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This article offers a pedagogical approach to introducing undergraduate students to hagiology by comparing medieval sanctity to modern celebrity. The bodies of saints and celebrities are important loci for the transmission of sanctity or celebrity from a person to the public and for the continuity of identity. Examples include St. Faith, St. Cuthbert, Kim Kardashian, and Marilyn Monroe. Using a comparative method allows students who are non-religious to better apprehend the unfamiliar practices and beliefs around the cult of saints and relics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dynamic relationship that exists between a religious rite and its territory is interpreted and analysed by religious anthropology as a form of protection, offered by the sacred to the place in which it resides. According to this interpretation, passage through the territory of what is reputed to be sacred or even its very presence as a sanctuary, drives evil away and is believed to perform a generally stable protective function. Within such a dynamic, the rite that actually creates this sacred passage, i.e., the procession of relics, lays the foundations for an analysis of the two specific variables that are, in actual fact, intwined: on the one side is the rite, and on the other, the territory. Such a relationship appears all the more problematic due to the progressive rationalisation of the religious dimension, extensively dealt with by Max Weber (Weber 1920) and accepted by contemporary sociology on religion, as it is now a supernatural phenomenon that is only considered to have a representational dimension. The internal secularization at the festival of Saint Rosalia happened in 2023, with the landing of the triumphal cart in New York. The rite moves to another new territory and transforms it. The cart of Saint Rosalia, preserved in the Columbus Citizens Foundation in New York, represents the identity of Sicilian immigrants but also a new form of ritualization on a new territory through an "ancient" ritual. When the sacred is located within the institutional dimension of a salvation religion presided over by an institution, it appears separate from any purely mechanical (and therefore magical) dimension, while the territory becomes a variable in which a multiplicity of factors are contained. These factors not only give importance to the very aspects of the ritual itself, boosting its civil and secular parts, but also to the religious programme, which undergoes unexpected transformations introduced by the presiding institution. The main object of this analysis is, therefore, to establish an interactive path whereby, on the one hand, the territory, through its various cultural components (both secular and religious), shapes the religious rite and how it places restrictions on those protective functions, while on the other, how the rite places its own constraints on the cultural transformations that take place in the fabric of society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 11th–12th centuries, extreme ascetic practices reappeared in Western Europe, in particular, the wearing of hauberks and heavy iron chains, associated with penitence and eremitism. This article discusses the charisma of three ascetic saints of the 12th century: Bernard the Penitent (d. 1182), Wulfric of Haselbury (d. 1154/55), and Godric of Finchale (d. 1170). Their hagiographies were written shortly after their death. The authors emphasize that they were revered as holy men already in their lifetime. Their charismatic power was revealed by miracles of healing and prophecy, sometimes in visions. The manifestations of their charisma continued and even increased after their death and were transmitted and spread through their relics. Their mortifications and the signs of their holiness are comparable to those of the stylites and other hermits of Syria of late Antiquity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article scrutinizes the use of liminality as a term to understand medieval dance practices. With the case of the feast day of St. Eluned described in Gerald of Wales Itinerarium Cambriae, I first present common ways that historians and theologians have used the term liminality in order to describe historical depictions of feasts of saints where more unruly forms of movement and dancing have happened. I then analyze this specific depiction by Gerald of Wales through a combination of a kinesic approach and a hermeneutics of suspicion and charity. This approach shows that earlier understandings of dancing always being a problematic element in traditions of Christianity in the west needs to be nuanced. After this, I turn to the critique that Caroline Bynum Walker has brought up, concerning the use of the term liminality in the medieval context. Taking her critique seriously, I return to the story of St. Eluned by focusing on the lived religion from the perspective of the female characters in the setting. Finally, I also bring in Vincent Lloyd's distinction between rituals and liturgy, to further strengthen how theological discussions can bring in more nuanced and important additions in how we may understand chaotic forms of medieval dance in new ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2020, religious celebrations in Romania were greatly affected by restrictions meant to control the COVID-19 pandemic. Easter, the highlight of the Orthodox Christian ritual year, was celebrated in empty churches during the spring lockdown. Participation in religious activities was later progressively permitted. During autumn, pilgrimages were allowed, but only in compliance with strict regulations. This article focuses on the restrictions imposed by public authorities, the solutions found by church representatives, and the faithful’s reaction to the new situation. The Orthodox liturgical year begins in Romania on the 1st of September, marked by a series of pilgrimages, occasioned by feasts for several saints whose relics are venerated in local churches. Some of them, centuries old, attract thousands of people. The celebrations last several days, during which people wait patiently, for hours, to touch the holy relics. In 2020, governmental measures limited participation to local residents, without previous consultation with the church authorities. This caused great discontent. Still, the number of pilgrims was not substantially less than in previous years, in large part due to the direct negotiations between the faithful and the local law forces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

First Plantagenêt kings' veneration of saints and their relics constitutes a part of their politics to construct the «empire» and to strengthen their territorial power basis. First, interest for certain cults fits in with the search for dynastic legitimisation by celestial patronage, while Thomas Becket has become the kingdom's new saint patron. Some relic affairs reflect symbolic of power's translation (Edward the Confessor, Edmund, Martial and Valerie, the elevation of relics at Fécamp, the discovery of Arthur and Guinevere's tombs at Glastonbury). Kings' presence at significant translation ceremonials or their visits to shrines are linked to their territorial politics (St. Michel's Mount, Rocamadour, Grandmont, and the translation of St. Frithswyth at Oxford). At last, relics played an essential role in Richard the Lionheart's crusade expedition. The link between politics and relics cult can be explained by the belief in the virtus materially present in relics; in which their possession and exalting by the cult had to grant celestial protection of the kingdom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of En la España Medieval is the property of Universidad Complutense de Madrid and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article explores the Counter-Reformation medievalization of Polish–Lithuanian St. Kazimierz Jagiellończyk (1458–1484)—whose canonization was only finalized in the seventeenth century—as a case study, taking up questions of the reception of cults of medieval saints in post-medieval societies, or in this case, the retroactive refashioning into a venerable medieval saint. The article investigates these questions across a transcultural Italo–Baltic context through the activities of principal agents of the saint's re-fashioning as a venerable saint during the late seventeenth century: the Pacowie from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Medici from the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, during a watershed period of Tuscan–Lithuanian bidirectional interest. During this period, the two dynasties were entangled not only by means of the shared division of Jagiellończyk's bodily remains through translatio—the ritual relocation of relics of saints and holy persons—but also self-representational strategies that furthered their religio-political agendas and retroactively constructed their houses' venerable medieval roots back through antiquity. Drawing on distinct genres of textual, visual, and material sources, the article analyzes the Tuscan–Lithuanian refashioning of Kazimierz against a series of precious reliquaries made to translate holy remains between Vilnius to Florence to offer a contribution to the entangled histories of sanctity, art and material culture, and conceptual geography within the transtemporal and transcultural neocolonial context interconnecting the Middle Ages, Age of Reformations, and the Counter-Reformation between Italy and Baltic Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]