Drawing Death into Life. Comparative Perspectives of Protestant Ways in Coping with Death between Desacralization and Resacralization, 1580–1700

"To die gently and blissfully": the project explored the background to this ideal and investigated how dying was reflected in the lives of people in early modern Europe. On the one hand, it enquired into the norms in which the emotions triggered by death and dying were embedded. On the other hand, it focussed on the ethical implications that were associated with this.

Funeral writings served as the main source material. While research into these sources had previously focussed primarily on biographical information, the project took into account the entirety of these diverse sources, including the sermon itself. The European and at the same time comparative confessional perspective was particularly attractive: Lutheran funeral writings from the imperial city of Nuremberg, those from the reformed city of Basel, as well as English ones from the Church of England were able to provide information on whether differences in dealing with death and dying could be recognised, even in the face of changing crises in the 16th and 17th centuries, or whether there were rather converging developments.