Projects / Programmes
IMAGE - WORD - KNOWLEDGE. The Transmission and Transformation of Ideas on the Territory Between the Eastern Alps and the North Adriatic 1400-1800
January 1, 2022
- December 31, 2027
| Code |
Science |
Field |
Subfield |
| 6.09.00 |
Humanities |
Art history |
|
| 6.01.00 |
Humanities |
Historiography |
|
| Code |
Science |
Field |
| 6.04 |
Humanities |
Arts (arts, history of arts, performing arts, music) |
| 6.02 |
Humanities |
Languages and Literature |
knowledge transfer, ideas, Late Middle Ages, Early Modern Period, Humanism, Protestantism, Counter-Reformation, Catholic Revival, Middle Europe, history, historiography, language, literature, architecture, iconography, art, culture, society
Data for the last 5 years (citations for the last 10 years) on
April 15, 2024;
A3 for period
2018-2022
Data for ARIS tenders (
04.04.2019 – Programme tender,
archive
)
| Database |
Linked records |
Citations |
Pure citations |
Average pure citations |
| WoS |
19 |
12 |
12 |
0.63 |
| Scopus |
42 |
26 |
18 |
0.43 |
Researchers (8)
Organisations (3)
Abstract
The formation of this interdisciplinary program team was triggered by a realization that there is an absence of research within humanities on the subject of Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Period in the region between Eastern Alps and Northern Adriatic. The team will remedy this in a markedly interdisciplinary manner. It involves scientists from leading Slovenian research institutions, covering not only art history and history, but also comparative linguistics and comparative literature, Slavic studies, classical philology, anthropology, cultural history and philosophy. Their scientific research will be accompanied by the digitization of primary sources. The research program focuses on reconstructing and analyzing the processes of knowledge transfer. Within the section Transfer and Exchange of Knowledge Between Monasteries, the team will examine the knowledge coming into the aforementioned space. Likewise it will be interested in the opposite direction of this exchange. The subject of the research will be mostly monasteries in the French and Italian regions and monasteries in Bavaria, Austria, present-day Switzerland and Croatia. The purpose of the section Transfer and Exchange of Knowledge Alongside the Military Frontier will be to scrutinize the extent to which perceptions of Ottoman Turks were shaped by interacting with them as opposed to inherited cultural concepts based on Biblical interpretations. In addition, attention will be given to the consequences of the military revolution in the sixteenth and seventeenth century. In the next section, The Development of Specific Cultural Practices and Knowledge Transfers, the team will illuminate the migrations of artists and military architects, who were important vessels for artistic taste. Within the context of the interwoven "great" and "little tradition", special care will be given to the idiomatic language in the works of Slovenian Protestants, where the phraseology developed through literary traditions on one hand and folk sources on the other. The Language, Handwritten Manuscripts, Book and Inscriptions section will be dedicated to researching the Slovenian, Latin and German texts, regardless of whether the knowledge dissemination was directed towards the general public or the upper intellectual echelons, for instance within Renaissance Humanism (Sigismund Herberstein, bishops of Ljubljana, humanists with reference to the Republic of Venice, inscriptions), religious conflicts during the sixteenth century (Pier Paolo Vergerio and Primož Trubar's German context) and Counter-Reformation (Passion Plays, "confraternity books"). In the final section, titled Changes in Understanding the Meaning of History, the team will shine a light on materials from Regional Assemblies which represent a treasure trove of sources for exploring the wider region. In addition, a separate treatment will focus on personal records by socially engaged agents within historic currents or their contemporary observers.
