Conference: Wachen und Erinnern in religiösen Gemeinschaften der Vormoderne (1300 – 1700)

The conference focuses on the interplay between vigilance and remembrance in religious communities. In pre-modern religious communities, vigilance played a central role, for example in introspection as a means of controlling one's own mind and in mutual observation within the community for the purpose of control and discipline. Vigilance encompasses various practices of watching, such as waking up, guarding, or supervising. Remembering refers to the preservation, reconstruction, and interpretation of the past. In religious communities, it included rituals such as commemorating the dead or codifying communal experiences.                                                                                                                                                                     The connection between watching and remembering refers to fundamental mechanisms of identity formation, preservation of tradition, and social cohesion, which were important for communities of different religions and denominations. These practices mediated between individual piety and collective memory culture. Waking and remembering complemented each other and contributed to community life both physically and mentally; however, little importance has been attached to their interconnection until now. At the conference, we will focus our attention on the specific forms of expression and functions of vigil and remembrance in various religious traditions and their influence on social and cultural structures. Through an interdisciplinary examination of the topic, we hope to develop and discuss new perspectives on the connection between vigil and remembrance.

The program can be found here.