Ever since fourth century CE, iconic objects and places have played a formative role in articulating Christian sacred space. This conference investigates the specific role of mobility and materiality in the creation of (trans)regional sacred landscapes and cityscapes, taking a longue durée perspective.
In particular, our aim is to address the role of mobility of objects, texts, and persons in the creation of sacred topographies. This explicitly includes objects and materials with the potential to reference or invoke sacred topographies further afield, as well as translated sacred topographies, and sites with a multi-scalar sense of place.
Moreover, this conference aims to address to the interplay between narrative/documentary sources and material culture: what role did cross-fertilization between narratives, and iconic objects and locations play in the creations of pre-modern hagioscapes?
The conference brings together scholars specialized in different geographical areas, in order to confront and connect the process of hagio-scaping along the axes of the North and South, old and new. Ultimately, the aim is to put into dialogue practices from North Sea and Baltic area and with the Mediterranean basin, as well as Old and New World contexts.
In case you are interested in attending (in person only) please write to events@roma.uio.no no later than 19 May 2023.
Preliminary programme
Wednesday 24 May
Session I (chair: Kristin B. Aavitsland, University of Oslo)
9:30 – 10.00 Welcome by director DNIR Kristin B. Aavitsland & opening address organizers.
10:00 -10:30 Achim Timmermann (University of Michigan): A Sacred Landscape in the Making: The Case of Late Medieval Franconia.
10:30-11:00 Tiffany N. White (University of California, Berkeley): Christian Topographies of Pre-Christian Temples in Medieval Iceland.
11:00 -11:30 Coffee break
Session II (chair: Florian Abe, Tucher’sche Kulturstiftung)
11:30 – 12:00 Veronika Poláková (National Autonomous University of Mexico), Marian Topographies: Shaping a Sacred Space in Seventeenth-century Bohemia and New Spain (Mexico).
12:00-12:30 András Handl (University of Leuven), Migrating Materiality and the (De)Construction of Hagioscapes: Transregional Relic Translations in Late Antiquity.
12:30 – 13:30 Lunch
Session III (chair: Rachel Davies, Australian Catholic University)
13:30-14:00 Simon Ditchfield (University of York), The challenges of stereoscopic vision: Seeing History with both eyes in an age of expanding horizons.
14:00-14:30 Marianne C.E. Gillion (Uppsala University), Resounding Hagioscapes in the Reformation.
14:30-15:00 Tea break
Session IV (chair: Kaja Merete Hagen)
15:00-15:30 Jan Willem Drijvers (University of Groningen), The mobility of Cross relics in Late Antiquity.
15:30-16:00 Florian Abe (Tucher’sche Kulturstiftung in Nuremberg), Die geystlich Straß (1521): Between Construction Manual and Devotional Guide to the Stations of the Cross.
16:30 Aperitivo
19:30 Conference dinner (for speakers)
Thursday 25 May
Session V (chair: Marianne Ritsema van Eck)
9:30-10:00 Margaret Cormack (University of Iceland), Hagioscapes in Iceland: Churchscapes and Landscapes.
10:00-10:30 Martin F. Lešák (Universität Regensburg), Charles IV’s Roman Inspiration. Relics, Liturgy, and the Sacred Topography of Imperial Prague.
10:30-11:00 Lucia Querejazu Escobari (Universität Zürich), Saints as ancestors: spatiality and cosmovivencia in the colonial Andean space. 1550-1650.
11:00 -11:30 Coffee break
Session VI (chair: Jan Willlem Drijvers, University of Groningen)
11:30 – 12:00 Aleksandar Savić (University of Belgrade), Into the (New) Promised Land: The Curious Voyage of a Medieval Serbian Pilgrim-Turned-Relic.
12:00-12:30 Linda Nolan (Iowa State University, Rome Program), The mobile and material history of votives at S. Maria del Popolo in Rome.
12:30 – 13:30 Lunch
Session VI continued (chair: Jan Willlem Drijvers, University of Groningen)
13:30-14:00
Noria Litaker (University of Nevada, Las Vegas), Tracing Global Sanctity: Roman Catacoms Relics around the World (16th-19th c.).
14:00-14:30 Steffen Birkeland Hope (University of Oslo) & Grzegorz Pac (University of Warsaw), Tracing a holy landscape on the peripheries of Latin Christendom – translation of saints in Norway and Poland in the twelfth century.
14:30-15:00 Tea break
Session VII (chair: Megan Cassidy-Welch, Australian Catholic University)
15:00-15:30 Brendan C. McMahon (University of Michigan), The Long Memory of Elephants: Ivory and Placemaking in Colonial Latin America.
15:30-16:00 Matan Aviel (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem), The Material Path to the Celestial City of Federico da Montefeltro's Urbino Studiolo.
16:00-16:30 Minou Schraven (Amsterdam University College), The Blessed Beads of failed saint and mystic Juana de la Cruz (d. 1534).
16:30 Aperitivo
Friday 26 May
Session VIII (chair: Simon Ditchfield, University of York)
10:00 -10:30 Raphaèle Preisinger (University of Zürich), The Incipient Cult of the Japan Martyrs in Asia and the Americas: Processions Modeled on the Via Crucis Centering on Images and Relics
10:30-11:00 Sergio Carro Martín (Universidad Complutense de Madrid), So Close, So Far: Faith, Mobility and Materiality Around the Islamic Rituals.
11:00 -11:30 Coffee break
Session IX (chaired by organizers)
11:30 – 12:00 Sandra Toffolo (Italian-German Historical Institute in Trento), Sanctity, materiality, and mobility in the Renaissance: Venice’s role in the circulation of material culture during pilgrimages to the Holy Land.
12:00-12:30 Megan Cassidy-Welch (Australian Catholic University), Liquidity, mobility and sacred space: Thietmar’s account of the cult of Mary at Saydnaya in the early thirteenth century.
12:30-12:45 Conclusion by organisers.
12:45–13.30 Lunch
15:00 HAGIOSCAPE city walk from Trastevere into the ghetto, starting point: DNIR.