Humility in theory and practice. Historical approaches across cultures (1250-1500)

SNSF Starting Grants 2023_Grant number 218236

01.08.2024 – 31.07.2029

The project aims to map the presence of humility during the period 1250-1500 by viewing it as an articulated awareness of human positionality and interconnectedness. It suggests that the defining cross-cultural feature of humility was its manifestation as a value that was both situated and embodied. As a situated value, humility underwent ongoing (re-)negotiations both in its theoretical frameworks and related practices. By examining written sources in various languages – Latin, different vernaculars, and Arabic – that circulated in manuscripts and early prints, as well as by considering visual sources and artifacts, the project seeks to substantially broaden current understandings of historical humility. This multifaceted perspective spans various cultures, with a particular focus on selected European regions and the Mamluk Sultanate. The project employs approaches from historical semantics, material philology, book history, intellectual, cultural, and social history, and history of knowledge, with a particular emphasis on gender-related issues. Digital tools, such as an open-accessible database, will also be implemented within the project.

PI: Prof. Dr. Silvia Negri
Knowledge about humility, humility and knowledge
Senior Researcher: Dr. James Weaver
Where was humility in the Mamluk Sultanate?
PhD Candidate: Elena Lampp
Environmental Humility in Medieval Monasticism
PhD Candidate: Michele Marchioni
The Terms of Opposites: A Semantic Analysis of humilitas, humiliatio, and Their Derivatives
Associated PhD Candidate: Lukas Bickel
The Typology of Prayer between 1250-1500