Sacred Spaces in Medieval and Medieval Revival Art and Architecture The Canadian Conference of Medieval Art Historians March 14-15, 2008- University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada Conference Papers: Presenters, Titles and Abstracts

James Addiss, CUNYInvention is the Mother of Invention: Continuities in Romanesque ArchitectureRomanesque architecture is so often described {in part correctly} as additive that one can easily ignore its strenuous efforts toward establishing continuities.  This paper will explore continuities in both spatial design and typologies of plan particularly in churches of central France, and their relationships to structure and articulation on the one hand, and patronage and supra-regional associations on the other.  An attempt will be made to describe both resemblances and differences at small and large scales, on the premise that each building is a unique totality as well as a member of a series of larger groups.

Shirley Ann Brown, York University: How the Bayeux Tapestry became a "Viking" Monument

During the 19th and 20th centuries, the Bayeux Tapestry has played an important role in the creation of national identities and the establishment of the early history of different national groups in Northern Europe: the English, the French, the Germans, and the Scandinavians.  Scholarly publications delineating Viking elements in Norman culture and Scandinavian reflections in the Embroidery have drawn connections between the medieval English, Normans, and the Northmen. This paper discusses the interest Scandinavian researchers, scholars, and popular writers have shown in the Bayeux Tapestry. It overviews and critiques these connections, with an addendum of how images from the Bayeux Tapestry have been employed in popular media to identify the Vikings for public entertainment and consumption.

Jim Bugslag, University of ManitobaSacred Architecture and the Sacral Landscape: An Overview, from the Holy Land, to and from Europe, to North America

The sacral nature believed to inhere in particular elements of landscape has not yet been seriously addressed by the discipline of Art History, at least in terms of the European Middle Ages. Perhaps the New Age interest in "lay lines", etc., has helped to deflect academic interest in the subject. More certainly, the ambivalent attitude of the Roman Church to this phenomenon resulted in its official relegation to oblivion: apart from the occasional futile attempt to suppress such beliefs, the Church ignored it, thus eradicating it from the hegemonic discourse of written documentation. Much of what is known about it comes from the historical margins – from folklore, from antiquarian interest in "curious customs", from the remnants of ancient oral tradition. What evidence does exist in the written record has, consequently, been ignored. More centrally to this paper, the physical evidence for it has also been ignored and its significance gone unrecognized. In this overview of the problem, I intend to sketch out what I see as the relevant issues that must be addressed to integrate this topic into mainstream disciplinary discourse.Initially, the biblical origins of sacral landscape elements will be addressed. Particularly after the Peace of the Church, when biblical sites were sought out and "rediscovered", sacral elements of landscape were useful visual markers: the tree at Mambre where Abraham encountered the three angels, the pool at Bethesda where Christ worked miracles, Mt. Sinai where Moses encountered God face to face – sites such as these involving trees, water sources, high places, grottoes and rocks became favoured locations for the growing network of churches defining a biblical landscape. Not only did such sites carry the authority of biblical revelation, but they also dovetailed with Late Antique expect
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