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Annual Riggsby Lecture on Medieval Mediterranean History and Culture

2025 Riggsby Lecture: Bissera V. Pentcheva (Stanford), “Icons of Sound: Chant & Recitation in Hagia Sofia”

What is an image? In Western culture we associate it with representation–the mimetic image– where the portrait is in a different ontology (essence) from the sitter: paint on canvas versus the actual person. Byzantium in the interior of its Great Church – Hagia Sophia – produced a totally different understanding of image: the methexic icon. The methexic image partakes in the essence of the prototype. In this case, the essence is divine breath that inspirits matter and makes it alive. In Genesis 2:6 Adam becomes a methexic icon of God (eikōn tou Theou in Greek, imago Dei in Latin), when the Lord breathes in him, transforming his inert body made out of clay into a living being.
 
The interior of Hagia Sophia with its immense volume and reflective surfaces of marble and gold mosaics produces extremely reverberant acoustics. Chant and recitation mobilize this wet sound to draw attention to breath and inspiriting which engenders methexic iconicity. This talk will explore two main manifestations of the methexic eikon tou Theou: the first focuses on the interaction of sound and light in the interior. The second explores how the melodic design of the chants and the structure of recitations make the reverberation the focus of perception. Here the emphasis will be on the use of melismas (singing many notes to a syllable) in the liturgical chants and the integration of long pauses in the recitation of the Gospel texts that together draw attention to reverberation: the gradual dissipation of residual sonic energy below the threshold of human audibility.
Bissera V. Pentcheva is the Victoria & Roger Sant Professor in Art at Stanford University. Her innovative work on acoustics, art, and music has redefined the field of Byzantine architecture and is now expanding into Western medieval art. Her work is informed by anthropology, music, and phenomenology, placing the attention on the changing appearance of objects and architectural spaces. She has published extensively on these subjects, and her 2017 book, Hagia Sophia: Sound, Space and Spirit in Byzantium, received the 2018 American Academy of Religion Award for excellence in historical studies.

About the Riggsby Lecture:

Photo of a man sitting in a red auditorium seat

Thanks to the generous support of donors Stuart and Kate Riggsby, the Marco Institute was able to establish the annual Riggsby Lecture in 2004. This lecture series brings a prestigious scholar of the medieval Mediterranean to the University of Tennessee campus every fall to give a public talk on a medieval Mediterranean topic of the speaker’s choosing. We are grateful to the Riggsbys to have been able to host the following distinguished academics in past years.

2024

Anthony Kaldellis

“Constantinople 1453: Romans, Latins, and Turks at the End of the Middle Ages”

2023

Suzanne Conklin Akbari

“Byzantine Purple, Purple Wampum: Mediterranean Studies on Turtle Island”

2022 Event poster

Monica H. Green

“A Mediterranean Divide: Christian versus Islamic Experiences of the Black Death”

Watch Online: https://youtu.be/MbV9vCthlas

2021Event poster

Marina Rustow

“The India Trade, the Global Middle Ages, and the Cairo Geniza”

Publicity for Samantha Kelly's 2020 Riggsby Lecture2020

Samantha Kelly

“The Other Christians of the Late Medieval Mediterranean: Ethiopian Settlement and Exchange with Latin Europe, c. 1200 – c. 1550”

Poster for Maureen Miller's 2019 Riggsby Lecture

2019

Maureen Miller

“Medieval Italy’s Bishops: A Mediterranean Episcopate in its European Context, c. 1050-1300”

Event poster2018

Hussein Fancy

Associate Professor of History, Univ. of Michigan

“The Impostor Sea: The Making of the Medieval Mediterranean”

2017

Event posterNuria Silleras-Fernandez

Associate Professor of Spanish and Portuguese, University of Colorado – Boulder

“The Crown of Aragon and the Mediterranean: Politics, Gender, and Culture”

2016

Event posterKarla Mallette

Professor of Italian and Near-Eastern Studies, University of Michigan

“Cosmopolitan Languages, Lingua Franca, and Linguistic Frontiers in the Medieval Mediterranean”

2015
Event poster

Paul M. Cobb

Professor of Medieval Islamic History, University of Pennsylvania

“Charlemagne’s Muslim Elephant: Kingship, Nature, and Monotheism in the Early Middle Ages”
Click Here to watch the simulcast on November 5 @ 5:30p

2014

Event posterJonathan P. Phillips

Professor of History, Royal Holloway, University of London

“Saladin: Life and Legend”

2013

Catherine Brown

University of Michigan

“Traveling Hands: Mobile Manuscript in the Early Medieval Mediterranean”

2012

Amy Remensnyder

Brown University

“La Conquistadora: A Tale of Two Seas, the Virgin Mary, Muslims, Christians, Jews, and Indians”

2011

Paul H. Freedman

Chester D. Tripp Professor of History, Yale University

“A Phantom Spanish Archive: The Past Slips Through Our Fingers”

2010

Cynthia Robinson

Cornell University

“Who’s that Girl?: Cross-cultural Narrative, Mysticism and the Lady on the Alhambra Ceilings”

2009

Sharon Kinoshita

University of California, Santa Cruz

“How To Do Things in the Medieval Mediterranean”

2008

Michelle Hamilton

University of California, Irvine

“The Fall of ‘Spain’: The Problem of Muslims in Medieval Iberia”

2007

Joel Cohen

Director, Boston Camerata

“Music of the Three Religions in Medieval Spain”

2006

Timothy Barnes

University of Toronto

“What is the Theodosian Code?”

2005

David Nirenberg

Johns Hopkins University“King Alfonso VIII and the Jewess of Toledo: A Love Story”

2004

Olivia Remie Constable

University of Notre Dame

“A Game for Everybody: Chess and Society at the Court of Alfonso X of Castile”