Statue Marriage and Medieval Iconophilia

Jordan Koel • University of Michigan

 

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Recommended citation: Jordan Koel, “Statue Marriage and Medieval Iconophilia,” Different Visions: New Perspectives on Medieval Art 13 (2026). https://doi.org/10.61302/OCAM9515.

 

Prelude

There is a story that tells of a young grammar student at Oxford during the late twelfth century. The boy, about twelve, compelled by an innate sense of virtue and fervent devotion, wished to promise his chastity to the Virgin Mary. Entering the silent and empty chapel with his confessor, he approached a familiar sculpture of the Virgin and knelt before it. Under the watchful eye of his confessor, he made his ardent and tearful vows. As a final gesture, he gently slid a golden ring onto the statue’s finger. After completing his surreptitious ritual, the boy, concerned about the questions the sudden appearance of the ring might raise, attempted to remove it. No matter how he tried, though, the ring held fast. The moment of panic quickly passed as the boy recognized this as a sign of the Virgin’s approval and acceptance of his vow.

Introduction

Among the many remarkable aspects of this story is its ostensible grounding in history. It is not recounted as a fabulous exemplum or miracle tale concerning an anonymous individual in a faraway land. Rather, it appears as a biographical episode in the life of a well-known figure. The young student was, in fact, Edmund of Abingdon (ca. 1174–1240), who would go on to serve as the Archbishop of Canterbury from 1234 until his death. A short version of the episode was entered into the Chronicon de Lanercost under the events of the year 1228 (though the text was likely written sometime near the end of the century), while a far more dramatic version was included as one of the earliest events in the Vita sancti Edmundi, composed by Matthew Paris (d. 1259) between 1247 and 1253.[1]

Another remarkable aspect of this incident in Edmund’s biography is how aptly it underscores themes that are fundamental to a vibrant and integrated understanding of the medieval function of devotional sculpture. First and foremost, it highlights the interactive and participatory potential of the relationship between devotees and images. In this sense, it can be explored as a literal interpretation of the concept of “social sculpture.” Edmund does not simply perform his ritual in front of the statue of the Virgin, but with it. He speaks to it and engages with it physically. The statue’s purported animation, while subtle, further alerts us to a desire to recognize it not as an inert, static object, but as an active and responsive agent in the performance. In this respect, this story is not unique. Medieval sources, from saints’ vitae, to chronicles, to miracle collections, are replete with reports of verbal and physical interaction between beholders and vivified sculpted bodies. The prevalence and persistence of such stories signals that relationships between beholder and image were not characterized by aesthetic distance but rather a desire for intimacy with the embodied presence of the divine.[2]

Investigations of sculpture—ancient, medieval, and modern—have increasingly recognized the importance of considering not just the materiality and physicality of sculpture, but the sensorium of an embodied viewer and the haptics of encounter.[3] For example, Mary Carruthers argued for the reprioritization of corporeal human sensation as a corrective to what she saw as “over-theologized and over-moralized” studies that obscured an understanding of the medieval aesthetic experience in general.[4] Likewise, scholars such as Jacqueline E. Jung, Alexa Sand, and Thomas E.A. Dale have grounded their studies of medieval sculpture in the kinetic and tactile experience of beholders.[5] The relevance of approaches like these is supported by the emphasis on touch in Edmund’s sculptural encounter. The focal point of the entire interaction, after all, is the meeting of Edmund’s and the Virgin’s hands. Not only does he first gently slide a ring onto her finger, but he then vigorously attempts to pry it off her hand with his. His reported actions are a vivid example of the transgression of a distanced and purely visual experience and highlight the medieval importance of the interactive, sensual, and intimate characteristics of real and imagined relationships with sculpted bodies.[6]

In its focus on this transformation of social norms, at the center of which is the interactive and performative relationship with sculpture, this study may be seen as a multifaceted investigation of “social sculpture.”[7] While the physical interaction with a sculpted body may be seen as the literal facet on the scale of the individual, the role of texts, such as miracle tales, and their relationship to images can be seen as the complementary cultural facet. It is not simply that the following stories are about sculpture, but, as Robert Ford Campany asserts, such texts “are rich historical sources precisely because they both reflect and were attempts to persuasively shape what these groups…thought and did.”[8] Likewise, Michelle Wang has argued that “the composition, circulation, and compilation of miracle tales may be considered as performative acts.”[9] In other words, these sources are not merely reflections of an ongoing transformation, but can—and should—also be understood as vital agents of it. The creation and transmission of the stories themselves, as much as the reported actions of beholders reported in them, represent performative acts that shaped how sculpted bodies were perceived and how audiences were taught to act in relationship to them.

Edmund’s story aptly illustrates the literal and figural embrace of devotional sculpture by western medieval audiences. The fact that the tale is utilized so naturally as a proof of the young archbishop’s sanctity, however, obscures the fact that the integration of sculpture as a licit component of medieval Christian devotion which it represents runs contrary to the religion’s aniconic roots and centuries of iconophobic rhetoric. Though the reemergence of monumental sculpture was underway by the late tenth century, and perhaps even earlier, it is the twelfth and thirteenth centuries that saw a marked increase in the defense and justification of sculpted images in religious life. The following pages do not seek the causes of, or propose explanations for, this shift. Rather, the trope of statue marriage, of which Edmund’s story is but one medieval iteration, is used as an index of the changing social patterns relating to the creation and use of sculpture in devotional practices.

Medieval Statue Marriage

Edmund’s miraculous interaction with a three-dimensional anthropomorphic image of a kind ubiquitous in the era provides rich material for gaining insight into the medieval sculptural imaginary. His purported actions were not invented ex nihilo by his biographers. Rather, the story appears to be an example of the hagiographical practice of utilizing a familiar trope to underscore a facet of the subject’s character, in this case Edmund’s “exceptional purity, abstinence, and vigilance.”[10] During the middle of the thirteenth century, that is, at the same that that Edmund’s vita was taking shape, the popularity and circulation of anthologies of miracle tales—an increasing number of which were illuminated—was reaching new heights. One story found in such miracle collections is that of the son of wealthy and pious parents who was exceedingly devoted to the Virgin. This boy of ten spent every free moment in his family’s chapel in the presence of an exquisite wooden statue of the Virgin said to be of such fine craftsmanship that one might even think it alive.[11]

One day, in response to the boy’s fervent devotion, the Virgin spoke through her statue. He professed his love for her above all others. She, in turn, promised that he would enter heaven with his virginity intact. Instead of presenting the Virgin with a ring, the youth sealed their vows by kissing the hand of the animated statue. It is this tender moment that the illuminator of a thirteenth-century copy of the Vie des pères (VdP), in which one version of this story appears, has chosen to depict (Fig. 1). The image of the Virgin is shown extending her hand towards the kneeling youth while the infant Christ—conspicuously absent in the text—stands in his mother’s lap and gestures towards her. The worn and smudged faces of the Virgin and Child in the manuscript suggest that its readers may have mirrored the youth’s devotion by touching, or even kissing, the representation of the exquisite wooden sculpture that had acted as the Virgin herself. The violent fulfillment of the vow, however, is not shown in this manuscript, as the youth will duly break his neck running from the church in defiance of an arranged marriage.

