Adaptation and Appropriation: Liturgies for New Power Realities in the Middle Ages
Sponsoring Organization(s)
PSALM-Network (Politics, Society and Liturgy in the Middle Ages)
Organizer Name
Paweł Figurski
Organizer Affiliation
Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History, Polish Academy of Sciences
Presider Name
Margot E. Fassler
Presider Affiliation
Univ. of Notre Dame
Paper Title 1
The Offices of Royal Saints on the Peripheries of High Medieval Christendom
Presenter 1 Name
Elizabeth Hasseler
Presenter 1 Affiliation
Univ. of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
Paper Title 2
The Making of Royal Saints in Early Rus
Presenter 2 Name
Sean Griffin
Presenter 2 Affiliation
Dartmouth College
Paper Title 3
Making the World as It Was Meant to Be Made? Christian Liturgy and the Formation of Polish Political Identity in the Middle Ages
Presenter 3 Name
Paweł Figurski
Start Date
10-5-2019 10:00 AM
Session Location
Schneider 1130
Description
Recent scholarship is demonstrating an increased interest in the dynamic relation between politics and liturgy in the Middle Ages. Essential is the dominant, traditionalizing power of liturgy to shape realities (both intellectual and practical) from which stable meaning could be derived in complex and continuously changing contexts. Indeed, contrary to what rough overviews of normative sources might suggest, liturgy was often much more contextual than has been held until now – and so were its sources. If it wasn’t highly local in formal differences, then at least in the juxtaposition of its universal character with each, necessarily unique, political context and identity in which it was performed.
This session, therefore, wishes to delve deeper in a fundamental historical aspect of the relation between liturgy and politics, by comparing examples of the (often paradoxical) interactions between tradition and change. The session will bring together papers that investigate change in political situations (be they secular or ecclesiastical) and whether and how this impacted (particular) liturgies, or, vice versa, where liturgical adaptations were meant to inspire new realities and political traditions. Pawel Figurski
Adaptation and Appropriation: Liturgies for New Power Realities in the Middle Ages
Schneider 1130
Recent scholarship is demonstrating an increased interest in the dynamic relation between politics and liturgy in the Middle Ages. Essential is the dominant, traditionalizing power of liturgy to shape realities (both intellectual and practical) from which stable meaning could be derived in complex and continuously changing contexts. Indeed, contrary to what rough overviews of normative sources might suggest, liturgy was often much more contextual than has been held until now – and so were its sources. If it wasn’t highly local in formal differences, then at least in the juxtaposition of its universal character with each, necessarily unique, political context and identity in which it was performed.
This session, therefore, wishes to delve deeper in a fundamental historical aspect of the relation between liturgy and politics, by comparing examples of the (often paradoxical) interactions between tradition and change. The session will bring together papers that investigate change in political situations (be they secular or ecclesiastical) and whether and how this impacted (particular) liturgies, or, vice versa, where liturgical adaptations were meant to inspire new realities and political traditions. Pawel Figurski