The Ivory Workers of the Middle AgesCust, Anna Maria Elizabeth
History
The Ivory Workers of the Middle Ages
Cust, Anna Maria Elizabeth
Ivories -- History; Ivories, Medieval
For the dead bishops the prayer was less for them, than to them, from
which comes the word “canonize,” or to be named in the Canon of the
Mass. On the inner side of the diptych of Clementinus, at Liverpool,
there is in roughly written Greek letters a prayer for the clergy of a
church of St. Agatha, and for “our Shepherd Hadrian the Patriarch,” who
can be none other than Pope Hadrian (✝795); this diptych probably came
from a church in Sicily, for Greek was still spoken, and the patron
saint of Palermo is St. Agatha.
Lists of bishops were inscribed, and when the list grew too long
parchment leaves were inserted. Whole services were bound in these
carvings, and the covers of many of the oldest MSS. are of diptychs,
set in an elaborate border of goldsmith’s work, to increase the size as
well as to enhance the beauty.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The numbers to the diptychs, in all cases, refer to those in the
list of diptychs at the end of the book.
[2] _Mélanges de l’Archéol. et d’Histoire_, Rome, 1882.
[3] See the figure of Circe in the Casa di Modesta, Pompeii.
[4] See the Joshua Rotulus, edited by the Directors of the Vatican
Library, Rome.
[5] _Zwei Antike Elfenbeintafeln_, Munich, 1879.
[6] _L’Arte_, 1898.
[7] _Roman Art_, Wickhoff, Eng. trans. by Mrs. A. Strong.
CHAPTER II
LATIN AND BYZANTINE IVORIES
I. LATIN, LATINO-BYZANTINE AND THE EARLY BYZANTINE IVORIES
At the end of the last chapter it was shown how the Church had
preserved a large number of consular diptychs, either unchanged or
altered to suit Christian iconography. To that list must be added
several ivory carvings with religious subjects, yet so closely
connected with the class of Private Diptychs, that it is more than
probable that they also have undergone transformation.
The most important among these are a fragmentary panel in the Museo
Civico at Bologna and the celebrated Ivory Book of Rouen Cathedral.
On the Bologna fragment is the figure of a bearded man of heavy type,
in a well designed but poorly executed robe; he clasps a roll in his
left land and beneath his neatly sandalled feet is a stool, always
a mark of honour, in the side of which is a deepened space with the
name “Petrus” rudely inscribed. Above, in the broken pediment, is a
niche with the bust of a bearded man, labelled “Marcus.” The whole is
surrounded by a handsome ovolo moulding, as are also the panels of the
Rouen Book Cover, which may be of a slightly later date, but they must
both be placed early in the sixth century. The Rouen carvings represent
St. Peter and St. Paul, without a doubt, for they are already of that
iconographical type which had become fixed by the end of the preceding
century, St. Paul with a bald head and long pointed beard, and St.
Peter with thick hair and a round curling beard; but it is very likely
that the figures on both the Bologna and Rouen tablets were originally
intended for authors or poets as on the series of complimentary
diptychs.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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