Fluent Essays

Please read the two articles I uploaded in PDF and watch the short film from the link, and then attach 3 pages response of the article. Remember that the response must include both two readings and the film.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS5wGQGp96I University of Chicago Press and International Center of Medieval Art are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Gesta. http://www.jstor.org University of Chicago Press International Center of Medieval Art Rethinking Romanesque; Re-Engaging Roman[z] Author(s): Linda Seidel Source: Gesta, Vol. 45, No. 2, 50th Anniversary of the International Center of Medieval Art ( 2006), pp. 109-123 Published by: on behalf of the University of Chicago Press International Center of Medieval Art Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25067135 Accessed: 29-10-2015 08:27 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected] This content downloaded from 204.168.144.64 on Thu, 29 Oct 2015 08:27:36 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions http://www.jstor.org http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucpress http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=icma http://www.jstor.org/stable/25067135 http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp Rethinking Romanesque;99 Re-engaging Roman[z] LINDA SEIDEL The University of Chicago, em?rita Abstract This paper takes as its topic the term Romanesque as it has been used by English-speaking scholars to identify European art of the eleventh and twelfth centuries for nearly two hundred years, at first tentatively, as one of several alternate terms (Byzantine, Norman, Saxon), but for much of the time without reflection as the primary designation. Rather than argue that we should abandon it because of the diachronic and inherently negative image it delineates of descent and decline from Roman antiquity, I shall enthusiastically embrace it, suggesting ways in which it can function as a more productive name than we realize. Rethinking the term, in light of a richer etymological history than has heretofore been presented, and in the context of recently recovered remnants of Roman construction in Gaul, moves us beyond characterization of structural and stylistic features in art and architecture, and reorients us toward thematic aspects and points of view, akin to the manner in which the terms Baroque or Rococo are recognized as de fining key visual components of the pictorial art of the seven teenth and eighteenth centuries. Introduction Names have the power to fix our sights and fashion our intellectual frontiers. Traditional understanding of the meaning of Romanesque focuses attention on architecture with its faded reflection of antique forms, setting up expectations for the ways in which inquiries into monuments and materials proceed. As a term, Romanesque has always been tied at its proximate end to the emergence of Gothic art, a circumstance that affects appreciation of its production in implicitly negative ways. As is well known, the appellation first came into fashion as a way of setting off the variety of eleventh- and early twelfth-century buildings that dot France and England from the more uniformly rib-vaulted structures that appeared in the Ile-de-France in the second half of the twelfth century. Anglo-Norman arche ologists on both sides of the Channel in the early nineteenth century (ca. 1810/1820), adopted cognate terms in response to their virtually simultaneous observations that round-arched, vaulted construction was the common characteristic of a large number of early churches in their territories; this feature, they argued, set the structures off from their streamlined successors. The term the English chose to identify these buildings was Romanesque, they employed the word because of the relation ship to continental architectural remnants of a distant past that it suggested.1 The English were right. An intimate physical association links Roman and Romanesque monuments, particularly in southern Europe, where antique remains riddle the landscape in the immediate vicinity of medieval churches. Yet scholars have been reluctant to examine this convergence of building activity; avoidance of the issue on the part of the French ar ticulates disdain for provincial Roman work while reinforcing patriotic desires to identify a unique and indigenous material heritage for their countrys art.2 Although relief carving did not originally figure into the definition of Romanesque, scholarship on sculpture has long labored under strictures comparable to those that broadly frame architectural inquiry. Preconceptions about its emergence from the vestiges of earlier work after years of decline and disuse coexist .alongside expectations regarding what follows Roman esque?the gracefully articulated bodies of Gothic statuary toward which its figures are thought to advance. Over a hundred years ago, Wilhelm V?ge suggested that sculpture in Provence, where the prominence of Roman monuments in Aries, Orange, and N?mes is impossible to ignore, was the direct antecedent of the jamb carvings on the west facade at Chartres. His observation implicitly reinforced the notion that Romanesque art formed the transition from ancient art to Gothic without explicitly addressing the relationship between Roman and Romanesque work in the Midi.3 Meanwhile, in France, the presence of antique motifs in the ornamentation of French Romanesque architecture was attributed to unspecified Roman and Byzantine sources. De