Preliminary communication
https://doi.org/10.21857/m3v76tz0wy
Ritual of the Deditio on the Relief Depicting a Croatian Ruler
Robert Kurelić
orcid.org/0000-0002-6908-1158
; Department of History, Faculty of Philosophy in Pula, Pula, Croatia
Abstract
There are still a lot of unsolved questions regarding the relief depicting a Croatian ruler in the Baptistery of St. John the Baptist in Split. There is no consensus as to whether it depicts Christ or a ruler, and in the latter case, who the depicted ruler might be. The author accepts the hypothesis that this is a matter of one of two eleventh-century Croatian rulers, Peter Krešimir IV or Zvonimir, and proposes an explanation of the content of the relief as a depiction of the medieval ritual of submission, deditio, which served as means of re-obtaining the ruler’s mercy and the return of rebellious vassals to his grace, and through that also their reestablishment within the hierarchy of power.
Rituals and symbolic communication played an important role in creating and maintaining the ruling hierarchy. By means of public, carefully planned and theatrically staged ceremonies, such as crowning, knighting or funerals, a sense of unity was demonstrated and traditional order was reaffirmed in the presence of the political public. In this respect, it is essential to stress the point that medieval power had an explicitly consensual character, and rulers carried out their will with the consent and support of their magnates, which demanded constant interaction.
The concept of feud, or Fehde, as an acceptable means of exercising rights and achieving satisfaction, allowed a vassal to engage in a military confrontation with his superiors, including the ruler himself. Any break in their interaction also meant the exclusion of the vassal from royal favour and political life, which posed a threat to the stability of the state. In order to renew symbolic harmony and achieve a return to royal favour, the ritual of the deditio was created; this was beneficial for the stability of the Empire, from the Frankish period up to Canossa. Henry II introduced innovations through which the deditio was connected with the ruler’s judicial power, and in that way built it into the foundations of his ruling propaganda. It is probable that Henry II, through the agency of Monte Cassino, to which he donated his Gospel Book with a depiction of a deditio, influenced the transfer of iconographic form, which is then depicted on the aforementioned relief of the Croatian ruler.
Keywords
symbolic communication; deditio; rituals of reconciliation; ruling propaganda; iconography; Peter Krešimir IV; Demetrius Zvonimir
Hrčak ID:
179579
URI
Publication date:
30.12.2016.
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