HIST Seminar: “Dance, sin and sickness in late antique and early medieval Christianity”, Donatella Tronca, 4:30PM March 27 2024 (EN)

You are kindly invited to the seminar entitled as “Dance, sin and sickness in late antique and early medieval Christianity” organized by the Department of History.

Date: 27 March 2024, Wednesday
Time: 16.30
Avenue: AZ-31 Seminar Room

Title: Dance, sin and sickness in late antique and early medieval Christianity

Speaker: Dr. Donatella Tronca, University of Bologna

Abstract:
Dance, sin, and sickness are closely related to the religious realm and are deeply embedded in Christian sources. We will examine the relationship between bodily gesture and illness through the regulation of dancing, a common theme in literary and homelitic texts as well as canonical and penitential literature. Some examples of these will be provided in the form of manuscripts. There is a close connection between the regulation of bodily gesture and penance, which is in turn structured around the lexicon of medicine (for example, sin as contagion and the invasion of a foreign body). The norms that regulated bodily gesture also had significant repercussions on liturgy. To this end, we will highlight certain essential aspects incorporated into ecclesiastical norms from classical texts and Roman law.

Bio:
After her degrees in History of Christianity and Latin Palaeography, Donatella Tronca completed a PhD in Cultural Heritage Studies. She then became a research fellow at the University of Verona, where she studied manuscripts held at the Cathedral Library. She is currently affiliated with the Department of Cultural Heritage at the University of Bologna, where she teaches Christianity and Cultural Heritage and is working on a project analysing religious terminology in the works of Dante. Her main research interest is late antique and medieval Christian texts. She examines these from a material perspective, which includes the history of manuscript transmission and libraries, and from a historical-anthropological point of view, focusing in particular on historical semantics.