 

 

Variations on this theme abound. For example, another tale with characteristics in common with Edmund’s vita is to be found in the seventh book of the Speculum historiale, concerning the miracles of the Virgin, compiled by Vincent of Beauvais (ca. 1190–1264). As depicted in a late fourteenth-century Old French translation (Fig. 2), a group of young clerks set about playing a ball game in front of a church. One of the young men had a ring, a token from his lover, that he wanted to keep safe. Looking for an appropriate place to store his ring, he entered the church. Inside, he admired the beauty of a sculpted image of the Virgin and devoutly knelt before the statue. He then placed his ring on its finger and prayed that he might be found worthy of her love in return. As he looked on in astonishment, the statue bent its finger (digitum suum imago constrinxit), ensuring the ring could not be removed and, in doing so, acknowledges the youth’s prayer. Later, with the memory of the encounter having nearly faded from his memory, the youth is married. On his wedding night, however, the Virgin appeared and accused him of infidelity. Terrified by the Virgin’s threats, he left straightaway to become a monk and serve her the rest of his days.[12]

 

 

Whether young Edmund was himself inspired by similar tales, which seem to have been circulating since at least the twelfth century, or the chroniclers posthumously inserted the tale into his life, it is clear that medieval audiences were familiar with the trope of statue marriage through word and image.[13] His and the similar “marriages” to the Virgin, however, represent a relatively narrow, fully Christianized manifestation of the trope. If we step back and survey the landscape of medieval literature with a wider lens, we find a range of distinct yet clearly related stories circulating concurrently in northern Europe. Broadly speaking—at least in terms of the present study—“statue marriage” may be considered a delicate shorthand for any instance of love or lust directed toward a statue, from boyish vows of chastity made to a sculpture of the Virgin to tales of agalmatophilia. Furthermore, for the purposes of this exploration, it is not necessary to concern ourselves with the legal and social intricacies of medieval marriage customs. Instead, the value of the trope lies in the fact that it underscores notions of attraction to and relationships with three-dimensional anthropomorphic images.

In the end, it is the manner in which the trope is utilized that emerges as the most revealing factor. In fact, it is remarkable that such stories are told at all in the contexts of a saint’s vita or miracle collection. The centrality of the sculpture to the ritual, its subtle yet unmistakable expression of agency, and the favorable light the interaction shines on the protagonist all seem to defy centuries of Christian warnings about the potential dangers of sculpted images and attempts to limit their use in devotional practices. The presentation of these youths’ interactions with sculpted images of the Virgin as natural, exemplary, even charming, belies the fact that even a century or two earlier the same actions might well have been portrayed as idolatrous. This sea-change of attitudes, beliefs, and practices must be set against the long tradition within Christian rhetoric of deriding figural sculpture. Other crafts and media had been easily legitimized through stories around figures such as the Old Testament craftsman, Bezaleel, or later, the saintly Merovingian goldsmith, Eligius. An unsavory stigma had, however, clung to anthropomorphic sculpture. Rather than being able to rely on scripture for justification, which offered little more than invectives against “idols,” the craft of sculpture was forced to swim upstream against that rhetoric.

The significance of the circulation of tales of statue marriage as positive exempla in Christian contexts is magnified further when the trope’s ancient—and decidedly “pagan”—origins are understood. Evidence suggests that the trope itself is a vestige of the custom of ritual sacred marriage which can be traced back millennia in the Mediterranean and Near Eastern worlds.[14] These rituals began, it seems, as the symbolic union of two deities, represented by their images, or of a human, such as a king or priest in a ceremonial role, with a deity. The myth of Pygmalion is, in fact, a direct offshoot of these traditions. As will be discussed, in the earliest versions of the myth, before it was adapted by Ovid, Pygmalion was a king of Cyprus—the center of the cult of Aphrodite (Venus)—who was consumed by an uncontrollable attraction to the statue of the goddess. Later, in Ovid’s telling, the statue was vivified by Venus herself in answer to Pygmalion’s prayer for a wife (coniunx) like his ivory maiden.[15] The memory of this ancient rite, which lived on in the figure of Pygmalion, was taken up by early Christian apologists in their attacks on paganism, especially pagan religions’ link with sculpted idols. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, however, as will emerge, medieval authors are found seizing upon the trope and endowing it with positive exemplary potential.

Here, it is also helpful to pause briefly to acknowledge a temptation to link the trope of statue marriage with the concept of mystical marriage as developed in the exegesis of the Song of Songs, where the bride (sponsa) is variously interpreted as the individual Christian soul, the entirety of the Christian Church, or the Virgin Mary herself.[16] A tale like Edmund’s indeed lends itself to such a reading, his actions potentially seen as structurally equivalent to the ritual consecration of nuns.[17] This interpretation, while not wholly implausible, risks the danger of misunderstanding the trope’s significance and function for at least three reasons. First, it takes for granted that a story centered on statuary came to be used in exemplary contexts in a religion that long derided such images as idols. Second, as will be shown, the origins of the trope of statue marriage are distinct, older, and its literary functions more diverse. Third, and most importantly, the nature of the animation displayed by statues in miracle tales of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, including instances of statue marriage, replaces the strictly symbolic actions of the earlier period with behavior meant to underscore the equivalence, presence, and efficacy of the sculpted devotional image. As Michael Camille pointed out, statues in the medieval imagination during this time begin to “do more than ‘act out’ theological roles…. They start to do some very human things.”[18] In other words, they cease being symbolic objects performing symbolic acts and begin to be presented in ways that promote their potential to function as physical presences. This does not necessarily negate a symbolic reading but should also alert us to the complexities of a society’s changing relationship with religious sculpture.

The transformation of the trope of statue marriage from a warning about the dangers of idolatry to an exemplary device can be viewed as one vivid indicator of changing perceptions of sculpture, now granted a licit place within para- and extra-liturgical devotion. During this period, there emerges a discernable pattern of the inversion of Christian rhetoric against sculpted bodies. By this is meant that the arguments drawn from scripture to buttress the church’s position on images—specifically three-dimensional anthropomorphic images—can be seen, in many instances, as being quite literally reversed. Where once the iconophobic voices of saintly protagonists represented a conservative and generally accepted orthodoxy, their battle cries against the idols of the pagans are later found emanating from the mouths of antagonists. At best, those who give voice to these anti-sculptural sentiments are cast as outdated and out of touch, while at worst they may be characterized as bordering on heretical. The function of these iconophobic voices shifts to serve as a foil to new voices that champion the efficacy of sculpted images and provide justification for those who fashion them. The appearance of statue marriage as a trope of exemplary devotion is among the most powerful manifestations of this inversion.

