SACRED MOUNTAINEERING AND THE IMAGERY OF ASCENT FROM CATALONIA TO PROVENCE, C. 1370-C. 1520 (original) (raw)
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CONSERVATION / CONSUMPTION: Preserving the tangible and intangible values, 2019
Walk tourism (with its problems) includes a large number of cases ranging from the most famous pilgrimages (often gone on for reasons that are unrelated to religion) to different ways to frequent the natural environment and in particular the mountains, that can be considered as ‘natural monuments’ also affected by consumption dynamics. Mountain landscape is the combination of environmental patrimony and (more or less) anthropized territory; a particular reflection must be done where the latter one presents such labile traces of anthropization (hiking trails, huts) which are, however, significant for historical and cultural reasons related to mountaineering history, to the evolution of geographic knowledge, but also to the XXth century war events that occurred on the borders between the European nations. In the last century the practice of mountain tourism grew increasingly, taking with it a landscape distorsion due to the development of winter sports and the socio-economic change of many alpine areas, that have been subjected to a withdrawal from rural activities (with the consequent degradation of the territory and its characteristic buildings) and to a building development often uncontrolled. The aspects we intend to reflect on are the following: Mountain tourism begins with the history of mountaineering and it is stimulated by the interest in knowing the mountains (see also Viollet le Duc and the Mont Blanc) and the desire to conquer inaccessible places; however, it has recently become a mass phenomenon only linked to sporting challenges that ignore the environment (as the extreme case of tourism on the Everest which damages the mountain by its intensive frequentation of access roads, trails and base camps); The maintenance of tracks and huts involves some adaptations to safety regulations that often conflict with the authenticity of historic artifacts. As an example, we may consider the various enlargements of alpine huts, which are rarely evidence of a serious awareness of architectural and environmental values (and which have recently become an opportunity for “archistars” to exhibit themselves). There is also the need to preserve important material traces, such as trenches and war shelters, historical mountain passes, ancient climbing ways, etc.); The accessibility to high altitude areas is increasingly favoured by cableways, funiculars and railways (see the Jungfrau railway in Switzerland) and this fact often involves a frequent and inadequate visiting of the mountain environment. Furthermore, tracks are often used also by vehicles (off-road motorcycles, mountain bikes) which accelerate the consumption. All this considered, the conservation discipline can contribute to the sustainable preservation of mountain environment with its material historical evidence, as well as to a conscious exploitation of the “Terre Alte” (High Lands) which prevents a possible transformation of natural territory in an object for consumption.
STAIRWAYS TO HEAVEN? MOUNTAINOUS LANDSCAPES AS SPIRITUAL AND RITUAL TOPOGRAPHIES
2019
Beside their economic, sociopolitical and cultural importance, Europe’s mountainous landscapes have always played and partly still play a central role in spiritual or religious activities and beliefs. Marginal, liminal landscapes or prominent peaks as “stairways to heaven” seem to have always fascinated and inspired people to imagine “supernatural” forces living and acting at these higher altitudes. And indeed, there are many examples of “sacred” alpine summits, glaciers and rocks, caves, lakes or mires where gods, ancestors or spirits lived and interacted with humans during the last millennia. Although the possibilities of archaeology are still limited to discover this invisible power or agency, recent discoveries of material remains already allow a more differentiated idea of ritual activities and the symbolic role of mountains. Therefore, this session aims to explore the nature of sacred or ritual topog-raphies in mountainous and upland landscapes to develop a bigger and more coherent picture of different rituals, their archaeo-logical indicators and the common characteristics of high-altitude “sacred” places. For this, it also seems essential to integrate these transitional topographies into other forms of daily life and economy (e.g. settlements, pastures, hunting grounds, exploita-tion of different raw materials, mobility and trade routes), and to critically explore how the perception of sacred landscapes was entangled with ancient communities. We would like to invite colleagues from all fields of archaeology, history, ethnology, biology, anthropology and other relevant fields to discuss various manifestations and methodological reflections on ritual activities in high altitude locations in a European or even global perspective, from hunter-gatherer societies through pastoral landscapes to the sacralization of mountains during the Modern Age.
2023
Deep-seated mythologies and powerful stereotypes have driven perceptions of mountain landscapes for millennia. Particularly damaging is the concept that mountains and mountain societies are static and stable, in both time and place. A critical approach replaces static and simplistic models of mountain practices with interaction among human and ecological communities within lively mountain landscapes. There are challenges to doing archaeological fieldwork in the mountains, but recent projects have shown how rich highland and rugged landscapes can be in archaeological material, particularly when systematic survey and historical analysis are combined with ethnological and ecological approaches. This is particularly productive when exploring the dynamic relationships among pastoralists, their animals, and their upland grazing grounds. Similarly, focusing on practices and socioecological relationships helps in understanding how human emotional connections with mountains can be expressed through everyday action and performance.
Rethoric and agency around Iberian sacred landscapes (11th and 12th centuries)
Revista Digital de Iconografía Medieval, vol. X, nº 20, 2018
This paper aims to demonstrate the feasibility of referring to ‘landscapes’ in medieval art. To this end, it will focus on the agency and rhetoric of five Iberian landscape representations produced between the eleventh and the twelfth centuries. These are the Girona Creation Tapestry, folios 63v-64r and 186v-187r of the Facundus Beatus, the wall paintings of the Pantheon of the Kings, the Monastery of Santa María de Sigena, and the Church of Santa María de Taüll. Do they reflect a direct observation of reality? To what extent are these landscapes symbolic and are their figures acting as spatial references cores? They show a rhetorical selection of points of view working as visual mediums. The notion of space is accentuated as an abstraction, a scenery of social practices and Biblical locations. This inquiry opens the discussion about the role of the multiple devices through which Romanesque landscapes were expressed.
2022
This monograph examines the way two sets of wide-spread European folktales became incorporated into the storytelling traditions of Europeans. The stories themselves are compared and treated as reservoirs of orally transmitted popular beliefs and traditions that are no longer readily accessible to a modern audience. It is shown that the tales themselves have acted as vehicles for transmitting an earlier animist worldview from one generation to the next, albeit with modifications. When viewed in the longue durée, certain repetitive elements found in the tales reveal their ethnographic value and allow us to reconstruct, always tentatively, the animist ontological framing that contributed to their creation. After carefully exploring the interpretive framework that characterized the tales in times past, a framework shared by storytellers and their audiences alike, what comes into focus is a worldview unfamiliar to most Europeans, but well known to Native Americans and Indigenous groups where bear ceremonialism has been or still is practiced and whose traditional narratives incorporate the belief that bears were ancestors and therefore kin. The comparative analysis of the European tales serves as an introduction to a larger question, namely, whether traditions associated with the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela (the Way of St. James) have a pre-Christian origin and more specifically, whether the choice of this specific geographic location for the “discovery” of the remains of St. James was motivated by the geomorphological characteristics of the nearby mountain peak called Pico Sacro and the legends that had grown up around it. This approach includes the possibility that the mountain was already the focal point of a pre-Christian pilgrimage tradition. Using the results obtained from analyzing the recurring motifs found in the two sets of folktales, what is suggested is that the ecclesiastic authorities who came up the story about the miraculous discovery of the Saint’s remains eight hundred years after he was allegedly buried, may have been aware that people were already regularly visiting Pico Sacro and that this site was already the subject of veneration and enveloped in a form of sacrality. In this scenario, the founders of the alleged discovery of the relics of St. James may have realized that if they could come up with the right story, they could overlay it on an already existing pilgrimage tradition. In that way they would be able to co-opt the already existing practices and profit from them in a myriad of ways. The process of superimposing a Christian narrative on the pagan practices and beliefs would be facilitated by inventing a story, based on the discovery of the tomb of one of Christ’s own disciples. In the folktales discussed here there is a motif that surfaces over and over, namely, a journey to a location referred to as Glass Mountain or Crystal Mountain. Furthermore, folkloric references to this steep mountain are widespread in Europe. It is directly linked the belief that upon death one’s soul must successfully scale the peak to be able to enter Paradise. And in some cases, it was customary for the dead to be buried along with the claws of a bear, in the belief that the bear claws would aid the soul to climb that steep mountain. That motif will be analyzed and shown to have a real-world counterpart.
Christiane Bis-Worch & Claudia Theune (eds): Religion, cults & rituals in the medieval rural environment (Proceedings Ruralia XI, Luxembourg), p. 13-24, 2017
Along the Camino Frances, an approximately one thousand-year-old pilgrim way leading from the Pyrenees to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, we encounter not only the familiar (post-) medieval European repertoire of built structures and other landmarks with a specific Christian function and appearance. Also present are small monuments and 'ritual places' which seem to appear spontaneously. The present paper focusses on such phenomena. It briefly discusses their appearance, location, likely age and meaning. Similar expressions of faith and spirituality (today perhaps worn down to a mere habit) may have been part of Europe's ritual landscape along pilgrim ways – and elsewhere – for centuries. That ritual landscape may well have been more complex than is often thought. Keywords: Camino Frances, ritual places, Europe’s ritual landscape, pilgrimage.
Religions
Religious routes and itineraries can be seen as promoting not only the sharing of ethical and religious values and sentiments of peace and brotherhood but also the awareness and personal growth of the traveller. Those who walk remote pilgrimage paths today wish to experience the fascination of the past, to feel something of the dread and the passion of ancient travellers, but they also seek to fulfil an emotional and intellectual need for authenticity, spirituality and culture. The Puglia region has numerous religious paths that arose in past centuries and continue to be practised by modern pilgrims, who treat the journey as an emotional, educational, social and participatory experience. Appropriate exploitation of this type of journey would enable the promotion of a “gentle” but no less successful tourism, above all in a period of social distancing and global suffering. The present study starts with a presentation of some of the precursors of the many routes that led from the Orien...