Session grouped by IMC Programming Committee:
Abstract Paper -a:
Tertullian briefly expressed the fact that Christianity is a religion based on the body: caro salutis est cardo. However attitude to the body in Christianity was at least ambivalent, as can be seen in some hymns of the medieval liturgy. Human body is fragile and sinful, hence one prays not to succumb to its temptations. On the other hand, body is called to praise the Lord during the Office and it is the Lord's holy body which is held as the salvation and Christian life.
Abstract Paper -b:
In 1954 Anton Kern published brief descriptions of Corpus Christi services preserved in eleven manuscripts from the mid thirteenth to the late 15th centuries housed in Austrian libraries. Further work has shown that the services are even more interesting than Kern imagined. The manuscripts contain versions of the early office from Liège, the two Roman offices, and the Dominican rhymed office. In one case, an individual service combined elements of at least two different offices. This paper will describe the services and show that this liturgical variety existed from the inception of the feast until well into the 15th century.
Abstract Paper -c:
The responsorium Hodie nata est beata Virgo Maria on c. 76v of the Antifonarium II, kept in the Ravenna's Arcivescovil Archive, is very interesting. The miniature of the Virgin's nativity is unusual: near the little Mary there are not just the midwives but four men characterized by different age. The representation, not justified by iconographical requirements, maybe refers the choristers to persons that paid the musical codex and it remembers them the coeval events. The image seems to be an allegory of the birth of a new political age for the city that becale possible thanks to the contribution of emergent families (the three young men near Mary) and of the lcal political men (the man with a beard).
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