Lasteyrie explained them as the result either of pilgrimage travel to holy sites or commercial exchange; for the Midi, he proposed interaction with northern Italy as an explanation. The relationship between Roman and Romanesque in Provence did not elicit scholarly attention in France until after the Second World War, and then the connections were presented in terms of local stylistic influence.4 Although divergent accounts have since been given for the reemergence of monumental relief carving as a significant mode of expression around the year 1000, these explanations all exist within a paradigm that posits an experiential as well as aesthetic gap between the new work and monumental remnants of provincial Rome.5 In past studies, I have examined Romanesque sculpture in France from different perspectives and at different places, following the monographic pattern of inquiry that was estab lished in the nineteenth century by local amateurs working GESTA XLV/2 ? The International Center of Medieval Art 2006 109 This content downloaded from 204.168.144.64 on Thu, 29 Oct 2015 08:27:36 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp for departmental societies. Territorial identity determined the way in which these early archeologists surveyed and cate gorized medieval monuments under their purview; location provided them with a structure within which scholarship could proceed in a systematic fashion. Not surprisingly, the devel opmental narrative about architecture that emerged from their work reinforced illusions of regional homogeneity as well as departmental diversity; it constructed Romanesque work, for the most part, as an aggregation of different local traditions and regional interests.6 In contrast, wherever I turned my attention I found that inquiry into the sculptural program disclosed evidence of intense interest in themes and forms of Antiquity irrespective of regional traditions and differences.7 A productive relation ship with Roman visual material, whether near to hand or far away, seemed to characterize Romanesque sculpture to a greater extent than I had been taught to appreciate in Aqui taine, at Moissac, and in Burgundy. My findings also indicated willful choice rather than passive circulation of ancient forms, challenging prevailing assumptions of Romanesque sculpture as being rooted primarily in forward-looking local traditions and of medieval artists as lacking either decisiveness or in tellectual independence. While my own research encouraged me to embrace the apparent root of the word Romanesque in a positive fashion, traditional understanding of the period term resisted that suggestion. This situation has led me to reexamine the term Roman esque and to rethink the meaning its usage conveys. A return to early nineteenth-century writings in which the vocabulary for differentiating Romanesque from Gothic was established brings to light an unsuspected degree of divergence between English and French notions about the origins of the architecture (and allied arts) they were naming. The English burdened the term Romanesque with intimations of inauthenticity behind which lurked hints of excess. The French opted for a word that submitted the art to ideas about language formation and structure. Both terms were the products of intellectual and aesthetic debates of the early nineteenth century and depended upon a common root word and certain shared traditions. At the point at which they converge, they open up possibilities for a revised understanding of, and approach to, the art of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Etymology The original designator of the word Romanesque was an Englishman, William Gunn, who articulated the specific sense in which he wanted the word to be understood in a book pub lished in 1819 but written several years before.8 Gunn drew attention to the way in which a native-born inhabitant of Rome differentiated himself from those who took up residence in the city at a later point in their lives: The first, he noted, called himself a Romano, the second, Romanesco. Gunn observed that the suffix stigmatized the person by conveying a notion of dubious origin or foreign extraction, and he re marked that the architecture he was designating as Romanesque should be regarded in the same point of view; it constituted to his mind a vitious (= vicious?i.e., faulty) deviation from Roman work. The fact that the term Gunn employed to identify round-arched pre-Gothic buildings was a French word implied continental origins for the emergence of Romanesque construc tion, an assertion that had been made by G. D. Whittington just a few years before.9 That the word Gunn chose enjoyed negative connotations at the time he chose it is examined further in what follows. In her book on the early architectural usage of the word that Anglophone scholars still employ, Bizzarro reviewed the scarcely rigorous terminology that was current in France and England before 1800 to describe monuments of the later medieval centuries. As her summary indicates, terminology was always a subjective matter of taste and was determined by local political, aesthetic, and religious realities. Bizzarro points to a single usage in 1750 of the word romanesque by a well-placed bilingual French woman living in London who employed it in reference to Windsor Chapel, a building we would surely define as Gothic. Anne-Marie du Boccage, an author who mixed in elevated literary circles that included the antiquarian Horace Walpole and the philologist Jean Bap tiste la Curne de