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Prayer and Performance

Acts of belief as symbolic communication in the late medieval and Renaissance period

 An international, interdisciplinary colloquium

examining the nature of prayer as performance in late medieval and early modern culture

 Co-organised by the Department of Aesthetics and Communication and the Discipline for

Medieval and Renaissance Archaeology, Aarhus University, Denmark in conjunction with the School of English, Bangor University, Wales.

  

 Aarhus University

Moesgaard Museum, Aarhus, Denmark

 April 23-24, 2012

Prayer and Performanceacts of belief as symbolic communication in the late medieval and Renaissance

period

Programme

Monday, 23 April9:30 Welcome

and coffee

10:00-10:50 Session 1Plenary*

(Chair: Joseph Sterrett)

Armin Geertz

'Defining prayer as a performative act: applying new social and scientific methods to our understanding of prayer in society'

10:50-11:05 15 min coffee break

11:05-12:30 Session 2: Plenary Panel*

Exterior and interior stages(Chair: Helen Wilcox)

Alison Findlay

'Prayer , Performance and Community in Early Modern Drama' How did acts of prayer work to create imagined communities between members of households, cities, religious affiliations, audiences and actors? This paper will explore ways in which the ceremonies of prayer are represented on stage in examples of late medieval and early modern drama. In particular, it will consider how the cultural trauma of the Reformation in England changed the significance of ceremony and performance as aspects of prayer.

Chloe Preedy

'Grounded Messengers: Delivering Prayers in Early Modern Drama' On the early modern stage, it is common for characters to be shown praying to their gods. A related but less often explored phenomenon is the prevalence of divine messenger figures: prophets, intermediary saints, and angels, as well as the most famous of divine messengers, Hermes/Mercury. Perhaps in response to the new Protestant emphasis on prayer as an intimate conversation with God, however, from the late Elizabethan period Mercury in particular is consistently represented as an absent, incompetent, or indifferent messenger. This paper will focus on the way in which the divine messenger-figure apparently expresses anxieties about the difficulties of communicating with the gods, exploring the significance of the divine messenger in Elizabethan drama through specific reference to the representation of Hermes/Mercury in four plays of the 1590s: The Arraignment of Paris, Dido Queen of Carthage, Titus Andronicus, and Troilus and Cressida.

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*All plenaries are in the Main Auditorium

Judi Loach 'Civic performance as communal prayer'

In seventeenth-century Lyons the town college’s patronal festival, Trinity Sunday, constituted the official act of obedience and gratitude, ordained to be enacted by the Jesuit schoolmasters towards the councillors as their paymasters.  But the Jesuits presented the series of acts (literally) performed – mass followed by a tragedy interpolated with ballet – as a Christian form of the Roman imperial vota, or communal vow to the city’s deity.  They incorporated their civic audience into this performed prayer of thanks for the past and supplication for the future: citizens were unconsciously drawn into participation in these acts which touched their outer senses and thus activated their inner spirits.  This paper examines the 1667 celebration in order to demonstrate how such superficially secular performances as plays and ballets could legitimately be considered to constitute prayer.

12:30-13:30 Lunch

13:30-14:30 Session 3:Plenary Panel*

Material evidence(Chair: Holger Gräf)

Martin Wangsgaard Jürgensen

‘Motion as Meditation: The Role of Actions in Early Modern Praying’

To pray is often considered purely a speech act, either voiced out loudly or unspoken, solely expressed internally. However, from the early Middle Ages and across the Reformation it was always debated whether or to what extent the act of praying ought to include more than merely words. Even to Protestants rejecting the idea that there was anything especially beneficial in taking specific poses or combining prayer with certain actions, the kneeling position was hard to explain away. Luther agreed that gestures performed during prayer could be helpful to maintain a fervent state of mind. When looking back into the Middle Ages, a wide register of performed actions are discernible in combination with the act of praying. Taking its cue from such considerations, this paper will discuss how spatial movements and prayer are connected. I propose to analyse how gestures and movements in the material space were believed to affect and shape the mind-set while praying. These questions are to be analysed from a medieval perspective and ultimately presented in their post-Reformation guises.

Rainer Atzbach

‘Between Representation and Eternity: Forms of Prayer in Archaeological Contexts’

In archaeological contexts, the immaterial act of prayer becomes visible in different ways. The well-known practice of putting magical or religious objects into graves seems to come to continue until the 10th century even in  regions which have been converted to Christianity for some time. The specific position of hands and arms in the graves also reflect changing bearings of prayer becoming a kind of immortal prayer lasting until the day of Last Judgment. It seems that as a consequence of the Reformation the practice of placing grave goods returns in the 16th century consisting of clothing, weapons and jewelry as well as prayer books and bibles. Staging the "immortal prayer" again becomes a part of funeral performance of the "true belief". Moreover excavations have brought to light a broad range of objects either showing prayer, e.g. tile stoves, or being used for it, e.g. rosaries. This paper will discuss the possibilities and problems of these sources.

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14:30-14:45 Coffee break 15 min

14:45-16:00 Session 4:Parallel Session

Main Grave performances(Chair: Morten Larsen)

Holger Th. Gräf

'The sepulchral politics of the landgraves of Hesse from late medieval period to early 17th century' Most important for Hesse dynastic identity during the middle ages was the cult of their ancestor, the holy Elizabeth, especially as a means of conferring legitimacy to landgraves. These medieval landgraves were buried in close vicinity to her tomb in the Church of Saint Elizabeth. After the Reformation and the death of Philip the Magnanimous in 1567, Hesse was divided. While Calvinist Hesse-Kassel was oriented towards protestant powers like Sweden and Brandenburg, the more Lutheran Hesse-Darmstadt aligned with catholic powers and the Hapsburg emperor. This paper will compare the inscriptions, programmes and architecture of tombs in Marburg, Darmstadt and Kassel in order to trace the threefold split along dynastic, political and confessional lines that resulted in distinct divergences in sepulchral politics as part of early modern territorial state-building.

