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Materiality and Religious Practice in Medieval Denmark' stresses the significance of the sensory, dramatic enactment that moved the soul, body, heart and mind of the medieval faithful and proposes to revisit and pave the way ahead for research in religious material culture in medieval Denmark.00From bread and wine to holy water, and from oils and incense to the relics of saints, the material objects of religion stood at the heart of medieval Christian practice, bridging the gap between the profane and the divine. While theoretical debates around the importance of physicality and materiality have animated scholarship in recent years, however, little attention has been paid to finding solid, empirical evidence upon which to base such discussions.00Taking medieval Denmark as its case study, this volume draws on a wide range of different fields to explore and investigate material objects, spaces, and bodies that were employed to make the sacred tangible in the religious experience and practice of medieval people. The contributions gathered here explore subjects as diverse as saints? relics, sculptures, liturgical vessels and implements, items used for personal devotion, gospel books, and the materiality of Christian burials to explore the significance of objects that moved the souls, bodies, hearts, and minds of the faithful. In doing so, they also open new insights into religion and belief in medieval Denmark.
Gift-giving played an important role in political, social and religious life in medieval and early modern Europe. This volume explores an under-examined and often-overlooked aspect of this phenomenon: the material nature of the gift. Drawing on examples from both medieval and early modern Europe, the authors from the UK and across Europe explore the craftsmanship involved in the production of gifts and the use of exotic objects and animals, from elephant bones to polar bears and 'living' holy objects, to communicate power, class and allegiance. Gifts were publicly given, displayed and worn and so the book explores the ways in which, as tangible objects, gifts could help to construct religious and social worlds. But the beauty and material richness of the gift could also provoke anxieties. Classical and Christian authorities agreed that, in gift-giving, it was supposed to be the thought that counted and consequently wealth and grandeur raised worries about greed and corruption: was a valuable ring payment for sexual services or a token of love and a promise of marriage? Over three centuries, Gift-Giving and Materiality in Europe, 1300-1600: Gifts as Objects reflects on the possibilities, practicalities and concerns raised by the material character of gifts.
Where medieval Denmark and Scandinavia as a whole has often been seen as a cultural backwater that passively and belatedly received cultural and political impulses from Western Europe, Professor Michael H. Gelting and scholars inspired by him have shown that the intellectual, religious and political elite of Denmark actively participated in the renaissance and reformation of the central and later medieval period. This work has wide ramifications for understanding developments in medieval Europe, but so far the discussion has taken place only in Danish-language publications. This anthology brings the latest research in Danish medieval history to a wider audience and integrates it with contemporary international discussions of the making of the European middle ages.
What does 'performance' mean in Christian culture? How is it connected to rituals, dramatic and visual arts, and the written word? This book addresses the issue from the Middle Ages to the Modern era and showcases examples of how Christians have represented their biblical narrative.
To write about works that cannot be sensually perceived involves considerable strain. Absent the object, art historians must stretch their methods to, or even past, the breaking point. This concise volume addresses the problems inherent in studying medieval works of art, artifacts, and monuments that have disappeared, have been destroyed, or perhaps never existed in the first place. The contributors to this volume are confronted with the full expanse of what they cannot see, handle, or know. Connecting object histories, the anthropology of images, and historiography, they seek to understand how people have made sense of the past by examining objects, images, and architectural and urban spaces. Intersecting these approaches is a deep current of reflection upon the theorization of historical analysis and the ways in which the past is inscribed into layers of evidence that are only ever revealed in the historian’s present tense. Highly original and theoretically sophisticated, this volume will stimulate debate among art historians about the critical practices used to confront the formative presence of destruction, loss, obscurity, and existential uncertainty within the history of art and the study of historical material and visual cultures. In addition to the editors, the contributors to this volume are Michele Bacci, Claudia Brittenham, Sonja Drimmer, Jaś Elsner, Peter Geimer, Danielle B. Joyner, Kristopher W. Kersey, Lena Liepe, Meekyung MacMurdie, and Michelle McCoy.
