080050 VO Image - Narrative - Time: Medieval Legends in Central Europe (2022S)

The series of lectures will lead the participants to a deeper understanding of the painted or sculpted stories of saints in Central Europe. The analyses are aimed not only on the basic iconography deciphered with the help of known textual sources but also on the way how the medieval pictorial narratives deal with questions of time. For their authors and viewers, the terrestrial death of a human being was by no means the final horizon of individual existence. Therefore, the references to actual historical events are interwoven with variously structured hints to supratemporal or even “eternal” meanings. The teachings about the revealed theological truth are mixed with connotations serving particular historical individuals, groups, and institutions. The course participants should learn how to decipher hidden messages in the visual media.
According to the saint type, these messages can be broadly divided into two groups. First, the legends of some heroes, such as apostles, holy bishops, hermits, or virgin martyrs, have inspired the whole Christian world. Second, there were local saints associated with the interests of local states and dynasties. Sometimes, their lives were represented not only in the region but also widely behind its borders (e.g., Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, Saint Stanislas of Cracow), sometimes they remained of predominantly local influence (Saint Venceslas, Saint Ludmila, Saint Hedwig of Thuringia, Saint Ladislas of Hungary). One of the leading questions of the course will be the place of those legendary lives in the visual culture of towns, monasteries, and castles in Central Europe. What media were used for their representation? What was the institutional background of the pictorial lives? Which legends proved to be the most inspiring? Were there some unique features of the local saints which could motivate the patrons to invest in their propagation? Have the legends been adjusted dependent on their place in life? In these respects, there are many intersections of art historical perspectives not only with philosophical or theological interpretations of time but with a history of religion and microhistory or social psychology of the communities.
The second important group of the question will be the temporal structure of the individual narratives. What scenes and sequences represented a course of a particular action and why? Which narrative structures were typical for the medieval understanding of time? Were there temporal differences between a story of saintly life in a chronicle compared to one in a legendary? What role was played by theological principles, such as imitation of Christ or his Holy Mother? After introducing several exemplary narratives in detail, there will remain some space to carefully look for general principles, which might be relevant for philosophical anthropology or even for a general theory of images in medieval and modern perspectives.