Sample Pages: Giants in the Medieval City

G IANTS IN THE M EDIEVAL C ITY

Studies in the Visual Cultures of the Middle Ages

VOL. 20

Series Editor:

Kathryn A. Smith, New York University

Editorial Board:

Sharon E. J. Gerstel, University of California, Los Angeles

Adam S. Cohen, University of Toronto

Acknowledgments

Giants with weak legs , complains Mr. Vuffin, the owner of a freak show in Charles Dickens’s

The Old Curiosity Shop, should be kept in a caravan, because once their legs start shaking, the audience loses interest. If you dismiss them and let them loose in the world, they would become a common sight, and people would no longer pay to see them. The best thing would be to keep them to wait on dwarves, a species that, contrary to giants, becomes even more valuable as they age. This suggestion turns the twelfth-century dictum attributed to Bernard of Chartres, “dwarves mounted on the shoulders of giants” (nanos gigantum humeris insidentes), into a cynical metaphor, since Dickens’s giants fail to function as the pillars of the world supporting new discoveries. The giants could collapse, and the dwarves would still remain effective.

It is perplexing that giants in the age of Dickens were still regarded as real beings, ancestors of the mythological and biblical world of mirabilia; in fact, they were still considered to exist in medical treatises produced until the 1920s. Humankind was captivated with the idea of a surplus of power, size, and lust, with beings who oscillated between the threatening and the alluring, who walked the tightrope between the abject and the sublime. Giants were both the heroes and victims of humanity’s hopes and fears. Should giants be allowed in the medieval city? In the church? Should they be permitted to see or be seen? What sights do they offer, and what visions do they enable? What memories and realities do they bridge? And why are they always linked with the miniaturized and the dwarfs? An enduring late medieval fascination with visualizing the wondrous is at the heart of this book.

This project was realized thanks to the support of the Israeli Science Foundation (ISF), which provided everything required to pursue this wide-ranging research, including technical equipment (such as professional cameras), literature, travel funds to visit various archives in Germany, and the means to hire research assistants and establish a group of “giantologists.” Sections of chapters 1 and 4 have been previously published by the ISF in the journals Word & Image and Speculum, respectively.

It is a pleasure to thank several giants in the field of medieval studies who accompanied me on this colossal journey: Herbert Kessler, whose intellectual generosity and friendship have never failed me, for his reading and astute commentary on various parts of this study; Michael Viktor Schwarz, who kindly invited me to Vienna during the Covid-19 pandemic, for enabling me to carry out this project while my own homeland was in quarantine, and for inspiring me to expand the project to

new horizons (namely my current interest in the “Scaling Revolution”); Jeffrey F. Hamburger, for his insightful criticism of my first article on the topic; Andrea von Hülsen Esch, for her inspiring studies and discussions; Martin Büchsel, for the pleasure of sharing my initial discoveries during my sabbatical leave in Frankfurt in 2016; and Raphael Rosenberg, for making me rethink my own terminology and refine it. I wish also to thank several scholars with whom I had the pleasure of discussing my ideas, and who helped me to understand the topic more fully: Anne Derbes, Jaqueline Jung, Jessica Barker, Elina Gertsman, Einat Klafter, Heidrun Rosenberg, Ayelet Zohar, Ittai Weinryb, Emanuele Lugli, Markus Ritter, and Achim Timmermann.

I extend special thanks to the editorial board of Brepols’s Studies in the Visual Cultures of the Middle Ages, Series Editor Kathryn A. Smith and Board members Adam S. Cohen, and Sharon E. J. Gerstel. It is a true honor that my work is included in this prestigious series. The review process, with suggestions, corrections, and revisions of the text, always in a collegial and kind atmosphere, was illuminating and enriched this book immensely. At Brepols, I would like to thank Johan Van der Beke for his attentive work, patience, and good will, as well as for the beautiful design of the book. I owe a special thanks to Florian Hofer, Stiftung Bozner Schlösser / Fondazione Castelli di Bolzano, who kindly provided me with all the images of Schloß Runkelstein—I am much indebted for his generosity. I wish also to warmly and sincerely thank Annika Fisher, for her excellent linguistic editing, as well as for her valuable, smart developmental editing and for being always available, no matter what happens in the world, consistently with a friendly and pleasant response; and immense gratitude to Danielle Omessi Moisa for her invaluable assistance in creating the indexes of the book.

