Mobile Matters of Religion: Devotional and Sacred Objects on the Early Modern World

• Applicant: Dr. Anne Mariss
• Subject Area: Early Modern History ; Social and Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology ; Protestant Theology ; Roman Catholic Theology ; Art History
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 534121478

The aim of the scientific network is to investigate the multi-layered forms of mobility of religious objects in the early modern world. Mobility is understood in a broad sense as geographical movement between regions and continents, between different social and ethnic groups and thus between different religious and confessional communities, but also between the spheres of the profane and the sacred. By focusing on the mobility and fluidity of religious objects within past cultures and societies, we aim to explore the potential of innovative methodological approaches that link the history of religion, the history of migration and mobility, art history, and material culture. The core interest of the network is to understand how the mobility of objects contributed to a transformation of religion in the early modern period. This guiding question of the network will be explored in four thematic foci and further differentiated in terms of content. The topic of the first workshop will be the question of the impact of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation on religious material culture. The second workshop will examine the processing of raw materials into religious objects and explore the question of how certain materials and types of design were associated with religious content. The third workshop will address the question of how the geographic mobility of objects contributed to changes in religious practices on a regional and global scale. A final focus is on the practices of collecting and displaying religious objects in early modern collections and how foreign religious ideas were represented and perceived in the Kunstkammer. The network has five central goals. It aims to 1. provide a forum for the discussion of methods and concepts and to advance theory building, 2. strengthen the connection between academic research and museum work through the joint study of objects, 3. bring German and international scholarship more strongly into dialogue with each other, 4. increase the visibility of the research field and demonstrate its potential for cultural studies, 5. successfully conclude the project through a book publication. Five workshops and a symposium will be held at six-month intervals during the total duration of 36 months. The workshops will focus on the topics and issues mentioned above, while the symposium will present the findings of the workshops to an international audience of experts. The last work meeting will mainly serve as a final discussion of the texts and will prepare the chapters for the publication of the book. A homepage presents the activities of the network to the public.

• DFG Programme: Scientific Networks