Interdisciplin­ary workshop "Use and understanding of the Lord's Prayer in the Middle Ages [Verwendung und Verständnis des Vaterunsers im Mittelalter], Tübingen, September 25–26, 2025

Use and understanding of the Lord's Prayer in the Middle Ages

The Lord's Prayer is of timeless and interdenominational relevance: in Christian tradition, it is the prayer attributed to Jesus Christ himself and is already given in its specific wording in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. As a result, since the earliest Christian testimonies, it has attained the status of that central prayer which it still holds today throughout Christendom. It has always been regarded as the ideal prayer (Luke 11:1–4) and the norm for prayer (Matthew 6:9) and, as a result, has enjoyed great historical continuity: ecclesiastical authorities in the Middle Ages therefore used it as a benchmark for basic Christian knowledge across different eras. At the same time, it has been repeatedly interpreted and updated in order to remain relevant in the face of changing cultural contexts and requirements. Accordingly, the Lord's Prayer provides insights into the religious ideas and experiences of the Middle Ages specific to that period, as well as into the change in beliefs and practices in a diachronic comparison.

Due to its great cultural influence, research into this prayer, its use and interpretation leads to interesting intersections between lived practice, catechetical instruction and theological reflection. Consequently, the Lord's Prayer is a genuinely interdisciplinary subject of study and offers points of contact for various fields of research, which this workshop will bring together for the first time. The different cultural and social-historical perspectives will be discussed in five sections: Teaching – Commenting – Representing – Translating – Praying.

The workshop is organised by a (post)doctoral research group that was formed in Tübingen in 2022 and is conducting interdisciplinary research into the use and understanding of the Lord's Prayer (https://thiger.libripendis.eu/). It is being organised in cooperation with the Theological University of Reutlingen, the Centre for Pre-Modern Europe (Prof. Dr. Andrea Worm), the Centre for Religion, Culture and Society (CRCS) and the Research Centre for Late Antiquity/Early Middle Ages, and is also sponsored by the University Association of Tübingen e.V.

Guests are welcome, and online participation is also possible. If you are interested, please register at: here.

You can find the program here