FORTHCOMING CONFERENCES

 

 

 

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Images of the Sorrowful Virgin, whether in the form of Michelangelo’s Pietà, or Mary at the foot of the Cross on the Isenheim altarpiece are ubiquitous in medieval and early modern culture. Liturgically this was explored through the Stabat Mater, while vernacular writers found in the Marian lament a vehicle through which the Virgin could speak, offering a route for affective engagement with Mary’s suffering. The Reformation and Counter-Reformation inflected the ways in which the Sorrowful Virgin was presented, as devotions such as the Seven Sorrows served as spiritual models for more standardized monastic environments in the post-Tridentine period. Moreover, with colonisation of the New World, Marian devotion took on new emphases.  

 

Eliška Kubartová Poláčková’s 2023 monograph Medieval Laments of the Virgin Mary offers new insights into a medieval aspect of this devotion, emphasising the performativity of Marian laments, giving a firm foundation for further research into medieval laments, and offering potential models for early modern engagement with this devotion.  Her work opens up the wider questions about medieval affective piety and performativity in the Marian context, and whether this continued to manifest into the early modern period, or whether the Counter-Reformation precipitated new developments or emphases. 

 

This interdisciplinary workshop will investigate the Sorrowful Virgin in medieval and early modern culture, in which we aim to engage with some of these questions. The workshop will include a hands-on session with material objects and a performance of an early modern lament. We have entitled this workshop ‘The Sorrowful Virgin’ to encompass the many manifestations of this devotion, from the Seven Sorrows to the Mater Dolorosa and welcome broad interpretations of the theme.

​The programme is now available here: https://medieval.ox.ac.uk/2025/01/16/cfp-the-sorrowful-virgin/

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​​​​​​There are  limited spaces for in-person participants but online participation will also be possible for the papers. Please email anna.wilmore@st-hughs.ox.ac.uk by 14th March to register for in-person or online attendance. 

 

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