聽(Brepols, 2026) is derived from the third and fourth installations of the聽聽conference. The purpose of the conference was to examine how the bishop, one of the key characters in the administration of medieval Europe, shaped how medieval European history has been recorded and remembered. Bolstered by the sense that the bishop, as an organizing idea, matters, the inaugural conference, In the Hands of God鈥檚 Servants, sought to examine the construction, enhancement, and expression of episcopal power at a local level. Papers selected and adapted for publication appeared in , which offers microhistories of episcopal power and authority, fracturing what we know about the bishop into episodes that represent dioceses and dependents, and the individuals that ran them. The singularity of these stories inspired the subject of the second conference on Episcopal Personalities. Papers from this conference were published in , which explored the work and responsibilities of the bishop, how a bishop鈥檚 persona shaped his approach to the episcopal office, and how a bishop鈥檚 charisma affected the way in which he was received or remembered by the communities he served.

Analysis of the bishop鈥檚 personality encouraged the organizers to mine the slippery space between the office and the man, not only for the ways this space elides differences between the episcopal personae of priest, pastor, or prince, but also because the space sheds light on from where鈥� or from whom 鈥� a bishop鈥檚 power derived. The third conference, The Bishop as Diplomat, took up this question as its focus, turning away from the bishop as an agent for and as himself, to the bishop’s role as a representative of the power and authority of others. The papers offered at this conference examined how bishops developed the skills and tactics needed for diplomacy, as well as how and when these skills were deployed, and in what circumstances. They also explored what it meant for a bishop, who was already representing an office beyond himself, to be a diplomat, which often required the bishop to re-present someone else.

Two years later, organizers turned to a theme that had been at the edge of each of the previous conferences: the Bishop as Patron. This conference focused on visual, material and social expressions of episcopal power as well as how those expressions were managed to ensure the legitimacy or the legacy of a bishop. Papers examined traditional examples of patronage, such as those demonstrated through the construction, expansion, and renovation of buildings and the production and reception of manuscripts. The papers asked how and with whom bishops built relationships, and how those relationships were maintained (or neglected).

The essays selected from these last two conferences were edited, expanded and combined into a single volume. Together, they offer a broad overview of how relational culture defines how, why, and for whom bishops work.

is divided into four parts. The introduction, authored by Gatti and Silvestri, explains how this book, the last in the 鈥淧ower of the Bishop鈥� series, responds to and expands on the usefulness of the 鈥渂ishop鈥� as a category of scholarly focus. Next, a prologue by Philippa Byrne asks, 鈥淲hat was Episcopal about Episcopal Patronage?” The remaining essays are divided into two sections. The first section, 鈥淓piscopal Patronage as Re/Presentation鈥�, foregrounds the material aspects of episcopal patronage, such as churches, manuscripts, hagiographies, rites, rituals, frescoes, windows and tombs. This section includes a chapter by Gatti, 鈥淒iplomatic Gestures: Art and Ambivalence in Eleventh-Century Italy鈥�, in which she compares visual images of the bishop to the embodied language of diplomatic gestures. The final section, 鈥淧atronizing Bishops: Clients, Diplomats, Allies, and Rivals鈥�, examines episcopal patronage as an extension of episcopal relationships with families, kings, emperors, and clients, with predecessors and successors, as alliances and antagonisms, and between bishops and their congregations, as well as the monastic and secular clergy.

Creating a coherent collection in a field as broad and disparate as medieval studies can be challenging. In fact, the hardships experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic, prohibitions for travel, the closure of archives and libraries across the UK, Europe, and North America, as well as the crises in higher education and funding cuts for scholarly work, made completing this book particularly difficult. In fact, it was because of these challenges that a decision was made to publish papers from the 2017 and 2019 conferences together after plans for a separate volume fell through. This effort fulfilled a commitment made by the conveners to publish high-quality scholarly papers that had been selected and expanded for publication.

Likely made two hundred years earlier as part of a pair of boxes, the small ivory box (about the size of a shoebox) was later encased in a golden skeleton inlaid with precious gems. The box is decorated with the 12 signs of the zodiac, carved in niches above the heads of the 11 Apostles and Jesus Christ. The place of the creation of the box, its original function and its reuse across generations remain contested.

In the book chapter, and , who have both published on the box independently, come together to discuss the dynamic and interconnected contexts across the box鈥檚 long history: from its construction and first uses in the Early and High Middle Ages, through the town鈥檚 appropriation and the Abbey Church’s reconsecration by the Nazis during WWII, the theft of items from the church treasury by a U.S. soldier after the war, and the church and town鈥檚 designation as in recently re-unified Germany.

