Witness Images and Oath-Stones
On Law and Pictorial Culture in the Eleventh Century
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21322306 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Peter Scott Brown (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 62 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 187-217 |
| Publication date | 2023-09-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Gesta (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0016-920X • E-ISSN: 2169-3099 |
| Publisher | University of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1086/725872 |
| OpenAlex | W4387882988 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 13 |
The capital known as La Dispute in the Musée Sainte-Croix, Poitiers, is one of the earliest and most celebrated single works of Romanesque sculpture. It depicts a pair of men with women restraining them on either side, wielding billhooks, butting heads, and pulling each other’s beards. Efforts to clarify its meaning frequently cite the inscription beneath a second image of beard-pulling in the famed Beatus of Saint-Sever: Frontibus attritis barbas conscindere fas est, a text long regarded as mocking nonsense intended to gloss a ludicrous, profane subject. I argue that modern readers have simply failed to recognize the metaphoric significance of the expression “frontibus attritis,” identical in meaning to the modern English expression “bald-faced,” signifying “shameless.” The text and its visualizations preserve a proverb on false witness that held legal-sacramental significance in relation to aspects of legal feud and dispute: “The bald-faced may pluck beards,” meaning that the shameless might act in ways that honor forbids. This proverb clarifies depictions of bald-faced beard-pullers associated with other eleventh-century monuments of canonical importance, including in the basilica of Saint-Sernin in Toulouse and the pictorial vita of Saint Albinus from Saint-Aubin d’Angers. Together, these are archetypes of what I call “witness images,” a species of pictorial oath-helper that has yet to be described. In short, the images are ornaments of legal-sacramental speech and ritual as well as attributes of monuments that were conceived as sites of testimony and oath-taking and useful to the credibility of such oaths and witness
Art · Eleventh · Oath · Political science · Witness · Archaeology and Historical Studies · Death, Funerary Practices, and Mourning · History · Law · Medieval Literature and History
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |