Edited by Carla Varela Fernandes, Catarina Fernandes Barreira, João Luís Inglês Fontes, Maria Joao Branco, Mario Farelo

Throughout the Middle Ages, the choice of a particular burial place remains a fundamental question in someone’s live.

Assembling the contributions of twenty-two authors, this volume aims at revisiting the question of the choice of burial sites throughout the Middle Ages, in their political, emotional, and devotional dimensions, across a wide chronology and in a vast palette of different social statuses. The choice of a burial site inevitably reflets very important statements, made by the living persons, not only regarding what they wished the memory of their passage on Earth to be, but equally enlightening us on what their concern for the future of their souls was and how it should be cared for, in the afterlife.

The first part of this volume is devoted to royal pantheons, considering their development and relevance in the construction of royal legitimacy. Kings and Queens were not the only ones considering their lineage and personal memory: noblemen, ecclesiastics, rich tradesmen, and their wives and daughters, were also involved in a world of changing tendencies, which are dealt with in the second part of the book. The third and last part looks at the strategies and interconnection between building a burial site and constructing collective memories, whether in stone or in writing through the performing influence of rituals, images, or symbols.

This book proposes, therefore a whole new set of approaches on the subject, addressed either in interdisciplinary and all-around syntheses or via analysis of specific case-studies, looking at panteons and other burial sites as the important witnesses of the lives, emotions, and devotions of the medieval society they served.

Contributors to this volume are Xavier Barral i Altet, Catarina Fernandes Barreira, Thiago José Borges, Maria Helena Cruz Coelho, Frederica Cosenza, Antonio Pio de Cosmo, Lorenzo Curatella, Mário Farelo, José Romón González de la Cal, Linsy Grant, Laurent Hablot, Orlindo Jorge, Emma Lano Martínez, Christian de Mérindol, Sonia Morales Cano, Jorge Morín Pablos, Pedro Redol, Martina Saltamacchia, Isabel Sánchez Ramos, Lydwine Scordia, Rosa Smurra and Christian Steer.

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Edited by Katrin Kogman-Appel, Elisheva Baumgarten, Elisabeth Hollender, Ephraim Shoham-Steiner

What did the world look like for Jews living in medieval Europe? How did they perceive and make use of the elements of their daily life, from items on the street to religious iconography within holy spaces — in particular synagogues and at the exterior of churches — and profane elements from the home? And how did they experience the visual and material cultures of their non-Jewish neighbours?

These questions form the core of this volume, which explores pre-modern Jewish approaches to images and material objects from a variety of perspectives. From clothing to manuscripts, and from lighting devices to the understanding of the invisible, the chapters gathered together in this multifaceted volume combine analyses of images and artefacts together with in-depth analyses of texts to offer fresh insights into the visual cultures that informed the world of European Jews in the Middle Ages.

Editor Biographies:

• Elisheva Baumgarten is a social historian of the Jews of medieval northern Europe at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
• Elisabeth Hollender is a Professor of Jewish Studies at the Goethe University Frankfurt specializing in medieval Jewish religious culture.
• Katrin Kogman-Appel is a Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Münster with an expertise on medieval Jewish visual culture.
• Ephraim Shoham-Steiner is a historian specializing in the History of Jews in Medieval Europe at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beer Sheva

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This volume is an exploration of the artistic cultural legacy of some of the most renowned medieval royal women, demonstrating their dedication to remain relevant for all time.

Medieval Mausoleums, Monuments, and Manuscripts: Royal Women’s Patronage from the Twelfth to the Fourteenth Centuries explores the manuscripts, monuments, and other memorabilia associated with the artistic patronage of Eleanor of Aquitaine (1122-1204), her daughters, Marie de Champagne (1145-98) and Matilda of Saxony (1156-98), as well as works generated by three queens of France, Marie de Brabant (1254-1322), Jeanne d’Évreux (1310-71), and Blanche de Navarre (1330-98). Through this study the shift in women’s artistic patronage over the centuries may be brought to light, as well as its evolution, evincing how each generation built upon the previous one.

Further, despite the assorted shapes these women’s efforts embodied, ranging from manuscripts to stained glass windows, from funerary plaques, paintings, jewels and linens to monuments, mausoleums and endowments of institutions, including a variety of other forms, these women were notably unified in that their greatest output tellingly occurred during precarious points in their lives that threatened their positions, such as the potential political turmoil associated with the deaths of husbands or children. At these times their participation in acts of patronage solidified their places at court, in society, and within cultural memory while doubling as assertions of their political power and lineage. Thus, testaments, manuscript books, monuments, and memorials were not only a declaration or signs of one’s possessions, but also sites and documents that continued the politicking of the deceased.

Christene d’Anca is a lecturer at California Lutheran University, as well as at her alma mater, the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she obtained her PhD in Comparative Literature with an emphasis in Medieval Studies.

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