Conference: ‘Inventing Past Narratives. Venice and the Adriatic Space’, 12th December 2022

This conference aims to explore the dialogue between Venice and the Adriatic area from a specific perspective: of the construction of the past. We would like to create a dialogue between specialists from various disciplines and examine the validity of interdisciplinary approaches: textual and visual, material, and historiographic. The chronological and geographical perspective chosen, which covers the late Middle Ages and the early modern age and focuses on the interaction between Venice and other centers in the Adriatic area, will indeed enable us to describe how the past is used to explore the mechanism of memory and recognition through which, when looking at artifacts or reading texts staging Venetian past, beholders are reminded of the shared values this past embodies.

For more information, please visit https://www.earlymedievalstudies.com/EN/index.html.

New Publication: ‘Bringing the Holy Land Home: The Crusades, Chertsey Abbey, and the Reconstruction of a Medieval Masterpiece’, ed. by Amanda Luyster

A carefully-integrated group of studies begins with the so-called “Chertsey” ceramic tiles, depicting combat between King Richard the Lionheart and Saladin.  Found at Chertsey Abbey not far outside London and admired since the nineteenth century, we present here a new reconstruction of both the tiles and their previously-undeciphered Latin texts.  The reconstruction demonstrates not only that the theme of the entire mosaic is the Crusades, but also that the overall appearance of the tiles, when laid as a floor, draws from the composition and iconography of imported Islamic and Byzantine silks.  Essays illuminate specific material contexts that similarly witness western Europe’s, and particularly England’s, engagement with the material culture of the eastern Mediterranean, including ceramics, textiles, relics and reliquaries, metalwork, coins, sculpture, and ivories.

Amanda Luyster specializes in the study of the art of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in England and France, with particular attention to secular production and cross-cultural contact with the Islamic and Byzantine worlds.

Table of Contents

Foreword — Michael Wood

Director’s Foreword — Meredith Fluke

Preface: “For we who were Occidentals have now become Orientals” — Amanda Luyster

Violence, Persecution, and Cultural Borrowing during the Crusades — Amanda Luyster

The Chertsey Tiles, Reassembling Fragments of Meaning — Amanda Luyster

A Clash of Civilizations? Diverse Motivations, Multiple Actors, and the Hidden Richness of Muslim Historical Sources — Suleiman Mourad

The Crusades: A Short History — David Nicolle

“So much national magnificence and national history”: The Foundation, Structure, and Fall of Chertsey Abbey — Euan Roger

Epic Sensibilities in French art of the Crusader Period — Richard A. Leson

Recreating the Holy Land at Home: Relics from the East in England — Cynthia Hahn

The Mobility of Fabric: Textiles in and around Medieval Eurasia — Elizabeth Dospel Williams

Crusaders in Jerusalem: Frankish Encounters with Idols, Holy Monuments, and Portable Objects — Eva R. Hoffman

Oliphants and Elephants: African Ivory in England — Sarah Guerin

A Cupbearer Crosses Cultures: Figural Ceramic Traditions of the Eastern Mediterranean — Scott Redford

Citizens and Invaders: Encounters with Sculpture in Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade — Paroma Chatterjee

Object Biographies – Select Bibliography – Index

To purchase, visit Brepols.

Seminar: ‘Medieval Theories of Conscience’, Sorbonne University, Paris, 2 December 2022 14:00-17:00 GMT

With the participation of :

Dr Gustav Zamore (Cambridge)
‘Conscience, Synderesis, and Heresy – the Emergence of a New Subjectivity?’

In this paper, I will trace the scholastic discussions on conscience, synderesis, and heresy: the problems posed by an erring conscience, and how scholastic discussions informed and were formed by inquisitorial practice and wider clerical concerns about heresy. Based on inquisitorial registers from the early fourteenth century, I suggest that together with the pastoral revolution of the thirteenth century, following Lateran IV, these new theories and practices shaped the expectations on how the laity conceived of their interior lives.
Responder: Monica Brinzei.

