medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
On Thursday, September 23, 2010, at 5:15 am, I wrote:
> 1) Zechariah and Elisabeth (d. 1st cent.).
Z. is of course routinely figured in representations of the Presentation of the BVM. See the selection of images in last year's "saints of the day" notice for that feast:
http://tinyurl.com/29fcdnn
> 3) Thecla of Iconium (d. late 1st cent., supposedly).
On Thursday, September 23, 2010, at 10:04 pm, Genevra Kornbluth wrote:
> There is also an earlier ivory with Thecla; see
> http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/search_the_collection_database/search_object_details.aspx?objectid=62246&partid=1&searchText=paul+ivory&fromDate=300&fromADBC=ad&toDate=600&toADBC=ad&titleSubject=on&numpages=10&orig=%2fresearch%2fsearch_the_collection_database.aspx¤tPage=1
The British Museum's text accompanying that image describes only the lowest of the three panels shown. The other two panels also show scenes from the Acts of Paul and Thecla. For example, at left in the middle panel T. is shown standing next to the seal pond in the amphitheatre at Antioch into which she is said to have leapt in an act of self-baptism, while at right in the upper panel T. is shown receiving water from the cave in the rock where she spent her final days after escaping through the cleft.
The animal in the pool, sometimes interpreted in versions of this scene as a dolphin, is in the texts a seal (a.k.a. sea calf). For an attested Roman amphitheatre with a pool containing seals, see Calpurnius Siculus, _Ecl._ 7. 65-68.
For a much later portrayal of T.'s baptism in that pool, see this detail of Johan Pere's mid-fifteenth-century polychromed alabaster altarpiece of T. in the cathedral of Tarragona:
http://tinyurl.com/3abxoxh
Distance views of the altarpiece:
http://tinyurl.com/38lcapz
http://tinyurl.com/37xtyz7
http://tinyurl.com/3yadp85
Views of the earlier scene in which T. survives an attempt to execute her by fire:
http://tinyurl.com/2d9hypu
http://tinyurl.com/2eb7wcj
http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/93892640/Hulton-Archive
Other detail views are here:
http://tinyurl.com/38jcm9o
While we're here, some views of Tarragona's cathedral of Santa Maria (sometimes said, because of the presence there of T.'s putative relics, to be dedicated to the BVM _and_ to T.):
http://tinyurl.com/2dg6gyb
http://tinyurl.com/29ewk6e
http://tinyurl.com/284hz5b
http://tinyurl.com/2uz248y
http://tinyurl.com/29oz3av
http://tinyurl.com/2346u7d
More views here:
http://tinyurl.com/38jcm9o
http://tinyurl.com/2faplbd
http://www.poblesdecatalunya.cat/element.php?e=2895
> 6) Adomnán of Iona (d. 704)...
> As abbot A. wrote both a widely circulated account of the holy places
> in Palestine (the _De locis sanctis_) and the standard -- and
> stylistically masterful -- Vita of Columba in three books.
Courtesy of the wonderful e-codices site for Swiss libraries, herewith the opening of A.'s _Vita Columbae_ in a contemporary or closely posthumous witness (Schaffhausen, Stadtbibliothek, Gen. 1; the scribe is known to have died in 713):
http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en/sbs/0001/6/medium
Time to practice your Irish half-uncial?
Best again,
John Dillon
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