Byzantine monumental Church mosaics are one of the great achievements of medieval art. These are from Monreale in Sicily from the late 12th century.

The medieval art of the Western world covers a vast scope of time and place, over 1000 years of art history in Europe, and at times the Middle East and North Africa. It includes major art movements and periods, national and regional art, genres, revivals, the artists crafts, and the artists themselves.

Art historians attempt to classify medieval art into major periods and styles, often with some difficulty. A generally accepted scheme includes Early Christian art, Migration Period art, Byzantine art, Insular art, Pre-Romanesque and Romanesque art, and Gothic art, as well as many other periods within these central styles. In addition each region, mostly during the period in the process of becoming nations or cultures, had its own distinct artistic style, such as Anglo-Saxon art or Norse art.

Medieval art was produced in many media, and the works that remain in large numbers include sculpture, illuminated manuscripts, stained glass, metalwork and mosaics, all of which have had a higher survival rate than other media like fresco wall-paintings, work in precious metals or textiles, including tapestry. Especially in the early part of the period, works in the so-called "minor arts" or decorative arts, such as metalwork, ivory carving, enamel and embroidery using precious metals, were probably more highly valued than paintings or monumental sculpture.

Medieval art in Europe grew out of the artistic heritage of the Roman Empire and the iconographic traditions of the early Christian church. These sources were mixed with the vigorous "Barbarian" artistic culture of Northern Europe to produce a remarkable artistic legacy. Indeed the history of medieval art can be seen as the history of the interplay between the elements of classical, early Christian and "barbarian" art.^[1] Apart from the formal aspects of classicism, there was a continuous tradition of realistic depiction of objects that survived in Byzantine art throughout the period, while in the West it appears intermittently, combining and sometimes competing with new expressionist possibilities developed in Western Europe and the Northern legacy of energetic decorative elements. The period ended with the self-perceived Renaissance recovery of the skills and values of classical art, and the artistic legacy of the Middle Ages was then disparaged for some centuries. Since a revival of interest and understanding in the 19th century it has been seen as a period of enormous achievement that underlies the development of later Western art.

Romanesque carving

Overview[link]

Detail of The Effects of Good Government, a fresco in the City Hall of Siena by Ambrogio Lorenzetti, 1338.

The Middle Ages saw a decrease in prosperity, stability and population in the first centuries of the period—to about 800, and then a fairly steady and general increase until the massive setback of the Black Death around 1350, which is estimated to have killed at least a third of the overall population in Europe, with generally higher rates in the south and lower in the north. Many regions did not regain their former population levels until the 17th century. The population of Europe is estimated to have reached a low point of about 18 million in 650, doubling by 1000, and reaching over 70 million in 1340, just before the Black Death. In 1450 it was still only 50 million. To these figures, Northern Europe, especially Britain, contributed a lower proportion than today, and Southern Europe, including France, a higher one.^[2] The increase in prosperity, for those who survived, was much less affected by the Black Death. Until about the 11th century most of Europe was short of agricultural labour, with large amounts of unused land, and the Medieval Warm Period benefited agriculture until about 1315.

Scenes of courtly love on a lady's ivory mirror-case. Paris, 1300-1330.

The medieval period eventually saw the falling away of the invasions and incursions from outside the area that characterized the first millennium. The Islamic conquests of the 6th and 7th century suddenly and permanently removed all of North Africa from the Western world, and over the rest of the period Islamic peoples gradually took over the Byzantine Empire, until by the end of the Middle Ages Catholic Europe, having regained the Iberian peninsula in the southwest, was once again under Muslim threat from the southeast.

At the start of the medieval period most significant works of art were very rare and costly objects associated with secular elites, monasteries or major churches, and if religious, largely produced by monks. By the end of the Middle Ages works of considerable artistic interest could be found in small villages and significant numbers of bourgeois homes in towns, and their production was in many places an important local industry, with artists from the clergy now the exception. However the Rule of St Benedict permitted the sale of works of art by monasteries, and it is clear that throughout the period monks might produce art, including secular works, commercially for a lay market, and monasteries would equally hire lay specialists where necessary.^[3]

The impression may be left by the surviving works that almost all medieval art was religious. This is far from the case; though the church became very wealthy over the Middle Ages and was prepared at times to spend lavishly on art, there was also much secular art of equivalent quality which has suffered from a far higher rate of wear and tear, loss and destruction. The Middle Ages generally lacked the concept of preserving older works for their artistic merit, as opposed to their association with a saint or founder figure, and the following periods of the Renaissance and Baroque tended to disparage medieval art. Most luxury illuminated manuscripts of the Early Middle Ages had lavish book-covers in precious metal, ivory and jewels; the re-bound pages and ivory reliefs for the covers have survived in far greater numbers than complete covers, which have mostly been stripped off for their valuable materials at some point.

The jewelled cover of the Codex Aureus of St. Emmeram, c. 870, a Carolingian Gospel book.

Most churches have been rebuilt, often several times, but medieval palaces and large houses have been lost at a far greater rate, which is also true of their fittings and decoration. In England, churches survive largely intact from every century since the 7th, and in considerable numbers for the later ones—the city of Norwich alone has 40 medieval churches—but of the dozens of royal palaces none survive from earlier than the 11th century, and only a handful of remnants from the rest of the period.^[4] The situation is similar in most of Europe, though the 14th century Palais des Papes in Avignon survives largely intact. Many of the longest running scholarly disputes over the date and origin of individual works relate to secular pieces, because they are so much rarer - the Anglo-Saxon Fuller Brooch was refused by the British Museum as an implausible fake, and small free-standing secular bronze sculptures are so rare that the date, origin and even authenticity of both of the two best examples has been argued over for decades.^[5]

The use of valuable materials is a constant in medieval art; until the end of the period, far more was typically spent on buying them than on paying the artists, even if these were not monks performing their duties. Gold was used for objects for churches and palaces, personal jewellery and the fittings of clothes, and—fixed to the back of glass tesserae—as a solid background for mosaics, or applied as gold leaf to miniatures in manuscripts and panel paintings. Many objects using precious metals were made in the knowledge that their bullion value might be realized at a future point—only near the end of the period could money be invested other than in real estate, except at great risk or by committing usury.

The small private Wilton Diptych for Richard II of England, c. 1400, with stamped gold backgrounds and much ultramarine.

The even more expensive pigment ultramarine, made from ground lapis lazuli obtainable only from Afghanistan, was used lavishly in the Gothic period, more often for the traditional blue outer mantle of the Virgin Mary than for skies. Ivory, often painted, was an important material until the very end of the period, well illustrating the shift in luxury art to secular works; at the beginning of the period most uses were shifting from consular diptychs to religious objects such as book-covers, reliquaries and croziers, but in the Gothic period secular mirror-cases, caskets and decorated combs become common among the well-off. As thin ivory panels carved in relief could rarely be recycled for another work, the number of survivals is relatively high—the same is true of manuscript pages, although these were often re-cycled by scraping, whereupon they become palimpsests.

Even these basic materials were costly: when the Anglo-Saxon Monkwearmouth-Jarrow Abbey planned to create three copies of the bible in 692—of which one survives as the Codex Amiatinus—the first step necessary was to plan to breed the cattle to supply the 1,600 calves to give the skin for the vellum required.^[6]

Paper became available in the last centuries of the period, but was also extremely expensive by today's standards; woodcuts sold to ordinary pilgrims at shrines were often matchbook size or smaller. Modern dendrochronology has revealed that most of the oak for panels used in Early Netherlandish painting of the 15th century was felled in the Vistula basin in Poland, from where it was shipped down the river and across the Baltic and North Seas to Flemish ports, before being seasoned for several years.^[7]

Art in the Middle Ages is a broad subject and art historians traditionally divide it in several large-scale phases, styles or periods. The period of the Middle Ages neither begins nor ends neatly at any particular date, nor at the same time in all regions, and the same is true for the major phases of art within the period.^[8] The major phases are covered in the following sections.

Early Christian and Late Antique art[link]

Arch of Constantine, Rome, completed 315: The lower long relief, with squat figures of size varying with status, is of that date, while the roundels are taken from a monument of nearly 200 years earlier, which maintains a classical style.