From Venus to the Virgin in the Vie des pères

The trope of statue marriage flourishes within an expansive and variegated forest of related stories and customs from which it draws its force and meaning. Its roots can be found reaching deep into the ancient world while its tendrils have crept into the modern world as robotics and AI strive to make the dream of the living statue a reality.[19] It would not be possible in the space of this study to catalogue all of these precedents and parallels, nor is it necessary. What is key is that not long before Edmund’s vita was composed, statue marriage was a narrative device employed primarily to attack paganism. Instead of being used to convey devotion and chastity, it is found signaling deviance and serving to ridicule idols. This function of the trope is brought into clear focus when we recognize that before the ring was given to the Virgin, it was given to Venus.

The earliest direct medieval precedent for Edmund’s betrothal to a statue is found in the Gesta regum Anglorum by William of Malmesbury (d. ca. 1143), composed in the early decades of the twelfth century.[20] As something of an urtext for one of the main medieval branches of this trope, a detailed synopsis is appropriate. William’s tale is set in Rome, a city renowned for being replete with statues of pagan deities. It tells of a young man from a high-ranking family, recently married, who threw a feast. As part of the festivities, he and his friends went to the Campus Martius for some exercise and sport. Before they began, he placed his wedding ring on the outstretched finger of a bronze statue (anulum sponsalitium digito extento statuae aereae) for safekeeping.[21] The text does not at this point specify the statue’s identity, nor does it make any comment on its appearance other than its material. When he returned, he found that the statue’s finger had curved around the ring making it impossible to remove. He concealed this turn of events for the time being but returned during the night with his servants to retrieve it. To his surprise, he found that the statue’s finger was once again outstretched though the ring was gone!

That evening, as he lay in bed with his wife, he felt an eerie presence. Something invisible, dense but nebulous (nebulosum et densum), kept the newlyweds apart as they lay in bed. Suddenly, he heard the voice of Venus claiming him as her own.[22] Night after night, for “a considerable time” (elapsum est in hoc multum tempus), he and his wife were kept apart by this invisible force (though, as William took care to note, the man was otherwise fit and full of vigor). Finally, the couple and their families resorted to a priest named Palumbus who appears to have been more adept at necromancy and magic than the mass.[23] For the promise of a considerable fee, this priest provided the young man with a sealed letter and instructed him to stand at a crossroads. There, in the dead of night, he saw a ghostly procession. At the end of the ghastly retinue was a figure taller than the rest who appeared to be their master. Without saying a word, the young man delivered the letter to the demon who recognized the seal (demon, notum sigillum). Compelled by the contents of the letter, the demon shouted a curse to God against Palumbus and sent his servants to take the ring from Venus, thereby freeing the young man from his impotence. As for Palumbus the magician, he is said to have met a violent end after confessing his crimes before the pope and whole city.

This story, though untitled in William’s text, has come to be referred to as “The Bachelor of Rome.” Aside from being set in an at least partially Christianized Rome overseen by a pope, there is nothing overtly Christian about this early version. The demon at the end of the procession—easily read as the Devil—was defeated by magic, not a Christian miracle. Venus was forced to return the ring, relinquishing her claim on the young man, which allowed the sexually frustrated couple to finally consummate their marriage. The Virgin, who will appear in later variants of “The Bachelor of Rome,” is conspicuously absent. If one were to extract any lessons from the story, they might be not to practice magic (even if capable of compelling the Devil) and to beware of pagan statues, like that of the idol Venus, as they might be a vessel for a demon.

It is a bizarre and striking tale that clearly resonated with the medieval imagination. At some point between the appearance of William of Malmesbury’s tale told in the Gesta regum Anglorum (ca. 1125) and Matthew Paris’s vita of Edmund (ca. 1246), a new branch of the story had sprouted which saw the recipient of the ring change from a pagan statue of Venus to a devotional image of the Virgin. Though it is unclear when exactly this new variation emerged, we do know that in the early thirteenth century, likely around 1215–30, an anonymous author adapted William’s Latin text (or similar retelling) into their own unique composition in Old French known as the Vie des pères.

Though frequently copied into or bound with other miracle collections, the fabliaux-like exempla that comprise the text of the first recension of the VdP give it a distinct tone that set it apart.[24] The anonymous author was a keen observer of contemporary life and the text was meant to resonate with the values and perspectives of a thirteenth-century urbanized borjois.[25] As Adrian Tudor has pointed out, the text of the first recension, in effect, “acts as an idealized manifesto of popular religion, beliefs, and behavior.”[26] In other words, the text as a whole is a creative synthesis of elements that speaks to relevant observations and anxieties of a broad audience by melding existing tales, familiar images, and persistent questions.

The conte known simply as the “Image de pierre” in modern editions demonstrates how the author of the VdP offers a fresh perspective on inherited lore. To classify this story as simply a retelling of William of Malmesbury’s “original” would be to misrepresent it entirely. While the author of the VdP indeed borrowed William’s story, here it forms the nucleus of a far more expansive and complex narrative. In fact, less than one fifth of its verses can be said to be derived from William’s version.[27] It is also distinct from the popular fully-Christianized inversion of William’s tale found in Vincent of Beauvais’ Speculum historiale (see Fig. 2, above), Gautier de Coinci’s Miracles de Nostre Dame, the Cantigas de Santa Maria, Jean Gobi’s Scala coeli, and other texts which essentially swap Venus for the Virgin.[28] In the VdP, statues of the pagan goddess and the Virgin Mary both appear in a story that explicitly describes a turning point in Christian visual culture.

Given the story’s exceptional character and the insight it is capable of providing, a detailed synopsis is again necessary. After a prologue that offers musings about pride and the fleeting nature of life, the story proper opens in Rome during Gregory the Great’s papacy (590–604). In order to rid the Eternal City of its pagan error, Gregory had ordered that all of the statues in the city be mutilated. The remnants of their stone bodies were then gathered in places such as the Colosseum so that all could see that the gods of the pagans were nothing more than material images, readily destroyed, “because in wood or in stone one cannot reasonably find knowledge or truth.”[29] Ironically, it is this sentiment that the story will eventually upend.

With the stage set and an atmosphere of iconophobia established, the narrative now retells the story of the ring on Venus’ finger that can be traced back to William, though with a few notable modifications. For one, the author is careful to note that the youth, upon seeing a statue of a woman—apparently one that had survived Gregory’s iconoclastic campaign unscathed—with its hand open as if ready to receive a ring, is amused at the situation and “marries” the statue in jest.[30] Curiously, the troublesome statue is never actually identified as Venus in the text. When first encountered by the young man, it is described only as an image sculpted in the form of a woman (Une ymaige…en forme de feme entailliee) and afterwards only referred to as “the image” (l’ymaige).[31] Nevertheless, context and its obvious relationship to William’s source material make the identity of “l’ymaige de pierre” clear.[32]

In a late thirteenth-century manuscript (BL Add. MS 32678), the initial “S” at the opening of the prologue to the tale, though small and partially worn (Fig. 3), shows the young man, wearing a red tunic and green leggings, placing a ring on the figure of the “ymaige de pierre,” a robed female figure painted white with blue accents. The identity of this figure as a pagan idol is conveyed in two ways. First, the figure, following long-standing convention, is set atop a column as indicated by a capital with blue volutes and red abacus below her feet. Second, its specific identity as Venus is suggested by the coy gesture of the figure’s left hand. This gesture recalls the Venus pudica pose of the famous Knidian Aphrodite of Praxiteles, known through copies including the Capitoline Venus in Rome (Fig. 4) or the Medici Venus (Fig. 5) in Florence.[33]

 

 

 

 

At least one similar sculpture was known to thirteenth-century audiences. In the twelfth chapter of Master Gregory’s Narracio de mirabilibus urbis Romae, in which he describes his impressions of the monuments of Rome, a marble statue of a nude Venus emerges as having been particularly captivating.[35] The illuminator of the copy in the British Library has opted for modesty and represented the figure fully clothed in a long-sleeved belted tunic that gathers at her feet. Yet, her pose echoes the ancient sculptural type. While the left hand reaches down as if to cover her pudenda, her right arm is bent sharply at the elbow and held across the chest, where her hand is met by the hand of the young man bestowing the ring. Many surviving antique sculptures of Venus depict the goddess with the fingers of her right hand extended as she attempts to cover herself in feigned surprise, a gesture that all but invites the bestowal of a ring. The text of the VdP recalls this sculptural detail, specifically stating that the statue’s right hand was open.[36]

Another noteworthy modification of William’s story found in the VdP is that rather than a ghostly cloud interrupting the newlyweds in their bed, it is “l’ymaige” itself that haunts them. The physicality of the statue is insisted upon by the text which states that the couple was forced to leap out of bed naked to avoid being crushed when it attempted to join them. The image’s materiality is also emphasized in an early fourteenth-century manuscript of the VdP in The Hague (KB MS 71 A 24) (Fig. 6) in which the illuminator seems to take liberties with the text. Rather than representing the “ymaige de pierre” as white marble as one might expect, it is rendered in olive drab, suggestive of the patina one might expect on the statuae aereae found in William of Malmesbury’s account. In the right panel, the youth and the statue—whose positions mirror those of the left panel—stand over the bed in which his bride still lies as Venus accuses the youth of infidelity. The monochrome animated statue now dramatically points to the living woman, depicted with white skin and rosy cheeks, further underscoring the difference between artificial and organic bodies. Finally, while the couple resort to calling a priest to aid them as they do in William’s version, in the VdP they are aided by a devout Christian chaplain who proves to be not nearly as effective as Palumbus had been.

 

 

It is at this point that the story diverges from its source material and ventures into new and otherwise unattested territory. The chaplain has the couple get into bed together in order to provoke the demonic ymaige. When the statue returns, fully animated, it speaks. As it presents the priest with the ring, it points out that the youth married her/it of his own free will and suggests that to presume such a vow means nothing would mean deviating from their own Christian laws. Outmaneuvered by the demonic statue, and with his holy water, stole, and crucifix proving to be ineffective, the priest flees, leaving the young couple to the statue’s mercy. With nowhere left to turn, they bring their predicament to Pope Gregory himself. The pope, recognizing the legal bind that the youth has found himself in, is also at a loss. He orders the youth to abstain from relations with his wife and to not tell anyone about the matter.

Unable to resign himself to this fate, the youth eventually leaves Rome in search of a renowned hermit whom he believes can help. The hermit advises him to devote himself to the Virgin, which he does, spending a good deal of effort and money building up her cult. Eventually, the Virgin, moved by his devotion, appears to him in a vision and commands him to have an image of her made. She specifies that it should depict her holding her son in front of her—an image conforming to the ubiquitous “throne of wisdom” type—and that he should spare no expense so that it is so exquisite, so well carved and painted, that no one could find fault with it.[37]

For the early thirteenth-century author and his audience, this description would have called to mind elegant contemporary images exemplified by the enthroned Virgin and Child now held in the Metropolitan Museum (Fig. 7). Traces of polychromy and numerous cavities once filled with semiprecious stones suggest the original radiance of the regal image. Moreover, this carved oak figure stands at just over four feet meaning that one would be virtually eye-to-eye with the Virgin if kneeling before it on the same plane. The stately presence of this and similar sculpted images of the Virgin was, however, undoubtedly amplified once placed on an altar. Understandably shocked by his vision demanding the creation of such an image, the youth consulted the pope, conveying the Virgin’s command and seeking council.

 

It is here that the story’s relationship to the history of sculpture snaps into sharp focus. Pope Gregory, in opposition to the wishes of the Virgin, warns the youth that statues of any kind are strictly forbidden and that anyone who sets one up—even if it is of the Virgin—would be subject to the church’s justice. Recalling the story’s opening, the author reminds the reader that sculpture had been forbidden because, as they say, such images were worshiped by weak minds.[38] The youth heeds the pope’s council and returns home, resigned to defying the Virgin’s command. But she then appears to him on a second and third night, her anger multiplying each time she is disobeyed. During her third visit, she vehemently chastises the youth and asks why she should not be worshipped everywhere throughout the city just as the pagan gods were?[39] Is she not more worthy of statues than those demons? The youth is given a deadline and threatened with death and damnation should he continue to disregard her wishes.

Gregory, finally convinced, allows the youth to fulfill the Virgin’s wishes. The young man then seeks out the best craftsmen in the city who fashion a statue of the Virgin adorned with silver and gold, so perfect that it was admired by all. The image was set up in Santa Maria Rotonda (the Pantheon) and word quickly spread of the new and exceedingly beautiful statue.[40] Soon, the church was crowded with people who came to prostrate themselves before it and pay homage to the Virgin. The author of the VdP is careful to note that the fame of the Virgin’s statue was due not only to its enchanting beauty but also because no one had ever seen anything like it since it was the first of its kind (por ce ke c’estoit la premiere).[41]

The story does not end there. The youth continued to serve the Virgin until one day, in the presence of a large crowd of clerics and laymen, knights and ladies, the statue of the Virgin miraculously disappeared. It soon reappeared, though now wearing a ring that the youth recognizes as that which he had jestingly presented to the demonic statue. The first thread of the story is tied off as the Virgin, having freed the youth from his bond with Venus, gives back the ring, thus allowing him to return to his marriage after seven long years. The second thread is resolved when Gregory orders similar statues of the Virgin to be set up throughout Christendom while the remnants of the pagan statues that had littered the city were used to pave the roads and sewers of Rome.

The climactic moment of the Virgin’s reappearance is depicted in the right panel of a trio of images that illustrate this story in a manuscript in the Royal Library of Belgium (MS. 9229–30) (Fig. 8). In this image, the illuminator has deviated from the text by showing the ring in the infant Christ’s hand rather than in the Virgin’s, perhaps a careful concession that while the youth has relied on the intercession of the Virgin, it was in fact the power of Christ that has freed him from his bond to the statue/demon. As a whole, this triptych depicts the illicit pagan idol at the far left while the newly licit statue of the Virgin and Child is shown at the far right. Between these two images of animated statues is a scene of the youths wrestling. This central scene of contestation, positioned like a fulcrum between the pagan past and Christian future, visually underscores the Virgin’s challenge to Venus, Pope Gregory, and centuries of Christian iconophobia.

