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1999 Colloquium Paper Abstracts

Culture Carved in Stone: Medieval Pictish Monuments
Jennifer L. Welsh, Medieval Studies

The culture of the Picts is a mystery surrounded by an enigma presented to scholars primarily on carved stone crosses, grave-slabs, and other monuments. This paper explores Pictish religion and culture as depicted through the symbols and images presented on these monuments. With the conversion of the Picts to Christianity by St. Columba and St. Ninian, the Picts were exposed to an entire new symbolic vocabulary to add to their already strong tradition of stone-carving. Monuments such as the stones at Meigle show an intricate vocabulary of both Christian and secular motifs. The backs of crosses show scenes of warriors hunting and men being torn apart by strange beasts, along with motifs which reach back far into pre-Christian pictish society, such as the Z-rod, crescent, and comb. How were these carvings to be understood? As secular markers? As sacred signs? As a combination of both? To what extent was there cross-cultural interaction between the Picts and the surrounding Christian cultures?

Saints as Gardeners: Sowing the Seeds of a New Faith
James G. Schryver, Medieval Studies

The role of architecture and art in the transition from paganism to Christianity around the Mediterranean has long been established. Temples were destroyed, exorcised, remodeled and reused. Artistic forms and iconographic styles were copied and reinterpreted. Fortunately, many of these changes are documented in the material record. Excavations have unearthed works of art in the Roman catacombs as well as the remains of pagan temples throughout the Mediterranean. Art Historical investigations have demonstrated the influence of pagan models on Christian works of art.

Did landscape have any role in the transition from paganism to Christianity around the Mediterranean? Written sources suggest that it did. Saints' lives, for example, often refer to the destruction of sacred groves or the cutting of specific trees as part of the efforts to help urge the conversion process along. Such references suggest that the landscape as a place of worship was as important to the pagans of late antiquity as were their temples. The fact that pagans resisted the destruction of their sacred groves and trees just as strongly as they did the destruction of their temples supports the claim of its importance.

What other evidence is there to support this idea? Did missionaries who were picking and choosing aspects from different contemporary religions in their conversion speeches include aspects involving the landscape? Did such a use occur more frequently when dealing with pagani in the true form of the word? And in the effort to assimilate would-be converts, what parts of pagan faith became incorporated into Christian beliefs and practices? Lastly, what can archaeology, or more broadly anthropology, offer us as far as a method for answering the questions posed above? Obviously, the material remains are lacking. However, ethnography and ethnology may offer a new approach to trying to answer some of these questions.

The Story (and History) of the Conversion of Iceland
Ken Baitsholts, Cornell University Library

The Icelandic word saga means both "story" and "history." The Icelandic sagas themselves can be described as elaborate weavings of truth and tale, synthesized from oral tradition, written sources, and fantasy. For the historian, however, saga-evidence is notoriously problematic. This is perhaps nowhere more apparent than with regard to the conversion of Iceland.

It is generally accepted that some of the original settlers coming to Iceland were Christians. Many had been living among, and intermarrying with, the Christian Celts of the northern British Isles for several decades, before migrating to Iceland. Syncretism seems to have been common with these people, and it is unlikely that their children or grandchildren maintained any form of Christianity.

Foreign missionaries, initially from Saxony and England, began to arrive in Iceland in the final decades of the tenth century. They met with little success. Óláfr Tryggvason, the first Christian king of Norway, sought to convert the Norse-speaking people of the Atlantic islands, including Iceland. By the end of his reign in A.D. 1000, our sources tell us, he had largely succeeded. In that year, the Icelandic parliament adopted Christianity as the official religion of the country, while still allowing some pagan cult practices to continue.

The goal of this paper is to examine the relationship between "story" and "history" in regard to the conversion of Iceland, and where possible to distinguish between the two. How did the conversion come about? What types of cultural changes did it entail? How quickly were these changes elicited? These are some of the questions explored. In addition, I examine aspects of the conversion of Greenland and the Faroes, which may help to shed light on the situation in Iceland.

As the thousandth year of Icelandic Christianity approaches, a reassessment of some of the generally held assumptions relating to the conversion is apropos.

The Trees of Iceland: Family, Fate, & Free-will in the Sagas of Icelanders
Maribeth Polhill, German Studies

From the settlement of Iceland in the 9th century to the present day, Icelanders have been concerned with family genealogies. Recent scientific efforts to capitalize on the relatively contained population of Iceland and its extensive records of genealogical information for genetic research attest to this long-standing fascination. Anyone familiar with the sagas of Icelanders will recall the long passages providing information about individual lineages throughout each saga -- passages which are often displaced as footnotes in the English translations so as not to disturb the saga's readability. As determining factors in a family member's behavior, however, the ancestral connections between individuals are anything but unimportant for the course of action in the saga. This paper focuses on genealogies as fatalistic components of saga-composition in Njal's saga, the Laxdaela saga and Grettir's saga.

St. Augustine at the Window (Conf. 9.10): The Tension between Compact and Differentiated Symbolization and the Problem of Contemplatio Litteraria
Steven Shurtleff, Medieval Studies

St. Augustine's struggle to express his relationship with God (or, the One) in the Confessions formulates the basic problems facing later medieval writers: if language-based thought (i.e., a system of signs based on creatura) constitutes the fundamental block to such experience and understanding, how is one to communicate the experience and understanding to others? In St. Augustine's case, the issue is further complicated by the fact that he seems to be using the act of writing itself as a form of contemplation, employing the suspect mode not merely as a means of communication but also as a means of communion, that is, as a "form" of the experience itself. This paper attempts to articulate a few of the theoretical positions the modern student may take to deal with this subject.

'What Nedeth Gretter Dilatacioun?': Amplification and the Merchandizing of Poetry in the Man of Law's Tale
Diane Marie Cady, English

Throughout the Man of Law's Tale, the narrator insists that he will avoid dilation at all costs. It is, he claims, mere rhetorical excess -- a kind of "chaf" left behind when the more profitable "fruyt" of a tale has been extracted. Despite the man of law's repeated assertions, however, dilation plays a central role in his story. Rather than being worthless verbal surplus that distracts from the narrative's more substantive aspects, it is precisely dilation that gives the tale its value. The man of law's use of amplification expands his story, delaying the conclusion and inciting desire in his listeners. His technique is similar to that of the Sultan's merchants, whose copious language advertises the goods they have to sell, including accounts of the "wondres" they have seen in Rome. Custance is among these "wondres," and it is precisely their skillful energia that ignites the Sultan's desire for her -- an event which also serves as a catalyst for the story that the man of law tells. This paper explores the intersection between mercantile and poetic selling and the role dilation plays in both, as well as how the display of Custance through description transforms her into an item for sale in both the merchants' and the poet's worlds.

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