The Normans in Southern Italy
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Begins: Wednesday 22 November 2023
Until: Thursday 23 November 2023
(2.30-4.45pm each day - a recording will be available to ticketholders for one week after the event) - Online Zoom Event, link details will be emailed to attendees on the morning of the event
- Lecturer: John McNeill
Interest in the Norman conquests of the eleventh and twelfth centuries has never been greater, a phenomenon perhaps best caught in a cluster of recent academic publications and the ‘Die Normannen-Norman Connections-Normands’ exhibitions in Mannheim and Rouen (by the time this flyer is published the Mannheim exhibition will have closed, though that at the Musée des Antiquités in Rouen runs from 14 April to 13 August, 2023). This study day is intended to examine one aspect of this; the Norman conquest of, and subsequent creation of a kingdom in, southern Italy. The emphasis is firmly on the architecture and material culture associated with the fitful, and ultimately rather brief, period during which Norman power was exercised in Apulia, Basilicata, Campania, Calabria, Sicily and parts of the Abruzzi.
The first afternoon will consider the eleventh-century situation on the mainland – the strength of Romano-Byzantine architectural traditions, the tantalising and isolated experiments with imported Norman forms and the dramatic effect of the creation of a new shrine church dedicated to Saint Nicholas in Bari. The second afternoon will look at the island of Sicily; the initial tangled attempts to build a diocesan system that suited Norman interests on an island which had been under Moslem control for two centuries and where the indigenous Christian population was Greek; and the eventual emergence of a wholly remarkable Mediterranean visual language in Palermo during the reign of Roger II.
Lectures
1 The Arrival of the Normans: Monte Sant’Angelo, Capua, Venosa, Salerno
2 The Arrival of Saint Nicholas in Bari
3 The Conquest of Sicily
4 Palermo
NB: Links to access recordings of the two-part event will be sent to all ticketholders after the second half and will be available for one week.
Lecturer
John McNeill is an architectural historian. He took degrees in art history at the University of East Anglia and Courtauld Institute, and went on to specialise in medieval architectural history, lecturing at Camberwell School of Art, London University’s Extra-Mural department, Birkbeck College and the Oxford University Department of Continuing Education. He lectures regularly to the Society and leads tours for Martin Randall Travel. He was appointed Secretary of the British Archaeological Association in 2000, for whom he also subsequently convened and edited conferences on Medieval Anjou, cloisters, medieval chantries, and King’s Lynn and the Fens. He founded the BAA’s biennial series of International Conferences on Romanesque, and is both a member of its steering committee and a co-editor of its transactions. His most recent effort in this field, Romanesque and the Year 1000 is due to be published at the end of 2024. Besides the BAA Conference Transactions, John has published numerous articles and is author of the Blue Guides to both Normandy and the Loire Valley. He is a Vice-President of the London Art History Society and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries.
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