Band 15, Heft 2 - Modelle des Medialen im Mittelalter. Hrsg. von Christian Kiening und Martina Stercken

One cannot scrutinize mediality in a pre-media age without referring to the complex issue of Christology. The idea of Christ as medium and mediator concerns not only particular theological questions but also general issues of translation and transference, as well as models of word and image. This paper sketches first the notion of Christ′s mediality up to early Scholasticism and then highlights the new conceptual patterns developed by Bonaventure ( Collationes in Hexaemeron ) and Nicolas of Cusa ( De visione dei ).

Maria mediatrix represents a paradigm of mediality in the Middle Ages. Mary′s power consists in bridging the gap between the celestial sphere and the world, the Christ and mankind. She is full of grace and conveying grace, participating in humanity and divinity by these characteristics. Her influence is based on having given birth to the Christ, accompanied his life until his death on the cross, having suffered and died in her soul with him in love. She incites the individual to follow her on her paths, to love and suffer as she did, to follow the Christ. Her path – if followed – offers the perspective to reach redemption and salvation. But she is also interceding for the sinners. Ascended to heaven and crowned as queen, she is able to change the severity of judgements of her son into mercy. The present article outlines a “mediologic” approach, presenting some developments from the bible to the Middle Ages and giving examples of different ways of Mary′s mediation. The latter are mainly focussed on homilies written by Bernhard de Clairvaux (1090–1153) on the occasion of the feasts of the birth and ascension of Mary and five chapters of the ‘Büchlein der Ewigen Weisheit’ by Heinrich Seuse (1295–1366).

The article shows that the currently fashionable idea of an omnipresence of mediality is already effective in some areas of medieval thought, even though in another form. The medieval conception of the relation between god, the world, and man implies a theological world view, according to which the phenomenon of mediality is not only universally present in the world, but in which the mundus creatus itself appears as a medium par excellence, as a message to man, assisting him in transcending that medium. Furthermore it is argued that medieval philosophical thought is by no means restricted to such a symbolic world view. Scholastic philosophy does not only come with a highly elaborate theory about the different forms of cognitive media, but also has developed, particularly in the context of logic, a thoroughly rational theory of the sign and its functions, by which the symbolic and allegorical thinking was pushed to the margins of the philosophical discourse.

The question of whether relics which were part of the historical body of Jesus could exist, arose in the first decades of the 12 th century, as the monks of St. Medard des Soissons claimed to have a tooth of Jesus. Based on historical and theological reasoning it seemed to Guibert of Nogent impossible that this kind of relic could exist or that they could mediate the redemption which Christ attained on the Cross. According to him, the prize of salvation could only be mediated through the eucharist. Guibert perceived a twofold mediality of the eucharist which at the same time reprents the holy body of Christ and mediates salvation. This medial dimension of the eucharist is denoted with the term figura . Since the Second Eucharist Debate and as a result of the criticism of Berengar of Tours the term figura became precarious. The discussion between Berengar and his opponents such as Durandus of Troarn, Guitmund of Adversa, Alger of Liège about the term figura can be viewed as a debate concerning mediality.

By analising the specific use made by Thomas Aquinas of the verb ‘ostendere’ in the context of systematic philosophical conclusions as well as his presentation of biblical events and by scrutinizing the narrative strategies relative to ‘ostentatio’ (in the sense of displaying, hinting at, demonstrating) in ‘Der Saelden Hort’, a late medieval text on salvation, this paper makes clear that ostentation is a central category of mediality in the Middle Ages.

The paper explores medieval representations of potentates with maps, a model for showcasing spatial power still in use today. It shows that in different contexts of transmission – in texts and images or as elements of reconstructed palace furnishing – maps are always ingredients of a complex medial situation conveying perceptions of the nature of rulership to an educated public. Representing general or concrete claims on space, they interact individually with recurrent components of the stylisation of power-bearers, such as representations of divine and genealogical legitimation, and of knowledge and virtues.

The article examines the change in luminosity in Gothic stained-glass windows, based on examples from France. This change began around the middle of the 13th century, when coloured panels were increasingly set into grisaille glass. The joint use of clear glass with intensely coloured glass on the one hand allowed more light to enter the interior of the church, and on the other led to different design solutions for combining coloured images with the grisaille. This brought about the evolution of the band window in which one or more horizontal series of coloured figurative panels crossed over the narrow mullions against a ground of grisaille. In order to explain the development of composite windows, material arguments (economic constraints, technological progress) as well as non-material arguments (new aesthetic) have been advanced and are critically considered. The focus of the article is on the effect of the media synthesis between stained glass and architecture with regard to the visual projection of the images.

Zusammenfassung Chirographen präsentieren medial komplexe Situationen. Ihr Text, ihr Beschreibstoff, ihre Bildlichkeit, ihr Layout und das Siegel tragen ebenso zur Vermittlung ihrer Bedeutung bei wie ihre Herstellung. Wie diese Elemente eingesetzt werden, in welcher Weise sie wirksam werden und welche Bedeutung ihnen beigemessen wird, ist Gegenstand dieses Beitrags. Ausgehend von französischer Überlieferung aus dem 12. Jahrhundert wird gezeigt, dass Chirographen besonders wirkungsvolle Formen der Zurschaustellung von Verträgen sein können, die in besonderem Maße Körperlichkeit ausstellen und durch das Oszillieren zwischen dem Ganzen und seine Teilen wie auch zwischen physisch Präsentem und Transzendentem Status und Autorität des Adels inszenieren.

This contribution analyzes a literary model of mediality, namely the representation of messengers in ‘Parzival’ by Wolfram von Eschenbach. On the one hand, this text conveys historical forms of mediality; on the other hand, there is also the specific mediality of the narrative text itself. It is suggested that the concept of metonymy could be helpful to model this double perspective. As far as the story is concerned, mediality is caused by spatial and temporal relationships and has a certain metonymic character, because the messenger is not only a bearer of a signifier, but at the same time part of the signified. On the formal level, these relationships demonstrate a general principle of narrative organization and transmission. Several parts of the narrative text are repeated, thus creating a relationship between the original and the repetition. The messenger represents after all not only a historical medial phenomenon, but at the same time a narrative principle that could be described as “metonymic narration”.