Liu - Carolingian & Ottonian

Connection to Reading (but also subject) Part II: In addition to the implications for Christology, it should be noted that this is effectively a simulacrum—an imitation—of a Byzantine imperial model. Indeed, the artist closely copied a Byzantine protoype (e.g. the ivory of Romanos II and Eudokia). In other words, the Ottonians are not only claiming divine sanction; they are claiming parity with Byzantium by adopting its formats, its insignia, and its aura of “God-crowned” sovereignty. Aurell points to two sources. Otto II wears the imperial loros (a richly embroidered pendant sash), a garment closely associated with Byzantine emperors, alongside other sumptuous vestments. Theophanu’s attire, in particular, which is a court regalia, makes her read as a legible Byzantine empress — despite her being the niece. In addition, it should be known that Otto II and Theophanu were wedded in 972 as part of a deliberate Ottonian-Byzantine alliance, and that Theophanu was crowned before Otto. Her precedence reads as intentional political rhetoric: it presents her not as an accessory to Otto’s power but as an empress in her own right, and, precisely because of her Byzantine origin, as a constitutive conduit through which the Ottonian image of empire could claim Byzantine legitimacy rather than merely borrow it. Furthermore, the inscription highlights the blending of Byzantine and Western traditions, using Greek, Latin, and Byzantine titles to affirm the legitimacy of the Ottonian rulers.

Subject: Christ is the central, tallest figure, standing on the pedestal, blessing the couple and placing his hands on their crowns to legitimize their rule. He is marked by a cruciform halo, while wearing a tunic. Otto II stands at Christ’s right—the position of highest honor, authority, and power in biblical tradition. This position would have recalled Christ seated at the right hand of God. Otto II is wearing imperial loros, a visual marker towards Byzantine, and a claim to equal authority. Both features show kingship as flowing from Christ himself and being vested in Otto through Christ’s direct touch, collapsing celestial and temporal sovereignty into a single image—so the emperor reads as an imago Christi, an earthly type of Christ whose crowned rule imitates Christ’s own royal (and quasi-sacerdotal) office. In addition, Theophanu is rendered in full court regalia, emphasizing her distinct status as a Byzantine empress. It should also be noted that she stands closer to Christ than Otto II does. Together, these choices highlight her role as a cultural bridge, bringing Eastern court formality into the Ottonian court. Her closeness to Christ may also point to her dynastic importance: it underscores her special favor and her key role in securing an heir and continuing the imperial line. Lastly, John Philagathos appears as a small, diminutive donor figure prostrated in proskynesis (kneeling/bowing) at the feet of the Otto II. John Philangaths has been identified as the monk who commissioned the plaque. The vertical hierarchy is doing real work here: John’s reduced scale and bodily submission mark him as a dependent supplicant, while Otto’s placement above him—and the imperial couple’s shared elevation—stages rulership as an order of being that is both socially and theologically “higher.” Authority appears literally elevated and grounded in Christ’s presence.

Style: The ivory of Otto II and Theophanu combined Ottonian art with strong Byzantine influences. It features stylized elongated figures, and a hierarchical composition where Christ crowns the royal couple, who are dressed in Byzantine-style garments, including imperial robes and crowns with prependoulia. This is a high-relief carving on a single piece of ivory that was likely created in Italy (Milan) or Germany, as a diplomatic, religious, and political gift to commemorate the marriage of Otto II and Theophanu. This would have most likely served as the front cover (binding plague) to a manuscript.

Connection to Reading: Holladay’s chapter argues that “royal iconography” is a historically changing visual language that reflects shifting ideas about authority, legitimacy, and closeness to God. She traces how core regalia develop out of Roman and late antique precedents and how their meanings evolve: crowns can derive from laurel/diadem/torque traditions and come to function not just as status markers but as transferable pledges of rule; scepters and related staffs similarly signal power, continuity, and sanctioned command; and thrones (from the sella curulis to Aachen’s “Solomonic” model) anchor kingship through staged hierarchy. Furthermore, Holladay links these objects to the ritual sequence of regalia, anointing, crowning and enthroning. From the Carolingians onward, the evidence expands and the imagery becomes more programmatic: manuscripts, seals, coins, and luxury objects portray rulers as Davidic/Solomonic “ideal” kings, place them in sacralized space (clouds, gold grounds, baldachins), and explicitly stage divine approval (the hand of God, angels, personified provinces/virtues). Holladay then shows how this visual theology and politics intensify in Ottonian/Byzantine-inflected scenes where Christ (or Mary) physically crowns the ruler (e.g., the ivory of Otto II and Theophanu), and how regalia like the cross-topped orb become near-standard imperial signs. Finally, she notes later medieval strategies for legitimizing rule through narrative cycles, dynastic genealogies in rooms and rolls, and even “subtle” portrait conventions that convey royal status without obvious attributes—demonstrating the long afterlife of these visual formulas into early modern and modern rulership imagery.