Early Christian art, more generally described as Late Antique art, covers the period from about 200 (before which no distinct Christian art survives), until the onset of a fully Byzantine style in about 500. There continue to be different views as to when the medieval period begins during this time, both in terms of general history and specifically art history, but it is most often placed late in the period. In the course of the 4th century Christianity went from being a persecuted popular sect to the official religion of the Empire, adapting existing Roman styles and often iconography, from both popular and Imperial art. From the start of the period the main survivals of Christian art are the tomb-paintings in popular styles of the catacombs of Rome, but by the end there were a number of lavish mosaics in churches built under Imperial patronage. Over this period imperial Late Roman art went through a strikingly "baroque" phase, and then largely abandoned classical style and Greek realism in favour of a more mystical and hieratic style—a process that was well underway before Christianity became a major influence on imperial art. Influences from Eastern parts of the Empire—Egypt, Syria and beyond, and also a robust "Italic" vernacular tradition, contributed to this process. Figures are mostly seen frontally staring out at the viewer, where classical art tended to show a profile view - the change was eventually seen even on coins. The individuality of portraits, a great strength of Roman art, declines sharply, and the anatomy and drapery of figures is shown with much less realism. The models from which medieval Northern Europe in particular formed its idea of "Roman" style were nearly all portable Late Antique works, and the Late Antique carved sarcophagi found all over the former Roman Empire;^[9] the determination to find earlier "purer" classical models, was a key element in the art all'antica of the Renaissance.^[10]

Ivory reliefs

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  Ascension of Christ and Noli me tangere, c. 400, with many elements of classical style remaining. See Drogo Sacramentary for a similar Ascension 450 years later.

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  Consular diptych, Constantinople 506, in fully Late Antique style

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  Ottonian relief from an altar in a bold monumental style, with little attempt at classicism; Milan 962–973.

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  Late 14th century French Gothic triptych, probably for a lay owner, with scenes from the Life of the Virgin

Byzantine art[link]

King David plays the harp in the 10th century Paris Psalter, a classicising work of the Macedonian period.

Byzantine art is the art of the Greek-speaking Byzantine Empire formed after the division of the Roman Empire between Eastern and Western halves, and sometimes of parts of Italy under Byzantine rule. It emerges from the Late Antique period in about 500 and soon formed a tradition distinct from that of Catholic Europe but with great influence over it. In the early medieval period the best Byzantine art, often from the large Imperial workshops, represented an ideal of sophistication and technique which European patrons tried to emulate. During the period of Byzantine iconoclasm in 730-843 the vast majority of icons (sacred images usually painted on wood) were destroyed; so little remains that today any discovery sheds new understanding, and most remaining works are in Italy (Rome and Ravenna etc.), or Egypt at Saint Catherine's Monastery, Mount Sinai.

Byzantine art was extremely conservative, for religious and cultural reasons, but retained a continuous tradition of Greek realism, which contended with a strong anti-realist and hieratic impulse. After the resumption of icon production in 843 until 1453 the Byzantine art tradition continued with relatively few changes, despite, or because of, the slow decline of the Empire. There was a notable revival of classical style in works of 10th century court art like the Paris Psalter, and throughout the period manuscript illumination shows parallel styles, often used by the same artist, for iconic figures in framed miniatures and more informal small scenes or figures added unframed in the margins of the text in a much more realist style.^[11] Monumental sculpture with figures remained a taboo in Byzantine art; hardly any exceptions are known. But small ivory reliefs, almost all in the iconic mode (the Harbaville Triptych is of similar date to the Paris Psalter, but very different in style), were a speciality, as was relief decoration on bowls and other metal objects. The Byzantine Empire produced much of the finest art of the Middle Ages in terms of quality of material and workmanship, with court production centred on Constantinople, although some art historians have questioned the assumption, still commonly made, that all work of the best quality with no indication as to origin was produced in the capital. Byzantine art's crowning achievement were the monumental frescos and mosaics inside domed churches, most of which have not survived due to natural disasters and the appropriation of churches to mosques.

6th or 7th century Coptic icon of Jesus and an abbot shares in more homely form the anti-realist style of Byzantine iconic art.

Byzantine art exercised a continuous trickle of influence on Western European art, and the splendours of the Byzantine court and monasteries, even at the end of the Empire, provided a model for Western rulers and secular and clerical patrons. For example Byzantine silk textiles, often woven or embroidered with designs of both animal and human figures, the former often reflecting traditions originating much further east, were unexcelled in the Christian world until almost the end of the Empire. These were produced, but probably not entirely so, in Imperial workshops in Constantinople, about whose operations we know next to nothing—similar workshops are often conjectured for other arts, with even less evidence. Some other decorative arts were less developed; Byzantine ceramics rarely rise above the level of attractive folk art, despite the Ancient Greek heritage and the impressive future in the Ottoman period of İznik wares and other types of pottery.

The Coptic art of Egypt took a different path; after the Coptic Church separated in the mid-5th century it was never again supported by the state, and native Egyptian influences dominated to produce a completely non-realist and somewhat naive style of large-eyed figures floating in blank space. This was capable of great expressiveness, and took the "Eastern" component of Byzantine art to its logical conclusions. Coptic decoration used intricate geometric designs, often anticipating Islamic art. Because of the exceptionally good preservation of Egyptian burials, we know more about the textiles used by the less well-off in Egypt than anywhere else. These were often elaborately decorated with figurative and patterned designs. Other local traditions in Armenia, Syria, Georgia and elsewhere showed generally less sophistication, but often more vigour than the art of Constantinople, and sometimes, especially in architecture, seem to have had influence even in Western Europe. For example figurative monumental sculpture on the outside of churches appears here some centuries before it is seen in the West.^[12]

Migration Period through Christianization[link]

Shoulder-clasp from Sutton Hoo, early 7th century Anglo-Saxon. The interlaced biting snakes and confronted boars (end sections) are depicted entirely schematically. Rædwald of East Anglia the presumed recipient of the Sutton Hoo burial had been baptised, but maintained a pagan altar to please his wife.^[13]

Migration Period art describes the art of the "barbarian" Germanic and Eastern-European peoples who were on the move, and then settling within the former Roman Empire, during the Migration Period from about 300-700; the blanket term covers early Anglo-Saxon art, Visigothic art, Norse art, Merovingian art, all of which made use of the animal style, which by this period had reached a much more abstracted form than in earlier Scythian art or La Tène style. Most artworks were small and portable and those surviving are mostly jewellery and metalwork, with the art expressed in geometric or schematic designs, often beautifully conceived and made, with few human figures and no attempt at realism. The early Anglo-Saxon grave goods from Sutton Hoo are among the best examples.

As the "barbarian" peoples were Christianized, these influences interacted with the post-classical Mediterranean Christian artistic tradition, and new forms like the illuminated manuscript,^[14] and indeed coins, which attempted to emulate Roman provincial coins and Byzantine types. Early coinage like the sceat shows designers completely unused to depicting a head in profile grappling with the problem in a variety of different ways. There are references to Anglo-Saxon wooden pagan statues, all now lost, and in Norse art the tradition of carved runestones was maintained after their conversion to Christianity. The Celtic Picts of Scotland also carved stones before and after conversion, and the distinctive Anglo-Saxon and Irish tradition of large outdoor carved crosses may reflect earlier pagan works. Viking art from later centuries in Scandinavia and parts of the British Isles includes work from both pagan and Christian backgrounds, and was one of the last flowerings of this broad group of styles.

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  Anglo-Saxon silver sceat, Kent, c. 720. Diademed head, holding cross; reverse, wolf-headed snake.

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  Viking carved wood and metal prow from the Oseberg ship, ca. 800, Norway

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  Parts of a Norwegian wooden doorway, 12th century, in the Urnes style

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  Image-stone from Sweden

Insular art[link]

Book of Lindisfarne, Northumbria, c. 715; decoration invades the text of the beginning of Matthew:"Liber generationis Jesu Christi filii David, filii Abraham".

Insular art refers to the distinct style found in Ireland and Britain from about the 7th century, to about the 10th century, lasting later in Ireland, and parts of Scotland. The style saw a fusion between the traditions of Celtic art, the Germanic Migration period art of the Anglo-Saxons and the Christian forms of the book, high crosses and liturgical metalwork. Extremely detailed geometric, interlace, and stylised animal decoration, with forms derived from secular metalwork like brooches, spread boldly across manuscripts, usually gospel books like the Book of Kells, with whole carpet pages devoted to such designs, and the development of the large decorated and historiated initial. There were very few human figures—most often these were Evangelist portraits—and these were crude, even when closely following Late Antique models.

The insular manuscript style was transmitted to the continent by the Hiberno-Scottish mission, and its anti-classical energy was extremely important in the formation of later medieval styles. In most Late Antique manuscripts text and decoration were kept clearly apart, though some initials began to be enlarged and elaborated, but major insular manuscripts sometimes take a whole page for a single initial or the first few words (see illustration) at beginnings of gospels or other sections in a book. Allowing decoration a "right to roam" was to be very influential on Romanesque and Gothic art in all media.

