Review: Memory and Redemption: Public Monuments and the Making of Late Medieval Landscape, by Achim Timmermann

Abstract

Achim Timmermann Memory and Redemption: Public Monuments and the Making of Late Medieval Landscape Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2017, 443 pp., 50 color and 335 b/w illus. $125 (paper), ISBN 9782503546520 Achim Timmermann's Memory and Redemption is a beautifully produced book that deals with a neglected but important aspect of the medieval built environment. Timmermann has located and analyzed a wonderful range of public monuments in German-speaking lands across the Middle Ages. These monuments appear in many forms (as market crosses, cemetery lanterns, wayside crosses, and boundary markers, among others) and in many places, including cities and towns, monasteries and convents, forests and fields. The “monumental” in medieval art is still most often associated with either buildings or more grandiose sculpture and tomb art, but Timmermann finds evidence of monuments everywhere across the late medieval landscape and, in so doing, reveals landscapes saturated by different forms of memory. Indeed, in addition to providing a valuable resource on the monuments themselves, this book makes an excellent contribution to the study of medieval remembrance in general. Timmermann's understanding of what exactly constitutes a “public” monument is fairly capacious and rests on the visibility of these landmarks. The term monument is carefully chosen to draw attention to the mnemonic and communicative functions of these sites. These are monuments that asked passersby to ponder on the civic, the sacred, the historical, and the territorial, reminding them of both immediate and eternal concerns. The chronological span of the book is from around 1200 until the Protestant Reformation, although further material from earlier and later periods bookends this time frame. The book is divided into four substantial chapters, along with a short introduction, bibliography, list of illustrations, index, and appendix of color plates. Black-and-white photographs are …