Blog

December 30, 2023

Arts and Rituals of Death in Byzantine Literature

By Stavroula Constantinou, Centre for Medieval Arts & Rituals (CeMAR, UCY)

Chanting, poetry recitation, and storytelling played a key role in Byzantine rituals, while rituals and ritual languages and structures constituted important elements of poetry and prose. This blog post brings to the fore the strong interrelationships between arts and rituals in Byzantine literature.
November 30, 2023

Following the Footsteps of Jesus: Bamberg’s Late Medieval Stations of the Cross

By Florian Abe, Tucher Kulturstiftung / Freie Universität Berlin

This blog post delves into Bamberg's late medieval Stations of the Cross, exploring their unique arrangement mirroring Jerusalem’s Via Dolorosa. These types of ensembles offered an immersive pilgrimage experience by intertwining art, architecture, and rituals that allowed visitors to physically follow Christ's steps, forging a profound connection between faith and experience that can still be grasped in the city today.
October 31, 2023

Breaking Βread and Βreaking Churches

By Associate Professor Robert Nelson, Melbourne University.

Is there a better way to understand the polemic between Byzantium and Rome that erupted in the eleventh century over the appropriate bread for holy communion? A new approach suggests that the ritual in church also entailed a domestic ritual, and the theological disagreement must be understood in visceral terms.
September 30, 2023

Languages of Shame: The Pillory and Its Impact on Metaphorical Ways of Speaking

By Gerlinde Gangl, M.A., University of Bamberg

The pillory punishment is one of the degrading punishments of the Middle Ages and Modern Times (executed in Europe until 1848), whereby a delinquent person was publicly exposed. In addition to the pillory, the associated punishment rituals remained alive in cultural memory. This becomes discernible in the metaphors employed in everyday expressions of many European languages.
August 31, 2023

Rituals and the Sound of War – The Belliphonic in the Middle Ages

By Hannah Potthoff, Technische Universität Chemnitz

Sound studies are an important aspect of both the study of rituals as well as of war. Researching the belliphonic, as done in the DFG-funded project “Belliphonie im Mittelalter” at TU Chemnitz, can give important insights in how sounds were used in medieval wars as part of warfare and its narration and memory.
July 31, 2023

Naming Patterns in Venetian Cyprus: The Case of Marathassa Valley

By Dr Marina Ilia, NetMAR UCY ESR

This blog discusses the significance of names and how they passed from one generation to the other, providing insights into a family's past and social status and local history. It specifically looks at the naming conventions of Venetian Cyprus in the Marathassa valley, using a census conducted in 1549 and analyses naming patterns based on age, gender, and family origin.
June 29, 2023

Rituals and Spaces of Punishment: NetMAR at the International Medieval Congress in Leeds (2023)

By Michaela Pölzl (UNI BA)

The EU-funded project Network for Medieval Arts and Rituals (NetMAR), which will participate in the upcoming International Medieval Congress in Leeds (IMC, 03-06 July 2022), takes once again the opportunity to share with the NetMAR blog readers a preview of the four papers of its session that will be given by some of the project’s young researchers.
May 31, 2023

Faked Rituals in ‘Tristan and Isolde’ or Who Knows What?

By Dr Andrea Schindler, University of Braunschweig

One has to believe in rituals, otherwise they don’t work. But of course, one can also just pretend to perform a ritual, or not do it properly. In ‘Tristan and Isolde’ of Gottfried of Straßburg, we learn what happens if some people know the truth about rituals – and some don’t.