Shrines Of Saints Research Articles

Musical analysis of Sardool Sikander’s Songs

Abstract: The people of Punjab have always had a flamboyant nature. Here, people dance, sing, and celebrate on every joyous occasion. Each festival in Punjab has its own unique traditions that form the basis for music and songs. Even during weddings, various types of songs are sung. In Punjab, people from all religions live together harmoniously. Each religion has its own traditional music and songs. At religious places, people sing religious songs related to their faith, like Qawwalis and Sufi music at the shrines of saints. In Hinduism, devotional songs related to deities are sung during Jagrans or birth festivals. In Christianity, hymns related to Jesus and Psalms are sung. Similarly, in Sikhism, Shabad Kirtan, Kavishri, and Vaars related to Gurbani are performed. It can be succinctly said that even though the people here are deeply religious, they are also closely connected to music. There has always been immense love and respect for musicians among the people of Punjab. This is why Punjabi music has flourished not only in India but also abroad. Over time, many artists have entertained people through their music. Even before the era of recordings, artists have contributed significantly in elevating Punjabi music to new heights. In the culture of Punjab, where men have received honor and respect in every field, they have also continued to showcase their singing prowess over time and have earned fame, including Asa Singh Mastana, Shri Lal Chand Yamla Jatt, Sukhjinder Shinda, Kuldeep Manak, Padam Shri Puran Chand Wadali, Gurdas Maan, Padam Shri Hansraj Hans, and Sardool Sikander. The subject of the research paper below is a musical study of Sardool Sikander Ji’s singing. Keywords: Singing, Punjab, Raag, Taal, Rhythm, Song.

Saints and shrines as ‘contested heritage’ and the case of Norwich Cathedral

ABSTRACT ‘Contested heritage’ and ‘cancel culture’ have specific meanings and points of reference in our culture today, but these are by no means new phenomena in the life of cathedrals. At the time of the Reformation and the Civil War, all evidence of traditional Catholic culture was considered fair game for iconoclasts, who systematically destroyed saints’ shrines and tombs with their relics. In recent years, in association with the revival of the practice of pilgrimage and in unstated rejection of Reformation tradition, shrines of saints in many cathedrals have been restored, some including relics. It is unsurprising that saints and their shrines can be controversial, since saints themselves are ‘signs of contradiction’, those whose lives lived according to the standards of the kingdom of heaven challenge the values of earthly kingdoms and cultures. Norwich Cathedral is unusual among the ancient cathedrals of England in never having had a great saint enshrined within it. This study will consider the cases of two figures locally revered as martyrs, William of Norwich and Edith Cavell, whose lives and witness have been causes of international controversy and yet who still merit commemoration by Christians today.

Revisiting Female Pilgrimage in Medieval Oxford: Evidence from the Miracula Sancte Frideswide*

The most common form of female pilgrimage in medieval England was local pilgrimage to a saint's shrine. One English pilgrimage destination which is especially associated with women is St Frideswide's shrine in Oxford, owing to a collection of miracle stories compiled in the 1180s in which women are particularly prevalent. Drawing on a new edition and translation of the Miracula sancte Frideswide, this article revisits the cult of Frideswide in the late twelfth century and takes a fresh look at the experiences of women visiting Oxford on pilgrimage. The article reassesses previous speculations about women's attraction to the cult, brings to light some little‐appreciated aspects of female pilgrimage, and finds that many of the accounts challenge assumptions made about female behaviour and expectations in the Middle Ages.

Reconsidering the medieval experience at the shrine in high medieval England

ABSTRACT This article reassesses pilgrimage practices in eleventh- and twelfth-century England and questions the assumption that pilgrims had relatively unrestricted access to saints’ shrines and relics in this period. Drawing on hagiographical evidence, and focusing on six case studies, the article finds that remarkably few pilgrims are depicted in close proximity to a saint's shrine in these narrative sources; they are instead shown venerating at alternative places of devotion such as holy wells, empty graves and extra-mural chapels. It proposes that policies of restricted access were operated by many English cult centres earlier than is often imagined, and in discussing why ecclesiastical institutions may have distanced the laity from their principal shrines the article sets its conclusions within the wider religious developments of the time.

