Transcience and eternity. Confrontation and Interconnection of Different Types of Temporal Semantics in Medieval Journeys to the Beyond

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Andreas Bihrer; Professorin Dr. Julia Weitbrecht
• Subject Area: German Medieval Studies (Medieval German Literature) ; Medieval History
• Term: from 2018 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 407041397

While the finiteness of human existence remains an anthropological constant, its perception and coping strategies are highly variable across history and cultures. The experience of the irreversibility of death generates manifold social practices, which aim to transcend mortality. To approach these phenomena in a historically adequate way, the various interpretive patterns must be found through which each respective coping with mortal transience becomes observable. This project examines the different types of temporal semantics of eternity and transience dealt with in medieval visionary literature. The subject of this study are Latin accounts of otherworld journeys from the High Middle Ages (12th century) as well as their Late Medieval translations into German (15th century), which are transmitted in combination with texts on the Ars moriendi. These written records are fluid texts, existing at the intersection of revelation, account and lore. Therefore the approach in this project is interdisciplinary and will be implemented by employing methods from both history and literary studies.Central to the analysis are narratives that reflect transience through different temporalities, in the intertwining of individual mortality and the end of the world, deliverance and eternity through visionary journeys to the afterlife. The journey narrative constitutes a particularly well-suited medium for this purpose since temporality is substantiated in corporeal and spatial experience and can thus be experienced and illustrated.The different temporal semantics of the linearly progressing journey and salvation history, eternity and individual mortality, eternal damnation and redemption should not be seen as inconsistent. These juxtapositions should rather be examined as to what concepts of meaning and processing in dealing with transience are developed here.Journeys to the hereafter provide a potent set of interpretive offerings for the Christian Middle Ages. In the Latin texts of journeys to the afterlife since the 12th century, there is a developing concurrency of experienced time, life time and expectation of the prospects ahead (be they salvation or the apocalypse). Medieval otherworld journeys thus establish a particular relation of symbolism and worldly reference over the negotiated prospects of punishment and penance, which the numerous written records continually refine, expand and modify. These processes of de- and re-stabilization are emergent phenomena of the interaction of theology, ecclesiastical law and lived piety. The study of this interplay, the main goal of this project, promises precise insights into the coping with mortality in those societies and groups that record, edit and disseminate these texts, as well as into the universal ideas of transcendence established by western Christianity.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants