Hospitality and Trust in God. Medieval Semantics and Practices of Trust

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Susanne Reichlin
• Subject Area: German Medieval Studies (Medieval German Literature)
• Term: from 2018 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 403178526

Trust is not only a personal attitude, but also a social practice of reducing the complexity of the future. If the necessary information for a rational choice is lacking, being trusting hides certain possibilities and shapes the future by doing so. When analyzing the current vanishing of trust in monetary or political systems, the social sciences normally act on the assumption of an opposition of pre-modern and modern societies: In pre-modern societies trust is based on personal contact and therefore easy to control and covered by the trust in God, while modern societies depend on trust in institutions. In focusing medieval semantics and practices of trust, the research project aims to put into question this opposition, and gains a better understanding of medieval practices of trust, which are not opposed to the trust in God, but go along with it. Therefore the project aims to analyze on the one hand forms of mutual confidence in situations of hospitality, which are described in courtly epics and short stories. On the other hand we will examine forms of trust in God in the mystical works of Eckhart, Tauler and Mechthild of Magdeburg. We would like to focus on the interdependence and transference of horizontal (social) and vertical (trust in God) forms of trust. Therefore, we have to analyze the described practices in the different fields as well as the historical words (“getriuwen”, “triuwe” “zuoversiht”) and the implied concepts of religious and social forms of trust. Furthermore, we will study how literary and religious texts perform and build trust in God as well as in social customs and get so a better comprehension of pre-modern and modern forms of trust.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants