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Conference Agenda

The Online Program of events for the 2026 AMS Annual Meeting appears below. This program is subject to change. The final program will be published in early November.

Use the "Filter by Track or Type of Session" or "Filter by Session Topic" dropdown to limit results by type. Some of the sessions are also color-coded: purple indicates performances, grey indicates paper forums, and orange indicates sessions which have been organized by one of the regional associations of IMS (ARLAC or IMSEA). (Sessions which are both IMS sessions and performances are only colored orange.)

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Please note that all times are shown in the time zone of the conference. The current conference time is: 1st Sept 2026, 02:57:56am EDT

Daily Overview

Session

Pre-Modern Musical Expression
Session Chair: Mary Channen Caldwell

Presentation 2

Mary Magdalene and Easter at the Benedictine Abbey of St. George, Prague

margot fassler¹, susan rankin²

1: University of Notre Dame, Yale University; 2: Cambridge University

Liturgical books from the mid twelfth and early thirteenth centuries witness to a thriving cult of Mary Magdalene at the royal Abbey of St. George, the oldest Bohemian monastic house for women, an institution where privilege allowed the women to develop their own liturgical practices. Notable features of the St George’s liturgy include a uniquely ordered office for the saint's feast (July 22), with readings found only at the Abbey, and a distinctive Easter Visitatio sepulchri ceremony that includes Mary Magdalene’s meeting with Christ after his resurrection. It is clear that the nuns of St. George had developed innovative strategies whereby the role of the Magdalene in the events commemorated at Easter was foregrounded. Comparison with manuscripts from the Cathedral of St. Vitus (only a few yards away from St George’s) indicates that these aspects of the Easter liturgy and handling of Mary Magdalene within that liturgy were indeed specific to St George’s.

Devotion to the Magdalene was significantly strengthened during the abbacy of Princess Kunigunde (1265–1321, and abbess from 1302). Easter themes within the liturgy for the feast of Mary Magdalene were significantly deepened, while the Visitatio sepulchri ceremony performed on Easter morning was led by the abbess, followed by Mary Magdalene. A brilliantly painted Passional (Prague XIV A 17) was commissioned by Abbess Kunigunde, and its contents suggest that she took a significant part in planning its contents. One of its illustrations shows a Benedictine nun who can be read as Mary Magdalene kneeling in the garden at the feet of the resurrected Christ; in another part of the manuscript there is a lament in the voice of Mary Magdalene. Ways in which the lament references the readings of the liturgical office for the Magdalene’s feast further promote the nuns’ shared conviction that Magdalene was especially beloved by Christ.