IMC 2024: Sessions

This session has been grouped by the IMC Programming Committee from individually submitted paper proposals.

Paper a: The objective of this presentation is to meticulously dissect the role of icy landscapes and frozen water within the medieval depictions of hell, which are commonly integrated into the framework of Last Judgment scenes. The initial segment of the discourse will craft a vivid portrayal of the concept of ice, drawing inspiration from select ancient and medieval textual sources. Prominent among these sources are the Bible, Apocrypha, early Christian writings, and Dante’s Divine Comedy. This comprehensive foundation will aid in shaping the imagery of ice as it was conceptualized during the medieval period, driven by an underlying apprehension arising from the climatic crises of their time.

The crux of this presentation will revolve around an in-depth exploration of a diverse array of medieval iconographic renditions. Central to this investigation will be the visual interpretations of hell, specifically as they feature within the broader context of Last Judgment compositions. The primary focus will be directed towards unraveling the profound symbolic significance that ice assumes within the eschatological framework of Last Judgment iconography. These representations of ice, borne of both artistic imagination and environmental unease, serve as visual testaments to the anxieties linked to climatic crises in the medieval era.

Paper b: Roth rámach (‘rowing wheel’) is a mysterious tool linked to the apocalypse in Irish medieval eschatology. Accounts provide various descriptions of the roth rámach, depicting it as a massive sailing vessel, a wheel, or a ‘thing’ that can blind, deafen, and kill those interacting with it. Its creation is attributed to the legendary Irish druid Mog Ruith (who is claimed to be the murderer of John the Baptist in Irish Apocrypha), his daughter the druidess Tlachtga, and Simon Magus. The coming of roth rámach in Irish eschatological literature signals the ‘last days’, and the mortality. The paper aims to bring together contradictory descriptions of the roth rámach, reveal popular misconceptions about it, and elaborate on the origins of the legendary machine.

Paper c: Catastrophe sermons, written in the midst of acute crisis, provide us with a valuable glimpse into the way in which catastrophic events were narrated in the medieval period. This paper studies one particular sermon, ‘Sermo in processione facta propter inundationem aquarum’ by Odo of Châteauroux (c. 1190-1273), concerning a flood that submerged the city of Paris in 1233. The sermon consists of multiple typological and tropological readings of biblical narratives of crisis - Old Testament narratives of flood and drought and New Testament narratives of the apocalypse. How did these biblical narratives contribute to the narration of a contemporary flood crisis in High Medieval Paris? The paper argues that the typological and tropological interpretations can be viewed as conceptual blending processes that involve compressions of biblical time and present time as well as biblical and contemporary spatial features. Through the blending of biblical narratives and the contemporary flood, the Parisian flood is inscribed into salvation history and conceptually connected to global, environmental events of the biblical past and future.