Sainte-Palaye, used the word in a letter written, in French, to her sister. Bizzarro suggests that du Boccage employed the word not to characterize visual hallmarks of the structure but rather to convey a sense of its chivalric function, a matter in which du Boccage had been influenced by then current notions regarding medieval literature.10 Some sixty to seventy years later, at the moment that the English were choosing a word of French origin to designate eleventh- and twelfth-century architecture, French archeolo gists opted for a different one, roman/ane, to identify the same structures. Bizzaro argues that the French, feeling frustrated and challenged by the terminological priority of the English who had beaten them in the naming game, sought to establish their own nomenclature for structures that were acknowledged to have proliferated on their soil. She suggests that Charles de Gervilles invention of the word romane in 1818 was prob ably a translation of the English Romanesque without considering why the French did not take back their own term; certainly, as she notes in passing, romanesque had a well established French meaning at the time.11 I am intrigued by the possibilities of the path deliberately not taken. In French, the word romanesque comes with considerable baggage. One of its earliest appearances dates to the middle of the seventeenth century, when Moli?re employed it in his play LEtourdi (The Blunderer) to characterize one of his char acters: vous ?tes romanesque avec vos chim?res, he has a player say. Mme de Sevign? likewise employed the term a few decades later to mean chimeric, in the sense of extravagant or marvelous. The word recurs with increased frequency toward the end of the century alongside pittoresque?especially but 110 This content downloaded from 204.168.144.64 on Thu, 29 Oct 2015 08:27:36 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp not exclusively in regard to features of landscape?to signify qualities that are fabulous or sentimental. Things romanesque are said to be unnatural, existing only in make-believe; they captivate the imagination while those that are pittoresque are said to fix the eye.12 Toward the end of the eighteenth century, Rousseau used the word romanesque interchangeably with romantique, a word that had been introduced into France in the 1770s and was derived from the English romantic. The words were both related to the noun roman, which was defined in a contem porary dictionary as a prose work of fiction involving uncom mon adventures and the development of human passions. Whereas the French word romanesque had come to be associ ated with extremes of human feeling, the English one enjoyed connotations of more rational and complex emotions and sen sibilities. Thus, by the turn of the century, romantique over took romanesque in discussions of contemporary poetry and art in France. It continued to advance at the expense of the native word, in part through a developing intimacy with qual ities defined as pittoresque. Since these were said to be con spicuously on display in Gothic architecture, the widening breach between romantique and romanesque positioned Gothic on the positive side of the divide.13 Appropriation of the term Romanesque into architectural vocabulary by the English dis tanced the word from its continental usage but did not obliter ate its prior history. Connotations of exaggeration and excess, because of which the word fell out of favor with the French, persisted, as did awareness of the words surrender to an English word, romanticfque] in another area of contemporary aesthetic debate. In place of romanesque, French archeologists adopted the word roman/ane. This word endeavored to characterize the same buildings that the English were defining but was scarcely a translation of the word the English had chosen to employ. The word the French chose allied architecture with the forma tion of Romance languages because of similarities between the emergence of Old French from a mixture of atrophied, indigenous tongues and the appearance of churches that employed a degraded form of opus romanum. The analogy between the development of these forms provided the French with the grounds for an account of the indigenous origin of / architecture roman and was explicitly used in this fashion in the 1820s by Charles de Gerville to portray architecture and language as parallel, indigenous phenomena. The word did not cast aspersion on the dubious origins of the buildings as Gunns appropriated Romanesque explicitly did. The French choice of a basically backward-looking lin guistic designation to identify a collection of pre-Gothic build ings brought with it a number of subtle claims. Above all, it contributed to the developmental paradigm in which Roman esque is experienced and understood as being en route, or in the process of development. Attention to where it has come from fundamentally implies the direction toward which it is headed; Gothics position as Romanesque arts triumphant off spring is thereby further secured. If la langue romane came into its own in literary writing of northern France in the late twelfth and early thirteenth century, then it follows that / art roman came into maturity in the same years. This would have occurred in a Gothic idiom, something that scholarship on both sculpture and architecture does not deny and indeed often asserts; the resultant time line effectively submerges the antecedent art under the imprint of its successor. Additionally, the chosen term roman/ane focuses