International Medieval Society, Paris • Société Internationale des Médiévistes, Paris

Symposium 2010 - Traditio
Abstract

Figuring translation: The Trier Ivory and its Pictorial Signifiers

Ljubomir Milanovic, Rutgers University

Medieval representations of the ritual of translatio documented the circulation of relics both within and between medieval cultures. Reliquaries transmuted abject human remains into objects of veneration. Depictions of the ritual of translation charted this movement between the earthly and heavenly realms. Neither fully alive nor dead, the saint’s body was suspended in a state of perpetual non-decay and endowed with super-natural powers of healing and protection for the faithful. Viewed as a reenactment of this ritual, the visual representations of the translation ceremony allowed the reader to establish an empathetic identification with the saint and access his beneficence.

The Trier Ivory has been the focus of intense scholarly debate for almost two centuries. Although extensive, the existing scholarship on the ivory focuses on the identification of the individual being translated and date of manufacture, while reading the iconography of this scene through that of the roman adventus. Few scholars closely attend to the formal characteristics and symbolic meaning of the scene, or take into account the subtle, but important, distinctions between the adventus in its Roman and Christian context.

My paper provides a close pictorial analysis of the Trier Ivory in relation to adventus and triumph in order to elucidate the mechanisms by which the ritual of translatio was itself translated from its Antique prototypes into a new, Christian pictorial language. The ritual of triumph showed not only power of the emperor, but also how his presence benefited the city and empire thanks to the spolia of war, as one of the most important parts of the triumphal procession. Similarly, the Trier Ivory figures the translation of relics in a way that symbolically allows a human corpse liable to decay to be transformed into the incorruptible body of a saint, one that will bring power and prosperity to the community that possesses it.