In the early Frankish world, starting with Clovis I, rulers often practiced partible inheritance, dividing the kingdom among all surviving sons. However, this tradition repeatedly fractured kingdoms, and, in that environment, mayors of the palace could grow in influence, since they increasingly administered territories and resources on the ruler’s behalf, sometimes becoming power brokers in their own right. Within that landscape, Charles Martel consolidates authority as the figure who actually holds the realm together. Serving as the Mayor of the Palace of Austrasia (and later all of Frankia), he effectively acted as the power behind the throne, reducing the Merovingian kings to mere figureheads Martel’s military credibility—above all the victory in 732 at the Battle of Tours—functions as proof of “utility”: he can defend Christian territory, stabilize Francia, and therefore deserves authority. In 751: Pépin deposed the last Merovingian king (Childeric III) and was made King of the Franks. His reign then deepened and institutionalized the Frankish alliance with the papacy. This is clearest in his campaigns against the Lombards in northern Italy, which produced the so-called Donation of Pépin—territories transferred to the pope that helped secure the papacy’s temporal power. The exchange was mutually reinforcing: Pépin gained religious authorization for a new dynasty, while the pope gained a political protector and a territorial base With Charlemagne, the Carolingian project becomes explicitly imperial and consciously programmatic. The coronation of 800, when the pope crowns Charlemagne “Emperor,” turns political dominance into a theological claim: the king of the Franks is recast as protector and unifier of a Christian world. That self-fashioning is reinforced through reform and patronage—standardizing scripture and liturgy, sponsoring monasteries, commissioning liturgical objects—so that “unity” is not just a slogan but something you can see in texts, rituals, and material culture. Read alongside the ivory of Otto II and Theophanu, this Carolingian arc functions as a kind of prehistory, establishing the template that later Ottonian art sharpens: imperial authority secured through sacral legitimation, and this partnership between Church and State. Indeed, the standardization is a security project. Because the empire is huge—and always vulnerable to regional power, border pressure, and shaky succession—the Carolingians use “unity” as a tool of control. Standardizing books and rites isn’t just about correct worship; it makes the realm feel coherently one across distance. Monasteries and bishoprics then function as stabilizing infrastructure—local nodes that educate, administer, and project imperial authority where the ruler can’t always be present.

In addition, there was increase use of relics and reliquaries, which were "holy bodies” made visible. These objects did not just store remains; they certified presence (“this person existed/this sanctity is real"). A bone splinter, cloth thread, or hair becomes complete through ritual framing, display, and the theology of part/whole. By the 11th century and after, increasingly elaborate containers (including rock crystal reliquaries and closed-box forms) intensify visuality. They choreograph how holiness is seen—glimpsed, mediated, authenticated. These objects can even be integrated into altars or altar frontals, making sanctity literally structural to worship.

The Palatine Chapel at Aachen functioned as Charlemagne’s private court church. Its design deliberately looks to Ravenna and other late antique precedents, signaling that the Carolingian court is not just powerful, but the rightful heir to Roman-Christian authority. In other words, Charlemagne was making a statement that the Frankish Empire was the new center of the Christian world . The Palatine Chapel at Aachen is an octagonal, centrally planned building, featuring a two story ambulatory, with Byzantine-inspired mosaics, and classical marble columns. However, there are a few changes, such as not using the squinch-design. Not to mention, Charlemagne also uses Justinian I as reference, since a lot of his goals are similar: expanding his empire’s power and territory, enforcing religious unity, building authority through law and centralized administration, and holding others accountable. This is where “indexical” imagery matters: Carolingian and later Ottonian art often works by pointing to an authoritative “original” (Jerusalem, Rome, Ravenna, Byzantium) while translating it into a new context—an empire built out of references that move across places and plans. The Treaty of Verdun (843 AD), which partitioned Charlemagne's unified Carolingian Empire among his three grandsons, initiated a long-term, cascading collapse of centralized power in Western and Central Europe. This created a prolonged, centuries-long power vacuum in the East and paved the way for the rise of the Ottomans.

