1-2nd June 2019
University of York, King’s Manor
‘Angels in the Medieval World’ is an interdisciplinary, two-day conference, commencing on June 1st and 2nd, 2019, hosted by the University of York forming part of the N/EMICS calendar for 2019. Across different regions, faiths, and narrative traditions, liminal beings that stand and shift between the everyday world of humanity and the realm of gods have captivated our collective imagination. Ranging from psychopomps to messengers, they are found across various textual and visual media, and nearly every religion or society has a being that fills these roles.
Angels, too, occupy this in-between space, operating in and between the tangible and intangible worlds. With the rise of Christianity from the Late Antique and into the Middle Ages, angels became an important component of spiritual practices and theological understandings of the sacred. Angels and angelic forms permeate art, literature, architecture, and exegesis, remaining a subject that continues to fascinate, from the medieval to the modern. Across the Medieval world (as well as in pre- and post-medieval contexts) different depictions, iconographies, legends, stories, and beliefs emerged and evolved, shaped by theological works such as The Celestial Hierarchy, City of God, and Pope Gregory I’s numerous commentaries on the nature of the divine. Stories shaped perceptions of angels, places and spaces became associated with angelic presences and happenings, and shrines were built in the highest peaks across Eurasia. In this period, the well-known figures of shining, white-garbed creatures with wings bloomed across the walls and vaults of churches across the Christian world.
This conference (re)considers various facets of angelic constructions and understandings in Medieval past, as viewed from the present, seeking an interdisciplinary approach to this topic. By analyzing, interpreting and evaluating artifacts, architecture, material culture, philosophical and theological texts, and the narratives and folkloric traditions surrounding angels across the Medieval period, this conference seeks to gain a greater understanding of how angels are shown on a wider scale, of how their depictions change over time, and of the significance of these enigmatic beings to the construction of past epistemological structures and narratives. By reaching across boundaries of discipline and period, and bringing together a wide range of academics at various stages of their careers, this conference provides a forum for the sharing of individual ideas, and the exploration of new thoughts on how angels, as beings and features of Christian theology, both emblem and envoy of the Sacred, became a strong feature of faith in the Middle Ages, and asks how they continued to evolve over time.
To register please see our eventbrite page here.
Please find the Programme here.
For further information please email Madeline Salzman and Meg Boulton at angelsNEMICS2019@gmail.com.