Die Mobilität religiöser Dinge

EINE AUSSTELLUNG DER SCHNITTSTELLE RELIGION IM HISTORISCHEN SEMINAR DER GOETHE-UNIVERSITÄT, AB 12. MAI

Die Ausstellung nimmt ein modernes und weltanschaulich neutrales Kunstobjekt, Eva Ulms weltliche hausapotheke (ab 2018), zum Anlass, um auf kleinformatige und mit der persönlichen Lebenswelt verschränkbare religionsbezogene Objekte zu blicken.

Heute unübliche Gegenstände wie Schabmadonnen und Schluckbilder kommen ebenso in den Blick wie das bis in die Popkultur verbreitete und doch in seiner Geschichte hoch politische flammende Herz Jesu.

Mehr Infos auf der Homepage “Schnittstelle Religion” der Goethe Universität Frankfurt.

9-11 April 2026, in cooperation with the Franckesche Stiftungen

“Negotiating Value between the Sacred and the Profane: Translocated Objects in Early Modern Europe and Beyond”

The workshop brought together scholars working on the entanglements of religious materiality, collecting practices, and global mobility in the early modern period. In her introduction, Anne Mariß looked back on the previous workshops of the network and outlined the agenda for the fourth meeting, which turned to the practice of collecting objects in missionary networks. The network members and guests asked how devotional and ritual objects circulated between missionary outposts, pilgrimage sites, and European collections, and how their meanings shifted across confessional, institutional, and geographical boundaries. Held in cooperation with the Francke Foundations in Halle, the workshop benefited in particular from its setting: working on questions of religious materiality in the very rooms in which Pietist missionary objects were catalogued and displayed in the eighteenth century opened up productive exchange between scholarly analysis and curatorial practice.

Opening the workshop, Holger Zaunstöck offered a longue-durée history of the Naturalienkammer of the Francke Foundations in Halle. Tracing the collection from its beginnings in 1698 through its systematisation under Gotthilf August Francke and Gründler in the 1730s, he emphasised how Pietist missionary networks fed objects into a space that functioned simultaneously as pedagogical instrument, scholarly repository, and stage for the Pietist Reichsgottesarbeit. Religious objects – including models from the Holy Land – stood at the very core of the Kammer.

The opening day concluded with a guided tour of the current annual exhibition 300 Jahre Neugier. Verborgenes Wissen aus der Wunderkammer. Thirty years after the reopening of the Wunderkammer, the exhibition takes stock of the current questions and themes that shape research on the collection. The fascination exerted by Wunderkammern remains unbroken in the twenty-first century – and the enthusiasm spread quickly through the group.

The next day of our workshop started with a paper on the silver votive lamps of the basilica of Loreto by Sabina Brevaglieri. Taking as her focal point a lamp donated in 1672 by the creole Don Francisco Valladolid which was produced in Lima and personally accompanied by the donor on pilgrimage, she reconstructed the object’s embedding in the beatification campaign for Toribio de Mogrovejo, the “Borromeo of the Andes.” Although the lamps themselves were melted down under Napoleonic fiscal pressure, donation registers, inventories, and printed pilgrimage guides preserved what Brevaglieri termed their afterlife as “paper artefacts.” The case opened onto questions of colonial silver, American Catholic identity, and the tensions between Roman and Spanish claims within a supposedly universal Church.

Placing Hallensian Pietists and Jesuits in comparative perspective at the peripheries of mission, Stefano’s paper drew on Florian Paucke’s Jesuit reducciones, the Jesuit presence on Sifnos and in Galata, and the Pietist medical outposts in Constantinople. He showed how improvised local materiality, imported devotional objects, and medical practice converged as instruments of contact. Both orders, he argued, worked with a sensory and embodied piety that complicates the conventional contrast between Catholic material religion and a supposedly word-centred Protestantism.

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Thomas Ruhland’s commentary on both papers foregrounded the interconnected sacred spheres in which such objects operated and the analytical weight of materiality itself. For the Loreto case, the fifty kilograms of Peruvian silver inseparably joined monetary value to inscribed Marian devotion and entangled colonial extraction with the making of saints, while a sacral topography stretching from South America through Spain to Italy made visible competing claims to universality within Catholicism. Turning to Stefano’s paper, Ruhland pressed the question of agency and voice: who spoke for the efficacy of sacred matter, and how were such claims legitimised? He also pointed to the ambivalence of a “religious pharmaceutics” in which the boundary between religious matter and the materiality of the religious threatened to dissolve. The discussion picked up Kelly Whitmer’s distinction between materiality as pedagogical guide and materiality as soteriologically relevant, and pressed the question of who, in each case, defined a substance as healing or holy.