investigation on indigenous material and terrain instead of engagement with the fanciful, mercurial, and distant, which, according to its traditional def inition, the term romanesque implies.14 This shift in naming conventions took place in a volatile atmosphere of literary conversations and lively political and intellectual debates regarding the monumental testimony of Frances pre-Revolutionary history. Archeological societies, established on a national as well as regional basis in these years, had as their explicit mission the conservation and character ization of venerable local, mainly medieval, structures. At the outset, these organizations were composed of untrained amateurs, many of whom also belonged to literary circles, who borrowed strategies from what they regarded as estab lished scientific practices in order to confer a degree of rigor on their own procedures. By adopting methods of classifica tion and systematization employed by philologists to identify historic lines of linguistic affiliation, they created a study of medieval architecture modeled on a particular kind of philo logical method. What started out as a verbal analogy between the development of architecture and language was transformed into an unexamined equivalency between systems of construc tion and communication in terms of both their origins and their organization. Linguistic affiliations with the term Romanesque have enjoyed considerable traction in scholarly practice, primarily as metaphor rather than method. Henri Focillon explicitly separated the two ways of proceeding in his widely read over view of medieval art. In the opening pages of the volume on Romanesque art, he provides an elegant, seemingly innocent characterization of his subject that depends upon, but does not refer to, de Gervilles analogy: Medieval architecture and the arts which derive from it constitute a common language of Western Christianity, a language spoken with various accents ... in an idiom intelligible to all. Further on, however, in a footnote regarding the nineteenth-century origin of the word he warns the reader that the term is more valuable than the doctrine.15 Roberto Salvini took the linguistic analogy more seriously in a book published in 1956 that examines the relationship of Romanesque relief carvings to inherited tradition. He argues for the recognition of sculpture as a system of communication that parallels verbal expression and is independent of archi tecture. According to his perspective, figurative and verbal ex pression both move from an inherited bilingualism of the late Roman world?in which high and low, aristocratic and vulgar Ill This content downloaded from 204.168.144.64 on Thu, 29 Oct 2015 08:27:36 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp forms of art and language were firmly opposed?toward in dependent flowerings around 1100 as unified vehicles of fig urative and verbal expression.16 Whether because of implicit hierarchies in intellectual inquiry that resist inter-disciplinary investigation, or simply because of the inadequate circulation of untranslated schol arship particularly in the post-war years, Salvinis argument fell on fallow ground. In the late eighties, Wayne Dynes drew attention to the link between the formal naming of Roman esque art by Gunn and de Gerville and the burgeoning of lin guistic studies throughout Europe in the nineteenth century. But he argued in an essay that associations between art and language could not be generative of new approaches; they were, at best, no more than strategies for coming to grips with the origin and status of our conceptual tools.17 While scholars in literature undertook significant r??valuation of their material with the aide of revised notions of the boundaries of their discipline, art historians remained protected by an enshrined definition of the proper archeological nature of their pursuit.18 Recently Willibald Sauerl?nder reflected on an invitation to write a general survey of French Romanesque sculpture that he had received in 1969, just after having completed his book on Gothic carving. He notes that he immediately resisted the temptation. ... I was convinced that the time had not yet come for a serious survey of the sculpture of the eleventh and twelfth centuries in France . . . [because] the foundations for a survey were not laid. ... It would have been premature to try to resolve so many unsettled archaeological, iconographie, and stylistic problems.19 More than a decade after Salvini had attempted to transform the approach to Romanesque carving by turning to linguistics, not to mention Meyer Schapiros use of semiotic analysis in papers of earlier decades, Sauerl?nders attention was still drawn to issues of chronology and material definition. Thirty-five years later he expresses regret for that decision; the archeological quest no longer seems so urgent and he now finds the art quite compelling. It is so much more fun, so much more amusing to play with the colourful Romanesque sculp tures in Western France or around Toulouse than to study the solemn statues of Chartres or Amiens, he writes, contrast ing the variety, inventiveness, and humor of what he calls the fabulous Romanesque sculptures in the Latin part of medieval Europe, with the stainless beauty of Gothic jamb figures. Sauerl?nders brief characterization of Romanesque carv ing recovers associations that the word romanesque brought to mind in the eighteenth century, before it lost out to roman tique as the preferred designation for complex forms of