The Materiality of Absence: Organizing and the case of the incomplete cathedral

This study explores the role of absences in making organizing possible. By engaging with Lefebvre’s spatial triad as the interconnections between conceived (planned), perceived (experienced through practice) and lived (felt and imagined) spaces, we challenge the so-called metaphysics of presence in organization studies. We draw on the insights offered by the project of construction of Siena Cathedral during the period 1259–1357 and we examine how it provided a space for the actors involved to explore their different (civic, architectural and religious) intentions. We show that, as the contested conceived spaces of the cathedral were connected to architectural practices, religious powers and civic symbols, they revealed the impossibility for these intentions to be fully represented. It was this impossibility that provoked an ongoing search for solutions and guaranteed a combination of dynamism and persistence of both the material architecture of the cathedral and the project of construction. The case of Siena Cathedral therefore highlights the role of absence in producing organizing effects not because absence eventually takes form but because of the impossibility to fully represent it.

The Siena relic of St John the Baptist’s right arm

The paper takes a systematic approach to the hitherto unpublished relic of St John the Baptist?s right arm which is kept in a cache in Siena cathedral. It includes the available historical information about the relic?s journey from Serbia until its arrival in Siena (1464) and the circumstances in which it came into the possession of pope Pius II. It provides a detailed description both of the relic and of the reliquary, an exquisite piece of medieval goldsmithing and filigree work with few direct analogies. Particular attention is devoted to the inscription on the reliquary lid: ?Right arm of John the Forerunner, cover me, Sava the Serbian archbishop.? Based on the inscription, the reliquary is identified as one of the founding objects of the treasury of the monastery of Zica (the Serbian cathedral and coronation church) which was gradually built up in the first decades of the thirteenth century through the effort of Sava of Serbia. Discussed in the context of this topic are also the ?veil? and the ?cushion?, the luxurious textiles in which the Baptist?s arm was brought to Siena.

Pope Pius II’s charter of donation of the arm of St John the Baptist to Siena cathedral

In 1464 Pope Pius II donated a precious relic to the cathedral of Siena, his hometown-the right forearm and hand of St John the Baptist. On that occasion the appropriate document was drawn up-a donation charter. This paper offers a transcription of the Latin text of the charter (furnished with critical apparatus) and its translations into Serbian and English.