Beyond 'Books for the Illiterate' understanding english medieval wall paintings.
British Art Journal › Vol. 9 Nbr. 1, March 2008
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Beyond 'Books for the Illiterate' understanding english medieval wall paintings.
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Medieval church interiors were entirely covered with paintings; between 1100 and the Reformation in the 1530s, hardly any ecclesiastical wall space was left bare (Pl 1). (1) Although most of these paintings have since been destroyed--some deliberately, others by accident-enough survive to give us a clear idea of what these painted interiors looked like. (2) However, a paucity of medieval textual commentary or other evidence has caused the purposes and functions of these paintings to become obscured by time and the resulting changes in religious, cultural and social practices. In this vacuum, Gregory the Great's memorable axiom 'books for the illiterate' has assumed exaggerated importance as an explanation of the function of medieval wall paintings. While it does elucidate certain aspects of the paintings, 'books for the illiterate' obscures many others, and is far too conceptually limited to justify its dominance in the literature on wall paintings. Medieval wall paintings do not have much of a role in the Vasarian view of the History of Art that dominated 20th-century art historical discourse. They do not conveniently demonstrate increasing truth to nature, linear perspective techniques, or subtle modelling, nor do they appear to aspire to such qualities. Explaining wall paintings as 'books for the illiterate' excused these perceived inadequacies by attributing to them a function for which artistic merit or progression was not necessary Furthermore, this suited the late 20th-century understanding of images as objects to be 'read', whose content should be studied with literary techniques such as semiotics and narratology. The desire to explain an art form that did not suit the dominant art historical story of progress, together with a discipline intent on proving its intellectual credibility by aligning itself with the theories of the word-based disciplines of History and English, caused the core functions of wall painting to be ignored. Wall paintings, although justified throughout the Middle Ages and beyond with the notion of 'books for the illiterate', in practice served two far more important functions in medieval churches. They provided decoration, and they encouraged devotion, aspects that should occupy a far greater portion of analysis of medieval wall paintings than is currently the case. Books for the illiterate The idea may have particularly suited 20th-century discussions of wall paintings, but 'books for the illiterate' has a long history reaching back to Pope Gregory I in the 6th century. A campaign of iconoclasm by Bishop Serenus of Marseille at the end of that century prompted Gregory to formulate his compelling explanation of Christian imagery: A picture is displayed in churches ... in order that those who do not know letters may at least read by seeing on the walls what they are unable to read in books ... [and] gather knowledge of the story ... For what writing offers to those who read it, a picture offers to the ignorant who look at it. (3) The idea was cited by virtually every author and encyclopaedist who considered the role of images throughout the Middle Ages, up to and including the Council of Trent. (4) Pictures were defended and justified as being appr...See the full content of this document
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