 

 

It is difficult to overstate the value of this text in the VdP as a source of insight into the thirteenth-century sculptural imagination. Far more than a run-of-the-mill miracle tale, this story seeks to capture an important moment—albeit an imagined one—in the history of Christian sculpture. It specifically calls attention to a decided reversal in the church’s stance on images as it recounts the imagined genesis of sculpted images of the Virgin.

The Inversion of Rhetoric

Among the many things that make the text of the VdP remarkable is the historical and artistic awareness it evinces. While the tale ostensibly has moral lessons to convey, it can also be read as the recognition of a demonstrable change in mainstream medieval French visual culture. At the center of a tale about a statue animated by diabolical forces and a thwarted sexual relationship is an origin story of the sedes sapientiae sculptural type along with divine justification for the proliferation of statues of the Virgin. A key plot point is the introduction of Christian devotional sculpture—specifically statues of the Virgin—as a replacement for, or better yet, a challenge to ancient pagan statuary, made at the command of the Virgin herself. Central to the narrative is an awareness that Christian iconophobic rhetoric ran so deep that, at least in the context of the tale, it took nothing short of divine intervention to overcome it.

That this story about the reversal of Christian rhetoric against sculpted images should be set in the time of Gregory the Great was, without a doubt, deliberate. By the thirteenth century, Gregory’s reputation as an iconoclast had been firmly established. In the twelfth century, for example, John of Salisbury (d. 1180) attributed the burning of the library on the Palatine to Gregory while the widely read and much-copied thirteenth-century chronicle of Martinus Polonus (d. 1278), the Chronicon pontificum et imperatorum, asserted that Gregory was responsible for ordering “the heads and limbs of the images [statues] of the demons” to be struck off.[42] When the author of the VdP described Rome under Pope Gregory as a city in which one would have found collections of the fragmented statues of the pagan past, it was an image that would have been familiar to a contemporary audience. Given this reputation, Gregory serves as an apt figure to voice the traditional iconophobic—even iconoclastic—position long held by the church. His voice functions as the foil to the “new normal” which is articulated by the youth acting as messenger for the Virgin.

The eleventh-century Liber miraculorum sancte Fidis offers invaluable insight into the early phase of this transitional period. Throughout, its author, Bernard of Angers (fl. ca. 1015), observes, records, and reflects on tensions and contesting attitudes with respect to the efficacy of sculpted devotional images. In chapter eleven, for example, he recounts the events surrounding a land dispute between the monks of Conques and a local noblewoman. The monks, hoping to leverage divine assistance to resolve the matter in their favor, threatened to involve their saint, Foy (Fig. 9). Hearing of their plan, one of noblewoman’s men, full of food, wine, and hubris, “asserted that he would not care a straw if the monks carried her statue (imaginem), which he thought of as a demon (larvam) that should be ridiculed and spat upon (ridendam et conspuendam), to the estate over which the two parties were wrangling.”[43] The man’s disrespect did not go unanswered as almost immediately the building collapsed, killing him and his family while all others were miraculously unhurt.

 

The drunkard’s attitude toward the reliquary image of St. Foy is not so far from Bernard’s initial view when he arrived in Conques. His position is, in fact, in line with earlier critiques of images and does not necessarily characterize him as unchristian. In this episode, however, the drunkard’s disrespect—and his now outdated view of images—casts him as the antagonist and the object of a cautionary tale. Of further significance in this case is that the equivalency between representation and represented, something that Christian rhetoric had repeatedly denied, is here insisted upon.[44] Words, actions, and attitudes—negative or positive—were understood to be capable of provoking responses from the statue/saint. Bernard’s text is replete with instances in which the image of St. Foy was indirectly responsive, efficacious, and equated with the saint herself—all inversions of even the most forgiving rhetoric against sculpted images that had long circulated.

Over the course of the next two centuries, the new stance towards images is encountered in a flood of stories of animated Christian images, tales found in histories, biographies, and miracle collections, the last a genre whose increasing popularity was linked, at least in part, to the flourishing cult of the Virgin. In his history of Glastonbury up to the year 1126, William of Malmesbury had included at least three references to animated images: a crucifix that spoke, another that shook, and another that bled when pierced.[45] A short time later, Walter of Cluny included in his De miraculis beate virginis Mariæ (1141) the story of an image of the Christ child which spoke to the boy who offered it bread.[46] Later still, Reginald of Durham (d. ca. 1190), in his life of Godric of Finchale (d. 1170), described in detail at least three episodes that center on the physical animation of images.[47] After one such event, in which Godric and a companion witnessed the actions of an animated crucifix, the saint is reported to have turned to his companion and said:

Human faith cannot doubt that the son of God, who underwent death for us, can pour the spirit of life into whatever he wishes. For he who just now gave the spirit of life to a piece of wood clearly demonstrates by such a prodigious sign of wonder that he lives always and sees everything. So, the power which comes from him gives life to everything which is born by breathing life into it.[48]

No medieval Christian would confess outright to worshiping the crucifix, a sculpted image of the enthroned Virgin, or a statue of a saint. Still, the rhetoric of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries assigned to sculpted images an ever-greater potential for efficacy and equivalency. This equivalency could be perceived as the presence of the saints themselves or as a sign of divine agency signaled through animation. In this regard, the object’s base materiality was crucial to the meaning and magnitude of the sign. God’s power was such that it could be infused into any matter, thus vivifying even inorganic material as if it were a living body. There is a clear shift of emphasis from warnings about the dangers of mere material images to using the potential of agency and animation of sculpted images as proof of divine power.

By the end of the twelfth century, sculpted images of Christ, Mary, and the saints had become objects integral to Christian devotion and were promoted in terms that would have been almost unthinkable a few centuries earlier. The Cistercian Caesarius of Heisterbach provided what is perhaps the most vivid and enthusiastic endorsement of religious images in the seventh book of his Dialogus miraculorum, written between 1219 and 1223. Following two consecutive stories of a particularly active image at Veldenz (near Trier), the interlocutors of his text, a Monk and a Novice, discuss the veracity and meaning of these miraculous occurrences.

Novice: I did not know up to now that there are such great consolations in the images of saints.
Monk: Saints work many wonders in and through these images, especially in those places where they are venerated. […]
Novice: [A]stonishment comes over me when I hear about a voice for speaking in wood, a hand for striking, a bending of the body, or standing upright, sitting, and the rest of the vital movements. […]
Monk: The divine spirit is in every creature through essence and potency; to it, nothing is impossible, nothing is miraculous. Every day this spirit works to affect these actions and ones similar to these to the honor of his saints.[49]

First, images—particularly anthropomorphic sculpted images—are no longer relegated to being, at best, mere ornament or, at worst, a potential spiritual pitfall. Instead, they are unequivocally understood to be efficacious and beneficial. Second, echoing the earlier sentiments of Godric, the belief that images have the potential to be animated by the Spirit of God and to behave as real bodies do is to be accepted without question.

