Table Of ContentNatural Materials of the Holy Land
and the Visual Translation of Place,
500–1500
Natural Materials of the Holy Land and the Visual Translation of Place, 500–1500,
focuses on the unique ways that natural materials carry the spirit of place. Since early
Christianity, wood, earth, water and stone were taken from loca sancta to signify them
elsewhere. Academic discourse has indiscriminately grouped material tokens from
holy places and their containers with architectural and topographical emulations, two-
dimensional images, and bodily relics. However, unlike textual or visual representa-
tions, natural materials do not describe or interpret the Holy Land; they are part of it.
Tangible and timeless, they realize the meaning of their place of origin in new locations.
What makes earth, stones or bottled water transported from holy sites sacred? How
do they become pars pro toto, signifying the whole from which they were taken? This
book will examine natural media used for translating loca sancta, the processes of
their sanctification and how, although inherently abstract, they become charged with
meaning. It will address their metamorphosis, natural or induced; how they change
the environment to which they are transported; their capacity to translate a static and
distant site elsewhere; the effect of their relocation on users/viewers; and how their
containers and staging are used to communicate their substance.
Renana Bartal (PhD, Hebrew University, 2010) is Senior Lecturer at the Department
of Art History, Tel Aviv University. She co-edited Between Jerusalem and Europe:
Essays in Honour of Bianca Kühnel (Leiden: Brill, 2015) and is the author of Gender,
Piety and Production in Fourteenth Century Apocalypse Manuscripts (New York:
Ashgate/Routledge, 2016).
Neta Bodner (PhD, Hebrew University, 2016) is a Post-PhD fellow in the ERC-funded
project ‘Beyond the Elite: Jewish Daily Life in Medieval Europe’ at the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem. Bodner teaches in the Art History Department of the Hebrew
University and at the Open University in Raanana. She has published several articles
about Pisan monuments and architectural translations of Jerusalem to Vienna and
northern Italy.
Bianca Kühnel is Jack Cotton Professor Emerita of Fine Arts and Architecture at the
Department of the History of Art, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her publications
include From the Earthly to the Heavenly Jerusalem: Representations of the Holy City
in Christian Art of the First Millennium (Rome-Freiburg/Br.-Vienna: Herder, 1987);
The Real and Ideal Jerusalem in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Art, Special Issue of
Jewish Art 23/24, 1997/1998; and Visual Constructs of Jerusalem, ed. with G. Noga-
Banai and H. Vorholt (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2014).
Natural Materials of the Holy
Land and the Visual Translation
of Place, 500–1500
Edited by
Renana Bartal, Neta Bodner,
and Bianca Kühnel
First published 2017
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2017 selection and editorial matter, Renana Bartal, Neta Bodner, Bianca
Kühnel; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of the editors to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and
of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with
sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
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known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
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Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent
to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Bartal, Renana, 1977– editor. | Bodner, Neta, editor. |
Kühnel, Bianca, editor.
Title: Natural materials of the Holy Land and the visual translation of
place, 500–1500 / Renana Bartal, Neta Bodner, Bianca Kühnel.
Description: New York : Routledge, 2017. | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016044330 | ISBN 9781472451774 (alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Christian pilgrims and pilgrimages—Palestine—History—
To 1500. | Souvenirs (Keepsakes)—Palestine. | Natural history—Religious
aspects—Christianity. | Palestine—Description and travel.
Classification: LCC BX2320.5.P19 N38 2017 | DDC 263/.04256940902—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016044330
ISBN: 978-1-4724-5177-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-21031-5 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents
List of color plates vii
List of figures viii
List of contributors xii
Acknowledgments xviii
Foreword xix
CAROLINE WALKER BYNUM
Natural materials, place, and representation xxiii
RENANA BARTAL, NETA BODNER, AND BIANCA KÜHNEL
I Collecting and collections 1
1 Earth, stone, water, and oil: objects of veneration in
Holy Land travel narratives 3
ORA LIMOR
2 Eleventh-century relic collections and the Holy Land 19
JULIA M. H. SMITH
3 The popes and the loca sancta of Jerusalem: relic
practice and relic diplomacy in the Eastern Mediterranean
after the Muslim conquest 36
MANFRED LUCHTERHANDT
4 Jerusalem refracted: geographies of the True Cross in late antiquity 64
LAURA VENESKEY
II Agents of translation 77
5 Una processione da farsi ogni anno con una Messa Solenne:
reception of stone relics from the Holy Land in Renaissance Ragusa 79
TANJA TRŠKA
vi Contents
6 The Stone of Grace in the Gareja Desert, Georgia 94
ZAZA SKHIRTLADZE
7 Earth from elsewhere: burial in terra sancta beyond the Holy Land 109
LUCY DONKIN
8 Materiality and liminality: nonmimetic evocations of