Christianizing Egypt: Syncretism and Local Worlds in Late Antiquity by David Frankfurter

Reviewed by: Christianizing Egypt: Syncretism and Local Worlds in Late Antiquity by David Frankfurter Ann Marie Yasin David Frankfurter Christianizing Egypt: Syncretism and Local Worlds in Late Antiquity Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017 Pp. xix + 314. $39.95. David Frankfurter's new monograph offers a rich and compelling examination of processes of religious change. His petri dish is late antique Egypt, and the study is solidly tethered to the particularities of primary source material preserved by its sands and scribal traditions, but the insights and methodological approaches he presents also make hearty fare for students of religious transformation in other places and times. Profiting greatly from examination of material and textual sources through lenses of anthropology and comparative religion, Frankfurter takes pains to walk readers through the historiographic and theoretical armature of his analysis. The volume is animated by a critical shift in orientation as to how we conceptualize the phenomenon of "Christianization." Frankfurter turns away from the notion of "conversion," to embrace instead a model of ongoing processes of negotiation and syncretism. The difference is far from semantic, for a conversion model implies a change of identity, a rejection of one religious order (with its attendant narratives, forms of devotion, sets of rituals, structures of authority, etc.) for another. Frankfurter's rehabilitation of the notion of syncretism, by contrast, highlights the active selectivity and combination, what he calls "creative assemblage" (4), of institutionally-promoted Christian elements along with traditional forms and practices that have conventionally been identified by scholars (and occasionally disparaged in late antique sermons) as pagan hold-overs or "survivals." Frankfurter's syncretism, moreover, is not merely a stew-pot combination of items from different religions' "ingredients lists," some from column A and some from column B, but rather a more nuanced, complicated process of appropriation and transformation as well as a contemporary contestation over claims of religious purity (though this later point remains less deeply pursued than the former). Frankfurter thus reorients us to consider Christianity not as something that increasing numbers of people in late antiquity "were" but as an amalgam of symbols, artifacts, words, and actions that individuals drew on, redefined, and embodied in different social settings. His wide-ranging study takes up numerous classes of sources, both textual and material, to interrogate the issue of Christianization at the local, everyday level. His stress on the situatedness of religious practice undergirds the organization of the book's core chapters around a set of social contexts in which a variety of instruments of religious syncretism were fashioned: the domestic realm, the holy man, the saint's shrine, the craft workshop, scribal practice, and landscapes of religious architecture. As is clear from this list, Frankfurter intends the notion of "sites of Christianization" not only to encompass literal places but something more abstract, closer to "social environments," that encompass people and artifacts, gestures and words, the ritual and the mundane. For example, for the author, the craft workshop need not be an archaeologically identified space—there are no architectural plans or analyses [End Page 498] of tools, facture, or spatial layouts in the "Magic of Craft" chapter. Rather, his discussion broadly encompasses the sphere of "making," whether in the home or in the monastery; the focus is on the creative act of fashioning things, such as figurines, cloth, tombstones, and panel paintings, that drew on both traditional and Christian iconography. Here as throughout the volume, there is a refreshing move away from superficial examination of objects' or places' appearance as some sort of index of the purity of their makers' or users' Christianity. Instead, the main thrust of the book's analysis lies in the ways in which individuals amalgamated elements drawn from traditions both familiar and new to tap into forms of religious authority and to achieve a perceived efficacy. Though a superficial look at the table of contents would appear to map out a social topography of apparently discrete "spheres," productive overlaps and interrelations within and between the social contexts identified by the chapter titles abound: the domestic concerns, for example, identified by emphasis on health, family, and ancestors, are also found in interactions with holy men and actions at saints' shrines; individual classes of...