All told, this exchange captures in exemplary fashion the ongoing process of the inversion of rhetoric regarding sculpted devotional images. Throughout the text of the Dialogus, and especially at this point, the character of the Novice voices passé, slightly naïve attitudes, thereby providing the figure of the Monk opportunities to guide him towards correct understanding. The apprehension that the Novice conveys during this exchange is based on Old Testament invectives against idols, specifically that there is no life or breath in them.[50] While this view of images may appear scripturally sound, it has become, as he learns from the Monk, incorrect, at least within the framework of this new strain of exegesis.

This same inversion of rhetoric in which a scripturally based critique of images is represented as outmoded and supplanted by new iconophilic teachings can be found in song 297 in the late thirteenth-century Cantigas of Alfonso the Wise. In it, a friar boldly ridicules a beautiful statue of the Virgin, which is said to perform miracles daily, that the king always carried with him. The friar asserted that all those who believe in such things are blind or mad since, as he proclaimed, “there is no power in carved wood that neither speaks nor moves.”[51] The friar’s words, just like those of the Novice in the Dialogus, derive from Old Testament verses. Among the Psalms, for example, one finds multiple passages that ridicule sculpted images as mere things made by human hands, as having no senses, as being inert objects that cannot speak or move.[52] Likewise, in Isaiah 44, the prophet asks mockingly, “Shall I bow down to a block of wood?”[53] The sentiments expressed in these Old Testament books are echoed almost verbatim by the friar of the Cantigas.

Like Gregory in the VdP or the Novice in the Dialogus, the friar’s criticism in the Cantigas is soundly rooted in traditional Christian doctrine. However, by the thirteenth century, the religious and artistic landscape had shifted to such a degree that these same criticisms no longer held, even becoming heterodox. In accusing an image-bearing king of idolatry and offending the Virgin in the process, the friar is portrayed not as a hero and champion of Christian doctrine—a figure that could still be found circulating saints’ lives—but is cast as ignorant of truth and is punished for his transgression and disbelief, cursed to go “mad without a doubt from then on.”[54]

The text of the Cantigas makes it abundantly clear that the sculpture of the Virgin was not to be viewed as merely a mute, senseless block of wood, but rather as an object vibrating with potential. The preface to this particular narrative unequivocally states that “[God’s] great power is such that it can act through that thing which He deems worthy to be thus empowered. This is the true reason why the one who sincerely believes finds power in a statue.”[55] Such an explicit assertation that power can reside in a statue makes plain the new emphasis on the potentiality of sculpture. By the end of the twelfth century—and certainly by the thirteenth— images could serve purposes beyond mere ornament, commemoration, or teaching aids.[56] In this new framework, an artform that had once been deemed to be of limited spiritual value—in some cases perhaps even dangerous—was embraced as efficacious and possessing spiritual potential. These stories and the many like them indicate an ongoing process that functioned to quell the doubts of Christians who might still harbor skepticism about the efficacy or legitimacy of sculpted images in orthodox practice. The tide had turned.

The Redemption of Pygmalion

The phenomenon of the inversion of iconophobic rhetoric is observable in a range of sources dating from across the eleventh through thirteenth centuries. The texts cited above, however, are explicitly Christian texts—saints’ lives, miracle collections, etc.—which were composed by authors who lived in a culture increasingly saturated with carved images and who were primed to promote the spiritual efficacy of sculpted devotional images. As a further means to evaluate the phenomenon of this inversion, the medieval reception of the ancient myth of Pygmalion is presented here as a test case. It is, first and foremost, the quintessential story of statue marriage in the western tradition. Perhaps the oldest coherent story based on the theme, it has, moreover undergone centuries—if not millennia—of reinterpretation. Second, as a myth about a pagan deity (Venus), thus falling outside the sphere of Christian biblical exegesis, medieval Christian authors had no immediate need to provide a positive explication or justification for the sculptor’s relation to a sculpted work. Tracing the trajectory of the reception of Pygmalion, we find a figure who was once closely associated with iconophobic Christian rhetoric but who, by the early fourteenth century, had become capable of being cast as the symbol par excellence of licit iconophilia.

The roots of the Pygmalion story are murky. What is certain is that long before he was Ovid’s master sculptor, Pygmalion was thought to be a mad king of Cyprus—the center of the cult of Aphrodite.[57] Our view of this early version of the myth, however, is narrow and colored by the agenda of early Christian authors. Sometime in the late third century BCE, the Greek author Philostephanus of Cyrene (fl. 215 BCE) incorporated the story into a text on the history of Cyprus. It was this lost text—not Ovid’s Metamorphoses (8 CE)—that was cited by both Clement of Alexandria (fl. ca. 200) and Arnobius of Sicca (fl. ca. 300) when they introduced Pygmalion into their polemics against paganism.[58] It is clear that in Philostephanus’s telling the story served as a cautionary exemplar about the perversion of the ancient rite of statue marriage. Pygmalion is presented as being unable to distinguish his ceremonial role as king/priest from reality as he becomes blinded by lust for the ancient and holy cult statue of the goddess.[59] Taken up by early Christian apologists, the story offered a prime opportunity to lambast pagan rites and idolatry.

In their effort to emphasize the theme of madness and unnatural lust, Clement and Arnobius both linked Pygmalion’s tale to a similar story, this one involving the cult statue of Aphrodite at Knidos.[60] Today best known through the writings of Lucian, it tells of a young man who was so consumed by an uncontrollable lust for the statue of the goddess that he snuck into her sanctuary to satisfy his desire, only to later throw himself from a cliff in shame.[61] Arnobius asks why, if the gods indeed inhabited their statues, would they let themselves be degraded in such ways? Clement, meanwhile, pointed out that only someone who had lost all reason would be so taken in by a work of artifice. The iconophilia—or more specifically the agalmatophilia—exhibited by Pygmalion and the Knidian youth is presented as a sign of madness and both characters are held up as negative exemplars, warnings about the perils of letting oneself be taken in by the outward beauty of empty idols.

As Ovid’s Metamorphoses reemerged in the medieval literary landscape, Pygmalion continued to be seen through the same condemnatory lens.[62] The terse gloss on the myth found in the work of Arnulf of Orleans, writing in the late twelfth century, is typical of the time. Arnulf writes: “Pygmalion’s statue [transformed] from ivory into a living woman. In truth, Pygmalion, the marvelous craftsman, made an ivory statue, and, conceiving a love for it, took it to abuse as if it were an actual woman.”[63] Arnulf finds no substantive allegorical meaning or deeper lesson to be learned from Ovid’s tale. In fact, he strips it of all its poetic potential and brings the reader crashing back to reality (re vera). The idea that Pygmalion’s statue could be thought of as having come to life finds no footing in Arnulf’s imagination. Nor is he sensitive to themes of artistry, beauty, or love. All that is left is a tale about unnatural lust and perverted sexual proclivities. Although he notes that Pygmalion was a marvelous artisan, he is certainly not presented as a figure to emulate.

