Project Details
Projekt
SPP 1173: Integration and Disintegration of Civilisations in the European Middle Ages
Subject Area
Humanities
Term
from 2005 to 2011
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 5472139
The guiding idea of the Priority Programme is the presumption that Europe has never been made up of one monolithic culture. Thus, the programme rejects the widespread opinion that the European Middle Ages were characterised almost exclusively by only one culture, the Latin Christian culture. This opinion is clearly based on a contemporary and time-bound search of identity that fails in the face of the present complexity and is not able to cope with current and future challenges. Therefore, one purpose of the research programme is not to discover or even affirm a European identity at all, but rather to ask, in a strictly scientific way, for the dialectics of integrating and disintegrating processes. We believe that these contradicting processes, that have always conditioned one another and continuously alternated with each other, marked European history all along and made up its specific character.
A second presumption of the programme is based on the idea that it was the three monotheistic religions in particular - Christendom (whereupon is has to be differentiated between the Roman and the Orthodox Church), Islam and Judaism - which have characterised cultural formations ( civilisations ). The dialectics of unity and difference during the European Middle Ages are without any doubt the most obvious in the sphere of religions, which is understood as a cultural system according to Clifford Geertz. In contrast to other systems of this kind - politics, economics or law for example - religion was the aspect of culture in pre-modern times that most shaped the thinking, categorising, acting and the imagination of the world of medieval men.
The monotheistic religions can be discerned as a factor of European integration of high importance. However, the integration of principally irreconcilable religions and cultures managed to create partial unities, though at no point could a complete European wholeness be established. Anywhere the compulsion to assimilation was exaggerated, new differences sprang up almost immediately. During the High Middle Ages, for example, the nascent Christian national monarchies of Western Europe or the papal centralism soon provoked the emergence of very successful and versatile heresies.
This diagnosis leads to a central matter of the Priority Programme: it aims to understand in which context religious contradictions led to further material differences and to oppositions in life-style, and where, on the other hand, similarities and a common ground were stronger than religious contrasts and contributed to the making of Europe.
Research projects that perceive the European unification as a historical phenomenon and one option of European history and not as the accomplishment of a linear, long-term and inevitable process may be able to show that an adamant policy of separation stands in opposition to the experiences Europeans made in the past. Therefore, the Priority Programme cannot rely on the tradition of national historiography and restrain itself to the agenda of medieval disciplines that work separately from each other. On the contrary, the Programme needs to apply interdisciplinary and transcultural approaches. This is accounted for by linking research projects that deal with the Occident, Byzantine or Russian orthodoxy, Judaism and Islam.
A second presumption of the programme is based on the idea that it was the three monotheistic religions in particular - Christendom (whereupon is has to be differentiated between the Roman and the Orthodox Church), Islam and Judaism - which have characterised cultural formations ( civilisations ). The dialectics of unity and difference during the European Middle Ages are without any doubt the most obvious in the sphere of religions, which is understood as a cultural system according to Clifford Geertz. In contrast to other systems of this kind - politics, economics or law for example - religion was the aspect of culture in pre-modern times that most shaped the thinking, categorising, acting and the imagination of the world of medieval men.
The monotheistic religions can be discerned as a factor of European integration of high importance. However, the integration of principally irreconcilable religions and cultures managed to create partial unities, though at no point could a complete European wholeness be established. Anywhere the compulsion to assimilation was exaggerated, new differences sprang up almost immediately. During the High Middle Ages, for example, the nascent Christian national monarchies of Western Europe or the papal centralism soon provoked the emergence of very successful and versatile heresies.
This diagnosis leads to a central matter of the Priority Programme: it aims to understand in which context religious contradictions led to further material differences and to oppositions in life-style, and where, on the other hand, similarities and a common ground were stronger than religious contrasts and contributed to the making of Europe.
Research projects that perceive the European unification as a historical phenomenon and one option of European history and not as the accomplishment of a linear, long-term and inevitable process may be able to show that an adamant policy of separation stands in opposition to the experiences Europeans made in the past. Therefore, the Priority Programme cannot rely on the tradition of national historiography and restrain itself to the agenda of medieval disciplines that work separately from each other. On the contrary, the Programme needs to apply interdisciplinary and transcultural approaches. This is accounted for by linking research projects that deal with the Occident, Byzantine or Russian orthodoxy, Judaism and Islam.
