Preliminary Programme

The practice of donating large funds to religious institutions depicts a constitutive element for medieval religious, economic and cultural belongings. The important question is what kind of benefit for the individual or the group resulted from the maintenance of such forms of belongings? My paper deals with various forms of urban memory practice in the duchies of Austria and the kingdom of Bohemia, mostly based on written source material caused by legal acts like last wills and testimonies or foundation letters. Different forms of relations are activated – but also deactivated – by the exchange of material and the negotiation and production of immaterial resources such as competencies, prestige or access to forms of belonging. What kind of institution do the city’s inhabitants serve as a place of remembrance? Why do they choose either a monastic, an ecclesiastical or a charitable institution? How do familiar, personal or economic relations reflect on urban memory practice? The success of a foundation depends on the strength and the duration of these relationships. Chapel and altar, anniversary and memorial donations, as well as donations of material culture only fulfil their purpose of long term, and eventually eternal memory, if the mechanisms of binding social ties and responsibilities are kept in place. One’s own religious and cultural connectedness but also the city’s institutional and economic connections to other towns/cities can be and are solidified, protected and expanded through these acts of belonging. (Show less)

My paper addresses the memory-charged readings of the triangular relationship between inscription, image and architecture in urban religious setting. Using examples from Austrian and Bohemian towns, I will look at meaning and possible motivation behind the creation of public inscriptions written on urban artworks and architectural monuments with public access. I will demonstrate how the inscriptions and accompanying images shaped the understanding of the particular monument, the space, where it was written, and its original investment; how they contributed to the construction of the common past; and, in some cases, how their interpretations evolved in the later period. My study aims at comparative investigation of different modi of urban memory keeping and sharing, as they manifest in the inscriptions on the religious artefacts and architecture. For this purpose, I take the individual examples of public inscriptions on urban monuments that are spotlighted out of the broader context of the towns’ respective topographies in order to demonstrate the manifold repertoire of the urban memory practices through monuments. (Show less)

The religious ethos of medieval people revolved around a serious concern about the fate of one’s soul after death. However, beyond general strategies known all over in medieval Europe for reaching the desired eternal heavenly peace, several local factors and considerations at work in a given community could affect the tools chosen by its members to reach this spiritual end. The paper intends to address the issues of urban spiritual economy and memory practices through the analysis of last will donations in the western region of the late medieval Kingdom of Hungary. Using examples from a few free royal towns, the presentation tries to highlight temporal changes and social affordability of the various pious acts. In addition, it will be also addressed how far (in geographical distance as well as in time) local memorial economy could have reached, what forms it took and through which channels it could have operated in the investigated urban surroundings. In addition, since several building activity (churches, altars) and the existence of the smaller institutions (confraternities, hospitals, altars) depended not only on life time support but also on such testamentary bequests it is also an issue whether and if then how preferences and the urban memory topography has changed through time. (Show less)

Religion always had its place in early modern society – a most important one. Since the religious developments of the sixteenth century, though, a new intensity of religious zeal arose. The reformation and the confessionalisation processes triggered a combative atmosphere all across Europe – e.g. Catholics, Lutherans, Calvinists, Huguenots, Anglicans, Puritans, Quakers, and other new religious groups began to catechise, and to prosecute those not belonging to their own religious movements. Research on these developments is extensive.
But almost never has it been considered, in how far and in which ways children and youth were expected to grow up according to the respective religious ideals of the various denominations and, at the same time, according to ideals of a more profane kind. However, socialisation covers intended aspects of growing up, like education, as well as unanticipated effects of growing up, such as those resulting from conflicting norms. In this paper I would like to present a section of my current dissertation research project on socialisation ideals, focusing mainly on the impact of the seven deadly sins on such ideals as being represented in written sources of urban elites of the French city of Bordeaux especially. (Show less)

In principle, the purpose of a pious donation was to secure „memoria“ on basis of exchanging gift and counter-gift: initiator and recipient of the donation thus stood in a relationship of mutual obligations. These obligations, which usually meant remembrance in prayer and reading services for the souls of the deceased, were - among other means - recalled by donation of precious liturgical manuscripts. In most cases, individuals wanted to be kept in active memory of ecclesiastical or monastic communities by financing manuscripts, however, also groups of people appeared as donors of liturgical books from the late Middle Ages onwards. This paper will focus on the preferred species for joint manuscript donations and investigate illuminated Bohemian choir books of the 16th century, whose decorated pages were financed by individual members of a social or religious group, e.g. of guilds and brotherhoods. The richly illuminated graduals of the literary brotherhoods - brotherhoods of educated citizens who cared for liturgical singing in utraquist worship - represent a special Bohemian feature at the turn of late medieval to early modern times. Common singing was (and is) in many ways an expression of togetherness and an important means of group formation by setting up acoustic identity. The study aims to demonstrate how the two means, chant combined with illumination, the auditive, active combined with the visual, passive, served the pious memory of specific donors, but also expressed enduring togetherness in common worship at its best, building bridges between past and present and thus forming solid base for social and religious communities within urban societies. (Show less)