This fascinating study reconstructs the tradition of the Legend of the True Cross in text and image, from its tentative beginnings in 4th-century Jerusalem to the culminating expression of its multi-layered cosmic content in 14th and 15th-century monumental cycles in Germany and Italy.

This fascinating study reconstructs the tradition of the Legend of the True Cross in text and image, from its tentative beginnings in 4th-century Jerusalem to the culminating expression of its multi-layered cosmic content in 14th and 15th-century monumental cycles in Germany and Italy.

Sacred Stimulus offers a thorough exploration of Jerusalem's role in the formation and formulation of Christian art in Rome during the fourth and fifth centuries. The visual vocabulary discussed by Galit Noga-Banai gives an alternative access point to the mnemonic efforts conceived while Rome converted to Christianity: not in comparison to pagan art in Rome, not as reflecting the struggle with the emergence of New Rome in the East (Constantinople), but rather as visual expressions of the confrontation with earthly Jerusalem and its holy places. After all, Jerusalem is where the formative events of Christianity occurred and were memorialized. Sacred Stimulus argues that, already in the second half of the fourth century, Rome constructed its own set of holy sites and foundational myths, while expropriating for its own use some of Jerusalem's sacred relics, legends, and sites. Relying upon well-known and central works of art, including mosaic decoration, sarcophagi, wall paintings, portable art, and architecture, Noga-Banai exposes the omnipresence of Jerusalem and its position in the genesis of Christian art in Rome. Noga-Banai's consideration of earthly Jerusalem as a conception that Rome used, or had to take into account, in constructing its own new Christian ideological and cultural topography of the past, sheds light on connections and analogies that have not necessarily been preserved in the written evidence, and offers solutions to long-standing questions regarding specific motifs and scenes.

Justinian's triumphal column was the tallest free-standing column of the pre-modern world and was crowned with arguably the largest metal equestrian sculpture created anywhere in the world before 1699. The Byzantine empire's bronze horseman towered over the heart of Constantinople, assumed new identities, spawned conflicting narratives, and acquired widespread international acclaim. Because all traces of Justinian's column were erased from the urban fabric of Istanbul in the sixteenth century, scholars have undervalued its astonishing agency and remarkable longevity. Its impact in visual and verbal culture was arguably among the most extensive of any Mediterranean monument. This book analyzes Byzantine, Islamic, Slavic, Crusader, and Renaissance historical accounts, medieval pilgrimages, geographic, apocalyptic and apocryphal narratives, vernacular poetry, Byzantine, Bulgarian, Italian, French, Latin, and Ottoman illustrated manuscripts, Florentine wedding chests, Venetian paintings, and Russian icons to provide an engrossing and pioneering biography of a contested medieval monument during the millennium of its life.

In Chosen Places. Constructing New Jerusalems in Slavia Orthodoxa, Jelena Erdeljan focuses on the Old Testament topic of the divinely-chosen status of Jerusalem and translatio Hierosolymi, including the history, process and media of formulating and disseminating this idea and its spatial-visual matrix in Christian visual culture. Firstly the study presents the case of Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, as New Jerusalem, and secondly, in relation to Constatinople, discussion focuses on the cases of the capitals of Slavia Orthodoxa in the later Middle Ages: Turnovo, Belgrade and Moscow. The idea of Jerusalem corresponds with the idea of a mystical center, the center of the historical Christian world, which travels and follows the path of eschatologial realisation.

Collection of essays examining the ways in which humanity is enmeshed in its surroundings.

An investigation on ancient sources (patristic and liturgical) on the Cross and the Eucharist that sheds light on contemporary discussions.