Artisti eretici ed eterodossi a Bisanzio

The present papers shows that, against the popular view of the Byzantine artist as a pious artisan subjected to the authority of the Church, a number of Byzantine craftsmen sympathized for and were involved in heterodox religious behaviours and heretic movements. The paper includes examples from late Antiquity until the Middle- and Late Byzantine periods

La moltiplicazione dei luoghi sacri lungo le vie d’acqua per Gerusalemme nel tardo Medioevo

A description of the sacred topography worked out by late Medieval Holy Land-pilgrims and seafarer along the searoutes between Venice and Palestine. This paper emphasizes the important role played by international voyagers in the selection, promotion and shaping of new holy sites in Dalmatia, Albania, Corfu, Crete, Rhodes, and Cyprus

La concepción del espacio sagrado en la Famagusta medieva

The present article deals with the dynamics of interaction between the different religious denominations living in the Cypriot port town of Famagusta in the 14th and early 15th centuries, as they are witnessed by extant monuments and their pictorial ornaments

L’individu en tant que prototype dans les ex-voto médiévaux

On the Medieval use of wax ex-votos as generic substitutes for human bodies and the analogical, and sometimes also mimetic, relationship they established with the individuals voting them

Le Majestats, il Volto Santo e il Cristo di Beirut: nuove riflessioni

In the small village of Beget, in the Catalonian Pyrenees, a monumental statue representing Christ in the Majestat- type and dating from the second half of the 12th century is involved in an unusual ceremony that takes place on November 9th, i.e. on the day associated in the High Middle Ages with the yearly celebration (known as Festum Salvatoris or Passio imaginis Domini) in honour of the legendary image of Christ said to have poured blood after being stabbed by the Jews of Beirut. The present article investigates the impact exerted by this liturgical background on the diffusion and usage of the peculiar crucifix-type representing Christ alive and clad with a long tunic, which was much widespread in Medieval Catalonia but was also known, though in a number of variants, in different areas of Western Europe in the 12th and 13th centuries. The most famous of such tunic-clad crucifixes, the Volto Santo of Lucca, is here regarded as a special local declination of a much wider liturgical and cultic phenomenon, associated with peculiar forms of worship for the Holy Saviour. A special emphasis is given to the performative aspects of the Passio imaginis rite, which laid emphasis on the miraculous blood in its Eucharistic association by setting chalices at the foot of Crucifixes