By Stavroula Constantinou, Centre for Medieval Arts & Rituals (CeMAR, UCY)
Chanting, poetry recitation, and storytelling played a key role in Byzantine rituals, while rituals and ritual languages and structures constituted important elements of poetry and prose. This blog post brings to the fore the strong interrelationships between arts and rituals in Byzantine literature.By Florian Abe, Tucher Kulturstiftung / Freie Universität Berlin
This blog post delves into Bamberg's late medieval Stations of the Cross, exploring their unique arrangement mirroring Jerusalem’s Via Dolorosa. These types of ensembles offered an immersive pilgrimage experience by intertwining art, architecture, and rituals that allowed visitors to physically follow Christ's steps, forging a profound connection between faith and experience that can still be grasped in the city today.By Associate Professor Robert Nelson, Melbourne University.
Is there a better way to understand the polemic between Byzantium and Rome that erupted in the eleventh century over the appropriate bread for holy communion? A new approach suggests that the ritual in church also entailed a domestic ritual, and the theological disagreement must be understood in visceral terms.By Gerlinde Gangl, M.A., University of Bamberg
The pillory punishment is one of the degrading punishments of the Middle Ages and Modern Times (executed in Europe until 1848), whereby a delinquent person was publicly exposed. In addition to the pillory, the associated punishment rituals remained alive in cultural memory. This becomes discernible in the metaphors employed in everyday expressions of many European languages.By Hannah Potthoff, Technische Universität Chemnitz
Sound studies are an important aspect of both the study of rituals as well as of war. Researching the belliphonic, as done in the DFG-funded project “Belliphonie im Mittelalter” at TU Chemnitz, can give important insights in how sounds were used in medieval wars as part of warfare and its narration and memory.By Dr Marina Ilia, NetMAR UCY ESR
This blog discusses the significance of names and how they passed from one generation to the other, providing insights into a family's past and social status and local history. It specifically looks at the naming conventions of Venetian Cyprus in the Marathassa valley, using a census conducted in 1549 and analyses naming patterns based on age, gender, and family origin.By Michaela Pölzl (UNI BA)
The EU-funded project Network for Medieval Arts and Rituals (NetMAR), which will participate in the upcoming International Medieval Congress in Leeds (IMC, 03-06 July 2022), takes once again the opportunity to share with the NetMAR blog readers a preview of the four papers of its session that will be given by some of the project’s young researchers.By Dr Andrea Schindler, University of Braunschweig
One has to believe in rituals, otherwise they don’t work. But of course, one can also just pretend to perform a ritual, or not do it properly. In ‘Tristan and Isolde’ of Gottfried of Straßburg, we learn what happens if some people know the truth about rituals – and some don’t.By Prof. Heinz Sieburg, University of Luxembourg
discusses medieval judicial ordeals and shows what judges did when they had not enough proof to declare an accused individual guilty.By Dr. Andria Andreou, Centre for Medieval Arts and Rituals, UCY
Were early Christian ascetics tempted by sexual desire? And if they did, in what forms did they experience such a temptation? How did they manage (or not) to overcome temptation? The hard battles that ascetics gave against sexual temptations, as depicted in two collections of early Byzantine tales, is the subject of this blog post.By Dr. Wiebke-Marie Stock, University of Bonn, Germany/University of Notre Dame, USA
What is beautiful can attract and enchant us, it can uplift us, but it can also distract. It is, therefore, by no means clear whether the beautiful should play a role within the realm of the divine. This text discusses how ideas of beauty were championed or censured by philosophers and theologians.By Prof. Ann Marie Rasmussen, University of Waterloo
Prof. Ann Marie Rasmussen from the University of Waterloo (Canada) brings to the fore the modernity of medieval pilgrim badges and the medieval dimensions of a modern cell phone camera.By Dr Aletta Leipold, Saxon Academy of Science and Humanities
The Old High German noun rûna does not denote a character, as one might erroneously assume based on the meaning of the German word Rune. The majority of words connected to rûna, rûnên and related derivates and compounds pertain to the semantic field of words such as ‘whisper’, ‘whispering’, ‘murmur’, and ‘murmuring’. This semantic range, associated with orality, was further expanded to include meanings related to ‘sorcery’ and ‘secret’. How much magic is in these Old High German words and what may we learn from them about medieval concepts of magic?By Savvas Mavromatidis, University of Cyprus (PhD student in the Interdepartmental Programme in Byzantine Studies and the Latin East)
