Introduction

Summary

This book explores seminal moments in the biography of a contested medieval monument between ca. 500 CE and 1600 CE. Justinian’s triumphal column was the tallest, freestanding column of the pre-modern world and was crowned by the largest metal, equestrian sculpture created anywhere in the world before 1699. This book demonstrates that the colossal, the exceptional, and the stationary can contribute to our understanding of a global middle ages. The monument’s reach was as wide as possible for any stationary object. In order to explore the monument’s changing discursive signification across centuries and cultures, I draw upon anthropological approaches. These analyze an object’s changing valuations within a broader cultural and societal framework from the moment of its creation to the end of its existence. Any moment of substantial human engagement with an object can define a period in its biography. This study is also devoted to the horseman’s agency. Although it may seem peculiar that an inanimate object could possess agency, both medieval observers and modern anthropological studies of material culture urge us to take this notion seriously. Medieval observers fervently believed that the horseman acted.