CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2021
| Author | Kandzha, Iliana |
|---|---|
| Title | The Cult of the Chaste Imperial Couple: Henry II and Cunigunde in the Hagiographic Traditions, Art, and Memory of the Holy Roman Empire (c. 1350-1500) |
| Summary | St. Henry (973-1024, can. 1146) and St. Cunigunde (c. 980-1033, can. 1200) are an imperial couple who, within a few centuries after their death, were invested with saintly powers and were believed to live in a virginal union. In the late medieval Holy Roman Empire, these saints were appreciated by their devotees as powerful intercessors, saintly founders, virgins, and imperial saints, while their cults became integral to symbolic and religious communication of the Empire. On an everyday basis and solemn occasions, through lavish artworks and printed images, during communal liturgical services and in private prayer, when narrating the history of a tiny monastery and of the Empire, multiple individuals and groups chose to turn to SS. Henry and Cunigunde. The study reveals the “ways and motives of remembering” SS. Henry and Cunigunde, present on various levels defined by different types of communication and the actors involved. The potential of this saintly couple to be perceived as rulers, donors, intercessors, and virgins had a profound political and cultural impact, triggering multiple forms of commemoration and devotion, engaging various communities and individuals—from parturient women and well-off clerics to famous humanists and German emperors. The saints’ key commemorative center remained in Bamberg, but they were known and engaged with in other parts of the Empire, where contested and novel interpretations of their sanctity were offered, especially in devotional and representational acts of the Habsburg rulers. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, SS. Henry and Cunigunde became recognized in their imperial, supra-regional status, devoid of unambiguous affiliation with a region or a community. Nevertheless, the cults, in their imperial signification, relied on a regional supply of relics as well as existing iconographic, hagiographic, and liturgical forms that were adapted and recrafted to suit these new communicational and representational purposes. The dissertation has a three-fold structure, with each part being further divided into two or three chapters. While the first part outlines the early developments of the cults and analyzes various literary and devotional forms associated with SS. Henry and Cunigunde, the other two parts explore the functions and impact of the saints in the milieu of private and communal devotion and imperial symbolism. Altogether, the research offers a new perspective on the history of the cults in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries that has not been comprehensively explored before. Moreover, the thesis brings to scholarly attention several unknown or under-researched texts and objects produced in the late medieval Holy Roman Empire, paying attention to their content, mediality, and circumstances of production and use. The study has contributed to our understanding of how rulers of the past centuries were apprehended in the medieval period, with sanctity being only one of the possible commemorative scenarios. Moreover, this research has pointed out the efficiency of studying saints’ functions beyond explicitly liturgical circumstances and researching the interweaving of “hagiographic” and “historiographic” knowledge about saints. Essentially, the study has revealed how SS. Henry and Cunigunde’s figures contributed to the interlacements of the memories of the imperial pasts and sanctity across local, regional, and imperial dimensions, though being just two threads in the socially diverse web of symbolic communication of the late medieval Empire. |
| Supervisor | Ziemann, Daniel; Jaritz, Gerhard |
| Department | Medieval Studies PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2021/kandzha_iliana.pdf |
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