Publications & Papers

Art of Spain and Portugal from the Romans to the Early Middle Ages: Routes and Myths

For generations, maps of the pilgrimage road and of the reconquest have bedevilled the study of Spanish art and architecture. They have also infiltrated the popular imagination and come to dominate the ways that we think about Spain and Portugal. Art in Spain and Portugal from the Romans to the Early Middle Ages: Routes and Mythssets out to diminish the power of such images and to enrich the wider English-language literature on early medieval art.

Over the last thirty years Spanish scholars have produced a multitude of specialist regional studies, but few attempts have been made to bring together the findings of these regional studies or to see what effect they have on the overall picture. Moreover most of them are not available in English and thus have not penetrated the wider literature on early medieval art. The book both presents and critiques such studies, as well as setting out the author’s position on many of the central questions.

This book engages with and reinterprets prior work by other researchers, so I’ve added an updates and discussion section to this site in order to allow any debate (and further refinement of ideas) to happen in a public and open manner.

Views of Transition: Liturgy and Illumination in Medieval Spain

British Library and University of Toronto Press, 1998

Articles

“Narratives of Hagiographic Imagination and the Camino”, in Imagining the Road to Santiago: Itineraries, Narratives, Myths, eds. Robert A. Maxwell and Manuel A. Castiñeiras González, Ad Limina (16/1, 2025) 153–69.

“Order and disorder through the eyes of scribes and illuminators in the kingdom of Pamplona c. 970–c. 1000”, in Romanesque and the Year 1000, eds. Gerhard Lutz, John McNeill and Richard Plant (Abingdon and New York, 2025), 85–104.

“Reimagining relics and reliquaries between al-Andalus and the Northern Kingdoms in the eleventh and twelfth centuries”, in The Visual Culture of al-Andalus in the Christian Kingdoms of Iberia, ed. Inés Monteira (New York and London, 2025) 27–43. 

“Atravesando el canon: mapas, rutas y líneas en el arte hispano medieval”, “Atravesando el canon: mapas, rutas y líneas en el arte hispano medieval”, in Repensando el canon. Modelos, categorías y prestigio en el arte medieval hispano, eds. Javier Martínez de Aguirre, Ángel Fuentes Ortiz, Víctor Rabasco García (Madrid, 2021) 389–416.

“Expressing Liturgical Change in Eleventh- and Twelfth-century Iberia through the feast of the Holy Innocents”, in ed. Ainoa Castro, Anuario de Estudios Medievales, 50/2 (July-December 2020), 865–91.

“The symbols of the Apocalypse: the subversion of nature and cosmic upheaval in illuminated Beatus manuscripts”, in Conoscenza scientifica nell’alto medioevo, Atti dell Settimane, vol. 2 (Spoleto, 2020) 1129–51.

“Manuscripts face to face: León and the Holy Roman Empire in the mid-eleventh century, in. Illuminating the Middle Ages. Tributes to Prof. John Lowden from his Students, Friends and Colleagues, eds. Laura Cleaver,  Alixe Bovey, Lucy Donkin (Leiden and Boston, 2020) 77–93.

“A Satirical Itinerary of Holy Bodies? Recommendations from the Pilgrim’s Guide”, in Romanesque: Saints, Shrines and Pilgrimage, eds. John McNeill and Richard Plant (Leeds, 2020) 77–88.

“Agency and the re-invention of slab relief sculpture at San Isidoro de León c. 1100”, in Romanesque Art: Patrons and Processes, eds. John McNeill, Richard Plant, Manuel Castiñeiras (Leeds, 2018) 235–50.

“Eating the sweet and bitter book. The ingestion of text during liturgical change in late eleventh-century Castile”, in Medieval Manuscripts in Motion, eds. Alicia Miguélez Cavero and Fernando Villaseñor Sebastián (Madrid, 2018) 101–12.

“Artistic Dialogue between León and Castile in the Tenth Century”, Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 170 (2017) 1–29.

“La producción de Beatos durante el reinado de Alfonso VIII de Castilla y Leonor de Inglaterra: ¿una respuesta a la caída de Jerusalén?”, in eds. Marta Poza Yagüe and Diana Olivares Martínez,  Alfonso VIII y Leonor de Inglaterra: confluencias artísticas en el entorno de 1200 (Madrid, 2017) 357–72.

“Art in the Visigothic Period.” In Oxford Bibliographies in Medieval Studies. ed. Paul E. Szarmach. (New York, Oxford University Press 2017)

“Mozarabic Art.” In Oxford Bibliographies in Medieval Studies. ed. Paul E. Szarmach (New York: Oxford University Press, 30/8/2016)

“Sculptors in Medieval Spain after the Conquest of Toledo in 1085”, in Romanesque and the Mediterranean: Points of Contact across the Latin, Greek and Islamic Worlds c. 1000 to c. 1250, eds. Rosa Bacile and John McNeill (Leeds, 2015) 259–75.

 “The influence of papal legates on the transformation of Spanish art in the second half of the eleventh century”, in Art et réforme grégorienne en France et dans la péninsule ibérique, ed. Barbara Franzé (Lausanne, 2015) 77–90.

“Memoriales de Guerra. Recuerdo y olvido más allá de Las Huelgas”, Quintana, 11 (2012) 13–36.

“Becoming Alfonso VI: the king, his sister, and the arca santa reliquary”, in Actas Jornadas Complutenses, eds. Javier Martínez de Aguirre and Marta Poza Yagüe (2011) 391–412.

“Sisters and Suburbs: Some Reflections on Berengaria of Navarre and her Cistercian Foundation outside Le Mans”, in Image, Memory and Devotion. Liber amicorum Paul Crossley, eds. Zoe Opacic and Achim Timmermann (Turnhout, 2011) 231–37.

“Beatus by the waters of Babylon” in Early Medieval Spain, Papers of the Medieval Hispanic Research Seminar, 61, eds. Alan Deyermond and Martin Ryan (2010) 129–46.

“The Poetics of Defeat: Cistercians and Frontier Gothic at the Abbey of Las Huelgas”, in Spanish Medieval Art. Recent Studies, ed. Colum Hourihane (Princeton, 2007) 187–213.

 “Leonor of England and Eleanor of Castile: Anglo-Iberian Marriage and Cultural Exchange in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries” in England and Iberia in the Middle Ages, 12^th–15^th Century, ed. María Bullón-Fernández (New York, 2007) 67–87.

 “Leonor of England, Plantagenet queen of Alfonso VII of Castile, and her foundation of the Cistercian abbey of Las Huelgas. In imitation of Fontevraud?” in Journal of Medieval History, 31, (2005) 346–68. 

“Images of Royal and Aristocratic Burial in Northern Spain, c.950–c.1250” in Medieval Memories, ed. Elizabeth Van Houts (Harlow, 2001) 150–72.

“The wall-paintings of the Panteón de los Reyes: a cycle of intercession.” in Art Bulletin (June 2000) 200–25.

“Sancha, Urraca and Elvira: the Virtues and Vices of Spanish Royal Women ‘dedicated to God’”, in Reading Medieval Studies, Graduate Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Reading (1998) 113–138.