Аннотация:During the 1920s two well known scholars, Émile Mâle and Arthur Kingsley Porter, sparred over the advent of Romanesque sculpture on the Iberian peninsula in a quarrel that is familiar to historians of Romanesque art. Borrowing their approach from Joseph Bédier's theories about the formation of the chansons de geste, both scholars proposed that the pilgrimage to Santiago stimulated the creation of Romanesque style by carrying a free flow of artists, architects, and artistic ideas from one region to the next. The date and national origin of the artists who created the Romanesque style were the main points of contention. Both men created the impression of a homogeneous art and architecture formed by an artistic cross-pollination, which occurred without regard for indigenous cultural forms, ethnic identity, regional boundaries, or geographic obstacles. Once hypothesized, however, this politically neutral international Romanesque style was deployed in line with the various agendas of the authors. This paper explores the personal, methodological, and ideological convictions that shaped Porter's and Mâle's scholarly views of the pilgrimage roads as a site of exceptional creativity. Their scholarship, I contend, reveals as much about them and their ethos as it does about the middle ages.
