Medieval Culture and Art History - Treasures

The following paper traces the origins and increased interest in the cultural heritage of Georgia on behalf of the local intelligentsia in the 19th century. After describing the circumstances that may have led the new generation of Georgian scholars to a systematic exploration of ancient remains in the Caucasus and medieval ecclesiastical monuments and treasuries, the paper will focus on the main archaeologists of Christian antiquity in Georgia, Dimitri Bakradze and Ekvtime Taqaishvili. Finally, the study outlines the creation of what has been called the Georgian National Treasure. The treasure items, collected from monasteries and settlements all over Georgia and protected from robberies and impetuous art collectors, were sent into exile in 1921, shortly before the short-lived Georgian Democratic Republic’s annexation to the Soviet Union. The thirty-nine boxes, containing manuscripts, icons, precious liturgical vessels and other priceless items, were sent from Batumi to Marseille, via Istanbul, and stored in France until 1945, when Ekvtime Taqaishvili, who had taken care of and protected them over those 24 years, accompanied them back to Tbilisi.

Inside the Carpathian Arch, on the present territory of Romania and the Serbian Banat, were discovered several treasures that contain items attributable to the Balkan space in terms of the typology of most items. Most of them were discovered either in marginal areas, where the Wallachian voivodes had domains (Amnaș, Streza-Cârțișoara, Brașov), or near the border areas close to the Danube (Dubovac, Duplijaja and Macoviște) and on the Lower Tisza (Banatski Despotovac). The exceptions are the treasures from Șopteriu (where only remains of a tiara were found, more specifically necklaces with pendants), Sâmbăteni and Brașov. To these is added another one found in the former county of Maramureș.
The analyzed treasures include tiaras plate, hair rings, earings, temple earrings, coins, glass bracelets, silver bracelets, buttons, metal vesels, fragments of ingots, buckles. In some treasures the items have different origins, balkanic or central european.
The chronology of the burial of the treasures indicates first of all the Tatar invasion of 1241-1242, but also the following ones from the thirteenth century. For the other situations, the causes had rather local reasons. For the middle Danube area, we must not forget the attacks of the Cumans from the end of the thirteenth century, when numerous destructions of the localities from the lower Tisza plain were attested. Other important moments can be related to the Danube conflicts between the Kingdom of Hungary and the Ottoman Empire, especially during the reign of Sigismund of Luxembourg (1387-1437). In southern Transylvania, the situation can be linked either to the tense relations between the king and the Saxons in the south of the region, but also to possible Tatar invasions on the Olt valley at the end of the thirteenth century and the beginning of the fourteenth century. Starting with the fifteenth century, the burial of the treasures can be attributed to the Turkish invasions.

Resumen
En 1887, el cura párroco de Rennes-le-Château, un minúsculo y humilde poblado del sur de Francia, hace un descubrimiento que cambia porcompleto la historia del lugar: unos manuscritos que lo conducen a un fabuloso y misterioso tesoro que no ha dejado de maravillar a investigadores quienes lo relacionan muy rápidamente con templarios, cátaros y cristianos primitivos, pasando por María Magdalena, el Santo
Grial y el Priorato de Sión... Muchos de los detalles de esta historia se fueron a la tumba con la muerte del sacerdote y su criada. En la actualidad no tenemos sino conjeturas y elementos dispersos que nos permiten reconstruir medianamente la historia. En 1896 Julio Verne publica su novela Clovis Dardentor signada por algunos especialistas como Michel Lamy como reveladora de ciertos mensajes cifrados
en los que se hace referencia al famoso tesoro del cura Saunière.
¿Coincidencia o algo más?

Abstract
In 1887 Abbot Saunière the parish priest of Rennes-le-Château, a tiny humble village in the south of France makes a discovery that completely changes the history of the place. He finds manuscripts that lead him to a treasure that is still the marvel of scholars. The site has been related to the Knights Templars, the Cathars and early Christians, to Mary Magdalen, the Holy Grail and the priory of Sion. Many of the details of this story
are lost with the death of the priest and his maid. Nowadays we can only make conjectures based on scattered elements remnants of these documents that help us in our aim to reconstruct the story. In 1896 Jules Verne publishes his novel Clovis Dardentor that some investigators such as Michel Lamy, have found to reveal certain encoded messages that refer to the famous treasure found by the priest Saunière. Is this more than coincidence?

Derrière la sécheresse apparente d’un inventaire surgit toute l’opulence du trésor de la cathédrale de Liège, remarquable par le nombre de pièces de qualité et de grande valeur qu’il contient. Par des mentions de prime abord anodines s’entrevoient également les préoccupations économiques et politiques du nouvel évêque de Liège, Réginard, dans le contexte spécifique du diocèse et de l’empire en 1025. Et, dans ces circonstances précises, l’inventaire du trésor de la cathédrale a peut-être été conçu comme un instrument symbolique non seulement d’exaltation de la généalogie sacrée des évêques, mais aussi, avec l’aide de Dieu et de saint Lambert, de défense des droits de l’Église de Liège.

