Newsletter
The Latest Newsletter is now available as a PDF. Please click on the Newsletters link to the left of this page.
Webmaster
The IAS is seeking a new webmaster. Please let Jeryldene Wood or Victor Coonin know if you are willing to serve. Meanwhile, the IAS thanks Emi McFarlen for her help in maintaining the website.
Call for Papers
Sanctity and the Arts in Medieval Italy - Four linked sessions: Sanctity and artistry went hand in hand in medieval Italy, whether in religious or civic contexts. Churches and shrines arose on the sites of miracles and at the tombs of the very special dead. Artists and patrons developed visual narratives, presented as multiple episodes and as synthetic epitomes, that represented, altered, and exceeded textual recollections of the lives and deeds of the saints, while iconic images, in a variety of media, provided loci for cultic veneration. The arts also had a generative effect on the cult of saints, helping to expand local veneration, spread the cults of specific figures, and reshape existing cults by providing new intellectual or devotional contexts.
This series of linked sessions examines several aspects of this intersection between the visual and architectural arts and the cult of saints in medieval Italy.
1. Sites of Veneration: Spurring New Devotion– Chair Gregor Kalas, University of Tennessee, Knoxville. How important were the arts--buildings, reliquaries, paintings, sculptures, manuscripts--in spurring devotion, particularly at the moment of the creation of a new cult or the transportation of an extant cult to a new location?
2. Novel Narratives, Narrative Novelties– Chair Charles S. Buchanan, Ohio University. Changing circumstances often led to the changes in the presentation of hagiographical narratives, as for instance during the ecclesiastical reform in late eleventh- and early twelfth-century Rome.
3. Movable Icons, Movable Cults Cults – Chair Rebecca Corrie, Bates College. How did new icons change the cultic landscape, what can we learn about a foundation from the presence of a specific icon, and how were icons used as devotional propaganda, particularly by the new Orders?
4. Foreign Saints in Italy/Italian Saints abroad Abroad – Chair Veronique Plesch, Colby College. While many cults were insistently local, others achieved transregional importance. This session examines the visual and material representation of "out of place" saints, be they saints from afar who achieved great Italian significance (e.g., Nicolas of Myra, later of Bari) or Italian saints who gained pan-Christian importance (e.g., Benedict).
The Program Committee welcomes proposals for IAS-sponsored sessions at the annual meetings of the Inter-national Congress on Medieval Studies (Kalamazoo), the Renaissance Society of America, the Sixteenth Century Society, and the College Art Association. Members are encouraged to send suggestions for sessions to the Program Committee. Contact: Felicity Ratte, Dean of Faculty, Marlboro College, PO Box A, Marlboro, VT 05344, (802) 258-9234, felicity@marlboro.edu
The Latest Newsletter is now available as a PDF. Please click on the Newsletters link to the left of this page.
Webmaster
The IAS is seeking a new webmaster. Please let Jeryldene Wood or Victor Coonin know if you are willing to serve. Meanwhile, the IAS thanks Emi McFarlen for her help in maintaining the website.
Call for Papers
Sanctity and the Arts in Medieval Italy - Four linked sessions: Sanctity and artistry went hand in hand in medieval Italy, whether in religious or civic contexts. Churches and shrines arose on the sites of miracles and at the tombs of the very special dead. Artists and patrons developed visual narratives, presented as multiple episodes and as synthetic epitomes, that represented, altered, and exceeded textual recollections of the lives and deeds of the saints, while iconic images, in a variety of media, provided loci for cultic veneration. The arts also had a generative effect on the cult of saints, helping to expand local veneration, spread the cults of specific figures, and reshape existing cults by providing new intellectual or devotional contexts.
This series of linked sessions examines several aspects of this intersection between the visual and architectural arts and the cult of saints in medieval Italy.
1. Sites of Veneration: Spurring New Devotion– Chair Gregor Kalas, University of Tennessee, Knoxville. How important were the arts--buildings, reliquaries, paintings, sculptures, manuscripts--in spurring devotion, particularly at the moment of the creation of a new cult or the transportation of an extant cult to a new location?
2. Novel Narratives, Narrative Novelties– Chair Charles S. Buchanan, Ohio University. Changing circumstances often led to the changes in the presentation of hagiographical narratives, as for instance during the ecclesiastical reform in late eleventh- and early twelfth-century Rome.
3. Movable Icons, Movable Cults Cults – Chair Rebecca Corrie, Bates College. How did new icons change the cultic landscape, what can we learn about a foundation from the presence of a specific icon, and how were icons used as devotional propaganda, particularly by the new Orders?
4. Foreign Saints in Italy/Italian Saints abroad Abroad – Chair Veronique Plesch, Colby College. While many cults were insistently local, others achieved transregional importance. This session examines the visual and material representation of "out of place" saints, be they saints from afar who achieved great Italian significance (e.g., Nicolas of Myra, later of Bari) or Italian saints who gained pan-Christian importance (e.g., Benedict).
The Program Committee welcomes proposals for IAS-sponsored sessions at the annual meetings of the Inter-national Congress on Medieval Studies (Kalamazoo), the Renaissance Society of America, the Sixteenth Century Society, and the College Art Association. Members are encouraged to send suggestions for sessions to the Program Committee. Contact: Felicity Ratte, Dean of Faculty, Marlboro College, PO Box A, Marlboro, VT 05344, (802) 258-9234, felicity@marlboro.edu