Identity, Place, Space, and Rhymes During a Pilgrimage to the Shrine of Moulay Abdessalam, Morocco

AbstractThe Jbala region in northern Morocco is known for an enormous number of Sufi lodges, shrines of local saints, and the cults of those saints. However, this topic has entirely escaped the attention of modern scholars. This paper focuses on the ziyara, or tradition of pilgrimage to a shrine of a saint, connecting it to the debate on place and space on the one hand, and identity studies on the other. Using a classical ethnographic approach, I analyze one such pilgrimage that took place in 2018, in which I was invited to participate as a guest,. In this paper I understand pilgrimage as a communal spiritual journey and analyze the roles the collective and individual play in it, as well as how and by what means the participants cocreate and experience constructs of place and space.

Family rites in Testour, Tunisia, in the 1970s

ABSTRACTIn the 1970s, people in rural northern Tunisia travelled in family groups to visit the shrines of saints (‘friends of God’) near them in search of desired health outcomes and emotional reassurance, sometimes spending overnight and enjoying the occasion for its recreational aspects as well as act of worship. This paper describes the set of beliefs that underlie such behaviour and the sequence of events in visits to several of these shrines. The visits involve prayer, commensality, and recreation. The shrines and the visits range from the simple to the complex. The occasional successful visit validates the system of beliefs, and prepares for the next visit. The collective aspect of the visits reinforces social relations within the groups of families and neighbours.

From Potent Dead to Potent Places? Reflections on Muslim Saint Shrines in South Asia

This paper analyses the issue of the thaumaturgy of the Muslim saints in South Asia by focusing on the notion of potent place rather than on the exemplary lives of these figures and on their exceptional relations to God. Nevertheless, there is an important contradiction between the ubiquity of the saint, his residence with God and his strict localisation in space. To establish a firm relation with him and obtain his intercession, devotees must visit him precisely where his corpse was buried. Generally, this place was already potent or extra-ordinary before the inhumation of the saint. Does the process of the saint’s institutionalisation through the rites performed on his body transfer the potency of the place onto the saint and the power of the saint to the place? The analysis will draw on fieldwork enquiries conducted at the shrine of the martyr Ghāzī Miyāñ, the oldest (eleventh century) and most popular Muslim heroic figure in Northern India and Nepalese Terai, and at the shrines of two popular Sufi saints of Sindh (Pakistan), Lāl Shahbāz Qalandar and Bodlo Bahār.

Appropriating Jerusalem through Sacred Places: Disputed Land and Female Rituals at the Tombs of Mary and Rachel

Due to deep-seated political tensions and intermittent violence between various streams of the city’s three major religions, Jerusalem’s sacred landscape is in the midst of significant change. One of the most salient expressions of this phenomenon is the renaissance of female saint shrines, most notably the Tomb of Mary and the proximate Tomb of Rachel the Matriarch. At these sites, female symbols, imagery rituals, and materiality have become powerful tools for asserting political claims that pertain to land and belonging. I will take stock of this phenomenon through the lens of different ethno-religious groups in Israel/Palestine that are availing themselves of female symbols (such as fertility, suffering, and maternal care) to advance various objectives. I find that these symbols have charged valences within minority communities. For members of the country’s hegemonic denominations, Rachel is the Jewish people’s “eternal mother” as well as a national symbol of the “return of the exiles” to their homeland. At the same time, local Catholic and Orthodox Christians view Mary to be “the mother of minorities” who suffered on behalf of and continues to provide succor for the weak. As a minority, Christians in Israel/Palestine employ this image of the Virgin as part of their effort to struggle with their weakening grip over the territories. Viewing the Virgin as a protector of minority groups is a departure from the vast majority of the Christian world, where Mary constitutes a national symbol that reinforces social belonging. In sum, I show how, amid the ongoing religious struggle, both female icons and their respective sacred venues are mobilized by different groups for the sake of challenging the political order and reshaping the landscape.

