Church Monuments Society

The Word of the Last Hour: Tombs and Epitaphs for Women in the Kingdoms of Jerusalem and Cyprus: This talk will examine the funerary monuments and inscriptions of the Latin populations in the areas of the two kingdoms of Jerusalem and Cyprus, from the epigraphic point of view. A series of a case studies are highlighted, with a special focus on tombstones devoted to women. This perspective serves two purposes: on the one hand it allows an examination of the role of women in a given society, mainly through the mechanisms of (self) representation entrusted to the epitaphs and the images, while, on the other, it enables us to question the totality of the funerary heritage in terms of similiarity and difference, as far as more general questions are concerned, even if funerary inscriptions for women in the Latin East as in Europe represent a minority.

Estelle Ingrand-Varenne specializes in medieval epigraphy. After having studied the inscriptions’ shift from Latin to French in her doctoral thesis (2018), her research focus turned to the Outremer. She has worked on the inscriptions of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, producing a new corpus for studying this specific epigraphy. After three years at the French Research Center in Jerusalem, she is now at the Center for Advanced Studies in Medieval Civilisation (CESCM) in Poitiers. Estelle is the principal investigator of the ERC Starting grant project GRAPH-EAST, which deals with inscriptions and graffiti in Latin alphabet in the Eastern Mediterranean from the 7th to the 16th c. (2021-2026).

Maria Aimé Villano is an art historian, specializing in the Italian and Byzantine middle ages. She has an MA degree from the Università degli Studi di Firenze with a dissertation on the sculpted columns of the ciborium of San Marco at Venice. She received her doctoral degree in 2020 in cotutelle between the Università Ca’ Foscari of Venice and the Université de Poitiers on the study of these columns, focusing on their epigraphic and iconographic aspects and especially on the relationship between text and image. For the Graph-East project, she is currently working on the medieval Latin inscriptions of Cyprus.

Event Information

This online talk is FREE to all and will take place on Zoom. Places must be booked via Eventbrite. Go to https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-last-hour-tombs-for-women-in-the-kingdoms-of-jerusalem-and-cyprus-tickets-536146146557 to register. This is one of a series of online talks delivered by the Church Monuments Society for Spring 2023. For information on the rest of the series and on other events, go to https://churchmonumentssociety.org/events.

JOINING INSTRUCTIONS: You should receive a link from Eventbrite two days before the event, two hours before the event, and just as the event begins. If you have not received the link, contact us via Eventbrite so we can try to resolve this.

Guidelines and handy Zoom hints

Before the event:

• Please ensure you have already downloaded and installed Zoom to the device you wish to use. Read their guide if you are unsure about how to do this (https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/115004954946-Joining-and-participating-in-a-webinar-attendee- )
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During the webinar:

• Please remain muted throughout.
• The talk will last approximately 45 minutes and will be followed by questions.
• You are welcome to use the Chat box to contact panellists.
• Send formal questions for the speaker using the Q&A function so that they are easily identifiable. These can then be put to the speaker by one of our event coordinators.
• The session may be recorded by the Church Monuments Society. Screenshots and/or recording by participants is not permitted for copyright reasons.
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• If you experience technical difficulties, contact panellists using the chat function. We will do our best to help.
• Enjoy the talk!

Image Credit: Estelle Ingrand-Varenne & Maria Aimé Villano

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