DFG Research Unit 5138 „Spiritual Intermediality in the Early Modern Era“

Funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation), the research unit 5138, “Spiritual Intermediality in the Early Modern Era”, analyses intermedial representations and the dissemination of religious content and practices from the sixteenth to the early eighteenth centuries. This analysis employs a novel approach that is rooted in extensive collaboration across various fields, including German, English, Italian and French literary studies; historical musicology; art history; history; Ethiopian studies; and Protestant and Catholic theology. The research unit thereby forms a transdisciplinary collaboration to innovatively explore early modern intermediality within spiritual and religious discourses.

Six interdisciplinary subprojects closely collaborate to investigate the intermediality of religious artefacts, focusing particularly on artefacts in which the fusion and interaction of the involved media generate a surplus of semantic and aesthetic value, thus enhancing the experience of piety. The range of cultural artefacts in focus consists of sacred music; combinations of words and images including the ars emblematica; the theory and practice of meditation aspiring to internal and external imagery; dramatic plays dealing with sacred subject matters; and religious processions.

 While the research unit builds on existing concepts of intermediality, it develops them further in light of the specifically religious contexts within which these intermedial constellations unfold. This is a necessary prerequisite for proper hermeneutical, philological, and theological description and analysis of the diverse manifestations of early modern spiritual intermediality. Therefore, all subprojects are based on the following assumptions: Firstly, early modern religious practices were fundamentally media practices. Secondly, the intermedial configurations in spiritual artefacts operating on the horizontal level always relate to a vertical dimension of divine intermediality, most fully embodied in the figure of Christ.

The research unit consists of six subprojects, each led by interdisciplinary teams, along with one coordination subproject. In total, there are 13 principal investigators and 12 research assistants involved in the unit. The research is further supported and enriched by international guest researchers (Mercator Fellows). This research unit is part of the University of Hamburg's emerging field "The Early Modern World", which is aligned with the University's job development plan. Within this framework, two additional collaborative projects funded by the German Research Foundation and various individual projects are also included.