Christus Pantocrator, ca. 1130, Cathedral of Cefalù, Italy (image: Andreas Wahra, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons).
Vaux Passional, ca. 1503/4, Peniarth Manuscripts (image: National Library of Wales, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons).
Ethiopian Gunda Gunde Gospels, ca. 1540, illustrated manuscript (image: Walters Art Museum, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons).
Christ in Majesty, ca. 781–3, Evangéliaire dit de Charlemagne ou de Godescalc (image: Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, France, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons).
Hans Baldung, Die Erscheinung des Auferstandenen vor Maria Magdalena, 1539 (image: The Yorck Project, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons).
Noli me tangere, San Nazaro Maggiore Basilica in Milan, Italy (image: Giovanni Dall’Orto, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons).
The purpose of the POLY Research Group Polycentricity and Plurality of Premodern Christianities (circa 700–1800 CE), housed at Goethe University Frankfurt and funded by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft), is twofold. First, we aim to facilitate and support comparative interdisciplinary research into preindustrial or premodern Christianities around the globe. Second, we will investigate the ways in which dynamic plurality works as a driving force of change across and within communities of belief.
Our primary goal is to decentralise religious history before 1800. We will also historicise and question the unitary and universalist self-images nurtured by institutional churches, as well as the corresponding models of religious culture or transformation found in modern scholarship. This ambitious intellectual agenda is supported by an international and interdisciplinary team of scholars. Together, we hope to more deeply understand the formation of religious communities by local and global forces, as well as the myriad connections among them.
