A reminder that our week 6 tutorial will take place in the Mattheson library in the ground floor Training Room 1 (a library floor plan is here). It's compulsory to attend this class and complete a worksheet based on what you learn. The aim is to give you the skills you will need to research your essay and reference it properly using the expected footnote style. It's a very important week for setting you up to study history in general as well as specifically to prepare for your essay in this unit. To get ready for next week, first use Monash's Search system to try and identify any book about Charlemagne that was published in the last 10 years and is available in the Mattheson library. Then try to find a journal article about Carolingian law written in the same period. Write down all the publication details you can find for these two items. Try to articulate what strategies you used to find the two items, and any difficulties you encountered. Come prepared with your results and any post any questions or problems that want solving below. In addition...
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| Love and Devotion is on at the State Library of Victoria |
- reference
- citation
- primary source
- footnote
- plagiarism
- secondary source
- bibliography
if none of this is new to you: Think about your experience of researching and writing an essay. What are your top tips for finding relevant books and other sources? What problems have you encountered when referencing essays? What useful feedback from tutors have you gained? Be ready to share your expertise with the rest.
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And since there is no required reading, here are some links you might want to peruse to keep you thinking medieval!
- For those of you fascinated by the difference between the East and West in the medieval period, you might want to look at the exhibition currently showing at the State Library of Victoria, Love and Devotion, which is a lavish display of Persian manuscripts from the 11th century onwards. It looks at Eastern literature on its own terms, and in relationship to contemporary and modern Western society. It's free and it's on until the 1st of July.
- For those interested in the weird and wonderful world of religious relics, you might be interested in this review of Treasures of Heaven, a recent exhibition of reliquaries (i.e. containers for relics) that was held at the British Museum in 2011.
You can watch the official introduction to the Treasures of Heaven exhibition here:
16 comments:
The Treasures of Heaven exhibit would have been amazing to see. The art work and craftsmanship and dedication that goes into the piece is fanominal.
The female saint who was the face of the exhibit was a great choice as she eminates elegance and righteousness, whilst still keeping the viewer thinking about Heaven as that is where she is looking.
I also liked the reliquary shrines of the bishops and noted that they are very similar in design. I was wondering whether these were made for all bishops or just a select few?
Hi all,
what great exhibitions. I liked the female also, I think she was the madien helper to Saint Ursula? The guy describing her shows the hiding spots where the bones of the saint would have been kept, very moving piece. The Persian art displays a lot of affection between people not just women and men but with everyone even the animals looks very mystical or dreamy. thanks
I might just go and see the "Love and Devotion" exhibition? Anyone want to come with me?? :D
Hello everyone, this is Kellie,
Every time I look at reliquaries I am amazed by the wealth of the institutions that created them and appalled at the lengths to which those institutions would go to obtain the relics they contained. Monasteries stealing from each other really didn’t set much of an example for Christian living. The way the bodies of people considered saintly were dismembered by their followers, like a bunch of ravenous vultures, for the wealth and glory of their Christian institutions is even more disturbing. I won’t even start on the charlatans selling donkey bones as those of saints. Did everyone just take a gullible pill in this period? What could have made people of this period so indiscriminately accepting of these relics?
Fear not, Kellie. There were sceptics in the medieval period too. For examples, you could check out this talk given by early medieval scholar, Ian Wood. However, relics weren't only produced to dupe a gullible public: we shouldn't make it seem like some massive conspiracy! They met real spiritual, social and political needs; and their authenticity was a matter of great significance to those who bought, (stole,) owned and venerated them. They wanted to be absolutely sure they weren't lavishing attention on fakes (defined on their terms) because the real intercession of Saints in their daily lives could be at stake. (That's one reason why contemporary stories about relics often detail on how sceptics were proven incorrect.) There's more on this topic in this recent review of Charles Freeman's Holy Bones, Holy Dust in the BBC History Magazine if you're curious.
To respond to your query Erika - not every bishop was a saint, so I doubt that they all had reliquaries like this. But trends could develop, so maybe a place that had relics of a holy bishop would decide to have had one made in a certain style they had seen in another church... leading to a common form of bishop reliquaries, without it being a 'rule', so to speak...
I'll bring in my copy of the catalogue after Easter and maybe it will help us answer more precisely!
Wow that exhibition looks awesome! I love artifacts like that. Like Erika said, takes a lot of dedication and passion to go into the making of some of those relics I reckon. I'm wondering if the criteria to become a saint was the same back then as it is today? Today at least, I think you have to be dead, have preformed 3 miracles and have been part of the catholic church or something like that.
Steph has a great link to add:
"Hi, those exhibitions look great! I also came across a BBC documentary which I found really interesting, mostly because it discusses the influence of religion on medieval thinking. It's called "Inside the Medieval Mind". You can find it here: http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/inside-the-medieval-mind/
Cheers,
Steph Kelly"
The love and devotion exhibition looks really interesting. Next semester I am headinng to Greece and Europe for a holiday, this unit has now made me add Turkey and Istambul to the itenerary. It should be very interesting to see the relics of the Eastern Empire which we are have studied.
During medievil time would have the relic have been openly displayed and if so within its reliquary or out side of it?
Good question, Nathan. There's probably no one answer. But I think relics would normally have stayed within their reliquaries except perhaps if very senior religious (or perhaps scholarly) figures had asked to see inside. People were probably expected to look inside from time to time, because the things inside were sometimes carefully labelled with little hand-written identification tags. But for 'everyday' viewers in the church or monastery, they would just have seen the exterior of the reliquary. Sometimes these were made with little windows in the side - or the container itself might be transparent quartz or glass - to let people see inside without opening the container; or the container might have been opened just on special occasions - like a saint's feast day. Some reliquaries were small and portable and might have been held up and displayed during services - while others were large and fixed - like the tomb of St Edward the Confessor at Westminster - which is big enough for people to crawl underneath in order to be close to the holy power of the bones.
What beautiful pieces the exhibit has. They clearly represent the wealth of the Church at the time given i mainly saw gold and jewels in that clip! Also shows the centrality of Christianity to medieval life given the amount of elaborate and fantastic craftsmanship that went into their construction.
It is so interesting how much importance a relgious relic has even after 100's of years have passed! It shows just how important religion was back in the Medieval Era.
I'd really like to go see the love and devotion exhibit, it looks amazing!
It is interesting to see the use of relics in the medieval period and how it became somewhat a central part of Christian worship. As well how these relics were worshipped and so ornate and delicately crafted which reflected their importance and spiritual value. The exhibition looks interesting in that it shows the beautiful medieval craftsmanship and helps us understand how our world and religion has evolved since then.
Great - so it sounds like you should get together with Lauren then Stephanie. I'm sure there will be other takers too. It's a fabulous exhibition, and it's open late on Thursday evenings, so you can even combine it with a meal or a drink in the city afterward!
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