„Reality“ of Images – „Realities“ of Law

„Reality“ of Images – „Realities“ of Law
Norbert Schnitz/er (Chemnitz)
My argument concerns the ongoing differenciation of the system of law
in the later middle ages (i.e. regulation of proceeding, reception of Roman
law, generalization of legal norms), and its implications for the changing
contents of images, especially the impact of criminal law on PassionJconography.
To a certain extent one could say that reality occupies the
sphere of pictorial tradition. 1
This is the case, for instance, if we take a Iook on representations of
Judas‘ suicide. The motif of the hanging-tree changed in the 1 3th century
and turned into gallows which are surrounded by black birds. Emphasis is
no Ionger set on suicide as last chapter of an extraordinary sinnerbiography,
but on the aspect of a rather shameful death which was
considered by theologians as anticipation of eternal punishment for the
betrayal of Christ. Another example is affered by the iconography of the
mocking-scene during Passion: Aspects of shame and disgrace resulting
from the arrestment and trial agairrst Christ more and more overlay this
scene. Such development is indicated by a systematic stigmatization of
servants through clothes, gestures and monstrous physiognomics which
cantrast harshly with the virtuous figure of Christ. Occasionally the loss
of honm1r seems more painful to Christ than the bodily tortures he had to
suffer?
In a 1 5th-century manuscript from the state-library in Murrich („The
Book of the Holy Trinity“) the impact of legal history becomes
unmistakably clear. The represented scenes do no Ionger follow the
biblical narrative, they are rather oriented towards different modes of
1 Especially on History ofLaw and its impact on Passion lconography, see G. Kocher,
„Passionsdarstellungen und rechtliche Volkskunde“, Forschungen zur Rechtsarchäologie
und rechtlichen Volkskunde I (1978), 1 31-189.
2 N. Schnitzler, „Der Tod des Judas – Ein Beitrag zur Ikonographie des Selbstmordes
im Mittealter“, in Mundus in lmagine. Bildersprache und Lebenswelten im Mittelalter.
Festgabe f K. Schreiner, eds. A. Löther et al . . Munich 1996, 219-46; id., „Vnform/
iche zeichen und freche Vngeberden – Zur Ikonographie der Schande in spätmittelalterlichen
Passionsdarstellungen“, in Körper-Geschichten, ed. R. v. Dülmen, (Studien
zur historischen Kulturforschung V), (Frankfurt/Main, 1996), 13-42.
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execution. Rudolf Berliner, a persecuted Jewish art-historian and expert
of medieval German art, discovered a further detail which illustrates the
contemporary range of interest in the judicial trial against Christ. He
analyzed a humanistic debate of the 1 6th century which discussed the
value of a parchment that covers allegedly the sentence of Pilate as well
as the impact ofthis debate on passion iconography.3
There are even other indications that point into the same direction.
For instance, how should we estimate a phenomenon like that described
by Leo Steinberg, who states that on late medieval altar-pieces Jesus is
frequently painted with a swollen penis?4 Does this reflect observations
that contemporaries made facing the naked bodies of the hanged? How
should we read a comment like that of a Protestant churchwarden from
16th·century Stralsund, a city at the Baltic Sea, who compared the ropes
which served on Good Friday to Iift up the figure of Christ with those
ropes that were used to Iift up criminals to the gallows?
In order to come to terms with the question of the „reality“ of
paintings and their place in legal proceedings of the past we have to ask
how those images of the Last Judgment or of the trial against Christ
modelled the perceptions and the experiences of judges, plaintiffs and
their audience. Since court-house rituals were designed for public
representation, they were based on symbolic acts as weil as effective
strategies to represent authority. In order to realize their demand for
deterrence, legal proceedings required a careful and effective staging
which focused the body of the criminal. Actually scholars share the
opinion that the body of the criminal played the central part of the drama,
less because i t figured as pure object of power and domination, but rather
because it figured as a streng collective symbol (a »master-metaphor«
Haiden White would call it) which bundles and shapes social, political
and religious ideas as weil as the common modes of experience.
Particularly scholars who are interested in cultural and anthropological
issues recently raised the question if there was a sort of
»Wahlverwandschaft« (voluntary kinship) between the bodies of saints
and the executed bodies of criminals.5
Medieval vitae and legendaries prove the opinion that those
extraordinary properlies of holy men and holy women, their pious
behavior as weil as their ascetic virtuosity became manifest as visible
sitWS on their bodies. For instance the vita of St. Clara says that during
3 R. Berliner, „Das Urteil des Pilatus“, Christliche Kunst 30 ( 1 934), 128-47.
4 L. Steinberg, The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and Modern Oblivion 􀁟London, 1983).
S. Y. Edgerton, „Maniera and the Mannaia: Decorum and decapitation in the
Sixteenth Century“, in The Meaning of Mannerism, eds. F. W. Robinson and S. G.
