Hardesty 1
Doug Hardesty (Drawer 936)
Medieval Art and Architecture (K. Fedders)
March 3 2004
Accumulation in Medieval Manuscripts and Reliquaries
Art served many different purposes in the medieval era. Pictographs were used as religious educational tools for the illiterate masses, reliquaries used to swear upon in the legal system, and churches designed to impress and make humble the average Joe
Peasant. Due to the impoverished conditions of the time, there was little art to be had for the sake of art. Instead, most art had some functional purpose, either secular or religious.
Although no two eras of art will be the same, many themes are shared in medieval-era and African art. This may be due in part to common themes within the two cultures.
Medieval and African societies were both fairly conservative and emphasized the respect of “older” things, while discouraging innovative thought and “new” ideas. Both medievals and Africans had a clear power structure, with certain monks or holy men bestowed special status within the culture. It was these men who often commissioned or made artwork. Thus, both cultures used art simultaneously as an educational tool and a control device. Aesthetically there are strong parallels between the African and medieval reuse of materials and symbols, and the material complexity of a work. In both medieval and African art, these aesthetic characteristics metaphorically express the concepts of transference and accumulation in artwork. Specifically, manuscripts and reliquaries are prime examples of accumulation in medieval art.
Arnold Rubin, in his essay Accumulation: Power and Display in African
Sculpture
, uses the term ‘accumulation’ in both a literal and metaphoric sense. Literally,

Hardesty 2
African art is composed of many different accumulated materials and may be seen as very “busy” to the Western eye. African art may also be the product of many artists over time, rather than being finished once it leaves a single artist’s workshop (Rubin, 7, 18).
Literal accumulation, Rubin argues, is used in African art to express the wealth and importance of the individual or group that owns such an accumulated piece of art (Rubin,
7). ‘Accumulation’ in a metaphoric sense refers to the “wisdom of the past” (Rubin, 6), a vast accumulation of knowledge and thought from the ancients. The idea of transference
(or as Rubin calls it, “POWER”) in art refers to the social, symbolic power a component of the work brings to the whole. It would be easy to apply these terms to almost all medieval art, but focus here shall be limited to manuscripts and reliquaries.
The majority of manuscripts produced in the early medieval era were religious works. Manuscripts formed a symbolic liturgical device. Many holy works were meant to be seen, not read. This is apparent in their format: The Book of Kells has 340 folios, each of which measure approximately 330x255mm (Meehan, 92). Such a massive book could not be easily read in a monk’s lap, but was intended for display, symbolism, and show.
What could have been a private text became a public display of art. Subsequently, manuscripts and even book covers employed many artistic techniques designed to impress the viewer. The Book of Kells is an excellent example of literal accumulation.
Hundreds of pages of vellum, each handmade and handwritten, luxuriously illuminated with gold leaf and expensive dyes, impart a sense of awe to those who see it. Of particular interest are folios 129V (the four evangalist’s symbols), 130R (the beginning of
Saint Mark’s gospel), and 291V (a portrait of Saint John). All three of these images show extraordinary detail and in particular 129V shows an opulent use of gold leaf. The cost of

Hardesty 3 producing these pages must have been enormous and further adds to the materialistic/literal accumulation within the book. The Lindau Gospels is another example of the literal accumulation of manuscripts, with its golden covers incrusted with precious gems. Undoubtedly, peasants and other churchgoers of the era saw such beautiful and expensive books to be a sign of the church’s accumulation of power and influence. Manuscripts too exemplify metaphoric accumulation. New manuscripts were copied from older manuscripts, which in turn had been copied from yet older manuscripts. This continuity and rigidity of knowledge formed a basis of conservative thought, which defines metaphoric accumulation: revering the wisdom of the past. Lastly, manuscripts have a great deal of symbolic transference or “POWER” in Christian imagery. Symbols of the four evangelists, the Virgin, Jesus’ life, and especially the crucifix are all Christian-specific images of power. Two prime examples from The Book of Kells are folios 34R and 114R, which are, respectively, the full-page “Chi Rho” symbol and the dramatic portrayal of the arrest of Christ. Both of these images invoke powerful emotions inside anyone within Christian society, but their power is drawn from that social meaning, rather than their aesthetic beauty.
Another art form that draws power from social meaning is that of reliquaries.
A reliquary is the artistic encasement of a relic; a relic might be a piece of a saint’s body or a fragment of the “True Cross” on which Jesus was crucified. These relics were themselves tattered and visually unimpressive, but their social meaning was profound.
Relics were considered to work miracles in an era of little comfort. Faith in these objects and in God was an important part of life in medieval times, and so it was only logical for the churches that owned such relics to house them in impressive works of art. These

Hardesty 4 reliquaries provided visual attraction while the relic inside of them provided a deep spiritual meaning to the overall piece. Several reliquaries are obvious examples of literal accumulation. One such work is the purse reliquary of Saint Stephen. Golden, with silver gilt and many precious stones affixed, it has an elaborate visual appeal that was very pleasing to the medieval eye; the vividness and expense of the work must have left no doubt in the medieval mind that the earth placed inside was indeed stained with the blood of Saint Stephen. Here is another purpose of reliquaries, namely, to gold-plate and jewelover any doubts regarding the authenticity of a relic. Certainly, Jesus did not have twenty foreskins, and only so many fragments of the True Cross could have survived to the medieval era. As such, many relics must have been counterfeit, either by accident or intentional deceit. A second reliquary, which holds much of the same power that the purse of Saint Stephen does, is that of Saint Foy – a classic example of reliquary excess.
Extraordinary accumulation surrounds the making of the reliquary statue of Saint Foy.
The hundreds of gems incrusting the statue have been added over a period of many years
(an accumulation over time), and the head of the statue blends literal accumulation with a metaphoric reverence for that which is ‘old’: it is as gaudy as the rest of the work, but borrowed from a piece of art made some years prior. ‘Authentic’ relics acted, even unseen, as a transference device. A small piece of bone, cloth, or wood turned a beautiful object into a beautiful, highly spiritual, deeply revered object by its purely social association with a saint or Jesus. No inherent aesthetic value of the object gave it these powers, but instead such value was granted by the relic’s place in medieval society.
Rubin’s concepts of accumulation and transference within African art are, it has been shown, applicable to art in the medieval era. This applicability, as previously stated,

Hardesty 5 may be connected by common themes within African and medieval culture, such as fierce competition for resources and a conservative outlook. Although separated by thousands of miles and hundreds of years, and although the materials used contrast sharply between wood with shells and gold with gems, both eras of art have prevalent examples of the concepts of material and metaphoric accumulation, and the idea of society-driven symbolism within components of artwork.

Hardesty 6
Work Cited
Meehan, B. The Book of Kells . London: Thames & Hudson, 1994.
Rubin, A. Accumulation: Power and Display in African Sculpture as published in Arts of
Africa, Oceania, and the Americas by Berlo, J. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1993.