How is the ‘distance’ or perhaps the lack of ‘distance’ between cultural and social phenomena, such as conception, birth, death, and the practices regarding the care of newborns and the dead conveyed in medieval art? This blog post investigates the didactic, social, devotional, and performative role of painting and funerary sculpture as formed in the Middle Ages.By Prof. Dr. Christian Schäfer, University of Bamberg
In the mid-15th century, the writings of Nicholas of Cusa elicited a controversy on the purpose and efficacy of intellectual powers for the knowledge of God, the so-called ‘Tegernsee debate’. But he and his followers not only participated in this dispute about the intellect and its role in the mystical ascent, they also drew conclusions from it to strengthen their reform movement.By Michaela Pölzl (UNI BA)
International NetMAR Summer School: NetMAR is excited to share with its blog readers a recap of its very successful summer school on “Teaching (in) the Middle Ages: Arts – Rituals – Education” that was held at the University of Bamberg in July 2022.By Alyssa Steiner
Alyssa Steiner (University of Bamberg). ‘Lyplep, Cris Cras, Rrrrrrrr!’ The fools on board of Sebastian Brant’s didactic Ship of Fools (1494) are a loud and rowdy crew. In contrast, the medieval church is a highly codified and ritualised soundscape. Embrace the noise and discover what happens when the two clash in Fool’s literature.By Viviane Diederich M.A.
Research communication plays an increasingly important role in contemporary societies. Young researchers are expected to start from an early stage to present their research to different types of audiences. It is, therefore, very important to test their communication skills and build their confidence through different channels such as those offered by NetMAR. This blog post explores various levels of research communication and substantiates its findings with examples from the field of Medieval Studies.By NetMAR
NetMAR at the International Medieval Congress in Leeds, 2022. NetMAR is excited to share with its blog readers a preview of its two sessions and six papers that will be delivered by some of the project’s PhD candidates and young researchers at IMC on 05 and 07 July 2022. Visit our blog space to learn more about NetMAR's participation in IMC.By Dr. Nadine Hufnagel
Most of the illustrations in the only fully illustrated manuscript of the Nibelungenlied (Codex Hundeshagen) do not show action scenes. Instead, they depict primarily situations of courtly ritual, especially scenes of reception and farewell. Nadine Hufnagel of the University of Bamberg explores how text and image work together to foreshadow the further development of the story, when the Burgundians arrive at Etzel’s court.By Dr Michalis Olympios
When did French sensitivity to the significance of medieval architectural patrimony emerge? How does Gothic architecture becomes a timeless symbol of national unity? The historian of Western medieval art Michalis Olympios of the Centre for Medieval Arts & Rituals at the University of Cyprus discusses how the restoration of maimed spires functions as an act of rebuilding collectivity.By Dr Chiara D’Agostini
NetMAR examines medieval arts together with rituals with the intention of addressing their intersections. Does this approach also apply to the investigation of scientific subjects? Would NetMAR’s holistic approach fit to the subject of geography? By taking as a case study the reception of Ptolemy’s Geography in 13th-century Byzantium, this blog post will try to answer this question.By Janina Dillig
Storytelling often resorts to narrative patterns. This is especially true for narratives with an oral tradition, which we encounter frequently in medieval literature. Usually, the use of narrative patterns in medieval literature is understood as a byproduct of the process of memorization, but narrative patterns may also be understood as elements of ritualization in the art of storytelling.By Rosa M. Rodríguez Porto
What lies behind coronation rituals? Why are they important? What do they hide and what do they reveal? Dr Rosa M. Rodríguez Porto of Universidade de Santiago de Compostela goes behind the scenes to investigate the role of the visual in understanding medieval (and modern) coronation rituals.By Gabriele Knappe & Patrizia Noel Aziz Hanna
What is ‘linguistic medievalism’ and what can it teach us? In our brand new post, Prof. Gabriele Knappe and Prof. Patrizia Noel Aziz Hanna of the University of Bamberg jointly present a teaching experiment they carried out on ‘Linguistic Medievalism’. Read on to find out what they did and what they found!By Maria Parani
