IMC 2018: Sessions

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.