The buildings of the monasteries for which the insular gospel books were made were then small and could fairly be called primitive, especially in Ireland. There increasingly were other decorations to churches, where possible in precious metals, and a handful of these survive, like the Ardagh Chalice, together with a larger number of extremely ornate and finely made pieces of secular high-status jewellery, the Celtic brooches probably worn mainly by men, of which the Tara Brooch is the most spectacular.

"Franco-Saxon" is a term for a school of late Carolingian illumination in north-eastern France that used insular-style decoration, including super-large initials, sometimes in combination with figurative images typical of contemporary French styles. The "most tenacious of all the Carolingian styles", it continued until as late as the 11th century.^[15]

Giant initials

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  Carolingian version of Insular style—compare the "Liber generationis…" above.

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  Franco-Saxon "In principio", 871-3.

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  Romanesque interlace, "inhabited" with figures, England, 1190-1200.

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  Typical Gothic pen flourishes in an unillustrated working copy of John's gospel in English, late 14th century.

The influence of Islamic art[link]

The Romanesque portal at Moissac—see text. Detail of the tympanum here

Islamic art during the Middle Ages falls outside the scope of this article, but it was widely imported and admired by European elites, and its influence needs mention.^[16] Islamic art covers a wide variety of media including calligraphy, illustrated manuscripts, textiles, ceramics, metalwork and glass, and refers to the art of Muslim countries in the Near East, Islamic Spain, and Northern Africa, though by no means always Muslim artists or craftsmen. Glass production, for example, remained a Jewish speciality throughout the period, and Christian art, as in Coptic Egypt continued, especially during the earlier centuries, keeping some contacts with Europe. There was an early formative stage from 600-900 and the development of regional styles from 900 onwards. Early Islamic art used mosaic artists and sculptors trained in the Byzantine and Coptic traditions.^[17] Instead of wall-paintings, Islamic art used painted tiles, from as early as 862-3 (at the Great Mosque of Kairouan in modern Tunisia), which also spread to Europe.^[18] According to John Ruskin, the Doge's Palace in Venice contains "three elements in exactly equal proportions — the Roman, the Lombard, and Arab. It is the central building of the world. ... the history of Gothic architecture is the history of the refinement and spiritualisation of Northern work under its influence".^[19]

Islamic rulers controlled at various points parts of Southern Italy and most of modern Spain and Portugal, as well as the Balkans, all of which retained large Christian populations. The Christian Crusaders equally ruled Islamic populations. Crusader art is mainly a hybrid of Catholic and Byzantine styles, with little Islamic influence, but the Mozarabic art of Christians in Al Andaluz seems to show considerable influence from Islamic art, though the results are little like contemporary Islamic works. Islamic influence can also be traced in the mainstream of Western medieval art, for example in the Romanesque portal at Moissac in southern France, where it shows in both decorative elements, like the scalloped edges to the doorway, the circular decorations on the lintel above, and also in having Christ in Majesty surrounded by musicians, which was to become a common feature of Western heavenly scenes, and probably derives from images of Islamic kings on their diwan.^[20] Calligraphy, ornament and the decorative arts generally were more important than in the West.^[21] The Hispano-Moresque pottery wares of Spain were first produced in Al-Andaluz, but Muslim potters then seem to have emigrated to the area of Christian Valencia, where they produced work that was exported to Christian elites across Europe;^[22] other types of Islamic luxury goods, notably silk textiles and carpets, came from the generally wealthier^[23] eastern Islamic world itself (the Islamic conduits to Europe west of the Nile were, however, not wealthier),^[24] with many passing through Venice.^[25] However, for the most part luxury products of the court culture such as silks, ivory, precious stones and jewels were imported to Europe only in an unfinished form and manufactured into the end product labelled as "eastern" by local medieval artisans.^[26] They were free from depictions of religious scenes and normally decorated with ornament, which made them easy to accept in the West,^[27] indeed by the late Middle Ages there was a fashion for pseudo-Kufic imitations of Arabic script used decoratively in Western art.

Pre-Romanesque art[link]

Detail of a votive crown from Visigothic Spain, before 672. Part of the Treasure of Guarrazar.

Pre-Romanesque is a term for architecture and to some extent pictorial and portable art found initially in Southern Europe (Spain, Italy and Southern France) between the Late Antique period to the start of the Romanesque period in the 11th century. Northern European art gradually forms part of the movement after Christianization as it assimilates post-classical styles. The Carolingian art of the Frankish Empire, especially modern France and Germany, from roughly 780-900 takes its name from Charlemagne and is an art of the court circle and a few monastic centres under Imperial patronage, that consciously sought to revive "Roman" styles and standards as befitted the new Empire of the West. Some centres of Carolingian production also pioneered expressive styles in works like the Utrecht Psalter and Ebbo Gospels. Christian monumental sculpture is recorded for the first time, and depiction of the human figure in narrative scenes became confident for the first time in Northern art. Carolingian architecture produced larger buildings than had been seen since Roman times, and the westwork and other innovations.^[28]

After the collapse of the dynasty there was a hiatus before a new dynasty brought a revival in Germany with Ottonian art, again centred on the court and monasteries, with art that moved towards great expressiveness through simple forms that achieve monumentality even in small works like ivory reliefs and manuscript miniatures, above all those of the Reichenau School, such as the Pericopes of Henry II (1002–1012). Later Anglo-Saxon art in England, from about 900, was expressive in a very different way, with agitated figures and even drapery perhaps best shown in the many pen drawings in manuscripts. The Mozarabic art of Christian Spain had strong Islamic influence, and a complete lack of interest in realism in its brilliantly coloured miniatures, where figures are presented as entirely flat patterns. Both of these were to influence the formation in France of the Romanesque style.^[29]

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  Carolingian Evangelist portrait from the Codex Aureus of Lorsch, using a Late Antique model, late 8th century

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  Another Carolingian evangelist portrait in Greek/Byzantine realist style, probably by a Greek artist, also late 8th century.^[30]

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  Mozarabic Beatus miniature, late 10th century.

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  The Bamberg Apocalypse, from the Ottonian Reichenau School, achieves monumentality in a small scale. 1000-1020.

Romanesque art[link]

Tympanum at Saint-Julien-de-Jonzy, mid-12th century. Christ in Majesty above, the Last Supper below.

Romanesque art developed in the period between about 1000 to the rise of Gothic art in the 12th century, in conjunction with the rise of monasticism in Western Europe. The style developed initially in France, but spread to Christian Spain, England, Flanders, Germany, Italy, and elsewhere to become the first medieval style found all over Europe, though with regional differences.^[31] The arrival of the style coincided with a great increase in church-building, and in the size of cathedrals and larger churches; many of these were rebuilt in subsequent periods, but often reached roughly their present size in the Romanesque period. Romanesque architecture is dominated by thick walls, massive structures conceived as a single organic form, with vaulted roofs and round-headed windows and arches.

Figurative sculpture, originally colourfully painted, plays an integral and important part in these buildings, in the capitals of columns, as well as around impressive portals, usually centred on a tympanum above the main doors, as at Vézelay Abbey and Autun Cathedral. Reliefs are much more common than free-standing statues in stone, but Romanesque relief became much higher, with some elements fully detached from the wall behind. Large carvings also became important, especially painted wooden crucifixes like the Gero Cross from the very start of the period, and figures of the Virgin Mary like the Golden Madonna of Essen. Royalty and the higher clergy began to commission life-size effigies for tomb monuments. Some churches had massive pairs of bronze doors decorated with narrative relief panels, like the Gniezno Doors or those at Hildesheim, "the first decorated bronze doors cast in one piece in the West since Roman times", and arguably the finest before the Renaissance.^[32] Most churches were extensively frescoed; a typical scheme had Christ in Majesty at the east (altar) end, a Last Judgement at the west end over the doors, and scenes from the Life of Christ facing typologically matching Old Testament scenes on the nave walls. The "greatest surviving monument of Romanesque wall painting", much reduced from what was originally there, is in the Abbey Church of Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe near Poitiers, where the rounded barrel vault of the nave, the crypt, portico and other areas retain most of their paintings.^[33] An equivalent cycle in Sant'Angelo in Formis at Capua in southern Italy by Italian painters trained by Greeks illustrates the continuing predominance of Byzantine style in much of Italy.^[34]

French historiated initial with men slaying a monster, from a theological manuscript. 1110-1115

Romanesque sculpture and painting is often extremely vigorous and expressive, and very inventive in terms of iconography—the subjects chosen and their treatment. Though many features absorbed from classical art form part of the Romanesque style, Romanesque artists rarely intended to achieve any sort of classical effect, except perhaps in Mosan art.^[35] As art became seen by a wider section of the population, and because of challenges from new heresies, art became more didactic, and the local church the "Poor Man's Bible". At the same time grotesque beasts and monsters, and fights with or between them, were popular themes, to which religious meanings might be loosely attached, although this did not impress St Bernard of Clairvaux, who famously denounced such distractions in monasteries:

