Holy Sepulchers

• Sarah Blick & Rita Tekippe, Art and Architecture of Late Medieval Pilgrimage in Northern Europe and the British Isles, 2 vols., Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions, 104 (Leiden: Brill, 2005).
• Genevi?®ve Bresc-Bautier, ‚ÄúLes imitations du Saint-Sepulcre de Jerusalem (IXe‚ÄìXVe si?®cles): Arch?©ologie d‚Äôune d?©votion,‚Äù Revue d‚ÄôHistoire de la Spiritualit?© 50 (1974): 319‚Äì342.
• N.C. Brooks, The Sepulchre of Christ in Art and Liturgy, University of Illinois Studies in Language and Literature, 7.2 (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1921).
• Ludwig H. Heydenreich, ‚ÄúDie Cappella Rucellai von San Pancrazio in Florenz,‚Äù in Millard Meiss, ed., De artibus opuscula XL: Essays in Honor of Erwin Panofsky, 2 vols. (New York, NY: New York University Press, 1961), 1:219‚Äì229.
• F.W. Kent, ‚ÄúThe Letters Genuine and Spurious of Giovanni Rucellai,‚Äù Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 37 (1974): 342‚Äì349.
• Richard Krautheimer, ‚ÄúIntroduction to an ‚ÄòIconography of Mediaeval Architecture,‚Äô‚Äù Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 5 (1942): 1‚Äì33.
• Justin E. A. Kroesen, The Sepulchrum Domini through the Ages: Its Form and Function (Leuven: Peeters, 2000).
• Colin Morris, The Sepulchre of Christ and the Medieval West: From the Beginning to 1600 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
• ———-, ‚ÄúBringing the Holy Sepulchre to the West: S. Stefano, Bologna, from the Fifth to the Twentieth Century,‚Äù in R.N. Swanson, ed., The Church Retrospective, Studies in Church History, 33 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press for The Ecclesiastical History Society, 1997), 31‚Äì60.
• Damiano Neri, Il S. Sepulcro riprodotto in Occidente (Jerusalem: Franciscan Printing Press, 1971).
• Robert Ousterhout, ‚ÄúLoca Sancta and the Architectural Responses to Pilgrimage,‚Äù in idem, ed., The Blessings of Pilgrimage (Urbana/Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1990), 108‚Äì124.
• ———-, ‚ÄúThe Church of Santo Stefano: A ‚ÄòJerusalem‚Äô in Bologna,‚Äù Gesta 20 (1981): 311‚Äì321.

[It is interesting to note that the same pattern of replication occurred in medieval Ethiopia, as well; see Marilyn E. Heldman, “Architectural Symbolism, Sacred Geography and the Ethiopian Church,” Journal of Religion in Africa 22 (1992): 222–241.]

Via Crucis & Sacri Monti

• Amilcare Barbero, ed., Atlante dei sacri monti, calvari e complessi devozionali europei (Novara: Istituto geografico De Agostini, 2001).
• Philippe Baud, Chemin de croix: les origines d‚Äôune d?©votion populaire (Paris: M?©diaspaul, 1995).
• David Freedberg, The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 192‚Äì245.
• Sergio Gensini, ed., La ‚ÄúGerusalemme‚Äù di San Vivaldo e i Sacri Monti in Europa (Firenze‚ÄìSan Vivaldo, 11‚Äì13 settembre 1986), Centro internazionale di studi ‚ÄúLa ‚ÄòGerusalemme‚Äô di San Vivaldo,‚Äô Montaione, 1 (Montaione: Comune di Montaione, 1989).
• Ces?°reo Gil Atrio, ‚ÄúEspa?±a, ¬øcu?±a del Viacrucis?‚Äù Archivo Ibero-Americano 11[n.s.] (1951): 63‚Äì92.
• Pedro Jos?© Pradillo y Esteban, V??a Crucis, Calvarios y Sacromontes: arte y religiosidad popular en la contrareforma. Guadalajara, un caso excepcional (Guadalajara: Diputaci??n Provincial de Guadalajara, 1996).
• Kathryn Rudy, ‚ÄúNorthern European Visual Responses to Holy Land Pilgrimage, 1453‚Äì1550,‚Äù PhD dissertation, Art History, Columbia University, 2001.
• Am?©d?©e Teetaert da Zedelgem, ‚ÄúAper?ßu historique sur la d?©votion au chemin de la croix,‚Äù Collectanea franciscana 19 (1949): 45‚Äì142.
• Herbert Thurston, The Stations of the Cross: An Account of their History and Devotional Purpose (London: Burns & Oates, 1906).
• Dorino Tuniz, ed., I Sacri Monti nella cultura religiosa e artistica del Nord Italia (Cinisello Balsamo [Milan]: San Paolo, 2005).

