Academic Sessions: Glasgow 2010
AAH Annual Conference 2010
15 - 17 April, University of Glasgow
The Relic and the City
Session Convenor:
Helen Hills, University of York hh508@york.ac.uk
Relics have been considered in relation to political power, to dynastic authority, to gendered devotion, and to venerational practices, amongst other important issues. To date, however, they have been considered above all as passive objects, valuable items for powerful individuals and institutions to possess, rather than as active affective objects productive of change.
Relics occupy curious positions both in relation to time and space. They look both forward and backward simultaneously. Thus they divide and link death and life, heaven and earth, heavenly Jerusalem and earthly city, and to participate in both simultaneously. They gesture back to the saint’s death and forward to the resurrection of all humans at the Last Judgement. Their ambiguous relationship to both time and space endows relics with significant potential. This session investigates that potential with regard to the city. How might we most productively think the relic-city relation? How might we usefully map relics? In what ways have patronal saints’ relics inflected or contributed to urban developments? How have relics impacted urbanistically? How did / do relics work to produce particular forms and practices within urban spaces and in relation to specific urban institutions and groups?
If we think of extensive space as that which can be measured, and of intensive space as that which defies linear measurement, but as potentially productive of spiritual, political, and social change, in what ways, and to what ends might we think of relics in relation to intensive space? How do relics disrupt extensive space and with what consequences for cities?
Speakers:
Cynthia Hahn (Hunter College and the Grad Center, CUNY)
Spatial control of the vision of relics
Michael Cole (Universityof Pennsylvania)
Relics and the politics of space in Grand Ducal Florence
Ashley D West (Temple University)
Documenting Sacred Spaces: An Early Reliquary Book from the Tyrol, c. 1507
Susan May (Birmingham City University)
The relic of Saint Andrew, Pius II and the founding of Pienza
Andrew J Hopkins (University of l’Aquila)
Sacralizing ex novo space: the Madonna Nikopeia at Santa Maria della Salute
Alice Sanger (University of Manchester)
City/Countryside and Medici Women’s Devotion to Relics
Anne Lutun (University of Pennsylvania)
Veneration of relics and redefinition of city identity: the case of early modern Milan