Turning to the early history of printed collection catalogues, Berit Wagner analysed Laurentius Hoffmann’s Thesaurus variarum (1625) as a pars pro toto for lost early modern collections. Organised under thirty headings and modelled on Bernardus Paludanus, the catalogue registered some 3,000 objects including pilgrimage souvenirs from Jerusalem, Russian icons, anti-Catholic polemical medals, and extra-European items such as an “idolum” and a belt of Saint Rosa of Lima. Notably, the catalogue refrained from confessional evaluation, suggesting a more ecumenical logic of curiosity than one might expect.

The question of which portable religious objects entered urban-bourgeois collections structured Kim Siebenhüner’s contribution, which contrasted Hainhofer and Weickmann’s Exoticophylacium with the Jesuit Orban collection and its 1774 inventory. Where Lutheran collectors such as Weickmann tended to “overwrite” rather than erase confessional alterity, the Halle collection went further and classified Catholic devotional objects under the category of superstition; by contrast, non-Christian religious objects in the Orban collection were handled within a markedly more respectful narrative frame.

Eva Dolezel traced the biography of a portable Vishnu shrine in the Halle collection. Following its journey from a Brahmin in Tirupati through Sartorius’s reframing as a “Götzenkästchen” to Gründler’s systematising hand in Halle, she showed how the object moved through successive stages of desacralisation, musealisation, and resacralisation within the collection. In her response, Paola von Wyss-Giacosa highlighted the distributed agency (Gell) at work in such transfers: the shrine arrived in Europe accompanied by a narrative treasure, and functioned simultaneously as missionary trophy and as evidence of genuine dialogue.

The concluding discussion drew the individual contributions into a wider conversation. Participants returned repeatedly to the difficulty of holding together parallels and differences across Catholic and Protestant, European and extra-European material religion without flattening the specificity of each case: Jesuit silver lamps, Pietist pharmaceuticals, Kunstkammer items, and a portable Vishnu shrine each carry their own dynamics of sacrality. A recurring concern was the question of agency – who, in any given constellation, was empowered to define a substance or object as healing, holy, ‘idolatrous’, or merely curious, and how those definitions were inscribed in inventories, catalogues, and narrative framings. Closely related was the observation that the boundaries between sacred and museal space were considerably more permeable than a straightforward secularisation narrative would suggest: objects were desacralised on entry into collections, only to be resacralised through the very apparatus of display and classification.

The workshop closed with an object handling session led by Tom Gärtig, curator of the collection, who opened the attic of the Waisenhaus where the Naturalienkammer is staged today, and gave participants the rare opportunity to engage directly with the objects held there. A carefully chosen selection had been prepared for the occasion, among them a painting of Vishnu in paradise and another of the dancing Vishnu, a glass containing a sample of kumkum, and two models of the Holy Sepulchre. The Vishnu shrine that Eva Dolezel had analysed in her paper is currently on display in the permanent exhibition and particularly captivated the group. Almost as in the eighteenth century itself, pieces were taken out of their cabinets and introduced one by one; participants were invited to ask questions, and conversations unfolded around and through the objects themselves – a fitting coda to a workshop that had spent two days thinking about the agency, mobility, and global itineraries of religious things.

10-12 September 2025, in cooperation with the Institute of Art History of the the University of Bern and the Historisches Museum Basel

“Religion to go? Material Worlds of Early Modern Faith in Motion“

The third network meeting took place at the University of Bern from 10 to 12 September 2025 in cooperation with the SNF-project “GLOBO: Global Bones: Entangled Histories, Transfers and Translations in the Early Modern Age”, led by Urte Krass, and the Historisches Museum Basel. Similar to our network, the researchers at GLOBO are interested in the mobility of religious objects, especially relics and reliquaries. You can find more information here: Link to the blog.

The workshop focussed primarily on the question of how the geographical movement of objects in various local scales, from the local to the regional and global, shaped religious attributions of meaning and practices. How were religious objects and images transformed by their physical and cultural itineraries? To what extent were they able to create connections and communities across cultural boundaries and across time?

Our third meeting began with a round table on the workshop’s topic “Religion to go?”. The participants Anne Mariss (Regensburg), Alberto Saviello (Bern), Simon Ditchfield (York), Christine Göttler (Bern), Urte Krass (Bern) and Paul Nelles (Ottawa) discussed how concepts of mobility can change our view of early modern religion and pious practices.

The transcript of the round table discussion will be available here soon!

The next day of the workshop began with a lecture by Corinna Gramatke, in which she dealt with the material and administrative dimensions of Jesuit collection practices in the early modern period. The starting point was the question of how written documents – lists, invoices, order books and inventories – can be used to reconstruct a picture of the objects in circulation, their attributions of meaning and material transformations.

