL STRATFORD Cluny and the Past

MANUEL CASTINEIRAS The Portal at Ripoll Revisited: An Honorary Arch for the Ancestors

ELIZABETH VALDEZ DEL ALAMO  Tarragona: Lieu de mémoire

ROGER STALLEY On the Edge of the World: Hiberno-Romanesque and the Classical Tradition

BELA SZOLST SZAKACS The Reconstruction of Pannonhalma: Archaism in 13th-Century Hungary

DEBORAH KAHN Uses of the Past in English Romanesque Sculpture: Beyond the Antique

PETER FERGUSSON Three Romanesque Patrons and their Interest in History: Anselm of Bury, Ailred of Rievaulx, Wibert of Canterbury

STEPHAN ALBRECHT Artistic Strategies for Institutional Memory: Trier, Villenauxe, Glastonbury

BEATRICE KITZINGER From Hrabanus Maurus to Regensburg: Romanesque Praise for the Holy Cross

ANDREA WORM Visualising History: The Rise of Pictorial Concepts in Twelfth-Century Chronicles

CONRAD RUDOLPH Time, Place and the Construction of History in Early Twelfth-Century Paris

ERIC FERNIE The Concept of the Romanesque