Person in Place: Possession and Power at an Indian Islamic Saint Shrine

Person in Place: Possession and Power at an Indian Islamic Saint Shrine

Paulinus Nolanus und die Basilica Nova in Cimitile/Nola: Studien zu einem zentralen Denkmal der spätantik-frühchristlichen Architektur (review)

Reviewed by: Paulinus Nolanus und die Basilica Nova in Cimitile/Nola: Studien zu einem zentralen Denkmal der spätantik-frühchristlichen Architektur Dennis Trout Tomas Lehmann Paulinus Nolanus und die Basilica Nova in Cimitile/Nola: Studien zu einem zentralen Denkmal der spätantik-frühchristlichen Architektur Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag, 2004 Pp. 283. Black and white illustrations, 252; color, 40; foldout plans, 3. This magnificently produced book written by a scholar who knows the archaeological site of Cimitile (near Nola) as well as anyone working today is the welcome fruit of nearly two decades of close association with the basilica complex that arose around the grave of Felix of Nola in the mid-fourth century, was then expanded and enhanced by the émigré Paulinus of Bordeaux, and remained an important pilgrimage center in the medieval period. Despite its general fame as a uniquely preserved and documented late antique saint's shrine, however, the site at Cimitile has not been well understood until quite recently. Early modern archaeology of the site was often haphazard and poorly published. Intermittent and fragmentary field reports (primarily those issued by Gino Chierici from the 1930s through the 1950s) and reconstructions based heavily upon the literary descriptions embedded in the poems and letters of Paulinus (notably R. C. [End Page 114] Goldschmidt's Paulinus' Churches at Nola [1940]) seldom sat comfortably side-by-side. Moreover, preservation efforts at the complex were largely insufficient until intensive recovery and restoration began in the late 1980s. But Cimitile is now a show-site well worth the detour from Naples or Pompeii, and Tomas Lehmann's erudite Paulinus Nolanus und die Basilica Nova makes the archaeology and history of the basilica complex fresh and comprehensible. Lehmann's approach in this volume, as it often was in his preliminary studies, is opportunistically ecumenical. Archival, epigraphic, art historical, textual, and archeological evidence and methodologies are all recruited to the service of historic reconstruction. The volume's introductory chapter is followed by a careful review of excavation and publication activity from the sixteenth through the twenty-first century. Chapter 3 charts the transformation of this originally extra-mural zone (which now underlies modern Nola's contiguous neighbor, Cimitile) from an early imperial cemetery into the suburban pilgrimage shrine it had already become even before Paulinus began construction of the Basilica Nova about 400. A long fourth chapter presents the archeological evidence for the Basilica Nova itself. Two chapters then consider, first, the group of structures (i.e., S. Stefano and S. Tommaso) lying just to the west of the Basilica Nova and the earlier Basilica Vetus and, secondly, the late fifth or early sixth-century construction projects carried out within the Basilica Vetus. Most notable in the latter respect are the still extant mosaic-laden aedicula that surrounds the tombs of Felix, Paulinus, and his wife Therasia and the grand western apse that completely reoriented the Basilica Vetus in the vicinity of these holy graves. Chapter 7 re-examines the literary evidence for the Basilica Nova. Lehmann introduces, translates, and comments upon the relevant sections of Paulinus's epistula 32 (404; to Sulpicius Severus) and carmina 27 and 28 (the natalicia of 403 and 404). Briefer consideration is given to the evidence of carmen 19 (the natalicium of 405) and to a sixth-century epigraphic sylloge (already thoroughly discussed by Lehmann in Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 91 [1992]), which also serves to document the interest of Pope Damasus (366–384) in Felix's Nolan tomb. Chapter 8 collates this broad array of evidence to provide an overview of the plan, form, and function of the new basilica built by Paulinus only a few meters north of the Basilica Vetus that sheltered Felix's tomb. Lehmann's volume concludes with a brief survey of the fate of the Basilica Nova after Paulinus, including recall of the major renovations required by a moment of catastrophic destruction linked to an early sixth-century eruption of Vesuvius. Words communicate a great deal here, of course, but so, too, do pictures. The volume's 252 black and white images, 40 color reproductions, and three foldout plans not only present a feast for the eyes (especially in the...

