Convivium

Examining ritual uses of scent in early Islamic sacred spaces, this article highlights the olfactory aspects of a set of columns and stones in Mecca and Medina that commemorated places where the Prophet Muḥammad was said to have performed ritual prayer. Several such locations of the Prophet’s prayers became memorialized sites of visitation and ritualization over the course of the seventh to ninth centuries ce. At a number of these sites, perfume was applied to parts of the buildings, apparently to mark them as spaces associated with the memory of the Prophet’s presence and, thereby, to highlight them as worthy of veneration. At the same time, contestation also emerged regarding the application of scent to these spaces, perhaps resulting from the complex and contradictory valences of perfume in the early Islamic sensorium.

The blue skin of the prominent Buddhist nun Utpalavarņā in paintings from medieval India references more than a simple translation of her name, “She Who is the Color (vara) of the Blue Lotus (utpala).” Sanskrit sources explain that her name refers to the color of the golden pollen-bearing anther, not the utpala’s blue petals, and that her skin miraculously exuded the fl ower’s fragrance. The blue of her skin in images, therefore, may have served as a visual suggestion of her fragrance rather than her skin color. The depictions, however, also project a pejorative interpretation of her character. Her blue body is the focus of one of the eight great events in the life of the Buddha, in which he rebuked her for using magic so that she could be the fi rst to greet him upon his descent from heaven. Visually arresting, images of the blue nun convey warnings about the seduction of fragrance, magic, and insubordinate nuns who must be tamed and controlled. Keywords / Buddhist art, Buddhist monasticism, Buddhist narrative, Buddhist nuns, medieval India, Nālandā, palm-leaf manuscript, Pāla manuscripts, Prajñāpāramitā, Utpalavarṇā.

The Freudenstadt lectern (1130–1150) is characterized by an extraordinary interaction of visual, olfactory, and auditory elements. After deciphering the allegorical and aesthetic meanings of the colors assigned to the Evangelists through polychromy, this study proposes, first, that transformative processes play a central, conceptual role, because they produce perceivable but ephemeral signals – flashing light reflections, dissolving scent of burnt herbs, fading sound of speech – that achieve soul-elevating effects. Together, these effects create a transcendent, remembered experience. The study’s second part, taking into consideration theological, encyclopaedical, and medical texts, suggests that medieval concepts of the harmony of the divine cosmos, its forces, and its impact on senses and perception are a connecting link that led to the lectern’s design. The lectern thus counteracts the instability of the senses by guiding them to the permanent macrocosm, making what is physically and fleetingly sensed comprehensible and enduringly memorable.

In the sensorium of the late Byzantine Divine Liturgy – the Orthodox Christian church service, which featured a riot of sights and sounds – scent played a key role. By the thirteenth century, lay involvement in the liturgy had diminished drastically from that of earlier centuries. With limited ways of accessing the divine, worshippers might still participate through smell as they inhaled the perfumed smoke that wafted throughout the sacred space. Drawing on incense and incense burners’ metaphorical associations, practical uses, and physical properties, this essay explores scent as an alternate means of sanctification for the laity at church in late Byzantium.

The illustrated Haggadah, the liturgical manuscript used during the Seder on the fi rst nights of Passover, emerged in thirteenth-century Europe and quickly became a conduit for expressing Jewish identity. This study focuses on the use of sensorial cues within the Golden Haggadah (London, British Library, MS 27210) to evoke responses related to personal and collective memory. These memories, of Seders past, of the persecution that Israelites endured under the pharaohs of ancient Egypt and under the Christians of medieval Europe, show how the manuscript cognitively and sensorially engaged its beholders. This study introduces questions of materiality and perception to consider how the Haggadah prompted Seder participants to experience intimately the Exodus narrative and how the senses – especially smell – were invoked by the narrative, the images, and the lived experiences of the beholders interacting with the codex. From poems referencing the incense of the Temple to images like Jacob’s betrayal of Esau to the very smell of the manuscript itself, olfaction became a consistent part of the Seder. Rabbinic writings contemporaneous to the Golden Haggadah’s creation further reveal the importance attributed to the sense of smell in the medieval period.