Gunthertuch

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The Bamberg Gunthertuch

The Gunthertuch , also Bamberg Gunthertuch , is a unique Byzantine silk knitted fabric , which was probably created in 971 and allegorically represents the reception of a Byzantine emperor (most likely Johannes I. Tzimiskes ) in the capital Constantinople on his triumphant return from a victorious campaign. Two small towns (recognizable by their wall crowns), both of which symbolize Constantinople, offer him a tupha (feather crown) or a golden circlet on his right and left. These objects are the symbols of rule of the defeated enemy, and most likely the crowns of the Bulgarian Tsar Boris II, whom Tzimiskes took as a prisoner to Constantinople in 971 after taking the Bulgarian capital Preslav. Only in this Byzantine triumphal procession of 971 did the defeated, presented opponent have the rank of emperor. The cloth was 1064/65 of Bishop Gunther of Bamberg in Konstantin Opel acquired, maybe it was a gift from the Emperor Constantine X. It was 1830 in Gunther's grave in Bamberg Cathedral rediscovered.

History of the silk scarf

In November 1064, Bishop Gunther von Bamberg took part in a pilgrimage to Jerusalem under the leadership of the German bishops Siegfried von Mainz , Wilhelm I von Utrecht and Otto von Riedenburg . The procession of around 7,000 pilgrims passed through Hungary , the Byzantine Empire and Syria .

In the Byzantine capital, Gunther was thought to be King Henry IV, traveling incognito, because of his gigantic figure and elegant clothing . How the silk fabric came into the possession of the bishop is not known. The Byzantinist Günter Prinzing suspected that the silk scarf might have served as a peplos (curtain) hanging between two columns as a textile picture decoration until the pilgrims' stay in Constantinople, in the Hagia Sophia . Gunther von Bamberg died on the return journey on July 23, 1065 in Stuhlweissenburg of a serious illness. Returning pilgrims brought his body, wrapped in the Byzantine silk cloth, back to Bamberg .

The visible damage to the Gunther cloth is related to the fact that Bishop Gunther was either wrapped in the cloth when he died on his way back to Bamberg in Hungary or only in Bamberg when he was buried, perhaps "when he was transferred to the east choir" (see p. soot.).

As part of the purification of Bamberg Cathedral under the direction of the architect and builder Friedrich von Gärtner , Gunter's final resting place was opened on December 22, 1830. In addition to his bones, the bishop's grave contained pieces of woolen fabric , leather , gold braids , fragments of silver and fragments of a silk fabric. The painter Friedrich Karl Ruppert, who played a key role in the restoration of the cathedral, put the pieces of the patterned silk fabric together. He found that the rider's head and the lower part of the horse's head were missing and made a drawing on which he reconstructed the missing parts with pencil marks. When the Gunthertuch was mounted in 1894, the front and back of some fragments were swapped. In 1965/66 it was cleaned and preserved in the workshops of the Bavarian National Museum in Munich . The correct viewing side could be restored, the cloth regained the luminosity of its original colors.

The Gunthertuch is today, along with the so-called imperial coats and the regalia of Pope Clement II, a highlight in the collection of medieval textiles in the Diocesan Museum of Bamberg .

description

A shiny, very soft and at the same time very heavy silk was used for the cloth. The pattern with different colored weft threads has been entered into the fine, natural-colored warp thread system . 22 warp threads per cm are crossed with 44 to 70 weft threads, depending on the thickness. For coloring the silk threads were used vegetable dyes from the decoction of madder root , ox tongue , Indigo and Wau . The colors are set next to each other like a mosaic. In a few places, for example on the cheeks and hands, tinted transitions were created through the strand-like weaving of colored weft threads. The borders that frame the cloth above and below with Sassanid palmettes and rosettes were originally of the same width. The pattern of the background means Infinite Distance .