Carmelite Deserts

• Trevor Johnson, ‚ÄúGardening for God: Carmelite Deserts and the Sacralisation of Natural Space in Counter-Reformation Spain,‚Äù in Will Coster & Andrew Spicer, eds., Sacred Space in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 193‚Äì210.
• J.M. Mu?±oz Jim?©nez, ‚ÄúYermos y Sacromontes: Itinerarios de V??a Crucis en los Desiertos Carmelitanos,‚Äù in Los caminos y el arte. Actas, VI Congreso Espan?µl de Historia del Arte C.E.H.A., Santiago de Compostela, 16‚Äì20 de junio de 1986, 3 vols., Cursos y congresos da Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, 54 (Santiago de Compostela: Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, 1989), 3:171‚Äì182.

Entering the palace’s outer courtyard, Latour was met by a rather shabby looking porter, who volunteered to lead Latour on a guided tour of the premises. While Latour seems to have been most interested in the house’s Mud?©jar architecture, his guide, it would appear, was much more concerned to highlight the typological similarity between Enr??quez de Ribera’s simulated Sevillan Via Crucis and the actual Via Dolorosa of Jerusalem. “When I arrived at the first floor,” wrote Latour, my guide called my attention to a small recess that concluded in a narrow window and served, on the right, as the back for a tiled bench. ‘There,’ he told me, ‘is where S. Peter was seated when he denied Jesus. And there,’ he added, indicating across the way a peephole covered with a grate, hidden in the wall, ‘is where the servant-girl who recognized him paused.’”

As the tour progressed, Latour noted, he became progressively more concerned about his guide, who seemed to lose the ability to distinguish between Enr??quez de Ribera’s house and the ‘real thing’ with each passing room. “After reciting the same stories for forty years,” lamented Latour, “the simpleton has doubtless forgotten that that which he is showing to travelers is nothing more than a copy of Pilate’s house. … Back out in the street, my guide, following me still, pointed out to me a window in a wall behind us with a stone balcony: “It’s there,” he told me, “that Jesus was shown to the people wearing the crown of thorns and a scepter of reeds!” Below was another window: “It belonged to the prison where Christ was held for several hours.” Latour, noting that “The brave man’s illusion seemed to augment as my visit grew longer,” was happy finally to escape from the urchin’s demented tour.

It is safe, I think, to assume that Latour’s account of his visit to the Casa de Pilatos contains a fair quantity of fiction and exaggeration. The delusional porter may very well have been a figment of Latour’s literary imagination, a device to heighten the contrast–one of the themes of his entire book–between French rationality and Spanish benightedness. Yet even literary fictions, like many stereotypes, must contain a grain of truth if they are to be believed, and therefore to be effective. What Latour describes as the Spaniard’s confusion or “illusion,” therefore, must have been plausible to his readers as the way in which an uneducated porter might really view the world. His inability to distinguish between reality and received opinion had to ring true.

I think, therefore, that we can read Latour’s visit to the Casa de Pilatos as an attempt to contrast not just France and Spain, but also two fundamental ways in which real, premodern people encountered their world. On the one hand there is Latour’s prized rationality, a way of seeing the world that is fastidious about chronological and geographical accuracy and prizes eyewitness observation above all other testimony. On the other hand, there is the porter’s way of seeing, which emphasizes collective memory over immediate, eyewitness evidence. This way of seeing strives to create an aura of immanence by erasing the difference between Spain and Jerusalem, present and past. It seeks to convince the seer that it is possible to reproduce, or ‘relive,’ the past.

It is especially appropriate that Latour chose to mark this contrast with a vignette about the Casa de Pilatos, for its very origins in the sixteenth century embody simultaneously these two ways of seeing the world. Fadrique Enr??quez de Ribera visited the Holy Land and measured the precise distances along the length of the Via Dolorosa, reproducing those measurements in his Sevillan Via Crucis. At the same time, however, the fact that he believed that the pile of rubble he was shown in Jerusalem was the Casa de Pilatos, and that one could ‘relive’ the Passion by walking a course paced out through the streets of Seville.