engleski

Hagiography as memory: Saints’ Cults and the Construction of the Past in Medieval Dalmatia

The aim of this study is to trace the role of hagiography and the cults of saints in constructing and preserving particular aspects of collective memories in medieval Dalmatian cities. Therefore, by studying hagiography and cult of urban patron saints, it deals with the history and reenactment of diverse memories of persons and events whose historicity is often doubtful, yet whose reception was of great importance for their medieval recipients. This approach is based on the presupposition that both “memory” and “history“ – always “the result of retrospective processing” – were important and meaningful for their recipients as a way of recollecting their past, but reflecting equally their contemporary views about themselves as communities. Such a view is not a novelty in general. Yet, its well-defined and focused application to selected case studies from medieval Dalmatian cities promises not only to broaden the accessible corpus of case studies on medieval hagiography and cult of the saints, but, more importantly, to offer insight into the ways particular “historical” aspects of “social knowledge” – preserved through “networks of memory” of the urban patron saints – was operational in shaping group identities in medieval Dalmatian communes. The geographical term Dalmatia in the title was originally meant to stand for the three prominent coastal cities: Zadar, Split and Dubrovnik. While focusing on these three, my original intention was to keep an eye on other Eastern Adriatic urban centers (like Osor, Rab and Trogir) as well as some other communities in their hinterland (like Nin). In the present form the study covers much less. In terms of the temporal framework, this study covers the period roughly defined as the Middle Ages. In the local context, it usually refers to the period between ca. 600 and ca. 1400, a time span marked by two important watersheds: The collapse of the Roman administrative system in Dalmatia and the Venetian final subjection of the Dalmatian communes.

Middle Ages; Hagiography; Cult of the saints; Cultural memory; Dalmatia; Zadar

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