Work group Religious practice and cultural knowledge

This work group deals with projects dedicated to questions of religious practice and cultural knowledge. Starting from the Imperium Romanum of late Antiquity, its geographical focus lies in Central and Western Europe.

Our research also focuses on regions and cultures beyond the Byzantine Empire, however. The main aspect of this thematic focus - form, dynamics and media of intercultural contacts, mechanisms of knowledge transmission and its implications for group specific religious identities - are thus analysed from a different perspective than that deployed by the other work groups. The period under consideration by this work group starts with the beginnings of the veneration of saints in the 2nd century and spans from the Carolingian period until the Late Middle Ages. Individual studies, in the process, emphasise different periods.

Questions pertaining to the exchange between early Byzantine and the West are of fundamental significance: Which effects did the transferred media develop? What kind of knowledge about Byzantine was transmitted together with them into the West? Thus, deductions about the shifting perceptions in the West of the Byzantine Empire are possible. At the same time, if less intensely, the opposite direction of the exchange, from the West to Byzantine, is contemplated. Here, the ways and actors of transmission and transference play a major role.

The early veneration of saints from the perspective of a still "unified" church and the different meanings / significances of these saints in East and West constitute our point of departure. To this end, hagiographic literature and its translation, and the development of individual cults are considered in depth. In the ecclesiastical-religious field, the subsequent process of "alienation" provokes the question of which ("imported") saints were actually still venerated in the West. Here, we are also interested in preferences of certain groups of persons, since local veneration of saints became increasingly important - especially in Gaul. In this process, Rome gained centre stage as a religious point of reference. The hagiography of Frankia is used as a source for development and change in the veneration of saints. But it also begs the question to what extent hagiographic transmission served as a store of knowledge precisely in the context of increasing alienation of the West from religious practice and culture of the East. This store would have registered names, terms, institutions and practices of the Eastern Church without complex cultural contextualisation, similar to archaeological artefacts, and would have allowed for their transmission.

In this context the development of liturgy is particularly insightful. Our work group therefore also includes projects on the tradition and use of liturgical equipment in East and West, and on music and musical practice with special consideration of the organ as an instrument used both in sacral and profane areas.