Claudia Melisch

'Faith and religious practice: sepulchral culture in Berlin/Cölln (Germany) from the Middle Ages to the Baroque era'

It is generally believed that the pre-Reformation Church in Berlin and the Margraviate east of the Elbe did not have the same resplendent background as the Church in western Germany and the important towns of the Holy Roman Empire. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether this thesis is represented in the graves from the cemeteries of St. Peter’s church and the Dominican monastery, and to explore how the graves might allow further conclusions to be drawn regarding contemporary religious practices.  Two archaeological excavations have unearthed more than 3,500 graves dating from the medieval period through to the first quarter of the eighteenth century.  One of the sites is near the oldest cemetery in Cölln around the former St. Peter's church which was in use since the beginning of the thirteenth century and closed in 1717 when it was thought overfull. The other is situated near the Dominican monastery built c.1300 which became a theological college in the 15th century and a Hofkirche (court church) in the 16th. Both cemeteries reflect, in their graves, the developments of sepulchral culture and thus of the changes in religious culture of Cölln from the Middle Ages to the Baroque era.  At the same time, by analysing these exceptional collections of skeletal remains, the composition and living conditions of the population may be better understood. Similarly, patterns can be established in the material cultures of the monastery, the members of the court, and the lay population of Cölln revealing contemporary regional religious practices.

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Juliane Schenk

"Signs of faith–crosses, rosaries & pilgrims badges in postmedieval burials"

Archaeological finds of graves and crypts from the 16th to 20th century reflect changes in morturary practice. Grave goods and the remains of garments are increasingly found in burials from this period and seem to be associated with the impact of the Reformation. The phenomenon is evident until the 19th century in almost all regions, social ranks and religious denominations. The purpose of this paper is to present an analysis of all modern grave goods and finds in Lower, Middle and Upper Franconia as well as in Upper Palatinate with regard to their appearance, distribution and usage, particularly in matters of social, gender-specific, confessional and local distinctions. Grave goods such as crosses, rosaries and pilgrims badges provide basic notes on personal devotion and prayer practice and can be understood through the detailed indexing and interpretation of objects from 120 find spots yielding approximately 2600 burials.

14:45-16:00 Auditorium 5

Shakespearean performances(Chair: Per Sivefors)

Emma Depledge

'Fighting with ‘Womens Weapons, Piety and Pray’rs’: Passive Obedience in Nahum Tate’s The History of King Lear (1681)' This paper will explore Nahum Tate’s 1681 alteration of Shakespeare’s Quarto and Folio versions of King Lear into The History of King Lear. It will focus on the character of Cordelia and the ways in which her reduced agency and frequent use of prayer can be seen to reflect the policy of passive obedience advocated in Tory propaganda of the late seventeenth century. Tate’s play, like nine other Shakespeare alterations staged between 1678 and 1682, was produced in response to a succession crisis known as the Exclusion Crisis. The Crisis, which takes its name from a parliamentary bill designed to bar Charles II’s Catholic heir, James, Duke of York, from the succession, led to heated debate over the circumstances in which a monarch’s rule might be resisted or limited. I wish to argue that Cordelia’s prayers and the numerous references to the gods found in The History of King Lear are central to the play’s defence of James’s (Divinely ordained) birth right, and legitimate rule more generally.

Sonia Suman

‘Performing Prayer in Shakespeare’s Henry V’ This paper will examine the efficacy of prayer in William Shakespeare’s Henry V. The play is saturated with instances of calling upon or praising God, however the agency of prayer itself is called into question by the rhetorical performances on offer throughout the play. The semblance of divine intervention is created through Henry V’s oratorical skill. I will consider Henry’s prayer in act four scene one in the context of early modern debates about the efficacy of spontaneous versus prescribed prayer, public versus private devotion and the efficacy of ‘habit’ or physical preparation for prayer. The absence of ceremonial kingly dress at this crucial moment in the play also bears on the perceived transformative power of this peculiar kind of speech. Finally, this paper will explore how early modern audiences may have responded to prayer performed on stage, taking into account the contemporary anti-theatricalist view that the theatres preached false religion.

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Annelis Kuhlmann

’“O, what form of prayer can serve my turn?”: Claudius and the problem of prayer’

In Act III, scene 3 of Hamlet Claudius asks, ‘O, what form of prayer / can serve my turn?’ (51-52). The form of prayer in this tragedy is the point of departure for this paper for prayer and its form has a particular function at this crucial place in the middle of Hamlet – a moment that is deeply connected to the genre of Shakespeare’s revenge tragedy. Prayer as rhetorical disguise protects Claudius, but it also exposes him as potential victim of Hamlet's sword. The use of prayer also provides an insight into more formal aesthetic sides of the play, namely the notion of theatrum mundi. The very notion of theatricality in Hamlet plays on the theme of the world as theatre. This can be seen in the ways characters’ make spectators perceive the nature / theatricality of the play. By asking ‘what form of prayer’ it could be argued that Claudius is questioning the very nature of prayer on multiple levels. Is this prayer a religious act, and the question contemptuous? Or is this an utterance of some deep reflection? Or perhaps it refers to prayer as a theatricalised speech act. The form of prayer can be perceived as a double-edged sword in the composition of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. This paper examines the form of prayer from the perspective of interpersonal speech as elaborated by Mikhail Bakhtin. While Claudius’ prayer would seem to be addressed to God, Hamlet hears the prayer and, as a Saviour, prevents the immediate sacrifice of the criminal’s body, creating a dramatic tension that lasts until the end of the play. It is my argument therefore, that Claudius’ monologue embeds a theatrical heteroglot form of speech.

16:00-16:15 Coffee break 15 min

16:15-17:15 Session 5:Plenary Panel*

Textual and material traces of prayer (Chair: Rainer Atzbach)

Roy Eriksen

'Varieties of Prayer: Marlowe's Mighty Line and Its Sources.'

Hauke Kenzler

‘Funeral Rites in Catholic and Protestant Germany: Religion, Status, Taboo’

This paper will focus on the archaeologically tangible aspects of the burial customs, which highlight the different treatment of the deceased in Protestant and Catholic areas of Germany. Now for the first time, an attempt to compare post-medieval burial customs over spatial and denominational boundaries can be undertaken. The presentation will deal with the differences in the organization of cemeteries, the shape of the graves and the number and type of grave goods. The analysis will show that people behaved quite conservatively concerning funeral customs. It was not for a long time after the Reformation when significant changes occurred. For example, in Protestant areas a strict separation of church and burial ground is visible. The type of grave goods (secular or religious) varies noticeably according to different beliefs. But not only religious reasons were crucial for the application of new ideas. Partially a number of profane reasons such as hygienic causes or a status-oriented way of thinking stood behind the changes.

