Books by Mette Birkedal Bruun
Early Modern Privacy: Sources and Approaches, Michael Green, Lars Cyril Nørgaard, Mette Birkedal Bruun (eds.), Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2022
Interdisciplinary Studies in Early Modern Culture Privacy is often viewed as a modern phenomenon.... more Interdisciplinary Studies in Early Modern Culture Privacy is often viewed as a modern phenomenon. Early Modern Privacy: Sources and Approaches challenges this view. This collection examines instances, experiences, and spaces of early modern privacy, and opens new avenues to understanding the structures and dynamics that shape early modern societies. Scholars of architectural history, art history, church history, economic history, gender history, history of law, history of literature, history of medicine, history of science, and social history detail how privacy and the private manifest within a wide array of sources, discourses, practices, and spatial programmes. In doing so, they tackle the methodological challenges of early modern privacy, in all its rich, historical specificity.
The Unfamiliar Familiar: Armand-Jean de Rancé (1626-1700) between Withdrawal and Engagement, 2017
This work is my Doktordisputats (the Danish equivalent of the Habilitation) which I defended in J... more This work is my Doktordisputats (the Danish equivalent of the Habilitation) which I defended in June 2017. I plan to work it into a more publishable format. However, with my current intense engagement in the Centre for Privacy Studies (www.teol.ku.dk), the Privacy Studies Journal (https://privacystudies.org/about/) and the research project "STAY HOME: The home during the corona-crisis - and after" (https://stayhomestudier.dk/) I have had to realize that such a reworking is not imminent. Thus I have decided to make the work available in its original format. I have made only a few formal corrections which means, among other things, that important scholarship that has been published since 2017 has not been taken into consideration.
This volume is a study of spatial structures in Bernard of Clairvaux’s Parables. It lays out a sp... more This volume is a study of spatial structures in Bernard of Clairvaux’s Parables. It lays out a spiritual topography which is linked to the rumination of the Bible. The topography ranges across such locations as Paradise, Babylon, the bridegroom's chamber, and the Celestial Jerusalem, and man navigates it in the character of peregrinus and viator.
The first part of the study addresses the spiritual topography and the hermeneutics of its mapping. The second and larger part examines each of Bernard's eight parables and the ways in which he reformulates issues central to monastic tradition – militia Christi, for example, God's image and likeness in man, contemptus mundi, the quest for beatitude – as voyages within spiritual landscapes.
Book chapters by Mette Birkedal Bruun
Quid est sacramentum? Visual Representation of Sacred Mysteries in Early Modern Europe, 1400-1700’, 2019
(DNRF 138). I thank each of my PRIVACY colleagues for having inspired the insights presented here... more (DNRF 138). I thank each of my PRIVACY colleagues for having inspired the insights presented here. I am particularly grateful to Lars Nørgaard. Thanks are due also to Anne Régent-Susini, Walter Melion, and Lee Palmer Wandel, as well as to the other participants of the conference Quid est sacramentum for stimulating questions.
Managing Time. Literature and Devotion in Early Modern France, 2017
Devotional manuals and catechisms organize time. They structure days, weeks, months and years acc... more Devotional manuals and catechisms organize time. They structure days, weeks, months and years according to liturgical rhythms and daily prayers; they prescribe particular exercises for particular hours of the day and meditative programmes for eight- or ten-day retreats. Such guidelines hinge on the idea that a purposeful investment of earthly time will secure eternity. This chapter examines the temporal tension between liturgical time and daily chores, between prayer and pastime, between time and eternity.
The Oxford Handbook of the Baroque, 2019
A penchant for retreat permeates baroque devotion. Prayer is key, and withdrawal from the world c... more A penchant for retreat permeates baroque devotion. Prayer is key, and withdrawal from the world corroborates sincere prayer. Some believers retreat to the cloister for an existence of permanent absorption, but believers are generally enjoined to retreat for a few days annually to follow a devotional program, or for moments of prayer across the day. While verbal prayer is seen as a basic expression of devotion, mental prayer is generally deemed more efficacious, demanding as it does the believer's full attention. Chapels, chambers, and gardens are privileged sites of devout absorption; prayer books, rosaries, and devotional images sustain the inward turn; manuals teach the practice; and written and drawn portraits show those who master it. This chapter presents the ideal of devotional retreat in prayer as well as some of its spatial, spiritual, corporeal, and material corollaries.
Living Together: Roland Barthes the Individual and the Community, 2018
In the chapter on enclosure (clôture), Barthes turns his attention to physically demarcated forms... more In the chapter on enclosure (clôture), Barthes turns his attention to physically demarcated forms of existence. The dynamic between text and praxis underlies the chapter and indeed the very publication of Comment vivre ensemble. On the one hand, the "novelistic simulations of everyday spaces" studied by Barthes oscillate between animal and human modes of being on one side, and on the other literary explorations of such modes of being in descriptions of the correlation between space and existence, and Barthes discusses the capacity of fictive texts to bring out nuances pertaining to this correlation. On the other hand, the translation of Barthes's lectures at the Collège de France into a textual whole, complete with explanatory notes, involves a transposition from oral discourse to edited text, from academic praxis to literary representation and from the enclosure of the academic auditory and its scholarly community to an indefinite and partly anonymous universe of readers and commentators. The interaction between text and practice is explored in the substance of Barthes's work and exploited in the emergence of the volume. The generic challenges and dynamic potential of this interaction are worth keeping in mind as we turn to texts that present a monastic vision of (co)habitation. Our point of departure is taken in Barthes's concern with clôture as a physical boundary and as a demarcation of privacy.
