FOVOG Newsletter 2/2022
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04.04.2022
 

FOVOG Newsletter 2/2022

We are pleased to be able to send you this second FOVOG newsletter 2022 today right at the beginning of the summer term here at TU Dresden. We hope that you are all doing well during this trying times.
Relocation of FOVOG

Summer term 2022

Conferences

Publications

Miscellaneous

 

Relocation of FOVOG

Since the last newsletter, the FOVOG has relocated.

Our new premises are located in Budapester Straße 34b. We are looking forward to welcoming visitors there. With our new, more spacious premises, we hope to be able to accommodate new projects' needs and also to be able to welcome more fellows for a stimulating exchange.
 
» Map
 

Summer Term 2022

Courses in Summer term 2022

In the upcoming summer term, two courses will again be offered by FOVOG staff. These are the exercises "Franziskus von Assisi im Spielfilm" (Francis of Assisi in Feature Films) and "Klöster im Kino" (Monasteries in Cinema). The latter will be offered in cooperation with Dr. Annette Teufel from the Chair of Media Studies and Modern German Literature.
 
» read more

Francis of Assisi in Feature Films (Franziskus von Assisi im Spielfilm)

Francis of Assisi is one of the most important figures of the Middle Ages. As the son of wealthy parents, he renounced all possessions and worldly dignities and instead lived with social outcasts. Initially ridiculed as an outsider, he was nevertheless quickly joined by women and men who, following his example, wanted to lead a life of poverty and penance, but also in direct discipleship of Christ. In just a few years, one of the largest religious and social movements of the time was born. As a symbolic figure of a non-conformist life, Francis engaged people far beyond his own time to engage with his life and also became the main character in films for cinema and television in the 20th and 21st centuries.
 
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Monasteries in Cinema (Klöster im Kino)

Monasteries are places where people have lived differently at all times. They are places of silence and prayer, but also cultural, scientific or economic centres. Even if their social significance has clearly receded in the modern age, monasteries still stand for a certain life model of the search for meaning - in their case, the search for God. The fact that monasteries are still generally known as places of otherness today, despite their increasing disappearance, is largely due to their presence in film.
This course is offered jointly by FOVOG and the Chair of Media Studies and Modern German Literature. Within this framework, students will not only be able to familiarise themselves with the world of monasteries and religious orders, but also receive an introduction to the methods of analysing feature films and documentaries - because understanding how films work also means understanding how our cultural memory is filled. In addition to the monasteries, the seminar will also focus on theories of fictional spaces, which monasteries exemplify in film. Building on this, the semiotisation of cinematic spaces and the cinematic reflection of the change in meaning of these 'other spaces' in the context of social developments will be examined.
 
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Film series at Kino im Kasten (KiK)

Cinema is a place that opens up worlds - metaphorically, but always also in real terms. Films not only show images, they produce them and in this way shape our cultural memory. In films we see what otherwise remains hidden from us - at the price, of course, that they in turn cover up such images that we have formed from reading or our own observation.

Admittedly, for most people in the 21st century, monasteries are places they do not know from their own experience - at least those that not only present themselves as museums, but in which women or men still live according to a fixed and binding order, i.e. monastically. So it can be said: what we know about monasteries, we know very essentially through media mediation, whereby film has a special role to play. It is comparatively unimportant whether it is a historical film set in the Middle Ages or a current crime scene. What both have in common is the character of what is portrayed: Monasteries are always different.

Why monasteries are different and how this otherness is presented is now to be experienced and understood in the cinema itself: In the coming summer semester, the Research Center for Comparative History of Religious Orders (FOVOG) at the TU Dresden would like to start a two-semester film series "Monasteries in the Cinema" together with Kino im Kasten (KiK), the TU's student-run university cinema. In particular, feature films will be shown in which monastic life is the central subject, but also selected documentaries.

Such an approach lends itself for several reasons: On the one hand, monasteries are a phenomenon with a long history and in constant exchange with the world around them. On the other hand, they function as spaces of mystery and secrecy, despite the fact that they have been highly influential in society for a long time. This makes monasteries projection surfaces not only for needs but also for fantasies.

Even if their social significance has clearly receded in the modern age, monasteries still stand for a certain life model of searching - traditionally for God, today perhaps more generally for meaning. They are places of silence and prayer, but also cultural, scientific or economic centres. They are places of retreat, but have played a significant role in shaping the world over the centuries. They are places that always belong to other, otherworldly spaces - the transcendent. The fact that monasteries as places of otherness are nevertheless generally known and occupied with certain ideas today, despite their increasing real disappearance, is largely due to their presence in film.

The film series begins on 2 May at 8 p.m. in the KiK with Jacques Rivette's film version of Diderot's "The Nun" (1966) - an impressive film about the urge for freedom and social conventions, which caused such a stir when it was released that it was immediately banned again. It becomes clear that monasteries still move the modern age.