The Hoard of Medieval Coins from the Village Stizhok. In the spring of 2011, a clay pot was found in a field nearby the village Stizhok (Shumsk district, Ternopil’ region,Ukraine). The pot contained about 2500 silver coins struck in the Golden Horde, Crimean Khanate, Caffa, Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, and Lithuania. The significant part of oriental coins bears the Tartar, Moldavian and Lithuanian countermarks. Most likely, the treasure was hidden during the Tartar military expansion atthe end of 15th and beginning of 16th centuries.

Keywords. Numismatics, medieval numismatics, coin hoard, Genoese colonies in Crimea,  Genoese history, Poland, Ukraine, Golden Horde, Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Moldova, Romania, Wallachia, Asprokastron, 15th century.

L’Abbaye de Saint-Maurice d’Agaune, 515-2015, 2vols, I: Histoire et archéologie, éd. Bernard Andenmatten et Laurent Ripart, II : Le Trésor, éd. Pierre Alain Mariaux, Gollion : Infolio, 2015

La table des matières des deux volumes est également donnée en pièce jointe.

La visión del templo medieval estuvo definida por varios principios: la contemplación pautada de los objetos y el aspecto cambiante del espacio religioso. Todo ello redundaba en el carácter camaleónico de los espacios, lo que contribuía notablemente a publicitar los mensajes predefinidos, a captar la atención del público y, paralelamente, otorgar un valor estético y programático a los objetos. Si este era el modo de funcionamiento de un templo medieval, el retablo –pieza fundamental en su ornato─ obligatoriamente tenía que subscribir los mismos principios.
En este artículo, nos acercamos al retablo bajomedieval, a sus diferentes tipologías –con y sin alas de apertura y cierre−, a las consecuencias topográficas derivadas de su inserción en el espacio religioso y, especialmente, a las funciones litúrgicas y ceremoniales otorgadas a su visión cambiante.  Para ello, de modo novel en el ámbito castellano, hemos empleados los libros de las consuetas o costumbreros de las principales catedrales bajomedievales donde se desgranan una a una cómo debían oficiarse las festividades litúrgicas y cuál era el cometido de cada oficio y cargo de la iglesia dejando constancia del cambiante atrezo de vestimentas, altares, retablos y espacio eclesial que adquiría una mutante cualidad multi-sensorial y una polisémica semántica.

Il volume ripercorre la storia della ricerca dei tesori fra Medioevo ed Età Moderna, analizzando le sfumature del desiderio che ha colto gli uomini attraverso i secoli, descrivendo alcuni degli oggetti che hanno alimentato i racconti più favolosi, svelando come nascono certe leggende, alla scoperta dei nascondigli e dei loro custodi, sulla scia di quei cercatori che, dalle sponde meridionali del Mediterraneo fino all’Europa settentrionale, per secoli hanno seguito il miraggio della ricchezza fra magia e misteriose topografie auree.

The article attempts to trace the destiny of a valuable artistic collection from the Palace in Nemyriv (Vinnitsa region) belonged to Princess Maria Shcherbatoff, which after her death in 1920, was nationalized. The article reveals the history of the transfer of values during 1920, 1927 and 1928 (the graphic arts, furniture, paintings and family archives), and the participation of the memorial guardian, the scientist-art historian Fedir Ernst, in preserving things from the Nemirovsky palace. We made an attempt to find the property from Nemyriv, which could have got to the Kyiv museums . It is known that 4 panels from the collection of Maria Shcherbatoff could have been exchanged by Fedir Ernst from the collection of S.K. Glevasky, a Kyiv antiquarian. In 1928 they got to the funds of the Allukrainian Historical museum named after T.G. Shevchenko (now The National Art Museum of Ukraine). Nowadays, these things have not been found. They can have been lost during the Second World War.
In order to reveal this unknown page in the history of the art collection, the correspondence of F. Ernst was researched. The documents from the archives of the documentation of the National Art Museum of Ukraine, the Central State Archives of the supreme bodies of power and administration of Ukraine and the Central State Historical Archives in Kyiv were carefully studied and published to disclose this story. A thorough research and popularization of treasures of domestic art plays an important role in the process of creation of the newest Ukrainian culture. Under such conditions the certain attention is paid to the problems of total study and comprehension of the creative achievements of outstanding Ukrainian artists. While admiring the beautiful collections of Ukrainian artists in the exposition of the Vinnytsia Regional Art Museum, we can not forget the names of those prominent scholars, enthusiasts, devotees, true Ukrainian intellectuals, thanks to whose tremendous efforts these treasures have been collected.

