Event details

At a synod convened by Emperor Louis the Pious in Paris in November 825, Frankish clerics debated the correct use of images in churches. After carefully considering texts and the traditions of the Church, they confirmed the long-attested view that the Incarnation (the pivotal Christian doctrine that God took on human form in Jesus Christ) legitimizes images. They also established that images should neither be worshiped nor destroyed. In fact, images could be used to instruct people about religion and morals and to elevate the mind to spiritual things. In this lecture I shall limit myself to considering the presence of high-relief and three-dimensional images in repoussé metalwork or other media in western churches before and after the Paris Synod, in the period of the image controversy (c.720s–850). Generally lost, high-relief and three-dimensional images are recorded in written sources.

High-relief and three-dimensional images from Rome, Gaul/Francia, England, and Langobardia have occasionally been mentioned in studies on early medieval art, either to retrace the re-birth of three-dimensional statuary or to discuss image worship. They have also been occasionally construed as attestations of iconophilia, that is an attitude in favor of sacred images. Whether this kind of image might have functioned as an ideological statement should be evaluated not only by considering the specific circumstances in which they were situated, but also the broader body of evidence offered by written sources and material culture between the fourth and the ninth centuries in various regions of the West. I set out to do this in my paper.