The urban patron saint Martin and performative expressions of urban citizenship in past and present are thematized in a public festival on 3-4 July 2022 at the occasion of the 900th anniversary of the Utrecht charter issued in 1122. The festival is a collaboration between the NWO Citizenship Discourses-project with various partners within the city and University of Utrecht. The two days will include the full performance (from First Vespers on Sunday, July 3rd to Second Vespers on Monday, July 4th) of the chants that bishop Radbod of Utrecht (899/900-917) composed for the festive commemoration of the translatio of Martin’s relics on July 4th, and a public symposium on 4 July. At the end of the second day, the festival will be closed with the presentation of the book Het wonder van Sint-Maarten: Utrecht, een gelukkige stad (red. Els Rose, AUP) to the mayor of Utrecht. More information (in Dutch only) on https://hetwondervansintmaarten.nl/.

 

Researcher

NWO grant

• dr. Bart Jaski
• drs. Maaike Wijnen
• dr. Leo Lousberg
• Anthony Zielhorst

• Zie voor verdere samenwerking de projectwebsite.

NWO VICI Grant, awarded February 2017

(2017-2022)

Citizenship Discourses in the Early Middle Ages (400-1100)

Western Europe in the early Middle Ages (c.400-c.1100) witnessed fundamental changes in social, political, and cultural structures due to the fall of the Roman Empire and the development of new political formations. The project studies the use of citizenship terminology in the redefinition of public identity that this complex period required. The early medieval West is not generally associated with ‘citizenship’, as it predates the modern state and lacks large-scale urbanisation. However,written sources from this period employ ancient and biblical citizenship terminology. This continuous use of citizenship terminology is marked by a radical change of meaning. As Christianity assumed the role of dominant religion, it introduced its own citizenship ‘discourse’, one that provided new legal and symbolic meaning and sat often in paradoxical opposition to the ancient definitions. The examination of these shifts in meaning will be our tool to study the formation of identity in Western Europe during the first millennium.

The project will apply discourse analysis, performative theory, and a socio-philological approach to sources that reflect and frame processes of identity formation in the early medieval West. These include accounts on Christian role models (saints), reshaping political and social relationships; prayers and sermons, redefining social and spiritual life in their close interrelation; and legal and theological texts, rephrasing civic identity in accordance with Christian thinking. Civic identity in this period is a dual belonging: both to social and political life in the terrestrial world and to the spiritual community in the hereafter, envisaged as ‘the heavenly city’. The sources under investigation express the tensions and ambivalences this dual belonging caused in human relationships, and use terminology rooted in ancient and biblical citizenship discourse in order to shape new patterns of social in- and exclusion, membership, belonging and participation. The project investigates the social and legal implications of this use of citizenship terminology, which resulted in new citizenship discourses that redefined legal and social alliances and oppositions (e.g. citizen vs. barbarian à Christian vs. non-Christian).

The project’s scholarly and social relevance is in its introduction of citizenship discourse as a new paradigm to research early medieval identity formation, and in its collaboration with social partners (secondary education and urban cultural institutions) in order to discuss present-day approaches to citizenship as a dynamic concept, adaptive to changing cultural circumstances, thus stimulating the discussion about citizenship, religion and identity in a time of political, social and religious transformations.

Researcher

NWO grant

• M.E. (Merel) van de Beek MA

Commemoration of the past is a central notion to medieval society. In the medieval period, the ritual commemoration of the ‘very special dead’, the saints, functioned in particular as a constructive instrument to build a religious community and to form or reform its identity. The commemoration of biblical saints (mainly the apostles) in the medieval period is central to the project, and more particularly the question how non-biblical (extra-canonical, or apocryphal) narrative traditions constituted main elements in this commemoration, both in a textual and pictorial context.

The relation between Christian traditions in and outside the canon is easily depicted as one of absolute opposition. There is the canon, containing authoritative truths, and there are the apocrypha, to which, because of their extra-canonical status, no authority is attributed. In reality, the gap between canon and apocrypha is much less impassable, particularly the commemoration of the apostles in medieval textual and visual culture demonstrates.

The diverse functions of extra-canonical traditions and their assessment in the Middle Ages will be examined. A collection of early medieval Latin rewritings of the ancient apocryphal Acts of the apostles, indicated as Virtutes apostolorum but previously known as teh 'Collection of Pseudo-Abdias’, serves as point of departure. Its use in the ritual and devotional practice of diverse religious communities, its transmission through manuscripts and its reception in pictorial art (stained glass windows in medieval cathedrals) are the main directions of research. Moreover, the language of the collection will be studied in order to come as close as possible to the cultural and religious environment where these apocryphal Acts of the apostles were composed, collected and used.

The results of the project will comprise the first critical edition of the Virtutes apostolorum, to be published in Corpus Christianorum series Apocryphorum, under supervision of the Association pour l'étude de la littérature apocryphe chrétienne (AELAC). Another monograph will present the commemoration of the apostles in stained glass during the thirteenth century, while a dissertation will present the findings in the field of language and text transmission.

For more information, visit the project website: http://apocryphal-traditions.wp.hum.uu.nl/

 

 

Project Leader & Researcher

NWO grant

• Tom de Schepper MA (T.J.E.deSchepper1@uu.nl)

The project explores the liturgical celebration of the apostles in the Latin Middle Ages and the influence of extra-canonical traditions on the liturgy. Where in the liturgy biblical persons are commemorated, the liturgical texts (prayers, chants, hymns, sermons) do not only rely on canonical texts on these figures. In the case of the apostles, legendary traditions receive their place in the liturgy. Sometimes apocryphal texts serve as sources for liturgical creations. The project tries to explore how the liturgy played a role in the transmission of apocryphal traditions, how these traditions and their sometimes deviating ideas were transmitted in the liturgy, and how the ecclesiastical attitude towards extra-canonical apostle traditions changed through the medieval period.

Project Leader & Researcher

NWO grant