Dr Maria Parani tells the story of one of the many medieval churches that populate the Cypriot countryside: that of the Church of the Transfiguration at the village of Sotera in southeast Cyprus. Tracing its history of successive building phases and painting campaigns opens up a window into the lives of the people whose needs - social and spiritual - it served.By Daniele Gallindo Gonçalves
Whether it’s the time we get up in the morning or when we eat or go to sleep, our daily routines are a form of ritual. However, can we really call such (individual) habits rituals? What is actually a ritual? As defined by Gerd Althoff, a ritual is “a formally-standardized symbolic sequence of actions that has a specific effectiveness”, since it has the capacity to (re)produce “a social, political, spiritual, etc. change of state” (Althoff; Stollberg-Rilinger 2008: 144).By Marina Toumpouri
Medieval written records are complex things; it is not easy (or often possible) to pin down their provenance, history of ownership, and transmission. In this month’s post, Dr Marina Toumpouri of the University of Cyprus considers the case of surviving Greek manuscripts and the work historians and philologists must do to access their distant but exciting world.By Sarah Böhlau
From the moment the time travel narrative entered human imagination at the end of the 19th century, opening doors to both past and future, the medieval period has held a special point of interest for many storytellers. Examining the foreign period through the lens of temporal tourism provides a unique way to relate to the past – and rituals are important support structures in this journey.By Nils Holger Petersen
In principle, aesthetic evaluation is not essential for judging the successfulness of rituals. The aesthetic value of song, however, was instrumental for the function of medieval liturgical rituals. Elements of these, gradually received into the modern arts, question the distinction between the medieval and medievalism.By Christos Hadjiyiannis
In her latest work, Serbian performance artist Marina Abramović stars as Maria Callas. The work opened at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich on 3 September 2020. In his review of the opera, Dr Christos Hadjiyiannis, Scientific Project Manager of NetMAR, suggests that the opera borrows much from late antique and early medieval texts that thematise the suffering of Christian women.By Lars Boje Mortensen
The NetMAR project is seeking to better understand and promote local heritage by bridging the disciplines of art history, literature, musicology, history and more – all under the lense of ritual. NetMAR takes place just as we are seeing a significant surge, and new trends, in the global discourse of heritage.One of the key aims of NetMAR is to involve in its workings a wide variety of voices and to foster dialogue.
Through a series of monthly blogposts, NetMAR members and affiliates share their insights, original research, ideas and opinions concerning medieval arts and rituals with the community in a way that is accessible and, crucially, inviting of everyone’s thoughts and responses. We welcome everyone’s feedback – so please do not hesitate to get in touch to let us know what you think.
Among the subjects that are broached in our monthly posts are the following:
- What do we mean by heritage and how can we protect it?
- How do medieval arts and rituals survive in contemporary theatre?
- Manuscripts produced in medieval Cyprus for church rituals.
- Storytelling in monastic contexts
- Rituals of medieval breastfeeding
- A Cistercian nunnery in medieval Nicosia
- The architecture and murals of the church of the Transfiguration at Sotera
As well as established researchers sharing their expert insights, the NetMAR blog offers a platform for Early Stage Researchers to showcase their work. NetMAR is working with a number of PhD students who are doing extraordinary work on various aspects relating to medieval arts and rituals. In specially commissioned posts, Early Stage Researchers attached to NetMAR offer their own unique takes on such matters as:
- The Venetian period in Cyprus and the relationships between lords and citizens
- The history of medieval agriculture in Cyprus and the long history of landscape
- Burial ceremonial and sculpture during the time of the Lusignans in Cyprus
- Byzantine texts and monument epigraphs.
At the same time, blog hosts posts by members of the wide network of stakeholders associated with the project. NetMAR is establishing links with local industry and various tourist organisations, including, for example, the Nicosia Tourist Board (NTB). In this blog, NetMAR members describe also the different ways in which specialist research conducted within NetMAR can reach the wider community.
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