Salve Regina. New Approaches to Marian Devotion in the Middle Ages, Ca’ Foscari University, Venice, April 22–24, 2020
This conference seeks to explore and offer an overview on Marian iconography, liturgy, and cult in the Middle Ages in the light of current debates and approaches. It focuses on the emergence of Marian devotion and its interactions with religious, social, and cultural factors that determined both the evolution and the rise of Mary as a prominent figure throughout the Middle Ages.
Research on any geographical area, pertaining to the indicated timeframe, is welcomed. Suggested topics may include, but are not limited to:
- Marian iconography and various media (statues, reliefs, stained glass windows, panel paintings, altar pieces, frescoes, miniatures)
- Interactions with images, transfer(s) and circulation(s) of iconographies, movements of workshops
- Production of (vernacular) religious literature: sermons, hymns, (private/public) devotional prayers, miracle stories, (apocryphal) lives of the Virgin, dreams, visions, and conversion stories
- Production of secular literature
- Theological and philosophical debates
- Marian feasts, liturgy, religious drama, miracle plays
- Relics, reliquaries, miracle-working images, devotional objects
- Local/regional iconographic and/or devotional developments
We welcome submissions, from a variety of disciplines, including but not limited to: history, art history, visual culture, social history, cultural history, hagiography, religious studies, textual studies, gender studies, in a transdisciplinary perspective by highlighting the latest debates and approaches. Panel proposals are also welcomed.
The conference takes place on 22-24 April, 2020, at Ca’ Foscari University, Venice. The registration is free of charge. Presentations are 15-20 minutes and the language of delivery is English.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 793043. This conference falls under the dissemination activities of the project "Marian Apocryphal Representations in Art: From Hagiographic Collections to Church Space and Liturgy in Fourteenth-to-Sixteenth-Century France” (MARIA).