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IMC 2019: Sessions

Session 1238: Material Manifestations of Transcendent Truth

Wednesday 3 July 2019, 14.15-15.45

Organisers:Martin Wangsgaard Jürgensen, Nationalmuseet, København
Maria H. Oen, Centrum för medeltidsstudier, Stockholms universitet / Institutt for lingvistiske og nordiske studier, Universitetet i Oslo
Moderator/Chair:Kristin B. Aavitsland, Det teologiske Menighetsfakultet, Oslo
Paper 1238-aSituating Devotional Edification: The Function of Micro-Architecture on the Exterior of Rural Parish Churches
(Language: English)
Line M. Bonde, Det teologiske Menighetsfakultet, Oslo
Index terms: Architecture - Religious, Art History - General
Paper 1238-bShrinking the World: Depicting the Holy in Miniature
(Language: English)
Martin Wangsgaard Jürgensen, Nationalmuseet, København
Index terms: Art History - Sculpture, Liturgy, Mentalities, Religious Life
Paper 1238-cThe Role of Art in the Construction of Late Medieval Visions
(Language: English)
Maria H. Oen, Centrum för medeltidsstudier, Stockholms universitet / Institutt for lingvistiske og nordiske studier, Universitetet i Oslo
Index terms: Architecture - Religious, Art History - General, Mentalities, Religious Life
Abstract

This session explores the connections between materiality and devotional culture in the Middle Ages. This juxtaposition by now has a long tradition within interdisciplinary scholarship and has gained renewed interest within academia since Caroline Bynum Walker published her much lauded volume Christian Materiality in 2011. The three papers focus on the paradoxical character of material representations as man-made objects of this world which, in medieval belief, when approached with the right mind-set (the 'ghostly eye' as the English mystic Margery Kempe calls it) become porous, transparent entities through which the beholder or devotee momentarily transcends into the beyond and is able to peruse divine truth.