Project description
Rethinking medieval contemplation
In the Middle Ages, contemplation was regarded as the pinnacle of religious experience – an intimate connection with divine love meant for the truly devoted. But how did everyday people tap into this kind of spirituality? Supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the PopLatin project will examine Latin textbooks that priests used to educate their congregations. These texts broke down complex contemplative teachings, making them accessible to the average person and challenging the notion that Latin was solely for the elite. PopLatin provides a fresh perspective on medieval lay spirituality and illustrates how priests made religious concepts popular long before the Reformation. This approach transforms our understanding of medieval literature, faith, and the way culture was shared.
Objective
PopLatin aims to write a new history of lay contemplative spirituality in the Middle Ages. Medieval people understood ‘contemplation’ as the highest religious experience: a revelation of divine love that could only occur, rarely, for those most committed to God. PopLatin offers a novel account of medieval contemplative spirituality by focusing on sources that scholars have largely overlooked: namely, the Latin textbooks that medieval priests used to teach their congregations. Latin priests’ books popularised famous medieval writers by transforming their teachings into more accessible forms, which priests then used to instruct their parishioners orally. The premise of PopLatin is that these neglected sources offer a new history of lay contemplative spirituality in the Middle Ages. By showing, counter-intuitively, that Latin was a language of popularisation through texts like these, PopLatin offers a radically revised view of what literature and beliefs ordinary laypeople could access during the centuries before the European Reformation. These objectives will be achieved through: literary analysis of four case studies, to establish how these Latin texts popularised the contemplative teachings of medieval authorities; analysis of material evidence, to show how priests communicated the teachings in their books to laypeople; survey of Latin priests’ literature, assisted by AI, to contextualise my research in wider trends; and literary analysis of the influence of Latin priests’ books on writers more famous today, to establish their importance for cultural history. This fellowship will enhance my career aim of securing a permanent academic position. It offers experience of a structured research project, which will ultimately form the basis of my next monograph, with one-to-one mentorship from a leading expert. It will develop my portfolio of teaching and public engagement, and enable me to contribute my knowledge of medieval Latin literature to research activities at UiB.
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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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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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)
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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-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
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Call for proposal
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(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2024-PF-01
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5020 Bergen
Norway
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