The Arma Christi, the cluster of objects associated with Christ’s Passion, was one of the most familiar iconographic devices of European medieval and early modern culture. From the weapons used to torment and sacrifice the body of Christ sprang a reliquary tradition that produced active and contemplative devotional practices, complex literary narratives, intense lyric poems, striking visual images, and innovative architectural ornament. This collection displays the fascinating range of intellectual possibilities generated by representations of these medieval ’objects,’ and through the interdisciplinary collaboration of its contributors produces a fresh view of the multiple intersections of the spiritual and the material in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. It also includes a new and authoritative critical edition of the Middle English Arma Christi poem known as ’O Vernicle’ that takes account of all twenty surviving manuscripts. The book opens with a substantial introduction that surveys previous scholarship and situates the Arma in their historical and aesthetic contexts. The ten essays that follow explore representative examples of the instruments of the Passion across a broad swath of history, from some of their earliest formulations in late antiquity to their reformulations in early modern Europe. Together, they offer the first large-scale attempt to understand the arma Christi as a unique cultural phenomenon of its own, one that resonated across centuries in multiple languages, genres, and media. The collection directs particular attention to this array of implements as an example of the potency afforded material objects in medieval and early modern culture, from the glittering nails of the Old English poem Elene to the coins of the Middle English poem ’Sir Penny,’ from garments and dice on Irish tomb sculptures to lanterns and ladders in Hieronymus Bosch’s panel painting of St. Christopher, and from the altar of the Sistine Chapel to the printed prayer books of the Reformation.
This collection of articles by Nordic scholars is truly interdisciplinary, covering philology, history, archaeology, theology, and other approaches. It is divided into two parts, the first of which addresses conversion from a broad perspective, while the second is devoted to the consolidation of Christianity and ecclesiastical structures. The book investigates from a fresh viewpoint important aspects of Nordic Christianity in the Middle Ages and discusses to what extent ideas and institutions were adapted to local circumstances.
The relation between religion and things has long been conceived in antagonistic terms, privileging spirit above matter, belief above ritual and objects, meaning above form and 'inward' contemplation above 'outward' action. This book addresses these issues.
A classic of medieval studies, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200–1336 traces ideas of death and resurrection in early and medieval Christianity. Caroline Walker Bynum explores problems of the body and identity in devotional and theological literature, suggesting that medieval attitudes toward the body still shape modern notions of the individual. This expanded edition includes her 1995 article “Why All the Fuss About the Body? A Medievalist’s Perspective,” which takes a broader perspective on the book’s themes. It also includes a new introduction that explores the context in which the book and article were written, as well as why the Middle Ages matter for how we think about the body and life after death today.
Derived from the Latin term "ex voto suscepto" meaning made in accordance with a vow, ex votos embody the hopes, dreams, and anxieties of the people who deposited them. Thus, almost anything, no matter its size, weight, form, or original function, can become a votive object. The category ex voto refers to a particular subset of the material world in which objects are not necessarily made with the intention of being votive, but become charged with votive meaning once they have been consecrated to a deity or deities. The variety of materials, forms, techniques of making, and manner of dedication all suggest that the wide array of materialized aspects of human devotion, function as a category in itself. This volume one of the only collections dedicated exclusively to the subject has been compiled with the assumption that a shared conceptual framework underpins the objects produced as part of the ritual of votive giving, and that by merit of their dedication they have become a category which represents a stage and a place in the life of a material artifact. As such, "Ex Voto: Votive Giving Across Cultures," is a comparative study, and the volume ranges from the classical Mediterranean world, through medieval Italy and northern Europe, to the period of the Catholic Reform and on to Mexico, Shinto and Buddhist Japan, and Muslim Iran. This volume will be read with interest and stimulate fresh discussion across cultures and disciplines. "