Material Cultures of Devotion in the Age of Reformations

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Northern Europe were
characterized by enormous religious change. During this period new
religious ideas and ideals gradually took shape and materialized in all
aspects of religious life, both on a private level as well as in public
and liturgical space. The fundamental question of how God could
be experienced as present in the world, became – again – the
center of lively debate. Lutheran, Calvinist, Roman Catholic and
Anglican reformations – to mention just a selection of the different
ideological movements in play during this period – challenged
interpretations of the Bible, the sacraments, the communication of
religious truth, the practice of devotion and the material expressions
of faith. When looking at the European reformations from a transnational
perspective, they stand forth as a bundle of fundamentally interwoven
religious movements attempting to define their specific religious
identity in terms of dissimilarity. Material Cultures of Devotion in
the Age of Reformations explores how the visual and material
cultures of Christian devotion were adapted, developed, transformed,
and, in some cases, disappeared altogether, in the age of reformations,
c.1500-1650 in Northern Europe.