Religion and Urbanity Online

Religion and Urbanity Online is a project of the DFG-funded Humanities Centre for Advanced Studies "Religion and Urbanity: Reciprocal Formations" (FOR 2779), based at the Max-Weber-Centre of the University of Erfurt.

Main Editors:

Susanne Rau and Jörg Rüpke (Universität Erfurt, Germany)

Managing Editor:

Elisabeth Begemann (Universität Erfurt, Germany; contact: urbrel-pub@uni-erfurt.de)

Contracting Editor:

Klara-Maeve O’Reilly (Universität Erfurt, Germany)

Editorial Board:

Martin Baumeister (Deutsches Historisches Institut Rom, Italy)

Hedwig Röckelein (Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Germany)

Martin Scheutz (Universität Wien, Austria)

Greg Woolf (University of California Los Angeles, USA)

Angelika Malinar (Universität Zürich, Switzerland)

Birgit Meyer (Universiteit Utrecht, Netherlands)

Rubina Raja (Aarhus Universitet, Denmark)

Cyrille Aillet (Université Lumière Lyon 2, France)

Hanna Sonkajärvi (Universität Würzburg, Germany)

Benno Werlen (Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Germany, until 2023)

Birgit Schäbler (Universität Erfurt, Germany)

Editorial

Susanne Rau and Jörg Rüpke

Religion and Urbanity Online (R&U) presents important research contributions on the subject of the interplay between religious change, on the one hand, and, on the other, changes in urban spaces and urban forms of life, as well as on practices of and discourses on urbanness in Europe, the circum-Mediterranean region, and South Asia. It provides historians, anthropologists, and sociologists of cities and of religion with research articles as well as overviews. Case studies focusing on particular cities or urban networks, or on specific phenomena and processes, help to build a reservoir of knowledge relevant to two overarching questions: What role did religious actors, practices, and ideas play in the emergence and ongoing development of cities and ‘urbanity’? What role did urban actors, spaces, and practices, and the discourse on urbanity, play in the emergence and ongoing development of religious groups and ‘religion’?

Why do we think that such an enterprise is timely? Problems of urbanity and urban religion are not just phenomena and problems of the present. On the contrary, these issues have recurred time and again throughout history. What do cities such as Jerusalem, Alexandria, Antioch, Rome, Constantinople, Wittenberg, Geneva, Mecca, Medina,

Varanasi, Sarnath or Pataliputra/Patna have in common with each other? They are all cities that have been the locus for decisive changes in the history of religion – namely the formations negotiated as Judaism and Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and the many strands summarised as Hinduism. At the same time, these places and other pilgrimage cities – but also port cities such as Surat and Hamburg or trading centres such as Lyon and Amritsar – owe their cityscapes and the ways of life cultivated and constantly changing within them to religious actors, practices and ideas. This relationship was reciprocal, for development of new forms of urban publicity also changed religious practices or caused new practices to come into being, as we can see with the construction of theatres in antiquity, the transformation of churchyards into squares in the sixteenth century, or the transformation of cinemas into Pentecostal churches in the twenty-first century. Spaces such as places of worship or cemeteries change the topography of urban areas and the streams of people that flow through them, from short-term city visitors to residents with generations of family history to only occasionally present rulers. These effects can be caused by such diverse phenomena as the erection of central sanctuaries, the closure of neighbourhoods through the creation of dead ends in the streets of ancient Greco-Roman or Islamic cities, or the demands on rulers to be present in centrally located temples or cathedrals. And such spatial changes did not remain without consequences for rituals such as religious ideas and institutionalisations. These in turn changed urban practices, urban orders, and reflections on what constitutes the urban. In Religion & Urbanity, we propose to investigate these interactions in a comparative historical context by first bringing together previous research and then identifying and developing research tasks from a comparative perspective. We conceptualise the two different clusters of factors as ‘religion’ and ‘urbanity’. It is the interaction of both which is the object of this online resource.

Read the Editorial in full length here:

Here you will find instructions for searching in the Religion and Urbanity Online and explanations of the individual search functions.

Search

You have two different options for searching.

Search form

The search form allows you to search using various search criteria. To do so, select the appropriate criterion in the search field and enter your search term(s) in the search field. The following search criteria are available:

1. Full Text: Searches in all entries for the entered terms. Finds all entries that contain all searched terms and therefore returns the most results. For a more specific search, the other search criteria are more suitable.
   
