Description
Book SynopsisA study of reliquaries as a form of representation in medieval art. Explores how reliquaries stage the importance and meaning of relics using a wide range of artistic means from material and ornament to metaphor and symbolism.
Trade Review“Lavishly illustrated in color, this book will be of fundamental importance.”
—J. Oliver Choice
“[Strange Beauty] stands as a major study in the field and is worth a serious read. Since Strange Beauty, more literature has engaged with concepts of reception, materiality, metaphor, and performance, demonstrating the continued relevance of this approach. As important as this work is to the study of relics, it is Hahn’s approach to the complexities of material culture that will provide the greatest appeal to a wide range of scholars and students, both within and beyond medieval studies.”
—Eliza A. Foster Peregrinations: Journal of Medieval Art & Architecture
“Cynthia Hahn offers a refreshing new synthesis on the topic of medieval reliquaries. She shows that they are a form of ‘representation’ that mediates religious experience of relics as well as their political and institutional meanings. Engaging both primary sources and current theoretical writings, Hahn’s text will be of crucial interest to a broader readership concerned with the material embodiment of the sacred and strategies of representation.”
—Thomas Dale,University of Wisconsin–Madison
“What discourses of otherness exist as particular and appropriate to premodernity and not as retrofitted versions of the theoretical frameworks designed to consider these issues for modernity? Addressing this question can profit us beyond the domain of medieval studies. Strange Beauty’s intricate objects offer clues to such possible discourses, expressed visually and poised to train viewers—medieval and modern—in significations that we still seek to understand.”
—Seeta Chaganti CAA.Reviews
Table of ContentsContents
List of Illustrations
Preface
Part I: First Things
1 Introduction
2 The Reliquary and Its Maker
3 Relics, Meaning, and Response: Early Christian Reliquaries, Narrative and Not
Part II: Shaped Reliquaries
4 Spolia and Sign, Metaphor and Simile
5 The Reliquary Cross
6 Like and Unlike Metaphors
7 Body-Part Reliquaries: Heads
8 Body Part Reliquaries: Other Body Parts
Part III: A Gathering of Saints: Processions and Treasuries
9 Reliquaries in Action
10 Treasuries
11 Relic Display
12 A Case Study: Wibald of Stavelot as Patron
13 The Impact of 1204, the “Space” of the Ark, and Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
