Announcement: New project to start in 2022

The German Research Foundation (DFG) has funded a new project entitled "Normative Ordnung und symbolische Präsenz der Antoniter. Edition ihrer Statuten und Analyse ihrer Zeichen", which will begin its work this year.

The Antonites are one of the little-known spiritual communities today, despite their formerly widespread and exceptionally high cultural presence. During their work between the 11th and 18th centuries, they had more than 350 branches throughout Europe as well as in the Holy Land and, with their hospitals, were among the most important providers of charitable care. Despite their outstanding importance not only for the history of religious communities but also for that of institutionalised care, central basic texts of the order have never been edited.

The project aims to address this serious desideratum in two complementary areas of work. Moreover, these are the only two that concern the Order as a whole and in its essence. The primary goal is the first edition of the medieval statutes of the Order, namely those from the years 1367, 1420 and 1478, which will then be available as open access editions. As a self-imposed law, these texts can provide information in a special way about the hitherto almost unknown constitutional structure of the Antonites and thus shed light on the normative foundations of a community that was interconnected throughout Europe and, despite its local location, always acted supraregionally. This project will be accompanied by a systematic recording and analysis of the Order's forms of media expression. The focus here will be on pictorial media (broadsides, panel paintings, wall and book painting) and sculptures, but also sermons and liturgical texts. They will be examined as symbolising performances with which the Antonites sought to express, convey and also legitimise their guiding ideas. The complementary treatment of both parts of the project will make it possible to grasp those factors that made the extraordinary success of the Order possible and guaranteed it over a long period of time.

This project also marks FOVOG's first cooperation with the Carl Gustav Carus Faculty of Medicine of the TU Dresden in order to adequately address medical aspects of the project. In preparation and accompaniment of this project, a bibliography on the Antonites will now be made available on our homepage.