Martyrdom and Voluntariness in the European High and Late Middle Ages

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Sabine Schmolinsky
• Subject Area: Medieval History
• Term: since 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 413222647

The topic of this subproject is martyrdom as a discourse as well as a practice of men and women by both, groups adhering to the Roman Christian church and groups opposing it by religious dissent. The subproject will analyze the discourses revolving around voluntary martyrdom, and it will contour agency in two different ways: as the agency of the martyrs and as the agency of those who discursively constructed martyria. The subproject will address voluntary self-sacrifice leading to one’s own death particularly with regard to questions related to processes of subject-formation and to gender.First, voluntariness will be analyzed with regard to martyria as a practice meant to strengthen Christianity in high and late medieval Europe. Here the Franciscans appear to be a good starting point for the subproject and its analysis. Martyria, however, may also be virtual in the sense of being a spiritual experience discursively disseminated in e.g. texts of Dominican or Franciscan origin. Second, the voluntary deaths of people stigmatized as heretics will be examined. Here, the subproject’s analysis will take the Cathars as its starting point. Women's dissident martyrdom may be investigated by looking at the Bohemian Hussites. One hypothesis of the subproject is that high and late medieval culture addressed women as voluntary martyrs only in the context of dissident faith. Third, the subproject is interested in subjectivation processes related to martyria and their discursive re-production. Fourth, the subproject will contribute to the conceptual study of the relation between voluntariness and agency in Medieval Studies.The subproject's relevance for Medieval Studies is to open up a new research field revolving around discourses and practices of voluntariness. Also, for the first time martyria by Christians and by people seen as heretics will be analyzed together, with the voluntariness of their deaths being a major link. Moreover, the issues of agency, self-will, and subject-formation will be further established in the research on Medieval History.The subproject contributes the analysis of discourses and practices of voluntary martyrdom in the High and Late Middle Ages to the research group, and it adds the exploration of voluntariness and self-sacrifice in religious contexts to the group’s portfolio. Also, the subproject will address the problem of conformity, resistance, and voluntariness from a pre-modern perspective. Synergy effects will be particularly produced by the cooperation with those subprojects, which also focus on people acting or being pushed to act in existential situations.The subproject employs methodology developed in the field of historical discourse analysis, combined with important techniques in historical methodology with regard to the transmission of medieval manuscripts. Its corpus of sources consists of high and late medieval historiographical as well as hagiographical texts.

• DFG Programme: Research Units
• Subproject of: FOR 2983: Freiwilligkeit