At the centre of this were the procurators of the Jesuit provinces in Madrid and Rome, who were responsible for purchasing, organising and shipping objects to missions outside Europe. The written traces of their activities – notebooks, order lists, invoices, freight manifests and tax documents – provide insight into a dense network of material circulation. They include both devotional and secular objects, ranging from travel expenses to relics and apotropaic objects.

Particular attention was paid to the so-called relicario di bufalo – a reliquary made from the horn of the Italian Mediterranean buffalo, which was widely used due to its malleability. The relicarios served the missionaries not only as spiritual protection, but also as emotional support in the loneliness of distant lands. Gramatke referred to reports by Jesuits such as Juan Eusebio Nieremberg, who addressed the significance of such reliquaries in the tension between vows of poverty and religious practice – for example, the conscious decision to forego silver mountings.

The Jesuit lists thus appear not only as accounting instruments of control, but also as narrative forms of material piety in which the miraculous, the economic and the spiritual are intertwined.

The next lecture also dealt with the intertwining of artistic production, devotional practice and global exchange processes in the early modern period. Nora Guggenbühler focused on the Madonna di Trapani as an outstanding example of the trans-Mediterranean circulation of religious images. Starting with the statue of the Madonna di Trapani she traced how the cult image spread widely throughout the 16th and 17th centuries – from Sicily to Sardinia, the Iberian Peninsula, Malta and as far as Mexico. This spread was closely linked to the networks of the Carmelites, who promoted the cult of the Madonna as well as the veneration of Saint Alberto di Trapani.

In Trapani, there were over forty workshops specialising in the production of replicas of the Madonna in coral and alabaster. Coral was not only considered a precious material, but also had apotropaic properties: it served as a protective substance, especially for newborns, and was often used in amulets and protective pendants. This dual function – as a work of art and as a religious protective object – was also reflected in the numerous votive offerings collected in the Tesoro della Madonna di Trapani. The objects testified to the deep conviction in the miraculous power of the Madonna. At the same time, the spread of the Madonna di Trapani was an expression of far-reaching exchange and donation networks. Vice-kings and noble patrons had precious copies made, which they gave as gifts to monarchs, monasteries or churches.

Nora also pointed out the dual nature of the Madonna replicas: they were objects of devotion and at the same time works of art that captivated with their materiality, craftsmanship and beauty. In this way, they were able to circulate in the art and curiosity cabinets of the early modern period – as impressively demonstrated by a painting by Frans Francken (now in the Historisches Museum Frankfurt), in which a Madonna figure is depicted in a collector’s cabinet. Thus, the Madonna di Trapani was exemplary of the intertwining of piety, global mobility and material culture that characterised early modern religiosity.

Martin Christ’s lecture focused on religious and devotional spaces in early modern Vietnam and asked how transculturality and mobility were reflected in material and spatial expressions of religion. The focus was on the region of Central Vietnam, in particular the port city of Hội An, which was an important centre of international trade and cultural exchange in the early modern period.

Martin argued that religious practices and material expressions in this context were characterised less by syncretism in the sense of a complete fusion of different traditions and more by a selective appropriation and adaptation of foreign elements. A vivid example was provided by the Japanese Bridge (Chùa Cầu) in Hội An, which not only served as an architectural landmark but also housed a pagoda sanctuary. The animal figures erected there, especially dogs and monkeys, refer both to astrological and symbolic interpretations and to transregional cultural references between Japan, China and Southeast Asia.

The lecture focused on the question of how spaces were sacralised – and who carried out this sacralisation. Christ emphasised that any form of space – from a bridge to a house to a tree – could be transformed into a religious space, provided it was marked as such through rituals, objects or practices. This raised the question of whether, for example, a tree itself was considered sacred, or whether its sacredness arose only through human action and attribution.

Finally, reference was made to the British traveller John Barrow, who observed religious practices in Vietnam in the context of colonial interests and the expansion of imperial spheres of influence. His writings testify on the one hand to his fascination with local sacredness and on the other to his attempt to classify these phenomena within a Western imperial framework of interpretation. Thus, he interpreted a sacred wooden construction of a Buddha figure in a tree as the ‘snuff box’ evoked in the title.

Alberto Saviello’s lecture also dealt with the intertwining of religious systems in an Asian context. He devoted his lecture to the role of relics in the early missionary work in the Philippines and examined how these objects became carriers of faith and mediators between cultures in the context of Spanish colonial rule. The starting point was the report by the Jesuit Angelo Armano from 1601, which describes the veneration of relics in the Jesuit college in Manila. These relics had already been brought to Manila in 1591 and formed a central element of the Catholic presence in the colonial space.

