Traditio legis

As large cities claimed apostolic founding of their churches, the Roman church declared that it was constituted on the "double apostolate" of Peter and PauL The concordia apostolontm which results from the final agreement between the "former rivals" in this city is also seen as the foundation of the Roman church. The term concordia apostolornm term has been applied to at least two image types which show the two apostles together. I propose that this name is more appropriate as a title for the well known Roman apse image of Christ flanked by the apostle princes than the traditional traditio legis, since the concordia and the double apostolate are concepts which relate the church to the city of Rome. Hence, the scheme with the two apostles which decorates so many Roman apses from Late Antiquity until the age of Paschal I can be seen as an emblem precisely of the
Roman church.

Taking its departure in a silver reliquary in Thessaloniki from c. 400 A.D. and from the small apse mosaics in S. Costanza in Rome, this article attempts a reevaluation of the iconography of the motif called "tradtitio legis".
Another question up for reassessment is the one about the alleged motif in the Constantinian basilica of Old St. Peter's in Rome. Here it is maintained that the various attempts by e.g. Schumacher to assign the motif to this prominent place are curbed by the uncertainty of the evidence.

C et ouvrage collectif examine les relations entre la réforme dite « grégorienne », mise en oeuvre par le pape Grégoire VII (1073-1085), et la production artistique contemporaine, en France et dans la péninsule Ibérique. Depuis plusieurs années se pose la question d'un lien entre, d'un côté, l'apparition d'images et de formes architecturales nouvelles dans la seconde moitié du xi e siècle, et de l'autre le processus de réforme initié par l'Église. Dès le milieu du xi e siècle, celle-ci impose en effet à son institution une réforme morale et structurelle qui modifie en profondeur et de manière permanente les dynamiques à l'oeuvre dans la chrétienté. Si les exigences de la réforme grégorienne impliquent une modification des rapports entre l'institution ecclésiale et les puissances politiques, l'existence de liens entre les évolutions politiques et théologiques et la production figurée et architecturale est indéniable. Les auteurs examinent ainsi la question de l'art monumental roman et son lien avec la réforme grégorienne, au sein du réseau clunisien comme dans les royaumes de la péninsule Ibérique, l'émergence de nouveaux modes de figuration dans l'art espagnol et français au tournant du xii e siècle, le renouveau paléochrétien dans un esprit de retour aux temps apostoliques ou encore l'exaltation des vies de saints. Ils invitent cependant à se garder d'une interprétation trop « mécanique » des phénomènes artistiques de l'époque et offrent un portrait nuancé des relations entre le mouvement historique réformateur et ses expressions artistiques.

In a description of a trip through the Midi of France in 1835, Prosper Merimée devotes a lengthy paragraph to the analysis of the Christ in Vézelay's Pentecost tympanum (fig. 1). He marvels at the carving of the figure's feet and “blessing” hands, as well as the placement of the thighs in relation to the torso. Later in his treatment of the abbey church and its sculpture, the author notes that figures on the nave capitals convey a “savage zeal” (zèle farouche) by means of posture and facial expressions. Gestures, in the widely construed, medieval sense of the word, clearly struck the celebrated French author as a salient feature of Vézelay's sculpture. Merimée sympathized with Romantic visions of the Middle Ages as a period less tainted by the stifling effects of civilization, and perhaps his fascination with the dramatic body movement carved throughout the abbey church reflects the belief that these were unfettered by the artistic or social constraints of the early nine...

Da più di millecinquecento anni, lo sguardo di un viso si perde nell’azzurro stellato della cella nord dell’Ipogeo di s. Maria in Stelle. Di quell’immagine, oggi, non rimane poi molto: un brano di viso, un piede su di un elemento di supporto: non di più. Chi è quell’uomo?
Questo breve articolo cerca, a fronte dei dati disponibili, di restringere il campo e stabilire una possibile collocazione della committenza dell'ultima fase di costruzione e decorazione mosaicale e pittorica dell'Ipogeo di Santa Maria in Stelle, un tempo conosciuto come Pantheon.
Questo articolo è stato pubblicato su I Quaderni della Dorsale 2, Verona ottobre 2020. Edizioni QuiEdit, ISBN 9788864646008.