“For a prayer in that place would be most welcome”: Jews, Holy Shrines, and Miracles—A New Approach

This article discusses the effect the Christian propaganda in favor of pilgrimage to the shrines of healing saints had on inner-Jewish social phenomenon. It explores the ways Jews confronted this issue and shows how Jews devised methods of their own to balance this propaganda, either by directly confronting the message or by offering Jewish solutions—especially to those Jews seeking the aid and healing powers that were reported to have existed at the shrines of saints. The argument is based on a review of attitudes found in medieval Jewish sources towards the alleged powers of the Christian saints, the inner-Jewish discussion concerning the authenticity of the miracles reported to have taken place at the saint’s shrines. Finally, it describes what appears to be a “Jewish alternative” constructed in pious Jewish circles to balance and counter the common practice among Christian neighbors to seek the aid of the saints, especially when health matters were concerned.

Decorations for the Holy Dead: Visual Embellishments on Tombs and Shrines of Saints. Stephen Lamia , Elizabeth Valdez del Alamo

Previous articleNext article No AccessReviewsDecorations for the Holy Dead: Visual Embellishments on Tombs and Shrines of Saints. Stephen Lamia , Elizabeth Valdez del Alamo Rita TekippeRita Tekippe Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Speculum Volume 80, Number 2Apr., 2005 The journal of the Medieval Academy of America Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1017/S0038713400000701 Views: 7Total views on this site Copyright 2005 The Medieval Academy of AmericaPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Decorations for the Holy Dead: Visual Embellishment on Tombs and Shrines of Saints (review)

Reviewed by: Decorations for the Holy Dead: Visual Embellishment on Tombs and Shrines of Saints Emma Hawkes Lamia, Stephen and Elizabeth Valdez del Alamo , eds, Decorations for the Holy Dead: Visual Embellishment on Tombs and Shrines of Saints ( International Medieval Research, 8), Turnhout, Brepols, 2002; pp. xxi, 260; 108 b/w illustrations, 11 colour plates; RRP €75; ISBN 2503510884. This collection of essays on the decoration of saints' tombs arose from a session sponsored by the International Centre of Medieval Art at the 1999 International Medieval Congress held at Leeds. Stephen Lamia and Elizabeth Valdez del Alamo have structured Decorations for the Holy Dead around 'the active role saints' tombs and their embellishments assumed within the fabric of medieval society' (p. xxii). The group of papers presented at Leeds considered saints' tombs located in Spain, France and Italy, but the essay collection also includes papers on sites in England, Greece and Hungary. Decorations for the Holy Dead begins with a reprint of an essay by Peter Brown: 'Enjoying the Saint in Late Antiquity'. This acts as kind of 'celebrity introduction' to the collection. It examines early Christian interpretations of martyrs' deaths and the recollection of saints. The remainder of the book is concerned with the high and late medieval periods, so this essay provides some theological background for later interpretations of the holy dead. The first section considers the ways people could physically interact with tombs. Rocio Sanchez Ameijeiras' essay on thirteenth-century Castilian saints' tombs provides an excellent introduction to the elements in cenotaphs and reliquaries, with a focus on how pilgrims could interact with the monuments by circling them, viewing them from special places or even physically entering into the cenotaphs. The essay acts as an introduction to the elements of memorial art as well as a guide to the ways that medieval people could interact with these thirteenth-century saints' tombs. The second section of the collection examines the burial of saints in cloisters. One of the more interesting essays considers the sculpture in the late eleventh-century cloister of the abbey of Saint-Pierre, Moissac. The sculpture is thoughtfully compared with liturgical manuscripts from the same period which also praise Saints Peter and Paul. The final section considers changes to saints' cults in the later middle ages. This is something of a catch-all, with various essays covering similar thematic material to the first two sections though focussed on a later period. The quality of the essays in the collection as a whole varies but some of the best essays are concentrated in this section. Leanne Gilbertson's essay on the Vanni altarpiece and the cult of Saint [End Page 253] Margaret is a very detailed reading of a single item produced around 1348. The preciseness of its geographical and temporal provenance means that Gilbertson can provide a detailed reading of the altarpiece in terms of the outbreak of the Black Death and its unusual iconographic representations of childbirth. The best of the essays provide this kind of clarity and specificity. Nadezhda Guerassimenko's essay on the representation of physician saints at the monastery of Hosios Loukas, Phokis, for instance, links the unusual concentration of nine physician saints at the monastery to local traditions. Other essays fail to provide enough information to situate the saints' tombs in a specific context. Elizabeth Valdez del Alamo's essay 'The Saint's Capital, Talisman in the Cloister' does not give sufficient background information about the church under consideration. The argument that the sculpture on the capitals is not meaningless (as is usually accepted) is fascinating, but the essay itself is difficult to follow because of untranslated epitaphs. The best essays in Decorations for the Holy Dead provide insight into the ways particular saints' tombs may have been understood at specific moments in time. Those which do not achieve this level of analysis nonetheless provide a general reading of tropes of medieval art. The fact that the volume is densely illustrated, with 108 black and white illustrations enhances this form of art history. It is unfortunate that there are only 11 colour illustrations, presumably limited by cost, of course, always prohibits full colour illustration. One of the essays in Decorations...

