The Chalukyan Architecture of the Kanarese Districts c48.s4: Image from Amīnbhāvi
The Chālukyan Architecture of the Kanarese Districts c48.s4
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Image from Amīnbhāvi
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Fig. 43 shows a very fine slab which was found in a Jaina temple at Amīnbhāvi, a village about six miles to the north by east of Dhārwār. It represents a Digambara *jina*, nude as all their images are. Above him are twenty-one small *jinas*, which, with the two beside him, under snake hoods, and himself, make up twenty-four, the number of the *jinas* or *tīrthankaras*; but two of these are of one, Pārśvanātha, with his serpent hoods. It will be noticed that the little fat male figure, down to the right of the big image, is the same as we found occupying the shrine in the Jaina temple near the temple of Virūpāksha at Aihole.
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Fig. 43.—Jaina image from Amīnbhāvi.
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the *Gesta Romanorum*, the *Legenda Aurea*, and the *Speculum Historiale* of Vincent of Beauvais. These were the books that fed the imagination of the Middle Ages, and they were the books that the Church, in its wisdom, provided for the instruction of the faithful. They were not history in the modern sense of the word; they were moral tales, designed to illustrate the power of God and the vanity of the world.
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But even in these works, we can see the beginnings of a more critical spirit. The *Gesta Romanorum*, for instance, contains stories that are clearly derived from classical sources, and the *Legenda Aurea* is full of accounts of the lives of the saints that are based on earlier, more reliable records. The Church was not entirely indifferent to the truth; it was simply that its conception of truth was different from our own. It was a truth that was not to be found in the dusty archives of the past, but in the living experience of the present.
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It is in this context that we must understand the work of the great chroniclers of the Middle Ages, such as Matthew Paris and William of Malmesbury. They were not merely recording events; they were interpreting them in the light of the Christian faith. They saw the hand of God in every event, and they sought to show how the history of the world was, in reality, the history of the salvation of mankind.
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This, then, was the task of the historian in the Middle Ages: to show how the world was governed by the providence of God, and how the Church was the instrument through which that providence was made manifest. It was a task that required not only learning and industry, but also a deep and abiding faith. And it is for this reason that the history of the Church is, in many ways, the history of the Middle Ages themselves.