Coordinator Silke Engelhardt, M.A.

Our project-coordinator holds a Master's Degree of Medieval Studies at Heidelberg University and her research focus lies in Medieval History and the auxiliary sciences (paleography, epigraphic etc). In her master's thesis she analyzed the corpus of church foundation and/or consecration/dedication charters compiled and edited by Ramon Orteig i Mata. With this work she was able to show the range of agency of medieval women within the context of church foundations and/or consacrations/dedications. 

In her current (PhD) project she analyzes the veneration of saints and their cults in early medieval Catalunya and Septimania especially the Pyrenees region as well as their veneration in the neighbouring regions, for example the Frankish Empire. She concentrates on written sources like Martyrologies, Passionaries and litrugical Calendars in order to find variations in the veneration through the 5th to 12th century. She centers her research on the history and reception of the cults of Saint Cucufatus of Barcelona and Saint Felix of Girona, as they allegedly traveled together from Scilium to the barcelonese harbour and from there started their missionary work in Barcelona and Gironas. She would like to show, how two parallel cults developed in different directions and how the cults spread through the mainly Carolingian and Ottonian ruled empires in the mediterranean west.