Linking the Living with the Otherworld: The Imperial Frontispieces of Speyer Codex Aureus and Gertrude’s St. Peter in Egbert’s Psalter

Abstract

Bonding is recognized as a peculiar property of the arts aging in Medieval societies, this is also true in a more spiritualized sense. This paper investigates the intervention of Greek-Byzantine painters in two eleventh-century Western manuscripts: the mid-eleventh century Speyer Codex Aureus and Egbert’s Psalter, specifically the folia gertrudiana. The former is hinting to the glorified appearance of the ones to whom the earthly Kingdom/Empire and the sovereigns’ eternal life was bounded. As for the latter, St. Peter catalyses the pleas and expectations of Gertrude, working as a powerful link between the living and the dead.