World Image after World Empire: The Ptolemaic Cosmos in the Early Middle Ages, ca. 700--900 (2012)
Anderson, Benjamin W. (Author)
Hertel, Christiane
Kuttner, Ann
Bryn Mawr College
Cast, David
Hertel, Christiane
Kuttner, Ann
Nees, Lawrence
Kinney, Dale
Cast, David
Nees, Lawrence
Publication date: 2012
Language: English
Edition Details: Advisor: Kinney, Dale; Committee Members: Cast, David, Hertel, Christiane, Kuttner, Ann, Nees, Lawrence.
Physical Details: 727 pp.
Images of the Ptolemaic cosmos were produced in all three major early medieval successors to the Roman Empire (the Carolingian, the Byzantine, and the Umayyad states). Early medieval cosmological images remained formally and iconographically close to their late antique models. They thus provide a point of comparison allowing examination of the changing functions of images. Two primary functions of ancient cosmological images are identified: the epistemological (images as carriers of information about the Ptolemaic world system) and the symbolic (images as signs of "the cosmos" within broader signifying systems). In early medieval Byzantine art the epistemological function predominated. The Vatican Ptolemy (Vaticanus Graecus 1291), a manuscript produced ca. 750, was a manual intended to ensure imperial access to natural-scientific knowledge. It may thus be compared to contemporary metrological monuments, in particular the Horologion of Hagia Sophia and the Anemodoulion, erected by emperors in Constantinople. Its apparent lack of progeny is related to a jealous "economy of knowledge" that developed from social antagonisms between centralizing emperors and elites determined to maintain independent sources of power. Charlemagne's silver table and the Cathedra Petri have traditionally been considered props for staging the Carolingian ruler as a cosmocrator through use of cosmological imagery. However, in the Carolingian world, as in the Byzantine, the epistemological function of cosmological imagery predominated. The proliferation of manuscripts with cosmological imagery, particularly in the period between ca. 800 and 820, provides a contrast to Byzantine scarcity, and evidence for a porous "economy of knowledge." Cosmological images aided in the formation of identities shared between state functionaries and hereditary elites. Cosmographic imagery, both terrestrial (the mosaics of the Umayyad Mosque of Damascus) and celestial (the frescoes of Qusayr 'Amra) played a major role in the staging of Umayyad rule. Thus in the early Islamic state it was the symbolic function that predominated. This is related to the gulf between the Umayyad state and its host society, and the necessity for Umayyad caliphs to develop a flexible visual rhetoric for articulating the nature of their rule to various constituencies.
...MoreDescription Cited in Dissertation Abstracts International-A 74/09(E), Mar 2014. Proquest Document ID: 1377282671.
Similar Citations
Article
Peers, Glenn;
(2000)
Peter, Iconoclasm and the Use of Nature in the Smyrna Physiologus (Evangelical School, B.8)
(/p/isis/citation/CBB000640603/)
Book
Stella Panayotova;
Paola Ricciardi;
(2018)
Art and Science (Manuscripts in the Making)
(/p/isis/citation/CBB736123765/)
Article
Samsó, J.;
(2001)
Ibn al-Haytham and Jābir b. Aflaḥ's Criticism of Ptolemy's Determination of the Parameters of Mercury
(/p/isis/citation/CBB000931694/)
Article
Boudet, Jean-Patrice;
(2013)
Ptolémée dans l'Occident médiéval: roi, savant et philosophe
(/p/isis/citation/CBB001420832/)
Article
Pérez Martín, Inmaculada;
(2004)
Un escolio de Nicéforo Gregorás sobre el alma del mundo en el Timeo: (Vaticanus Graecus 228)
(/p/isis/citation/CBB000640285/)
Article
Anne Tihon;
(2018)
Le diagramme des horizons et les prosneuses des éclipses dans l'astronomie de Ptolémée
(/p/isis/citation/CBB520988208/)
Book
Marion Dolan;
(2017)
Astronomical Knowledge Transmission Through Illustrated Aratea Manuscripts
(/p/isis/citation/CBB393393132/)
Article
Goldstein, Bernard R.;
(2007)
What's New in Ptolemy's Almagest?
(/p/isis/citation/CBB000850233/)
Article
Kunitzsch, Paul;
(2001)
A Hitherto Unknown Arabic Manuscript of the Almagest
(/p/isis/citation/CBB000471421/)
Thesis
Hamm, Elizabeth Anne;
(2011)
Ptolemy's Planetary Theory: An English Translation of Book One, Part A of the “Planetary Hypotheses” with Introduction and Commentary
(/p/isis/citation/CBB001562830/)
Article
Gregg De Young;
(2014)
Editing a Collection of Diagrams Ascribed to al-Ḥajjāj: An Initial Case Study
(/p/isis/citation/CBB926919821/)
Book
Vesel, Ziva;
Tourkin, Serge;
Porter, Yves;
(2009)
Images of Islamic Science
(/p/isis/citation/CBB001023300/)
Article
Langermann, Y. Tzvi;
(2008)
From My Notebooks: A (The?) Geniza Fragment on Optics
(/p/isis/citation/CBB000930647/)
Book
Guidetti, Fabio;
Santoni, Anna;
(2013)
Antiche stelle a Bisanzio: il codice Vaticano greco 1087
(/p/isis/citation/CBB001551806/)
Article
Gamini, Amir Mohammad;
(2012)
A Survey of the Arguments for the Immobility and Centricity of the Earth in the Hay'a Books
(/p/isis/citation/CBB001510314/)
Thesis
Niazi, Kaveh Farzad;
(2011)
A Comparative Study of Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī's Texts and Models on the Configuration of the Heavens
(/p/isis/citation/CBB001567326/)
Article
Katsiampoura, G.;
(2004)
Nikephoros Gregoras against Barlaam of Calabria: A Political Argument as a Debate about Eclipses
(/p/isis/citation/CBB000931336/)
Article
Ragep, F. Jamil;
(2012)
Shīrāzī's Nihāyat al-Idrāk: Introduction and Conclusion
(/p/isis/citation/CBB001510317/)
Article
Martínez Gázquez, José;
(2002)
El mundo ptolemaico en un “explicit” del Ms. 8198 de la B.N.M.
(/p/isis/citation/CBB000640323/)
Book
David Juste;
Benno van Dalen;
Dag Nikolaus Hasse;
Charles Burnett;
(2020)
Ptolemy’s Science of the Stars in the Middle Ages
(/p/isis/citation/CBB355746730/)
Be the first to comment!