She stands with her weight shifted slightly to her left and with that hip pressed outward and upward, in a version of the classical contrapossto pose (Fig. 1 and Plate I). She puts that pose to a different end, however, propping an infant up on her hip and securing him against her body with a strong grasping hand. The child reaches out with one hand to grasp her veil and pull it over her chest – and with that gesture he calls attention to the play of fabric folds that the contrapossto pose creates on her lower body. On her right, a series of curves at varying depths cross over her body from her extended hand to where the child's body presses against hers. The topmost of these folds flips the garment inside out, revealing its white inner surface so that it rhymes visually with her white veil above. On her left, by contrast, the fabric gathers into tight folds along vertical lines that extend down from the pleats in the lower portion of the child's garment. And the end of her veil gathers into similarly tight folds as it dangles from his hand. The placement of this flare of folds against her chest calls attention to her breasts, which are further emphasized by curving lines that extend upwards to them as drapery folds created by the tight cinch of her belt below.

This book asks what this sculpture – an early fourteenth-century French Virgin and Child – along with a number of other medieval sculptural representations of women – including the Annunciation and Visitation pairs from Reims cathedral (Figs. 2–3), the femme aux serpents from the church of Saint-Pierre at Moissac (Fig. 8), the transi of Jeanne de Bourbon-Vendome (Fig. 13), the Eve from the church of Saint-Lazare at Autun (Fig. 16), and multiple other Virgin and Childs (Figs. 26–37, Plates I–IV) – have to say about medieval women's experiences of motherhood. The most obvious answer to that question is little to nothing: the work of anonymous but presumably male sculptors, often working for clerical and so (ideally) celibate male patrons, there is little to no chance that these artworks speak of motherhood on the level of their makers’ self-expressions.

Late antique and early medieval monograms have traditionally been discussed by students of numismatics, diplomatics, and epigraphy, since coins, seals, charters, and epigraphic monuments were the most common media for monograms from the fourth to the tenth centuries. Manuscript scholars, meanwhile, have written little about this phenomenon for the simple reasons that monograms were relatively rare in late antique and early medieval manuscripts and that their use in decorated manuscripts was rather exceptional. The earliest surviving case of such usage, on the front page of the Calendar of 354, therefore deserves more academic discussion if we are to gain a proper understanding of fourth-century manuscript culture and its wider cultural contexts. Moreover, this early case exemplifies a monogrammatic mode of representation that became popular in late antique visual culture and contributed to the later appearance of a peculiar decorative element in early medieval decorated manuscripts, whereby certain initials were created from a sequence of letters in a monogram-like manner. The origins of such monogrammatic initials is a complex topic that warrants separate treatment elsewhere. My aim here is of somewhat limited nature. By taking the early medieval monogrammatic forms of Vere dignum and Te igitur as a point of comparison with the dedication monogram in the Calendar of 354, I seek to show that despite being divided by half a millennium these graphic devices display typological similarity in terms of their graphic composition, functions, and cognitive settings.

The Calligraphic Monogram in the Calendar of 354

The Calendar of 354 is a unique fourth-century manuscript in many respects – among other things, in greeting its late antique and medieval viewers with an impressive calligraphic monogram on the dedication page (Fig. 1). Even though the original decorated codex has not survived, its sophisticated layout is known to modern scholars in its entirety through early modern copies of another intermediary manuscript produced in the Carolingian period. As the text on the dedication page informs us, the late antique original was produced by Furius Dionysius Filocalus for a Roman noble named Valentinus. Valentinus is a somewhat obscure figure, though he might have belonged to an established aristocratic family of late imperial Rome, the Symmachi.

There is a famous Chinese saying, attributed to Confucius—as are all good Chinese sayings—to the effect: It is difficult to make predictions, especially with regard to the future (Or was that Yogi Berra?). So it is with the Pro Arte Quartet.

Though many string quartets have endured for decades, frequently with changes of personnel, only one has survived for a century. From their beginning to his demise, Alphonse Onnou was determined that the Quatuor Pro Arte should not die with him, but should find continuing life through their commitment to the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Despite recurrent changes in personnel and periodic crises, that commitment has been the anchor of survival.

Such survival is by no means ended. Our story is incomplete as of this writing, for the Pro Arte Quartet remains alive and active in Madison, still adding to their history. They maintain their decades-long pattern of giving concerts regularly, both in Madison and in tours around the state of Wisconsin. They continue to make appearances around the country. They continue to seek out new works by contemporary composers, and to do their share in championing the ongoing idiom of music for string quartet. Both in contemporary and in “mainstream” quartet literature, they diligently maintain the highest standards of ensemble skills and interpretative artistry.

It must be admitted that there are uncertainties as we look to the Pro Arte's future.

