Moving and Smelling Micro-Architecture: Medieval Censers East and West

Medieval buildings were necessarily concerned with the creation of meaning in an epoch of movement and change. But buildings are static by necessity, even micro-architecture, such as reliquaries, fonts, pulpits, and tombs, which was widespread during the Middle Ages. Only a specific object of medieval micro-architecture – the censer – is an exception to the rule: made of metal, usually bronze, with a bowl for the incense, a dome-like cover or a series of symmetrical gables and towers, and five chains, it embodies a sort of paradox. We will argue that the censer offered a solution to one of the intrinsic problems of architecture – stillness – by alternating moments of rest with a variety of movements in the void, while smoldering incense also transformed its form, thanks to the structural treatment of ornament. Through this object, operating under conditions of motion and lighting that obtained during the performance of sacred ceremonies in specific spaces and over time, we will be able to historically appreciate spatial identity through metamorphosis; the interplay between stillness and movement; contemplation and dynamic observation; the enactment of symbolic meanings, even in the absence of figural elements; and, finally, how the sensory and affective powers exercised by a work of micro-architecture during a liturgical performance could convey meaning in ways distinct from, but no less powerful or important than, the significance of iconography and the symbolism of materials.