Conversion Narratives in Early Modern Europe: a cross-confessional and comparative study, 1550-1700

In post-Reformation Europe (c.1550-1700), religious conversion took place on a scale that had not been seen since the official Christianisation of the Roman Empire in the fourth century and the seventh-century Muslim conquest of the south Mediterranean seaboard and most of the Iberian peninsula. Under the combined effects of the Protestant and Catholic Reformations within and pressure from the Ottoman Empire without, early modern Europe became a site in which an unprecedented number of people were confronted by new beliefs, and collective and individual religious identities were broken down and reconfigured. This project will bring together a team of researchers to explore the stories early modern men and women told about their own conversions and the changes of faith undergone by those around them.

The process of conversion took on diverse forms: from the intensification of the religious life (the most common contemporary meaning of the term 'conversion' in the West) to a change in religious allegiance that could be dramatic or dissembled, ambivalent or enforced. New words were coined to describe a correspondingly novel awareness of the potential for backsliding in this world of sharpening physical and mental borders: from 'New Christians' (those of Jewish ancestry) and 'Moriscos' (Christianised moors) to 'Rinnegati/Renegados' (former Christians who had 'turned Turk') and 'Nicodemites' (those who kept their true beliefs hidden). Conversion narratives are a privileged gateway into the study of the various strategies through which early modern people intensified, changed or concealed their spiritual and personal identities. They open up important questions about the relations between personal and religious identity; modes of autobiography; (self) censorship; dissimulation; domestic material culture; mobility and religious diaspora.

There has been little interdisciplinary exploration of conversion narratives. It is one of the principal aims of this three-year project to recover for sustained study the full range of genres in which these narratives have been preserved and to locate them comparatively in terms of the conditions of their production and reception. With one post-doctoral fellow working on conversion in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, another researching the Italian peninsula, and a series of conferences and publications bringing together leading scholars to offer a global perspective, this project will offer a unique transnational view, giving a compelling picture of religious life, and the pressures of religious change, in this pivotal period. We will deal with topics of enduring concern and contemporary relevance, including forced conversion and toleration, religion and identity, missionary activity, cultural exchange, and the negotiation of differences within and between faiths including Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, as well as Eastern and indigenous religions.

This will be an interdisciplinary project, housed in the Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies, the largest centre of its kind in the UK, with particular strengths in religious and book history, material culture, and the interface between religion and textuality. We will support new researchers not only by employing two post-doctoral fellows but by inviting postgraduate and early career researchers to participate in our conferences. Our researchers will be accommodated within the purpose-built Humanities and Education Research Centre. The research will be published in the form of two monographs, a journal special issue, and one edited collection. We will create an interactive website, which will be an essential tool for both scholars and the interested public to discover more about early modern conversion and its relevance to today's world. It will allow access to case studies and a series of carefully-targeted teaching resources. Public engagement will be encouraged through a series of open lectures as well as an exhibition.

This project will benefit a range of audiences. We will ensure the impact of our research through a carefully managed programme of dissemination, centering around an accessible and relevant website. Our key beneficiaries are the wider public, along with members of the education and public sectors, and include:

- teaching staff and school students in RE, History, and English, who will draw upon the teaching materials made available through the project website. We will encourage interaction with interested students by inviting them to contribute to discussion forums in an online exhibition designed to support and extend the exhibition at St Mungo. We will be assisted in this project by staff at St Mungo, already involved in the creation of award-winning educational resources, and by the findings of the AHRC-funded project, 'Does Religious Education Work?'.

- the local community: we will host an event for A level teachers and pupils from the Yorkshire region in the third year of the project, which will be both a teaching opportunity and an opportunity to widen access and encourage progression to Higher Education. Simon Ditchfield, as History Admissions Tutor, and Helen Smith, as English Open and Visit Day organiser, and schools liaison, are well placed to facilitate this event, as is Abigail Shinn, an AHRC Researcher in Residence. The Yorkshire region is ethnically, religiously, and socially diverse, and this project will provide a forum for considering the intersection of religious and cultural difference at a sufficient historical distance to allow for the exploration of challenging material.

- university staff and students, who will benefit from the bibliographies, archive finding lists, and case studies on the project website. Ditchfield, Smith, and Mazur are experienced University teachers, and Smith has a record of innovation in this field, having received pump-priming funds to pioneer VLE resources at the University of York. The resources uncovered will contribute to the AHRC-funded online centre for British data on religion.

- museums staff, directly in the case of our collaboration with the St Mungo Museum of Religious Life, who will benefit from our expertise and new knowledge, while contributing their extensive experience in exhibition curation and management, community engagement, and education; indirectly through the example of our exhibition, and dissemination of appropriate modes of evaluation.

- the wider public, who will be offered access not only to the results but to the processes of our research. Our public dissemination will begin early in the project as we release a series of case studies and project information on the web. Throughout the project, the two postdoctoral researchers will maintain regularly updated blogs about their research experiences. The investigators, and members of the international advisory group, will contribute materials and reflections, and be encouraged to create a lively commenting community, which will be open to the public. Our aim is to increase public understanding of the challenges, as well as the revelations, of this kind of scholarly work. A broader programme of public engagement, which may include radio and television presentations, articles in popular history magazines, and the performance of a selection of narratives in conjunction with the York department of Theatre, Film, and Television, will culminate in a widely publicised exhibition at the St Mungo Museum of Religious Life.

Taken together, our programme of dissemination and engagement will create a new conversation about the politics and history, and, perhaps more importantly, the individual experiences of religious conversion. The 2014 exhibition and associated materials will mark the culmination of the funded project, but the beginning of a longer term impact which will change the way we think about