Corredo e arredo liturgico nelle chiese tra VIII e IX secolo. Suppellettili antiche e moderne, locali e importate tra archeologia, fonti scritte e fonti iconografiche

Abstract

The liturgical furnishings and equipment of the churches from the 8th to 9th century. Antique and modern, local and imported objects according to archaeological, written and iconographic sources The bulk of remains of early medieval churches surviving to the present day consists little more  than parts of their former architectural plan and their floors. Even in the best preserved buildings the interior furniture and décor underwent dramatic changes throughout the time. The early medieval liturgical stone furnishings (altar screens, ciboria, ambos etc.) are almost always found in fragments, reused as building material in the high and late medieval ages, and they seem destined to stay (also in scientific publications) detached from the metal, glass or textile objects to which they were once closely related. Nevertheless, these architectural elements must be imagined in their original context, enriched by precious curtains, lamps, candelabras,
colourful icons, whereas liturgical implements such as chalices, patens, thuribles, jugs and paterae were displayed during the celebration of the mass.

This paper is an endeavor to reconstruct the main features, locations and uses of such elements. In order to do so, we have adopted a multidisciplinary approach integrating data from archaeological, iconographic and written sources (the Stuttgart-Psalter being our main figural source, owing to its reliability and exceptional attention to details). This method has enabled us to identify which liturgical implements could have been used in an early medieval church. They are characterised by very different chronologies and production centers. Among them, some were nearly contemporary with the written and iconographic sources (end of
the 8th - beginning of the 9th centuries), others were real antiquarian pieces, produced up to 300 or 400 years earlier. This fact reflects a pattern of accumulation which finds an echo both in well-known church treasures and in the furniture of present-day churches, in which some of the liturgical objects still used can be products of the Renaissance or Baroque period.
Owing to the particular complexity of the issue and the considerable scientific debate, special attention has been devoted to the so-called »Coptic« bronze vessels, used both in »sacred« and »profane« backgrounds. The analysis of securely dated contexts and a more careful typological classification convey new perspectives on the links between such objects and the early medieval liturgical spaces. In the addendum (»Appendice«) we collected all the miniatures of the Stuttgart-Psalter which display elements of church impements (chalices, patens, thuribles, jugs and paterae, lamps, processional crosses, curtains etc.), in an attempt to render more easily accessible the comprehensive documentation of the Psalter.