Significance for science
The international scientific community recognizes as interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary those scientific thematizations that fundamentally and in a highly particular way reflect, problematize, and systematically describe discourses and practices which can hardly - if at all - be addressed by political history alone. With its practices of intertwining political, cultural, art, literary, etc., history creates knowledge about the past and builds images of the past as a conglomerate of disciplines whose mission, according to Huizinga, is to "study the forms of life, thought, knowledge, and art." The program is of instrumental importance for science in several regards, namely: - It charges itself with the task of studying the hitherto unused and partly even inaccessible sources; - It will not study and use historical sources in an isolated, insular way, but rather within the framework of the comparative concept, which is widely recognized abroad as an orientation with the highest added value but rather under-represented in Slovenia; - The program will importantly broaden the theoretical frameworks of studying this specific historical period in Slovenia, which remains a desideratum in Slovenian science; - The program will significantly expand and interconnect national and international databases that are or will be of crucial importance for both historical research and research on the history of all scientific disciplines in the territory between Southeastern Alps and Northern Adriatic (and in some cases beyond); - With new databases or online corpuses, it will establish new collections of digitized materials; - With extensive international collaboration and publications in international milieu, it will provide the scientific, teaching, and broader interested public in Slovenia with access to unpublished materials that differ in structure from those in the neighboring countries. In Slovenia, where the discussion on methodological and conceptual questions concerning the historical research and historiography of the period between the 15th and 18th century in the territory between Southeastern Alps and the Adriatic is unsystematic, the dissemination of theoretical reflections on studies themselves is particularly important. The members of the program group have already addressed these problems based on their own experiences with investigating individual periods spanning Classical Antiquity and the Early Modern Period. In non-experimental sciences, a clearly defined and reflected theoretical stance is a crucial element in verifying research results (apart from source citation, even the most significant). For this reason, the implementation of the program will reinforce the scientific status of historical research in Slovenia, where numerous controversies point to a low level of historical culture. Establishment, maintenance, and continuous enrichment of new and existing databases will ensure the conditions for conducting research on the period that is under-researched in Slovenia, a fact that is also reflected in Slovenians' reserved attitude toward their own cultural heritage. As such, these collections will be indispensable in thematizing the genesis of the current conditions in many areas. The development of these collections will signify not only work with archives and the technologies of the digital humanities but also discovering new or forgotten materials. For this reason, the work performed by the program group will not only reflect multidisciplinary research, but it will also create conditions for it.
Significance for the country
The implementation of the program will help establish an integral historical culture, the need for which was already recognized before the Second World War by the later leading Slovenian medievalist Bogo Grafenauer. Historicization of past developments will ensure that these will not be used in an unreflected and meaningless manner. By highlighting the complexity of every single identity, the program will spread the non-integralist understanding of this often-used notion. The integralist conception of identities establishes differences among people as a basis for segregation and confrontation, whereas their non-integralist conception allows the differences to become a basis for complementing and collaboration. This applies to what Lucien Febvre already defined as the core of historical work: spreading the knowledge about different possibilities of human life in different cultural circles, periods and geographical spaces, as well as coming into contact with them. In this way, the validity of Marc Bloch's warning that there is nothing but general history comes into full sight, even on the micro-level of actual historical materials. The implementation of the program will enable foreign historians in the broadest sense of the term and other interested audiences to learn about the issues of the territory between Southeastern Alps and the Adriatic and its culture. In many regards, the structure of preserved sources differs from the structure of archival sources from the neighboring countries, where archives have been of central importance for centuries while also demonstrating the embeddedness of this territory in all cultural currents that marked the period under discussion. A certain structure of sources facilities certain paradigms of research and renders others more difficult (and costly). In this respect, the program will be not so much about promoting the state and its cities, etc., as it will be about filling the gaps in broader historical surveys. Expanding and deepening the knowledge about the history of this territory will increase the possibility of collaborating in extensive comparative studies and specialized projects. This is especially important for the historical period between the 15th and 18th century, which the program group will address. The implementation of the program will also be of tremendous importance for the teaching process by transferring new knowledge into practice; scientific findings find their way into the academic and wider professional as well as lay public not only in the form of scientific monographs, articles, interviews, radio and television shows, etc. (see the program group members' achievements under points 18-29), but also in the form of study courses, through which they enter the teaching practice at Slovenian universities and, of course, universities abroad. For this reason, the topic highlighted by the program will be of tremendous social significance that will reach far beyond its epistemological horizon as well as its historical thematizations and reflections. In other words, the research results will affect the wider social awareness about historical, cultural, political, and social currents that marked the period at the focus of the program.
