Week 40: 17th – 23rd June
‘Religion has always been characterised as much by embodied experience as by abstract theological dispute. From the sounds of the adhān (the Islamic call to prayer), to the smell of incense in the Hindu Pūjā (a ritual offering to the deities), the visual emblem of the cross in the Christian tradition, and the ascetic practices of Theravada Buddhism, sensation is integral to a range of devotional practices. At the same time, the history of many faiths is characterised by an intense suspicion of the senses and the pleasures they offer.’
How do things become holy?
So began the introduction to Sensing the Sacred: Religion and the Senses, 1300 – 1800, an interdisciplinary conference held at the University of York, exploring affective and sensory aspects of religious practice through material culture. The first keynote speaker, Christopher Woolgar, set up the themes of the conference, which seemed to be more specific to the senses in Western Christianity. The idea of sensory contamination was an overarching concept throughout the presentation, and explored the processes by which objects (and people) became holy or desecrated.
To this end, the precision use of words for efficacy in consecrating objects was explored, but also the ways in which it was believed that these same words, actions and objects could be used to produce effects for unholy purposes. This required protective measures to be undertaken by the priest through various means, including the curation of sacred objects in reliquaries, rituals for desecrated hosts, and even the segregation of suicide victims, as they were believed to be contaminants to cemeteries due to dying ‘unconfessed’.
Choosing the sessions
Unlike the last PGR conference I attended, this one was separated into parallel sessions, meaning I had to choose the sessions that I wanted to attend. I’d read the conference abstracts before arriving at York and was interested in following my previous interests of gestural performance in material culture. However, after hearing the keynote speech, I became interested in the different ways that the senses were experienced in medieval culture, so I opted for the papers on the more visceral sensations of taste and smell, as opposed to language based sensory media such as speech and gestures.
Elizabeth Swann and Ruth Mullett explored medieval associations of the gustatory. Understandings of taste and appetites prevail as metaphors for knowledge and excess in our contemporary culture, but even more so in pre-modern cultures where taste also operates as a variation of touch. As taste is believed to reveal the presence of God, so each of the physical senses expresses a parallel spiritual sense in vernacular understandings at the time.
As smell and taste sensations are prone to dangerous misinterpretation, sufferance against temptation was also encouraged, in order to gain heavenly scents in death. Alongside the content of the papers, both speakers also gave handouts containing the original Middle English text, which they recited and translated during their presentation. Although I had difficulty understanding the dialect, I found it an interesting way to allow transparency and further interpretation.
Scent in material culture
Jay Zysk and William Tullett considered the use and metaphors of incense in ritual proceedings. Through the rising of the smoke, the incense acted as a metaphor for prayer which combined with the scent and the noise of the censer to create a synaesthetic experience. This excess of sensory information was intended to elevate the laiety, however, the same excess was also criticised for directing worship towards external pleasures and away from God. Similarly, incense was linked to the secular perfume imported from the East, metonymically standing in for the exotic or Other. This shared material history of incense and perfume was also present of the trading cards of perfumers which displays religious imagery.
Although, the conference appeared at face value to be somewhat unrelated to my subject area, the information I obtained from the papers inspired me to think about new connections in my project. In particular, the areas of smell and taste in material culture seem to be rich in possibilities and less researched as aspects of contemporary art, so I am beginning to consider how I might use this in relation to my print and publishing work.