Finally, I would like to extend my thanks and love to my family: my wife, Sharon PinkusFaktorowich, a giantess in the spirit of these days; and our two sons, Nimrod and Itamar, each named after a giant of his kind. Even if our legs get weak, I know that you all will endure. In this period of turbulence and insecurity, I hope that you will be heroic dwarfs, standing on the shoulders of giants.

Introduction Towards a Global Genealogy of Giants

Lo. The giants groan under the water ... the giants shall not rise up again ... after their transgression being swollen with pride, they do not have recourse to the remedies of penitence.

– St. Gregory the Great, Morals on the Book of Job1

In the vengeful vision of St. Gregory the Great , giants are denied salvation and will not be resurrected at the end of times. Characterized by the sins of pride and arrogance, they resemble demons striving against God.2 Their transgressive character is made visible in their colossal size and physical excess, which together constitute a sign of their surfeit of sexuality and violence as well as immorality. As such, giants become synonymous not only with sinners but also with the ancient archetype of transgression that demands punishment and destruction, from the biblical Flood of the past to the coming Apocalypse at the End Times.

Yet, in spite of such starkly negative views prevalent from patristic writings to late medieval treatises, giants nevertheless were also objects of fascination and even admiration in the medieval imagination.3 They occupied a central role in numerous Middle High German epics, romances, and farces,4 and their images adorned both sacred and lay public spaces, including church sanctuaries, town halls, marketplaces, fountains, harbors, river banks, and even private dwellings. First, throughout the twelfth century, they appeared as punished atlantes, bearing the burden of an ecclesiastic edifice or carrying symbolic artifacts. From the thirteenth century forward, they are portrayed pronouncedly and unambiguously as giants. Colossal sculptures of giants shaped the urban silhouette and, to no less extent, the rural landscape, while their two-dimensional representations, spanning from miniatures to over-life-sized figures, are featured in almost all artistic media of the period.5

Why did these creatures, which had ostensibly been obliterated in the Flood, suddenly emerge in the center of the late medieval city? Why did they so captivate the late medieval imagination? What was their relationship to other mirabilia of the medieval and ancient world?

This book sets out to explore the functions and cultural concerns that were visualized and manifested through the figures of giants in later medieval public art, both sacred and profane. I will argue that representations of giants, especially as colossi, aroused the “colossus imagination” in viewers: namely, the range of cultural associations and expectations that the material, medium, and topic evokes.

I-6. ‘Ajeib Nama – The Book of Wonders, The Combat between Og and Moses Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris, Suppl. Pers.332 fol. 199r, 1388

Chapter 1 Being a Giant Geographies and Temporalities

Assaf Pinkus

According to the Norse Poetic Edda, after the gods, the Æsir (Odin, Vili, and Vé), killed the ancient frost giant Ymir, nature was created from his body: from Ymir’s skull, the gods created the sky; from his brain, the clouds; from his flesh, the earth; from his blood, the sea that encompasses and contains earth; from his bones, the mountains and cliffs; from his teeth, stones and gravels; and from his hair, trees.1 As a final step, “from his eyelashes, the gentle gods made Midgard for the sons of men”.2 Midgard means middle yard or middle enclosure, the place where humans dwell: the slaying of a giant was thus the means of filling the primeval void (the Ginnungagap). Humans literally live in and from a giant’s corpse, obtaining the nutrients, raw materials, and everything they need to survive from the giant’s body. The only refugees of the great flood of blood that flowed out of Ymir’s wounds were his son Bergelmir and his spouse, who had built an ark to save themselves. Their descendants first settled, as asserted by both the Prose Edda and Tacitus, in Saxony. From there they continued to the land im gebirge – South Tyrol.3

This myth lays the foundation for the geography and morality of the Nordic-Germanic giants’ sacred history. Once merged with the Biblical Mesopotamian narratives of the Flood and of gigantic refugees (such as Nimrod, builder of Tower of Babylon, or Goliath the Philistine), as well as with the Greek mythological giant Atlas, a new species of giants developed in the Middle High German epics.4 The most widespread visual image that grew out of this literary amalgam is the so-called telamon or Atlas-like figure found in churches. This image became a conventional motif in church architecture from the twelfth century forward, where it is generally found at the bases of door imposts, porticos, pulpits, and the like. In South Tyrol, the telamon image became contextualized in the universal story of the salvation. In this chapter, I will explore this development by examining the case of St. Jakob in Kastelaz, which offers the earliest extensive visual exposition on the integration of giants within the geographies and temporalities of salvation.5

