Sanctity and Pilgrimage in Medieval Southern Italy, 1000-1200

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The award of an AHRC Early Career Fellowship will enable me to complete a monograph entitled Sanctity and Pilgrimage in Medieval Southern Italy, 1000-1200, which is contracted with Cambridge University Press and to be submitted in September 2012. The award will allow me to embark upon a final phase of analysis of certain hagiographical and cartulary sources (which I will already have acquired) in order to produce the remaining chapters of the monograph. This monograph represents the first comprehensive study (in any language) of sanctity and pilgrimage in medieval southern Italy, and will contribute to a deeper understanding both of the region as it moved through profound transitions, and also of the medieval wide development of sanctity and pilgrimage. As the region was unique in sheltering Greek Christian, Latin Christian, Muslim, and Jewish communities, this study represents a rare chance to attempt a holistic analysis of a politically and culturally fragmented land which acted as a Mediterranean frontier for the major religious groups of the medieval world, and to analyse how sanctity functioned at such a key cultural crossroads. It also offers the opportunity to compare sanctity in a liminal zone with other forms throughout Europe thus addressing further the true extent of Southern Italy's perceived marginality in the medieval world. The region, in the Middle Ages and to some extent still today, has typically been viewed as marginal to the deeper currents of European events. The research incorporated within this project has involved the acquisition, translation and analysis of a diverse, but complementary, body of primary material (both published and unpublished). The major sources for this study are medieval hagiographical texts, in the form of saints' biographies and miracle collections. Medieval liturgical works have also been utilised, such as sanctoral calendars, martyrologies, exultet rolls and lectionaries. These reveal how saintly cults were venerated in an official format by the Church, and how they were presented to the wider lay community. This study also incorporates a vast range of material from cartularies (revealing information on bequests to saints and church dedications to particular saints), contemporary medieval chronicles (revealing the social and political contexts in which sanctity functioned) and visual material (architecture and decoration).Among its key conclusions the work emphasises that Southern Italy should be placed more to the centre rather than the periphery of many core medieval developments, a finding which carries wider consequences for our understanding of medieval Europe as well as modern-day Italy. The region could be termed a 'holy crossroads', one which played a pivotal role in the growing internationalism of sanctity. The unique environment in southern Italy created a melting pot for a variety of forms of sanctity with diverse cultural traditions, and venerated by equally diverse individuals and communities. Southern Italy and its models of sanctity represent an illuminating example of the propensity for imitation (with other forms of sanctity across Europe), integration and cross-cultural exchange. It also concludes, therefore, that an analysis of south Italian sanctity and pilgrimage can map the erosion of the region's internal frontiers through growing Latinisation and homogenisation. As a corollary to this, another important finding concludes that an exploration of sanctity in the South uncovers significant transitions in South Italian society (the re-Christianisation of Sicily, the nature of the apparent rupture between the region's Latin and Greek communities, the increasing influence of the Papacy, urbanisation, the rise of eremetical and monastic movements).This study will be of particular value to academics and students interested in the medieval Mediterranean, sanctity and pilgrimage, medieval Christianity, and interfaith relationships.