Emotions history has been an emerging field of historical enquiry since the early 2000s. Psycho-history had been developing on the fringes of the profession for decades, but it was only at the turn of the twenty-first century that historians began to conceptualise ‘emotions’ history in earnest. Although there is growing consensus that emotions have shaped the course of history, debates still rage over how historians can identify and assess them. Questions are also raised about what an 'emotional' approach to history can do to enhance the understanding of established topics and ideas. This topic investigates some of the ways in which historians have attempted to utilise the history of emotions for the study of religion, religious experience, and religious change. Many of the readings primarily focus on early modern Europe, a formative era in the history of religious change, though you are welcome to focus your reading on more modern studies of religion and emotion.

Seminar questions

• What are the benefits and limitations of using emotions history in the study of religion? What do emotions explain or not explain?
• What emotions can be identified with religion and religious experience?
• How have historians tried to explain religious change through emotions?

Required reading

• Read Susan Matt, 'Recovering the Invisible: Methods for the Historical Study of Emotions', in Susan Matt and Peter Stearns (eds.), Doing Emotions History (Chicago, 2013), pp. 41-54.
• Read Piroska Nagy, Xavier Biron-Ouellet, Anne-Gaëlle Weber, 'Rituals, relics and religious rhetoric', in K. Barclay et al., Sources for the History of the Emotions: A Guide (London: Routledge, 2020), pp. 41-53. Then:
  • Use this chapter to identify a primary source relating to religion or religious experience to which you might be able to employ an 'emotional' perspective. Be prepared to share your example with the group.
  • In order to find an example, you may find it useful to look at a short chapter from Section III 'Sources and Methodologies for Early Modern Emotions' in Susan Broomhall Early Modern Emotions: An Introduction (London: Routledge 2016), or to focus on some of the emotions associated with religion, e.g. pain and suffering, holy affections, the passions, contemplation.
• Please select an item of your choice from the 'Further Reading' list below. Come to the seminar prepared to discuss it with the rest of the group.

Podcast

'Emotions and the History of Witchcraft', Interview with Dr Laura Kounine (47 minutes), Not Just the Tudors Podcast

Further reading

Berkwitz, Stephen C., 'History and Gratitude in Therava-da Buddhism', Journal of the American Academy of Religion 71, no. 3 (2003), pp. 579–604.

Bailey, Merridee and Katie Barclay (eds.) Emotion, Ritual and Power in Europe, 1200-1920: Family, State and Church (2016), chapters by Soyer, Hotchin, Walker, Van Gent, Zika.

Barclay, Katie, The History of Emotions: A Student Guide (2020), pp. 55-61.

Barclay, Katie, Caritas: Neighbourly Love and the Early Modern Self (2021), esp. Introduction.

Broomhall, Susan, Early Modern Emotions: An Introduction (2016), [useful for thinking about the types of emotions associated with religion, e.g. the senses, pain and suffering, holy affections, the passions, contemplation].

Capp, Bernard,''Jesus Wept' But Did the Englishman? Masculinity and Emotion in Early Modern England', Past & Present 224 (2014), pp. 75-108.

Corrigan, John, 'Religion and Emotions,’ in Susan J. Matt and Peter N. Stearns (eds.), Doing Emotions History (2014), pp.143–62.

Cummins, Stephen, 'Religious Emotions and Emotions in Religion: The Case of Sermons', Journal of Religious History 45 (2021), pp. 3-24.

Downes, Stephanie, Sally Holloway and Sarah Randles (eds.), Feeling Things: Objects and Emotions Through History (2018), esp. chapters by Randles, Hickey, and Davidson.

Eriksson, Ann-Catrine, ‘Materiality, Rhetoric and Emotion in the Pietà: The Virgin Mary in Images of Piety in 15th-Century Sweden’, Scandinavian Journal of History 41, no. 3 (2016), pp. 271–88.

Hill, Kat, Baptism, Brotherhood, and Belief in Reformation Germany: Anabaptism and Lutheranism, 1525-1585 (2015), esp. introduction, chapter 3.

Hofman, Elwin, 'A Wholesome Cure for the Wounded Soul: Confession, Emotions, and Self in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Catholicism', Journal of Religious History 42 (2018), pp. 222-241.

Ibbett, Katherine. ‘Being Moved: Louis XIV’s Triumphant Tenderness and the Protestant Object' Exemplaria 26, no. 1 (2014), pp. 16–38.

Kounine, Laura and Ostling, Michael (eds.), Emotions in the History of Witchcraft (2016), chapters by Kounine and Millar.

Mack, Phyllis, Heart Religion in the British Enlightenment: Gender and Emotion in Early Methodism (2011).

Lyndal Roper, Oedipus and the Devil: Witchcraft, Religion and Sexuality in Early Modern Europe (1994), an example of how historians employed psycho-analysis to interpret history before the emergence of history of emotions as a discipline.

McLisky, Claire, Daniel Midena and Karen Vallgard (eds.), Emotions and Christian Missions: Historical Perspectives (2015).

McNamara, Rebecca, 'The Emotional Body in Religious Belief and Practice', in Susan Broomhall and Andrew Lynch (eds.), The Routledge History of Emotions in Europe, 1100-1700 (2020), pp. 104-118.

Rubin, Miri, 'Emotions and Selves', in Emotion and Devotion: The Meaning of Mary in Medieval Religious Cultures (2009), pp. 79-110.

Rublack, Ulinka, 'Fluxes: The Early Modern Body and the Emotions', History Workshop Journal 53 (2002), pp. 1-16. [Although this is not explicitly about religion, historians of emotion and religion have found this a formative article].

Karant-Nunn, Susan, Reformation of Feeling: Shaping the Religious Emotions in Early Modern Germany (2010).

Robin Macdonald, Emilie K. M. Murphy and Elizabeth l. Swann (eds.), Sensing the Sacred in Medieval and Early Modern Culture (2018).

Ryrie, Alec, Being Protestant in Reformation Britain (2013).

Scheer, Monique, 'Introduction', in Enthusiasm: Emotional Practices of Conviction in Modern Germany (2020), pp. 1-34.

Sullivan, Erin, Beyond Melancholy: Sadness and Selfhood in Renaissance England (2016).

Tarantino, Giovanni and Charles Zike (eds.), Feeling Exclusion: Emotional Strategies and Burdens of Religions Discrimination and Displacement in Early Modern Europe (2019).

Toivo, Raisa Maria, ‘Religion and Emotion: Rosaries of Objects and the Associated Emotions in 17th-Century Finland,’ Scandinavian Journal of History 41, no. 3 (2016), pp. 289–305.

Walker, Claire, 'Beliefs', in Susan Broomhall, Early Modern Emotions: An Introduction (2016), pp. 277-303.