You are here:

Francesca Dell’Acqua (Università degli studi di Salerno): '"The world’s most powerful woman"?: The Virgin Mary and authority in early medieval Mercia'

Labelled on the cover of the National Geographic magazine as “the World’s most powerful woman” in 2015, the Virgin Mary has also been held responsible for presenting a role model of a humble and subservient woman, allegedly impacting past and today’s lack of female leadership in the West and elsewhere. However, when we look at how the Virgin Mary was depicted in texts, images, preaching, and tales in the eastern Mediterranean and in the early medieval West, she appears as a multivalent figure which emblematises various virtues, spanning from humility (humilitas) to wisdom (sapientia) and spiritual, moral, and even doctrinal authority (auctoritas). By the late medieval period, however, her image as a compassionate and nurturing mother prevailed, possibly as a consequence of Medicant preaching, as well as of the Protestant Reformation and the ensuing Catholic Counter Reformation. 

An interesting case study through which to investigate how the authority and power of the Virgin came to be constructed is a carved stone relief immured in the Priory Church of St Mary and St Hardulph at Breedon-on-the-Hill (Leicestershire), part of the largest group of sculpture from the early medieval kingdom of Mercia. This relief represents the Virgin Mary, half-length, veiled, with no nimbus, as she imparts a blessing to the beholder while pointing to a book she reverently holds in her veiled left hand. It has been suggested that the Breedon iconography and style may be derived from seventh-century Byzantine icons. Yet, its iconography, let alone the fact that Mary holds a book and not her Child, is not found in Byzantine art, and remains highly unusual to the point that not all scholars who dealt with it believe it to be a representation of the Virgin. Therefore, we should ask: is the relief in Breedon to be seen as a variation of a Byzantine iconography of the Mother of God, or as a Mercian rendition of an earlier, lost model, or as an invention? What does it mean? And what does its historical context suggest? 

The Work in Progress seminar explores the variety of subjects studied and researched at the Warburg Institute. Papers are given by invited international scholars, research fellows studying at the Institute, and third-year PhD students.

ATTENDANCE FREE ONLINE OR IN PERSON WITH ADVANCE BOOKING.

image: The Virgin Mary holding a book, relief, Lincolnshire limestone, late eighth–early ninth century, 60 x 46 cm, Priory Church of St Mary and St Hardulph, Breedon-on-the-Hill (Leicestershire); photo: Francesca Dell'Acqua.