‘Media’ before ‘Media’ were Invented: The Medieval Ballad and the Romanesque Church

Abstract

My principal aim is to demonstrate a special variant of the spatiotemporal modality, which I propose to call the ‘numinous mode’, a result of the interface between a sacred and a secular space, a meeting that took place in the very Romanesque church building (cf. Elleström, this volume). Understanding this mode is necessary in order to grasp how a seemingly secular art form such as the medieval ballad could be created and performed in the church, as we can see happen in a Danish church painting from around 1300: the ballad dance in the church of 0rslev (see Figure 4).