Preliminary Programme

Wed 24 March
    11.00 - 12.15
    12.30 - 13.45
    14.30 - 15.45
    16.00 - 17.15

Thu 25 March
    11.00 - 12.15
    12.30 - 13.45
    14.30 - 15.45
    16.00 - 17.15

Fri 26 March
    11.00 - 12.15
    12.30 - 13.45
    14.30 - 15.45
    16.00 - 17.15

Sat 27 March
    11.00 - 12.15
    12.30 - 13.45
    14.30 - 15.45
    16.00 - 17.00

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Thursday 25 March 2021 12.30 - 13.45
K-6 REL07 The Religious Sensorium. Addressing Non-textual Realms of Faith
K
Network: Religion Chair: Marina Hilber
Organizer: Tine Van Osselaer Discussant: Marina Hilber
Maria Heidegger : “The Sound of Religion” about the Listening to Noisy Suffering in the Sanatorium - the Example of Catholic Tyrol in the 19th Century
The Medical Humanities have only recently become interested in the history of sensual cultures. So far, however, medical historians doing research based on texts and objects have not addressed historical “soundscapes” in medical spaces such as sanatoriums, hospitals and mental asylums. Doing research at the crossroads of the history of ... (Show more)
The Medical Humanities have only recently become interested in the history of sensual cultures. So far, however, medical historians doing research based on texts and objects have not addressed historical “soundscapes” in medical spaces such as sanatoriums, hospitals and mental asylums. Doing research at the crossroads of the history of medicine and religion I am particularly interested in non-textual realms of religious emotions within Tyrolean medical spaces of the 19th century. Nevertheless, my approach to acoustic phenomena of the past must be based on texts in which sounds from suffering patients are reflected, e.g. their prayers, supplications, recitations of litanies of the rosary, chanting religious songs, reading aloud, sermonizing. On the one hand, I use historical medical case-files, on the other reports from visitors and descriptions of institutions to ask: Which or how much religious background noises were tolerated within more-or-less secularized realms of medicine, what was categorized as noise, as noisy religious madness? What significance was attached to silence for the healing process? What about the mobilizing power of sounds in medicine and religion? Did noisy—or silent religiousness on the part of Catholic patients move to a listening compassion on the part of the doctors and nurses who were often Catholic sisters of religious orders? And what was the position of the institutional chapel within the specific soundscape of the historical sanatorium? I aim to introduce some ideas of the still marginal research field of the history of hearing (Müller, 2011; Morat et al., 2017) to a shared regional history of religion and medicine. (Show less)

Leonardo Rossi : Performing the Passion: Forbidden Sensorial Practices in Surviving Religious Material
On Wednesday 17 December 1924, the Cardinals of the Holy Office established by official decree that commodities, personal objects, documents belonging to Ester Moriconi were to be confiscated and destroyed. Two days earlier (in feria II), Inquisitors unanimously declared that the preternatural phenomena of Ester (stigmata, ecstasies, and visions) were ... (Show more)
On Wednesday 17 December 1924, the Cardinals of the Holy Office established by official decree that commodities, personal objects, documents belonging to Ester Moriconi were to be confiscated and destroyed. Two days earlier (in feria II), Inquisitors unanimously declared that the preternatural phenomena of Ester (stigmata, ecstasies, and visions) were the outcome of hysteria and pious illusion, and could not in any way be attributed to divine grace. Ester and the material evidence of her phenomena should have fallen into the damnatio memoriae.
However, the Augustinian nuns of the Roman convent of the Seven Sorrows, challenging the threat of excommunication, secretly preserved the sources of Ester’s Fridays of Passion. On these days, she staged her personal embodiment of the Via Crucis in a public scene that culminated in visible and physical stigmatization. Written testimonies, letters, bloody linens kept as relics, show how bystanders considered her performances a direct religious experience.
Recent studies on material culture and religious bodies allow us to analyze the surviving objects linked to her corporeal mystical experiences and censored sources on religious practices adopted by the ‘living saint’ and her community (Meyer, 2006; Clever and Ruberg, 2014).
Studying these unique sources (letters, relics, devotional objects and the body itself) through an approach based on the material and sensational forms, we shall improve our knowledge of the Moriconi case and the popular practices of the so-called ‘deviant devotion’ (Margry, 2004 and 2006) in early twentieth-century Italy. (Show less)

Kristof Smeyers : Cloth, Cotton, Social Fabric. Weaving together Material and Sensory Experiences of Religious Supernatural Phenomena in Early Twentieth-century English Local and Transnational Communities
Recent work on the popularity of religious supernaturalism in early twentieth-century England has convincingly done away with long-lived notions of ‘resurgence’ and ‘revival’ in the context of the First World War (e.g. Davies, A supernatural war (2018)), drawing attention instead to continuities and evolutions in faith experiences. These have primarily ... (Show more)
Recent work on the popularity of religious supernaturalism in early twentieth-century England has convincingly done away with long-lived notions of ‘resurgence’ and ‘revival’ in the context of the First World War (e.g. Davies, A supernatural war (2018)), drawing attention instead to continuities and evolutions in faith experiences. These have primarily focused on practices, emotions, and objects at the frontline; religious materiality ‘at home’ in this period has hitherto been understudied, despite its formative function in the creation and dynamic of local communities. In this paper I aim to show that the study of everyday objects such as pieces of cloth and seemingly mundane sensory experiences such as walking the dog could play a vital role in English communities centred around religious individuals who displayed extraordinary supernatural phenomena. Turning away from moments of revelation and conversion, particular emphasis goes instead to the material and sensory impact of long-lasting 'exposure' to the religious supernatural on people's day-to-day lives, and the material, affective and communal ways in which they tried to ‘make sense’ of the inexplicable. Two case studies from the First World War—one woman in Leeds, one woman in London; both fulfilling a profound social function in their communities when, first, they were miraculously cured from life-threatening ailments and, subsequently, bore the wounds of Christ—will provide a window into the ordinary strangeness of living with a religious supernatural phenomenon in local and transnational contexts: quotidian experiences that become visible in their complexity only when incorporating material and sensory expressions. (Show less)

Tine Van Osselaer : The Corpse as Evidence? Exhuming Bodies in Search of Proof of the Divine
The haptic and visual aspects of modern Catholic devotional culture have primarily been studied from an intra-religious perspective, as variations on older practices and ideas. In this presentation, I argue that we need to go beyond this religious realm and look at how other visual, olfactory and tactile cultures have ... (Show more)
The haptic and visual aspects of modern Catholic devotional culture have primarily been studied from an intra-religious perspective, as variations on older practices and ideas. In this presentation, I argue that we need to go beyond this religious realm and look at how other visual, olfactory and tactile cultures have informed ‘Catholic’ views. More in particular, I address the ways in which corpses have functioned as proof of divine intervention e.g. as material evidence of miraculous cures (e.g. healed bones), or of the saintly nature of the deceased (supported by their incorrupt state, or the sweet smell they produce) in the nineteenth and twentieth century, an era in which there was an increasing emphasis on medical expertise in the evaluation of e.g. apparitions or saintly individuals in canonization processes. Focus is on the cases in which the ‘peace’ of the body was disturbed (after the burial), e.g. by the ecclesiastical and public authorities and/or by the devotees, eager to promote a cause. A closer analysis of the reports of these exhumations will show how seeing and touching of this ‘material proof’ by the faithful was informed by medical and religious knowledge. (Show less)



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