早期中世纪艺术中的宇宙与社群（英文版）

This collection of excerpts, likely from Benjamin Anderson's book Cosmos and Community in Early Medieval Art, explores how depictions of the cosmos were utilized for political and communal purposes across the Byzantine, Islamic, and Frankish realms during the early Middle Ages. A central theme is the contrast between the “Warburgian” scholarly tradition, which focused on the solitary intellectual use of cosmic imagery, and the “archaeological” approach of scholars like Hans Peter L’Orange, who emphasized the public, ceremonial, and political functions of these images, particularly as declarations of cosmic kingship. The text examines monuments such as the Star Mantle of Henry II and Charlemagne’s silver table in the West, the celestial dome at the Umayyad bathhouse of Qusayr ʿAmra in the Islamic world, and the conflicting cosmologies present in Byzantine art, contrasting the development of a shared visual culture in the West and Islam with the Byzantine tendency toward exclusive imperial knowledge and dissensus. Ultimately, the source reveals that while the political ideologies of these states were influenced by claims of universal rule, the specific use and meaning of cosmic imagery—from illustrating learning to serving as a negative exemplum like the Throne of Khosrow—varied significantly among them.