Gatti鈥檚 article focuses on three extraordinary portraits of Bishop Sigebert of Minden (1022鈥�36) that appear in a set of nine liturgical manuscripts, or books, he had commissioned. Inspired by the unusual presentation of Sigebert鈥檚 portraits in an exhibition,聽Gatti argues that the portraits were more than repetitive, honorific re-presentations of a specific historical figure. Instead, the portraits should be seen as a series of thresholds through which Sigebert and his successors entered into the sacred space of the liturgy. Shaped by the development of liturgical iconographies of episcopal authority and heightened by changes in clerical education that emphasized the physical body as representative of inner virtue, the portraits exemplified the process of becoming a “good” bishop.

Gatti鈥檚 research shows how these images helped present and reinforce the relationship between Church and community, providing a lens for us to better understand how one of the most important political and religious forces functioned at that time.

For four decades the has brought scholars from across North America to the neo-Gothic campus of The University of the South for a shared conversation about the state of medieval studies. The small size of the colloquium allows for very few concurrent sessions and each session is assigned a respondent who receives the papers in advance and offers prepared remarks that weave individual essays into a larger discussion.

The 46th convening of the Sewanee Medieval Colloquium is dedicated to themes of Privilege and Position. Gatti’s paper for the colloquium,聽鈥淟egacies of Privilege: Making Meaning for Medieval Manuscripts鈥�, examines how the differences in her ability to access two groups of manuscripts, each belonging to a specific bishop and held in distinctly different contexts, changed the shape and scope of her scholarship. She will suggest聽that telling the stories about how scholars access the objects they study is a service to colleagues now and in the future. When scholars neglect to document the process or see privilege in how they look at medieval manuscripts, they risk misrepresenting important parts of their approach. Like preserving the data of an archeological findspot, the contexts in which scholars see a medieval book, the layers of permissions required, the other things they see simultaneously, whether they saw the original or facsimile, all affect how future audiences understand and build from their work.

Gatti concludes by arguing that when scholars neglect to reveal how they see the objects of their study, they ignore the privileges that characterize how one experiences a discipline. They suggest that the research process is neutral, that good work will prevail, and the truth will be revealed. We know that is not the case. One’s impact on a field is not shaped simply by diligence, but by access, privilege, and process.

The International Conference of Iconographic Studies draws scholars from across the globe to examine the iconography of a specific theme. This year鈥檚 theme,聽, explored the ways and mechanisms by which the lives of the saints were translated from textual sources into visual language. The conference was originally scheduled for May 2020 at the University of Rijeka in Croatia but was postponed until October and ultimately moved online in response to the spread of COVID-19. The virtual conference spanned two full days and included twelve sessions and forty-six papers. Gatti was one of only two North American scholars included in the conference program.

Gatti’s paper is a product of research undertaken during a 2019-20 sabbatical, part of a larger, ongoing project on the thirteenth-century聽Rotolus con Atti degli Apostoli聽held in the in Vercelli. The rotolus (or roll) could be a copy of eleventh-century paintings that once decorated the Cathedral in Vercelli and includes twenty-seven scenes from the biblical book of Act.

Examining the iconography of the聽Vercelli Rotolus, Gatti聽argued that it reveals the ways and the mechanisms by which the text of Acts was harnessed as a model for orthodoxy.聽 Gatti cited specific scenes selected for inclusion on the roll and especially the repetition of iconography that highlights the sacrament of baptism. The scenes of baptism appear in moments of disorder on the roll, or places where the narrative of the biblical text was reversed by the visual iconography. Gatti suggested this disorder points to the possible models used for the original painting and may also reveal how the images would have related to the original architecture of the Cathedral.

Conference participants were invited to expand their papers for potential publication in a special issue of the journal : The Journal聽of Iconographic Studies.

“Things They Carry Re-Presented: Episcopal Simulacra or Decorative Ephemera鈥� was presented as part of a session dedicated to the material culture associated with the medieval bishop. Gatti’s paper examined the meanings聽associated聽with visual representations of the vasa sacra (sacred vessels) used by bishops to celebrate the liturgy. Specifically, the paper examined聽liturgical objects such as the Eucharistic chalice and an聽altar crown聽depicted in the upper border of the聽eleventh-century wall painting preserved in聽Santa Maria Assunta in Aosta, Italy.

