Assistant professor Evan Gatti presented “A Bishop’s Blessing on the Border or In-between: The Frontispiece in the Benedictional of Engilmar” at the May 27-30 conference Bishop Saints and Saintly Bishops sponsored by Hagiotheca and the Hagiography Society in Porec, Croatia.
Gatti argues that while the Bavarian style of the Engilmar manuscript is removed from the Byzantine basilica in which it was used, consideration of the material context of the manuscript helps to understand Engilmar’s (and Porec’s) position in between competing powers and conflicting interests.
Bringing the two programs together allows us to see that while uttering the episcopal blessing pictured in the Ottonian miniature, Engilmar fulfilled the role defined by his predecessors in the apse mosaic: to protect and define the spiritual community to which he has been assigned. In this way the bishop-saint served as a visual model for his bishop servant.