During the thirteenth and the fourteenth centuries, Christian missionaries and merchants travelled from Latin Europe to the Mongol Empire and India. They recorded what they had experienced in letters, treatises, and reports. These travelogues offer an insight on the mobility of both men and objects during the global Middle Ages. The conference deals with this historical conjuncture, focusing on three main aspects. First, it examines the travellers’ attitude towards religious otherness. Western Missionaries and merchants conceptualized the plurality of Eastern religions according to Latin categories (cultus, lex, fides or secta), and they framed them within their cultural patterns and stereotypes, such as those of idolatry and monstrosity. Second, the conference contextualizes the experiences of the travellers within the religious landscape of Medieval Asia. In fact, they witnessed and described religious habits that actually took place in the East: rituals associated with images and relics, bloody sacrifices and self-immolations, as well as shamanic practices. Third, the conference aims to shed light on the consequences that these contacts provoked on the life of both men and objects, focusing on the experiences of Christians that were martyrized in the East (Thane, 1321). Furthermore, a great variety of objects was recorded by the sources: misplaced, re-functionalized, migrated, and misunderstood, they often compensated the communication difficulties between the travellers and the indigenous people, overcoming linguistic and cultural barriers.
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Please find the conference schedule below:
09:00 Greetings and introduction (Michele Bacci)
FIRST SESSION, CHAIR: MICHELE BACCI
09:15 Jana Valtrová (Masaryk University)
‘In istis partibus sunt multe septe ydolatrarum diversa credentium…’
Conceptualization of religious plurality in the medieval Latin travel accounts of Asia
09:45 Jennifer Purtle (University of Toronto)
Spaces of Enunciation: Franciscan Narratives of the Sino-Mongol City
10:15 Coffee break
10:30 李文丹 Li Wendan (Peking University)
Encounters of European travellers with Buddhists in the Far East in the 13th
and 14th century *[online]
11:00 马晓林 Ma Xiaolin (Nankai University)
Marco Polo and Yuan China: rituals and religions *[online]
11:30 Discussion
12:00 Lunch
SECOND SESSION, CHAIR: ELEONORA TIOLI
13:30 Partha Mitter (University of Sussex) Early Representations of Hinduism in the West (13th to 17th centuries)
14.00 Pier Giorgio Borbone (Università di Pisa) Rabban Sauma in the Land of the Franks *[online]
14:30 Agnes Birtalan (Eötvös Loránd University) The Mongols’ Pre-Buddhist Religious Views.
The Etic Understanding (Some Examples from the 13th – 14th century sources)
15:00 Discussion
15:30 Coffee break
THIRD SESSION, CHAIR: VESNA SCEPANOVIC
16:00 Michele Bacci (University of Fribourg) Image Worship in Medieval Eurasia. Comparative Perspectives
16:30 Alexandre Varela (University of Fribourg) “Ele lhe disse que yão buscar Christãos e especearia”. Encountering Christians in India: Cheryia Pally (Kottayam) wall paintings as a study case
17:00 Anne Dunlop (University of Melbourne) From martyrdom to mirabilia. The Franciscans, Odoric, and the deaths at Thane
17:30 Eleonora Tioli (University of Fribourg, Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa) The Perception of Religious Otherness in Medieval Texts and Images
18:00 Conclusion and final discussion
18:30 End of the conference
Medieval Art Research 