emotional expression in poetry and painting. But Sauerl?nder does not draw our attention to that, nor does he argue for the study of such features on those grounds. Instead, he cele brates the anomalous figures in French Romanesque sculpture because they appeal to him, without in any way challenging the investigatory paradigm that maintains the primacy of dia chronic inquiry: archeological study, architectural analysis, search for iconographie precedent. In French to this day, the word romanesque retains connotations that were lost in its English adaptation. Use of the word in the recent publication of a series of lectures given by Roland Barthes thirty years ago alerts the reader to the authors literary subject, and to a random rather than sys tematic development of its theme. Instead of chasing an analytic scheme toward certain solution, Barthes pursues fanciful?even unresolved?possibilities that he finds in a wide range of books, engaging the sense that romanesque enjoyed in the eighteenth century when it evoked the marvels and meanderings of medieval romance for someone like Madame du Boccage. The adjective romanesque in the title of Barthes lectures explicitly associates his project with works of fiction or fantasy, proclaiming for the reader its lit erary basis in the roman, or novel.20 Language, writing, and romanesque are venerable and intimate partners according to the root of the word in Old French. Romanz, along with romance in Spain and romanzo in Italy, were words coined by the Latin-educated classes of southern Europe to differentiate their own emerging vernacular tongues and the works they produced from learned Latin and its written tradition. In his etymological study of French first published in the 1920s, Walther von Wartburg situated the first appearances of the word romanz (as meaning the vulgar lan guage of the northern parts of France), in the years around 1135 in secular works of history and fable. Shortly thereafter the word was used to designate narrative texts that resulted from the translation or adaptation of Latin forms. According to Ernst Curtius, romanz literally means popular book; he notes further that Romance literature from the Song of Roland on was riddled with Latinisms consciously employed as rhetorical ornament.21 What at first glance may appear to be modest historical testimony provides us with significant insights into the emergence of new art forms in the twelfth century. First, there is the close connection in date between the naming of romanz as a discrete linguistic entity and the emergence of Romanesque art as we know it. Second, intro duction of the word appears to be free of hierarchical assump tions regarding the priority of Latin over local forms of communication; and third, the new word emerges within modes of verbal expression (secular history, fable) that differ from traditional, elevated literary categories. Within the first half of the twelfth century, then, a permutation of an older word, romanus, heralded a new form of indigenous expression that enjoyed its own tradition, one that saw itself as distinctive from, and not inferior to, Latin. Jean-Claude Schmitt, in a recent essay on time in the Middle Ages, unremarkably recommended that we examine that words usage within the period in question in order to gain a sense of its own understanding of the concept.22 This is something we often neglect to do even though three decades 112 This content downloaded from 204.168.144.64 on Thu, 29 Oct 2015 08:27:36 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp ago Edward Said urged the same, pointing to Vicos axiom that Doctrines must take their beginning from that of the matters of which they treat.23 Accordingly, I suggest putting the romanz back into romanesque and reclaiming the rich sig nification and associations the word enjoyed before it entered English architectural terminology, where, as von Wartburg noted, it became beschr?nkt in its usage. In this way we re invigorate the period name as a positive term associated with new forms of production and pronounced self-awareness of its distinction from Latin modes of expression. What emerges is liberty to engage Romanesque art, monumental construc tion included, in a way that celebrates its fanciful themes and unorthodox forms without attempting to define them pri marily in terms either of architectural structure or Latin syntax. It becomes possible as well to view the appropriation of antique motifs and materials as acts of self-conscious choice rather than as instances of passive acceptance, challenging us to pursue them as significant activities instead of ignoring them or, alternatively, rationalizing them as barometers of some degree of renaissance or rebirth.24 Archaeology Such rethinking of the period term Romanesque is re inforced by important recent findings. The archeological ex cavation that has accompanied accelerated urbanization throughout the French provinces, in particular over the course of the past several decades, has brought to light more remnants of the vibrant Roman civilization that survived throughout the Middle Ages in Gaul than scholars formerly imagined. This is especially true in Toulouse, where new finds present an unexpected picture of the way in which Roman esque structures engaged the ancient monuments. In the face of newly uncovered material evidence, and a revised way of regarding it, the likelihood of substantive interaction between Roman ruins and Romanesque monuments can no longer be either overlooked or denied. The issue