The quartet's livelihood and status are at the disposal of the University of Wisconsin. At this writing, there are shadows cast at both the national and state levels. The state of Wisconsin itself is in the midst of drastic political and fiscal change, involving heavy discrimination against educational institutions. The University of Wisconsin has been subjected to significant budget cuts, and there will be much upheaval in the years to come, involving sharp prioritizing of activities. The School of Music (now renamed the Mead Witter School of Music) faces its share of such budgetary constraints, whose full impact is only beginning to be understood. To be sure, the high standards and growing reputation of the School and of its faculty, especially in the field of training young performers, will certainly be sustained as fully as possible.

Medieval manuscripts without illustrations or illumination rarely attract the attention of art historians. They are the privileged domain of palaeographers and philologists, and by and large are valued according to the quality of the text they contain and preserve. Many of the standard editions of medieval texts that scholars work with go back to the nineteenth century or even earlier, when it was common practice to combine texts from multiple medieval manuscripts in order to come up with a version that was deemed free of ‘contamination’; this, however, produces an artificial and sterile text that does not actually exist in any medieval document.

But what about such medieval manuscripts as material testimonies? Viewing a manuscript is actually important not just for accessing medieval versions of texts but also for seeing how written texts were staged, how they were presented, how they visually engaged with their reader/viewer. Their materiality, which inevitably interferes with their performative qualities, contributes to their meaning and the meaning of the texts they contain. That materiality includes elements such as the mise en page, the selection of texts, the aesthetic qualities of a text in the light of its material context and so on. My focus here is on precisely this ‘stagecraft’ genius of named and anonymous scribes, as well as on the visual manipulation of the script, and how such mechanisms were employed in order to articulate eloquent messages and to convey profound meaning.

The constant fascination of anonymous artisans and named artists with the visualization of the script across the ages cannot be overstated. The iconicity of the alphabet persisted and assumed different forms and conceptual frameworks along the way. Throughout history, the visual properties of the letter have constantly been manipulated, and medieval precedents have always been a ‘goldmine’ from which modern and contemporary artists draw inspiration; to recognize this one need only view a Hellenistic carmen figuratum or technopaignion , a hybrid poetic genre invented and practised by playful poets of the third century BC, alongside the Calligrammes of Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918), and George Seferis (1900–71); or the Latin translation and visual rendering of the hexameter poem Phaenomena (Appearances) on constellations and celestial phenomena by the Greek poet Aratus (third century BC), alongside the work of contemporary artists around the world.

The two female figures stand shoulder to shoulder but also back to back (Fig. 2). Their close spatial juxtaposition combined with their mutual lack of recognition calls attention to the striking differences in their forms. The woman on the left stands upright, aside from a slight forward movement of her head, whereas the woman on the right stands in a version of the classical contrapossto pose; her right knee bent, her left hip and abdomen extended out to the side, her upper torso shifted away from that hip – a shift accentuated by her extended right elbow – and her head tilted back to the left. The women's draperies further accentuate these differences in their postures. The figure on the left has heavy draperies that fall down over her body in long vertical folds that have little interior detail: the only significant exception occurs on her chest and abdomen, where a few vertical lines extend between her breasts and a pair of V folds begins beneath her breasts and points downward between her thighs. By contrast, the draperies on the woman on the right wrap around her body while moving upward from her bent knee, downward from her head, and across her abdomen, and so form multiple diagonal and horizontal lines. Along these lines, furthermore, her draperies crinkle into tight and irregular folds that give her form additional visual interest.

Despite their differences, these two sculptures both represent the same figure – the Virgin Mary. Stepping back to see them in situ on the south jamb of the central portal on the west façade of Reims cathedral allows both to be placed in narrative context (Fig. 3). The sculpture on the left represents Mary in the scene of the Annunciation, standing alongside the angel Gabriel and receiving the news that she is to bear a child. On the right, Mary appears in the Visitation, her encounter, while pregnant, with her cousin Elizabeth, who is likewise pregnant with John the Baptist. This combination of scenes also appears in doorway programs on other Gothic cathedrals; at Chartres the left doorway of the north transept portal is flanked by the Annunciation on the left and Visitation on the right, and at Amiens the two scenes appear together on the south jamb of the south portal on the building's western façade (Fig. 4).

Suites of illumination introducing the gospels form a distinctive part of the Insular contribution to the medieval book (Fig. 1). Such decoration helped the reader to navigate the text visually, symbolically and cognitively, and might assist in penetrating its deeper meaning and interpretation. These images, in which letters, ornament and illustration converge, are complex vehicles of communication. They could serve as iconic places of assembly for ‘communities of reading’, whose members accessed and were affected by them in different ways. In this chapter I shall examine some such images (including examples from the Lindisfarne Gospels, the St Chad Gospels and the Book of Cerne, the Book of Kells and manuscripts from Armagh), which together demonstrate varied functions and contexts of reception – liturgical, cultic, theological, legal, didactic and devotional. I shall also explore some of the strategies of reading that may be deployed in comprehending and assessing them.