The 218 cm high and 211 cm wide silk knitting shows a Byzantine emperor against the patterned background. He rides a white horse, is crowned with the stemma , the Byzantine ruler's crown, and carries the labarum in his right hand. His head is surrounded by a golden nimbus . In front of the jeweled tablion , a trim sewn onto the blue billowing cloak at chest level, the ruler holds a red rein in his left hand . His ankle-length skirt is made of deep purple silk fabric patterned with ivy leaves . The wide straps of the bridle, decorated with gemstone medallions and pendants in the form of crescent moons , and the ribbons on the legs and tail of the horse are due to Persian influence.

The emperor is flanked by two Tyche figures. The Tychen are dressed in ankle-length white-reddish (left) or white-bluish shimmering undergarments and clearly graduated blue (left) and green (right) upper garments. They wear wall crowns on their heads , an attribute that identifies them as city goddesses (Stadttychen). The figure on the right in the green overcoat probably offers the emperor a crown, the left one in the blue overcoat the toupha , which was only worn on triumphal procession. Both Tychen are shown barefoot, which shows them to be the emperor's doulai (state slaves). If both Tychen are to be related to Constantinople together (These Prinzing), then the image expresses the idea that this city receives the emperor as his slave and bride. The floral background is to be interpreted as an ornament of the way into the bridal chamber.

interpretation

Initially identified with Emperor Basil II's triumphal procession after the conquest of Bulgaria in 1018, modern research today agrees that the Byzantine emperor depicted is John I Tzimiskes , who first conquered the Bulgarian capital Preslav in 971 and Tsar Boris II. had captured, and then after the siege of Dorostolon defeated the Kievan Rus in Bulgaria .

Triumphal procession in Constantinople 971. The imperial triumphal chariot with the image of the Mother of God drives in front of Emperor Tzimiskes. Boris , the defeated Bulgarian tsar, rides behind him . Miniature in the Madrid illuminated manuscript of the Skylitz , fol. 220v.

According to Leon Diakonos , Tzimiskes rode on a white horse behind a chariot with an icon of the Virgin Mary and the Bulgarian imperial regalia, including two crowns, on his triumphal procession . Although some details of the description of Leon by Johannes Skylitzes are ignored or refuted, both sources agree that Emperor Tzimiskes rode a white horse during the procession and that the Bulgarian imperial regalia, including two crowns, played a central role in the triumphant ceremony . Both authors explicitly state that the second crown was a tiara (toupha). The Gunthertuch shows all of these details.

If the Tychen represented ancient Rome and the New Rome or Athens and Constantinople, the two cities in which Basil II celebrated his triumph, according to a different opinion, they represent the Demes of Constantinople. The green clad Tyche stands for the party of the Greens, the Tyche in a blue robe for the blue. According to investigations of modern research, it seemed possible that the tychai on the Gunthertuch personify the two most important cities, Preslaw and Dristra (Dorostolon) conquered during the campaign of Emperor Tzimiskes , which were renamed Ioannoupolis and Theodoroupolis after the victory . However, this thesis was refuted by Prinzing in 2007.

