Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T17:05:09.566Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

1 - The Attire of the Virgin Mary and Female Rulers in Iconographical Sources of the Ninth to Eleventh Centuries: Analogues, Interpretations, Misinterpretations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 May 2021

Get access

Summary

In western Europe the formalization of the position of wife of the ruler started taking shape in the Carolingian period. She began to be crowned as empress alongside her husband, and the practice of anointing her as queen was adopted. Simultaneously with the introduction of formal coronations of queens and empresses in the West, rulers’ wives were gradually included into the world of Christian symbolism, and their special position, confirmed by religious rites, required a theological explanation and foundation.

Research on queenship ideology is undoubtedly a vivid and important field of recent medieval studies. Focusing on the religious basis of the ruler's consort position and its biblical models, students of the subject have shown the role of the Queen of Heavens, the Virgin Mary, already for centuries titled regina, as an important point of reference for the terrestrial queen. The confident conviction that the role of the Mother of God in queenship ideology was so crucial from the very beginning can in fact be called into question, but this is not the place to undertake that subject. My goal in this article is much more limited: I would like to show how the assumption of an ideological bond between Mary and the ruler's consort, in some cases perhaps too easily accepted, may have led us to misinterpretations of particular sources. I would like to show that only analyzed in a wider context can they help us to better understand queenship ideology as well as the perception of the Virgin in the early Middle Ages.

As examples, I have taken three iconographical sources, that is, miniatures from three different codices. The first of these images is from the so-called Bible of San Paolo fuori le Mura or the Bible of Charles the Bald (fig. 1.1), produced under the patronage of the ruler between ca. 866 and ca. 875. Another image is the famous dedication page of the Liber Vitae from New Minster, Winchester (fig. 1.2), a confraternity book containing names of monks and benefactors of the abbey, which was produced and began to be filled about 1031. The final example is from the Petershausen Sacramentary (fig. 1.3), the work of Anno, a scribe from the extraordinary centre of Ottonian art that is Reichenau Abbey, made between ca. 970 and ca. 980.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2016

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×