Relics, Communal Identity and Glorious Past. The Memory of the Saints in the Hispanic translationes of the Eleventh and Twelfth centuries

GUIANCE, ARIEL

The uses of memory in the Middle Ages

Arc Humanities Press

Lugar: Leeds; Año: 2021; p. 145 - 167

In this article I would like to propose an analysis of a very specific topic to this academic question, addressing memory, antiquity, and (in certain cases) the recovery of holy relics. These served as resources, first, to forge a common identity; secondly, give cohesion to a social body; thirdly, to sustain specific secular rights; and, finally, to establish a power structure within a given historical context. I am particularly interested in assessing the extent to which the discursive use of the problem of the relics contributed to the creation of a sense of ecclesiastical identity and supremacy in the Iberian Peninsula. With this goal in mind, we will primarily study the translationes, tales that narrate the circumstances surrounding the finding (real or fictitious), transfer, and definitive placement of sacred remains.Concretely, I will examine texts produced in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, a time of great change in Hispanic history and in the evolution of the Iberian Church (think of the problems around the change of the Visigothic Rite, the struggle for metropolitan supremacy, the consolidation of cathedral chapters, and the situation of the monastic orders).