From 25 to 27 November 2026, the international and interdisciplinary conference “Body and Clerical Order in the Middle Ages: Body and Communication” will take place in Dresden. The conference is organised by the working group „Körper und Geistlichkeit im Mittelalter. Tugend, Macht und Repräsentation“ / “Body and Clerical Order in the Middle Ages. Virtue, Power and Representation” in cooperation with the Faculty of Croatian Studies at the University of Zagreb. The event is aimed at researchers from all disciplines within the humanities and intends to bring together people with different levels of academic experience, from PhD candidate, postdoctoral researcher to professor (emeritus/a), so that they can inspire one another. We would like to extend a warm invitation to you to attend and take part in the discussion.

The conference will examine the relationship between the body and communication from various perspectives. Firstly, it will consider how members of the clerical order communicated about the body; secondly, how they communicated through the body; and thirdly, how the bodies of members of the clerical order were discussed. Particular attention will be paid to the purposes served by each form of communication and the discourses within which the respective statements can be situated. Attention will also be given to the question of how physicality could be used in communicative acts as a metaphor for other meanings. Furthermore, the conference will examine the means or media through which communication about the body took place, as well as the relationship between mediality and communication about the body. In line with the working group’s concept, we are particularly interested in the communicative distinction between the bodies of different groups within the clerical order (e.g. monks, nuns, priests, bishops), as well as between the bodies of laypeople and members of the clerical order.

Working group „Körper und Geistlichkeit im Mittelalter. Tugend, Macht und Repräsentation“ / “Body and Clerical Order in the Middle Ages. Virtue, Power and Representation”

Founded in December 2023, the working group aims to focus on a field of research that has been underexposed to date but is central to understanding the medieval world. The position of power and the special social influence and status of clerical actors are considered typical of the period; this position was often communicated visually and ritually by means of the body, which was also typical of the era. Although body-related practices in the Middle Ages have been intensively researched for the secular sphere, which has led to the identification of various rituals, social rules and the like, body practices and concepts of the clerical order, including their medial communication, have so far only been examined selectively and in relation to individual groups of actors (especially popes and bishops).

Analysing these bodily practices and concepts can help to shed light on a factor that should not be underestimated when it comes to the status identity and social positioning of the clerical order. Three dimensions in particular – the body as a means of expressing virtue and of attaining and representing power and status – appear to be important here. For through various body-related actions, one could not only approach God as a priest, monk or nun and demonstrate virtue, but also rise or fall in reputation as a political or social actor, gain or lose power and represent and legitimise one’s own status.

The working group aims to systematically and comparatively analyse these bodily practices and concepts, including their mediation, and to find out how they were used to differentiate from the laity, for social differentiation within the clerical order (such as between bishop and priest, monk and nun, religious and semi-religious and generally for the formation of hierarchies) and differentiation from other denominations and religions. In this way, a contribution is to be made to an interdisciplinary understanding of the clerical order in the medieval world.

Programme :

Wednesday, 25 November 2026

9:00 Welcome

Section I: The Disciplined Body
Moderation: Matthias Weber (Bochum)

9:15–10:00 Nicolangelo D’Acunto (Milano): The Ascetic and Penitential Dimension of Clerics between Interiority and Exteriority (9th–14th Centuries)

10:00–10:45 Mirko Breitenstein (Dresden): Disciplined Bodies, Purified Souls: Monastic Ideals and Corporeality in Caesarius of Heisterbach

10:45–11:15 Coffee break

11:15–12:00 Marko Jerković (Zagreb): Disciplinary Norms and the Dominican Body. An Anthropology of Corporal Functionality

12:00–12:45 Josip Vučković (Zadar): The Body as a Site of Corruption and Spirituality in a Croatian Vernacular Confession Guide for Nuns

12:45–14:45 Lunch

14:45–15:30 Kai Hnida (Cologne): Symbolic Communication through Living and Dead Bodies – Public Punishment in Late Medieval Strasbourg

Section II: Outward Appearance and Clothes
Moderation: Matthias Weber (Bochum)

15:30–16:15 Lucija Krešić Nacevski (Zagreb): On the Physical Descriptions of Martyrs in the Oldest Latin Hagiographies

16:15–16:45 Coffee break

16:45–17:30 Jörg Sonntag (Bielefeld): Religious Hair in the Context of High Medieval Canon Law: A Systematic Approach

Dinner

Thursday, 26 November 2026

Section II: Outward Appearance and Clothes (Continuation)
Moderation: Sandra Groß (Dresden)

9:00–9:45 Meta Niederkorn-Bruck (Vienna): Clothing, Colour and Corporality? – Theological Frames for the Interpretation of Dante’s Purgatorio

9:45–10:30 Jan Lemmer (Bochum): „Nec placere presentibus, nec posteris placiturum“. The Protest of Rainald of Dassel against Bernard’s Ban on the Wearing of Fur

10:30–11:00 Coffee break

11:00–11:45 Daniela Bianca Hoffmann (Dresden): Making a Monk-Bishop – Thomas Becket and his Three-Layered Clothes

11:45–12:30 Vera Henkelmann (Dresden): Jewelry of Ecclesiastical Dignitaries in the Middle Ages: Between Representation and Interiority

12:30–14:30 Lunch

Section III: Sick and Poor Bodies
Moderation: Marko Jerković (Zagreb)

14:30–15:15 Gerhard Lubich (Bochum): Sick Saints, Ailing Bishops and Ill Monarchs. Medical Findings Compared

15:15–16:00 Enrico Frosio (Brescia): The Body of the Ailing Brother: Conceptualisations, Practices, Communication

16:00–16:30 Coffee break

16:30–17:15 Sabine Schmolinsky (Erfurt): The Poor and the Needy: Bodies in Franciscan Communication

Dinner

Friday, 27 November 2026

Section IV: Holy and Unholy Bodies
Moderation: Mirko Breitenstein (Dresden)

9:00–9:45 Mija Oter Gorenčič (Ljubljana): Analysis of Body Language as a Way to Understand Hidden Meanings – the Example of Judas Iscariot

9:45–10:30 Željka Metesi Deronjić (Zagreb): Seeing the Sacred: Sensory Perception in the Croatian Version of Planctus Mariae

10:30–11:00 Coffee break

11:00–11:45 Manuel Kamenzin (Würzburg): The Murdered Body: Medieval and Modern Discourses on the Remains of Engelbert I of Cologne

11:45–12:30 Lisa-Marie Richter (Dresden): Of Calves’ Heads and Devil’s Claws: The Deconstruction of the Ascetic Body in Sixteenth-Century Polemical Prints

12:30–13:00 Final Discussion

Source : H-Soz-Kult