Dr Stephen Mossman (Manchester)
‘Confession, anticlericalism, and bescheidenheit: the authority of conscience in the works of Rulman Merswin (1307-82)’

The considerable oeuvre of the Strasbourg writer Rulman Merswin, a sometime merchant banker turned contemplative, expresses a strong claim for laity to shape the direction of their own spiritual lives. That claim goes hand-in-hand with a marked anticlericalism systematically downplayed in earlier scholarship. His treatment of confession brings the matter into sharp relief. Laity are instructed to rely on their inner sense of discernment (bescheidenheit) to choose the right course in moral quandaries, in direct and explicit opposition to the spiritual direction and moral tutelage offered by ordained confessors. Bescheidenheit operates in Merswin’s anthropology as a grounding principle with the force of conscience. Responsibility for salvation is transferred wholly onto the shoulders of laity themselves. The spiritual merits of those laity who have reached a state of perfection in the contemplative life – the ‘friends of God’ – and not the prayers of the institutional church are the foundations on which the redemption of mankind rests. This paper will explore these linked issues of confession and conscience in relation to changing understandings of the self in the later Middle Ages.
Responder: Isabel Irribaren

Those who wish to attend the seminar remotely are welcome to do so. Please contact Christophe Grellard (christophe.grellard@ephe.psl.eu) or Emily Corran (emily.corran@ucl.ac.uk) in order to receive the Teams link.

Further details at : https://www.paris-iea.fr/en/events/medieval-theories-of-conscience-2

Seminar organized by Emily Corran, UCL, and 2022-2023 Paris IAS Fellow, as part of her seminar series “Conscience and the Sources of Moral Authority”.

Seminar: ‘The Cleveland Fountain (Paris, 1320 ca.) and Multisensory Art History’, by Philippe Cordez and Gerhard Lutz, University of Padua, 30 November 2022, 17:00 CET

The hydraulic and musical fountain in the Cleveland Museum of Art offers a perfect opportunity for theoretical reflection and practical experimentation in multisensory art history. It is a unique device of gilt and enamelled silver made in Paris ca. 1320. As exposed in a recent essay, a close comparison with the Fountain of Youth presented in text, image, and music in the Roman de Fauvel – a political satire recorded in a manuscript of 1317 (Bibliothèque Nationale de France, ms. fr. 146) – suggests that the same group of intellectuals and artists was involved with both creations. Indeed, the Cleveland fountain multisensorially evokes the Parisian royal palace as a divine Fountain of Youth rejuvenating the French Kingdom. Collaborative research with the Cleveland Museum of Art, using digital tools, aims at deepening our knowledge of the fountain’s material constitution, historical context, and festive performance.

Sponsored by the ERC-StG Project “The Sensuous Appeal of the Holy. Sensory Agency of Sacred Art and Somatised Spiritual Experiences in Medieval Europe (12th-15th century) – SenSArt”; P.I. Zuleika Murat. This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 950248).

The event will be held both in person and virtually via Zoom. Please send an email to Valentina Baradel (valentina.baradel@unipd.it) to register for online attendance.

PhD Funding: ‘Rejecting and Recycling the Past in Reformation Canterbury’, AHRC/CHASE Collaborative Doctoral Award, University of Kent and Canterbury Cathedral (Deadline 13 January 2023)

This collaborative doctoral award will allow one student to intervene an emerging new humanities discipline, working at a World Heritage Site. Funded by CHASE, it is a collaboration between the Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies at the University of Kent and the Archives and Library at Canterbury Cathedral.

This project takes an historical perspective on two issues of urgent present-day importance: the impulse or imperative to destroy certain cultural artefacts (iconoclasm) and the countervailing need to reuse and recycle. The historical lens is the sixteenth century when the destruction wrought by the Dissolution of the Monasteries was met with a concern to salvage and redeploy what remained. Canterbury Cathedral has many witnesses to this in its Archives and Library: fragments of medieval manuscripts reused in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.‘Fragmentology’ is a developing discipline in its own right, and one which can disrupt existing narratives by introducingnew evidence and fresh eyes. This award will place the successful candidate at the heart of this transformative work.

We encourage applications from a diverse range of candidates. Training in the core skills of palaeography and codicology, as well as in Latin, will be provided as required.

 While a substantial number of fragments in the Cathedral’s collections have been identified, there remain many that have not been. The first task of the student, therefore, will be to explore and excavate the collections for relevant examples. The student will be given full training in identifying, recording and analysing the fragments. The student will be encouraged to consider these fragments as evidence as wider cultures of discarding and salvaging.

We welcome applications from a diverse range of backgrounds. Having gained or be about to gain either a MA or professional experience in a relevant area, particularly one with training in palaeography and languages would be welcome but, if that does not describe you, do not be discouraged: if you are interested, do contact the lead supervisor (see below).

The studentship is subject to UKRI eligibility criteria, and will cover home or EU fees and stipend at UKRI rates for a maximum of four years full-time, or eight years part-time study, subject to institutional regulations.