But in the cloister, in the sight of the reading monks, what is the point of such ridiculous monstrosity, the strange kind of shapely shapelessness? Why these unsightly monkeys, why these fierce lions, why the monstrous centaurs, why semi-humans, why spotted tigers, why fighting soldiers, why trumpeting huntsmen? …In short there is such a variety and such a diversity of strange shapes everywhere that we may prefer to read the marbles rather than the books.^[36]

He might well have known the miniature at left, which was produced at Cîteaux Abbey before the young Bernard was transferred from there in 1115.^[37]

During the period typology became the dominant approach in theological literature and art to interpreting the bible, with Old Testament incidents seen as pre-figurations of aspects of the life of Christ, and shown paired with their corresponding New Testament episode. Often the iconography of the New Testament scene was based on traditions and models originating in Late Antiquity, but the iconography of the Old Testament episode had to be invented in this period, for lack of precedents. New themes such as the Tree of Jesse were devised, and representations of God the Father became more acceptable. The vast majority of surviving art is religious. Mosan art was an especially refined regional style, with much superb metalwork surviving, often combined with enamel, and elements of classicism rare in Romanesque art, as in the Baptismal font at St Bartholomew's Church, Liège, or the Shrine of the Three Kings at Cologne, one of a number of surviving works by Nicholas of Verdun, whose services were sought across north-western Europe. Stained glass became a significant art-form in the period, though little Romanesque glass survives. In illuminated manuscripts the bible became a new focus of intensive decoration, with the psalter also remaining important. The strong emphasis on the suffering of Christ and other sacred figures entered Western art in this period, a feature that strongly distinguishes it from both Byzantine and classical art for the remainder of the Middle Ages and beyond. The Gero Cross of 965-970, at the cusp of Ottonian and Romanesque art, has been called the first work to exhibit this.^[38] The end of the Romanesque period saw the start of the greatly increased emphasis on the Virgin Mary in theology, literature and so also art that was to reach its full extent in the Gothic period.

• 

  The classicism of Mosan art; Reliquary by Nicholas of Verdun in Tournai, 1205.

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  Painted ceiling of a Spanish crypt

• 

  Jonah swallowed by the whale, capital in the nave of Mozac Abbey

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  Mary Magdalen announcing the Resurrection to the Apostles, St Albans Psalter, English, 1120-1145.

Gothic art[link]

Chartres cathedral c. 1220; the best High Gothic sculpture had largely rediscovered the art of naturalistic figure representation.

Gothic art is a variable term depending on the craft, place and time. The term originated with the Gothic architecture which developed in France from about 1137 with the rebuilding of the Abbey Church of St Denis. As with Romanesque architecture, this included sculpture as an integral part of the style, with even larger portals and other figures on the facades of churches the location of the most important sculpture, until the late period, when large carved altarpieces and reredos, usually in painted and gilded wood, became an important focus in many churches. Gothic painting did not appear until around 1200 (this date has many qualifications), when it diverged from Romanesque style. A Gothic style in sculpture originates in France around 1144 and spread throughout Europe, becoming by the 13th century the international style, replacing Romanesque, though in sculpture and painting the transition was not as sharp as in architecture.

The majority of Romanesque cathedrals and large churches were replaced by Gothic buildings, at least in those places benefiting from the economic growth of the period—Romanesque architecture is now best seen in areas that were subsequently relatively depressed, like many southern regions of France and Italy, or northern Spain. The new architecture allowed for much larger windows, and stained glass of a quality never excelled is perhaps the type of art most associated in the popular mind with the Gothic, although churches with nearly all their original glass, like the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, are extremely rare anywhere, and unknown in Britain.

Most Gothic wall-paintings have also disappeared; these remained very common, though in parish churches often rather crudely executed. Secular buildings also often had wall-paintings, although royalty preferred the much more expensive tapestries, which were carried along as they travelled between their many palaces and castles, or taken with them on military campaigns—the finest collection of late-medieval textile art comes from the Swiss booty at the Battle of Nancy, when they defeated and killed Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, and captured all his baggage train.^[39]

The central panel of Duccio's huge Maestà altarpiece for Siena Cathedral.

As mentioned in the previous section, the Gothic period coincided with a greatly increased emphasis on the Virgin Mary, and it was in this period that the Virgin and Child became such a hallmark of Catholic art. Saints were also portrayed far more often, and many of the range of attributes developed to identify them visually for a still largely illiterate public first appeared.

During this period panel painting for altarpieces, often polyptyches and smaller works became newly important. Previously icons on panels had been much more common in Byzantine art than in the West, although many now lost panel paintings made in the West are documented from much earlier periods, and initially Western painters on panel were very largely under the sway of Byzantine models, especially in Italy, from where most early Western panel paintings come. The process of establishing a distinct Western style was begun by Cimabue and Duccio, and completed by Giotto, who is traditionally regarded as the starting point for the development of Renaissance painting. Most panel painting remained more conservative than miniature painting however, partly because it was seen by a wide public.

Reconstruction of the temple of Jerusalem, Burgundian miniature, c. 1460.

International Gothic describes courtly Gothic art from about 1360 to 1430, after which Gothic art begins to merge into the Renaissance art that had begun to form itself in Italy during the Trecento, with a return to classical principles of composition and realism, with the sculptor Nicola Pisano and the painter Giotto as especially formative figures. The Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry is one of the best known works of International Gothic. The transition to the Renaissance occurred at different times in different places - Early Netherlandish painting is poised between the two, as is the Italian painter Pisanello. Outside Italy Renaissance styles appeared in some works in courts and some wealthy cities while other works, and all work beyond these centres of innovation, continued late Gothic styles for a period of some decades. The Protestant Reformation often provided an end point for the Gothic tradition in areas that went Protestant, as it was associated with Catholicism.

The invention of a comprehensive mathematically based system of linear perspective is a defining achievement of the early 15th century Italian Renaissance in Florence, but Gothic painting had already made great progress in the naturalistic depiction of distance and volume, though it did not usually regard them as essential features of a work if other aims conflicted with them, and late Gothic sculpture was increasingly naturalistic. In the mid-15th century Burgundian miniature (right) the artist seems keen to show his skill at representing buildings and blocks of stone obliquely, and managing scenes at different distances. But his general attempt to reduce the size of more distant elements is unsystematic. Sections of the composition are at a similar scale, with relative distance shown by overlapping, foreshortening, and further objects being higher than nearer ones, though the workmen at left do show finer adjustment of size. But this is abandoned on the right where the most important figure is much larger than the mason.

Death comes for the Cardinal, from a printed blockbook with hand colour, c. 1455–58, an early example of the Dance of Death.

The end of the period includes new media such as prints; along with small panel paintings these were frequently used for the emotive andachtsbilder ("devotional images") influenced by new religious trends of the period. These were images of moments detached from the narrative of the Passion of Christ designed for meditation on his sufferings, or those of the Virgin: the Man of Sorrows, Pietà, Veil of Veronica or Arma Christi. The trauma of the Black Death in the mid-14th century was at least partly responsible for the popularity of themes such as the Dance of Death and Memento mori. In the cheap blockbooks with text (often in the vernacular) and images cut in a single woodcut, works such as that illustrated (left), the Ars Moriendi (Art of Dying) and typological verse summaries of the bible like the Speculum Humanae Salvationis (Mirror of Human Salvation) were the most popular.

Renaissance Humanism and the rise of a wealthy urban middle class, led by merchants, began to transform the old social context of art, with the revival of realistic portraiture and the appearance of printmaking and the self-portrait, together with the decline of forms like stained glass and the illuminated manuscript. Donor portraits, in the Early Medieval period largely the preserve of popes, kings and abbots, now showed businessmen and their families, and churches were becoming crowded with the tomb monuments of the well-off.

Opening from the Hours of Catherine of Cleves, c. 1440, with Catherine kneeling before the Virgin and Child, surrounded by her family heraldry. Opposite is the start of Matins in the Little Office, illustrated by the Annunciation to Joachim. The typical exuberantly decorated margins descend from insular art, and are unlike anything in the Byzantine tradition.^[40]

The book of hours, a type of manuscript normally owned by laymen, or even more often, laywomen, became the type of manuscript most often heavily illustrated from the 14th century onwards, and also by this period, the lead in producing miniatures had passed to lay artists, also very often women. In the most important centres of illumination, Paris and in the 15th century the cities of Flanders, there were large workshops, exporting to other parts of Europe. Other forms of art, such as small ivory reliefs, stained glass, tapestries and Nottingham alabasters (cheap carved panels for altarpieces) were produced in similar conditions, and artists and craftsmen in cities were usually covered by the guild system—the goldsmith's guild was typically among the richest in a city, and painters were members of a special Guild of St Luke in many places.