Jerusalem along the Venetian sea routes to the Holy Land 127
MICHELE BACCI
III Instillation and enactment 155
9 Rocks of Jerusalem: bringing the Holy Land home 157
ELINA GERTSMAN AND ASA SIMON MITTMAN
10 Image, epigram, and nature in Middle Byzantine personal devotion 172
BRAD HOSTETLER
11 Place and surface: Golgotha in late medieval Bruges 190
NADINE MAI
12 Moving stones: on the columns of the Dome of the Rock,
their history and meaning 207
LAWRENCE NEES
13 Christ’s unction and the material realization of a stone in Jerusalem 216
YAMIT RACHMAN-SCHRIRE
IV Contemporary re-enactment 231
14 Susan Hiller’s Homages to Joseph Beuys: mystics, cult, and anthropology 233
KOBI BEN-MEIR
Index 250
Color plates
1 Reliquary box with stones and wooden fragments from the Holy Land, 24 ×
18.4 × 3 cm, lid 1 cm thick, sixth/seventh century, from the Sancta Sanctorum
treasure, Rome, Vatican, Musei Vaticani, Museo Sacro
2 Wooden reliquary box with stones, fragments of carbon and pilgrim’s tokens,
19 × 14.5 × 2.5 cm, Palestine, early medieval, from the Sancta Sanctorum treasure,
Rome, Vatican, Musei Vaticani, Museo Sacro
3 The Stone of Grace, Trinity Cathedral, Tbilisi, Georgia
4 Obverse of lid, the Sancta Sanctorum reliquary box with stones, wood and cloth,
sixth century, Syria or Palestine, painted wood, stones, wood fragments, and
plaster, 24 × 18.4 × 3 cm, lid 1 cm thick
5 Dome of the Rock, interior, view of inner colonnade on south side
6 Dome of the Rock, exterior, north porch, 2012
7 Dome of the Rock, exterior, south porch, columns to the right of the door
8 The Stone of the Unction, Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem
9 Maestro di San Francesco, Lamentation, between 1262 and 1272, tempera on
wood, a panel from a double-sided polyptych, chiesa di San Francesco al Prato,
Perugia, Italy
10 Maestro di San Francesco, Lamentation, before 1265, fresco, nave of the lower
church of Saint Francis, Assisi
Figures
Chapter 2
2.1 Painted relic inscription from the northern altar niche in
the eastern, eleventh-century crypt of Eichstätt cathedral 21
2.2 Latin relic list added to the Leofric Missal: Bodleian Library,
MS Bodley 579, fol. 6r 28
2.3 Old English Exeter relic list prefaced to a ninth-century
Breton Gospel book Bodleian Library, MS Auct D.2.16, fol 9v 29
Chapter 3
3.1 Rome, Chapel Sancta Sanctorum 37
3.2 Wooden reliquary boxes, early medieval, probably Palestine,
from the Sancta Sanctorum treasure, Rome, Vatican,
Musei Vaticani, Museo Sacro 38
3.3 Medicine box, ivory, Egypt, fifth century (with medieval
alterations), from the Sancta Sanctorum treasure, Rome,
Vatican, Musei Vaticani, Museo Sacro 47
3.4 Eastern places of origin of the Sancta Sanctorum relics, ca. 650–900 48
Chapter 4
4.1 Three pilgrim ampullae: one with the Crucifixion and Women at
the Tomb (left); one with the Adoration of the Magi (center); and
one with loca sancta scenes (right). Byzantine Palestine, sixth–seventh
centuries, tin-lead alloy, cathedral treasury of St. John the Baptist,
Monza, Italy 69
4.2 Two sides of a pilgrim ampulla with the Adoration and the Cross,
Byzantine Palestine, sixth–seventh centuries, tin-lead alloy,
cathedral treasury of St. John the Baptist, Monza, Italy 70
Chapter 5
5.1 Dubrovnik, Cathedral Treasury, 1713–1717, attributed to
Marino Gropelli 80
Figures ix
5.2 The Holy Sepulchre as restored by Fra Bonifacio de Stephanis,
illustration in Bonifacio Stephano Ragusino, Liber de perenni
cultu Terrae Sanctae et di fructuosa eius peregrinatione, 2nd ed. 82
5.3 Letter from Fra Bonifacio de Stephanis to the Republic of Ragusa,
July 24, 1558 83
5.4 Zebedeo Picinni, View of Ragusa (Dubrovnik) before the earthquake
of 1667, showing a procession entering the Franciscan church,
nineteenth century, Dubrovnik, Franciscan monastery 86
5.5 Reliquary of the fragment of the Holy Sepulchre, 17 × 32 × 21 cm,
silver, late sixteenth century 88
Chapter 6
6.1 Gareja Desert, Georgia. Lavra of St. David. General view from south 95
6.2 Lavra of St. David. General view from west 96
6.3 Gareja Desert. Udabno Monastery. General view from southeast 97
6.4 Udabno Monastery. North chamber of the main church. Scheme
of the First Phase Painting on the west wall, with the life cycle of
St. David Garejeli 98
6.5 Udabno Monastery. North chamber of the main church. Scheme
of the First Phase Painting on the north wall, with the life cycle of
St. David Garejeli 99
6.6 Lavra of St. David. View of the lower section of the complex with the
Church of Transfiguration 100
6.7 Church of Transfiguration. Groundplan 101
6.8 Lavra of St. David. Church of Transfiguration. Interior. View from west 102
6.9 Lavra of St. David. Church of Transfiguration. Interior. Tomb of
St. David Garejeli, view from north 104
Chapter 8
8.1 Jerusalem, wall of the Greek Monastery of Saint Charalampos,
identified in the nineteenth century as the eighth station
(The Women of Jerusalem) on the Way of the Cross 130
8.2 Old Cairo, Abu Sargha, view of the altar marking the first dwelling
place of the Holy Family in Egypt 133
8.3 Pisa (neighborhoods), view of the church interior with the column
marking the spot of the first altar erected by Saint Peter 134
8.4 Jerusalem, complex of the Holy Sepulchre, Greek Orthodox
Chapel of Saint George, altar with a stone from Mount Sinai 136
8.5 Pilgrims to the Tomb of Saint Barbara, Old Cairo, Church of
Sitt Barbara 139
8.6 Ex-voto image of Saint Barbara, painted panel, Catalan, early
fifteenth century 140
8.7 Cypro-archaic tomb, identified in the late Middle Ages as either the
site of Saint Catherine’s mystical marriage or Saint Catherine’s Prison 141
