Devotion and Decorum: Intention and Quality in Medieval German Sculpture

Abstract

From the Romanesque period on, wooden images formed the nuclei of increasingly extravagant religious rituals. Their use as liturgical accessories tends to distract from their qualitative assessment, but without an evocative power, the images would have been sterile objects. Ideals of classical beauty hardly apply, but standards of decorum do. Statues became ceremonial logos that insinuated sacral presence and elicited devotion. By the late Middle Ages, a distinctive image epitomized every christological feast, especially in the Holy Roman Empire. At the heart of the image-dominated feast of Palm Sunday, a life-sized wooden image of Christ astride a donkey rode in liturgical processions in villages, urban centers and diocesan sees. Enough evidence remains to allow inference of criteria for quality and decorum in the images. Dignity as well as comeliness had to inhere; the figure had to meet aesthetic scrutiny or be rejected. Being born in the Middle Ages did not occasion blunted aesthetic sensibilities. Nor did the utility of works of art preclude their quality; rather, the ritualized use of objects demanded artistic attributes that evoked the spiritual, hence held a formal dignity in keeping with the encapsulated mystery.

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