Crisis & Transition in Late Medieval Central Europe: Politics – Religion – Environment

The organizers invite Ph.D. students to apply for a five-day September School in Medieval Studies that will explore the phenomenon of the so-called „Crisis of the Late Middle Ages“ in a Central European context from the perspective of political, environmental, and religious history.

Society tends to be sensitive to indications of crisis at a time when the political situation is shaken and a general sense of insecurity spreads. This is also true for the so-called crisis of the Late Middle Ages. The September School on „Crisis & Transition in Late Medieval Central Europe“ suggests analysing the correlation between the perception of crisis by individuals and social groups, objective economic (crop failures, dearth, famine), biological (epidemics), and environmental indicators (extreme weather events, climatic change), and the ‚public‘ discourse in which the situation is reflected. In this way, the Summer School attempts to replace a separate consideration of these aspects, which has long characterized Central European research on the crisis of the late Middle Ages, with an integrative approach that assumes an interlocking of political, religious, and economic spheres and their interaction with natural conditions.

This intensive five-day course for Ph.D. students in medieval studies will introduce the participants to the topic through working with sources and discussing the relevant historiography from all three mentioned fields of research on politics, religious and environmental phenomena. Our participants will learn about the existing approaches to the late medieval crisis. Based on their own reading and interpretation of the sources, followed by joint discussion, they will gain a deeper understanding of the methodological possibilities of investigating socio-political, cultural, and environmental phenomena of the Late Middle Ages.