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medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

In response to Richard Landes' query:
Meyer Schapiro's _Romanesque Art_ devotes a considerable portion of its text to Moissac, a place he obviously adored. His discussion of the tympanum is far too lengthy to reproduce here. But I will extract a few sentences bearing directly on the recent discussion:
"The tympanum does not render a specific line of the Apocalyptic text but a characteristic and impressive moment of the vision" (202). [There follows a sort of catalogue of elements of the text omitted from the sculpture and elements of the sculpture which diverge from the text.] "With all these modifications of the vision, the tympanum is yet wonderfully in accord with it" (202).
"The wavy lines of the sea of glass, the meandering ribbon under the archivolt, and the dense, serried feathers of the many wings contribute further to the restlessness of the whole" (203).
"Even the sea of glass halts for a moment before his feet; the amplitude of the wave is noticeably greater here in acknowledgement of the common center" (203).
For whatever it's worth, Meyer Schapiro takes as a given that the sea of glass is depicted at Moissac.
MG

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