Disembodied Heads in Medieval and Early Modern Culture

Catrien Santing (1958), Ph.D. in History, is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Groningen. She has published widely on late medieval and early modern cultural and medical history, including Blood-Symbol-Liquid, together with Jetze Touber, Louvain 2011.Barbara Baert (1967), Ph.D. in Art History, is Professor of Medieval Art at the University of Leuven. Her research is mainly interdisciplinary, regarding sacred topography, visual anthropology, relics, and female biblical figures such as Mary Magdalene and the woman with the bloodflow. Recently she published Caput Joannis in Disco. {Essay on a Man's Head}, (Visualising the Middle Age 8), Brill-Leiden, 2012.Anita Traninger (1969), Ph.D. in Literary Studies, is Einstein Junior Fellow at the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at Freie Universität Berlin. Her areas of research include the history of rhetoric and discourses of knowledge in early modern Europe, with Disputation, Deklamation, Dialog (Stuttgart 2012) being her most recent book publication.

Discussing medieval and early modern 'disembodied heads' this collection questions the why and how of the primacy of the head in the bodily hierarchy during the premodern period. On the basis of beliefs, mythologies and traditions concerning the head, they come to an 'cultural anatomy' of the head.

Acknowledgements Notes on the Editors Notes on the Contributors List of Illustrations Introduction CATRIEN SANTING AND BARBARA BAERT Adam's Skull MARINA MONTESANO Talking Heads, or, A Tale of Two Clerics ROBERT MILLS The Meaning of the Head in High Medieval Culture ESTHER COHEN Securing the Sacred Head: Cephalophory and Relic Claims SCOTT B. MONTGOMERY The Johannesschussel as Andachtsbild: The Gaze, The Medium and the Senses BARBARA BAERT Chasing the Caput. Head Images of John the Baptist in a Political Conflict MATEUSZ KAPUSTKA The Self-Portrait 'En Decapite': interpreting artistic Self-Insertion ARJAN R. DE KOOMEN Capita Selecta in Historia Sacra. Head Relics in Counter Reformation Rome (1570CA.-1630CA.) JETZE TOUBER Framing the Face. Patterns of Presentation and Representation in Early Modern Dress and Portraiture BERT WATTEEUW And I bear your beautiful Face painted on my chest. The Longevity of the Heart as the primal Organ in the Renaissance CATRIEN SANTING Index Nominum