The keynote session with Cynthia Hahn and David Morgan will be livestreamed.
To participate in person (for the whole or a part of the conference) or online (keynote session), please register at events@roma.uio.no before 10 October.
The Institute is delighted to invite all in person participants to a rooftop reception after the conclusion of the programme.
Conference programme
9:00-9:30 Coffee and registration
9:30-9:40 Kristin B. Aavitsland, Director of the Norwegian Institute in Rome, and Justin Kroesen, Professor, University of Bergen: Welcome and Opening
Session 1. Chair: Justin Kroesen
9:40-10:20 Henning Laugerud (Bergen): False Relics? A Medieval Paradox
10:20-11:00 Kristin B. Aavitsland, Norwegian Institute in Rome / University of Oslo: Metrical Relics: Displays and Interactions
11:00-11:20 Break
Session 2. Chair: Kristin B. Aavitsland
11:20-12:00 Aintzane Erkizia Martikorena (Vitoria-Gasteiz) and Justin Kroesen (Bergen): Migrating Relics in the Seventeenth Century, Between the Rhineland, Flanders, and Spain
12:00-12:30 Małgorzata d’Aughton (Cork): A Highway to Heaven: Relics of the Millennial Blessed Carlo Acutis
12:30-13:30 Lunch
Session 3. Chair: Henrik von Achen
13:30-14:10 Marianne Ritsema van Eck (Rome): Containing the Titulus Crucis at Santa Croce in Gerusalemme in Rome, from Medieval to Early Modern Times
14:10-14:50 Rob Faesen (Louvain): The In- and Outsides of Reliquaries. Reflections on Ruusbroec’s Geestelijke Tabernakel
14:50-15:10 Break
Key note session. Chair: Henning Laugerud (This session will be livestreamed)
15:10-15:50 Cynthia Hahn (New York): Passion Relics as Crusader Treasure and the Arma Christi: Power and Devotion
15:50-16:30 David Morgan (Duke): “Magic in the Web of It.” Rags, Relics, and McGuffins
16:30-17:30 Debate chaired by Henning Laugerud
About the key note speakers:
Cynthia Hahn is Distinguished Professor of Medieval Art at the City University of New York - Hunter 
College. She has published extensively on medieval relics and reliquaries, contributing significantly to the understanding of the role of relics in the Middle Ages. At this occasion, she will talk about Passion Relics as Crusader Treasure and the Arma Christi: Power and devotion.
Abstract: This talk will examine triptychs, diptychs and tablet reliquaries that display Passion relics in a 2-D array, usually around the relics of the True Cross. The forms are inspired by Byzantium and the relics often represent the loot of the Sack of Constantinople – the array works hard to display the many small fragments that were distributed to Crusaders. However, these objects also reify the new ability of such relics to move – both in their translation from East to West, as well as in relation to the devotee. These reliquaries document a new presence brought from the Holy East, but they also perform a series of revelations of presentation, and perform an invitation to intimacy. Not unrelated, they became associated with newly written liturgies and prayers, and with indulgences that promised salvation through their presence. What begins as an aristocratic display of power in Passion relics, leads to a set of devotions that, although it also originates in the courts, eventually spreads through the practices of all the faithful. The striking intermediality of these devotions – passing from relic to reliquary, from manuscript to amulet, from cross to pendant, demonstrates the power of the Passion relics circulating through space, time, and imagination.
David Morgan is Professor of Religious Studies at Duke University. He has published several books and dozens of essays on the history of religious visual culture, fine art, and art theory, and developed the now flourishing research field of material religion. His talk at this conference is entitled 'Magic in the Web of It.’ Rags, Relics, and McGuffins.
Abstract: Othello’s scarf and Emile Durkheim’s discussion of flags as totems may offer some help in understanding relics. Each of these is an artifact capable of generating charisma and intense emotion. They drive plots, compel sacrifice, and generate communities. They are amulet, totem, and relic—material artifacts, on the one hand, and symbolic devices, on the other, whose power does not rest singularly within them but relies on an array of various components to produce the effects for which they are revered. This paper will discuss how relics operate as McGuffins, black boxes that are known for their effects rather than for their actual contents. A favorite device in cinema and literature, the McGuffin is an object or person who drives the plot without disclosing much if anything about itself, yet its agency is considerable.