Cathedrals collected and displayed relics in order to forge a "collective memory" of their origin... more Cathedrals collected and displayed relics in order to forge a "collective memory" of their origins and affiliations; their relics and reliquaries were, in effect, a material demonstration of ecclesiastical power and its access to salvation. The reliquary staff of Peter is an example, commissioned by an archbishop, of the forging of memories-it supplied Trier Cathedral with a vivid material testimony to its place in the power and hierarchy of the Church. At the French Cathedral of Langres, instead, a very unusual collection of relics argues for the prestige of the institution. Langres's rededication in the ninth century to Saint Mamas, an Eastern saint with few relics in the West, led to the assiduous collection of bodily relics of the saint, culminating, in the wake of the Crusader capture of Constantinople of 1204, of the 1209 acquisition of Mamas's head... At Langres, as a result, Mamas was considered to be complete, and said to be able to "speak," as a powerful patron, but more surprisingly, from the display of his multiple relics, we learn about the abiding power of the dismembered body.
Cathedrals collected and displayed relics in order to forge a "collective memory" of their origin... more Cathedrals collected and displayed relics in order to forge a "collective memory" of their origins and affiliations; their relics and reliquaries were, in effect, a material demonstration of ecclesiastical power and its access to salvation. The reliquary staff of Peter is an example, commissioned by an archbishop, of the forging of memories-it supplied Trier Cathedral with a vivid material testimony to its place in the power and hierarchy of the Church. At the French Cathedral of Langres, instead, a very unusual collection of relics argues for the prestige of the institution. Langres's rededication in the ninth century to Saint Mamas, an Eastern saint with few relics in the West, led to the assiduous collection of bodily relics of the saint, culminating, in the wake of the Crusader capture of Constantinople of 1204, of the 1209 acquisition of Mamas's head... At Langres, as a result, Mamas was considered to be complete, and said to be able to "speak," as a powerful patron, but more surprisingly, from the display of his multiple relics, we learn about the abiding power of the dismembered body.
Covering, protecting, and adorning the body count among the most fundamental of human concerns, a... more Covering, protecting, and adorning the body count among the most fundamental of human concerns, at once conveying aspects of an individual's persona while also situating a person within a given social context. Wearable adornment encompasses materials fashioned by human hands (like fabric, metalwork, or even animal bones) and modifications to the body itself (such as tattoos, cosmetics, or hairstyles), which beautify the body while simultaneously conveying social, political, and protective functions and meanings. The wearable is thus the most representational and at the same time most intimate product of material culture. This conference seeks to expand our current understanding of the wearable in the Middle Ages. Current scholarship on the topic in Byzantine, western medieval, Eurasian art, as well as Islamic traditions tends to encompass clothing and jewelry, and is frequently medium-specific, with minimal regard to the interrelatedness of different aspects of appearance. On the one hand, work on medieval textiles has tended to approach questions of identity, consumption, and appearance by comparing textual sources and visual depictions with surviving textiles. The study of medieval jewelry, on the other hand, largely focuses on the classification and attribution of precious metal pieces from excavations and museum collections, as scholars make sense of pieces long removed from the bodies they once adorned. Tattoos, prosthetics, cosmetics and headgear are almost entirely absent in our understandings of medieval dress practices. This separation was not always so, however, and indeed nineteenth-century art historians such as Gottfried Semper integrated all aspects of bodily adornment in their considerations of the nature of ornamentation and surface decoration.
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Papers by Cynthia Hahn