University experience in the 1420s resulted in two nervous breakdowns. No document attests to Alberti’s having been graduated; records are lost, rendering precise knowledge of curricula impossible. Ironically, the university’s primary endowment would be his discontent. Subsequent movement is speculation. Nonetheless, after honing rhetoric and optics – begun in Padua – Alberti finished the play Philodoxeos fabula and his confessional De commodis litterarum atque incommodis – both germane to the pursuit of glory. Visual art exposure evolved with antique motifs of Nicola Pisano and Jacopo della Quercia. Employed by Cardinal Niccol Albergati, Alberti would thence travel to northern Europe and confront the pictorial-architectural innovation there, further impacting prescriptions in De pictura.

The Epilogue identifies classical masculinity as reflected in depictions of late antique clothing,liturgy in Carolingian monasteries, and miniature illustrations in middle-Byzantine manuscripts. Fifth-century clergy wore specific apparel to signify manhood. Benedictine lectors (readers) were selected according to their virility of voice. And Byzantine artists set clergy face to face in manuscripts, in part a legacy of the agōn trope of reciprocal strength. These examples show that elements of classical masculinity continued to inform the Christian church in western Europe and Byzantium into the eleventh century. Such representations continued to evoke power and authority within the hierarchy of the church.Like fourth-century agōn rhetoric, these trappings of classical manhood provided a language of hierarchy for church leaders to integrate into a faith that lacked comparable platforms for displays of social and spiritual distinction.

This chapter addresses how the Crusades spurred a renewed appropriation of Alexander in historiography, literature, images and cartography in late medieval Europe. Alexander’s legend was particularly relevant because it reflected the era’s geopolitical and epistemological complexity. The chapter focuses first on the ancient Alexander legend’s adaptation in Crusade-era texts including Crusade chronicles, epics, antique romances and encyclopedias. These works compare Alexander to Crusaders, present Alexander as a precursor of the Crusaders who fights Asian tyranny, interpolate Alexander into the stories of Crusaders through ekphrasis, and frequently cite the legend of Alexander’s enclosure of Gog and Magog. The chapter’s second part focuses on how manuscripts present Alexander as a proto-Crusader even if texts do not overtly describe him as such. Particular attention is paid to compilations that join Alexander and holy warriors (Judas Maccabeus, Godfrey of Bouillon), and to images that Christianise Alexander or demonise his foes. The final section examines the influence of Alexander’s legend on the apocalyptic geography of late medieval maps, which often depict Gog and Magog and other elements (toponyms, sites, monstrous peoples) of the Alexander tradition.

This chapter explores the development and purpose of the illustrations in two manuscripts of Hildegard of Bingen’s works: one designed by Hildegard (the Rupertsberg Scivias), the other designed by a later generation of her monastery’s nuns (the Lucca Liber divinorum operum). An overview of her visionary experiences demonstrates the prophetic mission of their detailed images to communicate theological truths. The author argues that Hildegard designed the Scivias images to aid that communication and provide visual exegesis of her visions, serving as a teaching tool to guide the reader through the manuscript. The next generation of nuns followed Hildegard’s impulse to illustrate her visions with the later Liber divinorum operum manuscript, but its famous cosmological diagram diverges from the text because the designer did not understand its meaning. The chapter closes with an assessment of the very limited influence of Hildegard’s illustrations in the later Middle Ages, with one story from the preaching of Johannes Tauler demonstrating their liability to reinterpretation.