International Symposium ‘The Public and the Private in Early Modern Contexts: Comparative Perspectives’

Paolo Astorri (Centre for Privacy Studies) & Harald E. Braun (Liverpool)

Speakers: 

José Luis Egio (Frankfurt, MPILHLT)

Tamar Herzog (Harvard)

Virpi Mäkinen (Helsinki)

Sarah Mortimer (Oxford)

Heikki Pihlajamäki (Helsinki)

Rudolf Schuessler (Bayeruth)

Programme:

Thursday, 1 September 2022

University of Copenhagen
South Campus
Faculty of Theology
Karen Blixen Plads 16
Room: 8B.0.16

13.00-13.30	Welcome	Paolo Astorri (Copenhagen) / Harald Braun (Liverpool)
13:30-15:30	Session 1	Moderation: Paolo Astorri
13:30-14:30	Public and Private in the Old Regime: A Legal History in the Making?	Tamar Herzog (Harvard)
14:30-15:30	Police Norms Creating Public Sphere: The Example of Jerónimo Castillo de Bobadilla (ca. 1547 – ca. 1605)	Heikki Pihlajamäki (Helsinki)
15:30-16:00	Coffee Break
16:00-18:00	Session 2	Moderation: Harald Braun
16:00-17:00	Private Mass and Public worship: Conscience and Community in Early Modern Religion	Sarah Mortimer (Oxford)
17:00-18:00	Private Vices, Public discourses. Living Normative Authorities under Attack in the Age of Confessionalization	José Luis Egío García (Frankfurt, MPILHLT)
18:00-19:00	Wine Reception &  Presentation A Companion to the Spanish Scholastics

Friday, 2 September 2022

University of Copenhagen
South Campus
Faculty of Theology
Karen Blixen Plads 16
Room: 8B.0.16 

09.30-11:30	Session 3	Moderation: Lars Cyril Nørgaard (Copenhagen)
09:30-10:30	Rights and Privacy from Late Medieval to Early Modern Spanish Scholastics	Virpi Mäkinen (Helsinki)
10:30-11:30	Sforza Pallavicino on Private and Public Happiness	Rudolf Schuessler (Bayreuth)
11:30-13:00	Coffee Break & Conclusions
13:00-14:00	Lunch – Centre for Privacy Studies (PRIVACY)

 

This International Symposium aims to facilitate the conversation about early modern notions and conceptualization of ‘the public’ and ‘the private’ and to connect cognate fields of historical study (e.g. the histories of law, theology, and political thought). The focus will be on the boundaries between ‘public’ and ‘private’, and the terms will be understood in the widest sense, for instance with reference to physical space or the wide range of relationships between the individual and the community (soul, body, household, city, state). Speakers will stroll across early modern cultures of belief and knowledge – touching upon Catholic and Protestant scholasticism and natural law theories, for instance - and attempt to develop comparisons. Speakers will address some of the following questions:

 

• What was the impact of the first globalization on European and non-European notions of the public and the private? When, how, and why did European and non-European communities share and negotiate their respective notions of the private and the public?
• In what ways do early modern conceptualizations of the private and the public reflect on notions of race or gender or and alterity?
• Did processes of confessionalization, state formation, and secularization impact on notions and practices of the public and the private? What was the relationship between social, moral, political, and legal norms?
• When and why did gatekeepers of the sacred — such as Catholic and Protestant lawyers and theologians — read, comment, and draw on one another’s ideas and concepts, and what were the outcomes?
• In what ways did legal and theological thinking shape the boundaries between public and private, and what are the differences between cultural and confessional communities in this respect?
• How did different notions of public authority impact on individual freedom? For instance, who defined the boundaries between the self and the soul, the household, and the community? What is the rationale behind these definitions? How could the early modern individual protect the private, inner space of conscience from public scrutiny?

 

Registration

Please register for participation via this link

Contact

Paolo Astorri (Centre for Privacy Studies), paolo.astorri@teol.ku.dk & Harald E. Braun (Liverpool) hbraun@liverpool.ac.uk