Programme:
02.05.2022: Die Nonne (Suzanne Simonin, la religieuse de Diderot), dir. Jacques Rivette (1966)

15.05.2022: Franziskus (Francesco), dir. Liliana Cavani (1989)

30.05.2022: Von Menschen und Göttern (Des hommes et des dieux), dir. Xavier Beauvois (2010)

13.06.2022: Ida, dir. Paweł Pawlikowski (2013)

27.06.2022: Der Name der Rose (The Name of the Rose), dir. Jean-Jacques Annaud (1986)
 
» Read more
 
» Article in TU Dresden's Universitätsjournal (German)
 

Conferences

© IMAFO

Rare and Widely Disseminated Texts as Tools of Shaping Individual and Collective Identities of Religious Communities

The workshop “Rare and Widely Disseminated Texts as Tools of Shaping Individual and Collective Identities of Religious Communities” that took place on February 24 2022 at IMAFO in Vienna suggested to explore how various texts participated in the construction of religious identities and what was the impact of these processes on single communities as well as on religious congregations and religious orders. Two sessions focused on shaping of regional identities and institutional identities, and the analysed texts embraced the period from the Early to the Late Middle Ages. A special emphasis has been placed on the role of these texts in reinforcing local identities of religious institutions and/or in shaping a common spiritual culture through appealing to more general regional or congregational identities. By combining different perspectives and examining different genres of texts, this workshop contributed to a better understanding of the circulation and transformation of texts that were crossing the borders of religious communities, spiritual networks and various regions. The workshop was organised by the FOVOG-Dresden and the IMAFO (Austrian Academy of Sciences) and brought together researchers from Dresden, Vienna, Barcelona (ICREA) as well as from the Heidelberg and Saxon Academies of Sciences (the project Klöster im Hochmittelalter).
 
 
» Programme

Traditio legis. Schlaglichter auf 1200 Jahre Rezeptionsgeschichte der Gestalt des Benedikt von Aniane

Benedict of Aniane unjustly belongs to those figures in medieval Church history who are often overshadowed and relegated to second place. This international conference on the occasion of the 1200th anniversary of his death aimed to revisit old questions and to offer new impulses, especially in the field of reception research. Due to Covid-19, the conference - organised by the Institute for Catholic Theology at RWTH Aachen University, Kornelimünster Abbey and the Aachen Diocese - was taking place one year late on the 1201st anniversary of the death of Benedict's death.
 
» Programme (German)
© Pontificio Comitato di Scienze Storiche

I Canonici Regolari dal Medioevo ai nostri giorni

From 24-26 November 2021, the Pontifical Committee for the Humanities (Pontificio Comitato di Scienze Storiche) organised a conference in Rome entitled "I Canonici Regolari dal Medioevo ai nostri giorni", entirely dedicated to the regulated canons. Members of FOVOG took part in the organisation and gave a talk too, namely the former director of FOVOG and member of the papal committee Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Gert Melville, furthermore PD Dr. Jörg Sonntag and Dr. Michael Hänchen. After introductory greetings by the organisers and by the acting Abbot General of the Premonstratensians, Jos Wouters, numerous individual papers were presented in five thematically focused sections. The individual sections focused on the history of the regular canons from their foundation onwards and their development in the second millennium; they addressed their identity within the Church as well as the practical realisation of this way of life. The last section was dedicated to such important members of the regular canons as Anselm von Havelberg and the others, and the conference closed with an enriching and fruitful final discussion.
 
» Programme (Italian)
 

Publications

Cover Analecta Cisterciensia Annus LXXI 2021
© Be&Be Verlag

Analecta Cisterciensia 71 (2021)

Jörg Sonntag: Tra Carisma e Istituzione. L’abate benedettino nei rituali dell’alto medioevo
Benoît Chauvin: Sur les chemins du chapitre général à travers la Bourgogne (mi-XIIe s.–mi-XIVe s.), Partie II: De stabulis camerisque propriis
James France: Imaging Saint Bernard
Julia Burkhardt & Isabel Kimpel: Tugend, Laster, Strafe. Die “Wunderbücher” des Caesarius von Heisterbach als anwendungsorientierte Theologie
Laine Tabora: Psalterium Davidis of the Cistercian Nunnery of Riga (LMAVB RS F 22–96) and its liturgical calendar
Gérard Leroux: Note sur la dévotion à saint Joseph des moniales de l’abbaye cistercienne de Santa Maria de Cós, au Portugal aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles
Andreas Metzger Vielfalt oder Uniformität? Zur Rezeption der Liturgiereform in Ordensgemeinschaften des deutschen Sprachgebiets
Georg Schrott: Wem gehört ein Kloster? Eine Antwort aus kulturgeschichtlicher Perspektive
 
 
» Read more
Coverbild Jörg Sonntag (Hg.): Die Gesetzgebung der Cauliten im 13. Jahrhundert. Ausgewählte Zeugnisse ihrer Verfassung
© Schnell & Steiner

Jörg Sonntag (Hg.): Die Gesetzgebung der Cauliten im 13. Jahrhundert

When, at the end of the 12th century, various hermits were united under a Carthusian conventual from Lugny and found a home in the Val-des-Choux, the valley of the cabbage heads, it was certainly not yet foreseeable that this new Burgundian nucleus of religious life would soon grow into a small but very special order that maintained monasteries even in Scotland.
This book presents a critical edition and translation of the oldest basic rules and statutes of this order of Caulites from the 1220s to the end of the 13th century. The surviving regulations of at least 20 general chapters provide deep insights into the concrete life of the brothers and into the functioning of their complex, innovative mixed constitution supported by Cistercian structural elements, Carthusian spirituality and their own propositum.
 
