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IMC 2018: Sessions

Session 1532: At the Crossroads of Empires: Sant'Ambrogio at Montecorvino Rovella - A locus memoriae in Southern Lombardy, I

Thursday 5 July 2018, 09.00-10.30

Organiser:Francesca Dell'Acqua, Dipartimento di Scienze del Patrimonio Culturale, Università degli Studi di Salerno
Moderator/Chair:Walter Pohl, Institut für Mittelalterforschung, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien
Paper 1532-aOn Mary's Side: The Memory of St Ambrose of Milan in Southern Langobardia
(Language: English)
Ivan Foletti, Centre for Early Medieval Studies, Masarykova univerzita, Brno
Index terms: Art History - Painting, Ecclesiastical History, Hagiography
Paper 1532-bFrankish Aspirations in the South and the 'Division' of the Principality of Benevento in the Mid-9th Century
(Language: English)
Clemens Gantner, Institut für Mittelalterforschung, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien
Index terms: Archives and Sources, Charters and Diplomatics, Historiography - Medieval, Politics and Diplomacy
Abstract

The 9th-century church of Sant'Ambrogio at Montecorvino Rovella stands alone in a rural setting in the hills south-east of Salerno, capital of the southern Lombard principate. Largely unstudied and unknown outside local circles, the building showcases a host of cultural strategies in play in 9th-century Italy. Key to its understanding are issues such as private funerary commemoration, monastic outreach and investment, transalpine Frankish religious-political strategies, cultural interchange between northern and southern Italy, the interests and ideology of the Papacy, and iconophobia and iconophilia in the shadow of Byzantine iconoclasm. The role of local powers in the articulation of pilgrimage networks connecting western Europe to the Holy Land must also be taken into account. An on-going project supported by the British Academy and by the local municipality, will be presented in a series of papers looking at the history, archaeology, architecture, and art of the site, and at its position as a nexus of interests: local and external, personal, institutional, and political.