Archeology of an Epiphany. Reliquaries in the Middle Ages and their new display scenes in private collections, museums and Church treasuries since the XIXth century is a wide-ranging study about the construction of sacrality and the possibility of its later transmission through
museums. It chooses Christian reliquaries and their inscription in architectural settings, ritual and liturgical performances in the Medieval Church as an observatory position to consider their later redeployments. In order to write a diachronic story of the different settings surrounding
these peculiar objects throughout times, this PhD mobilizes the philosophical concepts of “visibility and display” (from Foucault & Agamben), “cultural transfer” (Espagne), “appropriation” (Banxandall) and the notion of “framing” (Grave, Van Eck & Phélan).
Considering two enunciative systems separated in time, this work confronts in-depth analyses of the reliquaries among medieval visuality with comprehensive descriptions of their subsequent museological apparitions. The first chapters investigate the interactions between
what P. Brown has called the “special dead”, the shrines built to house them, and the gleaming materials chosen to reflect Heaven’s glory. These pages focus on the articulation of reliquaries, treasure chests, Church barriers and treasuries in the dynamic elaboration of the sacred based on the manifestation of liminality in Medieval Christianity. In a religion characterized by the Incarnation of an invisible God, relics appear here on a fragile border between created and uncreated, visibility and invisibility, presence through absence, seeing and believing. The
journey of these precious fragments of medieval art and spirituality away from their former enshrining leads the second part of this study to question museological transcriptions and interpretations of the sacred over a long period of time. Chronologically and then thematically,
it brings together new scenes of apparition around reliquaries from permanent installations, temporary exhibitions, and contemporary church treasuries (exhibition units come from France, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Italy and Great Britain). Choosing the reliquary as a locus to observe the dynamic of sacralization in Medieval devotion, this essay queries the processes of historical appropriations of sacred objects, negotiations between the former meanings and uses
of these, and the transfer of sacredness. It underlines the extent to which exhibiting is always an interpretative operation framing both the art and society it stages and the figure of the museum itself inseparable from one’s own system of belief and authority.

The present article discusses two bracelets discovered in the Basarabi hoard, Dolj County, in 1968. Due to the fact that they were partially damaged, several observations on the materials and the manufacturing method could be made. We could see that they are different from other bracelets with trapeze‑shaped ends. Moreover, given the typology of the items manufactured from wires or twisted bars, we could frame them from a typological point of view. The coins discovered in association, but also the chronology of the adornments discovered in the hoards that contained such items allowed us to better classify them chronologically.
Three types of bracelets were identified, which are different in terms of execution of their body. In terms of time of burial, the first is datable between the late thirteenth century and the beginning of the following century (Amnaș, Pădurea Cernica, Voinești), except for the bracelet in the hoard from Păcuiul lui Soare. The second group includes the items from Basarabi (to which are added those from Vidin, Arčar in Bulgaria, or Juhor in Serbia, but also others from museum collections in Berlin, Timișoara and Belgrade), which can be dated to the late fourteenth century and the beginning of the following one. The third group is dated similarly (Gogoșu, Șușița, Voinești, Prahovo, Dolište, Baniska, Kladovo, Prilep, Dragiževo, Sliven, Popovo, Zdravec, German, Šumen, Gorna Bela Rečka). Coins from the North‑Danube area are discovered in the hoards, in all three groups of items.

The exhibition of the Anglo-Saxon Staffordshire Hoard at Birmingham Museum and Gallery is reviewed along with the accompanying publications ‘The Staffordshire Hoard’ and ‘Beasts, Birds and Gods: Interpreting the Staffordshire Hoard’ and the dedicated Staffordshire Hoard website. The exhibition is praised for its innovative approach in developing flexible displays, which can adapt to the findings of ongoing research, but criticized for the unclear juxtaposition of reconstructed and original artefacts, and cramped space within the ‘Treasury’. The publications are considered excellent, combining beautiful photography with modest cost, whilst the website is a useful additional resource containing a detailed gallery of photographs of use to both the serious scholar and student.

KEYWORDS
ANGLO-SAXON, EARLY MEDIEVAL, STAFFORDSHIRE HOARD, HOARDS, MATERIAL CULTURE, ANGLO-SAXON ICONOGRAPHY, MUSEUM STUDIES

With its Romanesque bell tower that stands at the foot of a soaring cliff, the Abbey of Saint-Maurice d'Agaune presents its visitors with 1500 years of history. From the Early Middle Ages, the memory of the martyrdom of Mauritius and his companions in the Theban Legion, who were massacred for refusing to obey an order that contravened their faith, endowed the site with great prestige in the Christian world. Testimony of the strength of the cult of Mauritius, the Abbey's treasure is unique for the quality and diversity of its pieces. This guide investigates the history and iconography, as well as the material nature, of the objects of which the treasure is comprised. Through high-definition videos of six emblematic medieval pieces, this publication offers a new understanding of the Abbey and its treasure.

