Creations: Medieval Rituals, the Arts, and the Concept of Creation

The meaning of terms like 'creation' or 'to create' - as well as other derivations of such words - range from the traditional theological idea of God creating ex nihilo to a more recent one of artistic creation. This collection of essays written by scholars of music, literature, the visual arts, and theology - which chronologically spans the period from the Carolingians to the twentieth century - explores the complicated relationship between medieval rituals and theology, and the development of an idea of human artistic creation. From the fifteenth century this idea comes to the fore and as late as the early nineteenth century it is occasionally used with reference to Pythagorean cosmology. It may also be directly connected to a medieval ritual heritage. Each study in the volume examines a particular topic concerned with ritual or artistic beginnings, inventions, harmony, disharmony, or representations or celebrations of creation, involving, not least, the interplay of the ideas of God the creator, God as being actively present in the medieval liturgy, God as artist, deus artifex, and, finally, homo creator, man reflecting God in his own (more modest) creativity. The book provides new contributions from the individual scholarly disciplines as well as an impulse to a complex interdisciplinary and large-scale historical construction