Material Cultures of Devotion in the Age of Reformations

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Northern Europe were

characterized by enormous religious change. During this period new

religious ideas and ideals gradually took shape and materialized in all

aspects of religious life, both on a private level as well as in public

and liturgical space. The fundamental question of how God could

be experienced as present in the world, became - again - the

center of lively debate. Lutheran, Calvinist, Roman Catholic and

Anglican reformations - to mention just a selection of the different

ideological movements in play during this period - challenged

interpretations of the Bible, the sacraments, the communication of

religious truth, the practice of devotion and the material expressions

of faith. When looking at the European reformations from a transnational

perspective, they stand forth as a bundle of fundamentally interwoven

religious movements attempting to define their specific religious

identity in terms of dissimilarity. Material Cultures of Devotion in

the Age of Reformations explores how the visual and material

cultures of Christian devotion were adapted, developed, transformed,

and, in some cases, disappeared altogether, in the age of reformations,

c.1500-1650 in Northern Europe.