Between Statues and Icons Iconic Persons from Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages Vladimir Ivanovici

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ivanovici, Vladimir, Author.

Series:

Contexts of ancient and medieval anthropology ; Volume 5.

Contexts of Ancient and Medieval Anthropology 5

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

martyrs.

emperors.

relics.

reliquaries.

churches.

liturgy.

light.

body.

bishops.

stylites.

Local Subjects:

martyrs.

emperors.

relics.

reliquaries.

churches.

liturgy.

light.

body.

bishops.

stylites.

Genre:

Informational works.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (275 pages) : illustrations.

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Paderborn Brill | Schöningh 2023

Language Note:

English

Biography/History:

Vladimir Ivanovici is Lecturer at the Accademia di architettura di Mendrisio and Marie Curie Fellow at the Universität Wien. He specialises in the mise-en-scène of religious experiences, with a focus on the human body and light as media of theophany.

Summary:

This book argues that Romans credited certain living persons with the capacity to function as cult statues, that is, as images and vessels of the divine. After addressing the cultural context that produced the idea that humans can become images of the divine, the text shows how emperors, bishops, and others imitated the aesthetic, immobility, and material setting of statuary to establish themselves as iconic and how their role as mediators with the divine was eventually transferred to new categories of material objects, such as relics and icons. The figure of the iconic person thus is shown to have bridged the cult statues of Antiquity with the new mechanisms of interaction with the divine that Christians used for the following millennium. By integrating living persons in the art historical analysis of the spaces and advocating for the need to consider the animation of artefacts together with the reification of bodies, this study marks an important development in the study of the past.

Contents:

Intro

Table of Contents

Abbreviations

Figures

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Methodological Considerations

Status Quaestionis

Chapter 1: Setting the Stage

1.1 Body Language in Early Imperial Society

1.2 Sieging Olympus: Humankind Claims Immortality

1.3 Knowing the Gods: From Cult Statues to Iconic Persons

1.4 Conclusions

Chapter 2: Emperors

2.1 Negotiating Divinity in Rome

2.2 Constructing Iconicity

2.3 From Image of Jupiter to Image of Christ

2.4 Conclusions

Chapter 3: Martyrs

3.1 Paul's Concept of Iconic Living

3.2 Performing Christ in the Arena

3.3 God's Living Temples

3.4 Preserving the Martyrs' Iconicity: Relics

3.5 Preserving the Martyrs' Iconicity: People

3.6 Conclusions

Chapter 4: Initiates

4.1 Visions, Ascensions, and Transformations in Late Antique Initiations

4.2 New Bishops for a New Church

4.3 Making Golden Statues of Christ

4.4 Beyond Baptism

4.5 Conclusions

Chapter 5: Bishops

5.1 From Martyr-bishops to Teacher-bishops

5.2 Rome's Aristocratic Bishops

5.3 Emperor Justinian's Living Mirrors

5.4 Beyond the Living Bishop

5.5 Conclusions

Chapter 6: Stylites

6.1 Living vs. Animated Statues

6.2 Multiplying the Stylite's Body: Eulogia, Relics, Columns

6.3 Preserving the Iconic Body: Icons

6.4 Conclusions

Chapter 7: Conclusion

Bibliography

Index of Ancient Names

Index of Places.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

3-657-79082-9

Publisher Number:

10.30965/9783657790821 DOI