Painting Sanctified Time: Oxford’s Bildmenologion and the Temporality of Devotion, lecture by Peter Boudreau (Princeton University), Princeton University, November 5, 2024, 4:30 pm

Charlie Barber, Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University

This lecture considers the Bildmenologion, or Picture Menologion (Oxford MS gr. th. f.1), a 14th-century text made for the aristocrat Demetrios Palaiologos (d. 1343?) and its structuring of time. Instead of narrative text, this unusual, pocket-sized manuscript offers 103 miniatures divided into 368 scenes of saints arranged according to the liturgical year. Studies of the manuscripts known as menologia typically analyze text and the cults of saints, but the absence of this material in the Bildmenologion provides an opportunity to consider time from a purely visual perspective. How does the extensive use of imagery adhere to and transform the calendar genre? This lecture grapples with this question, using imagery to move beyond hagiographic narratives and create new relationships to time.

Peter Boudreau is a 2024-2025 Mary Seeger O’Boyle Postdoctoral Fellow at the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies, Princeton University.