Dr. Cecilia Cristellon, German Historical Institute Rome (Web) ; in cooperation with the Royal Netherlands Institute Rome

Time: 26.-27.05.2011
Venue: German Historical Institute, via Aurelia Antica 391, 00165 Rome, Italy
Historical investigation into religious pluralism and multicultural coexistence has until now paid little attention to the subject of mixed marriages. Sources show that mixed marriages are documented from the late Middle Ages as a common practice, although they were not commonplace. In Europe the processes of confessionalization and nation state formation made mixed marriage into a political issue. Different types of authorities-ecclesiastical, state, local-both competed among themselves for, and simply sought to establish, control over interconfessional and interreligious marriages-alternately clashing, negotiating, and compromising. In the early modern period, mixed marriages helped to lay the foundations for religious coexistence and
tolerance and to negotiate interconfessional and interreligious boundaries both internal (between Catholic, Protestant and Reformed, and Jewish communities and regions) and external (with the Muslim world, the East, and the New World).
This international conference-the first dedicated specifically to this topic-will explore the potential of this new area of research. The papers will address the following issues: the emergence of the various systems of rules concerning mixed marriages; the institutions responsible for regulating them and the intermixing of politics and religion in this regulation; the political, social, and emotional elements that played roles in the processes of negotiating and overcoming religious and confessional boundaries; the many tensions underlying mixed marriages-conversion, gender roles, raising children; and the challenge of secularization.
PROGRAMME
Thursday 26 May 2011
Greetings and Introduction
9:00
Michael Matheus (Rome), Bernard Stolte (Rome)
Cecilia Cristellon (Rome), Introduzione/Introduction
Institutions and the Construction of the Law I
Chair: Alexander Koller (Rome)
9:30
Ermanno Orlando (Venice): Matrimoni misti tra greci e latini a Venezia (secoli XIV-XVI): dall’apertura alla chiusura/From Openness to Restriction: Mixed Marriages between Greek and Latin Christians in Venice between the Fourteenth and the Sixteenth Centuries
10:00
Ralf Frassek (Frankfurt am Main): Das frühe evangelische Eherecht des sächsischen Raumes und die Frage konfessionsverschiedener Ehen/Protestant Marriage Law in the Saxony Region and the Problem of Marriages between Adherents of Different Confessions
10:30 Discussion
11:00 Coffee Break
Institutions and the Construction of the Law II
Chair: Marina Caffiero (Rome)
11:30
Michael Khodarkovsky (Chicago/Berlin): Legal and Practical Aspects of Mixed Marriages in Early Modern Russia
12:00
Cecilia Cristellon (Rome): L’inquisizione romana e il controllo dei matrimoni misti in Europa in età moderna/The Roman Inquisition and the Control of Mixed Marriages in Early Modern Europe
12:30 Discussion
1:00 Lunch
Religion, Politics, Emotions
Chair: Amanda Eurich (Bellingham)
14:30
Dagmar Freist (Oldenburg): The Politics of Mixed Marriage: Queen Henrietta Maria as an Ambassador of the Catholic Faith in Seventeenth-Century England
15:00
Silvana Seidel Menchi (Pisa): Marrying Across Borders in the Eighteenth Century: Carl Eugen von Württemberg and His Three Women
15:30
Benjamin Marschke (Arcata): Cross-Confessional Marriages and the Limits of Religious Plurality: Changes in Confessional Identity and Conflict in the House of Hohenzollern in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Prussia
16:00 Discussion
16:30 Coffee Break
Conflicts: Conversion, Gender Roles, and Raising Children
Chair: Irene Fosi (Chieti-Pescara)
17:00
Magdalena Drexl (Essen): Glaube, Einfluss, Macht. Konfessionelle Konflikte zwischen Kurfürstin Anna und Kurfürst Johann Sigismund von Brandenburg/Faith, Influence, and Power: The Confessional Conflicts of Princess Anna and Prince Johann
Sigismund von Brandenburg
17:30
Benjamin Kaplan (London): Child Kidnappings in the Dutch Republic: Struggles over the Religious Upbringing of the Children of Interfaith Couples
18:00 Discussion
Friday 27 May 2011
Constructing and Negotiating Confessional Boundaries
Chair: Heide Wunder (Bad Nauheim)
9:00
Amanda Eurich (Bellingham): The „Acid Test“: Intermarriage and Confessional Boundaries in Early Modern France
9:30
Bertand Forclaz (Neuchâtel): Attraverso il confine. I matrimoni misti nella diocesi di Basilea durante la Guerra dei Trent’Anni / Across the Border: Mixed Marriages in
the Diocese of Basel during the Thirty Years‘ War
10:00 Discussion
10:30 Coffee Break
Inclusion and Exclusion
Chair: Gerard Delille (Paris/Rome)
11:00
Manuel Fernandez Chavez- Rafael Pérez García (Seville): The Marriage of „cristianos nuevos de moro“ in Spain between the Fifteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
11:30
Marina Caffiero (Rome): Matrimoni alla turchesca. Inquisizione e unioni trasgressive  tra cattolici e musulmani in terre di missione / The Inquisition and Transgressive Unions between Catholics and Muslims in Mission Territories
12:00
Laura Binz (Florence/Bern): Between Tridentine Doctrine and Local Practices: Latin Catholic Marriages in Constantinople, 1650-1750
12:30 Discussion
13:00 Lunch
Religious (In)tolerance and the Challenge of Secularization
Chair: Arthur Weststeijn (Rome)
14:30
Gian Ackermans (Nijmegen): Mischehen in der Missio Hollandica des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts: die katholische Perspektive / Mixed Marriages in the Seventeenth- and
Eighteenth-Century Dutch Mission: The Catholic Perspective
15:00
Ellinor Forster (Innsbruck): Die Diskussion und die Praxis der Ehen zwischen Katholiken, Protestanten und Juden in Österreich im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert/ Marriages between Catholics, Protestants, and Jews in Austria: Debate and Practice in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
15:30 Discussion
16:00 Coffee Break
16:20
Round Table Discussion
Chair: Silvana Seidel Menchi (Pisa)
Participants: Gerard Delille, Dagmar Freist, Benjamin Kaplan, Michael Khodarkovsky, Heide Wunder
18:00 Conference Conclusion
Simultaneous translation into English of the presentations in German and
Italian will be provided.
The conference is sponsored by the Gerda Henkel Foundation.