Conference: British Archeological Association Romanesque conference: Saints, Shrines and Pilgrimage, Oxford, 4-6 April 2016

UPDATE: BOOKING NOW AVAILABLE.

The British Archaeological Association will hold its fourth biennial International Romanesque conference in Oxford on 4-6 April, 2016. The theme is Romanesque: Saints, Shrines and Pilgrimage, and the aim is to examine the material culture of sanctity over the period c.950-c.1200. The Conference will be held at Rewley House in Oxford from 4-6 April, 2016, with the opportunity to stay on for two days of visits to Romanesque buildings on 7-8 April.

We wish to encourage contributions on a number of broad themes, which we have provisionally grouped under three headings.

The Geographies of Sanctity. This covers architecture and archaeology, but in addition to the development of spaces for reliquary display and studies of individual sites, we would be interested in papers concerned with the provision of accommodation for pilgrims, saints as protectors of cities, and the phenomenon of substitute holy places and vicarious pilgrimage.

Cults and Reliquaries. How were cults promoted through reliquaries, and how might reliquaries be designed to draw attention to the particular attributes, virtues or miracle-working character of individual saints? We would be interested in papers on sites where objects help to define a cult, and papers that discuss how the promotion of a cult through manuscripts, monumental painting or sculpture may have changed during the period.

New Saints and New Orders. We would welcome papers on the new saints of the 11th and 12th centuries, and papers that touch on the attitudes of the new monastic orders towards saints and pilgrimage, as well as the infrastructure that these provide (particularly the Templars and Hospitallers), the sanctification of their founders, and the revival of earlier cults.

Proposals for papers of up to 30 minutes in length should be sent to the conference convenors, John McNeill and Richard Plant, at jsmcneill@btinternet.com, by 15 May