Executed around 1215, the mural decoration of the apse in St. Jakob in Kastelaz in Tramin, South Tyrol, reveals a spectacular exposé of what Rudolf Wittkower long ago aptly called the “Marvels of the East”: an array of mythological beings, including a battling centaur, a manticora, a fish-man, an acephale, a cynocephalus, a siren, a fish-rider, a dolphin, a hydra, some kind of horned sea animal, a sciapode, a bird-woman, and a capricorn/fish-unicorn – all of which were believed to exist at the edges of ancient and medieval civilizations (figs. 1.1–1.3).6 This parade of combative, fabulous

top: Fig. 1.2. Tramin, St. Jakob in Kastelaz, lower left register of the apse, Combating Hybrids: Centaur, Manticora, Fish-man and Acephale, ca.1215

above: Fig. 1.3. Tramin, St. Jakob in Kastelaz, lower right register of the apse, Struggling Hybrids: Cynocephalus, Siren, Man Riding a Dolphin, Hydra, Horned Sea Animal and Sciapode, ca.1215

creatures, immersed in flowing water,7 is framed, literally and conceptually, by the sacrifice of Cain and Abel on the spandrels of the triumphal arch, the Majestas Domini with a Deësis in the conch of the apse (fig. 1.4), and the Apostles’ tribune in the arcade below (fig. 1.5). Furthermore, two large, naked, elderly male and female figures appear at the base of the arch and seem to support the entire composition on their hands and heads (figs. 1.6–1.7). As the most immediate and accessible images to the congregation, the figures invite their beholders to enter the realm of mirabilia and curiositas. 8

In medieval texts, objects and beings, or even events, that were considered marvelous were devices intended to inspire the experience of wonder; namely, they were meant to evoke a sensation of awe, astonishment, and exaltation. Such entities were dislocated from the center of the Christian world and natural environment. Belonging to either to its temporal or geographical boundaries, these beings and events lived or took place elsewhere: in foreign places, cultures, and times.9 To this category belonged the marvelous races of the East, which evoked a dangerous curiosity that not only challenged Christian morality but also held the threat of being a destructive force. However, as long as this threat was pushed to the margins of the world, it could be enjoyed as an enticing marvel.

Fig. 1.4. Tramin, St. Jakob in Kastelaz, upper registers of the apse, Majestas Domini and the Apostles, ca.1215

Aesthetic, temporal, geographical, and ethnographical alienation worked together to produce the mirabilis.

The two nude figures in St. Jakob not only appear as supporting pillars of the church structure and the pictorial field, but their size is also larger than any of the hybrid marvels located within the apse. These so-called atlantes are depicted as if pressed (or compressed) into the frame, bending their knees as if they are too huge to fit. Despite their remarkable visual prominence, both in terms of scale and location, as well as their status as the closest to human among the exotic creatures, they have never been regarded as the key to understanding the entire program of the apse. The two figures, as will be demonstrated, represent giants, who in the Middle Ages were believed to exist in both the biblical and mythological past, as well as in the present within the late medieval “imaginary”.10 Although Middle High German epics are replete with narratives featuring giants, the figures of Kastelaz do not portray specific giants but rather the notion of “the gigantic,” namely, the thematic and cultural web associated with giants: superhuman creatures of mythological times, foreign lands, uncivilized violence, sin, and destruction. As liminal creatures in their essence, not fully human and yet not fully monstrous, who survived the Flood and engendered further anomalies, giants trasverse epochs and geographical space. As such, I argue, they confront the beholder with the temporalities and geographies of salvation, connecting the Flood and its implications regarding salvation to present

Fig. 1.5. Tramin, St. Jakob in Kastelaz, upper registers of the apse, Disputing Apostles, ca.1215

Chapter 2 Out of Scale Experiencing the Gigantic

Assaf Pinkus

Shortly after the acquisition of Schloß Runkelstein in 1385 by Niklaus and Franz Vintler, social climbers from Bolzano who rose to the level of low-ranking nobility known as the Ministerialer, the brothers not only began the expansion and modernization of the late Romanesque structure but also initiated an enormous painting endeavor to turn the residence into a picture castle – a “Bilderburg.”1 This effort was achieved in several simultaneous campaigns by a number of unknown artists based in South Tyrol who were trained in the latest pictorial innovations of the Italian trecento.2 Although the frescoes have suffered from recurrent renovations, restorations, and the ravages of time (especially after a section of the walls collapsed in 1868), they still comprise the largest and most spectacular visualization of the ethos and habits of late medieval courtly love and life, featuring depictions of the local landscapes surrounding Schloß Runkelstein, tournaments, hunting parties, ball games, dances, lovers, erotic images, and even so-called bathing scenes.3 Uniquely, in addition to these conventional topics of courtly life (though visualized with unusual scope), the Summer House (Summerhaws) that comprises the western wing of the castle was adorned between 1395 and 1400 with several extensive narratives (Istoria) and nonnarrative, iconic representations of giants and their deeds.4 These frescoes were considered so impressive and important to the aristocratic milieu that at the beginning of the sixteenth century, Caesar Maximilian I commissioned the painter Marx Reichlin from Brixen to renovate (vernewen) these “good old narratives” (guten alten Istory).5

