R.M. Esser, Prof
Research interests
Research And Writing In Progress:
‘...te erhaldinge van alle goede frunttschap en naaburschap’: Crisis, Changing Borders and Citizens’ Resilience in the Eighty Years War’
The project addresses the current academic debates on “crisis” as a form of societal reflection. It challenges the still prevalent notion that premodern societies had a limited repertoire of responses to crises and change, which was predominantly framed in perceptions of a godly and/or eschatological order. While looking at the different media, practices and rituals used to express crisis and to apply a “crisis management”, it investigates the possibilities and resources available to early modern society to cope with crisis and to negotiate change. A range of mechanisms to foster stability in transitional times will be investigated. The study focuses on contemporary historiography, legal codes and material culture(s) applied by various agents as devices for the different rhetorical models used to come to terms with religious conflict and partition: these could be rhetorics of unity or division, continuity or change, memory or oblivion.
The border region of the early modern Low Countries and the Holy Roman Empire provides an ideal laboratory for this study. It utilizes recent research on the embeddedness of early modern notions of change in the local, and it applies theories taken from Border Studies to the scenario in question.
The project is funded by a research grant from the HAB Wolfenbüttel from September to December 2015.
The “Catholic Eye and the Protestant Ear”? The New Materiality of the Sacred
This cross-border project undertaken in collaboration with colleagues from the University of Oldenburg and the Johannes a Lasco Library in Emden.
The theme “Image and Reformation” is used as a starting point to address contemporary perceptions of the changes that they witnessed in the religious spaces around them. Did they apply a rhetoric of cleansing or reform taken from the confessional debates on pulpit or university? How was the new Counter-Reformation church furniture – confessionals , altar rails etc. – received by Catholics? In many instances, the Reformation changes to church interiors were not complete and elements of the medieval Catholic devotional objects and artefacts remained (for instance in the Ludgeri-Church, Norden, St. Peter, Schleswig). How were these continuations understood?
Trans (Re-)Formations: Frisian Monasteries as places of transition and reform in the 15th and 16th centuries
The project challenges established views on the anti-monastic narrative of the Reformation which is still prevalent in much of the historiography on the period. Rather than conceptualizing monasteries and their inhabitants as forces of intellectual standstill and backwardness we aim to focus on monasteries as space of education and learning, which contributed to a new approach to spirituality. Humanism and the Devotio Moderna were intellectual and spiritual movements which were also embraced by members of the monastic orders. They offered intellectual pathways into the religious changes in the 16th century and beyond.
The project aims to visualize these monastic contributions through a series of exhibitions on both sides of the Dutch-German border: Kloster Ihlow, Klooster Ter Apel and the Johannes a Lasco Library in Emden to be opened in August 2017.
The project is funded by EDR (http://www.edr.eu/de) and Freiheitsraum Reformation (http://www.freiheitsraumreformation.de/)
Project partners: the Universities of Groningen and Oldenburg, Klosterstätte Ihlow, Klooster Ter Apel, Johannes a Lasco Bibliothek Emden, Stichting Oude Groninger Kerken. Stichting Oude Groninger Kerken.