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17:15 Adjourn to Aarhus for drinks and dinnerThe bus leaves at 17:38 sharp.

Our three course dinner is at the ‘French inspired’ Sct. Oluf’s Restaurant at 19:30.

(See map included).

Meet in Cathedral Square by the water sculpture (which may be dry) in front of the Cathedral at 19:15 to walk the short distance to the

restaurant.

Tuesday, 24 April9:30-10:45 Session 6:

Parallel Session

Main 17th century poetic prayers(Chair: Mats Jørgensen)

Nancy Zaice

'Prayer and (Sexual) Performance: The Role of Prayer in Lord Edward Herbert of Chirbury’s Metaphysics'

While many have written about the performative aspects of George Herbert’s prayerful poetry in The Temple, most scholars simply neglect or ignore the poetry of his elder brother, the soldier, courtier and scholar, Lord Edward Herbert of Chirbury. One reason for this may involve Edward’s reputation, in his younger days, as a lady’s man, a “gay blade,” and as a caricature chivalric knight. This reputation tends to cause scholars, if they notice his poetry at all, to categorise his poetry as “cavalier.” Edward Herbert’s later reputation as an atheist or “deist” has also deterred some scholars from seriously examining the spiritual aspects of his poetry. This study of Edward Herbert’s metaphysics, as explained in his philosophical treatise De Veritate, and of his love poetry will reveal the spiritual nature of Herbert’s poetry and the role of prayer within Herbert’s spirituality, particularly the sexual act as the highest form of human prayer. This act or “performance” by male and female joins the physical and the spiritual into a transcendent experience that provides both with a momentary glimpse of the divine and an apprehension of the state of, what Herbert terms, “eternal blessedness.”

Erik Ankerberg

'Johann Gerhard, George Herbert, and the shimmering of chaos in early modern prayer' Contemporary scholars, as varied as the anthropologist Mary Douglass in her Purity and Danger and the literary critic Gary Morson in his theory of prosaics, have chronicled and interrogated humanity’s continual efforts to impose the concept of order on its cultural artifacts and phenomena. However, if the German Romantic poet Novalis is correct in his assertion that in “a work of art, chaos must shimmer through the veil of order” then

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attempts to overlay a system or order on a work of art, even if that work of art is a form of prayer, are bound to meet with frustration, and potentially, failure.  In the their engagement with collections of religious meditative texts such Johann Gerhard’s Sacred Meditations and George Herbert’s The Temple, early modern readers are exposed to two levels of performance: The first performance is the development and implementation of an over-arching architecture to the collection of texts by the translator (in Gerhard’s case) or the author (in Herbert’s case), and the second performance is the act of reading, praying, or engaging the respective collection of texts. Contrasting the performative acts we associate with these two collections of religious texts clarifies alternatives paths of reaching Morson’s conclusion that life, art, and in this case, prayer, always contain the “unfitting” of patterns and assumptions of stability or control.

Jonathan Nauman

“Vaughan’s Poetry of Prayer (a homily)”

Llansantffraed parish in Breconshire, Wales has become a destination for Christian literary pilgrimage, a place “where prayer has been valid,” largely because of Henry Vaughan’s gravesite in the parish yard and significant awareness of local setting in his devotional poems. I shall here consider how Vaughan’s verses of direct address to God interact with the natural imagery of the Usk Valley, showing how the poet’s decisive turns toward the transcendent strengthen rather than weaken his appreciative gestures toward nature.

9:30-10:45 Auditorium2

Memory, text, and gesture(Chair: Hauke Kenzler)

Effie Botonaki

'The Protestant Diary and the Act of Prayer' As I have argued elsewhere,* the early modern diary owes its emergence and development to the Protestant duty of self-examination which replaced the Catholic confession. While examining the form and content the early modern English diaries, I have found that a most powerful influence on them was the scores of guides to private prayer published at the beginning of the seventeenth century. While encouraging the unmediated, unprocessed contact between the believer and God through extempore prayer, these guides ultimately sought to control the believer’s act of prayer and mould it into acceptable forms. This effort and its results are vividly seen in the Protestant spiritual diaries which are an unruly mixture of the guidebooks’ prescriptions, and the individual believer’s needs. This is why we encounter the repeated recording of “improper” feelings and deeds, as well as the transformation of these spiritual accounts into secular texts that do not meet the prescriptions of the guidebooks to prayer.

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Maria Beatriz Hernandez

'Framing vision through prayer: The Book of Margery Kempe' Late medieval literary and artistic evidence, immersed in a culture of piety, clearly refers the emergence of an individual dimension which had so far been restrained or ignored. Among other possible causes, the spread of new techniques of confession not only fostered such sense of individuality but also contributed to stress the conversational quality of prayer itself. The degree of intimacy between human pleaders and divine addressees is especially apparent in the works of some female authors. Similarly, the portraits of the female commissioners in religious books speak the proximity between these believers and their divine counterparts in the sacred space depicted. This paper will analyze the role of prayers in the layout of individual divine visions in the The Book of Margery Kempe, an autobiographical work conflating diverse performative and discursive techniques --among them, prayer-- through which its protagonist tried to readjust herself into late medieval congregational activities.

Stina Fallberg Sundmark

Humiliter genu flectare - Bodily Expressions of Prayer in Late Medieval Eucharistic Settings Late medieval Church life was in many senses concrete and had corporeal dimensions. Late medieval prayer did not solely consist of different verbal expressions but also included varied bodily ones. In this paper we will look closer at prescribed body language and gestures for the layfolk in different Eucharistic settings and contexts such as Mass itself and the Eucharistic procession outside Mass when the priest went to sick and dying persons to give them communion. Questions to be answered are: Which were these bodily expressions? Which were their meanings? How were the bodily expressions related to the verbal prayer? How could they be interpreted in connection to the sacramentally present Christ in the Eucharist? To be able to answer these questions different sources will be used, such as prescriptions in synodal and provincial statutes from the Church province of Uppsala, teaching and moralizing descriptions in handbooks for priests and in exempla and visualizations through images (mostly German woodcuts).

