The Imperial Abbey of Farfa

The Imperial Abbey of Farfa
Author: Charles B. McClendon
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 342
Release: 1987-01-01
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9780300033335

The Benedictine abbey of Farfa was one of the most important monastic centers of medieval Europe. As an imperial establishment, patronize and protected by Charlemagne and his successors yet situated only thirty miles northeast of Rome, Farfa was often found at the center of events involving the papacy and the Empire. While its historical importance has long been recognized, the physical remains of the abbey have received little attention until now. This book by Charles B. McClendon is unique in combining an assessment of Farfa's place in the overall development of medieval architecture with an analysis of the abbey's historical role. McClendon has based his study on a detailed architectural survey of the medieval abbey church and on the extensive excavations of the site carried out under his co-direction between 1978 and 1983. By examining archaeological, architectural, and historical sources, McClendon reconstructs the various phases in the growth of the monastic layout from late antiquity to the early Renaissance, analyzes the circumstances under which they were built, and relates his findings to the architectural currents of the day. He shows, for example, that the ninth-century additions to the abbey church by Abbot Sichardus reflect the Carolingian revival of the plan of Old St. Peter's in Rome; that the design of other features points to influence from north of the Alps; that the east end of the abbey church, extensively rebuilt in the mid-eleventh century, should be considered a major monument of the early Romanesque period. Demonstrating that each phase of the architectural history of Farfa reflects the latest developments not only in Italy but also in the north, McClendon makes clear that Farfa provides a valuable understanding of the dynamic forces that helped shape the architecture of the early Middle Ages. "Scholarship at its best. . . . This volume will be the standard reference for many years to come."--Richard Krautheimer, New York University

The Medieval Abbey of Farfa

The Medieval Abbey of Farfa
Author: Mary Stroll
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 319
Release: 1997-03-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004247289

This is the first comprehensive study in English about the medieval imperial abbey of Farfa, which played a key role in the period of ecclesiastical reform, beginning in the mid-eleventh century. Its main sources are the Register and Chronicle, compiled by Gregory of Catino, a partisan monk. Controlling strategic property in central Rome and along the coast of Latium, Farfa functioned as a quasi-imperial embassy, supporting the empire in its struggle with the papacy for hegemony. Imperial ties and internal conflicts led to Farfa's loss of liberties and dependency upon the papacy. The book both depicts the competition between the empire and the papacy, and charts Farfa's losing struggle to maintain Benedictine standards and its independence from an expansive papacy.

The Medieval Abbey of Farfa

The Medieval Abbey of Farfa
Author: Mary Stroll
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 336
Release: 1997
Genre: History
ISBN: 9789004107045

This is the first comprehensive study in English about the medieval imperial abbey of Farfa, which played a key role in the Papal Patrimony and in the competition between the Empire and the Papacy.

The Grove Encyclopedia of Medieval Art and Architecture

The Grove Encyclopedia of Medieval Art and Architecture
Author: Colum Hourihane
Publisher:
Total Pages: 4064
Release: 2012
Genre: Architecture, Medieval
ISBN: 0195395360

This volume offers unparalleled coverage of all aspects of art and architecture from medieval Western Europe, from the 6th century to the early 16th century. Drawing upon the expansive scholarship in the celebrated 'Grove Dictionary of Art' and adding hundreds of new entries, it offers students, researchers and the general public a reliable, up-to-date, and convenient resource covering this field of major importance in the development of Western history and international art and architecture.

The Proprietary Church in the Medieval West

The Proprietary Church in the Medieval West
Author: Susan Wood
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 1034
Release: 2008-12-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 0191564559

Although there have been many regional studies of the proprietary church or particular aspects of it, this is the first extensive study of it covering most of western Europe, from the end of the Roman Empire in the West to about 1200. The book aims at a broad survey in varying degrees of intensity and with a shifting geographical focus; and it asks questions that are as much social and religious as legal or administrative. The book vindicates, for village and estate churches, Ulrich Stutz's basic concept of a church with its possessions, revenues, and priestly office as an object of what we can reasonably call property. But it largely rejects his and his followers' application of this to great churches, and sees the position of intermediate churches (such as small or middling monasteries) as various, changeable, and ambivalent. Above all it turns away from Stutz's view of the property relationship as a distinct institution or system of 'Germanic church law', presenting it rather as a fluid set of assumptions and practices taking shape as customary law. The book considers also the changing background of ideas and the bearing on it of important polemical writings (with some questioning of their established interpretations). Finally the book discusses how property in churches was imperfectly superseded by the new canon-law patronage, in the increasingly bureaucratic post-Gregorian Church.

