Through the eyes of a deacon: lesser clergy,major donors,and institutional property in fifth-century Rome

This is a study of the cults of two holy deacons at Rome: St Stephen and St Laurence. It is argued that the narratives associated with these saints were a medium for the resolution of two key, overlapping areas of tension: status anxiety within the clerical hierarchy, and relations between clergy and wealthy lay patrons. Controlling the ambitions of lesser clergy on the one hand, and on the other commanding the attention of major donors, absorbed a great deal of the energies of Roman priests and their bishop in this period. These issues converged on the figure of the deacon, understood in its early Christian sense as the helper/patron of the bishop. Defining the role of ‘deacons’ through the medium of saint cult was a necessary condition of the institutional development of the Roman church, and of church property.     

论中世纪晚期英国的圣徒崇拜

在中世纪晚期,英国的圣徒崇拜盛行,成为民众宗教信仰的中心。与中世纪早期相比,晚期的圣徒崇拜已发生了一些变化,民众已经开始关注到自己,具有了自我取向与现实取向。这表明在中世纪晚期,英国民众的宗教信仰中出现了“个人主义”倾向,在物质力量增长的同时,英国民众的精神力量也在发展。     

The Concepts of imitatio and translatio: Perceptions of a Viking‐Age Past

The author presents the results of excavations at Mare Church, North Tr?ndelag. Medieval sources indicate that Mære was the religious centre for Inner Tr?ndelag in pre‐Christian times. It was also the place where the first church (shire church) in Sparbyggjafylke was erected. At Mære if anywhere, therefore, it should be possible to test archaeologically the theory about cult continuity from pagan to Christian times.

Under the present church, which dates from the end of the twelfth century, the remains of an early wooden church surrounded by a churchyard were found, together with vestiges of at least two buildings from pre‐Christian times. On the evidence of loose finds, the oldest of these can be dated to the Migration Period (c. A.D. 500). A series of gold plaquettes were found associated with the later of the two buildings. This find is interpreted by the author as indicating that the building may have been a pagan cult building.     

New Architectural Models and Building Tradition: A Dialogue in Early Modern Sardinia – The Jesuit Church in Sassari

Architecture in early modern Sardinia is characterized by a strong continuity with previous practices. In the second half of the 16th century, new models join the Gothic building tradition, linked in particular to trends in military engineering and Classicism of the Catholic Counter-Reformation. The Jesuit church in Sassari offers an interesting example of the intertwining of these architectural modes, which originated with a sudden change of leadership at the site. Giovan Maria Bernardoni, an Italian Jesuit architect, initially modeled the church after the Gesù in Rome, and it was partially built under his direction. After his departure from Sardinia, local master builders finished the construction, following the Gothic tradition and possibly some external influences. This article analyzes the church, particularly focusing on the challenges presented by its articulated vaulting system completed between 1587 and 1609.     

Memorializing Gregory the Great: the origin and transmission of a papal cult in the seventh and early eighth centuries

This article examines the origins and early development of the cult of Pope Gregory the Great (590–604) in Rome, England, Gaul and Ireland. A first section analyses the earliest Life of the pope, written between 704 and 714 at the Northumbrian monastery of Whitby, arguing that it depended not upon oral tradition but upon early writings originating among Gregory's disciples in Rome and in part at least recorded by John Moschus. A second section relates this material to the development of Gregory's cult in the seventh and early eighth centuries, highlighting the activity of Archbishop Theodore in England. Although clerical rather than popular, the cult thus promoted established Gregory's reputation as a pastor, evangelist and father of the Latin liturgy.     

The kingdom of Portugal,homage and papal ‘fiefdom’ in the second half of the twelfth Century

This paper examines the relationship between the newly formed kingdom of Portugal and the papacy in the second half of the twelfth century. The kings of Portugal sought a close alliance with the papacy and their relationship has been seen as that of ‘vassal’ and overlord. However, it seems likely that this alliance owed more to the tradition of monastic protection grants. The act of homage performed to the papal legate by King Afonso I is an example of a wider use of the homage ceremony. Homage was not only used to cement ‘feudal’ bonds, but also to make peace or to confirm pacts and agreements. The annual census paid by the kingdom to Rome was part of the same grant of protectio. The papal–Portuguese letters used the same language and terminology as ecclesiastical protectio, which was awarded by the papacy to monasteries, churches and eventually kingdoms and kings.     

Medieval Italian pilgrims to Santiago de Compostela: New literary evidence

This paper offers literary evidence of the interest in the cult of St James on the part of late medieval Italian pilgrims. While extant written itineraries are few, occasional literary references demonstrate this interest without furnishing precise details of the route to Santiago de Compostela. Compostela holds a special place in chivalric literature: the legendary wars against Muslims in Spain and the status of the warrior Roland as a popular saint derive much of their impetus from the piety centred on Santiago. One episode of the widely-circulated chivalric romance Guerrino il Meschino by the Florentine Andrea da Barberino displays its genre's concern with the Spanish shrine and details and route from Rome to Compostela. Andrea, known for his verisimilar style, incorporates a virtuoso display of contemporary geographical knowledge which gives his fiction the texture of a chronicle. The author's inclusion of towns not found in the chivalric literary corpus argue for his reliance on maps or the testimonies of returned pilgrims. Places named tally with those in actual pilgrim accounts. The passage in Guerrino furnishes evidence of Italian pilgrimages to Santiago in the early fifteenth century, a period for which no historical accounts remain.     

