Saints and Shaping of Religious Identities

Project leads: Prof. Dr. Mirko Breitenstein

This bilateral cooperation was devised between two research groups with complementary on-going projects and research interests concerning hagiography and the institutional history of religious orders. We aim to shape the research in this area by studying hagiographic texts within their religious environment. The innovative aspect of our project concerns the connection between hagiography and identity, looking at how religious and social circumstances affected the composition and content of the text. In other words, we seek to analyse how the text functionally reflected the ideas and programs of creating religious identities. Saints often stood in the centre of spiritual, cultural and political histories on local and trans-regional levels, providing both religious and lay communities with role models of behaviour and of social relations. Furthermore, the texts that formulated these models were not only media that transmitted the notion of sanctity, but they also mirrored and formulated the specific visions of organisation of religious communities. Also, by writing about the saints, the authors were (re)creating the visions of idealised past and present times, in which their main heroes (saints) were placed, thus transmitting their ideas of how Christian society in general should function. Hence, we consider the hagiographic texts not only as a spiritual message, but also a functional and programmatic text from which we learn historical concepts of order, authority, rules, emotions, virtues, institutions, systems of governance, and, ultimately, of God. All these features of a hagiographic text shape the identity of religious communities and the lay societies that interacted with them.

Our primary goal is to create an open access anthology, in which we will present the different ways to approach sources as functional texts. It will comprise twelve case studies of saints with commentaries on sources including the explication of our methodology. Furthermore, we will organise four workshops to discuss the materials, i.e. the methodologies, content, and research results. These will be, consequently, integrated into the anthology. The workshops will be dedicated to the following topics: Workshop 1. Saints within religious orders: saints and institutional identity; Workshop 2. Mobility of saints and diachronic changes in the notion of sanctity; Workshop 3. Saints as the bridge between lay and religious communities: the impact of saints on medieval society; Workshop 4. Material dimension of the sainthood. Two of the workshops will take part in Dresden (workshops 1 and 3), and two in Zagreb (workshops 2 and 4). These workshops will be essential to realise the primary goal – the composition of the anthology. During our first workshop, we will agree on the concrete structure and editing standards of the anthology, and define the types of texts that will be incorporated. At each of the following sessions (workshops 2–4), the two working groups will choose four case studies of saints (twelve in total) that fit the pre-ordered typology. The workshops and the work on the anthology will strengthen the links between the German and Croatian working groups. By realising these activities the project will firmly connect the research traditions of Germany and Croatia, and make initial steps towards the comparative studies of Western and Central European lands. Furthermore, it will improve the connection of Zagreb and Dresden universities. We will also organise a teaching exchange to promote the studies of hagiography and the methodologies that these two groups are developing within the project. Members of the German team will hold seminars within the classes offered at the University of Zagreb by members of the Croatian team. Members of the Croatian team will hold seminars at the Dresden University of Technology.

All the pre-activities for realising project have been made: the two groups already discussed the form and goals of the project, both via Zoom meetings and in person in October 2021 in Zagreb. Furthermore, members of the two groups already co-organised conferences and workshops, where the initial dialogue and ideas about this project were devised. The complementarity of the two research teams can be seen in the fact that each group conducts research on saints and religious institutions at their home universities. The workshops and the work on the anthology will give us the chance for comparing the results and connecting the research efforts more closely. This project offers opportunity for early career scholars to engage with the workshop discussions and work on the preparation of the anthology. Both sides gather scholars on MA, PhD, and postdoc level as well as professors and assistant professors. Moreover, students from both universities will be involved in the activities of the workshops and encouraged to present their own papers considering the workshop subjects.

A distinct benefit of the project is that the anthology, available online, will be easily accessible and offered to scholars (for their research and teaching activities), students, and all other interested parties. The joint work on the anthology and within the workshops offers a possibility to both universities to strengthen their networking and to encourage further mobility between their staff and students. By encouraging mobility, both sides will have another opportunity to exchange knowledge and to familiarise themselves with the different approaches to research in Germany and Croatia. Moreover, the project is intended as a starting point for applying for the COST funding to increase our research network (by including other partners worldwide). The two groups will continue updating the online anthology by adding new materials. Finally, a conference shall be jointly organised in 2025. The members of the two teams already co-organised a conference together in the past, and we plan to continue this kind of cooperation on the subject of hagiography.

(Marko Jerković)