IMC 2026: Sessions

These two sessions examine how medieval ecclesiastical and secular leaders strategically shaped temporalities by reviving and promoting earlier saints’ cults to reinforce institutional authority. Between the 11th and 15th centuries, bishops, abbots, queens, abbesses, patrons and matrons shaped the memory of earlier saints, often female figures from Late Antiquity, to bridge chronological gaps and legitimize contemporary power structures. Our papers explore how these temporal strategies were articulated in hagiography, liturgical offices, relic traditions, music, architecture, and visual culture, and how they intersected with gender.

The second interdisciplinary session turns to Castile, Galicia, and Catalonia to examine queens, bishops, and abbesses as agents of the transformation of saints' cults. Amaya Pérez Almenara examines how two Castilian queens, Urraca López de Haro and Violante of Aragon, drew inspiration from the cult of Saint Ursula. Through reliquaries linked to their names, they combined dynastic self-assertion with acts of devotion in monastic settings. Mariana Ramos de Lima turns to the Lugo Breviary, illustrating how Bishop Pedro López de Aguiar left his mark on the city’s liturgy by incorporating Dominican saints into its pages and reshaping the local identity in the process. Marga Mingote takes us to Vallbona, where the abbesses of the Anglesola family fostered the cult of Corpus Christi. Their support reached into every corner of convent life, from building chapels and commissioning altarpieces to providing music for the Corpus Christi procession, so that Christ’s presence was experienced through their initiative and vision. Read together, the papers reveal figures such as queens, bishops, and abbesses not as distant figures of authority, but as active voices shaping devotion, leaving behind contributions that feel at once practical, creative, and personal.