Category: Case Studies

Attitudes, Atmospheres, Aspirations: Erfurt’s squares

Can we perceive Erfurt’s urbanity on its squares? In this hope, we hunted for perceptible atmospheres, attitudes and aspirations while other Erfurters went shopping, picked up their children or enjoyed the sun. The working hypothesis of our research group on “Religion and Urbanity” is that urbanity1 can be defined as a “way of life that emerges because of the size, density, diversity, mobility, instability, and transparency of a settlement or the people living there” (Rau 2020).2

Sacred City Intersections: Superiority-Inferiority Complexes in Sites of Amritsar, India

Be it Mecca, the Vatican City, Varanasi, or Amritsar: even while cities acquire the status of sacrality particular to a specific religious group, they continue to harbour pronounced inter- and intra-religious dynamics within and outside their circumscribed boundaries. Such phenomena require a multiscalar and intersectional lens of analysis…

Finally, a Long-Awaited Research Trip to France!

Throughout most of my time as a doctoral student, I have been living and studying in the United Kingdom, where I am in a co-tutelle arrangement with Durham University. Most of this time has also unfortunately been spent under travel restrictions, which made it difficult to travel from the United Kingdom to mainland Europe…

The Urban and Religious Fabrics of Public Ludic Games – Vol 2

Part two of the conversation between our fellows, Vanina Kopp and Richard Lim, on their research on public ludic games and their cultural and historical context. This time they are speaking about the urban environment of public spectacles, lay confraternities in France, Roman spectators and the fluidity of ludic acitivties and acts of devotion.

Stadt macht Kirche macht Stadt: St. Marien im thüringischen Mühlhausen

Unweit des Nationalparks Hainich gelegen, lädt das thüringische Mühlhausen mit seinen zahlreichen gotischen Kirchen ein. Von diesen ist die Marienkirche mitten im Herzen der Stadt die größte und wird auch im übrigen Thüringen nur vom Erfurter Dom an Größe übertroffen. Was aber hat eine Kirche mit Urbanität zu tun?

Map of Paris in Early Middle ages

The Same Spaces Tell Different Religious Stories. Several Considerations on Cospatiality in Paris around 1300

The following considerations have arisen in the context of research into the religious and social contexts of religious writing around 1300. The search for “co-spatiality,” for “equality in space”, has its roots in socio-religious conflicts in the city of Paris, which in the first two decades of the fourteenth century led to the use of state and ecclesiastical power, including force and violence, by the Inquisition…

Kreuzritter auf dem Fußballplatz? Ein Erfurter Graffito

Ganz in der Nähe des Max-Weber-Kollegs befindet sich ein monumentales Graffiti an einer Hauswand. Es handelt sich um von Fußballfans gestaltete oder möglicherweise sogar von Sportfunktionären in Auftrag gegebene Kunst. Um Fußball zu verherrlichen, ruft das Graffiti unterschiedliche kulturelle Vorstellungen auf. Auf dem Weg zur Arbeit ist es morgens möglich, über „Religion und Urbanität“ zu stolpern. Was hat dieses Graffiti mit der Forschungsgruppe zu tun?

Closing Comments of the “Blurring Boundaries” Conference

From the 24th to the 26th of November 2021 the research group “Religion and Urbanity: Reciprocal Formations” welcomed international researchers at Ettersburg castle for the conference “Blurring Boundaries”. Organised by Jörg Rüpke and Emiliano R. Urciuoli, the conference aimed to investigate the diffusion of urban religion beyond urban space. Susanne Rau and Martin Fuchs summarise their observations on the previous two days’ programme…

Urban and Rural Plague Prevention: Johann Georg Schiebel’s “Plague Pharmacy” (1680)

It is not always easy to find “urbanity” in early modern sources. Many times, historians have to reconstruct what an author considered to be features of urbanity, by reading carefully and between the lines. This is especially the case because words, such as “urbanity” or “rurality” do not feature in these sources, instead problems and benefits of living in an “urban setting” may be explored by early modern authors…

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