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Lafayette President Dan Weiss, who is teaching an art history seminar this semester on Pilgrimage and Crusade in Medieval Art, will give a lecture on “Sacred Images, Holy Wars: The Picture Bible of Louis IX” 8 p.m. Thursday in Williams Center for the Arts room 108.
Among the most historically significant and politically successful kings of the Middle Ages, Louis IX was devoted first and foremost to the ideal of crusading to the Holy Land. The Picture Bible of Saint Louis, produced most likely for the king himself, is one of the most impressive works of art to survive from the 13th century. An artistic masterpiece, this illustrated Old Testament serves as an unprecedented resource for understanding the role of art, religion, and Crusader politics in medieval France.
A leading authority on the art of medieval Europe in the Age of the Crusades, Weiss was a professor of art history in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences at The Johns Hopkins University while serving as Krieger School dean prior to becoming Lafayette’s 16th president. A member of the Johns Hopkins faculty from 1993-2005, he served as art history department chair from 1998-2001.
Weiss is author of numerous articles and four books on the art of the Middle Ages. His published work focuses on Romanesque, Gothic, and Crusader art, as well as the interaction of Byzantine culture with the Medieval West. In 1994 he won the Van Courtlandt Elliott Prize, awarded annually by Medieval Academy of America for a first article in the field of medieval studies, becoming one of the first art historians to win that award.
His talk is part of the ninth biennial Roethke Humanities Festival. Themed “The Book Re-Visioned: Crossroads of Traditions and Technologies,” this year’s festival celebrates books and their many interpretations and permutations through exhibitions, readings, workshops, lectures, performances, and special events. The festival is named in honor of poet Theodore Roethke, who taught at Lafayette for four years in the 1930s.