10:45-11:00 Coffee break 15 min

11:00-12:15 Session 7: Parallel Session

Main Symbolic prayer cultures(Chair: Martin Wangsgaard Jürgensen)

Mirko Gutjahr

‘Lead tablets and the materiality of popular belief in medieval Europe’

Recent archaeological finds of inscribed lead tablets from various locations in middle Germany as well as rediscoveries in the archives at the State Museum for Prehistory in Saxony-Anhalt, all dating from the 12th to 15th/16th century, could help to shed a new light on the materiality of magical and religious popular beliefs in medieval Europe. The Latin inscriptions consist of a hotchpotch of prayers, scriptural quotations, holy names and invocations against evil forces and personified illnesses. Densely folded and worn as amulets, the inscribed leaden sheets were intended obviously not to be read aloud but to work in secrecy. Although condemned by the church authorities, textual amulets were authored apparently by members of the local lesser clergy for the illiterate common folk. Since some of the lead tablets were

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found in graves of children or young women their apparent purpose was to protect those which were thought to be most vulnerable to demonic influences.

Blandine Wittkopp

‘Miscellaneous medieval burial rites in Brandenburg as a sign of religious identity’

Many churchyards in Brandenburg include unusual medieval graves. 'Leitersärge' graves contain caskets with ladder bottoms, or others containing mysterious burial objects such as sickles. While these might appear to be pagan or superstitious in meaning they also occur in clearly Christian churchyards such as the Dominican monastery of Strasberg. Other burial objects like scallop shells (Jakobsmuscheln) and what appear to be aspergillum are found alongside skeletal body postures which clearly express devotion: hands together as if in prayer or arms crossed over the thorax. “Leitersärge” from the 13th century are very common in southern Brandenburg with scattered examples across the whole of Germany and neighbouring areas. With the help of the graves in Schleswig, these are thought to be connected to St Laurentius, whom tradition held was matyred bound to a gridiron. The paper will present new findings for burials of this type.

Tanja Armbrüster

'The plate as a mirror of belief - On Christian symbols decorating dishware and the impact of Protestantism on tableware, table-manners and table-graces during the Renaissance and Baroque'

Among the many obvious and not-so-obvious changes brought about by the Reformation, religious habits underwent by far the most thorough transformations. The table prayer for instance was introduced only after the Reformation. An idealistic post-Reformation concept of man saw the individual as a collection of virtues, caritas and piety particularly prominent ones among them. And Protestantism explicitly spiritualized the household, inspiring the evolvement of the family prayer. As one result depictions of families praying together became more and more frequent in mural monuments and Dutch paintings through the late sixteenth and most of the seventeenth century The Common Table Prayer as we know it occurred during or after the Reformation. Some relate it to Martin Luther himself though that is highly speculative. First published evidence does not precede the mid-eighteenth century (the Moravian hymnal, 1753), but research indicates that it occurred most likely at some point during the seventeenth century. And while looking intently at the historical records we are nearly missing the material evidence at hand: Ceramics of the early modern period from central Germany are broadly comprised of so called "glazed utility wares" including a considerable amount of decorated (painted) table wares. Plates and bowls are common finds on site and while quantitative analysis indicates that plates were less popular in most early modern households the bowls of various shapes from shallow to high and conical forms were dominant. Among those we have only recently identified some items decorated with Christian symbols as for instance a three part interlocking fish symbol that commonly symbolizes the Holy Trinity (Father, son and Holy spirit). We assume that the occurrence of that particular symbol on utility table wares may be related to the performance of post-Reformation period table prayers and eating habits.

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11:00-12:15 Auditorium2

Authorship and Author(Chair: Erik Ankerberg)

Viktor Aldrin

'Prayer Practices among ordinary people in the Late Middle Ages' In this paper I will present key findings of my concluded project on the prayer life of peasant communities in late medieval Sweden, conducted at the University of Gothenburg 2005–2010. The aim of the project has been to identify, explain and delineate praying among peasant communities in late medieval Sweden. Four aspects have been examined through the perspectives of ideals and practices, namely the standards of prayer, devotional prayer, prayer in times of need and prayer cultures.  Focus in my paper will be practices of prayer, especially those occurring in connection with the praying for miracles.

Per Sivefors

'Prayer and the Performance of Authorship in Thomas Nashe's Christ's Teares Over Jerusalem'

This paper argues that the the frequent occurrences of prayers in Christs Teares Over Jerusalem (1593) constitute an expression of Nashe's own liminal position as a writer, specifically in the context of the hostile audience reactions that the work provoked. Prayers for comfort from the Lord function as acts of empowerment for the author and furnish a position of "mourning" from which Nashe constructs his authorial persona. While the paper thus revisits some of the more recent scholarship on Nashe and authorship, it provides a new angle in exploring the specific role of post-reformation religious belief and ritual in the development of authorial role models. Moreover, it contributes to the ways in which Christs Teares can be understood as a central, rather than marginal text in Nashe's oeuvre as a whole.

Micah Snell

'The Enchantment of Mercy: The Hopeful Ending of The Tempest'

The conclusion of The Tempest is not an epilogue but Prospero’s prayer. I will argue that The Tempest is the consummation of Shakespeare’s creative vision, and the consummation of that vision is a Christian prayer. Prospero, the priest of the play, sets down his charms to be relieved only by “prayer / Which pierces so that it assaults / Mercy itself and frees all faults.” Shakespeare’s liturgical conclusion places the play, the audience, the theatrical space, and even the playwright himself in a familiar religious construct. Shakespeare’s intention is veritable enchantment that submits humanity to mercy and grace, not magic.

