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The paper offers a survey of monastic island communities in Medieval Norway, including brief historical descriptions of their foundation, patrons, dissolution, sources, remaining building structure...

The first survey of Island Monasteries in Ireland dates back to 1891 when George T. Stokes, Irish ecclesiastical historian published results of field trips to “Island Monasteries in Wales and Ireland” in the Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland. Inspired by Gabriela Signori, host of this International conference on the monastic island of Reichenau at Lake Constance in January 2017, the plan to provide an up-to-date survey took shape. Of course we expected a significant number of island monasteries in Ireland, itself famous as “Isle of the Saints” (Lisa Bitel). Thus the Research project was started with great expectations. However, the results amply exceeded all expectations by far: Over 100 monastic islands in Ireland could be identified so far. The first results of this research project are presented here in the conference proceedings as an annotated “List of Medieval Religious Houses on Islands in Ireland”.

In Byzantium and in the Latin West the theological and political legacy of Constantine the Great (306-337) was particularly heavy from the very beginning, in relation to the earlier religious images and principally to the new iconic figural and non-figural symbols of the Christian salvation. Between the fifth and the sixth centuries, the papal and orthodox use of Constantine’s image found a first expression in the most ancient Latin version of pope Sylvester’s legend (Actus Silvestri). Shortly afterwards the hagiographical nucleus of this legend became part of pope Sylvester’s biography, with which begins the Liber Pontificalis of the Roman Church, indeed one of the principal sources for the spread of the legendary account of Constantine’s baptism and the image of Constantine as generous benefactor of the papacy. These themes nourished the hagiographical and theological-political imagery of the Christian West for more than a millennium. Between the eight and the ninth centuries and then from the eleventh century onwards, they gave rise to the Roman bishopric’s various claims of a universal primacy confirmed by law, already expressed in the Constitutum Constantini and the pseudo-Isidorian Decretales. Scholarship has clarified the general features of this complex subject. Here we will present a mnemo-historical reading that will outline the subject’s multifaceted and protean hermeneutic potential, in relation to the connection between power and salvation and to the legitimization of the Christian sovereignty through the iconic signs of the divine presence. This will involve a discussion on the mythical image of Constantine as patron of Christ’s images in churches – in support of which there is no archaeological evidence – and on the Lateran basilica of the Saviour, which was the first church of Rome and, until the end of the thirteenth century, the most prestigious container of relics and memory of the Medieval West.

Dans l'étendue de leurs fonctions et de leurs appréhension, les archives médiévales, objet d'étude et à l'occasion modèle au développement d'outils intellectuels par l'historien ou le philosophe, entretiennent de multiples rapports avec le facteur temps. Dans leur ampleur chronologique matérielle ou dans les projections idéelles qu'elles permettent, les archives jouent pour ainsi dire avec le temps et le paradoxe afin d'accomplir leurs multiples missions au service de l'institution de laquelle elles participent.