Medieval Monastery of Saint Elijah: A History in Paint and Stone

Hardback, 432 pages, Size:225 x 280 mm, Illustrations:10 b/w, 150 col., 2 tables b/w., 1 maps b/w, Language: English. ISBN 9782503589435. Summary Blending innovative art historical analysis with archaeology, epigraphy, history, liturgy, theology, and landscape and memory studies, The Medieval Monastery of Saint Elijah: A History in Paint and Stone is the first comprehensive interdisciplinary study of a deeply intelligent yet understudied male Benedictine convent near Rome. The only monastery known to have been dedicated to the prophet Elijah in the Latin West, it was rebuilt c.1122-26 with papal patronage. Today, the monastery is represented by its church of Sant'Elia, a stone basilica endowed with its original Cosmati marble pavement and liturgical furnishings, early and high medieval sculptures and inscriptions, and vibrant wall paintings that include unique depictions of the prophet Elijah and the twelve tribes of Israel as warriors, an apse program with a distinctly elite Roman origin, and an important narrative cycle of the Apocalypse. An outlying chapel marks the site of a theophany that sanctified the landscape and gave the monastery its raison d'être. The Medieval Monastery of Saint Elijah makes significant contributions to current art historical debates concerning communal identity and the construction of social memory, artistic creativity and processes, the multisensory and exegetical capacities of works of visual art, intersections of topography and sanctity, and the effects of medievalism on our understanding of the Middle Ages. TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction: 1769/2019 Chapter One: Recovering the Romanesque Monastery The Monastery Today Reversing Time's Arrow at the Church of Sant'Elia The Twelfth-Century Corpus Conclusion Chapter Two: vetustum monasterium Sancti Heliae A Sacred Landscape Remembering Abbots Past From Temple to Church, or, Building Like Benedict Conclusion Chapter Three: The Materiality of Memory Representation versus Materiality The Crypt as locus antiquior Promoting Cult, Protecting Community Conclusion Chapter Four: The Monk as the New Elijah In the Name of Elijah In the Image of Elijah Prophets as Models At the Altar of Elijah Conclusion Chapter Five: Seeing Apocalypse at Sant'Elia Painting the Apocalypse John the Revelator Conclusion Chapter Six: Why the Apocalypse? Exegetical Images The Politics of Apocalypse Conclusion Chapter Seven: A Papal Church in Lazio A Basilica Reformed The Images around the Altar Establishing the Papal Perimeter Conclusion Conclusion: Bovo famulus tuus 0 g.…