The Bernward Gospels : : Art, Memory, and the Episcopate in Medieval Germany / / Jennifer P. Kingsley.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Penn State University Press Complete eBook-Package 2014-2015
• VerfasserIn: Kingsley, Jennifer P.,
• Place / Publishing House: University Park, PA : : Penn State University Press, , [2021]; ©2014
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (228 p.) :; 18 color/34 b&w illustrations

Few works of art better illustrate the splendor of eleventh-century painting than the manuscript often referred to as the "precious gospels" of Bishop Bernward of Hildesheim, with its peculiar combination of sophistication and naïveté, its dramatically gesturing figures, and the saturated colors of its densely ornamented surfaces. In The Bernward Gospels, Jennifer Kingsley offers the first interpretive study of the pictorial program of this famed manuscript and considers how the gospel book conditioned contemporary and future viewers to remember the bishop. The codex constructs a complex image of a minister caring for his diocese not only through a life of service but also by means of his exceptional artistic patronage; of a bishop exercising the sacerdotal authority of his office; and of a man fundamentally preoccupied with his own salvation and desire to unite with God through both his sight and touch. Kingsley insightfully demonstrates how this prominent member of the early medieval episcopate presented his role to the saints and to the communities called upon to remember him.