ARTH 320(S) Picturing God in the Middle Ages
How did Christians come to depict their God? How did they visualize the deity described in Scripture as well as such theological subtleties as the Incarnation and the Trinity? And what purposes did pictures of God serve? This lecture and discussion course will examine chronologically the sources and evolution of Christian images of God during the Middle Ages, in both Byzantium and Western Europe, and the problems that these images often generated. Among other issues, the course will track the importance of the imperial cult, images of the dead and the cult of relics to the original development of the Christian sacred image, the ramification of theological debates over materiality on the form and use of pictures, and the visual exploration of the sexuality of Christ. The ultimate goal of the course will be to make sense of a wide variety of medieval images of God within their larger cultural and functional contexts. Requirements: participation in class discussions of readings, one-hour midterm, final exam, and a research paper. Prerequisites: ArtH 101-102; ArtH 223 recommended.