12:15-14:30 Lunch, Moesgaard Grounds and Museum(all delegates have free entry to the Museum)

14:30-15:45 Session 8:Plenary Panel*

Spontaneous performances: Milton on prayer(Chair: Chloe Preedy)

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Erica Longfellow

'Inwardness Regained: Private Prayer in Milton’s Epic Poems' In Eikonoklastes Milton is particularly concerned to attack what he sees as Charles’s hypocrisy in printing his own prayers in Eikon Basilike: ‘he should have shut the dore, and pray'd in secret, not heer in the High Street. Privat praiers in publick, ask something of whom they ask not, and that shall be thir reward’. This was a familiar argument about the hypocrisy of personal prayer performed for an audience, but for English Calvinists before Milton this fear of hypocrisy had been linked with an English cultural suspicion of secrecy and solitude. Milton, by contrast, displayed a radical optimism about the ability of the inward self to align itself to God in prayer. In Paradise Regained

the disciples and the Virgin Mary are redeemed persons who use prayer to bring rational order to chaotic inner selves; and the divine person, Jesus, proves capable of redeeming the whole of humankind through his perfect subordination and inner self-ordering. It is Milton, not his puritan predecessors, who truly makes the Protestant faith inward.

Gilles Sambras

'“A fair show in the flesh”: Reconsidering Milton’s rejection of codes and art in prayer.' Milton is famous for his rejection of set forms, art and performance in prayer. In his eyes, the only valid form of prayer seems to be both private and spontaneous.The point of this paper is to examine Milton’s grounds for this rejection of both conventions and art in prayer and to question Milton’s theological and artistic consistency on the subject of prayer. I will try and establish Milton’s theological consistency in showing that his rejection of set forms and rhetoric does not spring from a belief in man’s ability to be spontaneously intelligible to God but, on the contrary, from an awareness that prayer, for fallen man, can only be mute or mere sighs and that any attempt at ‘performing’ otherwise implies a blasphemous denial of the consequences of the Fall. As a religious poet however, Milton cannot escape the contradictions between truth and beauty, humility and vanity, that lie at the heart of most Protestant devotional poetry and are best represented in a text by one of Milton’s contemporary poets, Andrew Marvell’s 'The Coronet'.

Panagiota Tsentourou

'In feign’d religion, smooth hypocrisie’: Milton and the antitheatrical discourse'

In Eikonoklastes, Milton refers to Shakespeare’s Richard III as ‘a deep dissembler of religion’, while in the same tract, Charles I’s prayers are condemned as theatrical. This paper for the first time places Milton’s apprehension of hypocritical worship amongst debates of hypocrisy/hypocrites in early modern drama. In his condemnation of deceitful behaviour, which for Milton is primarily located in the Church’s adherence to an obsession with visual worship, the poet suggests that an individual’s inner state could be shaped by external shows of religion. The paradox of rejecting performance, while simultaneously acknowledging its transformative value, is typical of the antitheatrical rhetoric of late sixteenth-early seventeenth centuries. I argue that reading antitheatrical tracts alongside

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Milton’s prose allows for a redefinition of the notion of performance through prayer. Performing devotion is an idol to be demolished only when accomplished by private intentions.

15:45-15:55 Coffee break

15:55-17:00 Session 9: Plenary Panel*

Hamlet 3.3(Chair: Nancy Zaice)

Christopher Hodgkins

'Playing at Prayer: The Spiritual Failure of Performance in Hamlet' When King Claudius falls repentantly to his knees in Hamlet, it would seem to be a victory for what Philip Sidney had called the “virtue-breeding” powers of tragic poetry—after all, he has just seen the all-too-familiar “Murder of Gonzago,” and he’s seemingly been cut to the heart.  In fact, in a number of Shakespeare’s plays, both comic and tragic, drama seems to take on quasi-

salvific powers: for instance in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Bottom is the theatrical “weaver” whose visionary folly serves as the reconciling catalyst between city and country, spiritual and material, fairy and mortal, husband and wife, lad and lady, reason and love. Bottom essentially saves the world, and then concludes with a Bergomask. Even amidst the darkness of King Lear, Kent plays for a noble end, and Edgar’s heartbreaking impersonations save his father’s life for a better death. So Hamlet’s advice to the players seems to attribute great stakes to the actor’s craft, since unbeknown to the troupe, they’re playing not merely for the entertainment, but for the conscience, of the king.

But can they play for his soul? As Hamlet overhears the beginning of Claudius’ remorseful prayer, he fears that his “Mousetrap” has worked only too well, and resolves not to kill him while in a theatrically-induced state of grace, lest he dispatch the lecherous villain to heaven. Yet, as events quickly show, Hamlet needn’t have worried: if playing does indeed “hold the mirror up to nature,” then it’s quite possible, as it is written in James 1: 23-24, to put down the mirror, walk away, and forget everything. Art can move the emotions, even convict the conscience, but Hamletcasts profound doubt on the power of the stage to duplicate the transformative power of the Spirit.

So this paper will explore Shakespeare’s portrayal of the players’ failure to convert the soul and the self. Along the way I will refer to Sidney’s Defense of Poesy—which after all cannily doesn’t rise to matters of saving divinity—as well as to some 16th-Century commentaries on James’ epistle, and to the literary pedigree of the “mirror of the soul” tradition.

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Joseph Sterrett

'Poetic, public and private: re-reading early modern prayer as social act'

The purpose of this paper is to sketch out a theoretical framework for reading prayer as a performance, as an act governed by social conventions with effects in the social world.  While this may seem straight forward, even obvious, it is a move away from critical tendencies to evaluate prayer from within a theological framework reading prayer in terms of theological correctness.  Instead, we should keep pace with current socio-anthropological studies of religion that view prayer as act, text, and subject.  Beginning with late 19th C and early 20th C studies of prayer, Tylor and Heiler, I highlight the tenacity of theological perspectives tied up as they are with notions of an interior, unified, autonomous self before moving to more groundbreaking work by Marcel Mauss where prayer is a social act, socially defined and policed.  Then, noting the 'whiff of determinism' in Mauss's socio-anthropological conclusions I show how Hans Georg Gadamer's  theory of play can be used to understand prayer as an act defined by social processes while maintaining limited room for individual self expression that resists totalised readings of prayer as a deterministic practice.  Finally, as an example, I offer Act 3, scene 3 in Hamlet to illustrate how critical readings have sought to evaluate the quality of Claudius's prayer, in effect accepting his theological misgivings on their own terms and ignoring the Prince's more literal recognition of prayer as a meaningful--or potentially meaningful--act.  I offer, in contrast, a reading sensitive to the scene's presentation of the social tensions inherent in the act of prayer.

