Sacred Landscapes and Social Reform in Medieval Europe

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue looks closely at the intersection of environment, faith, and social circumstances in medieval landscapes. We invite contributions that explore the dynamic relationship between medieval societies and the landscapes that shaped, and were shaped by, spiritual experiences. The concept of landscape means, at its most base, the world around us, which we navigate in response to both physical and social pressures. Physical features (rivers, roads, mountains, castles) as well as perceived aspects (imagined boundaries, invented frontiers) comprise the landscape. As an analytical lens, the landscape refers to where human and non-human geographies meet. Scholarship primarily attributes social reform to human forces, but its success is also a product of how contemporaries understood the topography, geography, and spaces and places in the landscape.

During the Middle Ages, the act of sacralizing space represented a continuous process, and drawing the proverbial line in the sand to indicate where sacred spaced ended and profane space began fell not only to secular and regular clergy, but also to the institutions and individuals who occupied lands coterminous with Church property. Elites did not hold a monopoly on the creation of sacred space, and nor could the poorer classes be denied the power to distort, usurp, and transform these spaces in the landscape. Popular devotions manifested as places inbued with memory and meaning—pilgrimage sites, pilgrimage routes, shrines, and other locales of the miraculous; but at the same time, wealth and prestige granted the authority to found churches and monasteries to a select few. Social stratification, therefore, complicated the process of making places holy.

The idiosyncratic nature of medieval spiritualities reflected social disparities, but also the discrete contexts in which religious observance took root. Across medieval landscapes, the importance of spaces and places depended on perception and experience, as well as more tangible markers such as property lines and physical boundaries. Social constructs born of the landscape (aristocracy and peasantry; laity and clergy) simultaneously informed its organization. Contemporaries possessed a consciousness of religious space that reveals both collaboration and competition between lay people and religious authorities in defining that space. Gender further complicated questions of ownership and control of spiritual landscapes. Women, having been excluded from the priesthood, often lingered on the fringes of religious life—not necessarily as nuns, anchorites or recluses, but defying categorization altogether. For their part, male clergy took great pains to keep women at a distance, and that marginalization, both social and physical, affected their spiritual development.

Aims:

This Special Issue aims to situate the machinations of social geographies within the medieval landscape, broadly defined. The historiography of the medieval world generally privileges the city; this issue regards rural spaces as an equally important focus of study. We are pleased to invite scholars from multiple disciplines (literature, history, archeology, music, languages, etc.) to explore the topic across a wide geography. We seek to put different theoretical and methodological approaches in conversation and encourage interdisciplinary studies. To this end, we ask that authors explain the nature of their evidence, including types of documentary sources, and make clear the interpretive framework(s) driving their investigations. More specifically, the emphasis on social reform will bring understudied topics in landscape studies to the forefront and provide fresh perspectives on more well-trodden subjects.

Suggested Themes:

We invite proposals that pursue our goals through study of land-use patterns, borders and frontiers, notions of wilderness and nature, perspectives of sacred and profane space, personal and communal devotions, and feasting and other celebrations that defined social boundaries. Other topics more closely related to the question of class include the proliferation of labors (both paid and unpaid) in the landscape, many of which were often invisible but essential to social life.

Dr. Kathryn Jasper
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Religions is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• christianity
• religion
• sacred spaces/places
• hagiography
• popular devotions
• monasticism
• landscape
• environment
• church reform
• gender
• labor
• class