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IMC 2010: Sessions

Session 620: Stairways to Heaven: Transitions in Sacred Spaces - Exile, Pilgrimage, and Loss

Tuesday 13 July 2010, 11.15-12.45

Sponsor:Hilton Shepherd Postgraduate Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Birmingham
Organisers:Emily Jane Rozier, Department of English, University of Birmingham
Michael Rush, Department of History, University of Birmingham
Moderator/Chair:Carol Southworth, Department of History, University of Birmingham
Paper 620-aWhere is a Bishop Not a Bishop?: Episcopal Power in Exile
(Language: English)
Charlotte Lewandowski, Department of History, University of Birmingham
Index terms: Administration, Canon Law, Ecclesiastical History, Religious Life
Paper 620-bPilgrim Access and Activity in Medieval Monastic Cathedrals
(Language: English)
Anna Edith Gottschall, Department of English, University of Birmingham
Index terms: Archaeology - Sites, Architecture - Religious, Lay Piety, Religious Life
Paper 620-cLost on the Way?: Travelling the Silk Road after 9/11
(Language: English)
Philipp Hinz, Institut für Englische Philologie, Freie Universität Berlin
Index terms: Crusades, Historiography - Modern Scholarship, Medievalism and Antiquarianism
Abstract

If religion was at the heart of medieval society then religious space was at the heart of religion. This session explores how religious spaces define people's experience of religion through a variety of transitory contexts. We begin by examining the use of religious space in Episcopal power-relations in Anglo-Norman England. The second paper will then study the relationship of the spatial distribution and layout within specific cathedrals to the development of pilgrimage between 1100 and 1500. The session will end by discussing recent documentary films (produced in the aftermath of 9/11) which revisit religious sites mentioned in medieval travelogues.