17:05-17:15 Coffee break

17:15-18:20 Plenary Panel*

Poetic Performers(Chair: Joseph Sterrett)

Graham Parry

'Lancelot Andrewes and the Laudian Tradition of Prayer'

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Helen Wilcox

‘Your suit is granted’: performing prayer in early modern English poetry This paper will examine the idea of prayer as performance by focussing on the nature and role of the performers involved. In a reading of poems by, among others, John Donne, Elizabeth Major, Henry Colman, Mary Carey and George Herbert, I shall suggest that there are three main categories of those who are seen to enact prayer in early modern English sacred poetry. First, there is the collective performer, principally the Church whose ‘common’ prayer is frequently echoed by the poets as they invoke the language of the Bible and the performance of the liturgy in their own work. The second type of performer is the individual believer whose spiritual experience is vividly represented in devotional poetry; the single petitioning voice is the most predominant rhetorical feature of the early modern religious lyric. The third category of performers of prayer is not a human group or individual but the imaginative construction of a divine presence. If prayer is dialogue, then the anticipated or felt response of God is a vital part of the performative texture of poetic devotion, expressed in the formal structures as well as the discourse of the verse. As implied by my title quotation (from the last line of Herbert’s ‘Redemption’), poetic prayer is concerned with a double performance: the communal or private ‘suit’ to God, and the hoped-for divine ‘granting’ of that request.

Colloquium close

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Prayer and PerformanceActs of belief as symbolic communication in the late medieval and Renaissance

period

Participants

Viktor Aldrin Dr Viktor Aldrin (D.Th. in Religious Studies with a special focus on the History of Christianity) lectures in Theology and Higher Education Teacher Training at the University of Gothenburg. His research has focused on religious practices among lay people in the late Middle Ages and has recently published a monograph on the subject: 'The Prayer Life of Peasant Communities in Late Medieval Sweden: A Contrast of Ideals and Practices', with a foreword by Professor Stephan Borgehammar (Lund University). Lewiston; Queenston; Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press, 2011.

viktor.aldrin@gu.se

Erik Ankerberg

ERIK ANKERBERG is Associate Professor of English at Wisconsin Lutheran College, were he serves as Chair of the School of Modern Languages.  He also holds the Gary Greenfield Chair of Christian Leadership Studies and directs the college’s inter-disciplinary honors program.  His research interests include the intersection of Reformation theology and early modern literature.  He also serves an Associate Editor of Scintilla, as well as the digital conference and journal APPOSITIONS: Studies in Renaissance/Early Modern Literature & Culture

erik.ankerberg@wlc.edu

Tanja Armbrüster

Tanya Armbruester, M. A., studied in Hanover, Goettingen, Berlin and Charlottesville/ Virginia. She graduated from Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany in 1999 and spent several years excavating and doing archaeological researching in Africa and Iberia. She has recently re-discovered the wealth of archaeological archives that can be dug up in Germany and Central Europe, and is currently specialising in archaeology of the Medieval and post-Medieval (Renaissance/ Baroque) periods.

tanya.armbruester@gmx.de

Rainer Atzbach

Rainer Atzbach, Dr.phil. (Bamberg), is Assistant Professor of Renaissance Archaeology at Aarhus University. His PhD thesis (2005) focused on leather and fur in the late Middle Ages and early Post-medieval period. He was Curator for two exhibitions, "St. Elizabeth of Thuringia and the Service for the Poor" (University Museum Marburg, 2007) and "Castles and Power" (German Historical Museum, Berlin 2010). His current research focus is on everyday culture and building archaeology.

rainer.atzbach@hum.au.dk

Effie Botonaki Effie Botonaki teaches European literature at the Hellenic Open University, and has  taught courses in English literature at Aristotle University for several years. Her research and publications focus on early modern diaries and autobiographies, and more recently, masques. Her book, Seventeenth-Century English Women's Autobiographical Writings: Disclosing Enclosures, was published in 2004. Her latest publication is an article on Elizabeth's presence in the Jacobean masque in the collection Representations of Elizabeth I in Early Modern Culture, published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2011.

ebotonaki@yahoo.com

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Emma Depledge

Emma holds a BA and an MA from the University of Leicester, UK, and a PhD from the University of Geneva, Switzerland. She's currently working on a book project entitled 'Shakespeare in the Restoration', and has forthcoming articles in Philological Quarterly and the 2011 World Shakespeare Conference Proceedings.

Emma.depledge@unige.ch

Roy T Eriksen Roy Eriksen is Professor of English Renaissance Literature and Culture, University of Agder. His research field is English and Italian Renaisance studies, particularly the relationship between literature and the Arts. (www.uia.no/EMRG)

roy.eriksen@uia.no

Alison FindlayAlison Findlay is Professor of Renaissance Drama and Director of the Shakespeare Programme at Lancaster University (UK). She is the author of Illegitimate Power (1994), A Feminist Perspective on Renaissance Drama (1998), Women in Shakespeare (2010) and, most recently, Much Ado About Nothing: a guide to the text and the play in performance (2011). Alison was co-director of a research project on early women's drama, producing a series of filmed performances and a co-authored book Women and Dramatic Production 1550-1700 (2000). She went on to write a specialised study of site-specific production, Playing Spaces in Early Women’s Drama (2006). She has published essays on Shakespeare and his contemporaries and is currently a General Editor of the Revels Plays (Manchester University Press). This February she organised the 2012 British Shakespeare Association Conference in Lancaster, and is co-organising 'Capturing Witches' another conference to be held in August 2012 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the 1612 Lancashire witch trials.

a.g.findlay@lancaster.ac.uk

Armin W. Geertz

ARMIN W. GEERTZ, Dr.Phil., is Professor in the History of Religions at the Department of Culture and Society, Section for the Study of Religion, Chair of the Religion, Cognition and Culture Research Unit (RCC), and MINDLab Coordinator of the Cognition and Culture Project at Aarhus University, Denmark. He is Senior Co-Editor of the new Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion (JCSR) and President Elect of the International Association for the Cognitive Science of Religion (IACSR). His publications range from the cognitive science of religion to method and theory in the study of religions and the religions of indigenous peoples. He has recently published articles and chapters on evolutionary theory, atheism, the neurobiology of prayer and introductions to the cognitive science of religion.

