Research Training Group 1662: “Religious Knowledge in Pre-Modern Europe (800–1800)“

Transfers and Transformations—Ways to Modern Knowledge Society

I. Aims: The research training group is developing the term “religious knowledge” as an interdisciplinary research concept that can be used to analyze and describe in a new way the emergence of a so-called “knowledge-based society” in the West—a society which considers its self-attributes to be tolerance, secularism, rationality, and the distinction between science and education, as well as law and politics, but also religion, art, and literature.

II. Terminology: The term “religious knowledge” refers to a complex phenomenon within the social and cultural history of the three monotheist religions that have shaped the history of Europe since the Middle Ages: the Christian tradition, which is the primary subject of study, is endowed—like Judaism and Islam—with a canon of sacred texts. These were regarded as the result of divine revelation, and the knowledge they conveyed therefore as infallible, invariable, and absolutely venerable. Yet the influence of the knowledge contained in these revelations rested on the extent to which it formed the basis for meaningful communication and praxis within a changing world, evolving and transforming over time through new interpretations, and transferred via media. The training group refers to these adaptations across eras and cultures collectively as “religious knowledge.”

III. Research Areas: The transformation and transfer of religious knowledge contributed substantially to the delineation of fields of knowledge. Dynamic processes and controversial subjects of negotiation within religious knowledge are thus the focus of research in this field, which incorporates oral traditions, written texts, images, behavioral patterns, and rituals. The research group investigates: 1) those processes of transformation from which religious knowledge emerged over the course of history; 2) the synchronic and diachronic transfer of religious knowledge in its various forms. This requires an examination of the:

· institutions and social groups that were involved in the production, interpretation, conveyance, and control of religious knowledge;

· processes with which revelatory knowledge was integrated into the sphere of everyday life, but also with which religious knowledge was transported into other media and transmitted across chronological, geographical, and social boundaries; and

· interactions and delineations between religious knowledge and other forms of knowledge, which changed the central function of revelatory knowledge.

Cooperative Project “Johannes Baptista Sproll, Bishop of Rottenburg, 1927–1949”

Johannes Baptista Sproll, born in 1870, served from 1927 until his death in 1949 as the bishop of the diocese of Rottenburg. During his tenure, he experienced several political upheavals: the fall of the monarchy and World War I, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich and World War II, and the subsequent period of occupation. Sproll became known beyond his own diocese when he demonstratively refused to participate in the plebiscite and parliamentary elections following the annexation of Austria in 1938. In an unparalleled act in the history of the German episcopacy, the National Socialists succeeded in staging demonstrations to drive the bishop—who had been a thorn in their sides for years—from his diocese as a “traitor.” Only after the end of World War II was the bishop—now seriously ill—able to return from his exile in Bavaria.

Many of Sproll’s fellow Swabians regarded him as a “Confessing Bishop” and a model of the Catholic Church’s position during the era of National Socialism. The process for Sproll’s beatification was officially opened in 2011, but many questions remain unanswered. (Church) historians have thus far not granted his case the same attention paid to the stories of fellow churchmen such as the cardinals Adolf Bertram, Conrad von Preysing, and Clemens August Graf von Galen. Research on the history of the diocese itself is similarly spotty, especially regarding the topic of the Church under National Socialism. Little is likewise known about Sproll’s life prior to his election as bishop; he had previously served as Repetent for canon law at the Wilhelmsstift seminary in Tübingen, vice regent in the seminary in Rottenburg, congregational priest in Ehingen, and as canon, general vicar, and finally suffragan bishop in Rottenburg.

In order to fill this gap in scholarship, the diocese of Rottenburg-Stuttgart began funding a cooperative research project in May 2014 at the universities of Tübingen, Münster, and Würzburg. This project aims to evaluate, analyze, and digitize the historical records of the diocese in the age of Johannes Baptista Sproll, with a central focus on the records housed in the diocesan archives in Rottenburg. The project team is led by Prof. Andreas Holzem from Tübingen, Prof. Hubert Wolf from Münster, and Prof. Dominik Burkard from Würzburg; they are also members of the historical commission examining the case for Sproll’s beatification.

DFG-Project: Trilateral Research Conferences in the Villa Vigoni: The Threatened Self—The Threat of the Other

In Germany, France, and Italy, an emotionally charged political debate is raging over questions of to what extent a foreign “Other” poses a threat to the European “Self” (consider, for example, Pegida, Charlie Hebdo, or Lampedusa). Religious aspects play an important role in these debates, in which “foreignness” is characterized among other things by fearful perceptions of fanaticized religions. While these problems materialize somewhat differently in each of these three European countries, all are faced with the question of how concepts of identity draw upon concepts of foreignness and how these are religiously and culturally charged.

While this problematic situation might seem new in its intensity, there is a long-standing history of conflict-ridden contact in which the religious dimensions were at times more prevalent and well-defined. In earlier eras, the tendency to veil scenarios of religious threat in political or economic terms was much less pronounced. This historical dimension is the focus of our trilateral research conferences in the Villa Vigoni.

