Project description
Sacred space, memory, and early modern landscapes
The sacralisation of natural environments in early modern Europe remains an underexplored dimension of religious and cultural history. This can be observed in relation to how everyday rural spaces became sites of devotion and miracle narratives. Supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the LoM project investigates how visionary experiences transformed fields, woods, and water sources into sacred sites in rural communities of Venice during the 16th and 17th centuries. It focuses on sensory and embodied dimensions, as well as the gendered roles of visionaries (especially women) and the ways ecclesiastical authorities regulated these emerging sacred landscapes. Ultimately, LoM will create a digital framework for studying sacred space and environmental meaning in historical contexts.
Objective
Landscape of Miracles (LoM), investigates the sacralisation of natural spaces in rural communities of the Republic of Venice during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It examines how visionary experiences transformed fields, woods, and water sources into sacred sites, focusing on the sensory dimensions, gendered dynamics, and ecclesiastical responses that shaped these devotional landscapes. Building on the historiographical “spatial turn” and drawing from cultural memory studies, gender history, and digital humanities, the project bridges disciplines to reassess how sacred environments were socially constructed.
LoM pursues four objectives: (1) understanding how sensory and embodied encounters sacralised rural environments; (2) analysing women's roles as visionaries and agents of transformation; (3) tracing how ecclesiastical authorities either integrated or repressed apparition sites; and (4) creating an interactive, open-access digital map that integrates qualitative and spatial data from episcopal court records across six Venetian dioceses. Methodologically, the project combines archival research with qualitative coding, GIS-based spatial analysis, and digital storytelling, thereby generating new empirical and interpretive frameworks for the study of religion and environment.
By engaging with underexplored Italian archival sources and employing innovative digital methods, LoM challenges narratives of post-Tridentine religious uniformity, revealing instead the contested, gendered, and sensory dimensions of early modern Catholicism. It also contributes to public history by collaborating with local associations to recover and disseminate intangible cultural heritage. Ultimately, the project enriches scholarly understanding of sacred space-making in early modern Europe while providing a transferable digital model for interdisciplinary research.
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
- agricultural sciences agriculture, forestry, and fisheries forestry
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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)
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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-TMA-MSCA-PF-GF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - Global Fellowships
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Call for proposal
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(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2025-PF
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37129 Verona
Italy
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