Dumbarton Oaks Papers: Number Fifty-Six, 2002 (review)

Dumbarton Oaks Papers:Number Fifty-Six, 2002. Edited by Alice-Mary Talbot. (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection. 2003. Pp. vii, 324. $85.00.) Rarely are volumes of professional journals reviewed, but in this case, Dumbarton Oaks Papers has published nine articles on the theme of pilgrimage in the Byzantine Empire after 600. These papers were first presented at the Dumbarton Oaks Symposium, May 5-7,2000. Taken together, they represent a major work regarding Byzantine pilgrimage, to be placed next to that of John Nesbitt and Virgil Crisafulli on the Miracles of Saint Artemios. In introducing these articles, Alice-Mary Talbot emphasizes that Greek had no term for pilgrim, an English word derived through Italian from the Latin peregrinus (foreigner). The Byzantine term for those who traveled to a religious shrine was proskynetes (worshiper), a word which did not imply a journey. Another Greek term,xenos, most closely iefiectsperegrinus, but it has always retained a more general meaning of stranger or guest, and thus survives as the Greek word xenodocheion (hotel) or the English xenophobia, terms with no connection to pilgrimage. Three subsequent articles present evidence to support what Talbot infers from Greek terminology. In the first article, Talbot herself focuses on the years after iconoclasm; she examines miracle tales associated with saints' shrines in Asia Minor and Palaeologan Constantinople. Such miracle tales form a peculiar genre of hagiography. The most famous example of this genre is the Miracles of Saint Artemios, a seventh-century source recording forty-five miracles most of which describe how visitors to Saint Artemios' tomb in Constantinople were healed of disease. In studying Anatolian miracle tales, Talbot discovers that most visitors came from the local area rather than from distant lands. One could thus describe them as worshipers (proskynetes) rather than pilgrims. Unfortunately, no miracle tales survive from Ephesus and its wonder-working tomb of Saint John the Evangelist. Other sources prove that Ephesus did attract true pilgrims from all over the Mediterranean, including some Moslems, as Clive Foss's article emphasizes. The second article,by Jon Rosenqvist, focuses on Eugenics of Trebizond.In the miracle tales concerning this saint's shrine, Rosenqvist found again that visitors came only from Trebizond, not even from nearby mountain villages. Eugenics' tomb never attracted pilgrims, despite two attempts by local religious leaders to move his feast day from January to june, a month favoring long-distance travel. In the third article, Richard Greenfield reaches the same conclusion in examining the Life of Saint Lazaros of Mount Gelasion. Lazaros attracted thousands during his lifetime who came for spiritual advice, for material assistance, or simply out of curiosity, but none were pilgrims who traveled from distant provinces. …

The Congresbury Carvings – An Eleventh-century Saint's Shrine?

