Eventum: A Journal of Medieval Arts & Rituals

Eventum: A Journal of Medieval Arts and Rituals and its First Issue

Stavroula Constantinou — Wed, 20 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This first introductory article presents the brand new, interdisciplinary, and diamond open access journal Eventum, along with the specific theme of Issue 1: “The Arts and Rituals of Pilgrimage”. It describes the rationale and scope of the journal in association with the three key terms of its subtitle, in reverse order: ‘rituals’, ‘arts’, and ‘medieval’. As for the topic of the present issue, which explores the arts and rituals of the medieval and postmedieval practice of pilgrimage, some important points are noted in relation to the issue’s five subsequent articles.

Egeria’s “Panoramic Now”: Time and Temporality in Late Antique Pilgrimage

Georgia Frank — Wed, 20 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Focusing on the late fourth-century travel account produced by a woman known today as Egeria, this article asks how her somatic, interpersonal, and sensory experiences and feelings shaped her understanding of time, or temporality. The various ways she experiences time in both parts of her diary are considered: her descriptions of travels to holy places and people in Palestine, Egypt, Syria, and Mesopotamia, followed by a detailed description of Jerusalem’s Lenten, Holy Week, and Easter rites. Taken together, the two parts of Egeria’s travel diary reveal diverse ways of measuring and feeling time. It is argued that her feelings – frustrations, excitement, joys, and sorrows – shape her experiences of the biblical past, whether through its availability or grief at its loss. The itinerarium and liturgy provide many ways to engage biblical time, whether topographically, liturgically, or calendrically.

Revisiting the Pilgrimage Site of St. John Lampadistis

Ourania Perdiki — Wed, 20 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This article investigates the intriguing pilgrim cult of a Cypriot saint, John Lampadistes, during the Middle Ages. It considers first the development of the saint’s cult, and his shrine in the Marathasa Valley as a place of pilgrimage. The complex architectural space and the physical presence of the tomb, relics, and vita-icons of St John Lampadistes were the focal point of the pilgrims’ unique religious experiences. Subsequently, the article attempts to reconstruct the routes taken by pilgrims and to determine who might have promoted the pilgrimage to the saint’s shrine. Finally, the spread of the saint’s cult around the island of Cyprus is examined.

Postmortem Proxy Pilgrimages from Central Europe in the Late Middle Ages

Gerhard Jaritz — Wed, 20 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The surviving Viennese town-books of around 1400 contain more than 2000 entries that are last wills which often mention the bequest of postmortem proxy pilgrimages to be undertaken for the deceased. This article analyses postmortem Viennese proxy pilgrimages in a quantitative and qualitative way regarding chronological, financial, and gendered aspects and patterns. It also compares these pilgrimages with those of another neighboring city, Pressburg (today Bratislava) which took place from the twenties of the fifteenth century onwards. As shown, the rich collections of last wills involving Pressburg exhibit both similarities with and differences from the Viennese proxy pilgrimages.

W. A. Mozart’s Litaniae lauretanae Compositions and the Loreto Pilgrimage

Nils Holger Petersen — Wed, 20 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The Litaniae lauretanae (the Litany of Loreto), a Marian litany with medieval roots, has been set numerous times in polyphony, as well as in grand settings with soloists and orchestra, to be performed all over Catholic Europe. Famous musicians who composed settings of the Litany of Loreto include Orlando di Lasso, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Claudio Monteverdi, Heinrich Biber, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. This article discusses Mozart’s two settings of the Litaniae lauretanae that were composed in May 1771 and in 1774. The analysis of parts of Mozart’s settings in the light of the historical background of Loreto pilgrimages and the litany’s ritual and musical uses highlights some of their remarkable musical features. It is argued that Mozart’s settings, more than any other major contemporary ones, constitute musical reenactments of ritual experience.

Sacred Saliences?

Simon Coleman, Evgenia Mesaritou — Wed, 20 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Focusing on the restoration of material culture associated with pilgrimages, the authors examine how a temporally distant period might be reanimated in the present – or, by contrast, retains potential to be animated but remains dormant. They compare two pilgrimage sites, both characterized by disruptive historical caesuras that define salient periods of destruction of valued eras from the past. In Walsingham (England), the key break is represented by the northern European Reformation. At this site, the medieval remains prominent in the present, where it is repeatedly re-enacted, though in the context of loss. In the Monastery of Apostolos Andreas (Cyprus), the significant caesura is more recent, referring to the de facto partition of Cyprus in 1974. Here, the fifteenth-century chapel contained within the site has not been translated into substantial signs of medieval presence or performance. Despite their differences, both cases studied in this paper demonstrate how a caesura designates the period to be recalled and given an ‘afterlife’.