Place and surface

Abstract

When Jan left Anselm planned a broader representation of Jerusalem, trying to combine the particulars of the first chapel, founded by his father, with the knowledge he had acquired while traveling. Christian culture imagined the Holy Land as a multimedia embodiment of the Old and New Testaments, or a "Memnotop" of salvation history. When describing his visit to the site of the crucifixion in Jerusalem, Jan Adornes referred to the original Mount of Golgotha as "a small hill of living stone of white color mixed with red veins, naturally elevated". The Bruges Calvary created modes of "metonymic rather than metaphoric" perception by staging material as a trace of the passion, mediating the power of its place. As a main paradigm of Holy Land veneration, stones and other materials were thought to have "absorbed" the power of the holy sites, and collecting them was a primary way to maintain the grace of physical connection.