Medieval Art: The ivory of Otto II and Theophanu pushes us to recognize how “medieval art” can be used as a system for manufacturing legitimacy—power made persuasive through visual rhetoric. The plaque doesn’t simply depict a coronation; it compresses an entire political theology into a single scene. Christ’s hands on the crowns turn rulership into a visibly given status: the emperor becomes legible as a ruler whose authority is configured to act through Christ (the logic of Christomimesis), not just blessed by him. That distinction matters because it mirrors the hierarchy in practice: papal crowning is a public investiture, but anointing supplies the deeper claim of transformation and election, grounded in biblical precedent (Saul, David). In other words, the image isn’t illustrating doctrine—it is doing doctrine, staging sovereignty as something that descends from heaven into the political body. At the same time, the ivory makes clear that Ottonian authority is being built through citation—specifically, citation of Byzantium. The composition and regalia function like a borrowed imperial language: the loros, court costume, and the Christ-crowning type recall Byzantine models (like the Romanos II and Eudokia ivory), so the Ottonians are not only claiming divine sanction; they are claiming parity with Constantinople by adopting its formats, insignia, and aura of “God-crowned” sovereignty. That’s why Theophanu’s prominence matters. Her precedence (including traditions of her being crowned before Otto) reads as deliberate rhetoric: she is framed not as an accessory to Otto’s power but as an empress in her own right—and precisely because she is Byzantine, she becomes a conduit through which Ottonian empire can claim Byzantine legitimacy rather than merely imitate it. Even the donor’s tiny, prostrate body at the bottom reinforces the point: medieval art organizes authority by arranging bodies into hierarchy—Christ above, rulers elevated, supplicant reduced—so power is not just represented but made spatially and socially inescapable. This also has parallels to the Byzantine empress—especially Theodora—in that both women enter imperial representation with “imperfect” origins that the image works to overwrite. Theodora’s rise from a socially marginal background made legitimacy something that had to be performed and stabilized through court ritual and sacred display. Theophanu, too, arrives as an outsider—new to the Ottonian court and was only the niece, so not a true Byzantine princess. The ivory solves that vulnerability the same way Byzantium does: it turns her into a designed empress. Byzantine-coded regalia, proximity to Christ, and the format of “God-crowning” don’t just honor her; they convert biography into ideology, making her status feel inevitable. In both cases, the visual program functions as repair work: it disciplines messy personal histories into a legible, sacred model of empresshood. An empress whose right to stand beside the emperor is guaranteed by the same divine order that crowns him.

Context: The Ottonians rebuild a western “Roman” empire after the Carolingians. Otto I stabilizes the realm (notably after defeating the Magyars in 955) and is crowned emperor in 962, grounding rule in church partnership and Roman coronation/unction. Otto II and Theophanu fit this rise: their 972 marriage is a planned alliance with Byzantium, importing its prestige and imperial style. Originally, Otto I sought to marry his son to Anna, the daughter of Emperor Romanos II. However, this was refused. Instead, negotiations produced Theophanu, who was the niece. That substitution creates a problem the Ottonians have to manage: they want Byzantium to “show up” as legitimacy, even if Theophanu is not the exact imperial bride first requested. Theophanu’s marriage charter is a gold-written, dyed-parchment document that legally records the dos Otto II grants her—major revenues and lands (including Istria and Pescara)—to cement her status as empress and imperial partner. A similar message is depicted here, in which the ivory makes that balancing act legible. It stages Theophanu as Byzantine—through regalia, rank, and proximity—so the alliance reads as parity. Connection to Reading (but also subject) Part I: Under the Carolingians and especially the Ottonians, kingship is framed as sacred rule: the king’s authority comes from Christ’s royalty, and is made visible through coronation ritual. The Ordo of Mainz and the Ordo of King Edgar both cast the king as Christ’s analogue/mediator between divine and temporal order, and they become foundations for later coronation rites This logic is reinforced through Christus Rex, which invests Christ with royal and priestly attributes to make him more like his “temporal image”—the crowned kingThe ivory depicts Christ crowning the Holy Roman Emperor Otto II and his Byzantine wife, Empress Theophanu. In practice, popes crowned Holy Roman Emperors to legitimize their rule—the crowning was a public, visual investiture. Yet unction (anointing with holy oil) carried the deeper theological weight, marking a transformation of the ruler into a quasi-sacred, divinely chosen protector of the Church. That logic was grounded in biblical precedent—Saul and David—whose anointing signaled election by God rather than mere human appointment. Indeed, Aurell notes that the image is doing more than showing “divine approval”: it stages a kind of Christomimesis, implying that imperial authority is not merely blessed by Christ but configured to act through Christ—an emperor made legible as a terrestrial agent of the heavenly ruler.