The Celtic and Germanic converts of early medieval northern Europe possessed long traditions, stretching into prehistory, for signalling power, status, descent and belief through ornament, sign and symbol. Among the most developed and enigmatic of these communication systems were the Pictish symbols – a series of stylized glyphs based largely upon animal and artefact forms which reflect interaction between the indigenous prehistoric populace of much of what is now Scotland and the antique world. These may date from as early as the late Roman period until after Alba assumed its status as a unified kingdom, incorporating the Irish (Scotti) settlers, in the mid-ninth century. Following the reform of the Pictish Church, initiated by King Nechtan’s rapprochement with Northumbria at the beginning of the eighth century, these symbols, which, in the absence of a Pictish Rosetta stone, have yet to be convincingly deciphered, were combined with the more familiar repertoire of biblical and ruler imagery and of Insular ornament and Christian symbols, seen on complex monuments such as the Aberlemno Churchyard Cross-Slab (Forfarshire).

Thus, the visual semiotics of a strategically sited monument (perhaps designed, in the eighth century, to commemorate the Pictish victory over Northumbria at the Battle of Nechtanesmere in 685) proclaim a history of complex internecine relations.

In memory of Florentine Mütherich

In recent years, many medievalists have become interested in the place of the five senses in the Christian culture of the Middle Ages. Having long been neglected, despite the pioneering work of some authors, the five senses now feature in studies by medieval historians, specialists in literature and philosophy and, more recently, art historians. In the field of medieval liturgy, however, there are few publications which refer to the sensory aspect of ritual. Nor is there a comprehensive study of the role played by the five senses in the Christian liturgy of late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. To fill this gap, I have undertaken extensive research on art, liturgy and the five senses in the Middle Ages, which has resulted in a book which came out in 2014. In this research I considered art as an essential element of the definition of the liturgy, whose ‘function’ was primarily to activate the senses during the performance of the ritual in order to ‘produce’ the effect required by the theology of the liturgical ceremony.

This new approach to the place of art in medieval liturgy does not detract from the role of objects and their iconography in elaborating political and historical contexts during the ritual. Indeed, liturgical objects are essential elements of the ritual. Adopting this perspective allows one to escape from the strictly ‘utilitarian’ or ‘functional’ conception of art within liturgy, and to move instead towards a philosophical and theological understanding: the liturgy is brought within the realm of sensory experience, mainly expressed by the ‘placing’ of the ritual and its effective performance through all the elements which compose it – and most of all, art. This approach to the sensory world as part of the liturgy has similarities with the phenomenology of perception. That is, one must recognize the ‘sensory space’ par excellence of the Christian liturgy. The ‘sensory space’ of the liturgy is above all composed of elements which make a particular appeal to the senses (such as visual decorations and representations), brought into contiguity within the ritual sequences of a ceremony, and leading to an ‘inter-sensoriality’ or a ‘crossing over’ of sensory modalities.

In his review in The Times of the fourth volume of Jonathan Sumption's history of the Hundred Years’ War, the columnist David Aaronovitch contrasts French and English attitudes to kingship using the modern political analogy of the Labour Party and the Conservatives. The French, he suggests, like the Labour Party, ‘tended to hang on to [their kings] even when incompetent’, while the ‘Tory English … deposed theirs freely’. This is hardly a new insight, of course – this was very much the French view of the English in the late Middle Ages. Historians of fifteenth-century England in recent decades, however, have sought to explain the depositions in a much more ‘Labour’ way than a ‘Tory’ one. Far from being eager to pounce on any chance to remove their incompetent or tyrannical kings, the English rather, in the words of Christine Carpenter, ‘exhibited an almost saintly patience in the face of overwhelmingly kingly provocation … killing kings was not an English national sport … even opposing them tended to be undertaken with some reluctance.’

It is true that it took the English political community many years to get round to deposing Richard II and Henry VI, but, as in the breaking of any taboo, deposition was much easier to contemplate once it had been accomplished the first time. This essay aims, in a relatively short space, to tell the long story of how that taboo was breached for the first time and how the English polity, having flirted with deposing King John, twisted and turned during the long thirteenth century to avoid deposing their monarchs. In John, Henry III, Edward I and Edward II, England had kings who were, in different ways and for all or a part of their reign, offering their subjects inadequate kingship and the responses that the political community came up with, from Magna Carta, to the Provisions of Oxford, to the Articuli Super Cartas and the Ordinances of 1311, were all attempts to try to solve the same fundamental problem – how should one respond when a legitimate authority behaves illegitimately? While the solutions they attempted were, on the face of it, often quite different, each took notice of what had gone before and tried to find another way.