Saviello showed that relics fulfilled a dual function in the early missionary efforts of the Jesuits: on the one hand, they served as instruments of faith transmission, and on the other, as symbols of colonial authority. In the confrontation with local religious traditions, especially with the so-called anitos – the ancestral figures that played a central role in the pre-Christian beliefs of the Filipino population – a complex interaction of material cult objects took place. While the missionaries presented the relics as visible signs of Christian truth, many locals interpreted them within the framework of their own religious beliefs.

Saviello paid particular attention to the hierarchisation of relics that arrived in the colonies from Spain and Rome. The most valuable pieces – such as the bodily relics of high-ranking saints – were preferably kept in Spanish settlements and in representative churches such as the Jesuit College in Manila. Smaller or less significant relics, on the other hand, ended up in peripheral areas of the mission or served as personal protective objects for missionaries.

The lecture illustrated how relics in colonial Philippines were not only material manifestations of faith, but also actors in the process of cultural translation. They stood at the intersection of Christian sacredness and indigenous spirituality, between evangelisation and the exercise of power – and thus became decisive mediators in the religious and political fabric of early modern Philippines.

In his paper, Daniel Rimsl examined the symbolic and material significance of devotional objects that were incorporated into the laying of the foundation stone of the Clarissan convent in Regensburg in 1679. The focus was on a lead box that contained the names of the abbess, prioress and nuns, as well as a number of religious objects, including coins, two wax discs, probably Agnus Dei, medals with Saint Benedict Medals, small clay figures of the Virgin Mary and tow Caravaca crosses. These objects functioned as a kind of ‘spiritual time capsule’ that not only marked the beginning of the convent, but also materialised its spiritual foundation.

Using this find, the paper showed how material objects of devotion can be understood as constitutive components of monastic identity: they established a connection between the community of the living, the saints and God, and gave the building a sacred anchorage in physical space. Comparisons with similar finds, for example from Traunstein, made it clear that this practice was by no means unique in the 17th century, but should be seen in the context of early modern piety and spiritually legitimised building activity. At the same time, the time capsule also refers to the social and hierarchical structures of religious communities, in which the material aspects of faith were simultaneously an expression of power, representation and spiritual presence.

In the final discussion, the participants reflected on mobility as a key and inclusive concept that links trade routes, religious networks, and devotional practices across the early modern world. Mobility emerged not simply as the movement of people and things, but as a transformative process that reshapes our understanding of religion itself. Through human hands, blessings, and the circulation of material objects, divine power was transmitted, translated, and sometimes disrupted. The movement of religious objects facilitated profound changes—bridging the universal and the particular, connecting distant communities while allowing for local reinterpretations.

The discussion highlighted the crucial role of matter in these dynamics: how materials, through their affordances and agency, could trigger mobility and spiritual engagement. Concepts such as translation and translocation captured the multiple forms of movement—physical, linguistic, and conceptual—that defined the early modern religious world. Participants also asked whether mobility is an inherent feature of religion itself, pointing to the Bible as a text deeply shaped by journeys and displacement.

Finally, the group explored how Christian material culture embodies a tension between movement and stasis, presence and absence. Objects, it was argued, were not merely carried through networks but were made out of movement—their meanings and powers emerging from circulation. Yet, Christianity has always been troubled by both matter and mobility: the very things that made divine presence tangible also challenged the boundaries of orthodoxy and control.

On the second day of the workshop, the group travelled to Basel to visit the Historical Museum housed in the former Barfüsserkirche, where we examined a selection of objects in greater detail. Curator Sabine Söll-Tauchert welcomed the group and guided us through the museum’s holdings, which have been displayed in the former Franciscan church since the late nineteenth century. Particular attention was drawn to the reliquaries and devotional objects, displayed in their precious containers, as well as to the impressive Palm Donkey, once used in liturgical processions.

In the lower level of the museum, we had the opportunity to explore an ideal-typical Kunstkammer, reconstructed from collections of early modern Basel citizens such as Basilius Amerbach and Felix Platter. The display vividly illustrated the collecting and knowledge culture of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in which natural specimens, scientific instruments, and exotic rarities stood side by side with religious and apotropaic objects. Among the latter were medals, coral branches, and so-called “fear stones” (Schrecksteine), believed to protect against fright and evil spells, thus bridging the realms of natural magic, devotion, and early modern science.

During an object-handling session, the group had the rare opportunity to examine selected artefacts up close and engage with them directly. Among these were an elaborately mounted Agnus Dei and two rosaries. One was made of water nuts, notable for its simple materiality, while the other consisted of coral beads and featured a small figure of St Jamescarved from jet (Spanish azabache) — a type commonly produced and sold to pilgrims in Santiago de Composteladuring the seventeenth century.