Secular works, often using subjects concerned with courtly love or knightly heroism, were produced as illuminated manuscripts, carved ivory mirror-cases, tapestries and elaborate gold table centrepieces like nefs. It begins to be possible to distinguish much greater numbers of individual artists, some of whom had international reputations. Art collectors begin to appear, of manuscripts among the great nobles, like John, Duke of Berry (1340–1416) and of prints and other works among those with moderate wealth. In the wealthier areas tiny cheap religious woodcuts brought art in an approximation of the latest style even into the homes of peasants by the late 15th century.

Virgin Mary

• 

  The oldest Byzantine icon of Mary, c. 600, encaustic, at Saint Catherine's Monastery, Mount Sinai retains much of Greek realist style.

• 

  Romanesque statue of the Virgin as Seat of Wisdom, 12th century

• 

  The "Ravensburger Schutzmantelmadonna", painted limewood of ca 1480, Virgin of Mercy type. Attributed to Michel Erhart.

• 

  "Hunt of the Unicorn Annunciation" (ca. 1500) from a Netherlandish Book of Hours collected by John Pierpoint Morgan. For the complicated iconography, see Hortus Conclusus

Subsequent reputation[link]

The Assault on the Castle of Love, attacked by knights and defended by ladies, was a popular subject for Gothic ivory mirror-cases. Paris, 14th century.

Medieval art had little sense of its own art history, and this disinterest was continued in later periods. The Renaissance generally dismissed it as a "barbarous" product of the "Dark Ages", and the term "Gothic" was invented as a deliberately pejorative one, first used by the painter Raphael in a letter of 1519 to characterise all that had come between the demise of Classical art and its supposed 'rebirth' in the Renaissance. The term was subsequently adopted and popularised in the mid 16th century by the Florentine artist and historian, Giorgio Vasari, who used it to denigrate northern European architecture generally. Illuminated manuscripts continued to be collected by antiquarians, or sit unregarded in monastic or royal libraries, but paintings were mostly of interest if they had historical associations with royalty or others. The long period of mistreatment of the Westminster Retable by Westminster Abbey is an example; until the 19th century it was only regarded as a useful piece of timber. But their large portrait of Richard II of England was well looked after, like another portrait of Richard, the Wilton Diptych (illustrated above). As in the Middle Ages themselves, other objects have often survived mainly because they were considered to be relics.

There was no equivalent for pictorial art of the "Gothic survival" found in architecture, once the style had finally died off in Germany, England and Scandinavia, and the Gothic Revival long focused on Gothic Architecture rather than art. The understanding of the succession of styles was still very weak, as suggested by the title of Thomas Rickman's pioneering book on English architecture: An Attempt to discriminate the Styles of English Architecture from the Conquest to the Reformation (1817). This began to change with a vengeance by the mid-19th century, as appreciation of medieval sculpture and its painting, known as Italian or Flemish "Primitives", became fashionable under the influence of writers including John Ruskin, Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, and Pugin, as well as the romantic medievalism of literary works like Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe (1819) and Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831). Early collectors of the "Primitives", then still relatively cheap, included Prince Albert.

William Burges' design for the Summer Smoking Room at Cardiff Castle, 1860s.

Among artists the German Nazarene movement from 1809 and English Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood from 1848 both rejected the values of at least the later Renaissance, but in practice, and despite sometimes depicting medieval scenes, their work draws its influences mostly from the Early Renaissance rather than the Gothic or earlier periods - the early graphic work of John Millais being something of an exception.^[41] William Morris, also a discriminating collector of medieval art, absorbed medieval style more thoroughly into his work, as did William Burges.

By the later 19th century many book-illustrators and producers of decorative art of various kinds had learned to use medieval styles successfully from the new museums like the Victoria & Albert Museum set up for this purpose. At the same time the new academic field of art history, dominated by Germany and France, concentrated heavily on medieval art and was soon very productive in cataloguing and dating the surviving works, and analysing the development of medieval styles and iconography; though the Late Antique and pre-Carolingian period remained a less explored "no-man's land" until the 20th century.^[42]

Joseph's Dream from the Byzantinesque frescos at Castelseprio, the subject of much controversy since their discovery in 1944, and now generally dated to the 10th century.

Franz Theodor Kugler was the first to name and describe Carolingian art in 1837; like many art historians of the period he sought to find and promote the national spirit of his own nation in art history, a search begun by Johann Gottfried Herder in the 18th century. Kugler's pupil, the great Swiss art historian Jacob Burckhardt, though he could not be called a specialist in medieval art, was an important figure in developing the understanding of it. Medieval art was now heavily collected, both by museums and private collectors like George Salting, the Rothschild family and John Pierpoint Morgan.

After the decline of the Gothic Revival, and the Celtic Revival use of Insular styles, the anti-realist and expressive elements of medieval art have still proved an inspiration for many modern artists.

German-speaking art historians continued to dominate medieval art history, despite figures like Émile Mâle (1862–1954) and Henri Focillon (1881–1943), until the Nazi period, when a large number of important figures emigrated, mostly to Britain or America, where the academic study of art history was still developing. These included the elderly Adolph Goldschmidt and younger figures including Nikolaus Pevsner, Ernst Kitzinger, Erwin Panofsky, Kurt Weitzmann, Richard Krautheimer and many others. Meyer Schapiro had immigrated as a child in 1907.

See also[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: medieval art

• List of illuminated manuscripts
• European art history
• Medieval literature
• Medieval music
• Paleography
• Medieval theatre
• History of painting
• Western painting

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Atroshenko, V. I.; Collins, Judith (1985), The Origins of the Romanesque, London: Lund Humphries, ISBN 0-85331-487-X 
• Alexander, Jonathan (1992), Medieval Illuminators and their Methods of Work, New Haven: Yale University Press, ISBN 0-300-05689-3 
• Backhouse, Janet; Turner, D. H.; Webster, Leslie, eds. (1984), The Golden Age of Anglo-Saxon Art, 966-1066, British Museum Publications, ISBN 0-7141-0532-5 
• Caiger-Smith, Alan, Lustre Pottery: Technique, Tradition and Innovation in Islam and the Western World (Faber and Faber, 1985) ISBN 0-571-13507-2
• Beckwith, John (1964), Early Medieval Art: Carolingian, Ottonian, Romanesque, Thames & Hudson, ISBN 0-500-20019-X 
• Calkins, Robert G. (1983), Illuminated Books of the Middle Ages, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press 
• Calkins, Robert G. (1979), Monuments of Medieval Art, New York: Dutton, ISBN 0-525-47561-3 
• Campbell, Lorne (1998), The Fifteenth Century Netherlandish Paintings, National Gallery Catalogues (new series), New Haven: Yale University Press, ISBN 1-85709-171-X 
• Cormack, Robin (1985), Writing in Gold, Byzantine Society and its Icons, London: George Philip, ISBN 0-540-01085-5 
• Cormack, Robin (1997), Painting the Soul; Icons, Death Masks and Shrouds, London: Reaktion Books 
• Dodwell, C. R. (1982), Anglo-Saxon Art, A New Perspective, Manchester: Manchester University Press, ISBN 0-7190-0926-X  (US edn. Cornell, 1985)
• Dodwell, C. R. (1993), The Pictorial arts of the West, 800-1200, New Haven: Yale University Press, ISBN 0-300-06493-4 
• Henderson, George (1977) [1972], Early Medieval Art (rev. ed.), Harmondsworth: Penguin 
• Hinks, Roger (1974) [1935], Carolingian Art, University of Michigan Press, ISBN 0-472-06071-6 
• Hoffman, Eva R. (2007): Pathways of Portability: Islamic and Christian Interchange from the Tenth to the Twelfth Century, in: Hoffman, Eva R. (ed.): Late Antique and Medieval Art of the Mediterranean World, Blackwell Publishing, ISBN ISBN 978-1-4051-2071-5
• Honour, Hugh; Fleming, John (1982), "Honour", A World History of Art, London: Macmillan 
• Kitzinger, Ernst (1955) [1940], Early Medieval Art at the British Museum (2nd ed.), British Museum 
• Lasko, Peter (1972), Ars Sacra, 800-1200 (nb, 1st ed.), Penguin History of Art (now Yale), ISBN 14056036X .
• Mack, Rosamond, Bazaar to piazza: Islamic trade and italian art, 1300-1600, University of California Press, 2002, ISBN 979-0520221313, google books
• Mâle, Emile (1913), The Gothic Image, Religious Art in France of the Thirteen Century (English trans. of 3rd ed.), London: Collins 
• Pächt, Otto (1986), Book Illumination in the Middle Ages, London: Harvey Miller, ISBN 0-19-921060-8 
• Plummer, John (1964), The Book of Hours of Catherine of Cleves, New York: Pierpont Morgan Library 
• Rice, David Talbot (1968), Byzantine Art (3rd ed.), Penguin Books 
• Ross, Leslie (1996), Medieval Art, a topical dictionary, Greenwood Publishing Group, ISBN 0-313-29329-5 
• Runciman, Steven (1975), Byzantine Style and Civilization, Baltimore: Penguin, ISBN 0-14-021827-0 
• Schapiro, Meyer (1977), Selected Papers, volume 2, Romanesque Art, London: Chatto & Windus, ISBN 0-7011-2239-0 
• Schapiro, Meyer (1980), Selected Papers, volume 3, Late Antique, Early Christian and Mediaeval Art, London: Chatto & Windus, ISBN 0-7011-2514-4 
• Syndicus, Eduard (1962), Early Christian Art, London: Burns & Oates 
• Weitzmann, Kurt; Chatzidakis, Manolis (1982), The Icon, London: Evans Brothers, ISBN 0-237-45645-1  (trans of Le Icone, Montadori 1981)
• Wilson, David M. (1984), Anglo-Saxon Art: From The Seventh Century To The Norman Conquest, Woodstock, New York: Overlook Press, ISBN 0-87951-976-2 

