HomeEdges of the sacred. Materializing thresholds, from Antiquity to the end of the Middle Ages

Edges of the sacred. Materializing thresholds, from Antiquity to the end of the Middle Ages

Les frontières du sacré. Matérialiser les seuils, de l’Antiquité à la fin du Moyen Âge

Revue « Frontière·s »

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Published on Tuesday, September 03, 2024

Abstract

Art historians and archaeologists working on sacred monuments are not only interested in the architectural forms and techniques and the painted and/or sculpted decoration: they also try to reconstruct the ceremonies and circulations that took place around and inside the buildings they study. A sacred space is defined by a material or symbolic boundary that separates the building and its surroundings from profane space. This area, which belongs to the divinity, is bounded by a set of rules and customs that govern ritual practice, which is itself closely linked to space: gestures, sacrifices, prayers and paths take place in specific locations, the identification and function of which are often specified by architecture and decoration.

Announcement

Argument

Art historians and archaeologists working on sacred monuments are not only interested in the architectural forms and techniques and the painted and/or sculpted decoration: they also try to reconstruct the ceremonies and circulations that took place around and inside the buildings they study.

A sacred space is defined by a material or symbolic boundary that separates the building and its surroundings from profane space. This area, which belongs to the divinity, is bounded by a set of rules and customs that govern ritual practice, which is itself closely linked to space: gestures, sacrifices, prayers and paths take place in specific locations, the identification and function of which are often specified by architecture and decoration. Thresholds are also the architectural expression of boundaries in rituals, as they mark the passage from one space to another or, on the contrary, prohibit or restrict access to the most sacred spaces for certain social groups or religious officials. They embody different degrees of sacredness, requiring certain gestures and prayers, and their surroundings may be marked by specific architectural features and decorations (reliefs, architectural sculptures, statues).

The reconstruction of functional and symbolic spatiality through the analysis of architecture, decoration, furniture, texts (both literary and epigraphic), normative sources and sources of practice represents a consistently challenging endeavour for researchers interested in ancient and medieval societies, their beliefs, cults and ritual practices. The incompleteness of the surviving remains, the stratification of uses over a long period, the complex correspondence between the vocabulary used by ancient authors and the objects and spaces observed, the absence of texts or, on the contrary, the disappearance of certain buildings known only from written sources, raise many methodological questions.

This issue of the journal Frontière·s, focusing on the boundaries of the sacred from Antiquity to the end of the Middle Ages, invites authors to consider a number of different themes, based on case studies or summaries of datasets. These include

  • the establishment of rules governing access to different areas of sacred monuments;
  • the sometimes complex reading of the terminology used in written sources to distinguish between different spaces;
  • the cross-referencing of surviving remains and textual sources;
  • the reconstruction of separating structures that are more or less independent of the main structure (doors, hangings, chancels, rood screens, railings, fences, etc.), which may vary according to the type of worship, the religious calendar and changes in liturgical practice over time;
  • the design of thresholds and passages (sculpture, architectural decoration, topical inscriptions);
  • the sensory perceptions of ceremonies in a given space;
  • the periodization of the history of a building in terms of the evolution of the spatial organization of the sacred.

Issue Editors

  • Sidonie Bochaton (Université Toulouse – Jean Jaurès, TRACES)
  • Haude Morvan (Université Bordeaux Montaigne, Ausonius)
  • Natacha Trippé (Université Bordeaux Montaigne, Ausonius)

Timeline

  • December 2024: Abstract submission deadline (optional)
  • 31 May 2025: Deadline for submission of full papers

  • December 2025: Publication

How to submit

All paper proposals will consist of a text in French or English of up to 25,000 characters (excluding spaces), accompanied by an abstract (between 800 and 1,200 characters, excluding spaces) and a keyword list chosen in the thesaurus Pactols in the language of the article. Papers must be submitted by e-mail only to frontiere-s@msh-lse.fr including institutional affiliation, position and name of the author. If they wish, authors may submit an abstract of no more than half a page in English or French with bibliographic references by 31 December 2024 for an indicative opinion from editors (answer within one month).

For further information.


Date(s)

  • Saturday, May 31, 2025

Attached files

Keywords

  • frontière, séparation, sacré, espace, architecture, profane

Information source

  • Vincent Chollier
    courriel : revue [dot] frontiere-s [at] cnrs [dot] fr

License

CC-BY-4.0 This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons - Attribution 4.0 International - CC BY 4.0 .

To cite this announcement

Sidonie Bochaton, Haude Morvan, Natacha Trippé, « Edges of the sacred. Materializing thresholds, from Antiquity to the end of the Middle Ages », Call for papers, Calenda, Published on Tuesday, September 03, 2024, https://doi.org/10.58079/128iq

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