Volume VIII, Issue 4 (Autumn 2023)

This issue focuses on research that re-examines images, ideas that shift our understanding, with conceptions often occupying ambiguous and changing meanings. Loretta Vandi analyzes collected writings in the Liber scintillarum explaining how the initials and decorative motifs inspired personal devotion. Helen Davies reassesses the image of Philip II on an ostrich in the Vercelli Mappa Mundi as a reaction to changing political opinions. Gordon M. Reynold’s article investigates how the funerary imagery of Eleanor of Castile navigated between queenship, and pilgrimage, and the Crusades. Thomas Kaffenberget writes of a forgotten Dominican monastery in Famagusta, Cyprus, tracing documentary, archaeological, and art-historical evidence for a once-important religious and challenging site which did not quite fit into expected architectural categories. Eneko Tuduri proposes, through detailed examination of surviving wall paintings, that the small rural church of San Juan Bautista de Eristain in Navarre became a powerful  funerary space for the noble family, the Solchagas. Francis Cook also engages with wall painting, challenging how and why images of St. Margaret and St. Nicholas were used to create Christian community. Katharine Scherff examines the historical and social construction of the legend of St Helena and how that tale and its imagery was used by women to negotiate conflicting social and religious demands when they decided to embark on pilgrimage.