medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
From: Madeleine Gray <[log in to unmask]>
> Our librarian drew my attention to this last week.
http://peregrinations.kenyon.edu/
>It looks excellent -
it's new (3 issues, as yet), done on a shoestring, primarily by the two
editors, who are enthusiastic young scholars with a lot of promise.
but, as i pointed out before, Pippin Micheli's short summary of what we know
about the surviving pilgrims' badges from Chartres is simply As Good As It
Gets, "excellent", as you say :
(.pdf file)
http://peregrinations.kenyon.edu/vol1-2.pdf ("A Gordian Knot: Notes on
Chartres Pilgrim Badges", pp. 2-4)
the story of the Genesis of that essay might be exemplary for some here about
how suchlike things get done, internet "networking", etc.
about 1999 Sarah Blick sent me a photocopy of an article on the Chartres
badges.
reading it, i realised that, though i had looked at some of these precious
artifacts many years before, i had really not "seen" them.
originally i thought that they were "late" (for me --13th+ cc), rather crude
in style and of no particular interest iconographically.
seeing them again --or for the first time-- 20+ years later, either they had
changed or i had, for they now appeared to be quite facinating, depicting
nothing less than clerical processions in which the (or "a") Cult Statue of
the Virgin & Child and the great bejeweled reliquary which housed the
_camisia_ of the Virgin (the chief relic at Chartres) were carried on a bier.
other badges featured variations on this theme, or added precious details
which allowed us to see how the cult statue might have appeared in its
original setting, etc.
i was very interested indeed, and wanted to discuss these curious artifacts
with Sarah, Jim Bugslag, Pippin Michelli and others.
so, i started a little "Chartres" discussion list on Yahoo's egroups.com to do
that more easily and efficiently.
i also slapped together a rather crude webpage, just to display all the badges
in a single place where they could be easily accessed by all :
http://www.christophersbookroom.com/cc/badges/newbadges.html
the discussions on the new listserv went very, very well, were very
informative and a lot of fun, and eventually led to the idea of putting
together a session at the next Kalamazoo conference (2001) devoted to the
badges and pilgrimage at Chartres generally.
that session went very, very well also, with Pippin's paper leading off, and
equally excellent papers given by Jim and Margot Fassler.
i can say in all modesty (since i only organised and chaired it, not having to
do any of the scholarly Heavy Lifting) that it was about the best damned
session i've ever been to in 20 years at the Zoo.
the Chartres discussion list survives to this day, still small in size but
lively and scintillating whenever any members have anything to say, with
periodic discussions about a wide variety of topics, usually with some (at
least remote) Chartrain connection.
anyway, that's how that particular bit of sausage was made, and i am
constantly surprised at how it all came together.
_Peregrinations_ will, i'm sure, develop into an importan node in a network
which will facilitate other suchlike interchanges among scholars sharing
interests in the field.
>and FREE (is that what our librarian liked most, I wonder !!!!!!)
well, in this case you get *much* more than you pay for.
best,
c
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