Project description
Rural population in the later Holy Roman Empire
New political entities emerged in the Holy Roman Empire’s outskirts from the 10th century, institutionalising Christianity and expanding the Emperor’s power. Historical accounts have mainly focused on the elites, leaving a gap in understanding the organisation of the rural population, which is essential for maintaining stability in the state and church. In this context, the ERC-funded RELIC project will conduct a comparative analysis and contextualisation of archaeological and historical remains of the rural population who lived on the eastern fringes of the later Holy Roman Empire during the Ottonian and Salian periods (10th to 12th centuries). The project will explore the influence of centres and networks of secular and ecclesiastical lords, the natural environment and the economic infrastructure.
Objective
From the 10th c. onwards, new polities emerged on the periphery of the Holy Roman Empire (HRE), the new centre of Christendom. Endowing Christianity as an institutional system was integral to the emperor’s power, expanding his influence and securing his rule in the new kingdoms. Previous narratives have been generally constructed on the basis of limited written accounts, which mainly concern the higher echelons of society, emphasising the role of secular and ecclesiastical elites. However, the ecclesiastical and secular administrative organisation of the rural population could not be reconstructed satisfactorily from these sources, despite their importance for the stability of both State and Church.
RELIC proposes a complex, comparative analysis and contextualisation of archaeological and historical remains of the rural population living on the eastern fringes of the HRE during the Ottonian and Salian periods (10th -12th c.), exploring the influences of centres and networks of secular and ecclesiastical lords, of the natural environment, and of the economic infrastructure. Investigating this often-overlooked segment of the population, its hitherto unexplored or neglected role allows us to study how (top-level) changes in political and ecclesiastical organisations can be reflected in the evidence concerning the lower levels of society and of the local church network; how different strategies worked in different political settings, and what role local initiatives/agencies could have played in religious and political shifts.
The religiopolitics of the HRE is a well-researched topic. Still, investigating the involvement of the rural population in these processes is a new approach, and so is the applied methodology and primary data: proximity, network and catchment analysis on archival archaeological data and historical evidence. Individually, such evidence provides little information, but together it forms a significant and unexplored dataset of the rural population.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
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CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2023-STG
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1010 WIEN
Austria
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