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Sense and simulacra: Manipulation of the senses in medieval ‘copies’ of Jerusalem

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Abstract

Medieval and Renaissance ‘copies’ of the Holy Sepulchre are striking for their visual inaccuracies. This article proposes that these structures were never meant to serve only as visual copies, but that they were intended to be copies of the complete sensory experience of visiting the Holy Sepulchre. Focusing on the Jerusalem Chapel in Bruges and the Sacro Monte of Varallo, I posit that these sites functioned as sensory simulacra that replicated essential spaces, actions and stimuli experienced in Jerusalem by pilgrims at the Holy Sepulchre. European copies enabled devotees to become actors engaged in kinetic devotional practices like those performed in Jerusalem. This study reveals that European copies of the Holy Sepulchre were both more complex and more successful than has previously been recognized.

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Notes

  1. Numerous authors, including Rosenthal (1958) and Krinsky (1970), have written on the question of visual accuracy in these so-called copies of the Holy Sepulchre.

  2. Chareyron (2000) is a wonderful source for many of these accounts.

  3. Both are discussed in Rosenthal (1961, 149).

  4. See Casola (1855, 65, 70–72, 80), discussed in Rosenthal (1961, 150 n201).

  5. The Adornes brothers, Pieter II and Jacob (d. 1464 and 1465, respectively), first began construction of this unusual building in the middle of the 1420s, following a visit to the Holy Land. The Jerusalem pilgrimage undertaken by Pieter and Jacob was so interwoven into family tradition that, in 1470–1471, Anselme Adornes (1424–1483), Pieter's son, repeated their voyage to Jerusalem with his own son, Jan, who wrote a well-known account of the trip upon his return. See Adorno (1978) and Platelle (1982).

  6. For a recent discussion of the constructions dates, see Kirkland-Ives (2008, 1056–1057). There are a number of sources for information on the Jerusalem Chapel, including Devliegher's Les maisons a Bruges, which includes a plan of the church and the Adornes home which once stood alongside it (1975, 281–282). Geirnaert's work (1987, and with Vandewalle, 1983) on the Chapel, based on material in the Bruges archives, is essential. See also Penninck (1977) and Luber (1998, 29). See Spronk (2005, 109–111) regarding the Jan Provoost triptych that was once on the high altar of the Chapel.

  7. See also Goren (1995), Krinsky (1970) and Bresc-Bautier (1974).

  8. For a reference to the relic of the True Cross and its location within in the Jerusalem Chapel in 1519, see Spronk (2005, 109). Visitors to the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem climb 18 stairs to the top of Golgotha. Surely, the stairs in both churches must have been climbed by some visitors on their knees as is still done in Rome at the Scala Sancta, the stairs believed to have been brought from Pilate's house by Helena in 326. For the history of the Scala and their move in the sixteenth century, see Witcombe (1985).

  9. Spronk writes that, ‘apparently, the Palmers could be interred in a communal grave in the crypt of the Jerusalem Chapel, but it is unclear if such burials did indeed take place’ (Spronk, 2005, 111). For the contract between Jan Adornes and the Brotherhood, dated between 1517 and 1522, see Van de Walle (1964, 142–147).

  10. Hahn describes how ampullae filled with oil from the lamps that had burned over the sepulchre were then touched to a relic of the Holy cross where the oil proceeded to overflow its vessels until it was capped (Hahn, 1997, 1086). She likens this miraculous event to the filling up of the faithful with belief and wonderment when they visited the holy sites.

  11. Medieval memory has been the topic of numerous recent studies but its ascendance in the field of medieval studies is due largely to the important work of Mary Carruthers; see, for example, The Book of Memory (2008).

  12. The most thorough and helpful treatment of the sacro monte of Varallo is found in Panzanelli's marvelous dissertation (1999). See also Vaccaro and Ricardi (1992). Sacri monti are also discussed and illustrated in Wharton (2006, 98–126), Gregg (2004, 49–55), Hood (1984) and Wittkower (1978, 175–183).

  13. It is particularly significant to this study that these were the first three sites chosen for commemoration and reproduction. Calvary and the Holy Sepulchre are also commemorated in the Jerusalem Chapel in Bruges.

  14. Today the figure of Christ is behind glass and can no longer be touched.

  15. Gian Lorenzo Bernini's famous chapel for the Cornaro family in the church of Santa Maria Della Vittoria in Rome (1645–1652) with the Ecstasy of St. Theresa is a great example of this. Not only is our own ability to access and view the chapel tightly controlled, but the sculpted Cornaro family members in the theater boxes on either side of the sculpture also model the ideal devotional responses. For more on Bernini and his work, see Wittkower (1997).

  16. The website is http://www.holylandexperience.com.

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the editors of this volume for the invitation to include my work. I recently published the related essay, ‘Illusionism and Interactivity: Medieval Installation Art, Architecture and Devotional Response,’ in Push Me, Pull You (Blick and Gelfand, 2011, 87–116).

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  1. Department of Art and Design, Caine College of the Arts, Utah State University, Logan, UT

    Laura D Gelfand

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Gelfand, L. Sense and simulacra: Manipulation of the senses in medieval ‘copies’ of Jerusalem. Postmedieval 3, 407–422 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1057/pmed.2012.28

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