Project description
When nature tested the mission
In the 17th century, Catholic missions ventured into remote, often hostile environments, including the Canadian wilderness, Protestant Cévennes, and southern Italy’s rugged interior. Far from Rome’s reach, missionaries faced harsh climates, unfamiliar ecologies, and cultural resistance. Supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the MissNature project explores how these challenges shaped missionary strategies and redefined the Church’s global ambitions. Focusing on three contrasting missions (Jesuit, Capuchin, and ‘popular’), the project treats nature not just as backdrop but as a historical actor. How did geography, flora, and fauna shape faith, survival, and the Universal Church’s self-image? By reframing the environment as a driver of historical change, MissNature offers a new lens on Catholicism and Empire.
Objective
This project focuses on the Catholic Church’s environmental impacts and its strategies of environmental adaptation in the context of the evangelizing missions during the first half of the 17th century. It is based on three case studies, covering the variety of missions, territories and missionized: the Jesuit mission to non-Christian population, ad gentes, of New France, the Capuchin mission against Protestantism of the Cévennes, in France, and the Jesuit so-called “popular” mission, to already Catholic people, in Southern Italy. These mission lands were remote territories, difficult to access and largely beyond the control of the Church. There, the environment became a central actor and missionaries faced many challenges. With a comparative perspective, MissNature aims to understand the relationship with nature – flora, fauna, geography – and the adaptations required for a mission to work. MissNature seeks also to understand how their encounter with new landscapes and climates redefined the missionary programs. How did these missions impact local environments? How in turn did environmental conditions reshape missionary activities and the adaptation of Catholicism to local realities?
Through the challenges of travel, settlements and survival, the environment redefined Rome’s evangelizing project and its understanding of the relationship between the human and the natural—and thus, the very understanding of what the Universal Church should––and could––be. MissNature will lay the ground for a new positioning of Rome in the field of global environmental history, as one of the few truly global institutions of the early modern period, and will participate to the decentralization of the history of Catholicism by embracing the social differences of actors. This project introduces thus a radically new element: the environment seen as an historical actor, capable of influencing the directions taken by Rome in its missionary programs and, ultimately, the European expansion.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
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.
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.
- humanities history and archaeology history
- humanities philosophy, ethics and religion religions christianity
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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.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
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
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.
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-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2024-PF-01
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
60323 FRANKFURT AM MAIN
Germany
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.