This hands-on encounter offered new insights into the materiality, craftsmanship, and traces of use of these objects, as well as into their multifaceted functions as instruments of devotion, protection, and memory. The visit to Basel thus exemplified how the religious and epistemic dimensions of early modern objects can continue to be experienced, interrogated, and recontextualized within the museum setting.

After two days of intensive collaboration and discussion, the third network meeting came to an end. We are already looking forward to continuing our work and discussions at the fourth network meeting – this time with a focus on collecting religious objects and their presentation in collections. The next workshop will take place in cooperation with the Franckesche Stiftungen in Halle from 9 to 11 April 2026!

The round table of our 3rd workshop in Prague is finally online! The network has benefited greatly from our guests Mary Laven, Ulinka Rublack and Pamela Smith and their approaches to materiality, objects and religion. They brought their years of research experience on the connecting between the manufacturing of objects and the artistic manipulation of materials in the early modern period to the round table discussion, which is now open to the public. Thanks again to the technical support of the institute of art history. thanks to all involved for making the round table such an inspiring event!

Anlässlich des 30-jährigen Jubiläums der Wiedereröffnung der Kunst- und Naturalienkammer der Franckeschen Stiftungen widmet sich die Jahresausstellung 2025 “300 Jahre Neugier. Verborgenes Wissen aus der Wunderkammer” der einzigartigen Sammlung des ehemaligen Waisenhauses. Ziel der Exposition ist es, eine Bilanz ihrer Rekonstruktion und Zugänglichmachung zu ziehen und diese Leistung zu würdigen. Darüber hinaus soll sie eine “Art Bedienungsanleitung” für die Erfahrung der Wunderkammer im 21. Jahrhundert gegeben werden:

https://www.francke-halle.de/de/ausstellung/300-jahre-neugier-verborgenes-wissen-aus-der-wunderkammer

300_Jahre_Neugier_Tagungsprogramm 27-28.11.2025

Das 4. Treffen des Netzwerks wird vom 9.-11. April 2026 in Kooperation mit den Franckeschen Stiftungen veranstaltet. Wir freuen uns schon jetzt über die einzigartige Möglichkeit, die sammlungshistorischen Themen des Netzwerks in Halle zu vertiefen und mit Expert:innen vor Ort zu diskutieren!

3-5 April 2025, in cooperation with the Institute of Art History (CAS) and Museum of Decorative Arts

“Matters of Religion: Raw Materials, Natural Resources and Craftsmanship in the Making of Religious Objects”

The network’s second meeting began with a kick-off at the Museum of Decorative Arts led by Suzanna Ivanič and Petja Matějovič. The museum houses and displays numerous objects related to the collection of Emperor Rudolf II, some of which can be seen in the modern display of the Kunstkammer. Due to her research on the material culture of religion and piety in Rudolfine Prague, Suzanna is well acquainted with the collection and was able to give us insights into the production of objects and famous artists such as the Miseroni or Castrucci. Giovanni Castrucci (in Prague 1598-1615) made the pietre dure artwork ‘View of Prague’ from agate, jasper and other precious stones. Such works not only demonstrate the high artistic ability of craftsmen around 1600, but also show us the contemporary fascination with stones, which, as products of nature, were seen as imbued with divine power. After the tour through the Kunstkammer room, we had the opportunity to see more objects from the collection. Jewellery such as this ring in the shape of two entwined hands symbolises the connection between husband and wife and bears the inscription ‘what God has joined together, let no man put asunder’. The entwined rings could only be separated by unnatural forces (more on this in Suzanna’s book ‘Cosmos and materiality’, pp. 83-85).

On Friday morning, we were able to explore in greater depth the topic of the production of religious objects and the belief in the divine nature of matter. In her paper “Motivating Matter: Gemstones, Knowledge and Craft in Sacred Bohemia”, Suzanna took us to Prague around 1600. She argued that the material, different kinds of chalcedony, itself mobilised and brought people together: stone cutters like the Miseroni, prospectors like Mathes Kratsch or David de Brusse, and a woman named Dorotha Armpachová who was in possession of agnus dei, paternosters, a fede ring and several pieces of chalcedony as well as books on natural philosophy. Understanding the material itself as an agent is a useful approach to thinking about mobility in relation to religious objects. However, Suzanna showed that the term ‘religious object’ is often not the best to apply to the material. On the basis of the writings of de Boodt and other natural philosophers, she showed that matter itself acted as an instrument for divine power.

