2 - Negotiations
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 June 2023
Summary
Abstract: In Poland, the Byzantine murals commissioned by King Wladislas II Jogaila for Catholic churches were received as culturally other. Accommodating these confessionally alien images within church interiors is traced through the (re-)construction of roles of patrons, masters, and clerics. The parallel inquiry into connotations of the qualifier ‘Greek’ as applied to things and people shows divided judgement: ‘Greek’ objects were qualified as old and ‘Greek’ persons were associated with error. Hence, intellectual effort was made to detach Greek images from schismatic Greeks. This being done, icons became recognized as a core of the Roman Catholic tradition dating from the time of the apostles.
Keywords: visual otherness, appropriation, confessional polemics, cultural capital, iconography, postcolonial theory
Actors of varied provenance yet of higher social rank took positions in ascribing Greek images with roles and values. These activities are traceable in iconography and displays of wall paintings and lead to persons who acted as commissioners, proprietors, donors, and disputants concerned with images that became confessionalized from the moment they appeared in Catholic churches in the Kingdom of Poland. Although it is apparent that pictures had not only users, but also makers – the latter even when captured in records escaped the attention of the discussants until well into the sixteenth century. The concern with images rather than their producers structures this second chapter, which begins with commissioners and ends with painters. In addition to addressing images and persons, at several occasions the inquiry discusses inscriptions focusing on the script. While in Poland, Cyrillic captions of Greek images were frequently doubled in Latin; in Lithuania, where Ruthenian was the dominant written language until the mid-sixteenth century, the Byzantine painting and Cyrillic script stand in contrast rather than parallel. In the late medieval grand duchy Cyrillic was a vernacular script and Byzantine paintings, vernacular imagery. After the country's Catholic conversion, the Cyrillic alphabet and the Ruthenian language preserved their vernacular status, while Greek images were gradually alienated. What is more, the issue of language was exempt from growing disdain towards the Orthodox creed, its followers, and items used in liturgy. Hence, in this part of the book discussion on the confessional character of script pertains only to Polish material.
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- Maniera Greca in Europe's Catholic EastOn Identities of Images in Lithuania and Poland (1380s-1720s), pp. 119 - 160Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2023