11-7-03
BEHREND PROFESSOR LINKS ITALY'S ART AND HISTORY
Believing that art is a product of the culture that creates it, Dr. Sharon Dale, associate professor of art history at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College, spent her recent yearlong teaching sabbatical in Italy, learning more about Italian culture of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Based in a spacious apartment near the Vatican in Rome, she traveled throughout the country to continue research that she has pursued for the past ten years.
"My sabbatical was devoted to the study of the relationship between the papacy, the fourteenth century Visconti family that ruled Milan, and the Hermits of St. Augustine," said Dale. "In Italy, the fourteenth century was a period of constant struggle for political control, with major players being the popes and an emerging cast of dynastic families or republics." Because the archives of the Visconti family burned in the fifteenth century, Dale scoured the papal archives to complete her research.
Her study is centered on the tomb of St. Augustine in the Church of San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro at Pavia, a town in the Lombard region of northern Italy. St. Augustine, who died in 430, lived a communal life, and others who chose to imitate this way of life found guidance in one of his letters, later named "The Rule of St. Augustine." In 1256 the papacy combined a number of reclusive religious groups into the Hermits of St. Augustine, and the order spread rapidly.
In 1331 Pope John XXII appointed the Augustinian Hermits as builders and guardians of their founders' still hidden body in Pavia. Later in the century a St. Augustine's tomb was built, and Dale discovered that it was largely paid for by the Visconti, a dynastic family that held secular power in Lombardy and who had been excommunicated many times by various popes.
The carved figures that cover the large and ornate tomb reflect the Hermits' appropriation of Augustine's writings, Dale said. The narratives on the tomb relate a largely fictional story of the Hermits' founding by Augustine himself, while the miracles attributed to Augustine are shown on the tomb as reinforcing Visconti power in Lombardy.
At the same time, the shape of the tomb recalls the Arch of Constantine and promotes the authority of the Roman pope in the Great Schism, when a French pope at Avignon and the pope in Rome both claimed the chair of St. Peter.
"It is evident that the tomb's design advances several intertwined agendas, both religious and political," said Dale.
Dale was in Italy in 2002 when the war in Iraq began, and she was there to see firsthand how Italians struggled to understand America's military actions, which most Italians opposed.
"I don't think Americans understand how hard Europeans had it during World War II," said Dale. "Italy has more respect for history. They would rather figure out how to navigate in an imperfect world without destroying what they have." She also found that Italy is experiencing an enormous immigration of Chinese and African people.
"The nature of what it is to be an Italian is changing, and they are trying to embrace diversity while wrestling with an evolving Italian identity," said Dale. "I found Italy to be a magical place with an incredible culture. No matter where you go, you are aware of the past."
Contact:
Loretta Brandon
814-898-6063 (O)
E-mail: lzb6@psu.edu