AWG@teo.au.dk

Holger Th. Gräf

Holger Th. Gräf, Phd, Honorary Professor for Early Modern History at the University of Marburg. He studied medieval and modern history, geography and prehistory at the University in Giessen from 1982-1988, and (1986/87) at the Centre for Urban History in Leicester. He earned his Phd in 1992 and was assistant at the Historical Institute at the Humboldt-University, Berlin. Since April 1996 he has been „Akademischer Oberrat“ at the „Hessisches Landesamt für geschichtliche Landeskunde” in Marburg.

graef@staff.uni-marburg.de

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Mirko GutjahrMirko Gutjahr received his Magister-degree in Protohistoric Archaeology and Medieval History from the Albert-Ludwigs-University of Freiburg, Germany, in 2006. In 2008/2009 he curated the State Exhibition Finding Luther – Archaeologists on Martin Luther´s trail at the State Museum for Prehistory Halle and the Reiss-Engelhorn-Museum Mannheim. Currently, he works as a research associate at the State Museum for Prehistory Halle and holds the position of a project leader for the quadrennial project on archaeology of sites associated with the reformer Martin Luther (Lutherarchäologie).

mgutjahr@lda.mk.sachsen-anhalt.de

María Beatriz Hernández

María Beatriz Hernández is an Associate Professor at the University of La Laguna (Canary Isles), where she teaches and researches Medieval English Literature, especially the Chaucerian tradition and the links between late medieval English and Spanish authors. She is also interested in the construction of gender roles in Anglo-Saxon and late medieval English literature, and in any other aspects that might require the study of medieval culture through the support of literary criticism.

bhernanp@gmail.com

Christopher Hodgkins

Christopher Hodgkins is Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and works in the literature of the Renaissance. The winner of both UNCG’s 2010-2011 Senior Research Excellence Award, and its 2003-2004 Senior Teaching Excellence Award, he has particular interests in the early modern protestant lover’s quarrel with beauty, art, play, and worldly power. He is author of Authority, Church and Society in George Herbert: Return to the Middle Way (U. Missouri Press, 1993), and Reforming Empire: Protestant Colonialism and Conscience in British Literature (U. Missouri Press, 2002). He is co-editor, with Daniel W. Doerksen, of Centered on the Word: Literature, Scripture, and the Tudor-Stuart Middle Way (U. Delaware Press, 2004); editor of George Herbert’s Pastoral: New Essays on the Poet and Priest of Bemerton (U. Delaware Press, 2010); and editor of George Herbert’s Travels: International Print and Cultural Legacies (U. Delaware Press, 2011). He also is co-recipient of an 2010-2011 National Endowment for the Humanities Digital Scholarly Editions Grant, with Robert Whalen of Northern Michigan University, for The Digital Temple (U Virginia Press, 2012).

cthodgki@uncg.edu

Martin Wangsgaard Jürgensen

Martin Wangsgaard Jürgensen, mag.art, dr. theol. is a postdoctoral member of the Department of Church History, University of Copenhagen.

mwj@teol.ku.dk

Hauke Kenzler

Born 1969 in Cuxhaven (Germany), Hauke Kenzler studied Prehistoric Archaeology, Geography and Social Anthropology at the University of Hamburg. In 1995 he gained a Masters in medieval archaeology at Lübeck. From 1995 until 2004 he undertook several large scale excavation projects for the Saxon Heritage Department (e.g. in towns archaeology and rural environments). In 1999 he completed his doctoral thesis about an excavation in Zwickau. Since 2004 he has been Assistant and Associate Professor at the chair for medieval and post-medieval archaeology at the University of Bamberg. In 2011 he began work on habilitation in landscape archaeology of the saxon and bohemian Ore Mountains.

hauke.kenzler@uni-bamberg.de

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Annelis Kuhlmann

Annelis Kuhlmann is Associate Professor in Dramaturgy at Department of Aesthetics and Communication at Aarhus University. Her PhD dissertation on Stanislavsky’s theatre concepts (1997) was realised on the basis of studies at the Stanislavsky Archive at Moscow Art Theatre. Her present research is about director’s professional biographies in Denmark after World War II. She is the leader of Centre for Theatre Laboratory Studies (CTLS), a research cooperation between Odin Teatret and Dramaturgy, and she actively takes part in Network on Cultural Memory Studies. She has published on relationships between ritual and art in plays and theatre performances and installation art in Danish, English, Russian, and lately also in Japanese. http://pure.au.dk/portal/en/dramak@hum.au.dk

dramak@hum.au.dk

Judi Loach Judi Loach studied architecture, history and theory of architecture, and French literature, in London, Lyons and Cambridge, taking her PhD in architectural history and theory at Cambridge, where she became a Research Fellowship, working on 17th century French festivals.  All this research has concerned early modern Jesuits, mainly in SE France and Paris.  She has held permanent university teaching/research posts at Oxford Brookes and Cardiff, and a Research Professorship at an American Jesuit institute, at Boston College.  She currently holds a personal chair at Cardiff University.

loachj@Cardiff.ac.uk

Erica D Longfellow

Erica Longfellow is Dean of Divinity, Chaplain and Fellow of New College, Oxford. She is the author of Women and Religious Writing in Early Modern England (CUP 2004) and is editing Volume VII of the Oxford Edition of the Sermons of John Donne.

erica.longfellow@new.ox.ac.uk

Claudia Maria Melisch

Claudia Melisch studied classical archaeology as well as medieval German language and literature. Born in 1968, she has worked since 1995 in many archaeological excavations in Berlin and the Brandeburg area as well as Romania, Greece, Italy and Russia. She has worked in Pompeii and is currently involved with the excavations of the University of Michigan in Gabii, Italy.