Given that contemporary constellations of the communication of threats cannot be projected linearly onto the period from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century addressed here, the project aims to reconstruct interpretations of reality during this period. It examines how late medieval and early modern social groups explained the threats to their coexistence in a similar, perhaps more intense, fashion as an interaction not only of political, economic, and religious aspects but more generally as the result of immanent and transcendent factors. Because in their worldview, God and society were constantly interacting, every social threat was a threat to the divine and vice versa. In particular, two quite widespread literary genres with significant social and cultural influence gave expression to such conflicts: sermons and religious (liturgical) dramas

In the public spheres created by these performative texts, there are three marked threat scenarios in which the distinction between “the Self” and “the Other” and their corresponding religious associations in the intertwining of transcendence and society become especially evident. These include the broad themes of:

(1) “eternal damnation at the Last Judgment” for political and social deficiency;

(2) “Jewish conspiracies” from within; “Islamic expansion” from abroad; and

(3) “confessional condemnation” as the disintegration of “the Christian Occident.”

The methods historians use to analyze these sermons and liturgical dramas in order to generate systematic historical scholarship vary significantly among those countries participating in the research conferences. The proposed series of research conferences recognizes these differences and aims to:

(1) integrate the methods and perspectives developed by scholars who address primarily the history of religion, theater, and rhetoric;

(2) further the development of interdisciplinary and comparative tools of analysis and lenses for interpretation; and

(3) publish selected primary and secondary texts as models (editions and commentaries).

CRC 923: Threatened Order—Project F 03: Threat Discourse and Coping in Christian Societies (1570–1980)

The project F 03 examines sermons and liturgical dramas from the fourteenth to seventeenth century and the communication of threats within them from an intercultural perspective that bridges geographical boundaries within Europe and the chronological break around 1500/1517. It focuses on three scenarios involving threat, analyzing them to determine the extent to which it is possible to recognize literary/textual, rhetorical/theatrical, and religious/social schemas used to construct threats and mobilize against them.

Research Methods:

During the era in question (i.e., the fourteenth to the seventeenth century), European societies communicated threats to their coexistence as the work of transcendent and immanent factors. From the perspective of contemporary worldviews, God and society were constantly interacting, which meant that every social threat was a challenge to the divine and vice versa. Medieval and early modern sermons and liturgical dramas were a widespread and effective method of communicating perceived threats. They were fully integrated as organizational structures with religious and social functions, and they were temporally located within daily life and traditional celebrations, surfacing again and again, sometimes more acutely, sometimes less, depending on circumstances. Regularity and occasional urgency are thus not divergent but rather complementary; periodic dramatization is intertwined with dramatic problem-solving. Threats reoccur but not always with the same intensity. This project draws on sources that perpetuate the knowledge of such recurrence and provide models for interpretation and mobilization against perceived threats. Their implementation, however, took the form of oral performances before an audience, and this results in their mobilization potential: sermons and liturgical plays were a medium for conveying potentially threatening scenarios to a broad audience with a strong claim to religious and social validity.

Three Threat Scenarios

The staging of threats sought to mobilize the audience’s emotions—against religious indifference, against the enemies of Christ, and against confessional foes—and to effect a reorientation of their lives at both the individual and societal level. In addition to its focused threat assessment, the project also investigates strategies of mobilization for a re-ordering of society that grew out of the specific context in which sermons and liturgical dramas were performed.

(1) The “eternal damnation at the Last Judgment” is the greatest threat of all, because it is an irreversible reaction to the deformation of the world. Apocalyptic rhetoric foresees the end of the world in order to mobilize a small minority for the ultimate re-ordering of the world. The emphasis on the judgment of the individual, on the other hand, calls individuals and societies to commit themselves to a new model of Christian community.

(2) In the “Jewish conspiracy,” the Jews’ “denial of the Messiah” was seen as an eminent threat to Christian order and the Christian claim to power. Passion plays regularly drew attention to this fact. Sermons, on the other hand, reacted more to acute situations like plague, war, or hunger by suggesting that these were somehow caused by the Jews. During the Reformation period, the relationship between apocalyptic rhetoric, the conversion of the Jews, and hostility towards the Jews was redefined. There was a strong element of mobilization within anti-Jewish polemics: pogroms reinforced the foundation of “the Self” by destroying “the Other.” Beyond this concrete aggression, they also highlighted the superiority of the Christian culture or pointed to the sinfulness of Christians as well: this was ultimately a re-ordering that shaped identities.

(3) “Confessional condemnation” was a similarly extreme source of threat, because God himself called believers to combat the teaching of false doctrine from within the Church. The corresponding notion of the Antichrist that prevailed in such discourses served to bring together the heretical with the Last Judgment. In the Reformation, confessional condemnation for heresy was not only an issue between the confessions but also within the respective groups, as divergent parties strove to impose their own visions for a distinct re-ordering of the Christian community.

The diverse expressions of piety in the late Middle Ages, and even more so the early modern confessions, varied significantly in how they appraised threats and mobilized to deflect them. The project primarily analyzes sermons from Germany and Italy as well as German and French liturgical dramas.

The project as a whole draws on the perspectives developed by scholars of religion, theater, and rhetoric to address religious/social, staged/theatrical, and linguistic/textual schemata in terms of the construction of threats and mobilization against them. Because the communication of perceived threats in the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries included prominent transcendent and immanent elements, it is an object of study for church history. Because such communication is part of a constant exchange of the written and staged word, it is an object of study for literary scholars. The interdisciplinary nature of this project makes it unique within the landscape of German-language scholarship.