Layered Landscapes ─ Early Modern Religious Space Across Faiths and Cultures

Over the past two decades few areas of religious history have proven more vibrant than the examination of sacred spaces and landscapes. Scholars who specialize in a number of faith traditions and time periods have published ground-breaking work, and the field shows no sign of losing its dynamism. In order to further explore the implications of such work, this volume looks at urban sacred landscapes between the fifth and eighteenth centuries in order to answer questions that have relevance for much broader chronologies and geographies: What are sacred landscapes? What do they share across cultural and temporal boundaries? How does the sacred interact with or challenge conceptions of what is urban? What distinguishes concepts of the sacred landscape between faith traditions and time periods? How does the sacred landscape intersect with, and influence, broader cultural, political and intellectual trends? This volume does not eschew broad analysis but it is rooted in the conviction that exploring the particular leads to a more nuanced understanding of how humanity has created, cared for, and competed over sacred landscapes. By looking at key examples of this process through a well-defined inquisitorial filter many questions are answered but even more are raised. This approach offers a fertile way forward in this challenging, rewarding and rapidly maturing field.

Eric Nelson is a professor in the Department of History at Missouri State University. He is the author of Jesuits and the Monarchy: Catholic Reform and Political Authority in France (1590-1615) (Ashgate, 2005) and The Legacy of Iconoclasm: Religious War and the Relic Landscape of Tours, Blois and VendA’me 1550-1750, which appeared as part of the University of St Andrew's Centre for French History and Culture series in 2013. He has also co-edited two scholarly volumes, the most recent entitled Politics and Religion in Early Bourbon France (2009), and has published a number of journal articles, most recently 'The Parish in its Landscapes: Parish Pilgrimage Processions in the Archdeaconry of Blois (1500-1700)' in French History. Jonathan Wright is Honorary Fellow in the Department of Theology and Religion at Durham University. He is the editor of The Jesuit Suppression: Causes, Events and Consequences (forthcoming) and co-editor of Jesuit Survival and Restoration ( forthcoming). He is currently preparing a monograph on the theology of religious exile in post-Reformation Europe and serving as reviews editor for the Journal of Jesuit Studies. His history of the Jesuits, The Jesuits: Missions, Myths and Histories (2004) has been translated into eleven languages. He has published articles in numerous journals, including The Sixteenth Century Journal, The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, and the Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies.