Medieval Monastery of Saint Elijah

Blending innovative art historical analysis with archaeology, epigraphy, history, liturgy, theology, and landscape and memory studies, this is the first comprehensive interdisciplinary study of a crucial, but understudied, male Benedictine convent near Rome. The only monastery known to have been dedicated to the prophet in the Latin West, the monastery was rebuilt through papal patronage ca. 1125. Today, the monastery is represented by its church of Sant'Elia, a stone basilica endowed with a Cosmati pavement and liturgical furnishings, early and high medieval sculptures and inscriptions, and vibrant wall paintings that include unique depictions of the prophet Elijah and the Twelve Tribes of Israel as warriors, an apse program with a distinctly elite Roman origin, and an uncommon narrative cycle of the Apocalypse. An outlying chapel marks the site of a theophany that sanctified the landscape and gave the monastery its raison d'être. This book makes significant contributions to current art historical debates concerning the geography of art history, communal identity and the visual arts, artistic innovation and multisensory engagement with works of art, the role of natural and artificial topography in sacred architecture, and the effects of papal reform. It also demonstrates that politics and devotion were not mutually exclusive and offers a case study in writing history in the absence of texts.