The discovery of a small group of sculpted fragments at Congresbury in Somerset seven years ago set in motion a period of research, reflection and analysis that has given rise to this paper. It opens with an account of the circumstances of their discovery and a description of their appearance. Then follows a proposed date and provenance. It is suggested that the quality of the sculptures and the evident scale of the monument to which they once belonged indicate a structure and a site of high status, possibly the shrine of the Welsh missionary saint Cyngar, whose cult enjoyed some popularity in the high and late Middle Ages. A review of the history of the site and evidence from its placename and from archaeological investigations corroborate this thesis.The style of the sculptures when compared with dated manuscript illuminations and with sculptural fragments surviving from Anglo-Saxon Wessex is in line with a late tenth- to mid-eleventh-century dating. The historical circumstances of Congresbury at this time further suggest that this date may be narrowed down to the period between 1033 and 1060. The original structure of the shrine to which the fragments may have belonged is considered in the light of contemporary documentary evidence and research carried out on the remains of comparable shrine structures.

NEW REPORT CORRESPONDENT

An examination of records left by pilgrims visiting Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem reveals flourishing themes and rituals during the 1940s. These years were also a time of major cultural upheaval for the Jewish community of Palestine. The author suggests that an increase in pilgrimage to shrines of saints can be seen as an attempt to make sense out of current reality by linking it to sacred history. An important impetus for the development of a pilgrimage site may be the perceived convergence of aspects of the saint's biography with current political and social conditions.

Pilgrimage in medieval England

The men and women who gathered at the Tabard Inn in Southwark in Chaucer' s Canterbury Tales are only the most famous of the tens of thousands of English pilgrims, from kings to peasants, who set off to the shrines of saints and the sites of miracles in the middle ages. As they travelled along well-established routes in the hope of a cure or a blessing, to fulfil a vow or to see new places, the pilgrims left records that let us see medieval people and their concerns and beliefs from a unique and intimate angle. As well as the most famous shrines, notably that of St Thomas Becket at Canterbury, Diana Webb also describes the many local pilgrimages and cults, and their rise and fall, over the English middle ages as a whole. ' Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages, and palmeres for to seken straunge strondes.' --Chaucer

Prophetical Traditions in Northern Europe: Introduction

British Library MS Stowe 944 is a well-known eleventh-century manuscript, containing most notably the Liber Vitae of the New Minster at Winchester and the will of King Alfred. Written possibly in 1031 but certainly after Ælfwine was made abbot at the New Minster, the manuscript is a miscellany of lists of saints' resting places, kings' names, relics, and chronological commonplaces. The materials found in it are practical, historical, and could even be described as straightforward. On f. 40rv there appears a twelfth-century addition on an originally blank leaf, a text commonly known as the "Vision of Eadwine." In some fifty lines, the monk Eadwine apparently sees Cuthbert while lying in his cell at noon, and thereafter leaves the monastery, in defiance of abbot Ælfwine's order, in order to visit the saint's shrine. Upon his return he rejoices in the leniency of his reception by the other monks, and comments at some length upon the agreement between the two minsters at Winchester, "clarifying" the absolute equality of the two houses. This spurious vision is generally taken as a twelfth-century forgery, an attempt by the monks of the New Minster to establish their title and authority with respect to the Old Minster. They wished to establish that title and authority by way of this prophetic vision, a vision in the biblical and early Christian tradition of the revelatory dream-vision. Today, attempts to establish land claims and ecclesiastical authority would take place by way of arguments from documents, testimony from individuals, and careful historical investigation. A dream-vision by an employee of one of the involved parties would be unlikely to have much evidentiary value, though it is possible that were the text of the eleventh century, as this one purports to be, it might establish an historical pattern of belief (or spurious belief). How much value the "Vision of Eadwine" had in the medieval version of such proceedings is hard to determine.

