Addressing Urban Audiences in Twelfth-Century Spain

Addressing Urban Audiences in Twelfth-Century Spain

Date: 19 March 2018 (Monday)
Time: 5:00-6:30pm
Venue: Room 7.58, Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus

The twelfth century in Western Europe marks a period of significant social change and widespread urbanization. Through its exceptional visual record, the northern Spanish city of Carrión de los Condes illustrates a developing city’s navigation of diverse urban interests. This paper examines two Carrionese parish churches constructed across the course of the twelfth century, which actively participate in the contemporary social and spiritual upheaval and offer insight into a largely undocumented lay public. The earlier of the two churches aims to engage, entertain, and placate a dual audience of pilgrims and parishioners, while the latter seeks to involve an increasingly influential urban viewership in spiritual life by directly implicating citizens in a monumental soteriological plan. Likewise, the first half of the century sees Carrión in transition, with violent burgher revolts demonstrating citizens’ newfound agency as pilgrimage traffic from the Camino de Santiago bolsters the economy, and the second half witnesses Carrión’s apogee as prosperous urban center.

Speaker: Elizabeth Lastra

Dr. Lastra obtained her PhD in 2017 from the University of Pennsylvania, with a dissertation entitled Biography of a City: Art, Urbanization, and Shifting Structures of Power in Carrión de los Condes, 1050-1200. She is specialist in medieval Spanish art and architecture and has received numerous doctoral awards, including Fulbright and Metropolitan Museum fellowship.