Pamela H. Smith commented on the paper and addressed two points in particular in more depth: firstly, the imitation and counterfeiting of jasper and, secondly, the question of different ecologies of value. Using an example from the “Making and Knowing Project” (https://www.makingandknowing.org), a recipe for panelling a bed with counterfeited jasper, she drew our attention the following questions: Why is mimesis so important for early modern people? What kind of virtue do imitations have? One of her central arguments was that there are other aspects besides the pious value regimes: the epistemic and epistemological aspect of observing materials and manipulating them.

The discussion that followed centred on the question of whether there is a conflict between aesthetic and commercial interests and their relation to each other, and thus also the question of the close connection between spiritual concerns and economic ones. Sabina Brevaglieri drew our attention then to the question of how empire making and the quarrying and producing of gem stones is intertwined with political dimensions. We also addressed the question of how the global and the local were connected. That actors are actually very much concerned with knowledge about local nature has been studied by Alix Cooper in her pioneering study Inventing the Indigenous where she explores how early modern Europeans began to systematically record and document the natural world of their own regions, in part, a response to the discovery and growing popularity of exotic goods and remedies from overseas. As foreign products gained favour, European naturalists sought to emphasize the value and importance of local natural products.

In our round table discussion, the network guests Pamela Smith, Mary Laven and Ulinka Rublack gave a retrospective view of their own research and described how they used materiality in their academic work. An important point was then terminology. How can objects and materiality be described in the early modern period? Pamela emphasised that we should be attentive to the source terms. Contemporaries often talked about the properties and characteristics of materials and what they evoked, that is human ingenuity and capability. Mary reminded us of Tim Ingold’s essay “Materials Against Materiality” (https://doi.org/10.1017/S1380203807002127) where he criticized the focus on “materiality” as a fixed property of objects. But, as she emphasized, that was 2007 and pioneering projects like the “Making and Knowing Project” changed the way we understand materiality in 2025. We have long since moved away from the idea that meaning is created only by people. A beautiful example for this was provided by Ulinka: In the London church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, the so-called weeping statue used to mourn the death of the statesmen Edward Cooke (1552–1634). However, the phenomenon of the weeping stone can no longer be observed due to modern heating technique. This led us to the question of temporal mobility. What is lost over time? What is unmade or destroyed? What succumbs to decay? Ulinka drew attention to the colonial context and power asymmetries. While much was destroyed by the Spanish after the conquest of the Aztec Empire, other artefacts were preserved and came into European collections such as marvellous feather works, sculpture, painting, mosaics etc. – a phenomenon recently explored by Alessandra Russo in her book A New Antiquity(https://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-09569-1.html).

In the afternoon, we had the unique opportunity to visit the depot of the Museum of Decorative Arts and explore the shelved objects such as a watch made of etched Solnhofen stone which was missing the hand. The piece was probably made by an etcher from Regensburg, Andreas Plenninger. In the restoration rooms, we were amazed not only by the lightness of the glass, but also fascinated by the work of the restorers. Karla Frajerová explained how she restores ivory objects, using materials such as fish glue, as well as the different qualities of ivory, bone and antlers, their structure and colour. Others carefully explored rosaries, amulets and medals, and deciphered their inscriptions.

On Saturday morning, we heard Thomas Kühtreiber’s and Sabine Miesgang’s paper on “Material Manifestations of Religious Ideas: The Example of the so-called Fraisensteine from the Pilgrimage Site Sonntagberg (Lower Austria)”. The so-called “Fraisensteine” or “Schabsteine” are small oval clay objects produced by the Abbey of Seitenstetten between the early 18th and early 20th centuries. These ceramic tokens contained particles of the “Zeichenstein,” a sacred stone venerated alongside the Holy Trinity image at the Sonntagberg pilgrimage site. On the front, the stones bore an imprint of the pilgrimage image, creating both a physical and symbolic link to the sanctuary’s relics. Pilgrims could purchase these stones during their visit and use them for healing purposes—typically by scraping off powder and ingesting it like a medicine, in hopes of curing ailments. This practice closely resembles the use of the Schabmadonnen from Einsiedeln in Switzerland.

In her comment, Mary Laven observed that stones have a very special power, namely to root devotion in local spaces. She compared it to the Holy Flying house of Loreto and asked about their geographical radius of distribution. Another aspect that she invited Thomas to explore further is the close connection between dust, earth and the human body as well as the idea of divine nourishment. Further questions revolved around the extent to which the objects are comparable to Agnus dei and whether Sonntagberg wanted to rise to a kind of ‘second’ Rome in the distribution of grace. Alberto Saviello (online) raised the question of whether the legend of the shepherd who loses his flock and miraculously finds it again could also be an interpretation of the confessional conditions in the contested area of Lower Austria.