Notes from County Correspondents.

In 1503, the canons of Ripon Minster initiated a building campaign to replace the church’s nave. Through a careful study of the documentary evidence, including sources that have not previously been considered, this article investigates how Ripon’s clergy organised and funded the project. It offers a more precise chronology of the works and an assessment of their impact on the use of the church by its parishioners. The article also considers the clergy’s motives for rebuilding, proving that the renovation was not a reaction to the old nave’s deterioration so much as an initiative to create a grander architectural setting for processions and more space for burial within the church.     

Festa‐catholicism and media religion: the reproduction and transformation of the festa in Malta

This article examines the evolution of the festa phenomenon in Malta. It suggests that rather than looking at popular religion as an aberration of official Catholicism, it should rather be seen as a sui‐generis phenomenon, and proposes its characterization as “festa Catholicism”. It begins by suggesting that the distinction adopted by many anthropologists in looking at the festa in terms of sacred and profane, to correspond to the internal feasts and external celebrations has limited value both heuristically and in terms of the experiences of the participants themselves. For many of the aficionados (dilettanti) the external festivities are not just ritual but hold religious significance. Indeed, the tension between the public supporters of the saint and the church authorities is not an unfortunate “aberration” but rather is fundamental to explaining the sentiments of the parishioners. It then suggests that the recent exposure of the festa in Malta to close media scrutiny is both exacerbating the tension between the aficionados and the church, but is also transforming the public perceptions of the festa. The media have thus become a primary territory of contestation where both the Church and the aficionados are exploring new areas for the expression of their religious sentiments.     

Anarchy in Our Churches? The American Architectural Press, 1944–65

In the mid-twentieth century American architectural journals, including Architectural Forum, Architectural Record, and Progressive Architecture, routinely ran features on the state of contemporary church architecture in the United States. Rapid suburban expansion and the revival of religious life in the post-Depression, postwar era generated tremendous amounts of construction, with a great deal of work available for architects. This article examines the concerns and hopes of modernist editors in the 1940s–1960s, as they sought to stabilize a “direction” for church architecture. Specifically, it examines the role of the architectural press as the self-established gatekeepers for acceptable church design, and their relationship with theologians, liturgists, and building commissions within the Catholic Church. Questions of authority (who was competent to determine whether a church design was successful?) and expertise (whose theological knowledge should be weighted more heavily?) lay behind the stark assertions commonplace in these discussions. Editors, generally not themselves Catholic, used their professional positions to weigh in on hot debates within the Catholic Church over the purpose of a church building, the relationship of the Church to modernity (and modernism), and the appropriateness of new materials and engineering techniques.     

Guthlac at Medeshamstede?

This paper proposes that the early monastery at Medeshamstede (later Peterborough) was the sponsor and supporter of the hermit saint, Guthlac, on the fenland island of Crowland. It locates that initiative in the early Benedictine practice in England. It is argued that Medeshamstede subsequently sustained the saint’s pre-Viking cult, and is the best candidate for the location where Felix produced the saint’s Life. The potential impact of this proposition on received understandings of the relationships between the monasteries of Medeshamstede and Ely and the kingdoms of Mercia and East Anglia – played out through the local polity of the Gyrwe – is noted. Early stone sculpture at Fletton is interrogated as potential evidence for the cult of Guthlac at Medeshamstede but found wanting.     

The Constantinopolitan abbot Dius: his life,cult and hagiographical dossier

Abstract

Although one of the founding fathers of Constantinopolitan monasticism, the Syrian ascetic Dius is hardly ever mentioned in secondary literature. The reason for this unfavourable treatment lies in the scarcity of information available for this saint. His Late Antique Life is lost and can only be studied in Middle Byzantine adaptations, three canones, two synaxaria and an unedited encomium. This article offers a discussion of Dius' biography, the development of his cult and his hagiographical dossier on the basis of the surviving material.     

Merchandising and sanctity: the invasive cult of Padre Pio

In the final decades of the twentieth century, the Blessed Padre Pio da Pietrelcina (1887-1968) became a 'saint' of global stature. It is most exceptional for the cult of a saint to acquire such dimensions in so short a time. Further, this is the story not of someone with a modern profile of sanctity,but someone who on the contrary answers to the traditional model of sanctity, and whose cult is moreover characterized by an instrumental devotional repertoire. Despite this 'classic' model, his person and cult are extremely ambiguous. This article describes and analyses the processes which have brought and continue to bring this about, and the recent development of the cult in Italy. By these processes a controversial cult, often associated with anti-ecclesiastical devotional activities and of limited scope, has become one of the most important and irreproachable in Italy. In part through the personal support of Pope John Paul II, in about a decade Padre Pio has grown from a friar in a controversial fundamentalist context to an almost invulnerable national saint, who is beginning to become a part of the Italian identity. The power of his cult is so strong - a devotional avalanche - that it has sidelined other cults, and to an increasingly large degree defines the Italian sacred landscape. The Pio cult encroaches on other devotions, and moreover is becoming its own competitor: to an increasing degree Pio's central pilgrimage site at San Giovanni Rotondo is losing pilgrims to the secondary pilgrimage site at Pietrelcina and to the hundreds of chapels and local shrines that have sprung up the length of Italy.     

