Places of Faith, Places of Memory

Sacral Topography in the Pre-Modern Caucasus

Church of St. Gregory the Illuminator and Chapel of the Invention of the True Cross. W757, f. 20r © The Armenian Mekhitarist Monastery of Vienna

Creating or reviving sacral traditions of specific sites in the late ancient and medieval Caucasus, Armenian highlands, and Upper Mesopotamia was part of a process by which objects and material artifacts gained legitimacy. Regional literary sources such as Armenian and Georgian historiographies, geographies, chronicles, and 'minor' literary texts (poems, sermons, martyrologies, epistolography, travelogues and pilgrimage accounts), as well as archaeological and material evidence, show strategic and institutional approaches to construct, explain, and support the existence and propagation of socio-religious practices that were meant to legitimize a group or a position of authority through inclusion or alienation.
The construction of distinctly sacred spaces and examples of hierophany in the medieval Caucasus can be interpreted both on their own terms and within their wider environment. Hierotopic projects might evoke a wider Christian topography in a vast network of interwoven holy spaces, just as they might reflect the struggle for religious legitimacy and authority. The process of creating holy spaces, such as places of pilgrimage, and of locating relics in a specific geographical and cultural spaces served not only to establish or reinforce connections between the territory and the faith community (‘Glaubensgemeinschaft’) but also to delimitate the social and institutional borders between different religious and confessional identities.
Defining the sacral topography of the Caucasus as a multi-faith and interreligious space and drawing on inter-disciplinary research approaches, this workshop seeks to explore the history of hierotopy in the medieval Caucasus, the organisation and functionality of its sacred spaces, and their social, political, religious, economic, legal, gendered, cultural, visual, and material significance.
The workshop will run over two consecutive days in person on the 4^th and 5^th of October 2024, with a keynote talk and wine reception on the evening of the 3^rd of October. The event will consist of four sessions on day one and two sessions on day two, with each session consisting of two one-hour presentation slots (40–45-minute papers and 15–20 minutes for questions). The languages of the workshop will be English and French.

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Poster | Programme

^Programme _{^{Places for the keynote lecture are limited. Please contact Benedetta Contin (benedetta.contin[at]oeaw.at.ac) directly by 20.09 if you wish to attend.}}
Thursday, 3 Oktober
18:00	Welcome Address - H.E. Mr. Armen Papikyan ^{Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Armenia to Austria}
18:15-18:40	Opening Remarks - Benedetta Contin, Lewis Read, Anahit Safaryan
18:45‒19:45	Keynote Address Introduction: Benedetta Contin Boghos L. Zekiyan The Relationship between Architectural Space and Liturgy in Armenia and its Later Developments in the Overall Subcaucasian Region: A Theological Insight
19:45	Wine Reception
Friday, 4 Oktober
09:30-09:45	Welcoming Address \| Claudia Rapp and Andreas Rhoby
	Opening Remarks \| Benedetta Contin and Adrian C. Pirtea
09:45-10:00	Session 1: Holy Lives, Holy Objects, Holy Landscapes Chair: Claudia Rapp
	Nikoloz Alexidze \| Saints, Objects, and Landscape in Highland Svaneti Benedetta Contin \| Saints, Pilgrims, and Shrines: The Making of a Sacral Geography in Late Medieval Subcaucasia
11:30‒12:00	Coffee Break
12:00‒13:30	Session 2: Mobile Saints and New Cult Spaces Chair: Adrian C. Pirtea
	Lewis Read \| Commemorating Saint Eudoxius: Armenian Hagiography and the Byzantine Empire Sara Scarpellini \| On the Footsteps of Saint George: Tracing a Cult between Armenia and the Diaspora(s)
13:30- 14:45	Lunch Break
14:45- 16:15	Session 3: Memorialising Sacred Sites
	Valentina Calzolari \| Relics, burials and places of worship in the Armenian Christian apocryphal literature Anahit Safaryan \| Faith and Memory: Christianity as a Fundamental Pillar of Armenian Identity in the 17^th Century. Chair: Tara Andrews
16:15- 16:45	Coffee Break
16:45- 18:15	Session 4: The Emergence and Construction of Sacred Sites Between Armenia and Georgia Chair: Johannes Preiser-Kapeller
	Mariam Chkhartishvili \| At the Origins of Georgian Christian Hierotopy Nazenie Garibian \| Designing a New Sacred Topography: The Great Sanctuary of Ashtishat in the 4^th - 5^th centuries
19:15	Dinner for Invited Guests
Saturday, 5 Oktober
09:30 - 11:00	Session 5: Sacred Spaces and Lived Religions Chair: Paolo Sartori
	Victoria Arakelova \| Sacral Topography of Cross-Cultural Zones: Armenians, Alevi Zazas, Yezidis Kevin Tuite \| Saints, iconography, and ritual space: Vernacular Religion and Georgian Orthodoxy
11:00 - 11:30	Coffee Break
11:30 - 13:00	Session 6: Approaching Caucasian Sacral Topography through Material Culture
	Eve MacDonald \| Of men, mountains and gods: High Alpine Landscapes, Spatial Construction of the Divine and the Realpolitik of the Dariali Fort in the Late Antique and Early Medieval Caucasus Samvel Grigoryan \| The Armenian Monasteries of Cilicia: Problem of Localisation. Chair: Lioba Theis
13:00 - 13:15	Closing Remarks
13:30	Lunch (at own expense) - Optional
15:00	Visit to the Museum and Library of the Mekhitarist Congregation in Vienna - Optional

^{Subject to Change}

Information

Dates

3-5 October 2024

Locations

3 October:
The Embassy of Armenia to Austria
28, Hadikgasse
1140 Vienna, Austria

4-5 October:
Austrian Academy of Sciences
Institute for Medieval Research
5^th floor, Seminar room 8
Georg-Coch-Platz 2
1010 VIENNA

Conveners

Benedetta Contin
Austrian Academy of Sciences

Lewis Read
University of Vienna

Anahit Safaryan
University of Vienna

Adrian Pirtea
Austrian Academy of Sciences

Host institutions

University of Vienna
Austrian Academy of Sciences

Partners

Embassy of Armenia to Austria Austrian-Armenian Studies Society (ÖASG)

Funding

Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation
ERC Research Fund

PARTICIPANTS

Nikoloz Aleksidze
^{Free University of Tbilisi}
Tara Andrews
^{University of Vienna}
Victoria Arakelova
^{Russian-Armenian Slavonic University}
Valentina Calzolari
^{University of Geneva}
Mariam Chkhartishvili
^{Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University}
Benedetta Contin
^{Austrian Academy of Sciences}
Nazenie Garibian
^{Mesrop Mashtots Institute of Ancient Manuscripts}
Samvel Grigoryan
^{Austrian Academy of Sciences}
Eve MacDonald
^{University of Cardiff}
Adrian C. Pirtea
^{Austrian Academy of Sciences}
Johannes Preiser-Kapeller
^{Austrian Academy of Sciences}
Claudia Rapp
^{University of Vienna/Austrian Academy of Sciences}
Lewis Read
^{University of Vienna}
Andreas Rhoby^{Austrian Academy of Sciences}
Anahit Safaryan
^{University of Vienna}
Paolo Sartori
^{Austrian Academy of Sciences}
Sara Scarpellini
^{University of Florence}
Lioba Theis
^{University of Vienna}
Kevin Tuite
^{University of Montréal}
Boghos L. Zekiyan
^{University Ca ‘ Foscari Venice (Emeritus)}

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Events

Places of Faith, Places of Memory

Programme

Information

^Programme