The magic of early medieval ritual
Christina Pössel
Whether, and how, we ought to study early medieval rituals has been much debated recently, including in the pages of this journal by Geoffrey Koziol Philippe Buc. This paper is intended as a contribution debate, argues that rituals' written or spoken interpretations are not simple rendering ritualized actions' ‘meanings’ words must therefore be analysed separately, conflated with possible effects performance. Ritualized acts thus had two loci: short‐term experience embodied performance, long‐term struggle over interpretation speech writing, both which need explored appropriate methodologies. Whilst textuality our sources needs taken seriously, it proposed can also say something about even probable characteristics medium bodily postures gestures used for demonstrative public interations between power holders.
Early Medieval Europe