External links[link]

• Stones, Allison, Images of Medieval Art and Architecture, University of Pittsburgh, http://vrcoll.fa.pitt.edu/medart/index.html 
• Stones, Allison, Glossary of Medieval Art and Architecture, University of Pittsburgh, http://www.pitt.edu/~medart/menuglossary/INDEX.HTM 

Très riches heures du Duc de Berry: Juin (June) (1412-16)
Illumination on vellum, 22,5 x 13,6 cm

The Limbourg brothers, or in Dutch Gebroeders van Limburg (Herman, Paul, and Johan; fl. 1385 – 1416), were famous Dutch miniature painters from the city of Nijmegen. They were active in the early 15th century in France and Burgundy, working in the style known as International Gothic. They created what is certainly the best known late medieval illuminated manuscript, the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry.

Heritage[link]

The brothers' grandfather, Johannes de Lymborgh probably came from Limbourg on the Vesdre to Nijmegen, then the capital of the duchy of Gelre. Johannes' son, Arnold, was a wood carver who worked for the ducal court. Around 1385 Arnold married Mechteld Maelwael or Maloeul, the daughter of a well-to-do family of heraldic painters. Herman (Hermant in French sources) was the eldest child (born about 1385), followed by Paul (Polleke; or Polequin in French sources: 1386 or 1387), and Johan (Johanneke; or Jacquemin, Gillequin, or Jehanequin in French sources: probably 1388). There were two younger brothers, Rutger and Arnold, and a sister, Greta.

Uncle Malouel[link]

Around 1398, after their father's death, the brothers were sent for by their uncle Jean Malouel (or Johan Maelwael, Jehan Maleuel in original French sources), the most important painter for the French and Burgundian courts of the time. Herman and Johan learned the craft of goldsmithing in Paris. At the end of 1399 they were travelling to visit Nijmegen but, owing to a war, they were captured in Brussels. Since their mother could not pay the ransom of 55 gold escuz, the local goldsmiths' guild started to collect the money. Eventually Philip the Bold paid the ransom for the sake of their uncle Malouel, his painter. The two boys were released in May, 1400.

Work on the Bible[link]

From surviving documents it is known that in February 1402 Paul and Johan were contracted by Philip to work for four years exclusively on illuminating a bible. This may or may not have been the Bible Moralisée, Ms.fr.166 in the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris, which is indisputably an early work by the Limbourg brothers. Philip II died, in 1404, before the brothers had completed their work.

Jean de Berry[link]

After Philip's death, Herman, Paul, and Johan later in 1404 came to work for his brother John, Duke of Berry, who was an extravagant collector of arts and especially books. Their first assignment was to illuminate a Book of Hours, now known as the Belles Heures du Duc de Berry; held in The Cloisters of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

This work was finished in 1409 much to the satisfaction of the duke, and he assigned them to an even more ambitious project for a Book of Hours. This became the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, which is widely regarded as the peak of late medieval book illumination, and possibly the most valuable book in the world. It is kept as Ms.65 in the Musée Condé in Chantilly, France.

Paul especially was on good terms with the duke, and received a court position as valet de chambre or personal attendant (his uncle had had the same position with the Duke of Burgundy). The duke gave him jewelry and a big house in Bourges. Paul was attracted to a young girl, Gillette la Mercière, but her parents disapproved. The duke had the girl confined, and released her only on the king's command. In 1411 Paul and Gillette married anyway, but the marriage remained childless (the girl was 12, her husband 24 at the time).

Death[link]

In the first half of 1416, Jean de Berry and the three Limbourg brothers, all less than 30 years old, died, possibly of plague, leaving the Très Riches Heures unfinished. An unidentified artist (possibly Barthélemy van Eyck) worked on the famous calendar miniatures in the 1440s when the book apparently was in the possession of René d'Anjou, and in 1485 Jean Colombe finished the work for the House of Savoy.

The work of the Limbourg brothers, being mostly inaccessible, became forgotten until the 19th century. Nevertheless they set an example for the next generations of painters, which extended beyond miniature painting. They worked in a Northern European tradition, but display influences from Italian models.

References[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Limbourg brothers

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry

• Rob Dückers and Pieter Roelofs (eds.), The brothers van Limburg. Exhibition catalogue, Ludion, Nijmegen 2005. ISBN 90-5544-576-2
• Husband, Timothy B., The Art of Illumination: The Limbourg Brothers and the Belles Heures of Jean de France, Duc de Berry. The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Yale University Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0-300-13671-5

External links[link]

• Website of the 2005 exhibition in Nijmegen
• Website of the annual medieval festival dedicated to the Limbourg brothers in Nijmegen

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (March 2009)

Sir James Earle (1755–1817) was a celebrated British surgeon, renowned for his skill in lithotomy.

Earle was born in London. After studying medicine at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, he became the institution's assistant surgeon in 1770. Due to the temporary incapacity of one of the hospital's surgeons, Earle performed one-third of St. Bartholomew's operations between 1776 and 1784. At the end of this phenomenal feat, Earle was elected to be a surgeon on 22 May 1784 and remained until 1815. Just two years later, he was appointed surgeon-extraordinary to George III.

In March, 1794 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. ^[1] He was knighted in 1807. He married the daughter of Percivall Pott, the hospital's senior surgeon, and their third son, Henry Earle, also became a surgeon at St. Bartholomew's.

Earle write a memoir of Pott that was subsequently attached to his complete works (1790) and a biography of William Austin. Earle was renowned for his surgery skills, particularly in lithotomy. He also published several medical works: A Treatise on the Hydrocele (1791, with additions in 1793, 1796, and 1805), Practical Observations on the Operation for Stone (1793), A New Method of Operation for Cataract (1801), and Letter on Fractures of the Lower Limbs (1807).^[2]

References[link]

This United Kingdom biographical article related to medicine is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e

St. Hildegard von Bingen, O.S.B.
Illumination from the Liber Scivias showing Hildegard receiving a vision and dictating to her scribe and secretary
Sibyl of the Rhine
Born	1098 Bermersheim vor der Höhe, County Palatine of the Rhine, Holy Roman Empire
Died	17 September 1179(1179-09-17) (aged 81) Bingen am Rhein, County Palatine of the Rhine, Holy Roman Empire
Honored in	Roman Catholic Church (Order of St. Benedict), Anglican Communion, Lutheranism
Canonized	10 May 2012 (equivalent canonization), Vatican City by Pope Benedict XVI
Major shrine	Eibingen Abbey Germany
Feast	17 September

Saint Hildegard of Bingen, O.S.B. (German: Hildegard von Bingen; Latin: Hildegardis Bingensis) (1098 – 17 September 1179), also known as Saint Hildegard, and Sibyl of the Rhine, was a German writer, composer, philosopher, Christian mystic, Benedictine abbess, visionary, and polymath.^[1] Elected a magistra by her fellow nuns in 1136, she founded the monasteries of Rupertsberg in 1150 and Eibingen in 1165. One of her works as a composer, the Ordo Virtutum, is an early example of liturgical drama and arguably the oldest surviving morality play.^[2]

She wrote theological, botanical and medicinal texts, as well as letters, liturgical songs, and poems, while supervising brilliant miniature Illuminations.