Recent research on the Schedula diversarum artium has lead to a "depersonalisation" of the anonymous author "Theophilus". re-positioning the important 12th century treatise in the function of an open source monastic manual in the service  of the "decor domus Dei" and liturgical practice.  The prominent description of the two censers in the centre of book III not only highlights two important metalworking techniques, the different iconographies of the two censers also suggests their functional identification with the two essential parts of the mass: The reading of the Gospels and the Eucharist.

A l’occasion de son jubilé, l’abbaye de Saint-Maurice a procédé au redéploiement de son trésor dans un nouvel écrin, intégré à la fin du parcours de visite du site patrimonial et archéologique. L’occasion était donnée d’étudier à nouveau cet important ensemble de reliquaires et de pièces de sacristie, datant pour la plupart du Moyen Age, tout en s’intéressant à la paramentique, aux inventaires anciens ou à l’histoire des dispositifs, et de s’interroger sur les conditions matérielles des objets et de leur mise en exposition.
Ainsi, pour la première fois, une publication réunit tous les objets conservés dans le trésor abbatial, les enveloppes textiles des reliques qu’ils contenaient et les étiquettes qui ont servi à les identifier. Cet ouvrage consiste en un solide état des connaissances, qui devrait permettre aux chercheurs d’ouvrir de nouveaux chantiers de recherche.

Schatzstücke tun gerne so, als wären sie einzigartig – das wird in ihrer Erscheinungsgestalt, der Inszenierung ihrer Herkunfts- oder Entstehungsgeschichte und bei ihrer Präsentation betont. So heterogen sie sind, sie verfügen oft über ein gemeinsames Kriterium: Ihre Gestalt gleicht einer bricolage. Ihr Erscheinungsbild scheint zugleich Produkt und Zeichen zu sein für den steten Wandel der Gestalt des Schatzstückes. Es ist entweder das Ergebnis eines regen Gabentausches mit dem Schatzstück oder aus heterogenen Fragmenten, Diebesgut und kostbaren Materialien zusammengefügt.
Der Repräsentation einer geschlossenen Form oder einer Werkidee verweigern sich drei exemplarische Beispiele nur auf den ersten Blick: Sie wirken zunächst nicht einer höheren Idee wie der des artificiums verpflichtet, das den mittelalterlichen Künstler befähigt, ein opus zu schaffen. Vielmehr erzählen die einzelnen Fragmente verschiedene Entstehungsgeschichten, vom göttlichen Schöpfer und der Natur geschenkt, von antiker Meisterschaft gezeugt, von frevelhaften Händen gestohlen oder wie eine Perle aus dem Nichts entstanden – als creatio ex nihilo. Was jedoch bedeutet ihre zusammengesetzte Gestalt für sie als Objekt der Schatzkunst? Welchen Prinzipien aber folgt die Zusammenfügung zu einem Schatzobjekt? Wie und nach welcher Idee fügt man die heterogenen Bestandteile zusammen und was bedeutet der Schöpfungsakt eines solchen Stückes für ihre Natur als kunstvolles Objekt?
Die Herkunft der einzelnen Bestandteile, ihre Materialität und die Bruchstellen, die Geschichte ihrer Entstehung sowie die Spiegelungen des Betrachterblickes im Glanz ihrer Oberflächen verweisen auf Bedeutungen und lenken zugleich von ihnen auch wieder ab. Das Objekt bemüht sich gar nicht darum, dass sich diese Verweise zu einer lesbaren, auf einen höheren Sinn anspielende Bedeutung schliessen: es bleibt sichtbar polyvalent und lässt uns nach dem Verhältnis von idea und forma als künstlerisches Problem fragen.

Special issue guest edited by edited by Therese Martin
Contents: "Caskets of Silver and Ivory from Diverse Parts of the World: Strategic Collecting for an Iberian Treasury" (Therese Martin); "Narrating the Treasury: What Medieval Iberian Chronicles Choose to Recount about Luxury Objects" (Ana Rodríguez); "Textiles from the Museum of San Isidoro (León): New Evidence for Re-evaluating Their Chronology and Provenance" (Ana Cabrera Lafuente); "Sovereign, Saint, and City: Honor and Reuse of Textiles in the Treasury of San Isidoro (Leon)" (María Judith Feliciano); "Between León and the Levant: The Infanta Sancha’s Altar as Material Evidence for Medieval History"(Jitske Jasperse); "Demons and Diversity in León" (Pamela A. Patton); "Jews, Real and Imagined, at San Isidoro de León and Beyond" (Julie A. Harris)