Applications for this studentship must be made via the University of Kent application form https://www.kent.ac.uk/scholarships

Potential candidates are encouraged to make informal enquiries, contacting the lead supervisor, Dr David Rundle D.G.Rundle@kent.ac.uk

Online Lecture: ‘Heritage in Crisis 2: Decolonising Ukrainian Cultural Heritage’, ICOM UK Talks, 30 November 2022, 12:30 GMT

Decolonisation has become an important global debate. Much has been done in UK museums, galleries, libraries, archives and universities to uncover and address deep-rooted colonial views. Work in the UK has largely focussed on the legacy of the British Empire, but Russia’s war in Ukraine has revealed other sides to colonial power. One colonial narrative claims that Ukraine is simply part of Russia rather than a separate nation that regained its independence in 1991, while another asserts Russia’s superiority in terms of culture and heritage.

This talk will consider why Russian colonial narratives persist in the west and how heritage and cultural professionals can contribute towards developing a non-prejudiced narrative about Ukraine. We will explore practical steps that can be taken to ensure Ukrainian cultural heritage is appropriately catalogued, described and interpreted. This will play an important role in ensuring that the UK remains an important and trusted ally to Ukraine.

Speakers:

Mel Bach, Head of Collections and Academic Liaison / Slavonic Specialist at Cambridge University Library

Tetyana Filevska, Creative Director at the Ukrainian Institute in Kyiv (currently based in London)

Attendees will be invited to consider ways to improve their own cataloguing systems to ensure Ukrainian cultural heritage is searchable, accessible and appropriately described.

The series of talks is free to attend for ICOM UK and ICOM members, or you have the option to pay what you can via a donation ticket. For non-members, we ask you to pay what you can via a donation ticket. We suggest a donation of £5 – £10 per talk.

All donated income from the series (minus Eventbrite fees) will be donated by ICOM UK to ICOM Poland’s fund to support Ukrainian museum professionals fleeing Ukraine.

This online talk is part of a series of on-line lunchtime discussions about the destruction of global cultural heritage and how heritage professionals can help.

The series consists of three talks that focus on the war in Ukraine where cultural heritage is under attack. Through case studies and knowledge-sharing, practical actions will be identified for heritage professionals to use in support of Ukraine. Learning from the situation in Ukraine may, in turn, prove useful for responding to future crises elsewhere.

Register here.

New Publication: ‘Los animales en los Beatos. Representación, materialidad y retórica visual de su fauna apocalíptica (ca. 900-1248)’ by Nadia Mariana Consiglieri

Beatus illuminated manuscripts were mainly produced in the Iberian region but also in French and Italian territories between the 10th and 13th centuries when Beatus of Liébana’s Commentary on the Apocalypse was copied in monastic scriptoria. Depending on their origin and time, the versions of their animals were modified. In this regard, the different animal figures were structured in these manuscripts from the sacred and devil poles in continuity with the Isidorian classification based on the opposite concepts domestication- bestiality, featured in his Etymologiae. These zoomorphic representations in Beatus codex acquired ideological and rhetorical functions by acting as effective support structures for the eschatological contents of the Commentary in the activity of monastic lectio.

To purchase, visit Mino y Davila.

Lecture: ‘”So shall the king greatly desire thy beauty”: on the sculptures of knights and ladies at Santa María la Mayor de Toro (Zamora)’, by Marina Aurora Garzon Fernandez, The Courtauld Research Forum, 23 November 2022, 17:00 GMT

During the second half of the 12th century sculptures of knights and ladies started populating churches across the Iberian North. Particularly interesting is the case of Santa María la Mayor de Toro (Zamora) because it features three capitals carved in successive construction stages that can be linked to different traditions. First, in the apse, a victorious knight facing a lady, similar to scenes found in Lleida, León and Santillana del Mar, could be read as a representation of Psalm 44. Later, a capital with a knight and a lady in a farewell embrace was sculpted at the transept, an iconography that can be traced back to a cycle of the Song of Songs from the portal of San Pedro de Villanueva (Asturias). Finally, decades later, another victorious knight with lady was carved at the tower quoting the earlier sculptures. Traditionally interpreted as images of the fight against evil, a reading of these scenes based on Psalm 44 and the Song of Songs, biblical passages alluding to the marriage between Christ and the Church, offers a new perspective on the sculpture program of Santa María la Mayor de Toro.

Marina Aurora Garzón Fernández studied Art History at the University of Santiago de Compostela (2011) where she earned a Masters in Medieval Studies (2013) and obtained her Phd in Medieval Studies (2019) with the thesis “Santa María la Mayor de Toro (Zamora): Church and City (1157-1312)” focusing on the study of Visual Culture in Leon and Castile during the 12th and 13th century. She is currently pursuing her post-doctoral project about paper-cut calligraphy in the Middle Ages at the CRC 933 “Material Text Cultures” at the University of Heidelberg.

