Jerusalem in Rome, Constantinople, and Venice: Four Cities and the Idea of a ‘Holy of Holies’

The questions at the heart of this project are: how did ritual, ceremonial, and devotional practices involving Christian relics shape the character of urban communities? And how did the spiritual and economic needs of urban communities shape the sacred and secular topographies of their cities and the cultural geographies beyond them? What binds the Rome, Constantinople, and Venice together is the idea that each city, in its own right, functioned as a Holy of Holies and as a guardian of the most sacred relics of Christendom..

Holger A. Klein is the Lisa and Bernard Selz Professor of Medieval Art History at Columbia University in New York and currently the Michael I. Sovern Fellow at the American Academy in Rome. He was educated in Art History, Early Christian Archaeology, and German Literature at the universities of Freiburg, Munich, London, and Bonn. His research focuses on the history and historiography of late antique, early medieval, and Byzantine art and architecture, especially the cult of relics and issues of cultural and artistic exchange in the Medieval Mediterranean.

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Scientific Organization: Tobias Teutenberg, Giovanna Targia (University of Zurich)

This event is part of the Research Seminars Series "Methodology and Ideology: Critical Perspectives on the Historical Paradigms of Art History" (8th Seminar)