Due to the influence of the Greek-speaking immigrants who flocked into the city of Rome over the course of the 7th and 8th centuries, there was an explosion of interest in the cults of saints and their relics, one manifestation of which was the efflorescence in the depiction of saints' lives on the church walls. Five of these cycles survive--albeit in various stages of preservation--and portray the martyrdoms of Quiricus and Julitta, Erasmus, the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste, Callixtus, and Paul and Anastasius. As the largest surviving body of early hagiographical cycles, the paintings serve as the standard of comparison for later works, but they have yet to be fully studied in the art historical literature. The aim of this dissertation is to help correct this oversight, and to examine the cycles, in the context of their cultural and architectural settings, in order to come to an understanding of how early hagiographical cycles functioned.
The dissertation begins with an examination of the evidence for pre-8th century cycles, Biblical and non-Biblical, extant and non-extant, produced in any medium in Byzantium or the West. The aim is to discover patterns, either in the make-up of the cycles, or the contexts for their use. The paintings in Rome are then carefully analysed, both in terms of their content and archaeological context, in combination with the surviving hagiographical, liturgical, and historical texts.
The conclusion reached is that non-Biblical hagiographical cycles first gained popularity in the East, where they were most commonly found decorating either the tombs of saints, or their reliquary shrines. Their appearance in Rome can be closely linked to the influence of the Greek-speaking immigrants, to the cults of saints and relics that they promulgated, and to the special veneration accorded the non-Biblical saint by members of the lay population. The cycles most commonly decorate chapels, or chapel-like spaces, that are located in diaconiae, the charitable institutions founded in Rome at the end of the 7th century, and whose administration was largely the responsibility of the lay community. Furthermore, as several of the cycles seem to decorate private chapels, perhaps provided to the wealthy laity in return for their donations to the church, they emerge as the early ancestors of the works found in the private chapels, decorated for rich benefactors, which proliferate in the late Middle Ages. / Graduate
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uvic.ca/oai:dspace.library.uvic.ca:1828/9654 |
| Date | 10 July 2018 |
| Creators | Jessop, Lesley Patricia |
| Contributors | Osborne, John |
| Source Sets | University of Victoria |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | Available to the World Wide Web |
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