Conferring with the Dead: Necrophilia and Nostalgia in the Seventeenth Century

Conferring with the Dead: Necrophilia and Nostalgia in the Seventeenth Century Scott Dudley O that it were possible we might But hold some two days’ conference with the dead, From them I should learn somewhat, I am sure I never shall know here. The Duchess of Malfi 1 This nostalgic lament, uttered by the Duchess of Malfi just before her death, looks back to an earlier, though not so distant, cultural moment when it was still possible to hold “conference with the dead.” It simultaneously summons the images of the dead—the corpses, the severed body parts, and the skeletal remains—that are such a notable feature of this play as well as of seventeenth-century theater and culture in general. Derided as mere sensationalism, or, more recently, explored as a site for the emergent scientific objectification of the body and subsequent privileging of the Cartesian subject, the relics of the dead that accumulate in plays like The Duchess of Malfi, in fact, engage a counter-reformation, Roman Catholic aesthetic and theology about the dead body that most frequently clusters around discussions of relics and the efficacy of prayers to the saints. The remains of the body that accrue throughout the literature of this period participate in a uniquely seventeenth-century negotiation between emergent and residual cultural concerns about history, the nature of the body, subjectivity, representation, and epistemology. The necrophilia that surrounds these body parts reconstitutes, in an altered form, the residual cultural impetus to have access to the past through the physical, and, in the best new historicist fashion, thereby to hold “conference with the dead.” Earlier criticism of Jacobean theater was primarily concerned either to denigrate it for the “Tussaud Chamber of Horrors” that it frequently stages, or to justify it for its ability to depict a higher moral or theological order that triumphs over the macabre. 2 A decade ago Francis Barker argued that the “glorious cruelties” of the Jacobean theater “articulate a mode of corporeality” in which the body is not “that effaced residue which it is to become, beneath or behind the proper realm of discourse.” 3 [End Page 277] In a similar fashion Karin Coddon has argued that the necrophiliac desires that run throughout The Revenger’s Tragedy serve to “parody and to interrogate contemporary, increasingly scientistic notions of the body.” 4 These arguments, while seminal, do not account for the continuing power of residual cultural forces which complicate the distinctions between subject and object, discourse and body, present and past in this period. In the first half of the century the cultural tensions concerning corporeality, subjectivity, and epistemology, which had long been present in Reformation debates over issues of salvation, relics, and images, took on a new intensity in the increasingly frequent and often heated controversies regarding miracles performed at the shrines of saints. Beginning in 1606 with the English translation of the French pamphlet Histoire des Miracles (Miracles Lately Wrought) and continuing on for the next several decades, Catholic, Anglican, and occasionally Puritan authors argued with one another over the potential power of relics. The corpses and body parts that appear on the Jacobean stage—for example, Gloriana’s skull in The Revenger’s Tragedy, Annabella’s heart in ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore, or the severed hand in The Duchess of Malfi—participate in these theological debates. Unlike the corpses on the dissecting table or the view of the dead body taken by Protestant theology, body parts on the Jacobean stage are endowed with extraordinary material potency. They thus stage the moment in seventeenth-century culture when the corpse can be seen either as an object that has been emptied of all subjectivity, as Protestant theology and the emerging scientific discourse of anatomy claim, or as an object in which attenuated and even enhanced subjectivity and agency still reside, as Catholic polemics about relics insist. The intrusion of the macabre into these plays revives earlier cultural concerns which here return in an alienated form to mark the distance between the dominant and residual culture, and which expose areas of epistemological and affective human experience that the dominant culture does not and cannot address. 5 Such residual cultural concerns come...