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Nino Zchomelidse Art, Ritual, and Civic Identity in Southern Italy

In her book Art, Ritual, and Civic Identity in Southern Italy Nino Zchomelidse investigates different aspects of the Easter rite and its liturgical furnishings in South Italy, particularly “the different modes of interaction” (4) and when they are “set in motion” (7). Zchomelidse brings a highly interdisciplinary approach to this study, additionally taking in the functional change of ambos, Easter candelabra, and Exultet rolls from the tenth to fourteenth centuries. Hence, she covers a region that is acutely ethno-culturally and religiously diverse, and a time frame characterized by constant political and social change. The focus is on the regions of Campania and Latium, thus bringing to the fore the churches and cathedrals in urban centers like Ravello, Salerno, Naples, Capua, Sessa Aurunca, and Gaeta, which, notwithstanding the political transitions, consistently preserved stable civic structures. Zchomelidse begins by listing a number of features of southern liturgical ensembles, which she sees as fixed firmly in the Lombard tradition and the practice of the Beneventan rite. First, she describes the two-stair ambo, its placement in the nave, and its use as a liturgical stage, the formal and functional origin of which she traces back to the beginnings of Christianity; second, she covers the two scenes from the Book of Jonah on the panels on either side of the ambo’s platform (cf. the Rogadeo pulpit in S. Giovanni del Toro, Ravello); and third, she brings in the emergence, imagery, and inherent performative potential of the illustrated south Italian Exultet roll. The author maintains that these three components interact with the physical configuration and signification of the ambo, creating a niche, as the tomb of Christ. They are theologically charged objects, designed for the moment during the Easter liturgy in which the Resurrection of Christ is reenacted. Zchomelidse then argues that formal and functional changes of the respective ensembles were prompted by liturgical reforms emanating from Rome, which aimed to replace the Beneventan with the Roman rite. Allegedly, the Normans and the Abbey of Montecassino were the Reform papacy’s foremost political and spiritual agents for