Roma Felix û Formation and Reflections of Medieval Rome

by Carragßin,+amonn +

• ISBN13: 9780754660965
• ISBN10: 0754660966
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-03-28
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

After the Roman empire fell, medieval Europe continued to be fascinated by Rome itself, the 'chief of cities'. Once the hub of empire, in the early medieval period Rome became an important centre for western Christianity, first of all as the place where Peter, Paul and many other important early Christian saints were martyred: their deaths for the Christian faith gave the city the appellation Roma Felix, Happy Rome. But in Rome the history of the faith, embodied in the shrines of the martyrs, coexisted with the living centre of the western Latin church. Because Peter had been recognised by Christ as chief among the apostles and was understood to have been the first bishop of Rome, his successors were acknowledged as patriarchs of the West and Rome became the focal point around which the western Latin church came to be organised.This book explores ways in which Rome itself was preserved, envisioned, and transformed by its residents, and also by the many pilgrims who flocked to the shrines of the martyrs. It considers how northern European cultures (in particular, the Irish and English) imagined and imitated the city as they understood it. The fifteen articles presented here range from the fourth to the twelfth century and span the fields of history, art history, urban topography, liturgical studies and numismatics. They provide an introduction to current thinking about the ways in which medieval people responded to the material remains of Rome's classical and early Christian past, and to the associations of centrality, spirituality, and authority which the city of Rome embodied for the earlier Middle Ages.

Table of Contents

Introduction, Carol Neuman de Vegvar and Éamonn Ó Carragáin

Articulating the City

Communities, Congregations, Cults and Processions

Rome of the martyrs: saints, cults and relics, 4th-7th centuries

Building for bodies: the architecture of saint veneration in early medieval Rome

Life after death: the afterlife of sarcophagi in medieval Rome and Ravenna

Gendered spaces: the placement of imagery in Santa Maria Maggiore

Roman processions of the major litany (litaniae maiores) from the 6th to the 12th centuries

Art and socio-cultural identity in early medieval Rome: the patrons of Santa Maria Antiqua

Sacred memory and confraternal space: the insignia of the Confraternity of the Santissimo Salvatore (Rome)

Reading the City

Envisioning, Interpreting, and Imitating Medieval Rome

Dating medieval mural paintings in Rome: a case study from San Lorenzo fuori le mura

'Ut domus tali ornetur decore: metamorphosis of ornamental motifs in Anagni and Rome

Fact and fiction in the Mirabilia urbis Romae

Juniors teaching elders: Columbanus, Rome and spiritual authority

Ireland and Rome in the 7th century

Three coins in a fountain

Authority and care: the significance of Rome in 12th century Chester

Index

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