The final discussion revolved around two of the network’s core concerns. On the one hand, the question arose as to what extent the concept of mobility can help us to understand religious practices and experiences in the early modern period. Suzanna and Thomas’ papers did an excellent job of showing how the material itself was able to move people and connect them. Stones, whether they were precious stones that grew in the heart of mountains and made the landscape sacred or ‘sign stones’ that were endowed with special power through a divine miracle, were an integral part of early modern religious practice. On the other hand, as in Amsterdam, the question arose as to what is special about religious objects and how their mobility differs from the mobility of other things and acquires a quality of its own. A discussion ensued about the extent to which the concept of ‘salvation’ and ‘grace’ can be integrated more strongly into further thinking with the concept of mobility and ‘moving objects’.

These and other questions will be discussed at the third workshop in Bern/Basel!

3-4 October 2024, in cooperation with Meertens Instituut & Museum Ons’ Lieve Heer Op Solder (Our Lord in the Attic)

The first meeting in Amsterdam was devoted to the topic of the confessional upheavals of material culture in the wake of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. The prelude was a paper by network member Minou Schraven (Amsterdam). She used the example of the mystic Juana de la Cruz to explore the question of the meaning that an object acquired through indulgences and consecrations.

The blessed beads of the Spanish mystic became a great success and were in high demand among the members of the House of Habsburg and other members of the high nobility. According to Juana’s vision, the beads had been consecrated by Christ himself in heaven. Numerous other mystics in her footsteps, including Luisa de la Ascension, modeled themselves on the nun and brought miracle-working objects into circulation. The blessed crosses of Juana de la Ascension, for instance, became as popular as the blessed beads. Minou Schraven emphasised that the network of Spanish female mystics included not only the highest nobility but also churchmen and inquisitors. However, the circulation of false indulgences turned out to be problematic, and in 1637 the possession of blessed objects was banned; their production and circulation were used as arguments against canonisation.

Minou presented the results of her most recent research done during her stay in the Casa Velazquez (Madrid). Fascinating finds include a brotherhood book (Hermandad register) kept in the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid, which contains numerous signatures and whose first pages read like a Who’s Who of Spanish nobility. One of the preserved crosses of Luisa de la Ascension in the convent de Las Descalzas, on which her name is engraved, can be further contextualized by written sources such as Luisa’s inquisition trial and an inventory of Luisa’s follower and relative Ana del Rio. The document lists numerous objects that she personally received from the nun and thus sheds light on the circulation of the consecrated objects in the mystic’s social networks.

The discussion revolved around the question of the extent to which the changing treatment of the holy women (Juana remained unharmed by the Inquisition, while Luisa had to face it) also testifies to a historical change overall. In the course of the 16th century, the respective church authorities as for instance, the Spanish Inquisition, were confronted with the task of controlling the handling of sacred and venerated as miraculous objects; in the wake of the Council of Trent, canonisations were regulated and subjected to a complex process. Another point of discussion was the afterlife of the objects and the only slow effectiveness of prohibition measures – often the consecrated objects were venerated by the faithful long after the death of the persons and despite ecclesiastical prohibitions.

Charles Caspers then gave a presentation of his book ‘The Miracle of Amsterdam. A Biography of a contested devotion’ (2019), which tells the story of a host that has been around for over 500 years. It was first made in 1345 and miraculously survived a fire. Soon, a chapel was built on the spot that became a place of pilgrimage; the event turned into an urban festival. It was only the Alteration (Alteratie) in 1578, in the course of which Amsterdam’s Catholic city counsel was desposed in favor of a Protestant one, that put an end to the veneration of the host in public. However, since more than half of the city’s population remained Catholic, the veneration was not forgotten. Rather, Catholics invented creative ways to continue venerating the host. Since processions with candles and banners were forbidden, the Stille Umgang (Silent Walk) was established, which is still performed every year in March.

Since the early modern period, the public image and the way the city has been presented has been that of a cosmopolitan city granting religious freedom to its citizens. In recent years, historical works have contributed to a more differentiated image. Carolina Lenarduzzi, who was a guest at our workshop, has examined the question of how Catholics were able to practice their faith when it was forbidden in public. One of these possibilities, for example, was to attend Catholic masses in the numerous hidden churches within the city. One of these hidden churches has been preserved in the attic of one of the canal houses and is now the Museum Ons Lieve Heer op Solder (Museum of Our Lord in the Attic).

The church preserved in the museum today was founded by the German merchant Jan Hartman and was inaugurated in 1663. In the course of the Great Alteration, all the churches were converted into Protestant places of worship, and the Catholics had no choice but to celebrate mass and all church ceremonies in the town houses. This way of secretly practising the faith was tolerated by the Protestant city council. Climbing the narrow stairs and passing through the merchant’s living quarters, the group reaches the church in the attic. It is equipped with everything that belongs in a church: pews, an organ, liturgical implements and altarpieces.

