Papers by Erik Inglis
Speculum, 2021
This article examines impression relics associated with Saints Peter and Paul: the apostolic knee... more This article examines impression relics associated with Saints Peter and Paul: the apostolic knee prints now at the church of Santa Francesca Romana; a stone marked by Simon Magus, their foe; Christ’s footprints at the church of Domine quo vadis; and the springs attributed to Paul’s head at the abbey of Tre Fontane. These relics of Rome’s most important
saints attracted attention from Romans and non-Romans—from Gregory of Tours and Pope Paul I to Petrarch and Nikolaus Muffel. The article analyzes the cultural expectations and viewing habits that conditioned the identification of these relics and traces their reception over time. It argues that while the identification was spurred by preexisting knowledge of the saints’ local actions, a site’s unique features could lead viewers to alter those narratives to conform them to the physical evidence they saw on the ground, which might in turn drive subsequent historical accounts. In this process, texts, images, and topography were all evidence; a reading of one informed the reading of others.
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/713103
10.1086/713103
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Quintana, 2017
This article addresses medieval texts that comment on the loss or revival of artistic media. Mos... more This article addresses medieval texts that comment on the loss or revival of artistic media. Mostly written by ecclesiastical authors, these texts offer evidence of how medieval viewers understood objects and techniques in historical context. They demonstrate the medieval people used media to periodize past art historic production, unlike ancient or Renaissance authors who prioritized the rise or fall of representational skills. This periodization is linked to local or institutional history.
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The inventory of the monastery of St-Denis’s treasury evaluates more than three hundred objects, ... more The inventory of the monastery of St-Denis’s treasury evaluates more than three hundred objects, from classical cameos to sixteenth-century metalwork. The inventory was the product of collaboration between court secretaries, Parisian goldsmiths, and monastic administrators. Deploying their specialized expertise, the goldsmiths identified the materials and techniques used in the objects, while the monks presented their identity and history. Careful comparative scrutiny allowed the group to document losses, revealing the treasury’s fragility, and to recognize the complex fabrication history of composite objects, like the martyrs’ shrine. The same comparative scrutiny undergirded the provenances contemporaries invented for several works in the treasury.
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Gesta, 2015
A passage from the Grandes Chroniques de France claims that the rebuilding of the nave of Saint-D... more A passage from the Grandes Chroniques de France claims that the rebuilding of the nave of Saint-Denis in the 1230s marked the first new construction there since Dagobert built the church in the seventh century. The text’s omission of Abbot Suger’s famous campaigns in the 1130s and 1140s, which the abbot himself did so much to commemorate, provides an opportunity to assess Suger’s reception, to see if and how his hope to be remembered was realized in the centuries after his death. Reviewing the evidence from Saint-Denis’ chronicles and inventories, we find that the years around 1300 marked a turning point in Suger’s posthumous reputation. Some of this is probably the inevitable result of the passage of time, as the living memory of Suger died; it also results from the desire to celebrate the ambitious construction at the abbey in the thirteenth century. The article concludes by comparing the memory of Suger with that of other celebrated patrons, including Bernward of Hildesheim, Louis IX, and Anquetil of Moissac.
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Matter of Faith: an interdisciplinary study of relics and relic veneration in the medieval period, 2014
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Viator, 2013
This study analyzes what fifteenth century pilgrims from Northern Europe wrote about the art and ... more This study analyzes what fifteenth century pilgrims from Northern Europe wrote about the art and architecture they encountered while on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Although these pilgrims did not have the discipline of art history, they nonetheless had a strong art historical imagination that conditioned their reception of old art and architecture. Their attempts at dating objects demonstrate a pre-modern periodization in which important rulers or dynasties matter most, and the terms medieval and Renaissance are unknown. They expected striking objects to have significant histories, studied those objects appearance for clues to those histories, and read a city’s buildings as a trustworthy barometer of its vitality. Lacking our hierarchy of fine and applied arts, they were open to appreciate a wide range of objects, which they frequently praise in terms of their workmanship.
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Journal of the Early Book Society, 2002
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Caa.reviews, 2003
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Gesta-international Center of Medieval Art, 2003
Jean de Jandun 's Tractatus de laudibus Parisius is one of the earliest and most interesting of P... more Jean de Jandun 's Tractatus de laudibus Parisius is one of the earliest and most interesting of Parisian encomia. The author 's detailed evocations of Notre-Dame, the Sainte-Chapelle, and the palace of Philip the Fair, documenting the contemporary reception of Gothic architecture, deserve greater attention than they have received to date. Primarily interested in architectural effects, Jandun praises the buildings for their size, varied decoration, transparency, and color, but pays little attention to their structural vocabulary or engineering. His Tractatus invites comparison with other medieval texts about art: his belief that a building 's material beauty can stir the soul to devotion resembles that of Abbot Suger, while his distinction between superficial and acute perception is also found in Gerald of Wales; he implies that recognizing a building's quality requires a skill not possessed by all equally, a notion found in Boccaccio 's contemporary praise of Giotto. Jandun's identity as a scholastic makes his Tractatus a useful means of testing the frequently alleged relations between Gothic architecture and scholasticism: a close analysis of Jandun's text argues against any necessary links between these two phenomena.
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French Historical Studies, 2003
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Books by Erik Inglis
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Teaching Documents by Erik Inglis
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The art and architecture of Judaism, Christianity and Islam in the Mediterranean from the first t... more The art and architecture of Judaism, Christianity and Islam in the Mediterranean from the first to the fifteenth century. We will study religious art typologically (for example, what roles did religious buildings play?), through important works (i.e. the Great Mosque of Cordoba), sites (i.e., Jerusalem, Damascus, Rome, Istanbul) and media (metalwork, textiles, and manuscripts). We will emphasize art's contribution to contact, exchange and conflict between the three religions, with particular attention to Spain.
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Papers by Erik Inglis
saints attracted attention from Romans and non-Romans—from Gregory of Tours and Pope Paul I to Petrarch and Nikolaus Muffel. The article analyzes the cultural expectations and viewing habits that conditioned the identification of these relics and traces their reception over time. It argues that while the identification was spurred by preexisting knowledge of the saints’ local actions, a site’s unique features could lead viewers to alter those narratives to conform them to the physical evidence they saw on the ground, which might in turn drive subsequent historical accounts. In this process, texts, images, and topography were all evidence; a reading of one informed the reading of others.
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/713103
10.1086/713103
Books by Erik Inglis
Teaching Documents by Erik Inglis
saints attracted attention from Romans and non-Romans—from Gregory of Tours and Pope Paul I to Petrarch and Nikolaus Muffel. The article analyzes the cultural expectations and viewing habits that conditioned the identification of these relics and traces their reception over time. It argues that while the identification was spurred by preexisting knowledge of the saints’ local actions, a site’s unique features could lead viewers to alter those narratives to conform them to the physical evidence they saw on the ground, which might in turn drive subsequent historical accounts. In this process, texts, images, and topography were all evidence; a reading of one informed the reading of others.
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/713103
10.1086/713103