| Abstrakt: |
Architectural historians, focused on whether form or meaning had primacy in the medieval “copy,” have debated the significance and value of Letaldus of Micy’s statement that Theodulf’s oratory at Germigny-des-Prés was “manifestly in the likeness” of Aachen, as Germigny-des-Prés bore little formal resemblance to Charlemagne’s famous chapel. Letaldus’s quote, however, has been divorced from its textual and historical contexts. Considered as part of his tenth-century Miracula Sancti Maximini and the circumstances of its production, Letaldus’s association of the ninth-century buildings confirms Richard Krautheimer’s well-known assertion that meaning was primary in medieval notions of likeness, voicing an image of a Carolingian past remembered in light of fierce present struggles within the monastic world of the Orléanais. Indeed, rather than answering the question of whether Germigny-des-Prés was built as a “copy” of Aachen, Letaldus’s quote raises the issue of how buildings’ complex, layered, and transforming meanings are rooted in time and place. |
