Handbuch der Religionsgeschichte im deutschsprachigen Raum, Volume Two: Hoch- und Spatmittelalter (review)

Abstract

This is the first volume to appear in a planned six-part series on the history of religion in the German lands from antiquity through the modern era. Its declared goal is to examine the totality of religious behavior and experience during the high and later Middle Ages from a phenomenological and interdisciplinary perspective. The author, Peter Dinzelbacher, has consciously written neither a history of theological ideas nor a church history. Rather, by drawing on a wide range of sources including both Latin and vernacular verse and texts, painting, sculpture, and inquisition and visitation records, Dinzelbacher examines how religion affected daily life and attitudes. His presentation of hundreds of examples of (predominantly) late medieval religious life in Germany rests on two fundamental assumptions. First, "holiness" is not understood as the equivalent of moral sanctity, but rather as the numinous presence of unseen powers which could be associated with persons, places, rites, and objects. Second, late medieval religious life was characterized by a conflict between institutional religion (religion préscrite) on the one hand and the people's lived religious experience (religion vécue) on the other. Both assumptions lead to a problematic understanding of medieval religion, as I will argue below.