BOOK REVIEW: Pilgrim Routes of the British Isles by Emma J. Wells
What was pilgrimage like in the Middle Ages? Do modern day routes faithfully retrace the steps of long ago pilgrims? How has pilgrimage changed over the course of hundreds of years? Tourist? Pilgrim? Or both? What is the meaning of pilgrimage today?
Crusaders, Pilgrims, and Relics – Bearers of the Cross: Material Religion in the Crusading World 1095-1300
The Museum of the Order of St. John is hosting a series of events and talks to promote their project: Bearers of the Cross: Material Religion in the Crusading World 1095-1300.
What Remains: Women, Relics and Remembrance in the Aftermath of the Fourth Crusade
After the fall of Constantinople to the Latin Crusaders in 1204 hundreds of relics were carried into the West as diplomatic gifts, memorabilia and tokens of victory. Yet many relics were alsosent privately between male crusaders and their spouses and female kin.
Places to See: Sainte Chapelle
Travelling to Paris ? Add this beautiful thirteenth century Capetian chapel to your MUST-SEE list for your next visit!
BOOK REVIEW: Plague Land by SD Sykes
My review of SD Sykes brilliant medieval thriller, Plague Land.
Saints, Tradition and Monastic Identity: The Ghent Relics, 850-1100
The extraordinary story ofthe Ghent relics was first told by Oswald Holder- Egger in an article published in 1886. During his work on part two of volume 15 of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica Scriptores series, which Holder- Egger had just finished, he had come across the hagiographie literature produced at the abbeys of St Baafs and St Pieters in Ghent.
Call for Papers: Moving Women, Moving Objects (300-1500) (ICMA CAA 2015)
CFP: Moving Women, Moving Objects (300-1500) (ICMA CAA 2015)
Under the aegis of the saints. Hagiography and power in early Carolingian northern Italy
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.
“I, too, am a Christian”: early martyrs and their lives in the late medieval and early modern Irish manuscript tradition
This paper examines part of that future: late medieval and early modern Gaelic Irish devotion to the early Christian martyrs as evidenced in the vernacular manuscript tradition.
The Voices of the Saints: Speaking Reliquaries
Although they have often been considered as mere representational labels identifying the relic contained, body-part reliquaries, or what I would prefer to call shaped reliquaries, participate in a fluid exchange of signs
Relics and Reliquaries in the Vita Germani Auctore Constantio : the Capsula
It is the sporadic presence of the term capsula in the Vita Germani, and in other texts contemporary to it, which indicates its importance in the history of Christian costume as described by Constantius. In what follows, I shall demonstrate through literary comparisons and historical linguistics how such an affirmation is not, in fact, a contradiction at all.
Narratives of the saintly body in Anglo-Saxon England
This dissertation investigates narratives of the saintly body in Anglo-Saxon England. Specifically, it examines the ways in which the bodies of holy men and women were constructed through such narratives and read in local appropriations of emblematic vitae and passiones.
Literal and Symbolic: the Language of Asceticism in Two Lives of St Radegund
Since Radegund was never martyred, it is through her ascetic practice, a vicarious martyrdom, that her sanctity must be constructed. Both Fortunatus and Baudonivia treat Radegund’s ascetic practices as a means of creating the powerful body of a saint, a living relic, but the differences in the two writers’ approaches are notable.
Russian Pilgrims in Constantinople
If one compares the Russian Anthony text with the original Mercati Anonymus text, the longest and most detailed of the three extant contemporary Western descriptions of the shrines of Constantinople, one finds that the Latin text includes only twenty of the seventy-six religious shrines mentioned by the Russian enumeration.
Expressions of Power – Luxury textiles from early medieval northern Europe
This paper focuses on luxury textiles from archaeological and non-archaeological contexts in north-western Europe.
What Do Reliquaries Do for Relics?
What is really inside the reliquary?
Kissing Images, Unfurling Rolls, Measuring Wounds, Sewing Badges and Carrying Talismans: Considering Some Harley Manuscripts through the Physical Rituals they Reveal
Christianity as practised in the late Middle Ages demanded physical rituals. These rituals encompassed great public displays, such as processions around town walls and through churches, led by clergy dressed in ceremonial garb; smaller public displays, such as priests’ performances of Mass; and actions by the laity, including small private rituals involving a votary with his book and perhaps an image.
Sacred Things and Holy Bodies: Collecting Relics from Late Antiquity to the Early Renaissance
Intimately tied to concepts of wholeness, corporeal integrity, and the resurrection of the body, the collecting of bones and body parts of holy martyrs was an important aspect of the Christian cult of relics already during Antiquity
Relics, Religious Authority, and the Sanctification of Domestic Space in the Home Gregory of Tours: An Analysis of the Glory of the Confessors 20
With the rival clerics out of the way, Gregory still needed to solidify his new and publicly contested position with local elites and other powerful members of his new congregation. Thus, much of what Gregory did early in his episcopacy was intended to convince the community at Tours that he was their right man.
Seeing and Not Seeing the Reliquary Bust of Saint Yrieix
The reliquary was experienced through an orchestrated system of punctuated non-sight, suggesting that experiencing was not about seeing, but believing.
Eastern Objects and Western Desires: Relics and Reliquaries between Byzantium and the West
Among the many eastern objects that reached western Europe between the seventh and the fifteenth century by way of gift-giving, theft, or trade, sacred relics hold an important, if somewhat unusual, position.
Remains of Anglo-Saxon Saint discovered?
Archaeologists working in the Oxfordshire town of Bicester believe they have discovered a reliquary containing some of the bones of Saint Edburg, a…
Why Jerusalem? Why then? A study of the religious significance of Jerusalem to the West in 1095
Why Jerusalem? Why then? A study of the religious significance of Jerusalem to the West in 1095 Larson, Erin (Clemson University) PhD Thesis, Clemson…
KALAMAZOO 2011: Session 47 – Thursday, May 12: The Sacred and the Secular in Medieval Healing I: Images and Objects
Session 47 – Thursday, May 12, 2011: The Sacred and the Secular in Medieval Healing I: Images and Objects Sponsor: AVISTA: The Association…
Material and Meaning in Lead Pilgrims’ Signs
Material and Meaning in Lead Pilgrims’ Signs Lee, Jennifer (Indiana University – Purdue University of Indianapolis) Peregrinations, Vol.2, Issue 3 (2009) Abstract Thanks to…