No abstract

This study is an exploration of lived religion and gender across the Reformation, from the 14th 18th centuries. Combining conceptual development with empirical history, the authors explore these two topics via themes of power, agency, work, family, sainthood and witchcraft.By advancing the theoretical category of 'experience', Lived Religion and Gender reveals multiple femininities and masculinities in the intersectional context of lived religion. The authors analyse specific case studies from both medieval and early modern sources, such as secular court records, to tell the stories of both individuals and large social groups. By exploring lived religion and gender on a range of social levels including the domestic sphere, public devotion and spirituality, this study explains how late medieval and early modern people performed both religion and gender in ways that were vastly different from what ideologists have prescribed.Lived Religion and Gender covers a wide geographical area in western Europe including Italy, Scandinavia and Finland, making this study an invaluable resource for scholars and students concerned with the history of religion, the history of gender, the history of the family, as well as medieval and early modern European history.

No abstract

Canonization processes, inquiries into a putative saint's life, merits and miracles, are rich sources for the study of lived experiences as well as religious practices of lay Christians. Studies of this field have multiplied during the 1990s and 2000s; the focus had shifted from overall categorizations and comparison of various processes to a narrower but nuanced perspective; qualitative close reading of the depositions is an important method of analysis. Currently, social history approach, everyday life, family and gender, as well as local interaction and political motivation behind the practicalities of the proceedings are pre-eminent themes in the study of medieval canonizations.

In this introductory chapter Katajala-Peltomaa & Toivo analyse historiographical changes from the history of popular religion to the history of religion as lived. They lay out the framework and discuss the tradition of studying the history of experience and religion as a cultural and time-bound phenomenon. The chapter introduces three analytical levels, namely everyday experience, experience as a process and experience as a social and societal structure arguing for a situational nature of experience. The three levels of experience are approached via the concepts of cultural scripts, communities, embodiment, materiality and agency. Finally, the introduction explains the structure of the rest of the volume.