The marking of monastic space: inscribed language on Romanesque capitals

2015-04-18The period between 1080 and 1140 saw an explosion in monastic construction throughout Western Europe. Such architectural refurbishment frequently went hand-inhand with monastic reform and the creation of spaces for spiritual renewal. These projects coincided with the understanding of the church building as a representation of the community of the faithful (the Church). Since the eleventh century, every facet of the church building and its decoration was subject to encyclopedic allegorical exposition, yet there was no mention of the many monumental inscriptions. This is a striking omission if one considers the numerous monumental inscriptions produced in monasteries between 1080 and 1150, particularly inscriptions on capitals. There has been no broad study of inscribed capitals in relation to architectural space and ritual activity. ❧ This dissertation examines the interaction of text and image on inscribed capitals in order to understand the ways in which religious orders defined monastic space. I compare the capitals’ placement, iconographical, and inscriptional content in seventy-six French Romanesque monasteries with evidence of ritual performance in customaries, hymnals, cartularies, and chant manuscripts. I propose that the relationship between text and image within architectural space provided performative cues for both the monastic and lay audience. I argue in this study that the inscriptions on these capitals did more than identify a scene or figure; they transmitted the monastic mission, highlighted the liturgical function of an area, and bounded sacred space. The interpretations developed in this study draw from the fields of epigraphy, art history, history, archaeology, musicology, and liturgical studies