Shaping a Monastic Identity

Shaping a Monastic Identity
Author: Susan Boynton
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2006
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780801443817

During the eleventh and early twelfth centuries, the imperial abbey of Farfa was one of the most powerful institutions on the Italian peninsula. In this period many of the lands of central Italy fell under its sway, and it enjoyed the protection of the emperor until the 1120s, when it passed gradually into the control of the papacy. At the same time, the monastery was an influential religious center, and the monks of Farfa filled their days with the celebration of the liturgy through prayers, processions, sermons, chants, and hymns.Susan Boynton, a historian of medieval music, addresses several of the major themes of present-day medieval historiography through a close study of the liturgical practices of the abbey of Farfa. Boynton's findings are a striking demonstration of the local nature of liturgical practices in the centuries before church ritual was controlled and codified by the papacy. Boynton shows that the liturgy was highly flexible, continually adapting to the monastery's changing circumstances. The monks regularly modified traditional forms to reflect new realities, often in the service of Farfa's power and prestige. Equally fascinating is Boynton's examination of the process by which Farfa, like other monasteries, cathedral chapters, and royal houses, constantly rewrote its history--particularly the stories of its founding--as part of the continuous negotiation of power that was central to medieval politics and culture.

Lombard Legacy

Lombard Legacy
Author: John Mitchell
Publisher: Pindar Press
Total Pages: 765
Release: 2018-12-31
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1915837111

Using the great south-Italian monastery of San Vincenzo al Volturno, one of the best preserved monasteries of the earliest Middle Ages, as a case-study and heuristic paradigm, John Mitchell has engaged in a wide-ranging examination of the ways in which visual culture was developed and deployed by ambitious states and institutions in early medieval Europe. The present volume includes studies on the cultural dynamics of Italy and its contribution to the visual complexion of Europe in the period, as well as essays on many aspects of the artistic culture of San Vincenzo, including a series of papers on the display of script in the physical fabric of the monastery and the prominent role it played in its self-image.

Popes and Antipopes: The Politics of Eleventh Century Church Reform

Popes and Antipopes: The Politics of Eleventh Century Church Reform
Author: Mary Stroll
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2011-12-09
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004226192

A revolution shook the Christian world in the second half of the eleventh century. Many eminent historians point to Hildebrand, later Gregory VII (1073-1085), as the prime mover of this movement that aspired to free the Church from secular entanglements, and to return it to its state of paleochristian purity. I see the reform from the perspective of much wider developments such as the split between the Greek and the Latin Churches and the Norman infiltration of Southern Italy. Contentrating on the popes and the antipopes I delve into the character and motivations of the important personae, and do not see the movement as a smooth line of progress. I see the outcome as reversal of power of what had been a strong empire and a weak papacy.

Medieval Rome

Medieval Rome
Author: Chris Wickham
Publisher:
Total Pages: 530
Release: 2015
Genre: Civilization, Medieval
ISBN: 0199684960

Medieval Rome analyses the history of the city of Rome between 900 and 1150, a period of major change in the city. This volume doesn't merely seek to tell the story of the city from the traditional Church standpoint; instead, it engages in studies of the city's processions, material culture,legal transformations, and sense of the past, seeking to unravel the complexities of Roman cultural identity, including its urban economy, social history as seen across the different strata of society, and the articulation between the city's regions.This new approach serves to underpin a major reinterpretation of Rome's political history in the era of the "reform papacy", one of the greatest crises in Rome's history, which had a resonance across the entire continent. Medieval Rome is the most systematic analysis ever made of two and a halfcenturies of Rome's history, one which saw centuries of stability undermined by external crisis and the long period of reconstruction which followed.

Standing on Holy Ground in the Middle Ages

Standing on Holy Ground in the Middle Ages
Author: Lucy Donkin
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 526
Release: 2022-02-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1501753851

Standing on Holy Ground in the Middle Ages illuminates how the floor surface shaped the ways in which people in medieval western Europe and beyond experienced sacred spaces. The ground beneath our feet plays a crucial, yet often overlooked, role in our relationship with the environments we inhabit and the spaces with which we interact. By focusing on this surface as a point of encounter, Lucy Donkin positions it within a series of vertically stacked layers—the earth itself, permanent and temporary floor coverings, and the bodies of the living above ground and the dead beneath—providing new perspectives on how sacred space was defined and decorated, including the veneration of holy footprints, consecration ceremonies, and the demarcation of certain places for particular activities. Using a wide array of visual and textual sources, Standing on Holy Ground in the Middle Ages also details ways in which interaction with this surface shaped people's identities, whether as individuals, office holders, or members of religious communities. Gestures such as trampling and prostration, the repeated employment of specific locations, and burial beneath particular people or actions used the surface to express likeness and difference. From pilgrimage sites in the Holy Land to cathedrals, abbeys, and local parish churches across the Latin West, Donkin frames the ground as a shared surface, both a feature of diverse, distant places and subject to a variety of uses over time—while also offering a model for understanding spatial relationships in other periods, regions, and contexts.