Final Report Summary - SPECTRUM (Projections of Jerusalem in Europe: A Monumental Network)
‘Projections of Jerusalem in Europe: A Monumental Network’ is about the monumental, multimedia, interactive recreations of Jerusalem in Europe. The sites studied during the project represent loca sancta through architectures reproducing the historical ones in the Holy Land, set in similar spatial and topographical relationships, complemented by sculptural groups enacting the respective event in a painted decorum, with artifacts completing the ambience. The project has documented, comprehensively studied, and conceptualized more than 200 sites. We have been able to gain insights into the variety of Jerusalem sites outside the Holy Land, achieve a classification and crystallize a typology that was impossible to foresee beforehand. We now have a good idea about correspondences and dissonances between the various countries of Europe in their reference to Jerusalem and the Holy Land at different turning points in their national and European history. We have established chains not known before of mutual influences across Europe. Besides, we are now able to show how relics, reliquaries, and various other objects functioned as agents of translation of Jerusalem sites to Europe.
By bringing together both fresh data and interpretations of European Jerusalem sites, many of them not known before, the project opened up a totally new research area, generating many new insights. Through publications, conferences, itinerant symposia and workshops, and through graduate teaching, the project has managed to broadly disseminate the knowledge and conclusions gained, thus creating a sound basis for further inquiry. The Jerusalem sites are now established as an integral part of European culture and history, an indispensable tool of access to key processes, social, political, and religious in Europe during the medieval and early modern periods.
The fact that our project is being referred to in various contexts, our publications quoted internationally, many fora of scholarly activities throughout the world are dedicated to Jerusalem and its manifestations in Europe, our participation in them being constantly required, all these allow us to believe that Jerusalem sites have already become part and parcel of the study of European culture.
By bringing together both fresh data and interpretations of European Jerusalem sites, many of them not known before, the project opened up a totally new research area, generating many new insights. Through publications, conferences, itinerant symposia and workshops, and through graduate teaching, the project has managed to broadly disseminate the knowledge and conclusions gained, thus creating a sound basis for further inquiry. The Jerusalem sites are now established as an integral part of European culture and history, an indispensable tool of access to key processes, social, political, and religious in Europe during the medieval and early modern periods.
The fact that our project is being referred to in various contexts, our publications quoted internationally, many fora of scholarly activities throughout the world are dedicated to Jerusalem and its manifestations in Europe, our participation in them being constantly required, all these allow us to believe that Jerusalem sites have already become part and parcel of the study of European culture.