Imagery and Ritual in the Liminal Zone. (original) (raw)
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In studies on the sensory activation of the sacred, there is a special place for relics. In addition to their evocative power, they have determined many itineraries that converge in places of greater religious pathos. Along with expedients of images and planimetric layout, relics offered the basis for a sort of storytelling that, on one hand, indulged the visual expectations of the faithful and, on the other, reassured the worshipper that he was on the right path. This paper examines the case of one portal, and concludes with an example of an ambulatory closely connected to the Via Francigena. The purpose of this article is to prove that, even without a significant relic presence, the sensory activation of the sacred can take place in other ways. The first part focuses on a Romanesque portal, originally located in the church of San Leonardo al Frigido in Tuscany, now held in the Met Cloisters Museum in New York. The section dedicated to this work of art analyses attributive issues and focuses on the portal’s social role. The conclusion of the article investigates some aspects of the ambulatory in the Abbey of Sant’Antimo.
By focusing on liturgical screens, this contribution addresses issues of liminality in Medieval art and ritual performance, both in the Eastern and Western Christian traditions. Working as shrines for the holiest parts inside church architecture, liturgical separations created areas of inclusion and exclusion between the different categories of actors involved in the use and fruition of the sacred. In both Byzantine and Roman rites, the history of the sanctuary and choir screen is intertwined with the congregation’s experiential transition from a straightforward visual participation in the rites towards the ritualic interactions with an enclosure which prompts a multisensorial engagement in the liturgy. This study emphasizes the role of screens in shaping rituals and generating devotional responses by assessing the use of barriers during liturgical performances and exploring ways in which sacred spaces were designed to accompany the beholders towards a mystical experience through liminal devices.
Sacred Space in Early Modern Europe
This book explores the many dimensions of sacred space - churches and chapels, pilgrimage sites, holy wells--during and after the religious upheavals of the early modern period. Leading historians examine the subject through a variety of contexts across Europe from Scotland to Moldavia, but also across the religious divisions between the Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran and Calvinist Churches. Based on original research, these essays provide new insights into the definition and understanding of sanctity in the post-Reformation era and make an important contribution to the study of sacred space.
In: Tarlow, Sarah ed. The Archaeology of Death in Post-medieval Europe, 2015
This article discusses the human body as a kind of material culture, an active medium for expressing values and beliefs, as well as hopes for the life after this. The excavation of the cemetery at Linköping Cathedral in 2002–2003 comprised 570 individuals from the period 1100–1810. Here we have a unique opportunity to study living conditions and changes in mortuary practice over a long period The material has been stratigraphically divided into three medieval phases (1–3) and three post-medieval phases (4–6). The period from circa 1500 until the end of the 17th century (phase 4) saw a distinct continuity in burial traditions from the Late Middle Ages. The great change actually came in the 1680s, when burial customs became much more heterogeneous. Arm positions were allowed to vary, the deceased was buried in normal clothes and it became much more common to put personal belongings in the graves. Phase 6 comprises the period 1780–1810, which is characterized by the introduction of a linear system, with burials taking place as deaths occurred, with no consideration for family, gender, social status etc. Finally, the material is discussed in terms of specific themes: cemetery users, the cemetery as a social arena, and changes in mortuary practice. The change in grave ritual at the end of the seventeenth century can be interpreted as an expression of a more individual attitude to the human body and the grave as a social medium. The time around 1700 was a watershed between the united church of Sweden’s Age of Greatness, perceived as the obedient instrument of the absolute monarch, and the more open attitude of the Age of Liberty, when new revival movements such as pietism began to gain influence, with their more personal and individually coloured faith. Recent studies in contemporary micro-rituals concerning changing modern grave rituals, indicates that the material culture as well spatial arrangements involved are very important for the new habits. It is possible to interpret these detectable changes in the material culture as an example of the concept of modernity and a desire of expressing new attitudes of individuality towards the deceased. Material culture has for a long time been an important subject for cultural historians and not least archaeologists. When archaeologists and cultural historians discuss material culture it is frequently a matter of clear and manifest remains. But even the human body can be seen in the same way – as a social project, the most intimate and personal such venture. Through the body we communicate our identity © 2015 Göran Tagesson This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License. Unauthenticated Download Date | 2/4/16 3:20 PM 20 The Human Body as Material Culture ‒ Linköping Cathedral Churchyard in... and how we want our environment to apprehend us. We hide and we assert ourselves precisely with the body as the means, in life as in death. At the same time, the body is a meeting-place for all kinds of contradictory messages. We shape – or forbear to shape – our bodies according to ideals we may not always sympathise with (Hamilakis et al., 2002; Tarlow, 1999a, 2002b). Latter-day research has emphasised the human’s range of choices and capacity for expression. The history of the body is in many cases the history of the individual’s relationship with the world around, for good and ill. We can see the body as an arena for differing interests, sometimes in the form of economic and social pressures, political power or the desire of commercial forces demanding that we appear in a particular way. In this way the body becomes a discursive field where different volitions meet and are reshaped (Foucault, 1998). At the same time the individual body carries the memory of our biological life and social history. The human body can be compared to an osteological database, with clear traces of the individual’s conditions of life, health and illnesses, which in their turn reflect social distinctions and changes over time. The question is how factors such as life-span, child mortality and maladies in general have changed over time and how these factors can be interpreted as differences in human living conditions (Arcini, 1999; Arcini et al., 2012). The dead body is a particular field for transformation. Through the treatment of the body after death and in the grave, a remodelling and communication occurs with the surrounding world which is not always in agreement with the deceased’s own identity and volition. Here a transformation takes place which is frequently dependent on the wishes of the collective, the authorities or by convention. The grave can reflect the identity and social position of the deceased, but often it is even more an expression of the wishes and intentions of the surviving relatives (Tarlow, 2002a). The following article deals with the view of the human body and Christian burial customs during a period of radical change: the Reformation and the break-through of modernity. The starting point is taken from an archaeological investigation in the cemetery of Linköping Cathedral in southern Sweden (Fig. 2.1). The cemetery functioned continuously circa 1100–1810 and the investigation in 2002–2003 comprised burials from the whole period. For Swedish circumstances, and even internationally, this investigation seems almost unique in capturing the whole sequence of burials over a 700-year period. The material is of special significance in that burial customs and osteological information can be analysed in an unbroken sequence for both the Medieval and the Early Modern periods.
During the late Middle Ages a unique type of ‘mixed media’ recycled and remnant art arose in houses of religious women in the Low Countries: Enclosed Gardens. These are retables, sometimes with painted side panels, the central section filled not only with narrative sculpture, but also with all sorts of trinkets and hand-worked textiles. Adornments include relics, wax medallions, gemstones set in silver, pilgrimage souvenirs, parchment banderoles, flowers made from textiles with silk thread, semi-precious stones, pearls and quilling (a decorative technique using rolled paper). The ensemble is an impressive and one-of-a-kind display and presents as an intoxicating garden. In this essay the exceptional heritage of such Enclosed Gardens is interpreted from a range of approaches. The Enclosed Garden is studied as a symbol of paradise and mystical union, as the sanctuary of interiority, as the sublimation of the sensorium (in particular the sense of smell), as a typical gendered product, and as a centre of psycho-energetic creative processes.