Friday morning started with two papers by Roisin Watson (Oxford) and Natalie Krentz (Frankfurt) on the handling of mobile and immobile objects by Lutherans. Roisin took the altarpiece in Blaubeuren (in the then duchy of Württemberg) and the changing responses to it as an opportunity to reflect on the ‘preserving power of Lutheranism’ – a concept that she believes needs to be further sharpened and deepened. In her paper, she traced the individual steps that were necessary for this altar to survive the Reformation more or less unchanged and to be preserved to this day. While in the first phase in the 16th century it was mainly due to fortunate circumstances and the motives of individual actors, in the 17th century it was more strongly due to confessional-political reasons that the altar was preserved. Over time, the altarpiece became a local attraction for travellers who admired it for its artistic design. Roisin emphasised the contingent nature of material survival and that the power to preserve it consisted in individual acts that had to be repeatedly articulated and performed.

Natalie concentrated on Nuremberg and the question of how people dealt with sacred objects after the early introduction of the Reformation in the city. In doing so, she problematised the Lutheran concept of ‘adiaphora’, the indifference towards objects and images. The handling of formerly sacred objects was adapted to the various contexts. While some objects remained in the now Protestant churches , such as the grave monument of St. Sebald or the Angelic Salutation by Veit Stoß , others were transferred to the municipal collection. Interestingly enough, Catholic visitors to the church of St Laurence like for instance the imperial marshal Ottavio Piccolomini were more surprised by the ‘Protestant’ chairs than by the preservation of artworks with Catholic imagery. In the municipal collection, however, the presentation and perception of formerly sacred objects was quite different. Here, liturgical objects, Indian ‘idols’ and Lutheran ‘memorabilia’ were transferred into a common collection context serving to raise curiosity about different religions, but also to commemorate and visualise the city’s past. It is noteworthy that the display of non-European objects within the municipal collection stimulated the discussion about religion in Europe, thus challenging Western ideas about the divine.

Prompted and inspired by Andrew Spicer’s (Oxford) comment on both papers, a debate about the core questions followed: What makes an object confessional, or rather, are there confessional objects at all? Was there ever anything that annoyed Lutherans regarding religious materiality? To what extent did the objects have agency and what is specific about the agency of religious objects in contrast to other, rather ‘secular’ objects? Did sacred objects lose their potency as a result of being transferred to collections, and if so, to what extent was this also perceived as such by the visitors?

These and other questions will certainly be on our minds at the next network meetings. The second meeting in Prague is currently being prepared, and more information will be available here soon!

Some impressions of religious objects and images from the collection of the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam… enjoy!

Mapping «dissonant objects»: religious material agencies between Italy, the Iberian Peninsula and the Holy Land

Sabina Brevaglieri (Humboldt Universität, Berlin), Massimo Carlo Giannini (Universidad Complutense de Madrid-Università di Teramo); Lina Scalisi (Università di Catania)

The project is targeted to a internationally peer reviewed, open access, book on Mapping «dissonant objects»: religious material agencies between Italy, the Iberian Peninsula, and the Holy Land to be finally submitted in Spring 2026.

The project will be developed during 2025 in two workshops in Madrid (Universidad Complutense) and Venice (Columbia University, Casa Muraro), expected to take place respectively in May/June and November/December 2025.

For more details see the project description.

Please, send a 200-word abstract and a biopic to sabina.brevaglieri[at]hu-berlin.de by 30 October 2024.

On 20th September the virtual workshop “Catholicism in Transit: Exploring Mobility and Exchange in the Early Modern World“ will take place online. A Zoom link will be circulated to registered participants (catholicismintransi[at]gmail.com).

Dingliche Gottesliebe. Die Materialität religiöser Emotionen im Christentum, Judentum und Islam, hg. von Ulrike Gleixner (Wolfenbütteler Hefte 41)

Mit Beiträgen von Ulrike Gleixner, Anne Mariss, Cornelia Aust, Xenia von Tippelskirch, Christine Göttler, Sara Kuehn und Peter J. Bräunlein

International Workshop, Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History, Rome February 4-5, 2025

The ProJesArt Research Group Agents: Jesuit Procurators and Alternative Channels for Artistic Circulation in the Hispanic World (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid), in collaboration with Prof. Tristan Weddigen (Bibliotheca Hertziana), invite proposals from specialists on Italian material culture and Iberian and Latin American viceregal art to explore new methodological perspectives related to the transnational circulations of devotional objects that travelled between the Iberian world and Rome from the 16th to the 18th centuries.

[…]

Click here for a full version of the CfP https://www.biblhertz.it/3493560/240319_CFP_Transnational-Circulations-of-Devotional-Objects