Studies on medieval social and cultural history have already for several decades demonstrated the rich possibilities hagiographic material can offer the historian interested in everyday life, lived religion and society. Since the late fifteenth century, this material has experienced an unprecedented growth in volume. Nevertheless, there is still a great need for studies on lived religion and everyday life portrayed through early modern Catholic hagiographic material.

To address this need, we invite abstracts for contributions on the subject from scholars working with early modern (ca. 15th –18th centuries) hagiographic material, such as beatification and canonisation processes, other miracle accounts, art, vitae, and other spiritual (auto)biographies. The aim is to produce a high-quality collection of articles, which offers cutting-edge and fruitful insights into early modern social and cultural history, using hagiographic texts and art as sources. We especially welcome contributions, which have a sensitive approach to gender, age, health and social status.

The deadline for submitting abstracts is the end of February 2017. Twelve most promising abstracts will be selected. If funding can be secured, the article drafts will be discussed in May 2018 in a workshop organised at the Finnish Institute in Rome (Villa Lante). The collection of articles will be submitted to an international publisher following the peer-review process soon after the meeting, in autumn 2018.

Suitable article topics for the collection will include, but are not limited to:

- family and household, gender roles
- health, body, dis/ability, illness, and cure
- death and salvation
- religious practices and materiality of religion
- identity and community

Please send an abstract of no more than 300 words for an English article and a short biography including name, affiliation and the most important publications, to earlymodernhagiography@gmail.com by Tuesday February 28th, 2017.