medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Sorry,
I meant: Might the adoption of the *vertical* scroll be a reaction to
the continued Jewish use of the horizontal scroll for the Torah?
Jim
On 26/04/2012 7:12 AM, Dr Jim Bugslag wrote:
> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
>
> Dear Bob,
> One type of horizontal scroll that presumably would have survived all
> the way through the Middle Ages is the Torah. Might the adoption of
> the horizontal scroll be a reaction to that? I wonder, as well,
> whether there might have been vertical scrolls in antiquity. Besides
> liturgical scrolls, like the exultet rolls for example, there are
> medieval vertical rolls surviving for genealogies, for which they are
> well suited. Many thanks for raising an interesting distinction.
> Jim
>
> On 26/04/2012 12:17 AM, Robert Kraft wrote:
>> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and
>> culture
>>
>> I'm fascinated by this image of John and Mark with their respective
>> Gospels in hand. The formats of the books seem to represent scrolls
>> written horizontally in "classical" fashion (rather than as rotuli,
>> read vertically, as often depicted in Christian iconography after
>> about the 6th century), unless normal codices were intended by were
>> muddled in the restoration.
>>
>> I've been collecting images of horizontal scrolls in Christian
>> depictions, and find that most of them are relatively early (many
>> from Ravenna, for example), and that after about the 6th century,
>> many artists understood scrolls to be vertical rotuli, like those
>> used in liturgical (and legal) contexts. Of course, most frequently
>> when "books" are depicted the codex format is represented. My
>> interest is in the probable loss of awareness of the horizontal
>> scroll especially in the west (at least one such scroll -- the
>> "Joshua scroll" -- has been preserved from much later), the
>> replacement of such scrolls by codices in the imagery, and the
>> lingering awareness in some circles that "scrolls" were an early book
>> format, but by the time the artist worked, "scroll" no longer meant
>> the horizontal variety, but the then familiar vertically read rotulus.
>>
>> Any suggestions (or further examples) relating to this situation
>> would be most welcome.
>>
>> Bob Kraft, UPenn
>>
>> On 4/25/2012 2:55 AM, John Dillon wrote:
>>> Mark (at right; at left, St. John, apostle and evangelist) as
>>> depicted in the restored eleventh-century frescoes of the Karanlık
>>> kilise (Dark Church) at Göreme in Turkey's Nevşehir province:
>>> http://www.pbase.com/dosseman/image/41566368
>>>
>>>
>>
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>
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