Research Catalog

Title

The allegory of the Church : romanesque portals and their verse inscriptions / Calvin B. Kendall ; with photographs by Ralph Lieberman.

Author

Kendall, Calvin B.

Publication

Toronto ; Buffalo : University of Toronto Press, ©1998.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

Lieberman, Ralph

Description

xv, 401 p., 40 p. of plates : ill., map; 24 cm.

Summary

The Allegory of the church is the first full-length study of Romanesque verse inscriptions in the context of church portals and portal sculpture, and is the product of a twenty-year study. Calvin B. Kendall demonstrates how these inscriptions served to express the role of the church building as a concrete allegory of Christ and the Church. Describing them in detail, he traces the history and nature of the changes in allegorical interpretation of the inscriptions until, as medieval assumptions about language and rhetoric changed, they were finally abandoned by Gothic artists.

Subjects

• Christian art and symbolism > Europe
• Inscriptions, Latin > Europe
• Architectural inscriptions > Europe
• Church doorways > Europe
• Doorways, Romanesque > Europe

Genre/Form

• Allegories
• Allegories.
• Allégories.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. [355]-378) and index.

Contents

pt. 1. The Making of Meaning -- 1. The Allegory of the Church -- pt. 2. The Early History of Christian Verse Inscriptions -- 2. Constantine and the Mosaics of Rome -- 3. Portal Inscriptions, Liminal Transformation, and the Creation of Sacred Space -- pt. 3. Visions and Voices: Allegorizing the Romanesque Church -- 4. 'I am the door': Typological Allegory and the Design of the Romanesque Portal -- 5. The Voice of Allegory: Language and Form in Romanesque Verse Inscriptions -- 6. The Portal as Christ: Personification or Real Presence? -- 7. Portal Inscriptions as 'Performatives' -- 8. Conditional Transcendence: Movement between the Literal and Spiritual Levels of the Allegory of the Church -- 9. Anagogical Allegory and Imagery: Gate of Heaven, Gate of Life, Fountain of Life -- 10. Moral Allegory: Admonitory and Pax Portals and the Tympanum of Jaca -- 11. Visions of Allegory: The Archivolts of Aquitaine -- pt. 4. Secular Transformations -- 12. The Search for the New: Politics, Pilgrimage, and Economics -- 13. Artists and the Pursuit of Fame -- 14. Allegory Undone: Patronage and the Shift to Representational Symbolism -- Catalogue of Romanesque Verse Inscriptions.

ISBN

• 0802042627
• 9780802042620

LCCN

98168204

OCLC

• ocm38106214
• 38106214
• SCSB-362131

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library