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dc.contributor.advisorHamburger, Jeffrey F
dc.contributor.authorPulichene, Nicole Danielle
dc.date.accessioned2021-08-04T04:47:00Z
dash.embargo.terms9999-01-01
dc.date.created2020
dc.date.issued2020-10-06
dc.date.submitted2020-11
dc.identifier.citationPulichene, Nicole Danielle. 2020. “One Whose Name was Writ in Wax:” Reflections on the Medieval Reuse of Consular Diptychs. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.
dc.identifier.other28148569
dc.identifier.urihttps://nrs.harvard.edu/URN-3:HUL.INSTREPOS:37368939*
dc.description.abstractThis dissertation considers the medieval reuse of the remarkable, though under-studied, group of Late Antique Roman ivories known as consular diptychs. Existing today in some fifty examples dated ca. 400–540 C.E, these pairs of hinged tablets, which bear double portraits of the new consul on their exterior surfaces, front and back, have attracted scholarly interest primarily as instruments of Roman administration and as documents of stylistic development in Late Antiquity. Almost entirely ignored is the fact that the interiors of these diptychs contained wax writing surfaces. Indeed, many still bear legible traces of centuries of subsequent re-inscription by communities of medieval Christians. I argue that, as Roman objects repurposed specifically for the commemoration of the Christian dead, consular diptychs testify to broader concerns of community identity and imperial legitimacy in an emerging Christian empire reoriented toward Western Europe. The ubiquity of hinged writing tablets, some of which were reused as insets in book covers, and parallel liturgical and monastic uses for diptychs and manuscripts in the early Middle Ages can also shed light on the development of the Christian codex. This dissertation focuses on the consular diptych of Boethius, whose unique paintings of the Raising of Lazarus and the Doctors of the Church, and lists of Latin and Germanic names, were inscribed and partially erased on the interior surfaces of the diptych between the seventh and ninth centuries. In addition to exploring the relationship of the annual consular office to Roman conceptions of time, I relate the memorial practices attested by the Boethius diptych’s medieval inscriptions to the emergence of libri memoriales, codices containing lists of the names of the dead that were popular primarily in German monasteries between the eight and twelfth centuries. I broaden this preliminary study to the extant corpus of consular diptychs as well as comparative Late Antique, Carolingian, and Ottonian ivories and manuscripts. This enables a deeper consideration of the capacity of both portraits and personal names to signify bodily presence in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, as well as how lists served as tools for visually articulating and imposing order on the natural and the supernatural. Finally, my work considers the generative role of both inscription and erasure in shifting conceptions of imperial, familial, and community identity. Since Richard Delbrueck published his catalog of consular diptychs in 1929, these objects have received little more than a cursory or partial treatment in scholarship. They primarily serve as evidence of a shift away from the naturalism of imperial Roman art toward schematic, hierarchical representations in the first centuries of the Christian Empire. In my efforts to reframe the material, I have turned to scholars like Hans Belting, Jas’ Elsner, and Jean-Claude Schmitt, who insist on the capacity of portraits to encourage cross-temporal associations due to a historical connection to funerary memoria. For, as Belting reminds us, “it is not enough to see the cult portrait as a symbol of presence and the narrative picture as a symbol of history. The portrait, too, derives power from its claim to historicity, from the existence of a historical person.” Belting therefore points to a period in which imperial, funerary, and devotional images became increasingly enmeshed, when the cult of the saints grew to mirror the cult of remembrance around the dead. The surviving corpus of re-inscribed consular diptychs articulates a similar concern with the memorialization of the dead through two predominant trends. Both trends stem from the diptychs’ original conception as Roman imperial objects, which codified the authoritative presence of the consul through his represented body and the attributes of his office. As demonstrated by the Boethius diptych, the names and honorific inscriptions recorded on the interior of many consular diptychs forge a relationship between the authority of the past, depicted outside, and the new clerical powers of the Church, named within. The presence of litanies and musical notation in examples like the Justinianus diptych fragment speak to a specifically performative form of memoria. Other diptychs like the David and Gregory diptych in Monza were also re-carved and invested with typological meaning before being fashioned into the treasure bindings of manuscripts. This object is one of several repurposed consular diptychs, which together demonstrate that their medieval owners perceived a direct correspondence between antique writing tablets and their own parchment manuscripts. In my dissertation, I expand my preliminary research on the devotional efficacy of such objects by exploring their relation to the Pauline metaphor of the fleshly tablets, or tables, of the heart. Referenced also in the Old Testament Proverbs, the tablets of the heart served as metaphors for the transmission and internalization of parental knowledge of personal virtue and spirituality. As Jerome himself instructs: “Write in your heart like children learning their ABCs, carving the curved letters with trembling hand in the tablet.” Because Jerome also writes extensively on utility of diptychs and ivory implements in the early education of elite Roman children, the parallel metaphorical and educational use of tablets in this transitional moment in Roman history insured that knowledge of both the terrestrial and the spiritual was transmitted from generation to generation, much like the generational records preserved in the extant tablets themselves. There is likewise a strong biblical tradition linking the vocalized act of naming to the assertion of identity through inscriptions on writing tablets. A prominent example from the Gospel of Luke narrates how Zacharias, rendered mute by divine punishment, inscribes a tablet with the name divinely ordained for his newborn son, John the Baptist. This biblical precedent for patrilineal naming inspired medieval communities to construe themselves, through the inscription of names on diptychs, as witnesses to the life and words of Christ, and as inheritors of Christ’s kingdom. Like John the Baptist, known to art historians iconographically as the one who points to Christ, the Word made Flesh, monastic men and women in the Middle Ages pointed to their own belief in a reverse process of familial naming. For rather than inscribing the name of newborn sons in tablets, they inscribed the names of deceased ancestors in diptychs and libri memoriales as records of their rebirth into eternal life. The medieval custodians of consular diptychs actively engaged with interrelated Late Antique conceptions of the name, the portrait, imperial identity, and the passage of time. The medieval men and women reused these objects in the context of the liturgy and monastic memoria in order to establish a collective identity couched in both the imperial and the biblical past. Further, by exploring the material signification of wax tablets and analyzing the means by which both consular diptychs and libri memoriales articulated genealogical claims in visual form, my project sheds light on Late Antique and early medieval conceptions of divine law and human agency. This agency was itself exercised through the creative act of re-inscription and erasure in writing tablets. For rather than bearing an implicit meaning, inscribed objects in the early Middle Ages constructed history as a function of the ever-changing needs of its present owners.
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdf
dc.language.isoen
dash.licenseLAA
dc.subjectdiptychs
dc.subjecterasure
dc.subjectivory
dc.subjectliturgy
dc.subjectmemoria
dc.subjecttext and image
dc.subjectArt history
dc.subjectMedieval history
dc.subjectReligious history
dc.title“One Whose Name was Writ in Wax:” Reflections on the Medieval Reuse of Consular Diptychs
dc.typeThesis or Dissertation
dash.depositing.authorPulichene, Nicole Danielle
dash.embargo.until9999-01-01
dc.date.available2021-08-04T04:47:00Z
thesis.degree.date2020
thesis.degree.grantorHarvard University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
thesis.degree.levelDoctoral
thesis.degree.namePh.D.
dc.contributor.committeeMemberKalavrezou, Ioli
dc.contributor.committeeMemberBielfeldt, Ruth
dc.type.materialtext
thesis.degree.departmentHistory of Art and Architecture
dc.identifier.orcid0000-0003-3195-6825
dash.author.emailnpulichene@gmail.com


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