This study of Santa Maria del Gualdo Mazzocca, a Benedictine priory, and then abbey, directly dependent upon the papacy, offers a remarkable glimpse into the nature of monastic life in the middle ages.

Southern Italy's strategic location at the crossroads of the Mediterranean gave it a unique position as a frontier for the major religious faiths of the medieval world, where Latin Christian, Greek Christian and Muslim communities coexisted. In this study, the first to offer a comprehensive analysis of sanctity and pilgrimage in southern Italy between 1000 and 1200, Paul Oldfield presents a fascinating picture of a politically and culturally fragmented land which, as well as hosting its own important relics as important pilgrimage centres, was a transit point for pilgrims and commercial traffic. Drawing on a diverse range of sources from hagiographical material to calendars, martyrologies, charters and pilgrim travel guides, the book examines how sanctity functioned at this key cultural crossroads and, by integrating the analysis of sanctity with that of pilgrimage, offers important new insights into society, cross-cultural interaction and faith in the region and across the medieval world.

This collection builds on the foundational work of Penelope D. Johnson, John Boswell's most influential student outside queer studies, on integration and segregation in medieval Christianity. It documents the multiple strategies by which medieval people constructed identities and, in the process, wove the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion among various individuals and groups. The collection adopts an interdisciplinary approach, encompassing historical, art historical, and literary perpsectives to explore the definition of personal and communal spaces within medieval texts, the complex negotiation of the relationship between devotee and saint in both the early and the later Middle Ages, the forming of partnerships (symbolic, economic, devotional, etc.) between men and women across medieval Europe's considerable gender divide, and the ostracism of individuals and groups through various means including imprisonment, violence, and their identification with pollution. Contributors include: Diane Peters Auslander, Constance Hoffman Berman, Elizabeth A.R. Brown, Alexandra Cuffel, Anne M. Schuchman, Jane Tibbetts Schulenburg, Katherine Allen Smith, Kathryn A. Smith, Christina Roukis-Stern, Susan Valentine, Susan Wade, and Scott Wells.

The political fragmentation of Italy—created by Charlemagne’s conquest of a part of the Lombard Kingdom in 774 and the weakening of the Byzantine Empire in the eighth and ninth centuries—, the conquest of Sicily by the Muslims in the ninth century, and the Norman ‘conquest’ of southern Italy in the second half of the eleventh century favored the creation of areas inhabited by persons with different ethnic, religious, and cultural background. Moreover, this period witnessed the increase in production of historical writing in different parts of Italy. Taking advantage of these features, this volume presents some case studies about the manner in which ‘others’ were perceived, what was known about them, the role of identity, and the use of the past in early medieval Italy (ninth–eleventh centuries) focusing in particular on how early medieval Italian authors portrayed that period and were, sometimes, influenced by their own ‘present’ in their reconstruction of the past. The book will appeal to scholars and students of otherness, identity, and memory in early medieval Italy, as well as all those interested in medieval Europe.

This dissertation examines inventiones, that is narratives of relic discoveries, written in southern Italy between the tenth and twelfth centuries. During this period, communities dealt with sweeping changes brought on by political upheaval, invasion, and ecclesiastical reforms. Several inventiones written concomitantly to these events have received little scholarly attention. This dissertation has two goals: to enhance our understanding of the genre in general and to explore further the local circumstances that prompted their composition and copying. The following four case studies pertain to Christian communities in Naples, Benevento, and Larino, and the abbey of San Vincenzo al Volturno respectively. This dissertation argues that, because of their "inventive" nature, these sources were powerful means of writing and rewriting history and, more often than not, the exercise of historical memory fueled their production. In particular, this dissertation contends that in eleventh-and twelfth-century southern Italy, as communities underwent the transition from Lombard to Norman authorities, the memory of the Lombard lords of the past was utilized in inventiones as a powerful tool to rewrite the identity of a community as it negotiated the changing political and ecclesiastical landscape. Furthermore, this dissertation argues that because of the devotional nature of inventiones, typically composed for use in the liturgy and thus potentially exposed to a large public, the history encoded within these sources was made all the more powerful. Inventiones reveal how the liturgy, ritual, and devotion were mobilized by medieval communities and display an inherent reciprocity between historical and devotional writing and thought. In order to unlock these features as well as the local conflicts and agendas that prompted the production of inventiones, both a close study of the original manuscripts of extant inventiones as well as attention to contemporary liturgical, diplomatic, and material sources are major components of each case study.

In the renaissance also architecture from c. 800–1200 was regarded as a useful source of inspiration for contemporary building, sometimes by misinterpreting these medieval architecture as roman structures, sometimes because that era was also regarded as a glorious ‘ancient’ past.

This book integrates the analysis of sanctity with that of pilgrimage, offering important new insights into society, cross-cultural interaction and faith.