DFG Programme
Priority Programmes
International Connection
Austria, France, Spain, Switzerland
Projects
- Abwehr des Fremden im Reich des 15. Jahrhunderts (Applicant Wefers, Sabine )
- Barrieren - Passagen. Intellektuelle Eliten, Religionsgesetz und die Gestaltung des Minderheiten-Mehrheiten-Verhältnisses von Juden und Nichtjuden auf der iberischen Halbinsel zwischen 1032-1413/14 (Applicant Benz, Wolfgang )
- Beweggründe von Menschen aus dem 4.-8. Jh., das Christentum/christliche Lebensformen in Westeuropa anzunehmen und so zur Christianisierung beizutragen (Applicant Becher, Matthias )
- Die heterodox-islamischen Qalandari-Derwische im Spannungsfeld zwischen Christentum und Islam in Südosteuropa (13.-16. Jahrhundert) (Applicant Hoffmann, Birgitt )
- Die Kirche im interkulturellen Konflikt zwischen Orient und Okzident. Der Klerus auf Kreuzzügen (Applicant Weinfurter, Stefan )
- Die Kunstpraxis der Mendikanten als Abbild und Paradigma interkultureller Transferbeziehungen in Zentraleuropa und im Kontaktgebiet zu orthodoxem Christentum und Islam (Applicants Jäggi, Carola ; Krüger, Klaus )
- Die Mozaraber. Kulturelle Identität zwischen Orient und Okzident (Applicant Bobzin, Hartmut )
- Die Rus' und das Det-i-Qipcaq. Regesten zur Geschichte der Slavia Asiatica, 580 - 1480 (Applicant Lübke, Christian )
- Die Zungen Europas: Sakralität, Weltdeutung und Vielfalt der Sprachen im euromediterranen Mittelalter (Applicant Borgolte, Michael )
- Eigenständigkeit durch Integration. Die Erinnerung an die heidnische Vorzeit als Element der Konstruktion ethnisch-regionaler Identität an der Peripherie Europas im Hoch- und Spätmittelalter (Applicant van Eickels, Klaus )
- Eingemeindungen des Sakralen. Heiligkeit und Stadtkultur in der deutschen Literatur des späten Mittelalters. (Applicant Müller, Jan-Dirk )
- 'Grikkland' und 'Varangia'. Die byzantinisch-skandinavischen Kulturkontakte in der Wikingerzeit (ca. 800 - 1096) (Applicant Brandes, Wolfram )
- "Juden und Christen" im römisch-deutschen Reich in der Umbruchzeit zwischen 1273 und 1306 in westeuropäischen Zusammenhängen (Applicant Haverkamp, Alfred )
- Karten als Brücken für Welt-Wissen: Westeuropäische und muslimische Kartographie des Mittelalters im interkulturellen Austausch (Applicant Baumgärtner, Ingrid )
- Konstruktionen und Erfahrungen des Heidentums im spätmittelalterlichen Europa (Applicant Schneidmüller, Bernd )
- Mediterranes Kaisertum und imperiale Ordnungen zur Zeit Kaiser Friedrichs II. (ca. 1200 - ca. 1250) (Applicant Weinfurter, Stefan )
- Mittelalterliche Ethik und Anthropologie im interkulturellen Kontext. Von der Gleichheit der Seelen zur rationalen Grundlegung des Naturrechts (Applicant Ernst, Stephan )
- Mohammed in Avignon. Der Islam zwischen Papsttum und religiosen Gemeinschaften im 14. Jahrhundert. (Applicant Berndt, Rainer )
- Multiethnische und multireligiöse Kulturen Europas im transkulturellen Vergleich: Das Beispiel der Iberischen Halbinsel (Applicants Herbers, Klaus ; Jaspert, Nikolas )
- Onomastik und Akkulturation. Die Entwicklung der Namengebung, ihrer Semantik und Motivation in der Begegnung von Christentum, Imperium und barbarischen gentes zwischen Spätantike und frühem Mittelalter (4.-8. Jahrhundert) (Applicant Haubrichs, Wolfgang )
- Orient und Okzident. Heiden und Christen in der volkssprachlich deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters (Applicant Kellner, Beate )
- Selbst- und Fremdwahrnehmung im Prozeß kultureller Transformation. Muslimische Quellen aus Anatolien über Türken, Christen und Konvertiten (11.-15. Jahrhundert) (Applicant Hoffmann, Birgitt )
- Soldaia und die Siedlungsstätten der südöstlichen Krim als Bestandteil der lateinischen Romania, ihre Rolle im Integrationsprozeß zwischen lateinisch-italienischer und byzantinisch-orthodoxer Welt (Applicant Bulgakova, Victoria )
- Verbindungen und Ausgrenzungen zwischen Christen und Juden zur Zeit der Reformkonzilien des 15. Jahrhunderts (Applicant Haverkamp, Alfred )
- Vergleichen im mittelalterlichen Europa - Zusammenhänge von Fremdwahrnehmung und Identitätsbildung (Applicant Schneidmüller, Bernd )
- Vermittler zwischen Ost und West: Griechisch-orthodoxe und lateinische Christen unter muslimischer Herrschaft als integrative Kräfte in der Levante (13.-15. Jahrhundert) (Applicant Pahlitzsch, Johannes )
- Von Petrus Alfonsi zu Alfonsus von Espina. Lateinische Integrations- und Desintegrationsprozesse in der christlich-muslimischen Begegnung und Wahrnehmung auf der Iberischen Halbinsel vom 12. zum 15. Jahrhundert im europäischen Kontext (Applicant Berndt, Rainer )
- Zeitvorstellungen im westlichen und im östlichen Hochmittelalter (11.-15. Jahrhundert) - betrifft Zentraleuropa, Südeuropa, Südosteuropa (Applicant Makrides, Vasilios N. )
- Zentralprojekt des Schwerpunktprogrammes "Integration und Desintegration der Kulturen im europäischen Mittelalter" (Applicants Borgolte, Michael ; Schneidmüller, Bernd )
Spokesperson
Professor Dr. Michael Borgolte