   The following operators can be used in the search field:
• *: Added to a string. Searches for entries including all terms that match the searched string with any addition.
• AND: Searches for entries including all the terms connected by this operator (default search function).
• OR: Searches for entries including at least one of the terms connected by this operator.
• NOT: Searches for entries including the first, but not the second of the terms connected by this operator.

These operators can be combined with each other.

2. Title: Finds all entries whose titles contain all searched terms. This search criterion can be used to search specifically for entries for particular terms. Search with truncation does not work at the moment.
3. Person: Finds all entries that contain the searched person. Suggests up to 15 matching persons in alphabetical order as you type. This search criterion can be used to search for entries in which specific persons are mentioned.
4. Author: Finds all entries with authors of the searched name. Suggests up to 15 matching author names in alphabetical order as you type. This search criterion can be used to search for entries by specific authors.
5. Keyword: Finds all entries to which the searched keyword is assigned. Suggests up to 15 matching keywords in alphabetical order as you type. This search criterion can be used to search for entries that deal with a specific topic.
6. Type: Select a type from the drop-down menu: Overview Article, Research Article. Finds all entries of this type.
7. Period: Select a period from the drop-down menu. Finds all entries which are assigned to this epoch: Ancient Cities and Religion (800 BCE – 600CE), Cities and Religion after 1700, Cities and Religion in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period (600 – 1700 CE).
8. Publication Year: Select Exact to search for a single year, or Range to search for a range of years. Finds all entries that have been published electronically in this year or range of years.
9. Place: Finds all entries which contain the searched place. Suggests up to 15 matching places in alphabetical order as you type. This search criterion can be used to search for entries in which specific locations are mentioned.
10. Bibliography: Finds all entries whose bibliography contains all searched terms. This search criterion can be used to search for specific sources or their titles, authors, etc.
11. Entry language: Select a language from the drop-down menu. Finds all entries which are written in this language. Only German language is available for URBREL.

Please note: The search is not case sensitive.

You have the option to apply several search criteria at the same time. To do this, click on "Add row" in the search form. This creates a second search field in which you can set another search criterion (or else the same one). You can create as many additional search fields as you like.
If you use more than one search field, the search will find all entries that match all search criteria ("Search for all of these terms"). Instead, you can also select "Search for any of these terms" above the search fields, which will cause the search to find all entries that match at least one of the searched criteria.
By clicking on "Add NOT" you create a search field to which you can assign a search criterion. Terms entered in this search field will be excluded from the search. You can add this search field as often as you like.
By combining the above functions, you are able to perform very specific searches.

Example

You want to search the Religion and Urbanity Online for all entries that mention the word "City" and that match the type “Research Article”. However, you want to exclude entries that belong to the period „Cities and Religion after 1700“ from the search. For this you use the search form as follows:

1. Create a second search field via "Add row".
2. Select the search for "all of these terms" (default option).
3. In the first search field, select the search criterion Full Text and enter the search term "City".
4. In the second search field, select the search criterion Type and select “Research Article” in the dropdown menu of the search field.
5. Create a third search field via "Add NOT". This is marked with a "NOT".
6. Select the search criterion Period in this search field and select „Cities and Religion after 1700“ in the dropdown menu of the search field.
7. After clicking on "Search" you will see 10 out of 34 hits in the results list.

A-Z

On the start page of the database you can view indices of all contained persons and places from A to Z. By clicking on a term you get to the results list, which shows all entries that contain the place or person. In case of a lemma the results list shows all entries which have the full lemma in their title.

Results list

The results that match your search are listed on one or more pages. The number of search results as well as the search criteria can be found above the results list.

Each search result consists of the title of the entry, author(s) if existent, access information, entry type, online publication date (print publication date in brackets, if applicable), the cover of the database as well as a button to download the PDF ("Download PDF"), if available, and a text preview showing relevant text passages and highlighting the searched term in yellow (only for Full Text search criterion).

You can access a search result by clicking on the title or cover of the database. If you do not have access to the database, please log in first.

The search results are sorted by relevancy (frequency and weighting of the searched terms). You can also sort by date ("New to old" or "Old to new") or by title ("A to Z" or "Z to A").
Furthermore, instead of the default 10 results per page, you can also display 20, 50 or 100 results per page.

The search results can be further restricted under "Filter Results". Various filter options are available for this:

1. Access: This option filters the search results according to who can access them. By default, "All content" is found. It is possible to filter by "Licensed content", "Open Access", "Publicly available" as well as "All available content".
2. Publication
3. Type
4. Period
5. Publication Year
6. Place
7. Entry language

All filters can be combined with each other. Filtering by certain filter options excludes further certain filter options if there are no entries which match both options.