The monastic conversion of Romuald of Ravenna and the church of Sant’Apollinare in Classe

Romuald of Ravenna was one of the foremost reformers of the late tenth and early eleventh century, devoting his energy to establishing monastic communities that emphasised asceticism. After his death, he was celebrated for this work in a vita written by Peter Damian that described the conditions of the conversion of Romuald, who rejected the world after an encounter with St Apollinaris in the church of Sant’Apollinare in Classe outside Ravenna. Peter Damian’s detailed account of this space not only created a fitting location for the conversion to monastic life, but in its appropriation of the visual, textual and hagiographic landscape it would have invited his eleventh-century audience who entered Sant’Apollinare in Classe to share in the same type of experience as his monastic hero, Romuald, and to connect with Ravenna’s late antique patron saint directly.     

A testimony of Carolingian rule? The Codex epistolaris carolinus,its historical context,and the meaning of imperium

In the preface to the Carolingian collection of papal letters, known as the Codex epistolaris carolinus, the word imperium is used in the context of describing what is in the collection. In this article, I shall argue that a reinterpretation of the preface's statement about what imperium refers to will shed a different light on the CC as a collection in its entirety. What imperium refers to exactly can be debated, yet studying the Codex carolinus as a Carolingian product of its time, in combination with a reappraisal of its preface, may help to understand the source's historical context and its value to the Carolingian court. As I hope to demonstrate, the CC was an essentially purposeful collection, which underlined the shared history of the Carolingian family and the papacy in Rome.     

Simon de Montfort,Earl of Leicester,and the utility of sanctity in thirteenth-century England

Almost immediately after his death, Simon de Montfort, the leader of the Barons' Revolt against Henry III, was revered as a saint. Despite the received historical opinion that his cult was local, furtive, and brief, it actually received support throughout England, from the noble and clerical ranks as well as from the peasantry, and lasted into the reign of Edward I. The manifestations of Earl Simon's cult reveal that his revolt was popular as well as noble, that even illegal cults could be profitable for their home shrines, in this case the abbey of Evesham, and that sanctifying a rebel leader was an effective way of justifying both the continuation of a revolt and sympathy for the defeated rebels, in this case the Disinherited. On the hagiographical level, Montfort's cult shows the incredibly rich diversity of expression of devotion in medieval cults, and the more practical concerns with advertisement and profit. On the political level, the cult proves once again that the king did not control all means of political discourse. The merger of political and religious authority, the importance of which has been often demonstrated in studies of the king's touch and the laudes ceremonials, affected rebel leaders as well as kings.     

Imaginary Worlds,Real Stories

St Edmund, King and Martyr survived the Reformation as a hero and emblem of East Anglian regional identity. This article traces the development of the post-Reformation Edmund in ‘popular’ sources, including his continuing presence in the landscape and the influence of the nineteenth-century ‘cult of commemoration’ on perceptions of the saint.     

Solitude or Performance? The Papal and Royal-Imperial Residences of Benedict XII and Charles IV in Avignon,Prague and Karlstein

A comparison of the architectural models applied, on the one hand, at the papal residence in Avignon (Benedict XII) and the royal and imperial residences in Bohemia (Charles IV) and, on the other, at the first forms of baronial apartment consisting of public (sala regia) and private rooms (studiolo; thalamus, locus) offers a new way of approaching this aspect of architectural history. The baronial apartment was a specific type of room in the residence and an early sign of the gradual transformation of the fortress architecture that had been associated with itinerant rule. Accordingly, it should be interpreted as one of the first example of the ‘state-building’ architecture used to construct fixed or temporary residential locations.     

The Religious Crisis of the 1960s: The Experience of the Australian Churches

The decade of the 1960s in North America and Europe is generally seen by historians and sociologists as a time of sudden and unexpected religious upheaval. But was this the case in Australia? This article examines the changes in belief and behaviour within Australia’s major churches during the ‘remembered sixties’ from c. 1964 to c. 1972, in relation to the cultural and social context, and the extent to which these amounted to a religious turnaround or crisis. Areas examined include the impact of radical theology, symbolized by the book Honest to God, and the ‘new morality’; the changes in Australian Catholicism initiated by the Second Vatican Council; the debate among Catholics over birth control and the papal encyclical Humanae Vitae; the decline in weekly church attendance, Sunday school enrolments and the membership of church youth organizations; the ‘crisis’ in the ordained ministry; changing attitudes in the churches towards social issues; and the responses of the churches to the Vietnam War. The religious unsettlement that occurred in Australia during this period was very similar to North America and Europe, though there were distinctive local emphases. The central issues in debate were common to all major denominations: the relevance and authority of traditional institutions and formulations of belief.