IMC 2017: Sessions

Paper -a:
The coronation of the nine-year-old Henry III in Gloucester Abbey was a hurried and poorly-attended affair, but it did legitimise his accession in the middle of a civil war. Why Gloucester? What actually happened during the ceremony? And what music was performed? Some questions are unanswerable, but this paper aims to present what is known and to explore the possibilities for the unknowns.

Paper -b:
In her own day, Hildegard of Bingen was best known for her prophetic vision which was inextricably connected to long periods of illness diagnosed in modernity as migraine. She sometimes felt marginalized by fear or by public opinion due to her visions of what they impelled her to do. This paper seeks outline what we term 'disability' in Hildegard's cultural milieu. It argues that music and ceremony are crucial to this description. Thus, to our surprise, 'disability' may emerge not simply as physiologically-defined deficiency as in the medical model, nor as societal power excluding physical or mental aberration, as in the modern social model. Instead, sacramental reality redefines disability as transformative difference particularly open to God which may be expressed, interpreted, and enacted in the embodied culture of music and liturgy.

This paper describes spaces of disability. Often now as in the Middles Ages disability defines spaces of marginalization - people with physical impairments may be left to wait for help in spaces apart, or those with long-term illness may be separated from the general population, while people with mental distress may feel isolated or be institutionalised. Yet there is another possibility, sacramental significance. We may think of the integration of developmentally disabled people in the city of Geel as enactment of its identity defined by the legend and patronage of St. Dymphna. Examining Hildegard's drama, the Ordo Virtuum and her liturgical lyrics, and her first-person accounts in her Vita and letters, this paper analyses disability in her monastic life, her experiences of vision, and her liturgical imagery in terms of music and ceremony. We emerge with a new understanding of music and liturgical ceremony as illuminated by the body in a sacramental model of disability.