Only at the end of the thirteenth century did Pygmalion come to be seen through more rose-colored lenses. In the unabashedly secular continuation of the Roman de la rose (figs. 10 and 11)—the lengthy extension of Guillaume de Lorris’ work produced by Jean de Meun around 1270–80—Pygmalion’s image is softened as he becomes a slightly more sympathetic figure. In this text, Pygmalion demonstrates a level of self-awareness, even shame, over his inexplicable and unnatural desire that was absent in previous renditions. He calls himself a fool, recognizes his thoughts and actions as despicable, his love as mad, and declares that Nature has a terrible son in him.[64] In an attempt to justify his feelings, Pygmalion compares his love to the unrequited love of courtiers who pine for ladies beyond their reach. He poignantly asks if his love is any more foolish or any less a fantasy than theirs.[65] In contrast to the glosses of the monastic schools, Pygmalion is here portrayed not as a madman but as a victim. In this drama populated by personifications, it is Love who captures Pygmalion in his net and robs him of his intelligence and wisdom.[66] It should come as no surprise that in the end Pygmalion is, to a certain extent, redeemed in this bawdy tale in which Chastity plays the villain and Venus the heroine. Despite its overtly carnal themes, the Roman de la rose would signal a seismic shift in Pygmalion’s reputation.

 

 

 

A few decades later, most likely in the years around 1320, an anonymous author composed an innovative retelling of Ovid’s Metamorphoses known as the Ovide moralisé (figs. 12 and 13).[67] The redemption of Pygmalion that had begun in the Roman de la rose is fully realized in this text. No longer reduced to a symbol of sexual deviance, Pygmalion is provided with two separate identities, both of which—at least to an early fourteenth-century audience—paint him in a favorable light.[68] In the first of these, he is presented as a rich man who falls in love with a beautiful but unrefined servant girl, taking it upon himself to transform her into a well-dressed and well-spoken woman suitable to marry (the inspiration, of course, for George Bernard Shaw’s play and all its subsequent retellings).

 

 

The second interpretation is a far more complex allegory in which Pygmalion is transformed into the mirabilis artifex, the smith responsible for all of creation, specifically humanity as represented by the ivory maiden.[69] In the allegorical treatment, the clothes, flowers, jewels, and animals bestowed on Pygmalion’s maiden become gifts of virtues that God bestows upon his creation.[70] In effect, the author of the Ovide moralisé presents the union of Pygmalion and his statue as a mystical marriage, not between an individual and a deity, but between the creator and his creation—humanity. The innovation of the Ovide moralisé is that its author synthesized Christian exegesis with classical mythology, thus rehabilitating the ignominious figure of Pygmalion. What emerged was an image of the sculptor that was altogether different than his counterpart found in twelfth-century glosses.

The Pygmalion of the early fourteenth century is almost unrecognizable from his counterpart in the works of the early Christian apologists. In this new version, the sculptor’s madness and sexual deviancy have been all but expunged from both the narrative and interpretation. The trajectory of this rehabilitation from a warning against the dangers of idolatry and sexual perversion to a figure capable of standing as an allegory for the divine creator can be seen as an echo of the trajectory that had taken place with respect to rehabilitation of free-standing sculpture itself. Though best known as the quintessential myth of the sculptor, it is still fundamentally a story of statue marriage. This trope survived in a group of related myths and legends that, just like Pygmalion, underwent a process of integration and evolution from cautionary tale to serve in the justification of sculptors and their creations.

Illicit Statue Marriage

The appearance of fully Christianized versions of the trope of statue marriage was an expression of the phenomenon of the inversion of anti-sculptural rhetoric. The evolution of this trope, however, did not mean that its previous forms and meanings went extinct. Rather, the old forms coexisted with the new, retaining their potency as a tool for ridicule and parody. Variations are to be found in an assortment of medieval literary genres and demonstrate that the trope was mutable enough to be applied in numerous contexts and was not confined to the Venus/Virgin dichotomy.

If statue marriage to the Virgin was present in the minds of the clergy as a viable act, it could, if abused, be used to condemn a figure utterly. Such is the case of Tanchelm, an itinerant priest active in the Low Countries around the years 1112–1115. Tanchelm was clearly a thorn in the side of the clergy of the diocese of Utrecht who painted him as a nefarious heretic—their very own Antichrist (antichristus noster)—in their letters to the archbishop.[71] Among the bevy of accusations leveled at him, he is said to have preached against the sacraments, claimed that only he and his followers were the true church, and even distributed his own bath water as a sacred relic. According to the clergy of Utrecht, he was also a known sexual deviant and was characterized as having been as charismatic as he was lascivious.

Among the reports of his outrageous and offensive deeds, Tanchelm is said to have commanded that a statue of the Virgin (imaginem sancte Marie) be brought to him.[72] He then took the statue’s carved hand in his and betrothed himself to it/her (et accedens manumque imaginis manu contingens sub tipo illius sanctam M. sibi desponsavit). After he did this, he pointed the crowd’s attention to two boxes, one positioned on either side of the image, and asked the crowd to contribute to the wedding fund, challenging the sexes to demonstrate their greater devotion by filling their respective casket. It is unclear what Tanchelm’s motives were for this performance. It is possible that this was the act of a dramatic priest who was attempting to preach against vanity and luxury and instead urge the crowd to donate their wealth to the church.[73] The clergy of Utrecht, however, portrayed it as an act of personal enrichment, noting that through his most savage sacrilege he gained boundless sums of money. In this dramatic case, statue marriage—even to the Virgin—is utilized as a means of character assassination, one act among many portraying the individual as deranged, deviant, and dangerous.

An even more sinister version of the trope was employed by the Viennese poet, Jans Enikel (ca. 1230–1290), who incorporated a scurrilous story about the famed Virgil in his Weltchronik (World Chronicle). The medieval Virgil was something of a sorcerer, a genius to whom a variety of marvelous creations were attributed existing in the murky space between magic and mechanics. Enikel includes a story regarding the diabolical source of Virgil’s knowledge explaining that while he was digging in a vineyard one day, he unearthed a bottle that contained a multitude of demons. In exchange for their freedom, they taught him the art of magic. Enikel went on to say:

This very same Virgil set out for Rome to ascertain if his art was truly the devil’s power. At Rome he sculpted by magic a woman of stone who had such a body that whenever a rogue or an evil man wanted to go to a woman, he, the evil one, the impure one, went to the stone and lay with the stone as if it were truly a woman. I shouldn’t continue. You know my opinion well.[74]

This medieval tale of agalmatophilia is presented as the first test by which Virgil gauges his newly acquired black magic.

This use of the trope of statue marriage existed outside of the medieval Christian literary tradition as well. It appears in Jewish lore in a biographical record related to golem mythology. It is a curious tale regarding Solomon Ibn Gabirol, a Jewish Neoplatonist who lived in Al-Andalus (Spain) during the middle of the eleventh century (ca. 1021–1058).[75] These traditions transmitted an account of an incident in which Gabirol, who in his own autobiographical statements notes that he was afflicted with a disfiguring disease (perhaps a skin ailment), was said to have constructed a female golem. Instead of being made of clay or mud, his golem was made of wood and hinges.