The Summer House is a two-story structure with a balcony that opens onto an inner courtyard of the castle (fig. 2.1). The walls of the edifice are populated with images of giants. Originally, one entered the house through a door in the upper floor that was marked with the Vintlers’ coat of arms. The first room, decorated with episodes from Gottfried von Strasbourg’s romance Tristan (c.1210) that have suffered severe damage over time, led to the Garel Room, a lounge or sleeping room with a fireplace, where the entire space is filled with a fresco cycle of an epical narrative involving numerous giants. Both rooms are connected from the outside by a balcony decorated with over-life-sized representations of chivalric role models: the Nine Worthies; several triads of great heroes, lovers, and warrior-knights from Arthurian literature; and colossal images of the three greatest warriorgiants and the three most powerful giantesses (figs. 2.2–2.3).6 The lower floor, the so-called Wigalois Room (Vigeles Sal), features another Arthurian epic – Wigalois of Wirnt von Gravenberg (c.1220) – in which the giantess Rüel plays a prominent role. These frescoes are barely discernible today, with all

that remains being their general outline.7 In sum, the Summer House might be considered as a visual exposition on giants. Earlier studies have pursued close iconographical readings of the frescoes and analyzed text-image relationships in the narratives.8 My role in this chapter will be instead to offer an ontological and phenomenological interpretation of the giants at Schloß Runkelstein that aligns them with the “scaling turn” of the late Middle Ages. Since this analysis concerns the experience of the frescoes, the discussion will focus only on the well-preserved representations. I will concentrate on the visual configuration of the giants and their properties, and particularly on the way in which they may have been scaled in relation to the bodies and consciousnesses of the viewers. Finally, I will reflect upon the role of giants as the alter egos of the new social class that emerged in the fifteenth century, and as embodiments of liminal social identity.

Fig. 2.2. Schloß Runkelstein, Summer House, Balcony, The Three Giants, 1395–1413

Fig. 2.3. Schloß Runkelstein, Summer House, Balcony, The Three Giantesses, 1395–1413

Giants in the Balcony

Although completed around 1413, that is, slightly later than the indoor frescoes, I will begin my discussion with the balcony’s murals because they feature giants in the most straightforward way: as colossal, iconic images. The showcase of heroes of mythological status begins on the southern end of the balcony with the Nine Worthies. These symbols of bravery and chivalry include Hector, Alexander the Great, and Julius Caesar as representatives of pagan antiquity; Joshua, David, and Judas Maccabeus as Old Testament heroes; and King Arthur, Charlemagne, and Godfrey of Bouillon as three Christian kings.9 These nine exemplars are followed by the three greatest heroes of King Arthur’s Round Table: Parzival (Percival), Iwein (Yvain), and Gawain; the three greatest pairs of lovers of the courtly romances: Tristan and Isolde, Wilhelm of Austria and Aglie, and Wilhelm of Orleans and Amelie; and the three greatest epical warriors: Dietrich of Bern, Siegfried, and Dietleib von Steier, identified by the names of their swords. The spectacle of heroes ends with the colossal imagery of the three greatest warrior-giants – Waldram, Ortnit, and Schrutan – and warrior-giantesses –Rüel, Birkhilt, and Rachin.10 These six giants appear twice the size of the other figures, which are themselves rendered larger than life-size. They therefore constitute not merely images of giants but gigantic representations – icons of enormousness. Three crowned miniature figures, identified by a (now lost) inscription as the best dwarfs,11 appear above the door that leads to the eastern wing. Although the presence of these small figures makes the giants appear even larger, and therefore they function effectively within the overall program of the balcony, they are most likely later additions: they clearly differ in style and the way they were spatially perceived from the other figures.12

Fig. 2.4. Schloß Runkelstein, Summer House, Balcony, The Nine Worthies, 1395–1413

