The symposium aims to trace the role of the body during the religious upheavals of the European Reformation. As well as investigating the Protestant and Catholic bodily discourses and practices of particular regional constellations, it also seeks to open up cross-confessional and cross-religious perspectives on how the Reformation(s) and Counter-Reformation(s) led to particular corporeal norms and habits. It explores how this played out in a range of religious contexts, and the contribution that this made to the erection–and blurring–of religious boundaries and to the process of identity formation. The symposium aims to foreground the methodological challenges entailed in studying the pious body in early modern history and to build upon the insights of existing work in the field. By bringing together scholars from across Europe and North America to examine these themes comparatively, it hopes to initiate new conversations and foster fresh research.

A report of the conference is available on H-Soz-Kult (in German).