Politics and devotion around the memory of the Passion in the Western world (Middle Ages - Modern Times)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.6092/1593-2214/512Keywords:
Sacred places, Worship in the Passion, Calvary, the Way of the Cross, collective Imagination, Social spacesAbstract
The seven texts in this folder invite the scholar to study the phenomena of producing and reproducing objects and places connected to the memory of the Passion in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times. Its focus is on illustrating the fertile convergence of two approaches, one focusing on the religious sensibility, the other scrutinizing above all the uses and political meanings of the devotional processes, as Ludovic Viallet points out in his introduction by emphasizing the concepts of both “localization” and “collective imagination”. Three articles are then dedicated to representations or reproductions supporting a devotion or a spiritual pilgrimage in the late Middle Ages: Hans-Joachim Schmidt analyzes several maps and tales which made the Holy Places of Jerusalem accessible for those who couldn’t make the trip to them; Peter Kurmann shows that the Holy Sepulcher, which has been near the Constance cathedral since the tenth century, was renovated shortly after the middle of the thirteenth century to be adapted to its new role as a Eucharistic receptacle, as it was the destination of a weekly procession in which the Holy Eucharist was venerated; finally, Elsa Karsallah examines the monumental “Entombments” which appeared in France in the 1420s.
Paolo Cozzo then shows that in the Early Modern Savoy Dukedom the worship of the Shroud gave rise to a system of copies brought into contact with the original and distributed in the European courts to strengthen the identity and prestige of the dynasty, as did the promotion of important Marian shrines. Furthermore, in the fifteenth century the dukes of Savoy reproduced a more “political” paradigm, that of the Sainte-Chapelle which was forged in Paris two centuries earlier: Laura Gaffuri fully revises the folder of that Savoy foundation.
What does the notion of replication ultimately means? asks Catherine Vincent in the conclusion, highlighting in particular the paradox inherent to the spatial dimension of replication processes, which breaks with the uniqueness of the sacred place considering that it can be accessed almost anywhere that faithful is ready to establish it and to live it as such in his path.
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