Niehots (Hanover (N.H.), 1972), 67-103.
24
the examination of her dead body there were discovered several Arma
Christi (-symbols) near her heart and serveral crosses in her flesh. In the
eyes of contemporary witnesses this was a reliable sign that the saint had
suffered Christ’s pain and sorrow once again. On the other hand we have
some evidence that even pious layman in early modern Europe believed
in the supernatural power of the blood of the executed. An official record
from Brussels, dated 1 568, describes the execution of two noblerneo
which were Ieaders of the rebellion against the Spanish govemment in
Flanders. lmmediately after the execution some passengers took chance
to dip their cloth into the „holy“ blood. Leaving the authentic qualities of
the text beside, it seems obvious, that princes and urban goverments of
medieval and early modern times were anxious to render legal
proceedings and executions in pious forms. The act of execution should
be transformed into a sacral event, it should figure as a didadic-deterrent
performance based on the esthetic techniques of decorum in which the
criminal had to play the part ofthe penitent sinner.6
As a matter of fact traditions of the ecclesiastical penal-law seem to
have penetrated the new fonns of public criminal law. Monastic prayerand
penitent-books prove that prayers of penitent monks regularly were
accompanied by postures and gestures of the body which gave an
expression of the inner state of that person. For instance one could lay
down with one’s face on the ground praying penitent psalms with
crosswise outstreched anns. In the same way, like a living image (imago
vivente), those penitents went their way making a vow to undertake a
pilgrimage to holy places. One may suggest that even earthly law courts
were anxious to render those criminals who ought to be put to death the
role of a sincere penitent. The chronicler Hector Mülich reports the case
of two brothers who were both executed in Augsburg in 1477. Immediately
before the hangman took the rope, they both delivered an
address to the crowd according to which they would forgive their
enemies. After they were hanged the sight of their bodies impressed the
audience deeply, and especially the hardened civic mercenaries, whose
eyes were filled with tears, as Mülich puts it. Furthennore the martyrlike
death of several Protestant Ieaders assumed Christological traits. Daniel
of Soest relates the story of the Ieader of the Protestant party in Soest.
Just when the city-officer came to arrest him, he embraced him and kissed
him like Christ had embraced and kissed his traitor. Jt was this event,
Daniel wrote, from which arose the Protestant upheaval. 7
6 K. Park, „The Criminal and the Saintly Body: Autopsy and Dissection in Renaissance
ltaly“, Renaissance Quarterly 47 ( 1 994), 1-33.
7 N. Schnitzler, Ikonoklasmus – Bildersturm. Theologischer Bilderstreit und ikonoklastisches
Handeln während des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts, (Munich, 1996), 139.
25
Let me sum up my argument with the following statement: Pictures
of medieval times are undispensable sources for the historian, in
particular for those working in the field of legal history. Furthermore the
relation between text and image, the tensions and reciprocal comments
deriving from it, obtain methodologically important starting points for
reliable interpretaions. But we should keep in mind that the legal system
of the Middle Ages was for the most part a ritualized enterprise, that
means it was built upon strong symbolic references, in which the body of
the executed as weil as its image played the central part.
26
MEDIUM AEVUM
QUOTIDIANUM
38
KREMS 1998
HERAUSGEGEBEN
VON GERHARD JARITZ
GEDRUCKT MIT UNTERSTÜTZUNG DER KULTURABTEILUNG
DES AMTES DER NIEDERÖSTERREICHISCHEN LANDESREGIERUNG
Titelgraphik Stephan J. Tramer
Herausgeber: Medium Aevum Quotidianum. Gesellschaft zur Erforschung der
materiellen Kultur des Mittelalters, Kömennarkt 13, A-3500 Krems, Österreich.
Für den ltlhalt verantwortlich zeiclmen die Autoren, olme deren ausdrückliche
Zustimmung jeglicher Nachdruck, auch in Auszügen, nicht gestattet ist. – Druck:
KOPITU Ges. m. b. H., Wiedner Hauptstraße 8-10, A-1050 Wien.