On 10 May 2012, Pope Benedict XVI extended the liturgical cult of St. Hildegard to the universal Church,^[3] in a process known as "equivalent canonization".^[4] On 27 May 2012, the Pope announced that, on 7 October 2012, he will declare St. Hildegard to be the 35th Doctor of the Church.^[5]

Biography[link]

Hildegard's date of birth is uncertain. It has been concluded that she may have been born in the year 1098.^[6] Hildegard was raised in a family of free nobles. She was her parents' tenth child, sickly from birth.^[7] In her Vita, Hildegard explains that from a very young age she had experienced visions.^[8]

Monastic life[link]

Perhaps due to Hildegard's visions, or as a method of political positioning, Hildegard's parents, Hildebert and Mechthilde, offered her as a oblate to the church. The date of Hildegard's enclosure in the church is contentious. Her Vita tells us she was enclosed with an older nun, Jutta, at the age of eight. However, Jutta's enclosure date is known to be in 1112, at which time Hildegard would have been fourteen.^[9] Some scholars speculate that Hildegard was placed in the care of Jutta, the daughter of Count Stephan II of Sponheim, at the age of eight, before the two women were enclosed together six years later.^[10] There is no written record of the twenty-four years of Hildegard's life that she was in the convent together with Jutta. It is possible that Hildegard could have been a chantress and a worker in the herbarium and infirmarium.^[11]

In any case, Hildegard and Jutta were enclosed at Disibodenberg in the Palatinate Forest in what is now Germany. Jutta was also a visionary and thus attracted many followers who came to visit her at the enclosure. Hildegard also tells us that Jutta taught her to read and write, but that she was unlearned and therefore incapable of teaching Hildegard Biblical interpretation.^[12] Hildegard and Jutta most likely prayed, meditated, read scriptures such as the psalter, and did some sort of handwork during the hours of the Divine Office. This also might have been a time when Hildegard learned how to play the ten-stringed psaltery. Volmar, a frequent visitor, may have taught Hildegard simple psalm notation. The time she studied music could also have been the beginning of the compositions she would later create.^[13]

Upon Jutta's death in 1136, Hildegard was unanimously elected as "magistra" of the community by her fellow nuns.^[14] Abbot Kuno of Disibodenberg, also asked Hildegard to be Prioress, which would be under his authority. Hildegard, however, wanted more independence for herself and her nuns and asked Abbot Kuno to allow them to move to Rupertsberg.^[15] This was to be a move towards poverty, from a stone complex that was well established to a temporary dwelling place. (New York: Routledge, 2001), 6. When the abbot declined Hildegard's proposition, Hildegard went over his head and received the approval of Archbishop Henry I of Mainz. Abbot Kuno did not relent, however, until Hildegard was stricken by an illness that kept her paralyzed and unable to move from her bed, an event that she attributed to God's unhappiness at her not following his orders to move her nuns to Rupertsberg. It was only when the Abbot himself could not move Hildegard that he decided to grant the nuns their own monastery.^[16] Hildegard and about twenty nuns thus moved to the St. Rupertsberg monastery in 1150, where Volmar served as provost, as well as Hildegard's confessor and scribe. In 1165 Hildegard founded a second monastery for her nuns at Eibingen.

Visions[link]

Hildegard says that she first saw "The Shade of the Living Light" at the age of three, and by the age of five she began to understand that she was experiencing visions.^[17] She used the term 'visio' to this feature of her experience, and recognized that it was a gift that she could not explain to others. Hildegard explained that she saw all things in the light of God through the five senses: sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch.^[18] Hildegard was hesitant to share her visions, confiding only to Jutta, who in turn told Volmar, Hildegard's tutor and, later, secretary.^[19] Throughout her life, she continued to have many visions, and in 1141, at the age of 42, Hildegard received a vision she believed to be an instruction from God, to "write down that which you see and hear."^[20] Still hesitant to record her visions, Hildegard became physically ill. The illustrations recorded in the book of Scivias were visions that Hildegard experienced, causing her great suffering and tribulations.^[21] In her first theological text, Scivias ("Know the Ways"), Hildegard describes her struggle within:

But I, though I saw and heard these things, refused to write for a long time through doubt and bad opinion and the diversity of human words, not with stubbornness but in the exercise of humility, until, laid low by the scourge of God, I fell upon a bed of sickness; then, compelled at last by many illnesses, and by the witness of a certain noble maiden of good conduct [the nun Richardis von Stade] and of that man whom I had secretly sought and found, as mentioned above, I set my hand to the writing. While I was doing it, I sensed, as I mentioned before, the deep profundity of scriptural exposition; and, raising myself from illness by the strength I received, I brought this work to a close – though just barely – in ten years. [...] And I spoke and wrote these things not by the invention of my heart or that of any other person, but as by the secret mysteries of God I heard and received them in the heavenly places. And again I heard a voice from Heaven saying to me, 'Cry out therefore, and write thus!'^[22]

Hildegard's Vita was begun by Godfrey of Disibodenberg under Hildegard's supervision. It was between November 1147 and February 1148 at the synod in Trier that Pope Eugenus heard about Hildegard’s writings. It was from this that she received Papal approval to document her visions as revelations from the Holy Spirit giving her instant credence. (New York; Routledge, 2001) 5.

Before Hildegard’s death, a problem arose with the clergy of Mainz. A man buried in Rupertsburg had died after excommunication from the Church. Therefore, the clergy wanted to remove his body from the sacred ground. Hildegard did not accept this idea, replying that it was a sin and that the man had been reconciled to the church at the time of his death.^[23]

On 17 September 1179, when Hildegard died, her sisters claimed they saw two streams of light appear in the skies and cross over the room where she was dying.^[24]

Works[link]

Hildegard's musical, literary, and scientific writings are housed primarily in two manuscripts: the Dendermonde manuscript and the Riesenkodex. The Dendermonde manuscript was copied under Hildegard's supervision at Rupertsberg, while the Riesencodex was copied in the century after Hildegard's death.

Mutterschaft aus dem Geiste und dem Wasser (Motherhood from the Spirit and the Water), 1165

Music[link]

Attention in recent decades to women of the medieval Church has led to a great deal of popular interest in Hildegard, particularly her music. In addition to the Ordo Virtutum, sixty-nine musical compositions, each with its own original poetic text, survive, and at least four other texts are known, though their musical notation has been lost.^[25] This is one of the largest repertoires among medieval composers. Hildegard also wrote nearly 400 letters to correspondents ranging from Popes to Emperors to abbots and abbesses;^[26] two volumes of material on natural medicine and cures;^[27] an invented language called the Lingua ignota;^[28] various minor works, including a gospel commentary and two works of hagiography;^[29] and three great volumes of visionary theology: Scivias, Liber vitae meritorum ("Book of Life's Merits" or "Book of the Rewards of Life"), and Liber divinorum operum ("Book of Divine Works").^[30]

	"O frondens virga" From Ordo Virtutum
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One of her better known works, Ordo Virtutum (Play of the Virtues), is a morality play. It is unsure when some of Hildegard’s compositions were composed, though the Ordo Virtutum is thought to have been composed as early as 1151.^[31] The morality play consists of monophonic melodies for the Anima (human soul) and 16 Virtues. There is also one speaking part for the Devil. Scholars assert that the role of the Devil would have been played by Volmar, while Hildegard's nuns would have played the parts of Anima and the Virtues.^[32]

In addition to the Ordo Virtutum Hildegard composed many liturgical songs that were collected into a cycle called the Symphonia armoniae celestium revelationum. The songs from the Symphonia are set to Hildegard’s own text and range from antiphons, hymns, and sequences, to responsories.^[33] Her music is described as monophonic; that is, consisting of exactly one melodic line.^[34] Hildegard's compositional style is characterized by soaring melodies, often well outside of the normal range of chant at the time.^[35] Additionally, scholars such as Margot Fassler and Marianna Richert Pfau describe Hildegard's music as highly melismatic, often with recurrent melodic units, and also note her close attention to the relationship between music and text, which was a rare occurrence in monastic chant of the twelfth century.^[36] Hildegard of Bingen’s songs are left open for rhythmic interpretation because of the use of neumes without a staff.^[37] The reverence for the Virgin Mary reflected in music shows how deeply influenced and inspired Hildegard of Bingen and her community were by the Virgin Mary and the saints.^[38]

The definition of viriditas or ‘greenness’ is an earthly expression of the heavenly in an integrity that overcomes dualisms. This ‘greenness’ or power of life appears frequently in Hildegard’s works.^[39]

Recent scholars have asserted that Hildegard made a close association between music and the female body in her musical compositions.^[40] The poetry and music of Hildegard’s Symphonia is concerned with the anatomy of female desire thus described as Sapphonic, or pertaining to Sappho, connecting her to a history of female rhetoricians.^[41]

Writings[link]

"Universal Man" illumination from Hildegard's Liber Divinorum Operum, 1165

Mysticism[link]

In addition to her music, Hildegard also wrote three books of visions, the first of which, her Scivias ("Know the Way"), was completed in 1151. Liber vitae meritorum ("Book of Life's Merits" or "Book of the Rewards of Life") and Liber divinorum operum ("Book of Divine Works", also known as De operatione Dei, "On God's Activity") followed. In these volumes, the last of which was completed when she was about 75, Hildegard first describes each vision, then interprets them through Biblical exegesis.

