Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction
1 Staging the Logos: The Ambo in the Medieval Mediterranean
2 Unfurling the Logos: The Exultet Rolls of South Italy
3 Liturgical Change and the Double Stage
4 Trees of Light: Exegesis and Liturgy in the Context of the Easter Candlestick
5 Allegory and Remembrance: Lay Patronage in the Angevin Kingdom
6 The Saint and His City: Hagiography, Relics, and the Panels of Santa Restituta in Naples
Epilogue: Imitatio Christi and Civic Identity in Angevin Gaeta
Appendixes
Iconographic Indexes
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Nino Zchomelidse is Assistant Professor of Art History at Johns Hopkins University.
“This remarkable book transforms our understanding of the meaning
and function of the liturgical art of Italy: the pulpits and ambos,
monumental sculpted candlesticks, pavements, and chancel screens
that are among the greatest masterpieces of medieval sculpture.
Nino Zchomelidse’s volume is the first coherent explanation of how
these liturgical objects articulated the dynamic role of liturgical
theater to further the goals of the Gregorian reform. Indeed, this
ecclesiastical furniture reconfigured religious ritual in both
horizontal and vertical space within the medieval church, enhancing
vision, drama, and the visual experience of the laity. Created by
some of the greatest sculptors of the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries, these liturgical objects were initially commissioned by
bishops and the upper clergy, who were often buried adjacent to
them; by the mid-thirteenth century, however, they were
appropriated by members of the patrician elite as affirmations of
local pride and multigenerational family commemoration. Zchomelidse
is the first scholar to fully utilize the visual and textual
evidence of the Exultet rolls to explicate medieval ritual within
church interiors prior to the Council of Trent. Her deeply learned
and insightful interpretation is a milestone for scholarship on the
dynamic roles of art, ritual, theatrical presentation, and
patronage in central and south Italy.”—Caroline Bruzelius,Duke
University
“Art, Ritual, and Civic Identity in Medieval Southern Italy offers
a rich analysis of the roles that pulpits, candlesticks, and other
fixtures played in preaching and liturgical performance. Examining
local and continuously changing practices, multiple uses of single
monuments, music, burial customs, iconography, the relation of
words to images, church reform, the meaning of unfolding, the
significance of darkness (and light), and myriad other issues that
enliven the appreciation of specific works, the book provides a
subtle overall account of how design and decoration not only framed
but also fashioned the real activities that took place in medieval
churches.”—Herbert L. Kessler,Johns Hopkins University
“What were the conceptual relationships between liturgical
manuscripts and church furnishings during the Middle Ages, and how
were those relationships enacted and understood during liturgical
performances? Nino Zchomelidse’s learned and highly
interdisciplinary study of three centuries of medieval art in
turbulent southern Italy provides complex and compelling answers to
such critical questions. This well-researched and beautifully
produced book is an essential contribution to the burgeoning field
of southern Italian studies, as well as to art history and medieval
studies in general.”—Jill Caskey,University of Toronto
“This book fully realizes medieval scenography. It vividly presents
practices of liturgical performance in a rich range of light,
spectacle, smell, and touch that unfolds in an entirely realized
time and place. South Italy in the Late Middle Ages comes to
compelling life in Zchomelidse’s hands, and the illustrations, so
well chosen and finely produced, form an integral part of her
strongly persuasive arguments. The cultural lives of the south
Italian cities are faceted and evocative. Anyone interested in
performances of identity ought to read this significant
work.”—Glenn Peers,University of Texas at Austin
“In this sumptuously illustrated and beautifully written volume,
Nino Zchomelidse invites the reader to reimagine the southern
Italian church as a space in which elaborately carved furnishings,
illustrated scrolls, and decorated candlesticks guided ritual
movement, captured the sound of voiced prayer, united communities
in common worship, and proclaimed civic pride.”—Sharon E. J.
Gerstel,UCLA
“From start to finish, in her fascinating analysis of ambos and
candlesticks of Campania, Nino Zchomelidse keeps her eye firmly on
the points cited in the title: Art, Ritual, and Civic Identity,
summarising the complexity of the links between art and liturgy
from several points of view and tracing out a line of development
for liturgical furnishings within the religious and historical
milieu in which they were made. The approach is interdisciplinary
and opens the door to social, liturgical and musical history,
including the latest trends in art-historical studies that look at
the concepts of agency, performativity, and the anthropology of
images. The results of this study are presented in a fascinating
way even for a public that has little knowledge of these (sometimes
arduous) subjects.”—Elisabetta Scirocco Convivium
“This is a complex and erudite study based on the author’s close
reading of the liturgical texts and close observation of the
liturgical objects. It answers many questions about the arrangement
of the pulpits and the unfurling of the Exultet rolls while
focusing on the liturgy that inspired the works of art.”—Janis
Elliott Church History and Religious Culture
“Formidably learned, its dense arguments ranging widely over
literature and theology as well as sculpture and painting, and
discussing Byzantine, central, and northern Italian exemplars as
well as those from southern Italy, the book is by no means easy
reading. However, it thoroughly repays the effort it demands. In
her introduction the author briefly reviews earlier publications on
the material and artistic culture of southern Italy, commenting on
their rising number and growing importance. The present volume is a
distinguished addition to these studies.”—Christine Meek Sixteenth
Century Journal
“[Nino Zchomelidse] is to be thanked for producing a work which is
both stimulating and provocative.”—Valentino Pace Burlington
Magazine
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