Ways Through Medieval Rome [Swedish Institute in Rome]
The medieval Latin manuscript no. 326 in the Abbey Library of Einsiedeln, Switzerland, is the single most important textual source for the topography of Rome in the Middle Ages. It contains ten pilgrim routes through Rome, where churches and martyr tombs are listed, but also ancient Roman monuments and locations. In an appendix, transcriptions of Latin inscriptions along the routes are collected. The manuscript shows the way to so much more than Rome as goal for medieval pilgrimage: it is the key to understanding how Rome was constructed as a cultural heritage site and a center for learned travel around the year 800 CE.
In a previous project on the history of guidebooks to Rome, I analyzed the importance of the manuscript for the establishment of the guidebook as a genre, and was also able to reconstruct the medieval routes in the text to a large extent. The aim of the present project is to describe the ways through medieval Rome in a topographical and historical context, with a special focus on how the collection of inscriptions in the manuscript relates to these routes, something which has not yet been done. Even though some attempts previously have been made at such reconstructions, an overall approach to the contents and functions of the manuscript in its entirety remains to be performed, which would be of great value for the understanding of the construction of Rome as a cultural heritage place as well as for a deeper knowledge of the medieval topography of Rome.
Final report
My guest researcher project at the Swedish Institute in Rome was completed during a total of four months, December 2022–May 2023. The aim was to continue and deepen the research on the topography of medieval Rome and the pilgrims’ itineraries through the city that I had already initiated in a previous project on the history of guidebooks to Rome (’Topos and Topgraphy – Rome as the Guidebook City’, funded by RJ 2012–2016). Special focus was given to the earliest collections of transcriptions of Latin inscriptions, preserved in manuscripts from the 7th–10th centuries, texts which previously have not been studied systematically.
During my research stay, I analysed how these inscriptions are located in relation to the pilgrim routes around and through the city of Rome that were established and developed during the same period of time, by using the theory of ’epigraphic density’, and how this can mirror topographical movement and social focus points. The inscription collections are also an important key to understanding how historical and topographical knowledge on the city of Rome was managed and transmitted during the first half of the Middle Ages, a period for which few other topographical sources are preserved.
I also performed separate topographical studies of some Roman late-antique and medieval monuments such as the now lost arch of the emperors Gratian, Valentinian and Theodosius, located near the medieval ’pons sancti Petri’, the bridge that led over the river from central Rome to the Vatican area; the likewise late-antique ’Porticus Maximae’, a now lost construction of one or several porticoes in the same area; and the medieval topographical region ’ad Elephantum’, ’at the elephant’, which apart from medieval textual sources also is mentioned in the late-antique so-called Regionary catalogues over the city of Rome.
The first sub-study was presented at a workshop that I arranged at the Swedish Institute in Rome, ’Textual traces of northern pilgrims in medieval Rome’ (funded by RJ) in March, 2023; in the session ’Pilgrims and Networks of Knowledge: Texts and Topographies of Medieval Rome’ at the International Medieval Congress in Leeds in July 2023, and at the conference ’Texts and networks: infrastructures, identities, itineraries’, which I arranged at the university of Gothenburg in August 2023. The presentation will also result in a paper in the publication of the conference, published at De Gruyter in 2024. I will also present the study in a lecture at the Pontificia Università Gregoriana in Rome in February, 2024, entitled ’The popes and the epigraphic topography of medieval Rome’.
The second sub-study was presented at a seminar at the Swedish Institute in Rome in April 2023, which also formed part of the annual course in archaeology held at the Swedish Institute in Rome in cooperation with the university of Gothenburg (AN2076, 15 ECTS, advanced level). I will also present the study at a conference in Rome in June, 2024, arranged by the research network SSILAR (Spatial Strategies in Late-Antique Rome).
During my research stay, I analysed how these inscriptions are located in relation to the pilgrim routes around and through the city of Rome that were established and developed during the same period of time, by using the theory of ’epigraphic density’, and how this can mirror topographical movement and social focus points. The inscription collections are also an important key to understanding how historical and topographical knowledge on the city of Rome was managed and transmitted during the first half of the Middle Ages, a period for which few other topographical sources are preserved.
I also performed separate topographical studies of some Roman late-antique and medieval monuments such as the now lost arch of the emperors Gratian, Valentinian and Theodosius, located near the medieval ’pons sancti Petri’, the bridge that led over the river from central Rome to the Vatican area; the likewise late-antique ’Porticus Maximae’, a now lost construction of one or several porticoes in the same area; and the medieval topographical region ’ad Elephantum’, ’at the elephant’, which apart from medieval textual sources also is mentioned in the late-antique so-called Regionary catalogues over the city of Rome.
The first sub-study was presented at a workshop that I arranged at the Swedish Institute in Rome, ’Textual traces of northern pilgrims in medieval Rome’ (funded by RJ) in March, 2023; in the session ’Pilgrims and Networks of Knowledge: Texts and Topographies of Medieval Rome’ at the International Medieval Congress in Leeds in July 2023, and at the conference ’Texts and networks: infrastructures, identities, itineraries’, which I arranged at the university of Gothenburg in August 2023. The presentation will also result in a paper in the publication of the conference, published at De Gruyter in 2024. I will also present the study in a lecture at the Pontificia Università Gregoriana in Rome in February, 2024, entitled ’The popes and the epigraphic topography of medieval Rome’.
The second sub-study was presented at a seminar at the Swedish Institute in Rome in April 2023, which also formed part of the annual course in archaeology held at the Swedish Institute in Rome in cooperation with the university of Gothenburg (AN2076, 15 ECTS, advanced level). I will also present the study at a conference in Rome in June, 2024, arranged by the research network SSILAR (Spatial Strategies in Late-Antique Rome).