Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- 1 Introduction: A Case Study of Symbolic Cognition
- 2 Conjugal and Nuptial Symbolism in Medieval Christian Thought
- 3 Marriage Symbolism and Social Reality in the New Testament: Husbands and Wives, Christ and the Church
- 4 Single Marriage and Priestly Identity: A Symbol and its Functions in Ancient Christianity
- 5 ‘Put on the Dress of a Wife, so that you Might Preserve your Virginity’: Virgins as Brides of Christ in the Writings of Tertullian
- 6 Veiled Threats: Constraining Religious Women in the Carolingian Empire
- 7 Double Standards?: Medieval Marriage Symbolism and Christian Views on the Muslim Paradise
- 8 Marriage, Maternity, and the Formation of a Sacramental Imagination: Stories for Cistercian Monks and Nuns around the Year 1200
- 9 Marriage Symbolism in Illuminated Manuscripts of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Visualization and Interpretation
- 10 ‘His Left Arm is under my Head and his Right Arm shall Embrace me’: The Bride and the Bridegroom in Trastevere
- 11 Marriage in the Divine Office: Nuptial Metaphors in the Medieval Conception of the Officium
- 12 What Kind of Marriage did Pope Innocent III Really Enter into?: Marriage Symbolism and Papal Authority
- 13 ‘Please don't Mind if i got this Wrong’: Christ's Spiritual Marriage and the Law of the Late Medieval Western Church
- Index of Biblical Passages
- Index of Names
9 - Marriage Symbolism in Illuminated Manuscripts of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Visualization and Interpretation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 November 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- 1 Introduction: A Case Study of Symbolic Cognition
- 2 Conjugal and Nuptial Symbolism in Medieval Christian Thought
- 3 Marriage Symbolism and Social Reality in the New Testament: Husbands and Wives, Christ and the Church
- 4 Single Marriage and Priestly Identity: A Symbol and its Functions in Ancient Christianity
- 5 ‘Put on the Dress of a Wife, so that you Might Preserve your Virginity’: Virgins as Brides of Christ in the Writings of Tertullian
- 6 Veiled Threats: Constraining Religious Women in the Carolingian Empire
- 7 Double Standards?: Medieval Marriage Symbolism and Christian Views on the Muslim Paradise
- 8 Marriage, Maternity, and the Formation of a Sacramental Imagination: Stories for Cistercian Monks and Nuns around the Year 1200
- 9 Marriage Symbolism in Illuminated Manuscripts of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Visualization and Interpretation
- 10 ‘His Left Arm is under my Head and his Right Arm shall Embrace me’: The Bride and the Bridegroom in Trastevere
- 11 Marriage in the Divine Office: Nuptial Metaphors in the Medieval Conception of the Officium
- 12 What Kind of Marriage did Pope Innocent III Really Enter into?: Marriage Symbolism and Papal Authority
- 13 ‘Please don't Mind if i got this Wrong’: Christ's Spiritual Marriage and the Law of the Late Medieval Western Church
- Index of Biblical Passages
- Index of Names
Summary
Abstract
This chapter explores marriage symbolism in twelfth- and thirteenth-century illuminated manuscripts containing canon and civil law texts but also liturgical texts and illustrated Bibles. Visual representations of weddings and marriages were neither straightforward nor immediate, but challenged the artists to make conceptual and interpretative choices. How was marriage visualized? What could be pictured? How did the artists face the difficult task of illustrating abstract concepts? Pavon Ramirez explores the relationship between visual images and theological ideas, and the role of artists and patrons in the construction of new images of the theological concept of marriage in the Middle Ages.
Keywords: illuminated manuscripts; iconography; medieval art; juridical manuscripts; liturgical manuscripts; illustrated Bibles
In the Middle Ages women – whether religious or lay – were assumed to be someone's wife. A woman who became bride of Christ, having taken the veil or given a vow of celibacy, could be imagined to be under a kind of male patriarchal and institutional control, just like the wife of an earthly husband. These analogies seem, at first glance, to be easy to imagine and conceptualize. However, how was such a spiritual marriage to be visualized? And how was the union between the Church as bride and Christ as bridegroom, frequently imagined by theologians, intellectuals, and canonists, represented visually in the Middle Ages? What were the visual differences, if any, between a spiritual and a mundane marriage?
Marriage symbolism in the Middle Ages involved a wide array of nuptial themes, one of which was Christ's union with the Church. Nevertheless, as Philip Reynolds notes in his recent book, the comparison between a mundane marriage and the union between Christ and the Church was a rarity before 1100. My purpose in this essay is to explore the relationship between visual images and theological and intellectual ideas in twelfth- and thirteenth-century illuminated manuscripts and to expand on Reynolds’ essay in this book by making a comparison between conjugal and nuptial symbolism in visual art.
Representations of Marriage in Illuminated Manuscripts
Marriage as an iconographic theme in Classical Antiquity and in the Middle Ages has been carefully studied by scholars. Jérôme Baschet and Chiara Frugoni have discussed marriage iconography both in monumental art (sculpture, paintings, and architecture) and in illuminated manuscripts, with an interesting excursus on the different representations of marriage from Antiquity until the Middle Ages.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Symbolism of Marriage in Early Christianity and the Latin Middle AgesImages, Impact, Cognition, pp. 231 - 258Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2019