Solitudo: Spaces, Places, and Times of Solitude in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, 2018
The Play of Construction and Modification, 2004
Papers by Mette Birkedal Bruun
xii acknowledgements lar. Especially I thank Centre leader Nils Holger Petersen for his vigilance... more xii acknowledgements lar. Especially I thank Centre leader Nils Holger Petersen for his vigilance, ambition, and unfailing wideness of perspective. Eyolf Østrem and Sven R. Havsteen's distinct personal versions of intellectual diligence have been an invaluable stimulus, and conversations with Sven have been a recurrent source of intellectual revitalization. The other institutional backdrop to this work is that of the Department of Church History at the University of Copenhagen. I remain thankful to the Dean of Faculty, Steffen Kjeldgaard-Pedersen, for the hospitality that first secured this affiliation, and should like to thank my colleagues at the department for a spirited milieu. First and foremost Tine Reeh, friend, dynamo, and inspiration in the ongoing endeavours to balance theory and source work. For theoretical motivation and interest in the project I moreover thank Niels Kastfelt of the Centre for Africa Studies,
Aarhus University Press eBooks, Jan 25, 2021
Fordham University Press eBooks, Dec 31, 2022
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Books by Mette Birkedal Bruun
The first part of the study addresses the spiritual topography and the hermeneutics of its mapping. The second and larger part examines each of Bernard's eight parables and the ways in which he reformulates issues central to monastic tradition – militia Christi, for example, God's image and likeness in man, contemptus mundi, the quest for beatitude – as voyages within spiritual landscapes.
Book chapters by Mette Birkedal Bruun
Papers by Mette Birkedal Bruun
The first part of the study addresses the spiritual topography and the hermeneutics of its mapping. The second and larger part examines each of Bernard's eight parables and the ways in which he reformulates issues central to monastic tradition – militia Christi, for example, God's image and likeness in man, contemptus mundi, the quest for beatitude – as voyages within spiritual landscapes.
It focuses primarily on so-called occasional rituals such as burial, church consecration, exorcism and excommunication rather than on the Mass and Office. Recent research on such rites challenges many established ideas, especially about the extent to which they differed from place to place and over time, and how the surviving evidence should be interpreted. These essays are designed to offer guidance about current thinking, especially for those who are new to the subject, want to know more about it, or wish to conduct research on liturgical topics.
Bringing together scholars working in different disciplines (history, literature, architectural history, musicology and theology), time periods (from the ninth to the fifteenth centuries) and intellectual traditions, this collection demonstrates the great potential that liturgical evidence offers for understanding many aspects of the Middle Ages. It includes essays that discuss the practicalities of researching liturgical rituals; show through case studies the problems caused by over-reliance on modern editions; explore the range of sources for particular ceremonies and the sort of questions which can be asked of them; and go beyond the rites themselves to investigate how liturgy was practised and understood in the medieval period.
Contents: Introduction, Helen Gittos and Sarah Hamilton. Researching Rites: Researching the history of rites, Helen Gittos; Researching rites for the dying and the dead, Frederick S. Paxton; Approaches to early medieval music and rites, William T. Flynn. Questioning Authority and Tradition: Questioning the authority of Vogel and Elze’s Pontificale Romano-Germanique, Henry Parkes; Rethinking the uses of Sarum and York: a historiographical essay, Matthew Cheung Salisbury. Diversity: Interpreting diversity: excommunication rites in the 10th and 11th centuries, Sarah Hamilton; Medieval exorcism: liturgical and hagiographical sources, Florence Chave-Mahir; Rites for dedicating churches, Mette Birkedal Bruun and Louis I. Hamilton. Texts and Performance: Architecture as evidence for liturgical performance, Carolyn Marino Malone; Liturgical texts and performance practices, Carol Symes. Bibliography; Index.
Furthermore the ideal candidate should demonstrate an active research agenda within the fields of ancient and medieval church history, preferably with a focus upon the history of theology, and including a documented high level of the implied language skills (especially Latin).
What is home and how do we relate to, inhabit, shape, experience, and use it? Home is described in terms of shape, space, and scale, but also in terms of experiences, relationships, and emotions. During the corona crisis home became a central yet contested term. What does it mean to stay at home? What makes a home? What about those without a home? The pandemic might be a catalyst for thinking about home in new ways-not only as a safe or as a private space, but maybe also as an unsafe space or a space that is sometimes public or professional. We invite scholars to think with us about the home. The aim of the conference is to share and discuss new perspectives on the home-in particular perspectives that emerge during crises and may inform future conceptualizations of human dwelling. We invite speakers to deliver research and design perspectives on the home as a physical, social, digital, and existential place in past, present, and future.
Centre for Privacy Studies (PRIVACY), funded by the Danish National Research Foundation and based in Copenhagen, advertises 3-4 fully funded PhD positions within the fields of Architectural History, Church History, Legal History and History.
Applications must be submitted electronically no later than 15 April 2019
PRIVACY was launched in the autumn of 2017 under the direction of Professor Mette Birkedal Bruun and runs for six years with the possibility of a four-year extension. It is hosted by the Department of Church History at the Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen, in association with the Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen and the School of Architecture, Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Schools of Architecture, Design and Conservations (KADK), Copenhagen.
Deadline: 15 April 2019
theoretical principles played out in epistolary practice. Reading the correspondence against the foil of Rivet’s treatise brings to the fore a number of characteristics of his ideal prince: the intimate educational nexus between tutor, parents, and pupil; the way in which the prince is taught to navigate the interrelated spheres of self, household, and society; and finally, the ways in which the dichotomy between public and private is at once dissolved and affirmed in the educational molding of an early modern prince.