DAAD workshop: Communication and Knowledge Transfer in Medieval Monastic Networks - The Transfer of the Exemplary

Communication and Knowledge Transfer  in Medieval Monastic Networks - The Transfer of the Exemplary. Fourth Research Seminar of the FOVOG/Dresden – CEU/Budapest Project

Budapest, November 4-5, 2016

Sainthood is in all religions an illustration of exemplary and absolute value. This is why this field provides a good possibility to make a synthesis of the themes discussed in the previous workshops. The monastic and mendicant orders in Christianity offer a good material for studying this phenomenon. Their networks disseminated a special selection oft he cult of saints, in harmony with the rules and the ideals of the individual orders. At the same time these networks also promoted the veneration of relics and patrocinia of their local institutions. In addition, they also supported within their networks the saints’ cults related to their royal and aristocratic patrons. The complex mechanism of the transmission of these cults has received so far little systematic consideration. We should like to discuss, how monastic networks communicated concepts of sanctity as ideal values so that their concretely manifesting forms could have an impact reaching beyond their religious significance, and be used for stabilizing institutions and become a vehicle for culture. On this workshop we would like to deal with the comparative consideration of the different media of the transfers: donation and translation of relics, dissemination of liturgies, images, other art objects and manuscripts. This way we would like to examine how the diffusion of ideals in these networks was mediated by concrete things.

Program

November 4, Friday

I. FOVOG Projects

10.00 Markus Handke: Solitude - Definition and function in high medieval monasticism

10.45 Katrin Rösler: How to become perfect. Ideals of the eremitical life in the twelfth century

11.30 Coffee break

11.45 Mirko Breitenstein: What does a monk know about the horrors of hell? Caesarius of Heisterbach and his image of the beyond

12.00 Philipp Stöver: Medieval voyages to Asia in the 13th and 14th century. Forms and contents of communication

12.45 - 14.00 Lunch break

14.00 Edgar Leitan: Premodern Indian asceticism and transfer of knowledge

14.45 Stephanie Righetti: Exemplary sanctity among the first Franciscans in the New World

15.30 Coffee break

II. CEU Projects

15.45 Előd Nemerkényi: Cult of Saints and Monastic Libraries in Medieval Hungary

16.30 Dane Miller: Sing a new song: the spirit of Cistercian liturgical reform

17.15 Karen Stark: The cult of the Virgin within monastic and mendicant networks in Hungary

18.00 Book Presentation: Fabrizio Conti: Witchcraft, Superstition, and Observant Franciscan Preachers (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015) – Gábor Klaniczay in conversation with the author

November 5, Saturday

10.00 Eszter Konrád: The Transfer of the Relics of the Saints of the Order of Preachers:  Attempts to Build Local Cults in Hungary

10.45 Zsuzsa Pető: The hermit ideal among the Hungarian Paulines

11. 30 Coffee break

11. 45 Ines Ivić: Franciscan Observants and the cult of Saint Jerome in Dalmatia

12.30 Ottó Gecser: Helper saints in mendicant sermons at the end of the Middle Ages

13. 30 Lunch break

15.00 Walk on the Margaret Island (ruins of the Dominican monastery and other monastic institutions), guided by József Laszlovszky

The Workshop is supported by the DAAD-TEMPUS Framework of the CEU-FOVOG co-operation research project Communication and Knowledge Transfer in Medieval Monastic Networks. Kommunikation und Wissenstransferin monastischen Netzwerken des Mittelalters