IMC 2016: Sessions

Session 1707: Dividing and Collecting Bodily Relics in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, III: The Politics of Body Parts

Sponsor:	European Research Council Project ‘The Cult of Saints’, University of Oxford
Organisers:	Julia M. H. Smith, School of Humanities (History), University of Glasgow Bryan Ward-Perkins, Faculty of History, University of Oxford
Moderator/Chair:	Caroline Goodson, Department of History, Classics & Archaeology, Birkbeck, University of London
Paper 1707-a	Bones of Contention: Stories of Division and Struggle over the Bodies of Saints in Late Antique and Early Medieval Syria-Mesopotamia (Language: English) Sergey Minov, Faculty of History, University of Oxford Index terms: Hagiography, Religious Life
Paper 1707-b	Church Decoration and Relic Translation in Early Medieval Rome (Language: English) Masue Kato, Graduate School of Christian Studies, Rikkyo University Index terms: Art History - Painting, Religious Life
Paper 1707-c	Establishing and Maintaining the Cult of St Cyrus and St John in Alexandria and Rome (Language: English) Eileen Rubery, Institute of Continuing Education, University of Cambridge Index terms: Architecture - Religious, Art History - Painting, Hagiography, Religious Life
Abstract	The possession and display of relics played an important part in the diffusion and establishment of particular saintly cults, and in the buttressing of clerical authority. This session examines these phenomena from two case studies in Rome, where visual evidence enhanced the role of relics, and from the world of Syriac Christianity.