The narrative of her visions was richly decorated under her direction, with transcription assistance provided by the monk Volmar and nun Richardis. The book was celebrated in the Middle Ages, in part because of the approval given to it by Pope Eugenius III, and was later printed in Paris in 1513.

Herbal medicine[link]

Hildegard also wrote Physica, a text on the natural sciences, as well as Causae et Curae. Hildegard of Bingen was well known for her healing powers involving practical application of tinctures, herbs, and precious stones.^[42] In both texts Hildegard describes the natural world around her, including the cosmos, animals, plants, stones, and minerals.

She combined these elements with a theological notion ultimately derived from Genesis: all things put on earth are for the use of humans.^[43] She is particularly interested in the healing properties of plants, animals, and stones, though she also questions God's effect on man's health.^[27] One example of her healing powers was curing the blind with the use of Rhine water.^[44]

Alphabet[link]

Alphabet by Hildegard von Bingen, Litterae ignotae, which she used for her language Lingua Ignota

Hildegard also invented an alternative alphabet. The text of her writing and compositions reveals Hildegard's use of this form of modified medieval Latin, encompassing many invented, conflated and abridged words.^[8] Due to her inventions of words for her lyrics and a constructed script, many conlangers look upon her as a medieval precursor. Scholars believe that Hildegard used her Lingua Ignota to increase solidarity among her nuns.^[45]

Significance[link]

During her lifetime[link]

Maddocks claims that it is likely Hildegard learned simple Latin, and the tenets of the Christian faith, but was not instructed in the Seven Liberal Arts, which formed the basis of all education for the learned classes in the Middle Ages: the Trivium of grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric plus the Quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music.^[46] The correspondence she kept with the outside world, both spiritual and social, transgressed the cloister as a space of female confinement, and served to document Hildegard’s grand style and strict formatting of medieval letter writing.^[47]

Contributing to Christian European rhetorical traditions, Hildegard “authorized herself as a theologian” through alternative rhetorical arts.^[47] Hildegard was creative in her interpretation of theology. She believed that her monastery should not allow novices who were from a different class than nobility because it put them in an inferior position. She also stated that ‘woman may be made from man, but no man can be made without a woman.'^[24]

Hildegard's preaching tours

Due to church limitation on public, discursive rhetoric, the medieval rhetorical arts included: preaching, letter writing, poetry, and the encyclopedic tradition.^[48] Hildegard’s participation in these arts speaks to her significance as a female rhetorician, transcending bans on women’s social participation and interpretation of Scripture. The acceptance of public preaching by a woman, even a well-connected abbess and acknowledged prophet does not fit the usual stereotype of this time. Her preaching was not limited to the monasteries; she even preached publicly in 1160 in Germany. (New York: Routledge, 2001, 9). She conducted four preaching tours throughout Germany, speaking to both clergy and laity in chapter houses and in public, mainly denouncing clerical corruption and calling for reform.^[49]

Many abbots and abbesses asked her for prayers and opinions on various matters.^[50] She traveled widely during her four preaching tours.^[51] She had several rather fanatic followers, including Guibert of Gembloux, who wrote frequently to Hildegard and eventually became her secretary after Volmar died in 1173. In addition, Hildegard influenced several monastic women of her time and the centuries that followed; in particular, she engaged in correspondence with another nearby visionary, Elisabeth of Schönau.^[52]

Hildegard communicated with popes such as Eugene III and Anastasius IV, statesmen such as Abbot Suger, German emperors such as Frederick I Barbarossa, and other notable figures such as Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, who advanced her work, at the behest of her abbot, Kuno, at the Synod of Trier in 1147 and 1148. Hildegard of Bingen’s correspondence with many people is an important element of her literary work because this is where we can see her speaking most directly to us.^[53]

Beatification and canonization[link]

Hildegard was one of the first persons for whom the Roman canonization process was officially applied, but the process took so long that four attempts at canonization were not completed, and she remained at the level of her beatification. Hildegard's name was nonetheless taken up in the Roman Martyrology at the end of the sixteenth century. Her feast day is 17 September. Numerous popes have referred to Hildegard as a saint, including Pope John Paul II^[54] and Pope Benedict XVI.^[55] On 10 May 2012, Pope Benedict XVI extended the liturgical cult of St. Hildegard to the universal Church^[56] in a process known as "equivalent canonization".^[57] Hildegard’s parish and pilgrimage church in Eibingen near Rüdesheim houses her relics.

Hildegard of Bingen also appears in the calendar of saints of various Anglican churches, such as that of the Church of England, in which she is commemorated on 17 September.

20th-century interest[link]

Hildegard has also become a figure of reverence within the contemporary New Age movement, mostly due to her holistic and natural view of healing, as well as her status as a mystic. She was the inspiration for Dr. Gottfried Hertzka's "Hildegard-Medicine", and is the namesake for June Boyce-Tillman's Hildegard Network, a healing center that focuses on a holistic approach to wellness and brings together people interested in exploring the links between spirituality, the arts, and healing.^[58] Hildegard's reincarnation has been debated since 1924 when Austrian mystic Rudolf Steiner lectured that a nun of her description was the past life of Russian poet Vladimir Soloviev,^[59] whose Sophianic visions are often compared to Hildegard.^[60] Sophiologist Robert Powell writes that hermetic astrology proves the match,^[61] and artist mystic Carl Schroeder claims to be in the lineage of Hildegard^[62] with the support and validation of reincarnation researchers Walter Semkiw and Kevin Ryerson.^[63]

In recent years, Hildegard has become of particular interest to feminist scholars.^{[citation needed]} Her reference to herself as a member of the "weaker sex" and her rather constant belittling of women, though at first seemingly problematic, must be considered within the context of the patriarchal church hierarchy. Hildegard frequently referred to herself as an unlearned woman, completely incapable of Biblical exegesis.^[64] Such a statement on her part, however, worked to her advantage because it made her statements that all of her writings and music came from visions of the Divine more believable, therefore giving Hildegard the authority to speak in a time and place where few women were permitted a voice.^[65] Hildegard used her voice to condemn church practices she disagreed with, in particular simony.

In space, she is commemorated by the asteroid 898 Hildegard.

Bibliography[link]

See also[link]

Anglicanism portal

• Bibliography of Hildegard of Bingen
• Discography of Hildegard of Bingen

Hildegard has been portrayed on film by Patricia Routledge in a dramatized BBC biographical documentary called "Hildegard Von Bingen In Portrait: Ordo Virtutum."

The film Vision - From the Life of Hildegard von Bingen, directed by Margarethe von Trotta, premiered in Europe in 2009 and in the United States in 2010. Hildegard is played by Barbara Sukowa.

Notes[link]

References[link]

Further reading[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Hildegard von Bingen

• Hildegard Center for the Arts, A Faith Based Fine Arts Center in Lincoln Nebraska
• International Society of Hildegard von Bingen Studies
• A Hildegard FAQ Sheet
• Hildegard Von Bingen
•  "St. Hildegard". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913. 
• Hildegard of Bingen Documents, History, Sites to see today, etc.
• Works by or about Hildegard of Bingen in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Source
• Discography
• Biography and Prayers of Hildegard
• Another discography
• Church of St. Hildegard in Eibingen, Germany with information about Hildegard von Bingen and the Eibinger Hildegardisshrine
• The Reconstruction of the monastery on the Rupertsberg
• Free scores by Hildegard von Bingen in the Werner Icking Music Archive (WIMA)
• Free scores by Hildegard of Bingen in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)
• Free scores by Hildegard of Bingen at the International Music Score Library Project
• Young, Abigail Ann. Translations from Rupert, Hildegard, and Guibert of Gembloux. 1999. 27 March 2006.
• McGuire, K. Christian. Symphonia Caritatis: The Cistercian Chants of Hildegard von Bingen. 2007. 14 July 2007.
• * From Katya Sanna's blog
• Women's Biography: Hildegard of Bingen, contains several letters sent and received by Hildegard.
• "Brooklyn Museum: Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art: The Dinner Party: Place Setting: Hildegarde of Bingen", describes the Hildegarde Place Setting in Judy Chicago's work called "The Dinner Party".

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