What do you do when you have too much time on your hands? Exactly, you start a six-person research group made up of theologians (Sven Gröger and Jonathan Reinert), historians (Johanna Jebe and Bastiaan Waagmeester) and Germanists (Michael Lebzelter and Isabell Väth) to analyse an almost unmanageable number of vernacular and Latin texts from the early to late Middle Ages. We met through the Graduiertenkolleg 1662 ‘Religiöses Wissen im vormodernen Europa 800-1800’ at the University of Tübingen and while travelling together to the International Medieval Congress in Leeds, where we discovered our shared interest in religious topics and interdisciplinary cooperation.
In June 2021, we began to review the extensive material of the library of St. Gallen in regular meetings and to explore possible research questions. We quickly realised that our greatest expertise lay in working together and yet with our own subject-specific approaches, which resulted in a multi-perspective approach that has characterised our work ever since.
At the beginning of 2023, we received funding from the Mediävistenverband to view and examine the not yet accessible expositions of the Lord’s Prayer in the library of St. Gallen, which we were able to do in September 2023.
Even though we are involved in the project on a part-time basis, we enjoy working together on this exciting topic and hope to do so for the coming years.
We are kindly supported by:
