Article
Portrayed on the Heart: Narrative Effect in Pictorial Lives of Saints from the Tenth through the Thirteenth Century (review)
Biography
(2003)
Abstract
Cynthia Hahn's long-anticipated study is a very useful addition to the many books and articles that have been published in the last several decades concerning western medieval hagiographic imagery. Much scholarship in this area can be traced back to the stimulating article written by Francis Wormald in 1952, "Some Illustrated Manuscripts of the Lives of Saints." In this article, Wormald discussed the flourishing of hagiographic illustration in western Europe between the tenth and thirteenth century particularly in the formof libelli manuscripts, which is to say, manuscripts concerning texts and illustrations devoted to the life of a single saint (or in some cases, two or more related saints). Wormald connected the production of these manuscripts to a variety of social, cultural, and religious factors during these centuries, primarily the interest in saintly-cult-promotion of the monastic high Middle Ages. Wormald also provided in this article an extremely useful "list" of these libelli manuscripts, which list has inspired many subsequent specific studies of most all of these individual examples, including a previous dissertation and subsequent volume by Hahn on the Ottonian illustrated Lives of Kilian and Margaret. The majority of the other libelli manuscripts mentioned by Wormald have also received detailed scholarly attention in the past several decades, which Hahn acknowledges in her introduction, text, extensive endnotes, and bibliography. ~article exerpt
Disciplines
Publication Date
Summer 2003
Citation Information
Leslie D. Ross. "Portrayed on the Heart: Narrative Effect in Pictorial Lives of Saints from the Tenth through the Thirteenth Century (review)" Biography Vol. 26 Iss. 3 (2003) p. 469 - 471 ISSN: 0162-4962 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/leslie-ross/15/