should not be posed in terms of a renaissance as Haskins suggested, or a renascence as Panofsky argued, for it does not merely involve the degree of resemblance between ancient and medieval carving. Yet heightened naturalism in figure style has often been the benchmark by means of which Romanesque arts relationship to ancient work is measured. Sauerl?nder remarked a generation ago that there had been in creased borrowing from Antiquity in architecture and in the figurative arts in the twelfth century, and that instances of this in southern France essentially provided a tool to broaden … A CONNECTION TO INDIA? LALIBELA AND LIBONOS, THE KING AND THE HYDRO-ENGINEER OF 13TH CENTURY ETHIOPIA // MARK JARZOMBEK The complex of twelve rock-cut churches in the city of Lalibela, Ethiopia, constitutes one of the world’s great architectural ensembles. 1 A lofty, UNESCO-funded, space-frame roof protects some of the churches from the ravages of heat and time. The attention that this site has re- ceived in recent decades has intensified scholarly debates about the churches. How were they built? Who designed and directed the operation, and who were the masons? What religious iconography underlies their design? What was their liturgical function? Were they modeled on the Holy Land? Were all twelve built by King Lalibela, who ruled in the early thirteenth century, as tradition claims? 2 While such issues are central to our understanding of the churches, this paper considers a neglected, if no less important, aspect of this religious site: the significance of water. I will argue that the buildings of Lalibela are just as much a hydro-engineering marvel guaranteeing the city’s economic existence as they are an attribute of religious symbolism. Lalibela is given little recognition in this regard, even though the most astonishing aspect of the pools associated with the churches is that they are located at the top of a high plateau, one thousand meters above the valley floor. To get a broader historical picture of Lalibela, one has to start with the demise of the Ax- umite civilization in the eighth century CE. Axum, in northern Ethiopia, rose to prominence in the fourth century BCE as a metal-producing center and as an important, regional geopolitical power with connections stretching eastward across the Red Sea to Yemen and westward to Nubia. By the fifth century CE, the kingdom began to fade in importance, and the area suffered a period of prolonged decline until the rise of the Zagwe Dynasty in the eleventh century, which had its center in the mountain villages of the Ethiopian Highlands south of Axum. The Zagwe, under the leadership of a priest-king, were Christian; their conversion took place dur- ing the Axumite kingdom in the fourth century. Yemrehanna Krestos, who ruled at the end of the twelfth century, was apparently the first Zagwe king to define the parameters of the state, ruling Ethiopia according to the Apostolic Canons. 3 His capital was centered in a now-remote part of the Ethiopian Highlands, some two hundred kilometers south of Axum. Today, all that remains are his palace and a church known by his name, which is still used by the local popu- lation and the occasional pilgrim. The buildings are located just inside the mouth of a large, natural cave and have spectacular views eastward into the surrounding valleys. The site was chosen because the cave, despite its elevation of two thousand six hundred meters above sea level, had a remarkable feature within: a natural lake. All that was needed was to reinforce the shore of the lake with foundations to support the church and the palace, and to seal off the space between the buildings with a floor. Access to the water below was provided by a trap door directly in front of the church and still exists today. The Yemrehanna Krestos church was an important pilgrimage center. Today, one can see the bones of thousands of pilgrims – who, according to legend, came from far-off places – piled up at the back of the cave. However, Yemrehanna’s city failed and, apart from the church complex, has long since disappeared. Perhaps there was not enough water for a flourishing city, aside from that one, single source. Or perhaps the farming along the steep hills was insuf- ficient to support the population. When he inherited the throne, Yemrehanna’s younger brother, Lalibela (1181–1221), moved the capital – which was named after him posthumously – somewhat further south to the top of a ridge high above the valley floor. In the design of the city, originally known as Roha, there was not just one church, but at least twelve, all richly endowed and housing a substantial priestly class, who lived off the gifts of food and money from peasants and pilgrims. Even to- day, Lalibela remains Ethiopia’s leading pilgrimage site, welcoming between twenty thousand to fifty thousand believers during important holidays and supporting, at last count, about three 1 // Research was made possible by an MIT School of Humanities, Art, and Social Sciences Research grant. 