It was the fourth church to be built on the site on Ludgate Hill and the presence of the shrine of St. Erkenwald made the church a pilgrimage site in medieval times.
Stained Glass: Radiant Art
April 21, 2014 By
Readers are treated to an overview of medieval stained glass as an art medium, an academic topic of study, and as a prized portion of the collection of the Getty.
The Place of the Organ in the Medieval Parish Church
April 18, 2014 By
A list of eight hundred existing parish churches with a priori evidence of organs has been drawn up, forming the basis for exploration of medieval churches for physical evidence of liturgical musical arrangements, including organs.
The Augustinian Canons in England and Wales: Architecture, Archaeology and Liturgy 1100-1540
April 12, 2014 By
The Augustinian canons remain very much the Cinderellas of British medieval monastic history.
Living stones : the practice of remembrance at Lincoln Cathedral, (1092-1235)
March 29, 2014 By
This thesis analyses four different aspects of devotional life at one of England’s largest and wealthiest medieval cathedrals between the years 1092 and 1235.
Badia Burning: The Spectacle of Violence in 14th-century Tuscany
March 17, 2014 By
The theme of this paper is the use of ecclesiastical properties as sites of theatrical violence, and violence as a major element in the complex discourse between powerful rural lords and the Florentine commune.
Movement Through Stillness: Imagined Pilgrimage in Medieval Europe
March 16, 2014 By
This paper examines the phenomenon of ‘spiritual’ or ‘imagined’ pilgrimage in Medieval Europe.
Sickness in the Nidaros Cathedral?
March 14, 2014 By
Up towards the ceiling vault of the Nidaros Cathedral, a number of artworks are hidden from public view. Many of the stone sculptures portray mythological animals and other scary creatures. In such company, one would imagine that human faces were also intended to evoke fear and anguish. Do they depict people with diseases?
The Salisbury Spire Scaffold Debate
March 13, 2014 By
Rising 168 feet (51 m) from the main crossing tower to a height of 404 feet (123 m) above ground level, the spire of Salisbury Cathedral, the tallest stone spire in England
Comforting sentences from the warming room at Inchcolm abbey
February 3, 2014 By
Inchcolm abbey has the best-preserved medieval conventual buildings
in Scotland.
Medieval Thought and its Architectural Expression
February 2, 2014 By
This dissertation will study the correlation and influences between a series of underlying beliefs and how these find expression in the architecture and setting of place.
Byzantine Church and Mosaic discovered in Israel
January 27, 2014 By
Archaeologists working for the Israel Antiquities Authority have uncovered the remains of a 1500 year old Byzantine church south of Tel Aviv. It includes a large mosaic and inscriptions in Greek.
Florence Cathedral: The Design Stage
January 25, 2014 By
No list of the outstanding Gothic monuments of Europe could fail to include the Cathedral of Florence, yet its place in medieval architecture remains anomalous. Anomalous above all is its unprecedented design, which integrates a rib-vaulted basilica, a domed octagon, and a triconch of fifteen extruded chapels.
Under the aegis of the saints. Hagiography and power in early Carolingian northern Italy
January 22, 2014 By
This article gives an overview of the features, choices, tastes and models of sanctity characteristic of Italian hagiography, against the background of local contexts and political competition.
Basan and Bata: The Occupational Surnames of Two Pre-Conquest Monks of Canterbury
January 22, 2014 By
As hereditary surnames were not common in Anglo-Saxon England, men of the same name were differentiated by sobriquets based on their place of origin, a physical characteristic or occupation. This article argues that Eadui Basan and Aelfric Bata, two eleventh-century monks of Christ Church, had sobriquets, in Latin of fashionable obscurity, that reflected their occupations within the monastic community.
Manuel II Palaeologus in Paris (1400-1402): Theology, Diplomacy, and Politics
January 20, 2014 By
The end of the fourteenth century found the Byzantine Empire in a critical state.
Late medieval choir stalls and the search for their maker
January 17, 2014 By
Christel Theunissen, a graduate student at Radboud University, has created this video introducing the research she is doing on medieval choir stalls.
Experience and Meaning in the Cathedral Labyrinth Pilgrimage
January 15, 2014 By
A medieval design based in Sacred Geometry principles, this unicursal path through concentric circles is a metaphorical container for spiritualjourneying.
The Riurikid Relationship with the Orthodox Christian Church in Kievan Rus
December 29, 2013 By
Prior to the late tenth century, the princes of the Riurikid dynasty were rulers over the loose collection of pagan Slavic tribes and minor city states that were Kievan Rus. However, in a relatively short period, the dynasty had linked itself and its legitimacy to rule to the Orthodox Christian Church centered in Constantinople.
Christ in Motion: Portable Objects and Scenographic Environments in the Liturgy of Medieval Bohemia
December 5, 2013 By
It accordingly seems clear, from many preserved accounts, that by the end of the fifteenth century the rubric of the Church of Prague was no longer the same and that progressive versions contained different layers of alteration to the performance practice of Palm Sunday ritual.
Projecting Power in Sixth-Century Rome: The church of Santi Cosma e Damiano in the late antique Forum Romanum
December 4, 2013 By
In the year 526 CE, the bishop of Rome, Pope Felix IV, petitioned the Ostrogoth king Theoderic for permission to convert a small complex in the Forum Romanum into a place of worship dedicated to the Saints Cosmas and Damian…This paper critiques traditional interpretations of this church—its physical location and its apse mosaic—in light of new research that nuances our understanding of the historical context in which it was commissioned.
Mundane Uses of Sacred Places in the Central and Later Middle Ages, with a Focus on Chartres Cathedral
December 2, 2013 By
Although technically reserved for worship, church buildings were put to numerous non-devotional uses in the Middle Ages, raising the question just how set apart from daily life medieval churches were.
The Charlemagne Window at Chartres Cathedral: New Considerations on Text and Image
November 24, 2013 By
The Charlemagne Window, justly considered one of the most beautiful of the history windows of Chartres Cathedral, is located in the northeastern intermediate radial chapel and can probably be dated to about 1225.
The Contractors of Chartres Revisited
November 20, 2013 By
The Contractors of Chartres Revisited Chris Henige Paper given at: The Masons at Work Conference (2012) Abstract Some thirty-five years ago, architect and architectural historian John James published an in-depth study of the cathedral at Chartres entitled The Contractors of Chartres. Five years later he summarized his conclusions in The Master Masons of Chartres, in […]
St. Augustine’s Tower – Hackney, London
November 19, 2013 By
My trip to St. Augustine’s Tower in Hackney, London.
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