Magic, Diabolism, and Global Religion in European Print Culture, 1500-1700

本项目以宗教改革与反宗教改革的宗教冲突为背景，分析1500-1700年欧洲的印刷文化。在此过程中，它考察了印刷书籍和相关出版物如何成为辩论交流的场所。该项目的核心涉及对“奇迹书”的分析，这些书大量出版，有助于塑造当代宗教焦虑和辩论。这些书整理和解释了一系列非同寻常的自然和超自然现象（地震、“可怕的”出生、天空中的可怕迹象、恶魔般的生物），并用道德和经常是深刻的争论的术语来框定它们。最重要的是，它们是新教徒和天主教徒利用他们周围世界的惊人特性来创造关于宗教冲突的论战性叙述的工具。这些书与其他百科全书式的著作同时出现，其中包括关于非欧洲大陆的宇宙学和游记，以及关于女巫和魔鬼活动的鬼神学论文。奇迹书还与廉价的大报密切相关，作为原始新闻文化的一部分，这些大报报道了奇妙和可怕的事件。该项目将首次对新教徒和天主教徒如何在讲德语、法语和荷兰语的欧洲以及不同的宗教团体中回收这类印刷品进行实质性的分析，并在此过程中以充满活力的新方式使用印刷品。在主题方面，本研究将首次探讨这些出版物如何共同揭示对欧洲边界以外的魔鬼、巫术和“异教”宗教日益增长的焦虑，以及这些焦虑如何塑造了欧洲人在自己家门口处理宗教冲突的方法。随着16世纪欧洲以贸易和传教为基础的扩张，有关亚洲、印度、美洲和其他地方的魔法和恶魔行为和物品的报道开始出现在欧洲的印刷出版物中。这些材料与欧洲关于恶魔巫术的新辩论和报道相交叉，整个故事被置于一个更广泛的框架中，即自然世界的非凡而可怕的表现。在研究这些材料的过程中，该项目将为神奇书籍的印刷文化提供一种新的阅读方式，以及它们在现代早期世界中构建和塑造不同形式的宗教身份的切实作用。它将探讨这种对“他者”（女巫、恶魔和崇拜偶像的异教徒）的焦虑在多大程度上是欧洲内部宗教冲突的一种辩论方式。在奖学金期间的研究将以一本书和一篇文章的形式产生创新的出版物，并将为2016年初在曼彻斯特约翰·里兰兹图书馆的合作展览项目奠定基础。约翰·里兰兹图书馆拥有丰富的印刷和手稿材料，反映了早期现代文化，知识分子和社会对魔法的关注，超自然现象，以及欧洲及其他地区物质世界的非凡特性。本次展览将与相关的公共活动一起，吸引广大观众和社区团体，探讨现代早期欧洲的新思想和新经历如何引发了关于魔法、恶魔和超自然事件的激烈辩论，以及作为个人和社会如何应对这些事件。宗教冲突、科学发展、法律变化，以及与遥远的土地和民族的接触，催生了报道、呈现和辩论魔法及相关现象的新方式。这次展览将探索人们对魔法、巫术和相关现象的信仰是如何持续下去的，并适应了早期现代世界的变化。它将得到一份出版物、一次学术研讨会和一系列面向更广泛公众的活动的支持和扩展。

This project analyses the print culture of Europe c.1500-1700 against the backdrop of the religious conflicts of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. In doing so it examines how printed books and related publications were sites of polemical exchange. The core of the project involves an analysis of 'wonder books', which were produced in great numbers and helped to shape contemporary religious anxieties and debates. These books collated and explained an extraordinary range of natural and supernatural phenomena (earthquakes, 'monstrous' births, terrible signs in the sky, diabolical creatures), and framed them in moralising and often deeply polemical terms. Most significantly, they were tools for Protestants and Catholics to use the astonishing properties of the world around them to create polemical narratives about religious conflict. These books appeared at the same time as other encyclopedic works, including cosmographies and travelogues with information on non-European lands, and demonological treatises on the activities of witches and devils. Wonder books were also closely connected to cheaper broadsheets that reported wondrous and terrifying events as part of a proto-journalistic news culture. The project will provide the first substantial analysis of how Protestants and Catholics recycled this sort of printed material across German-, French- and Dutch-speaking Europe - as well as across different religious communities - and in doing so used print in vigorous new ways. In thematic terms this study will explore, for the first time, how these publications collectively reveal increasing anxieties about the devil, witchcraft, and 'heathen' religions beyond Europe's borders, and the ways in which these anxieties shaped European's approaches to religious conflicts on their own doorsteps. Reports of magical but also diabolical practices and objects in Asia, India, the Americas and elsewhere began to appear in European printed publications in the wake of European trade-based and missionary expansion in the sixteenth century. This material intersected with new debates and reports of diabolical witchcraft in Europe, and the whole was set in a broader framework of the extraordinary yet terrifying manifestations of the natural world. In examining this material, the project will provide a new reading of the print culture of wonder books, and their tangible role in constructing and shaping different forms of religious identity in the early modern world. It will explore the extent to which this anxiety about 'others' (witches, demons, and idolatrous heathens) was partly a means of giving polemical voice to religious conflict within Europe. Research during the fellowship period will lead to innovative publications in the form of a book-length study as well as an article, and it will form the foundations for a collaborative exhibition project in early 2016 at the John Rylands Library, Manchester. The John Rylands Library is rich in printed and manuscript materials that reflect early modern cultural, intellectual and social preoccupations with magic, the supernatural, and the extraordinary properties of the physical world of Europe and beyond. This exhibition, with associated public events that will engage wide audiences and community groups, will explore how new ideas and experiences in early modern Europe prompted intensive debates about magical, diabolical and supernatural events, and about how to deal with them as individuals and societies. Religious conflicts, scientific developments, legal changes, and encounters with distant lands and peoples led to new ways of reporting, representing and debating magic and related phenomena. The exhibition will explore how beliefs in the power of magic, witchcraft, and associated phenomena persisted and adapted to changes in the early modern world. It will be supported and extended by a publication, an academic symposium, and a range of events for and by the wider public.