2 // Among the most recent scholars, there are the following works: Jac- queline Pirenne, “La signification symbolique des églises de Lalibéla, à partir des inscriptions découvertes en 1980–1983,” in Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference of Ethiopian Studies, University of Ad- dis Ababa, 1984, ed. Taddese Beyene (Addis Ababa: Addis Ababa Univer- sity Institute of Ethiopian Studies, 1989), 137–45; Michael Gervers, “The Rehabilitation of the Zague Kings and the Building of the Dabra Sina–Gol- gotha–Sellassie Complex in Lalibala,” Africana Bulletin 51 (2003). Available online at: http://www.utoronto.ca/ deeds/pubs/golgotha/golgotha.html; Marilyn E. Heldman, “Architectural Symbolism, Sacred Geography and the Ethiopian Church,” Journal of Religion in Africa 22, no. 3 (August 1992): 222–41; Gigar Tesfaye, with the collaboration of Jacqueline Pirenne, “Inscriptions sur bois de trois églises de Lalibala,” Journal of Ethiopian Studies 17 (1984): 107–43; D.R. Bux- ton, “Ethiopian Medieval Architecture – The Present State of Studies,” in Ethiopian Studies, papers read at the Second International Conference of Ethiopian Studies (Manchester Uni- versity, July 1963), eds. C. F. Becking- ham and Edward Ullendorff, Journal of Semitic Studies 9 (1964): 239–44; Emeri van Donzel, “Ethiopia’s Lali- bäla and the fall of Jerusalem 1187,” Aethiopica 1 (1998): 27–49; Taddesse Tamrat, Church and State in Ethiopia, 1270–1527 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972). 3 // Taddesse Tamrat, Church and State in Ethiopia, 1270–1527 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972). WATER // 77 4 // Crusader-castle water systems are only starting to be studied. On Petra, see Ortloff, Charles R, “The Water Supply and Distribution System of the Nabataean City of Petra (Jordan), 300 BC–AD 300,” Cambridge Archaeological Journal 15, no. 1 (2005): 93–109. Available online at: http://journals.cambridge. org/production/action/cjoGetFulltex t?fulltextid=302831 b // Church of Yemrehanna Krestos’s trap door giving access to under- ground cistern c // Painting of Libanos (in the church, Biet Abba Libanos, Lalibela) showing him striking the top of the mountain with his spade to produce water d // View of Bete Giyorgis, Lalibela, with water tank hundred fifty priests and two hundred fifty deacons who are training to be priests, along with hundreds of monks and students. The churches were built using a relatively unconventional technology: they were carved downwards into the bedrock. This technique dates back at least to 1244 BCE with the build- ing of the Abu Simbel temple by Pharaoh Ramesses II. In the fifth century BCE, the Lycians built hundreds of rock-cut tombs in Anatolia on a similar model, though smaller in scale. The ancient Etruscans of central Italy also left an important legacy of rock-cut architecture – mostly tombs such as those near the city of Tarquinia – as did the Nabataeans in their city of Petra, now in Jordan. 4 The most spectacular examples are to be found in India, where one finds rock- cut sanctuaries dating from the third century BCE to the eleventh century CE. One key aspect of the Ethiopian churches is that the interiors were carved with just as much detail as the exteriors. The skill needed to accomplish this must be factored into the discus- sion. Such rock-cut buildings are, for logical reasons, carved from the top down. This also ap- plies to the interior, requiring a great deal of coordination among the masons, who start at the vaults and then work their way downward to the floor, with a complete, ‘reverse’ plan already sketched out in their mind. There are other rock-cut churches further to the south, near the modern city of Addis Ababa, but they all date to roughly the same period – the late twelfth to early thirteenth century. The question of how the technique of rock-cut architecture came to Ethiopia may never be solved, but its quick arrival and the lack of evidence about interim stages of development strongly indicate that persons skilled in this technique came from elsewhere or were contracted from outside sources. One strong possibility is that the technique came from India, where rock-cut ar- chitecture has a history spanning one thousand years. The epitome of Indian rock-cut architecture is at Ellora, where various Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain cave temples and monasteries were built mostly between the fifth and tenth centuries CE; they are complex constructions, not only exter- nally, but with elaborately carved interiors as well, much like at Lalibela. But it is perhaps not just the rock-cutting technique that came from India, but the larger ‘package’ of building and water. At first glance, the siting of Lalibela on the top of a plateau high above the river might seem odd. But an exposed site by the river would not have been easy to defend, and this reason is often given as an explanation for the choice of the site. There was an additional factor: re- markably, at the very top there was water. Although there are no hydro-geological studies of the site, it is nearly indisputable that the water comes from an artesian pressure system. As is common with artesian systems, the source is miles away – in the Lasta mountain range to the north, which rises to over three thousand meters. With an elevation of about two thousand meters, Lalibela is, in essence, in the foothills of these mountains, the tallest of which is Mount Abuna Joseph. The springs were certainly known by local villagers long before the village was transformed into a capital. But there is a big difference between water leaching out of rocks in a natural process and the water distribution system that was put into place. The design of the water system was accomplished in coordination with the design of the churches. The central theme of the site, in fact, is the ‘River Jordan,’ which is represented by an artificial canyon located between the two clusters of churches and ‘flows’ into a naturally-occurring seam be- tween two hills. A