Inhaltsverzeichnis
Vorwort . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
History ofDaily Life: The Variety of Approaches . . . . . .. . . . . . . .. . . .. . . …. . . . . . 7
Franceise Piponnier, L’histoire de Ja vie quotidienne
au Moyen Age . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Gerhard Jaritz, Geschichte des Alltags im Mittelaltereine
Herausforderung zur komparativen Forschung . . . . .. . . . . .. . . 10
Axel Bolvig, Medieval Images and the History ofEveryday Life . . . 20
Norbert Schnitzler, „Reality“ oflmages- „Realities“ ofLaw . . . . … . 23
Melitta Weiss Adamson, Researching the Diet of
Medieval Germany: Possibilities and Limitations of
Written Sources and Material Evidence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Gordan Ravancic, Crime in Tavems ofLate Medieval Dubrovnik .. . . . . . . 31
Anu Mänd, Shooting the Bird and the MaigrafFestival
in Medieval Livonian Towns . . . . . . . . ….. . . . . . . . . . . .. . . .. . . . … . . . . . … . . . . . 46
Rezensionen . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . .. . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 66
3
Vorwort
Medium Aevum Quotidianum legt mit diesem Heft 38 die erste Veröffentlichung
des Jahrgangs 1998 vor. Der Band widmet sich im
besonderen den Statements zu einem Round-Table-Gespräch „History of
Daily Life: The Variety of Approaches“, welches im Juli 1997 am
International Medieval Congress in Leeds mit reger Publikumsbeteiligung
stattgefunden hat. Dabei zeigte sich wieder, daß einerseits die
interdisziplinäre Analyse unterschiedlichsten Quellenmaterials im
jeweiligen Kontext, andererseits die vermehrte Heranziehung bildlicher
Überlieferung im Zentrum der Diskussion stehen. Aspekte der digitalen
Bildverarbeitung spielen dabei eine relevante Rolle sowohl in bezug auf
Bilddokumentation als auch hinsichtlich der Analysen. Zwei Einzelstudien
behandeln Wirtshauskriminalität im spätmittelalterlichen Ragusa,
sowie die Ausgestaltung von Kaufmanns- und Handwerkerfesten im spätmittelalterlichen
Baltikum.
Heft 39 wird bereits anfangs Juli 1998 erscheinen und sich vorrangig
mit verschiedenen Möglichkeiten der Bildanalyse in der Geschichte
des Alltags auseinandersetzen. Die einzelnen Beiträge werden den nordund
zentraleuropäischen Raum behandeln und konzentriert von Beispielen
mittelalterlicher Wandmalerei ausgehen.
Unser Heft 40 wird – mit Schwerpunk-t auf dem ungarischen Raum
– vor allem der mittelalterlichen Ernährung gewidmet sein und soll neue
interdisziplinäre Forschungsansätze vorstellen; dabei werden besonders
die Möglichkeiten einer Verbindung der Analyse schriftlicher Quellen
und archäologischen Materials im Zentrum der Argumentation stehen.
Heft 41 wird sich wiederum in starkem Maße mit jenen Ergebnissen
auseinandersetzen, welche am International Medieval Congress,
Leeds 1998, in dessen alltagsgeschichtlichen Sektionen zur Vorstellung
gelangen werden. Damit soll neuerlich vermittelt werden, auf welch
intensive Weise sich die Anwendung moderner Methoden und die
Verwirklichung neuer· Ansätze in aktuellen Studien zu Alltag und
materieller Kultur des Mittelalters – im internationalen Rahmen –
verfolgen läßt.
5
Medium Aevum Quotidianum dankt seinen Mitgliedern und
Freunden für das anhaltende bzw. steigende Interesse an den Anliegen
und an der Arbeit der Gesellschaft.
Gerhard Jaritz, Herausgeber
6
History of Daily Life: The Variety of
Approaches
At the International Medieval Congress, Leeds 1997, a round table
discussion was organised as part of the strand „History of Daily Life“ that
dealt with the variety of possible approaches towards this, still rather
young field of Medieval Studies. The international panel consisted of
Axel Bolvig (Copenhagen), Gerhard Jaritz (Krems), Franyoise Piponnier
(Paris), Norbert Schnitzler (Chemnitz), and Melitta Weiss Adamson
(London, Ontario).
As a kind of basis for the discussion, it was emphasised that the
history of medieval everyday life is a field of research dependent on
interdisciplinary approaches. Written and pictorial sources, as weil as
archeological evidence play important rotes for any analysis. The
different contexts of infonnation and their interpretation detennine our
(re)constmction of everyday life in the Middle Ages decisively. The aim
of the round table was to discuss some of the methods and approaches
which are relevant for today’s research. It should also show that „History
of Daily Life“, generally, has to be seen as an undispensable field of
Medieval Studies that also offers relevant methodological aspects and
results for many other historical disciplines.
We are happy to be able to publish the modified short statements of
the panelists in this volume of Medium Aevum Quotidianum. The
originally English statements of Franyoise Piponnier and Gerhard Jaritz
were translated by their authors into French and Gennan respectively.
7