TY - JOUR
T1 - Withdrawal and Engagement in the long Seventeenth Century
T2 - Four case studies
AU - Bruun, Mette Birkedal
AU - Havsteen, Sven Rune
AU - Mejrup, Kristian
AU - Nagelsmit, Eelco
AU - Nørgaard, Lars
PY - 2015
Y1 - 2015
N2 - The Cistercian monastery La Trappe, Mme de Maintenon's school for girls at St Cyr, the schools at A. H. Francke's foundations at Halle and the community established within these foundations bring to the fore the dynamic between withdrawal and engagement and the medial expressions of this dynamic. But each case demonstratesaparticular employmentofarchitecture, texts, music and imagesinthe service of withdrawal and engagement respectively. At La Trappe the liturgical life and the furnishing of the abbey church made manifest the appropriation of desert asceticism as well as the Cistercian origin. Meanwhile the ethos of isolation and devotional self-surrender was conveyed beyond the walls by means of treatises, letters, images and the reception of visitors. At St Cyr noble girls were taught to renounce the world. This aim went hand in hand with the disciplinary and educational profile of the school and the royal founders' ambition of to educate the wives and mothers of French noble households. Three paintings produced for the royal institution embody this aspiration in a particularly illuminating way. In the two cases related to Halle, the juxtaposition of theological texts and concepts such as Gelassenheit, musico-poetical culture as well as material and visual expressions of the Pietist reform movement and the employment of the eagle motif contributes to a multi-faceted understanding of the dynamic between withdrawal and engagement and the relation between the withdrawn locus and the society in which it was set.
AB - The Cistercian monastery La Trappe, Mme de Maintenon's school for girls at St Cyr, the schools at A. H. Francke's foundations at Halle and the community established within these foundations bring to the fore the dynamic between withdrawal and engagement and the medial expressions of this dynamic. But each case demonstratesaparticular employmentofarchitecture, texts, music and imagesinthe service of withdrawal and engagement respectively. At La Trappe the liturgical life and the furnishing of the abbey church made manifest the appropriation of desert asceticism as well as the Cistercian origin. Meanwhile the ethos of isolation and devotional self-surrender was conveyed beyond the walls by means of treatises, letters, images and the reception of visitors. At St Cyr noble girls were taught to renounce the world. This aim went hand in hand with the disciplinary and educational profile of the school and the royal founders' ambition of to educate the wives and mothers of French noble households. Three paintings produced for the royal institution embody this aspiration in a particularly illuminating way. In the two cases related to Halle, the juxtaposition of theological texts and concepts such as Gelassenheit, musico-poetical culture as well as material and visual expressions of the Pietist reform movement and the employment of the eagle motif contributes to a multi-faceted understanding of the dynamic between withdrawal and engagement and the relation between the withdrawn locus and the society in which it was set.
U2 - 10.1515/jemc-2014-0012
DO - 10.1515/jemc-2014-0012
M3 - Journal article
SN - 2196-6648
VL - 1
SP - 249
EP - 343
JO - Journal of Early Modern Christianity
JF - Journal of Early Modern Christianity
IS - 2
ER -