Field of Research D “Violence“ (2007-2018)

Central to the “Violence” field of research is the question of the ambivalence of religions with respect to physical violence: Researchers are investigating the potential of various religious beliefs for violence or for peace, and the question of the political and social conditions under which these potentials are variously realised. With a view especially to ancient Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, it is asked under which conditions religious protagonists become violent and when and why the exercise of violence becomes imbued with religious language and symbols. Therefore, research in the Cluster of Excellence’s second funding period from 2012 to 2017 is concentrating on (1) the recourse to sacred texts in the legitimisation of violence, and (2) to the conditions for and manifestations of martyrdom and the cult of martyrs, in both cases across cultures and different eras.

Second Funding Period 2013-2018 - Field of Research D: Violence

• D2-1 - The Role of the Church in the Formation of Political Will in the Early and High Middle Ages
• D2-2 - Local Martyrs of the ‘Third Reich’: The Funerals and Veneration of the ‘Old Fighters’ in Westphalia and of the July Putschists in Upper Austria
• D2-3 Marginal prophets and sacred sites. Translocality of religious concepts in Uganda
• D2-4 - Martyrdom and the Discourse of Martyrdom in the 4th Century A.D.
• D2-5 - The Catholic Church between Reform and Dictatorship: Argentina and Chile in the Second Half of the 20th Century
• D2-7 - Indescribable Violence: Visual Worlds of Martyrdom in the Modern Period
• D2-8 - The Book as a Weapon in Religio-Political Conflicts: Discourses of Violence and Their Transmission in 15th- and 16th-Century England
• D2-9 - Thomas Müntzer’s reception of the Book of Daniel
• D2-10 - The Experience of Violence and the Wrath of God: Religious-Historical and Reception-Hermeneutic Analyses of Old Testament Laments
• D2-11 - Islamic Concepts of Jihâd in the Past and Present
• D2-12 - Ancient Near Eastern and Biblical Historical Myths and their History of Reception
• D2-13 - “Force majeure” and public action. Politics at the times of the plague

First Funding Period 2007-2012 - Field of Research D: Violence

• D1 - Divine Violence: Religious-Historical and Reception-Hermeneutical Analyses of the Images of God in the Hebrew Bible
• D2 - Revelation’s Violent Visions and Spectacles of Violence in the Roman Empire
• D3 - The Destruction of Sanctuaries in Late Antiquity: Events and Discourse
• D4 - Images of the Other: Analyses of the Rhetoric of Violence in Late Antiquity
• D5 - “Blessed Are Those Who Practice Persecution for the Sake of Righteousness”: On the Uses of Tradition in the Era of Gregory VII
• D6 - The Censorship and Destruction of Books in Late Medieval and Early Modern England: The Example of the Lollard Heresy and the Reformation
• D8 - Images of the Wound / The Wound as Image: Conceptions of the Passion in Pre-Modern Christendom and the Visual Art of the Modern Period
• D9 - The Vatican and the Legitimisation of Physical Violence: The Example of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939)
• D10 - Between Support for Authoritarian Regimes and the Defence of Human Rights: The Catholic Church in Chile and Argentina during the Military Dictatorships of the 1970s and 1980s
• D11 - The Lord’s Resistance Army: Violence and Christianity in East Africa
• D12 - A Comparative Study of Strategies for the Pacification of Religious Legitimacy Claims
• D13 - Violence Against Oneself and Against Others in Ancient Judaism
• D14 - Islamic Concepts of Jihâd in the Past and Present