river at the very top of a ridge might seem to be more symbolic than real, but it was real to a great degree and thus also magical. A spring is located at its apex and its water channeled through the site and down along the hillside to the farms. In making the churches, it is clear that the architects first had to establish the water pressure level as this would mark the depth of the excavation around the church, and thus the scale and proportion of the building. Care had to be taken to find a balance between the depth of the floor of the churches and the height of the water in the wells. If the floor level was too low, it would fill up with water and be unusable. The engineers had to find just the right depth – deep enough so there was room for a church to be carved, but not too deep that access was difficult. This remarkable aspect of the design process had to be repeated numerous times, since al- most all of the principal churches each have a water tank associated with them. In the wet sea- son, the overflow runs through specially constructed channels into the ‘River Jordan.’ In most b // c // d // 78 // WATER Mark Jarzombek is professor of His- tory and Theory of Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technol- ogy in Cambridge, MA, where he is currently also the associate dean of the School of Architecture and Plan- ning. He has worked on a range of historical topics from the Renaissance to the modern age. e // View of a water tank at the top of the hill at Mahabalipuram, India f // View of a second water tank at the top of the hill at Mahabalipuram, India g // Sketch showing plan and probable section of the church-palace complex of Yemrehanna Krestos h // View from the church-palace com- plex of Yemrehanna Krestos of the pools, papyrus grows on the surface. These pools serve a special religious purpose that is still enacted today. During a special ceremony, infertile women are lowered into the pool as a way to restore their fecundity. The papyrus symbolizes rebirth, the birth of Moses, and the Nile River, thus adding to the symbolic charge of the pools. Bete Giyorgis, the famous cross- shaped church, not only has a pool of its own, but also a special corridor oriented eastward, leading to a sacred spring. Nothing is known for sure about Lalibela’s architect or engineer. But there are some clues. One of the churches is named after a certain Abba Libanos, who must have held consider- able stature in the community since this is the only church not dedicated to a saint or biblical figure. Inside the church, one can still see a painting, probably a nineteenth-century copy of a lost original, showing him holding a cane against the top of a mountain. The cane has a cross on top, and, though made of wood, has a metal tip at the end in the shape of a small spade. From the spot where it touches the earth – at the top of a hill – a river springs forth. It is unique among the representations of holy men in Lalibela and is clearly a reference to Moses striking water from the rock. Who Libanos was is open to conjecture. He could have been a native Ethiopian, and it is most certain that a tradition of water engineering existed, dating back centuries. But how far that tradition had developed is unknown; given the evidence currently available, it was not put to use at Yemrehanna Krestos. Did Libanos travel to other cities to perfect his craft? Did other water specialists come to Lalibela as part of his team? It is possible that Libanos was not Ethiopian, but came from somewhere else as a consultant? One possibility is that Libanos came from India or had trained there. Indian Hindu architecture is almost always associated with the purifying and symbolic func- tion of the Ganges River. This river is actually recreated at some sites. At Ellora, for example, an artesian well at the top of the hill feeds a now-dry ‘river’ that runs down into the site. But the most dramatic example is found at Mahabalipuram, on India’s eastern coast. Between the sev- enth and ninth centuries CE, when it was one of India’s leading port cities, a series of rock-cut temples were constructed in and along a nearby plateau. A ‘Ganges River’ runs down the hill from two artesian tanks located at the topmost level of the plateau. One of the tanks is dried up as a consequence of global warming, but the other is still filled with water. The similarities between Mahabalipuram and Lalibela are too close to be ignored. Both sites use an artesian water system to irrigate a symbolic river. Unfortunately, as with modern day Lalibela, there are no studies about the hydro-engineering of Mahabalipuram or, for that matter, Ellora. What I have been trying to argue is that the carving of the churches and the aqua-engineering were not separate realities, but bound up with each other. Furthermore, in studying such inter- related systems, it is also clear that India is the place where a balance between architecture and water has been achieved at numerous sites. Thus it is easy to imagine that there was a knowl- edge transfer between Ethiopia and India. Ethiopia was not a land-locked kingdom, but con- nected to the world through its ports along the Red Sea. What is certain is that Lalibela’s water system served two economies. On the one hand, it was central to the agriculture and economy of the region; on the other, it was part of a brilliantly designed, politico-religious economy that was evidence of divine sanction, and, as such, was ‘proof’ of Libanos’s chosen status. // e // f // g // h // WATER // 79