Twenty-Second Warwick Symposium on Parish Research - 'Parish Memory'
!!! CALL FOR REGISTRATIONS CLOSING SOON !!!
University of Warwick, Hybrid Format (Institute of Advanced Study / Online), Saturday 11 May 2024, 09.30-18 hrs
Co-organized by Miia Kuha (Jyväskylä / My-Parish Visiting Researcher) & Beat Kümin (Warwick / My-Parish)
with Angus Crawford & Kristi Flake (Warwick)
Petäjävesi Church and old parsonage in Central Finland painted by A.F. or C.E. Soldan (1840).
The Finnish Heritage Agency, Historical Picture Collection.
This year’s theme intersects with the interdisciplinary field of memory studies, focusing particularly on when / how / why parishioners remember(ed) events, customs, people and other aspects of their locality & culture. The Symposium coincides with Miia Kuha’s visiting fellowship at My-Parish & Beat Kümin’s project on tower capsule deposits.
KEYNOTE ADDRESS
Katalin Szende (Central European University)
'The Parish as a Place of Memory in Medieval Central Europe'
The parish system emerged in Central Europe during the thirteenth century as a lasting result of the Christianization process. From that time onwards, the parish became the basis of both pastoral care and community life, particularly since the establishment of new communities usually implied the right of electing their own parish priest who often stayed and served there for several decades. This talk explores the multi-level importance of the parishes as founders and keepers of local memory, especially in the secular sphere. First, will survey the parish as an institution connecting past and present. This includes the roles of the parish priests as envoys and often the first notaries of their community, the parish churches as frequent safekeepers of the most important local documents, and the parish schools and schoolmasters as transmitters of local memory. I will also show visual references to founders and patrons: coats of arms on keystones and pillars in parish churches and examples of preserving common memory by chronicles painted on the church walls. Second, I will look at other ways of how the parishes connected the secular and the ecclesiastical through the churchwardens as well as the guilds and their altars. Finally, I will consider how parishes connected the living and the dead through burials in the parish church and the parish cemetery and the memorials erected to them. The examples to be presented from the kingdoms of Bohemia, Poland and Hungary can serve as comparisons to other parts of Europe, but also show features that played out differently in the eastern half of the Continent
We invited 15-minute contributions on any related topic, source, concept, method or debate (closing date was 1 March) and you can find the FULL PROVISIONAL PROGRAMME HERE (subject to changes). It features papers on different British and European contexts from the Middle Ages to the present. The Symposium will be held at the Institute of Advanced Study in the Zeeman Building on Warwick's Central Campus near Coventry (information on visiting the university / campus map / virtual participation also possible) and has always been an inclusive forum of exchange between anyone with active research interests in parish culture from whatever background or career stage. The co-organizers now warmly invite registrations.
!!! CALL FOR REGISTRATIONS - HYBRID FORMAT - CLOSING DATE 1 MAY 2024 !!!
ALL PARTICIPANTS (INCLUDING ACCEPTED SPEAKERS) NEED TO REGISTER ONLINE.
PLEASE CHECK OUR BOOKING TERMS / CONDITIONS INCL. CANCELLATION / REFUND POLICY AND,
TO TAKE PART IN PROCEEDINGS, THEN REGISTER VIA THE APPROPRIATE ROUTE OF THE THREE SHOWN BELOW,
WITH LUNCH & REFRESHMENTS INCLUDED UNDER OPTIONS 1 + 2:
WE LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING YOU ON 11 MAY
UPDATES
Further information and updates will be published here
on our homepage at:
http://warwick.ac.uk/my-parish/parishsymposia/memory/
.
TO GET IN THE MOOD ...
Check out our new post, specially written for the Symposium
by My-Parish Fellow Valerie Hitchman (Kent):
'Parish Memory: The Churchwardens' Accounts of St Botolph Aldersgate'
The organizers gratefully acknowledge the support of our Symposium partners:
