Dr. Iris Fleßenkämper

Department of History

Curriculum vitae:

Research interests:

• History of Sciences
• Cultural History of the Enlightenment
• English and Scottish History
• Women’s and Gender History
• Reformation and Denomination History

Function within the cluster/Membership in projects and groups:

• Executive coordination of the cluster
• Advisor to the Board of Directors and to the Principal Investigators
• Professorial project: Marriage conflicts between crime and sin: On understanding secular and clerical penal power in 17th century Calvinistic towns.
• Member of the working groups
  • Theories and Methods in comparative Interdisciplinary Perspective
  • Comparison and Transfer

Project description

Marital conflicts between crime and sin: On the relationship of secular and clerical penal power in reformed towns of Northwest Germany in the 17th century

So far, confessionalisation research has analysed early modern marital and sexual offences primarily from the angle of gender-related unequal treatment and from the paradigm of social disciplinary action. The question of how competences were shared between clerical and secular authority in marriage jurisdiction, however, remains largely open. While secular authorities issued regulations against sexual offences only sporadically before the reformation, jurisdiction concerning, above all, marital matters had been incumbent on the Church for several centuries. Only over the course of the 16th century did the secular authorities, too, deal with religious moral infringements more intensely from a penal point of view, increasingly assuming control over offences such as fornication, harlotry and adultery. The reformation played an important role in this, which, on the one hand, denied marriage its sacramental character, thus turning it into a primarily secular business; on the other hand, within the course of the Protestant confessionalisation, the controlling power over the churches devolved to the territorial lords, who, as secular authorities, now also increasingly dealt with clerical matters, including marital matters.

In reformed territories in particular, this development was not rarely connected with conflicts, the more so as the church considered it its special duty to publicly punish all those whose moral conduct was sinful in the church’s judgement. The introduction of Calvinism as a new religious doctrine often generated new church and marital orders that were not necessarily compatible with secular legislation, with local folk culture and with regional legal traditions. Although both church and state pursued the same interests – that is, to prevent secret betrothals, illegitimate children and their need for support from the poor box – this did not mean that they framed uniform rules on this which the subjects likewise adhered to. Against this backdrop, the question arises how various and above all contradictory norms were dealt with in practice and how, on the basis of antagonistic notions of order, authority worked at all and was legitimised. The research project expounds the problems of these questions, using the example of a contrasting comparison between the marriage jurisdiction in Bremen, Emden and Salzuflen (County of Lippe), where three different systems of order emerged after the introduction of the Reformed churches: while the church council in Emden was primarily engaged in marital matters, the Bremen city council prevented the institutionalisation of a presbyterian church discipline. In the County of Lippe, both secular and clerical courts dealt with marital offences. The study will highlight in particular the political communication between Church, municipality and territorial lord, the role of the mediating officials and institutions, and not least the subjects’ ability to deal with conflict as well as their opportunities to negotiate.

Publications:

Monograph:

• Considerations – Encouragements – Improvements: Die Select Society in Edinburgh 1754-1764. Soziale Zusammensetzung und kommunikative Praxis einer schottischen Gelehrtengesellschaft zur Zeit der Aufklärung. (Colloquia Augustana, Bd. 27), Berlin: Akademie Verlag 2010.

Contributions to anthologies and academic journals:

• Die Select Society of Edinburgh (1754-1764). Soziale Logik und kommunikative Etikette, in: Ulrich Johannes Schneider (Hg.): Kulturen des Wissens im 18. Jahrhundert, Berlin: de Gruyter 2008, pp. 263-272.
• The Select Society of Edinburgh (1754-1764). Social Composition and Communicative Practice, in: Eighteenth-Century Scotland 22 (2008), p. 8-12.
• Judas Maccabaeus – ein Held in der Krise. Zur gesellschaftspolitischen (In-)Stabilität Großbritanniens im 18. Jahrhundert, in: Dominik Höink, Jürgen Heidrich (Hg.): Gewalt – Bedrohung – Krieg: Georg Friedrich Händels Judas Maccabaeus. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2010, pp. 29-54.
• From Aristocratic Support to Academic Office: Patronage and University in the Scottish Enlightenment, in: André Holenstein, Hubert Steinke, Martin Stuber (Hg.): Scholars in Action. The Practice of Knowledge and the Figure of the Savant in the 18th Century. Leiden, Boston: Brill, forthcoming 2012.
• „Exciting a Spirit of Emulation“: Selbstverständnis und Aktionsfeld der Edinburgh Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Sciences, Manufactures, and Agriculture in Scotland (1755-1764), in: Marcus Popplow (Hg.): Landschaften agrarisch-ökonomischen Wissens. Strategien innovativer Ressourcennutzung in Zeitschriften und Sozietäten des 18. Jahrhunderts, (= Cottbuser Studien zur Geschichte von Technik, Arbeit und Umwelt, Bd. 30), Münster/ New York: Waxmann Verlag 2010, pp. 277-295.
• Die Ordnung der Ehe. Zum Verhältnis von weltlicher und geistlicher Strafgewalt in der reformierten Grafschaft Lippe im 17. Jahrhundert, in: Matthias Freudenberg, Georg Plasger (Hg.): Kirche, Theologie und Politik im reformierten Protestantismus, (= Emder Beiträge zum reformierten Protestantismus, Bd. 14), Neukirchen-Vluyn: Foedus Verlag 2011, pp. 79-94.

Reviews and conference reports in:

• Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung, Mitteilungen des Instituts für Europäische Kulturgeschichte

Courses:

• Tutorial, winter semester 2008-2009: History of the landscape and the perception of landscape in the early modern period (German)
• Tutorial, winter semester 2009-2010: Matrimony and sexuality in the early modern period (German)
• Tutorial, summer semester 2011: History of media and communication in the early modern period (German)

Contact

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