IMC 2024: Sessions

This session examines how sensory experiences shape commemorative practices and their associated objects in Late Medieval Europe. Particularly in the last two decades, scholarly attention has shifted to how commemoration goes beyond what remains visible today. Nevertheless, much remains be said on how actively the senses were targeted in these rituals and what the link is between commemoration and the senses in the period after the ritual. In our session we will to explore the intersection between ritual and object in which funerary architecture were charged, activated or loaded with a certain meaning through a sensory effect at its initiation. Source types, such as witness accounts and theological sources, allow us to gain new insights on the relation between the senses and mourning rituals. This session discusses practices of commemoration in three distinct geographical regions and in three different consecutive centuries, allowing opportunities for comparison in the discussion. The papers will allow us to research the mechanisms and strategies of consolidating memory into existing rituals and spaces in Late Medieval Europe.