cmelisch@web.de

Jonathan Nauman

Jonathan Nauman, secretary of the Usk Valley Vaughan Association in the USA, is an independent scholar from Beverly, Massachusetts. His most recently published article appears in the Autumn 2011 issue of The Seventeenth Century: “Alternative Saints: Eucherius, Paulinus of Nola, and Henry Vaughan’s Silex Scintillans.” He will speak at this year’s UVVA Colloquium on “Death and the Dazzling: Henry Vaughan in Madeleine L’Engle’s A Ring of Endless Light.

jonnauman@hotmail.com

Graham Parry Graham Parry is Emeritus Professor of Renaissance Literature at the University of York. He is interested in all aspects of ecclesiastical life in the 17th century and spends much time visiting churches. His most recent book is Glory, Laud & Honour: the Arts of the Anglican Counter-Reformation (Boydell & Brewer, 2006).

gp8@york.ac.uk

Chloe Preedy Chloe Preedy currently teaches in the Faculty of English at the University of Cambridge and is a Fellow of Lucy Cavendish College. Her research focuses on religious themes in early modern drama. Her book 'Marlowe's Literary Scepticism: Politic Religion and Post-Reformation Polemic' is forthcoming from Arden Early Modern Drama later this year.

ckp21@cam.ac.uk

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Gilles Sambras

Gilles Sambras is senior lecturer at the University of Reims where he teaches English literature. He wrote his thesis on Andrew Marvell and has published several articles on Andrew Marvell and John Milton. He was president of the Andrew Marvell Society in 2005-2006 and edited a collection of essays on Andrew Marvell.

gilles.sambras@neuf.fr

Juliane Schenk

Juliane Schenk read Medieval Archaeology at the University of Bamberg, having an M.A. conferred in 2008. Since 2008 she has been working on a phd project, “Postmedieval burials in Franconia and Upper Palatine‐-the archaeological context” (working title). She is a member of the university excavation teams and became a freelance archaeologist in 2009.

juliane_schenk@web.de

Per Sivefors Per Sivefors is Senior Lecturer in English at Linnaeus University, Sweden. After receiving his PhD in 2004, he has published on Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Nashe, early modern dream narratives and urban culture. He is the editor of Urban Preoccupations: Mental and Material Landscapes (Pisa, 2007).

per.sivefors@goteborg.bostream.se

Micah Snell Fr Micah Snell is writing his PhD thesis on Shakespeare and theology at the University of St Andrews' Institute for Theology, Imagination and the Arts. His research interests include spiritual alchemy in Shakespeare and Renaissance theatre as religious paroidos. He holds degrees from Biola University (BA), Nashotah House Theological Seminary (MDiv) and the University of Dallas (MA).

Micah Snell <ms946@st-andrews.ac.uk>

Joseph Sterrett

Joseph Sterrett, PhD (Cardiff), is Assistant Professor of Literature in English at Aarhus University. His research interests are prayer in literature and as literature, Shakespeare in his religious context, and early modern definitions of immunity. His most recent book is The Unheard Prayer: Religious Toleration in Shakespeare's Drama (Brill, 2012).

engjs@hum.au.dk

Sonia Suman Sonia Suman is a Graduate Teaching Assistant in Renaissance Drama and Literature at the University of Leicester (UK). Her research interests lie in late Elizabethan and Jacobean literature, particularly performance texts including sermons and drama. She is currently exploring the role of performance in preaching and playing in relation to the senses of sight and sound, and their respective truth-telling powers.

sds8@leicester.ac.uk

Stina Fallberg Sundmark

Stina Fallberg Sundmark, b. 1977, Dr Theol, MA (art history), is a researcher at the Faculty of Theology, Uppsala University. In her research she investigates different medieval expressions of piety, liturgy and theology, often in relation to the function and meaning of images and liturgical vessels. She defended her doctoral dissertation in 2008 on the visitation of the sick in Swedish medieval and reformation traditions. In an ongoing project financed by the Swedish Research Council for three years she investigates Summula by Laurentius of Vaksala, a handbook "for poor and simple clergymen", from 14th century Sweden.

stina.fallberg-sundmark@teol.uu.se

Panagiota-Naya Tsentourou

Panagiota-Naya Tsentourou is a PhD student in the University of Manchester. Her thesis, Performing Piety in Milton's Poetry and Prose, seeks to place Milton within a tradition of works that dramatize prayer and to examine how the early modern subject engaged in dialogue with the self and with God.

Panagiota.Tsentourou@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk

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Helen Wilcox Helen Wilcox is Professor of English at Bangor University and Director of the Institute for Medieval and Early Modern Studies at the Universities of Aberystwyth and Bangor. Her research interests are in early modern English devotional writing, drama, and the work of women writers. Her annotated edition of the English Poems of George Herbert came out in paperback from Cambridge University Press in 2011.

helen.wilcox@bangor.ac.uk

Blandine Wittkopp

Blandine Wittkopp is an archaeologist and has worked since 2009 on a research project called "The late medieval land consolidation and the development of rural settlements in Brandenburg " (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft DFG) at the Brandenburg State Office of Historic Monuments in Zossen-Wünsdorf. She studied pre- and early history and medieval history at the Universities of Berlin and Bonn. Her research focuses on the archeology and architectural history of churches and monasteries. She directed inter alia excavations at the Cistercian monastery in Chorin. She is co-author of the book Brandenburg Monastery at the University of Potsdam.

blandine.wittkopp@bldam-brandenburg.de

Nancy Zaice Dr. Nancy Zaice is an Assistant Professor of English at Francis Marion University in Florence, SC, where she teaches Composition and Literature classes. Dr. Zaice received her Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina in Early Modern British Literature with a minor in Early American Literary Studies. In addition to some side research in Composition Studies, her primary research interests center around the life, philosophy, works, context and legacy of Edward Lord Herbert of Chirbury. Herbert of Chirbury has been and remains an endless source of fascination to her.

nzaice@yahoo.com

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Notes

The cover illustration is taken from an illustrated page of a Book of Hours showing the Virgin, the Sybil and the Emperor Augustus.

It is available in the public domain. (http://historymedren.about.com/od/booksofhours/ig/Tr-s-Riches-Heures/Virgin--Sybil--Emperor.htm)

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