April 17-18, 2020
Emmanuel College, University of Toronto
How were religious ideas and practice realized through interaction with objects? How did the presence of sculptures, paintings, books, vestments, and church furniture—their visibility, tactility, and materiality—help form attitudes toward devotion, sacred history, and salvation? In other words, how did people think with things—both clerics and lay devotees? Historians of the late medieval and early modern period have created an antithesis between spiritual (inward) and physical (outward) devotion, branding the latter as superficial, ritualistic and mechanistic. Yet, does it make sense to distinguish between late medieval and early modern religious culture, given the fact that the definitions and boundaries of these periods are notoriously problematic and considerably overlap? We will examine the degree to which these differing traditions dictated separate approaches to objects and their role in forming beliefs and practices.
Program
Friday April 17
9:00 – 9:30 Coffee & Pastries, Student lounge, 3rd floor
9:30 – 9:50 Introduction by Ethan Matt Kavaler (University of Toronto), Room 302
9:50 – 11:20 Session I Chair: Ralph Dekoninck
Achim Timmermann (University of Michigan), ‘Dem heylighen Cruce to Werle’: The Staging of Civic Relics in Late Medieval Westphalia
Luc Duerloo (University of Antwerp), Manila: The Marian Citadel
11:20 – 11:40 Coffee, Student lounge, 3rd floor
11:40 – 1:00 Session II Chair: Ralph Dekoninck, Room 302
Ethan Matt Kavaler (University of Toronto), Pulpits and the Glorification of the Word
Anne-Laure-Van Bruaene (University of Ghent), The Arbres d’Or of the Golden Fleece between Religious Rite and Political Order
1:00 – 2:00 Lunch, Student lounge, 3rd floor
2:00 – 3:20 Session III Chair: Barbara Baert, Room 302
Ralph Dekoninck (Université catholique de Louvain), The ‘Ornamentalisation’ of the Ornamenta Sacra in the Early Modern Low Countries
Elizabeth Rice Mattison (University of Toronto), Between Altar and Collection: Miniature Devotional Sculpture in the Low Countries
3:20 – 3:40 Coffee, Student lounge, 3rd floor
3:40 – 5:00 Session IV Chair: Barbara Baert, Room 302
Herman Roodenburg (Free University of Amsterdam), Devotional Objects, the Mind’s Eye, and Affective Piety
Isabelle Frank (City University of Hong Kong), The Compianti of the Passion of Christ: Emotional Affect, Affective Piety, and the Flagellants
Saturday April 18
8:30 – 9:00 Coffee & Pastries, Student lounge, 3rd floor
9:00 – 11:00 Session V Chair: Achim Timmermann, Room 302
Johannes Röll (Bibliotheca Hertziana), The ‘Cristo de Burgos’ and the Duplication of Belief: Broken Objects of Devotion
Una Roman D’Elia (Queens’s University), Misbehaving with Devotional Sculpture in the Italian Renaissance
Paul Vandenbroeck (University of Leuven), Renaissance sculptures take to the streets in Andalusia
11:00 – 11:20 Coffee, Student lounge, 3rd floor
11:20 – 12:40 Session VI Chair: Achim Timmermann
Barbara Baert (University of Leuven), Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold. The Paperolles in Enclosed Gardens of the 16thCentury
Philip Sohm (University of Toronto), Artistic Transubstantiations of St. Luke’s Pigments and Palettes
12:40 – 1:20 Lunch, Student lounge, 3rd floor
1:20 – 2:40 Session VII Chair: Anne-Laure Van Bruaene, Room 302
Koenraad Jonckheere (University of Ghent), The Image and the Object: Johannes A Porta on Devotion
Marie Hartmann (Free University of Berlin), Domini est salus: Aspects of Devotion in Text and Illumination of Amulet Ms. Princeton 235
2:40 – 3:00 Coffee, Student lounge, 3rd floor
3:00 – 4:20 Session VIII Chair: Anne-Laure Van Bruaene, Room 302
Andrew Spicer (Oxford Brookes University), Ringing in the Old Faith: Restoring church bells in the southern Netherlands, c. 1585-1621
Ruben Suykerbuyk (University of Ghent), Altarpieces and the Debate on Idolatry in the Low Countries (c 1520-1585)
4:20 – 4:30 Coffee, Student lounge, 3rd floor
4:30 – 5:00 Closing Remarks and Discussion, Room 302
Anne-Laure Van Bruaene (University of Ghent)
5:00-6:30 Closing Reception, Student lounge, 3rd floor
For more information and to register, see the event page.