» Read more

At this point, we would like to take a look back at selected articles published by FOVOG staff in the past year.

Gert Melville

L’istituzionalità crea una presenza fittizia?, in: Presenza-Assenza. Meccanismi dell'istituzionalità nella 'Societas Christiana' (secoli IX-XIII), Atti del Convegno Internazionale Brescia, 16-18 settembre 2019, a cura di Guido Cariboni / Nicolangelo D'Acunto / Elisabetta Filippini (Le Settimane internazionali della Mendola. Nuova Serie 7), Milano 2021, pp. 3-16.

Erfolg und Scheitern der Vita perfectionis. Klösterliche Virtuosen des Glaubens im Mittelalter auf dem Prüfstein des Gewissens, in: Henrike Manuwald/Daniel Eder/Christian Schmidt (eds.), Vita perfecta? Zum Umgang mit divergierenden Ansprüchen an religiöse Lebensformen in der Vormoderne, Tübingen 2021, pp. 35–57.
 
» Profile

Mirko Breitenstein

Was ein Prämonstratenser wissen muss: Philipp von Harveng und sein Werk „Über die Unterweisung der Kleriker“, in: Mit Bibel und Spaten. 900 Jahre Prämonstratenser-Orden, ed. Claus-Peter Hasse / Gabriele Köster / Bernd Schneidmüller (Schriftenreihe des Zentrums für Mittelalterausstellungen Magdeburg 7), Halle: Mitteldeutscher Verlag 2021, pp. 164–175.

Haus, Buch oder Spiegel. Der Mensch und sein Gewissen vor der Moderne, in: Mitteilungen des Sonderforschungsbereich 1369 „Vigilanzkulturen. Transformationen – Räume – Techniken“, Ludwig-Maximilian-Universität München, 01/2021, pp. 20–31. read online
 
» Profile

Jörg Sonntag

Das Imitieren verstehen. Perspektiven, Analysen, Zugriffe, in: Imitationen. Systematische Zugänge zu einem kulturellen Prinzip des Mittelalters, ed. together with Michael Grünbart and Gerald Schwedler (Münstersche Mittelalter-Schriften 83) Paderborn 2021, pp. 1-21 (together with Gerald Schwedler).

Adam. A German? The Ethnic Element in Swabian Chronicles of the 15th Century, in: P. Rychterova (ed.), Historiographies and Identity, Bd. 6: Competing Narratives of the Past in Central and Eastern Europe, c. 1200 – c. 1600 (Cultural Encounters in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages 32), Turnhout 2021, pp. 437-451.

Von langen Bärten und geschorenen Köpfen. Das kulturelle Potenzial des menschlichen Haares im Frühmittelalter, in: Mittelalter. Interdisziplinäre Forschung und Rezeptionsgeschichte 4 (2021), pp. 77–102. read online

Der Körper als Bußinstrument. Reinigungsrituale hochmittelalterlicher Prämonstratenser im Spiegel von Tradition und Innovation, in: G. Köster / B. Schneidmüller (eds.), Mit Bibel und Spaten. 900 Jahre Prämonstratenser-Orden (Schriftenreihe des Zentrums für Mittelalterausstellungen Magdeburg 7), Regensburg 2021, pp. 153-163.
 
» Profile
 

Miscellaneous

Jörg Sonntag to be visiting professor at Regensburg University

In the summer term 2022, PD Dr. Jörg Sonntag will be deputy head of the Chair of Medieval History and Auxiliary Historical Sciences at Regensburg University.
There, his focus will be on teaching. He will offer several courses with a broad range of topics, including a lecture on travelling in the Middle Ages. Further topics will be the cultural properties and power of hair in the Middle Ages, rituals in monasteries in the 11th and 12th century, and Charles IV and the empire.
 
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Responsible for the content of the newsletter:
Direktor der Forschungsstelle für Vergleichende Ordensgeschichte (Mirko Breitenstein)
Research Center for Comparative History of Religious Orders (FOVOG)

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Responsible for the content of the newsletter:
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Mirko Breitenstein
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Cover picture: © A. Tarquini, Santa Maria Novella, © Editrice Guisi di Becocci Saverio, Firenze 2000, S. 61 f.
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