As large cities claimed apostolic founding of their churches, the Roman church declared that it was constituted on the “double apostolate” of Peter and Paul. The concordia apostolorum which results from the final agreement between the “former rivals” in this city is also seen as the foundation of the Roman church. The term concordia apostolorum has been applied to at least two image types which show the two apostles together. I propose that this name is more appropriate as a title for the well known Roman apse image of Christ flanked by the apostle princes than the traditional traditio legis, since the concordia and the double apostolate are concepts which relate the church to the city of Rome. Hence, the scheme with the two apostles which decorates so many Roman apses from Late Antiquity until the age of Paschal I can be seen as an emblem precisely of the Roman church.

Da più di millecinquecento anni, lo sguardo di un viso si perde nell’azzurro stellato della cella nord dell’Ipogeo di s. Maria in Stelle. Di quell’immagine, oggi, non rimane poi molto: un brano di viso, un piede su di un elemento di supporto: non di più. Chi è quell’uomo?
Questo breve articolo cerca, a fronte dei dati disponibili, di restringere il campo e stabilire una possibile collocazione della committenza dell'ultima fase di costruzione e decorazione mosaicale e pittorica dell'Ipogeo di Santa Maria in Stelle, un tempo conosciuto come Pantheon.
Questo articolo è stato pubblicato su I Quaderni della Dorsale 2, Verona ottobre 2020. Edizioni QuiEdit, ISBN 9788864646008.

Studies about Christian perceptions of Islam and other non-Christian cultures in the Middle Ages in recent years have tended to focus on individual authors and their works. New research in the field of manuscript philology, particularly its focus on the idea of the “whole book,” however, suggests some new interpretive vistas that can sharpen our understanding of how medieval readers engaged with, and responded to, texts about the non-Christian Other. This article takes as its subject a twelfth-century miscellany manuscript from the Westfalian monastery of Grafschaft that constitutes a remarkable dossier of hagiographical and exegetical texts relating to Muslims, pagans, and holy war. This codex, Darmstadt Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek, Cod. 749, offers a window onto how works dealing with these subjects were read not only on their own terms, but in dynamic relationship to one another. Focusing on the associative resonances between the different works in a single manuscript allo...

Manuscripts cited:
Eton, Eton College Library MS 96
Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, MS Orientale n. 387
Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, SP II 64
New York, The Pierpont Morgan Library, MS M.268
Oxford, Bodleian Library, Selden Supra 38
Paris, Bibliotheque de l'Arsenal, MS 5070
Paris, BNF, fr. 922
Paris, BNF, lat. 2688
Paris, BNF, lat. 11867
Vatican City, BAV, Ms lat. 4578

... On Abelard's influence, see DE Luscombe, The School of Peter Lombard: The Influence ofAbelard's Thought in the Early Scholastic Period (Cambridge, 1969). 6Paul Fournier and Gabriel Le Bras, Histoire des collections canoniques en Occident depuis ...

The mysteries and challenges presented by the Latin poem known as De Sodoma are many and varied. The identity of its author will likely never be known. Date and place of composition can only be expressed in terms of probabilities, and portions of the poem are extremely difficult to read and interpret. I am currently involved in the preparation of a critical edition, with translation and commentary, of both De Sodoma and its shorter, perhaps superior companion-piece De Iona, in the hope that this might pave the way for easier reading. In the present discussion I also address problems of readability, returning to that aspect of the poem which first attracted my attention and which, on balance, seems to offer the greatest help comprehending it: its relation to Ovid's Metamorphoses. While the poet of De Sodoma makes explicit and dramatic reference to the tale of Phaethon as told by Ovid, Ovid's text functions at a yet more basic level. In my view, the defining characteristic of ...

The article regards the prefaces to the first humanist translations of Greek physicians printed from 1480 to 1524. They contain information on the environment in which the translations were undertaken, their dates and sources, on lost or unknown material, and, in general, on the circulation of ancient Greek medical texts during that period, as well as on reflections of the humanist physicians on the problems they encountered in the process of translating, problems concerning style, terminology, emendation. The article points out these precious and rare philological remarks.