Gatti co-organized two聽additional sessions for the International Medieval Congress that were sponsored by聽: The Society for the Study of Bishops and the Secular Clergy in the Middle Ages,聽including a third installation of the #EPSBrevia, and two聽sessions dedicated to Gender, Identity, & the Medieval Bishop & the Secular Clergy.聽

鈥婫atti also presided over the first business meeting for聽聽to be held outside the U.S.

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The conference included two days of sessions with presenters at all stages in their careers and from across the globe. The first day culminated in a keynote talk on “Problems with Patronage. The clergy, the laity and the relics of San Gimignano of Modena” by Edward Coleman from University College, Dublin, and ended with a roundtable discussion, facilitated by Gatti. During the roundtable, all conference attendees discussed the themes that will guide the publication of the conference proceedings.

The first conference resulted in an edited volume published by Brepols (;). A second and a third volume are in process. The final order of business for the roundtable was to develop the theme for the next conference.

Keep your eyes open for "The Power of the Bishop 5: The Bishop as Spiritual Leader" in Summer 2021.

Evan A. Gatti, associate professor of art history and associate director of the 黑料不打烊 Core Curriculum, presented "Drawn in Ink With Love: Desire in Looking at and Looking Back” and "Re-Presentation and a Theology of Images" at the International Medieval Studies Congress in Kalamazoo, Michigan. She also organized three sessions sponsored by Episcopus: The Society for the Study of Bishops and the Secular Clergy in the Middle Ages and presided over their business meeting.

"Drawn in Ink with Love," offered a historiographic analysis of a phrase, "disegnate ad inchiostro, con amore," that was included in an early 20th-century essay on the Rotolo pergamenaceo con episodi degli Atti degli Apostoli (Parchment scroll with scenes from the Acts of the Apostles) held in the  in Vercelli.

Gatti argues that the phrase, when understood as part of the broader scholarly production of Italian medievalist Carlo Cipolla, requires we see the Rotolo di Vercelli as part of an effort to define an Italian artistic style separate from outside influence or exchange. Gatti's paper also remarked on the urgency for contemporary scholars to call out and challenge arguments wherein medieval art can be being used to bolster the false narratives of a hegemonic medieval Christian Europe as support for white nationalism. 

"Re-Presentation and a Theology of Images" was presented as part of a session of Brevia, or short three-minute papers on work in progress. The panel was modeled on similar successful sessions at the American Historical Association and aims to foster research in its very early stages and to generate paper proposals for the International Congress in 2020.

In addition to giving two papers, as president of : The Society for the Study of Bishops and the Secular Clergy in the Middle Ages, Gatti organized three sessions for the Congress, including the Brevia, which was moderated by  co-director,  and Clinical Assistant Professor,  at , and a session on "Clerics and Codices: Bishops, Secular Clergy and Their Books," moderated by , assistant professor of art history at the University of Alabama.鈥�

Gatti served as the chair and moderator for "Old Clerics, New Tricks: Bishops, Secular Clergy, & New Methodology", which celebrated new approaches to historical bishops, including a database on , presented by Jerzy Szafranowski (University of Warsaw), an reframing of hagiogra[hic categorise for monastic exegesis, presented by David Defries (Kansas State University), the application of , presented by Kalani Craig (Indiana University- Bloomington), and finally, a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) analysis of place in the rolls and registers of Oliver Sutton, Bishop of Lincoln, presented by Michael Burger (Auburn Univ.–Montgomery). 

鈥婫atti also presided over the annual business meeting for : The Society for the Study of Bishops and the Secular Clergy in the Middle Ages. 

The three panels were co-organized with Michael Burger (Auburn University –Montgomery), Kalani Craig (Indiana University–Bloomington) and John S. Ott (Portland State University) and include papers from scholars across the globe. Each session is organized around the theme “Start-Ups and Flops” and considers the variety of tasks involved in maintaining institutions or practices performed by bishops and the secular clergy in the Middle Ages.  

“Pastors and Disasters,” presided over by Gatti, is the second of the three sessions and is focused on the ways bishops or other secular clergy responding to setbacks or even catastrophes, from plague to invasion to simply resistance to their programs. 

A new essay by Kirstin Ringelberg, professor of art history, is included in the most recent volume of the n.paradoxa: international feminist art journal.

While we might be tempted to put the blame on artists who allow their evidently feminist work to be presented as not necessarily feminist, Ringelberg argues that we must instead interrogate our shared acceptance of the individualized nature of neoliberal feminism in the contemporary art world more broadly.