“The World of Gregory the Great”, Part 1: Theodolinda and the Longobards

For as many much material as I have, I will offer some ideas on how to teach Early Medieval Art.  I will follow the syllabus of the current semester, which you may find in a previous post. 

In my course this semester, I began with an overview of “the World of Gregory the Great,” surveying the objects associated with Theodolinda, Queen of the Longobards, and also those found in the burial mounds at Sutton Hoo. 

First we looked at pilgrim flasks from the Holy Land, namely those preserved in the treasury at Monza, north of Milan.  They demonstrate the movement of objects and ideas in the early medieval Mediterranean.  I showed a flask with a symbolic Crucifixion- Christ’s head in a medallion floating above a cross and flanked by thieves.  This flask provided a comparandum at least twice in subsequent weeks.  Also, the convergence of the inscriptions on the flasks and the account of the Piacenza Pilgrim started the thread of text and image that runs through the length of the course. 

I then showed the book covers of Theodolinda and read from a letter of Gregory the Great to Theodolinda referring to his gift of a “persian case.”  We discussed the temptation to connect the persian case with the book covers.  

The Longobard component then concluded with the Visor of Agilulf, a good object for practice in description.

For large color images of two Monza flasks , see the Splendori di Bisanzio, the catalogue of a 1990 exhibition in Ravenna.