Acknowledgements
In May 2023, the research unit Spiritual Intermediality in the Early Modern Period, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and founded at the University of Hamburg in 2022, hosted its first international conference to explore forms and functions of intermediality in the praxis pietatis of Post-Reformation Europe. Theologians, historians, art historians and literary scholars, all working in the field of early modern studies, were invited to engage with our proposed concept of spiritual intermediality and what we claim is its key role in shaping practices of piety in early modern Europe. The present volume contains the proceedings of this conference. We would like to express our gratitude to the general editor of Intersections, Karl A.E. Enenkel, and the members of its editorial board for giving our book a home in the series, and we also thank Wietse de Boer for shepherding this project. We further thank the DFG for its generous sponsoring of our research unit and this conference in particular. We also gratefully recognise the Warburg Haus in Hamburg for kindly hosting us in the iconic ellipsoidal reading room, which inspired many fruitful exchanges among all participants.
The research presented here has significantly benefited from the interdisciplinary dialogue among the volume’s many contributors, and we thank our colleagues for engaging so productively with the theoretical concepts that underpin it. And last but not least, we are infinitely grateful to Jaclyn Arndt for her most competent copyediting work. In times where scholars increasingly rely on AI, we would like to stress that no tool will ever be on par with the acuteness, precision and perceptiveness with which she has accompanied the editing process of this volume.
Marlene Dirschauer, Rogier Gerrits, Marc Föcking and Alec Ryrie
April 2025