Register here.

Call for Applications: 2023-2024 Predoctoral Research Residencies at the Center for the Art and Architectural History of Port Cities “La Capraia” (Deadline 31 January 2023)

Founded in 2018, the Center for the Art and Architectural History of Port Cities (Centro per la Storia dell’Arte e dell’Architettura delle Città Portuali) is a collaboration between the Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, the Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History at the University of Texas at Dallas, Franklin University Switzerland, and the Amici di Capodimonte.

Housed in “La Capraia”, a rustic eighteenth-century agricultural building at the heart of the Bosco di Capodimonte, the Center engages the museum and the city of Naples as a laboratory for new research in the cultural histories of port cities and the mobilities of artworks, people, technologies, and ideas. Global in scope, research at the Center is grounded in direct study of objects, sites, collections, and archives in Naples and southern Italy. Through research residencies for advanced graduate students, small field seminars, and larger programs organized with partner institutions, the Center fosters research on Naples and southern Italy as a site of cultural encounter, exchange, and transformation, and cultivates a network of scholars working at the intersection of the global and the local.

The Advisory Committee of the Center for the Art and Architectural History of Port Cities “La Capraia” invites applications for Research Residencies for PhD students in the earlier stages of their dissertations. Projects, which may be interdisciplinary, may focus on art and architectural history, music history, archeology, the digital humanities, or related fields, from antiquity to the present. Projects should address the cultural histories of Naples and southern Italy as a center of exchange, encounter, and transformation, and, most importantly, make meaningful use of local research materials including artworks, sites, archives, and libraries.

This year’s Research Residencies will run for the 2023-2024 academic year, from 11 September 2023 through 3 June 2024. Research Residents will be granted free lodging at La Capraia (private bedroom/study/bath and communal study/living/kitchen spaces) and a modest stipend of 6,500 EUR, administered by the Amici di Capodimonte, to help defray the cost of living. The Center will help Research Residents arrange access to collections, sites, archives, and libraries as needed for their projects; at Capodimonte, we will arrange access to collections and research resources insofar as it is possible during the museum’s upcoming closure for renovation. During their time in Naples, Research Residents are expected to work on their projects full time and in residence, and to participate in the organized activities, scholarly programs, and intellectual life of the Center. In the spring semester, Research Residents will be invited to present their research in an informal seminar, gallery talk, or site visit. In the summer following the residency period, Research Residents will be invited to contribute a short essay to the Center’s annual research report.

Residents will be responsible for obtaining appropriate visas (the Center will provide official letters of support) and for providing proof of health insurance. Residents must arrange their own travel to and from Naples. Because the Center is housed within an Italian institution, all residents are required to follow government COVID-19 regulations in effect during the residency period. We strongly recommend that all residents be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 before arriving in Naples.

We welcome applications from advanced doctoral students of any nationality. Applicants are invited to submit a letter of interest, a CV, and a research proposal of 1,000-1,500 words that frames the central questions, methods, and scholarly contributions of project, and describes the resources that will be used while on site in and around Naples. Materials should be sent in a single PDF file (with last name as the title of the file) to Center Coordinator, Dott.ssa Francesca Santamaria (francesca.santamaria@utdallas.edu). In addition, applicants must invite three recommenders to send letters of support directly to the same email address. All materials, including letters of recommendation, are due by January 31, 2023.

Learn more about the Center for the Art and Architectural History of Port Cities “La Capraia” at https://arthistory.utdallas.edu/port-cities/. Learn about our Research Residencies at https://arthistory.utdallas.edu/port-cities/residencies/. View past and upcoming scholarly programs at https://arthistory.utdallas.edu/port-cities/programs/.

Download an overview of La Capraia at https://arthistory.utdallas.edu/port-cities/La_Capraia_Overview.pdf

Newberry Library Short-Term Residential Fellowships 2023–2024 (Deadline 15 December 2022)

The Newberry Library is currently accepting applications for Short-Term Residential Fellowships for Individual Research. Short-Term Fellowships provide opportunities for individuals who have a specific need for the Newberry’s collection. Short-term fellowships are open to faculty members and postdoctoral scholars; PhD candidates with “All But Dissertation” (ABD) status; and scholars with terminal degrees in areas that do not offer a PhD, such as an MFA, MLIS, MSW, or JD. If you live or work in the Chicago metropolitan area, you may be eligible for a short-term fellowship at the Newberry.

Fellowships are available for one month with a stipend of $3,000. 

Click here for instructions on how to apply.