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A Medieval Harness-Mount at Termoli
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 January 2012
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Termoli is a small city of the Molise, on the Adriatic coast of Italy just above the junction of the ‘spur’ of Gargano with the main coastline. Like the whole of the lower Molise, it had in the middle ages a troubled history, always in dispute between the duchies of Benevento and Spoleto and the successive masters of Apulia, and on at least two occasions the victim of disastrous sack, at the hands of the Venetians in combat with Frederic II and in 1566 at the hands of the Turkish fleet under Ali Pasha. In 1943 it re-emerged characteristically into history as the scene of a successful flank-landing by the Eighth Army. Its most notable monuments are the remains of the castle built by Frederic II and the cathedral church of S. Basso, built under the same monarch and the most northerly outlier of the northern branch of the great Apulian school of Romanesque architecture. The façade, with its elaborate scheme of recessed arcading, derives directly from that of the Collegiata at Foggia, with which it shares the unusual characteristic of the use of a pronounced horseshoe arch. Within have recently been exposed the remains of the pre-Romanesque church and fragments of a mosaic pavement in the style of those at Otranto and Trani.
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- Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1949
References
page 1 note 1 So L. Bertaux, L'Art dans l'Italie méridionale, i, 645–7. Miss E. M. Jamison points out to me, however, that an inscription on one of the capitals of the main door records Grimoald of Ravello, a judge, whose signature appears on a document relating to Ravellese citizens at Termoli as early as 1153 (Camera, M., Memorie storhhe-diplomatiche dell’ antica Città e Ducato di Amalfi, Salerno, 1876, vol. i, p. 361).Google Scholar
page 1 note 2 Bertaux, op. cit. 488 f.
page 1 note 3 In preparing this article the writer has availed himself of the advice and help of Miss E. M. Jamison; of Dr. U. Chierici, Superintendent of Monuments and Galleries for the Abruzzi and Molise; of Professor Sergio Ortolani; of Professor W. F. Stohlman; and of Mr. Francis Wormald. To the Bishop and Chapter of Vasto thanks are due for permitting the publication of this reliquary.
page 3 note 1 London Museum Medieval Catalogue, 1940, pp. 118–22.
page 3 note 2 This distortion, visible in pl. 1a, has for the sake of clarity been eliminated in the scale-drawing, fig. 2.
page 3 note 3 Previously illustrated in British Museum, Guide to the Medieval Room, 1907, fig. 54; Proc. Dorset Field Club, xxxii, 1911, 226–38, fig. 12.
page 5 note 1 British Museum Guide to Medieval Antiquities, 1924, fig. 3. Proc. Dorset Field Club, xxxii, 1911, 226–38Google Scholar, fig. 12.
page 5 note 2 O. v. Falke, ‘Reiteraquamanilen’, Pantheon, i, 246–52; also Antiq. Journ. xix, 1939, 300–2.
page 5 note 3 See also note on a harness-mount from Barnwood, Glos., now in Cheltenham Museum, forthcoming in Trans. Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc.
page 6 note 1 e.g. London Museum Medieval Catalogue, 1940, fig. 40, 2. Similar heraldic mounts, swivelling on a lateral loop, are not uncommon. There are examples in the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, Norwich Castle Museum, and elsewhere.
page 6 note 2 But not in Spain, where pendants of a some-what different form were in use.
page 6 note 3 Romanelli, D., Scoverte patrie di città distrutte e di altre antichità nella regione Frentana oggi Apruzzo citeriore nel Regno di Napoli, Napoli, 1805, vol. i, pp. 245Google Scholar, 247. I owe this reference to Miss E. M. Jamison.
page 7 note 1 The writer is not competent to discuss the stylistic affinities of the enamel-work. It is certainly not traditional indigenous Italian work; but, superficially at any rate, it would not seem improbable that enamels of this sort were being produced under foreign influence at the Angevin Court of Naples.
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