A Garden Among the Flames: Stylistic Changes in the Osma and Facundus Beatus Manuscripts as Reflections of Medieval Iberian Socio-Political Change

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Date

2021-09-13

Authors

Kambour, Zoey

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Publisher

University of Oregon

Abstract

Scholars universally acknowledge the eleventh century as the turning point in medieval Iberian history. Léon-Castile did not ally with the papacy until 1080 at the Council of Burgos when their liturgical practices were forcefully changed from the Visigothic to Roman rite. The illumination style, controversially referred to as “Mozarabic,” emerged alongside this multi-century old Visigothic religious tradition. Therefore, this forced change resulted in the imposition of a new, foreign style found in Rome. Before the style was fully assimilated into the northern Iberian manuscripts, I argue that two eleventh-century Beatus manuscripts, the Facundus (1047) and Osma (1086), reflect the socio-political transitionary period in their use of local and foreign styles. Through stylistic analysis, I demonstrate that the instances of religious involvement — the introduction of the order of Cluny and the papal intervention regarding the Visigothic rite —catalyzed a stylistic progression out of the local style and into the foreign.

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Keywords

Beatus, Facundus, Iberia, Leon-Castile, Manuscript illumination, Osma

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