literature

  • André Grabar : La soie byzantine de l'eveque Gunther a la Cathedrale de Bamberg. In: Munich Yearbook of Fine Arts Ser. 3, Vol. 7, 1956, pp. 7-26.
  • Sigrid Müller-Christensen: Observations on the Bamberg Gunthertuch. In: Munich Yearbook of Fine Arts Ser. 3, Vol. 17, 1966, pp. 9-16
  • Agnes Geijer: Bishop Gunther's Shroud in Bamberg Cathedral. In: Mechthild Flury-Lemberg, Karen Stolleis (Ed.): Documenta textilia. Festschrift for Sigrid Müller-Christensen , research notebooks. Bavarian National Museum Munich 7, Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich 1981, pp. 156–162, ISBN 3-422-00719-9 .
  • Sigrid Müller-Christensen: The Gunthertuch in the Bamberg Cathedral Treasure. (= Publications of the Diocesan Museum Bamberg. Vol. 2). Bayrische Verlagsanstalt, Bamberg 1984, ISBN 3-87052-381-6 .
  • Renate Baumgärtel-Fleischmann : Selected works of art from the Diocesan Museum Bamberg. (= Publications of the Diocesan Museum Bamberg. Vol. 1). Bayerische Verlagsanstalt, Bamberg 1992, ISBN 3-87052-380-8 .
  • Günter Prinzing : The Bamberg Gunthertuch in a new perspective. In: Vladimír Vavrínek (ed.): Byzantium and Its Neighbors, from the Mid-9th till the 12th Centuries. In: Byzantinoslavica 54, 1993, pp. 218-231.
  • Paul Stephenson: The Legend of Basil the Bulgar-Slayer. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2003, ISBN 0-521-81530-4 , pp. 62-65.
  • Günter Prinzing: Again on the historical interpretation of the Bamberg Gunthertuch on Johannes Tzimiskes. In: M. Kaimakamova, M. Salamom, M. Smorag Rozycka (Eds.): Byzantium, New Peoples, New Powers: The Byzantino-Slav Contact Zone, from the Ninth to the Fifteenth Century. (= Byzantina et Slavica Cracovensia 5). Krakow 2007, pp. 123-132.
  • Marcell Restle: The Gunthertuch in the cathedral treasure of Bamberg , in: K. Belke [et alii], Byzantina Mediterranea. Festschrift for Johannes Koder on his 65th birthday. Vienna, Cologne, Weimar 2007, pp. 547-568.
  • S. Ruß: So-called Gunthertuch . DMB inv. No. 2728 / 3–13, in: M. Exner, Die Kunstdenkmäler von Oberfranken. City of Bamberg. Domberg, 1. The cathedral monastery. Part 2: furnishings, chapter buildings, cathedral treasure. With contributor by S. Bali [et alii], Bamberg 2015, pp. 1815–1858 (with lit.).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Exhibits in the House of the Diocesan Museum Bamberg
  2. ↑ Annals . In: Oswald Holder-Egger (Ed.): Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi 38: Lamperti monachi Hersfeldensis Opera. Appendix: Annales Weissenburgenses. Hanover 1894, pp. 1–304 ( Monumenta Germaniae Historica , digitized version )
  3. ↑ Ludwig Schmugge: About "national" prejudices in the Middle Ages.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 2.4 MB) In: German Archive for Research into the Middle Ages . Vol. 38, 1982, pp. 439-459.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.digizeitschriften.de  
  4. ^ A b c Günter Prinzing: The Bamberg Gunthertuch in a new perspective. In: Byzantium and Its Neighbors, from the Mid-9th till the 12th Centuries. Papers read at the Byzantinological Symposium Bechyne 1990, Vladimír Vavrínek (Ed.) In: Byzantinoslavica 54 (1993), pp. 218-231.
  5. ^ A b c d Paul Stephenson: The Legend of Basil the Bulgar-Slayer Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp. 62-65.
  6. ↑ a b c d e f Sigrid Müller-Christensen: The Gunthertuch in the Bamberg Cathedral Treasure. Publications of the Diözesanmuseum Bamberg Vol. 2, Bayrische Verlagsanstalt GmbH, Bamberg 1984, ISBN 3-87052-381-6 .
  7. ^ A b André Grabar: La soie byzantine de l'eveque Gunther a la Cathedrale de Bamberg. In: Münchener Jahrbuch 7 (1956), p. 227.
  8. ↑ Alice-Mary Talbot, Denis F. Sullivan (Ed.): The History of Leo the Deacon: Byzantine military expansion in the tenth century . Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Washington, DC 2005
  9. ↑ Hans Thurn (Ed.): Ioannis Scylitzae Synopsis historiarum . Berlin 1973.
  10. ↑ Percy Ernst Schramm : The image of the ruler in the art of the early Middle Ages. In: Lectures of the Warburg Library 2 (1922–23), pp. 159–161; Josef Deér : The Holy Crown of Hungary. Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 1966, p. 59.