Much like the bronze maidens who waited on Hephaestus in the Iliad, this wooden woman is said to have acted as a helper or servant to Gabirol. However, when the authorities caught wind of it, he was denounced. In order to defend himself from accusations of impropriety, Gabirol demonstrated that it was “not a perfect creature” by disassembling it and laying bare the thing for its collection of material parts.[76] In many ways, it resonates with the tale told about Virgil in that it speaks to both the intellectual and technical prowess of Gabirol while also incorporating insinuations, or at least potential doubts, about his moral character. It is another example of how the specter of illicit “statue marriage” could rear its ugly head to mar a reputation.

The trope was still capable of characterizing heathens and heretics even in contexts that were not overtly sexual. Such is the case of Jarl Hákon (Haakon Sigurdsson) in the Færeying saga (Saga of the Faroe Islanders). Set amid the period of Scandinavian transition to Christianity, the part of the pagan goddess, typically played by Venus, is here mapped onto the figure of Þorgerðr Holgabrúðr.[77] In some texts she is described as a flagð (flagðinu), a term meaning witch, troll, or ogress—a sort of female monster.[78] However, judging from the way that Hákon interacts with her, it is clear that she is to be understood as an analogue to Venus in similar tales of statue marriage.

In chapter twenty-three of the Færeying saga, we find an episode that resembles, at least in broad strokes, the typical statue marriage narrative.[79] Jarl Hákon, the last non-Christian ruler of Norway, and Sigmundr visit an ornate temple in the forest to ask for good fortune from the gods for their upcoming voyage. The temple is described as having an extravagantly ornamented exterior inlaid with gold and silver designs while beautiful glass windows (glergluggar) bathe the entire interior in light, a description that could just as easily be applied to a gothic cathedral. Housed within the temple are a number of idols (fjöldi goða, literally “many gods”), but pride of place went to a magnificently adorned figure of a woman, an idol of Þorgerðr Holgabrúðr.

Hákon prostrated himself before the image and solicited her blessing. He then stood and told Sigmundr that they would know they had the goddess’s approval if she let him take the ring she held in her hand.[80] Initially, the image of Þorgerðr closed her fist around the ring (beygja að hnefann), though she eventually acquiesced, releasing the ring after more fervent prayers were offered. It is hard to not see parallels between this story and the tale told in Edmund’s vita. At the heart of the story is a man seeking to strengthen his relationship with a goddess, who, with a subtle hand gesture and the exchange of a ring, acknowledges his worship. Yet, set against the Christianization of the north, such a ritual could once again easily be employed as source of ridicule of the pagan past.

One further story relating to Þorgerðr Holgabrúðr is particularly relevant. Contained in the Flateyjarbok (GkS 1005 fol.), a late fourteenth-century compendium of Old Icelandic sagas, is another story that emphasizes Hákon’s paganism.[81] The events take place in the aftermath of the conflict between Hákon, an adherent to the pagan past and the last non-Christian Norwegian ruler, and Olav (Óláfr Tryggvason), the famed christianizer and Hákon’s successor. After Hákon is killed, a point is made of mocking his paganism, demonstrating that the new order is Christianity. Not content to simply strip the gold, silver, and fine textiles from the idol found within a pagan temple he has looted, Olav topples the idol (líkneskja, literally shape, form, or “graven image”) identified as Þorgerðr Holgabrúðr and drags it behind his horse. He mocks the image further by asking his men if any of them want to buy a wife. This jest, and the prolonged dialogue that ensues between him and his men, functions, at least in part, on the logic of statue marriage. As a test of his people’s faith, Olav once again set the idol up to see if anyone paid reverence to it, though none did. Afterward, it, along with another idol, are violently broken and burned. Though this tale does not strictly conform to the standard form—there is no ring, no vow, no animation—it nonetheless serves as a pointed reminder of how the trope of statue marriage could still serve as a potent tool of ridicule.

Conclusion

The trope of statue marriage functions as a remarkably apt means to track nuances in the developing iconophilia that characterized the sculptural imagination of the twelfth through fourteenth centuries. The transformation of this trope can be seen as a manifestation of a cultural shift relating to the legitimization of anthropomorphic sculpture and especially devotional practices that centered on sculpted images. The antique pagan connotations of the ring-on-the-finger trope were subverted and transformed through a process of substitution and inversion. These inversions, found in a variety of texts and confirmed in visual depictions, are indicative of the changing valuation of sculpture and its function in religious life.

Coda: Modern Reverberations

The tales of vivified sculpture discussed above, one could say, find their modern counterpart in stories of rebellious robots and sentient androids. Whether these artificial bodies are brought to life by a divine spark or technological ingenuity—or perhaps a bit of both—they force us to confront our relationship with technology and “things” while also serving as a mirror, allowing us to reflect on our own emotions and our connections with others.[82] Many of the issues raised by these objects and the stories in which they appear are timeless. Modern advances in AI and robotics, however, have thrust such questions and problems to the foreground and demonstrated that they are not simply relevant to the present moment, but exigent. What was half a century ago pure science fiction is today, in some cases, reality.

If we understand the stories we tell as manifestations of our collective aspirations and anxieties, it becomes evident that our relationship with artificial animated bodies is undergoing a fundamental reevaluation and transformation. There is no denying that much of what we see in modern science fiction pushes current technology to extremes, though perhaps not as much as one might think.[83] Consider the number of companies currently developing and marketing humanoid robots designed for both the domestic and industrial spheres, such as Ameca, NEO Gamma, and Helix.[84] At the same time, companies such as RealDoll are creating animated artificial bodies designed to cater to the most intimate forms of robot-human interaction. These androids in particular have reignited conversations about agalmatophilia and present a prime example of contemporary “statue marriage.”

While robots and androids are on the brink of becoming more common in workplaces and homes, they have also begun appearing in places of worship and devotional contexts. This should come as no surprise given that technology and religion have long been bedfellows.[85] In fact, an entire sub-genre of machines dubbed “theomorphic robots” has appeared over approximately the last decade, sparking public interest and religious debate.[86] According to a recent survey, robots of varying degrees of complexity have appeared in Christian (Catholic and Protestant), Buddhist, Hindu, and Muslim contexts.[87] These robots—such as Mindar,[88] Xian’er,[89] and SanTO,[90] vary widely in their level of anthropomorphism and their capability to directly interact with devotees. They do, however, serve a variety of functions such as performing rites and rituals, teaching, and providing various forms of spiritual care.

Medieval society in Western Europe, as this study has shown, grappled with the place and function of artificial bodies in religious devotion, entangled as they were in theological debates, associations with the pagan past, and perceived dangers of the Other.[91] Today, in a way that is not altogether different, we are in the midst of a reconfiguration of society’s relationship with artificial bodies as they are poised to have an ever-greater presence in our homes, businesses, and places of worship. Certainly, technology has changed and modern ethical and social concerned have emerged. Still, fundamental issues of how one perceives and interacts with these bodies endure. Roboticists are actively pushing the limits of both software and hardware in attempts to make their creations more responsive and interactive. The modern counterparts to Venus and the Virgin are no longer mute blocks of wood or stone without eyes to see or voices to speak, but bodies made of metal and plastic capable of seeing you, speaking to you, and even reaching out to touch you.[92]