Chapter 4 Chaos and Order in the Cities

Roland and his Companions

Assaf Pinkus and Noeit Williger Aviam

In the middle of late medieval cities in central and northern German-speaking lands (int myddel der Stadt), Roland statues functioned as immense, overpowering, protective entities, dominating the urban institutional and social landscape. But the sculptures of the mythological knight never appeared on their own; they were accompanied by smaller companion figures or other images. Such attending diminutive figures not only visually magnified the impression of Roland’s colossal size and enabled viewers to scale the gigantic hero against their own bodies and to apprehend him as something magnificent. They also evoked very basic notions related to giants that reflected the deepest fears surrounding the fragile political states of free cities: the prevalence of chaos over order.1 In Bremen, Roland appears to fulfill the giants’ designated ancient role of protecting dwarfs, their loyal minions, through the inclusion of a dwarf between Roland’s massive legs. This symbiotic coexistence is seemingly indicated by the dwarf’s peaceful, smiling expression on the sculpture. In the created worlds of the courtly romances, however, the relationship between the two species was much tenser and more conflicted, and they often appear as bitter adversaries and not as allies.2 The intrinsic potential of giants to throw order into chaos – as discussed in the introduction to this book – was restrained through the naming of the figure as Roland, the heroic, legendary miles Christi. Nevertheless, the inherent potential for chaos still pervaded his imagery, evident in the inclusions of miniature figures sheltered or governed by him or in the way such figures sneakily entered the scene between the giant’s legs or hid behind him, as if without Roland’s knowledge.

The duality of these monuments – as protective entities that simultaneously evoke, in various forms and motifs, the very threats from which they were supposed to protect – is inherent to the apotropaic. As Geoffrey Galt Harpham discusses, the assumption that underlies such configurations is that demons and evil spirits are, after all, like us and are therefore afraid of the same imaginative beings and creatures that frighten humans.3 For this reason, apotropaic entities are often designed in the forms of what they were supposed to ward off and defeat, thus representing the demonic or chaotic forces themselves. Similarly, Sylvia Huot argues that the otherness and alterity of giants were essential for the self-definition of late medieval culture, as they expressed the prohibitions and permissions of local customs and beliefs.4 The Christian knight, for example, subdues giants with the very same violence that he wishes to moderate. Albrecht Classen, too, argues that knights in romances were frequently described as being much taller than the average man in order to delineate

A different interpretation of the dog that was part of a late sixteenth-century and early seventeenth-century tradition, appeared as a fourteenth-century forgery in the Ratschronik. This local story involved a contemporary criminal called Dannekow, a disloyal member of the commune, who actually lived seventy years after the erection of the sculpture.24 He was sentenced for murdering a juror with whom he disagreed and was allegedly executed in front of the Roland statue. In this contextualization of the sculpture, the dog was read as a symbol of loyalty, countering Dannekow’s traitorous disloyalty, a warning to all indecent citizens of Zerbst. However, since executions were

Fig. 4.1. Meister Curd Zerbst, Marketplace, Roland, 1445 (original in wood, 1385)

Fig. 4.3. Stendal, Town Hall, Roland, 1525 (copy; original in wood, 1462)

left : Fig. 4.4. Detail: Telamon Bearing a Vase

below : Fig. 4.5. Detail: Monkey

above : Fig. 4.6. Detail: Fool

left : Fig. 4.7. Detail: Till Eulenspiegel

left : Fig. 4.9. Magdeburg, Marketplace, Roland, 2005 (replica of the third version of 1540)

below: Fig. 4.10. Johannes Pomarius, Magdeburgische Stadtchronicken, Colossus Magdeburgensis, woodcut, 1588

likely renovated more frequently, whereas the other marginal figures were left unrestored and have been heavily eroded. Regardless, even if the current Till Eulenspiegel figure is indeed a somewhat later supplement, it is considered as part of the original constellation, at least iconographically.

The combination of Roland with Till Eulenspiegel at his backside also appeared in Magdeburg, but unfortunately none of the three early incarnations of the Magdeburg Roland have survived.48

The one that stands today in front of the Rathaus facing the market square is a contemporary replica from 2005 of the third version of 1540, which was destroyed by a fire in 1631 (fig. 4.9).49

The modern statue, however, is based on a 1588 woodblock by Johannes Pomarius, who labeled the

Assaf Pinkus is Professor of Art History at Tel Aviv University and Professor Honorarium at the University of Vienna. His diverse studies engage with Gothic art and late medieval culture; workshop practices and economic models; patronage, narrative and spectatorship; nonreligious experience and response; imagination and somaesthetics; violence imagery; and, most recently, the global history of giants.

He is a recipient of ISF, Minerva, GIF, and Gerda Henkel research grants and several international prizes.

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