IMC 2023: Sessions

In medieval cultures, both in the East and West, public punishments were common phenomena. Such punishments often had a ritualistic character and functioned as staged performances. While these punishments often focused on physical disfigurements, it was not uncommon that also the wrongdoers' submission to certain humiliating ceremonies led to restoration after a transgression of order. By adopting an interdisciplinary approach, this session – which is sponsored by the EU-funded Horizon 2020 project 'NetMAR - Network for Medieval Arts and Rituals' – explores medieval rituals of punishments with a particular focus on their spaces and stagings.

The paper of Marina Ilia will explore the law and penalties related to major crimes in medieval Cyprus during the Venetian rule and it will focus on the ritual spaces of punishment. Andria Andreou will discuss public and private forms of punishment in Byzantine hagiography to unearth the narrative significance of the ritual space of punishment and its impact on the audience. Sara Moure López' paper will approach the image of Babylon - the accursed city - in Castilian visual culture, analysing the different visual strategies adopted in its representation. She will also examine how these strategies relate with contemporary literary works nourishing the 13th-century Castilian imaginary on divine punishment. Finally, Gerlinde Gangl's paper will use various European languages to show how the ritual practices surrounding the pillory as a public humiliation device have remained etched in cultural memory until today.