Author: Alicia Walker
Source: The Medieval Globe: Vol. 3 : No. 2 , Article 7
Abstract: In the twelfth century, Christian military saints, including George and Theodore, became intercultural heroic figures. Appearing in works of art across western European, Byzantine, Crusader, and Islamic cultural spheres, these holy heroes sometimes featured in contexts and objects that modern taxonomies classify as 鈥渟ecular.鈥 This article focuses on a particularly intriguing example of this phenomenon: a middle Byzantine silver drinking cup, which displays on its exterior a program of so-called princely cycle imagery derived from medieval Islamic courtly iconography, but contrasts these decidedly non-religious motifs with a portrait of Saint George on the interior bottom of the vessel. By excavating the logic of the cup鈥檚 iconography鈥攊ts inclusion of George at a banquet鈥攊t aims to overcome the insufficiencies of conventional, modern terminology and taxonomies for medieval art by engaging with the transcultural complexity of elite leisure culture in the medieval world.