Iconology and the Logic of Belief. A Case Study of Anselm’s Chapel in Canterbury

Abstract

Starting from the practical problem that identifying objects and narratives in text (the levels of description and iconography) often depends on our understanding of higher-level contexts (the level of culture or iconology), I suggest a way to calibrate lower-level analysis to higher-level without circularity or arbitrary top-down hunches. The theoretical framework is that of propositional attitudes, mental states accompanying the entertaining of thought contents, which determine just how actors regard the lower-level perceptual data that interests us. I examine this tool in a classic eleventh-century text, the proof of God’s existence in Anselm’s Proslogion, then apply it to an iconographically distinctive fresco in Anselm’s memorial chapel at Canterbury. Finally I suggest that paying attention to rational psychology, in the sense of attitude to thought content, can make art historical ascent from formal to cultural facts more reliable, and aptly underline its fallibility.