In the Bernward Gospels, the prominent purple curtain hanging behind the Virgin adds to the objects on the page that are identifiable as works of art mediating access to the divine. A silk pasted into the back cover of the Bernward Gospels and another found covering relics sealed by Bernward’s predecessor indicate the presence of Byzantine textiles in Hildesheim.57 Although, like the processional cross, its depiction is generic enough that tying it to a specific work at Saint Michael’s is impossible, it is another reference to a valued category of object commonly found in churches of the period. The composer of the dedication inscription on the left folio indeed highlights the importance of liturgical textiles in Hildesheim when he notes Bernward’s ceremonial vestments, whose repeating weave pattern marks them as silk: ornatus tanti vestitu pontificali.
While there is no evidence that any specific textile in Hildesheim served to shape local memory, the pictured curtain behind the Virgin does resemble the other objects just analyzed in that it acts as a portal. It does so not only pictorially, by means of its similarity to the altar curtain and roof depicted on the left folio, but also metaphorically. The association of a curtain with Mary plays into a complicated semiotic system within which medieval theologians understood curtains to operate. Compared to the concealing temple curtain of the Old Testament, the curtain in the New Testament was said to mark the path to the secrets of the heavens revealed by Christ’s Incarnation: “Having therefore, brethren, a confidence in the entering into the holies by the blood of Christ; A new and living way which he hath dedicated for us through the veil, that is to say, his flesh” (Hebrews 10:19–20). In this passage, Christ’s flesh is linked to the veil of the tabernacle that Christians penetrated when they consumed Christ’s body during the sacrament of the Eucharist. From this idea developed figurative language that associated the temple curtain with the flesh of Christ, resulting in the increased pictorial presentation, in early medieval art, of the curtain motif in depictions of the Incarnation and of the Virgin. The metaphorical fusion of the curtain and Christ’s body crystallized in Western thought during the eleventh century.
Indeed, the curtain-flesh trope appeared frequently in the Ottonian period, even outside exegetical commentary. In her poem on Mary, the nun Hrotsvit, for example, referred to Christ’s Incarnation as the covering of his divine nature with a veil of human form. The picture of the Baptism in the Bernward Gospels (fol. 174v; plate 15) presents the same idea in a painting. Standing to each side of Christ, two angels hold open a white curtain with a gold border. Its color and V-pattern closely resemble the shading of Christ’s body, thus visually linking the two. By means of this association, the curtain becomes not only the portal and conduit to the sacred but also, and at the same time, a metaphorical membrane in which the divine manifests its presence.
A peculiar detail emphasizes the extent to which their nature—as both portals and membranes in the mode of Christ’s incarnate and sacramental body—informs the selection of the objects reproduced in the dedicatory painting, the manner of these works’ depiction, and their resulting symbolic power. On the left folio, the church in which Bernward stands includes two central rows of windows. The lower one, at the clerestory level, is painted gold and silver; it reads as part of the metallic patterning that repeats over the surface of the page. These windows appear impermeable to the eye.
In contrast, the representation of the three windows in the gable suggest a sense of transparency. Lines around the central window frame its arch. These begin at the top of the window and split along a vertical part into two groups of parallel lines that curl around the window, creating a pattern that resembles hair and suggestively conjures the impression of a face in the window (fig. 9).58 There is only scattered evidence for the presence of historiated windows in Germany in the Carolingian and Ottonian period.59 Although archeological research indicates the presence of fragments of colored glass in Europe since at least the sixth century, it remains difficult to reconstruct what such fragments originally depicted.60 Extant eleventh-century glass panels that may have portrayed a figure offer only inconclusive evidence.61 In Germany, two late eleventh-century roundels from Lorsch and Wissenbourg have been restored. Each portrays a bearded man, but other reconstructed details in the windows are disputed, so that identifying the subjects of these panels remains a contentious issue.62
Despite the lack of material evidence, however, numerous medieval texts associate Christ with glass and suggest that the hair around the painted window may be intended to visualize metaphors that compare the passage of light through a window to the Incarnation. Two sermons that were attributed to Augustine in the Middle Ages popularized this trope.63 The concept’s importance in fashioning eleventh-century discourse about the Incarnation is attested to by its appearance in a German vernacular poem by the end of that century. A verse addressed to the Virgin summarizes the metaphor: “Since you gave birth to the Child, you were wholly stronger and virgin from the companionship of man. If this seems impossible, consider glass, to which you are similar. The sunlight appears through the glass; it is twinkling and stronger than it was before; through the blinking glass it enters the house dispelling darkness. You are the blinking glass through which comes the light, which takes the darkness from the world. From you shines the light of God in all lands.”64 In this passage, the poet associates the window with the Virgin’s body, while the light that shines through the glass is Christ. When these lines are considered against all the other textual and pictorial references to the Incarnation in the bifolium, it becomes highly probable that the window framed by hair pictorially renders Christ’s Incarnation in matter.
On the one hand, to the extent that the glass serves as the material support that gives visible shape to the divine light, the window, like both the curtain and reliquary statue of the Virgin, contains and transmits the sacred. On the other hand, the glass acts also in the reverse direction, like doors, as a mediating portal between Bernward’s church and the divine. The two rows of windows—one a transparent membrane that models the Incarnation, and the other reflective, and blocking—in effect resemble the works reproduced on the right folio (doors, curtain, statue) in their capacity to be either active/open/revealing or still/closed/concealing. These both evoke actual works of art from Hildesheim and share the same symbolic power to mediate the sacred via a process allegorically related to Christ’s Incarnation.
A series of objects with similar characteristics appears on the left folio, primarily around the altar. The most easily identifiable works are the five golden candleholders with a triangular base and silver knobs that surround the altar. They reflect the shape and material of a pair of candlesticks that were discovered in Bernward’s tomb in the twelfth century and bear an inscription naming the bishop.65 Drawn more generically, as types, the chalice, paten, portable altar, and various textiles on the left folio offer more conventional depictions of common ecclesiastical objects. Yet these too may index products of Bernward’s patronage. According to his biographers, Bernward donated several chalices and patens to Saint Michael’s.66 Additionally, a portable altar from the cathedral treasury is connected by figural style and iconography to the Bernward Gospels.67 Where the golden