RELIGION AND MONEY: Economy of salvation in the Middle Ages

Prosjektet har undersøkt forholdet mellom religion og penger i middelalderen der fremveksten av kulturelle forutsetninger for pengeøkonomi, kapitalisme og frelsens økonomi utviklet seg. Pengenes funksjon har blitt diskutert innenfor rammene av et kristent univers i Skandinavia og Nord-Europa. Over hele den vestlige kristenhet ble penger potente symboler, metaforer og universelle verdibærere i økonomisk og sosial utveksling og religiøs praksis og fromhetskultur. Relasjonen mellom kirken og penger kommer til folkelig uttrykk i arkeologiske kontekster der flere enn 100 000 enkeltfunn av mynter under gulvene i 650 skandinaviske kirker forteller om pengeofferets status og utbredelse. Sammen med religiøse, historiske, litterære og juridiske tekster og kunsthistoriske og bygningshistoriske kilder utgjør disse myntfunnene et laboratorium for studier av myntbruk som fromhetskultur i alle deler av samfunnet. Med utgangspunkt i dette tverrvitenskapelige materialet har vi utviklet metodiske innfallsvinkler som åpner muligheter for å tolke pengebruk inn i nye økonomiske og religiøse perspektiver. En hovedkonklusjon er kirkens rolle som drivkraft for monetarisering, særlig på bygdene i skandinaviske middelaldersamfunn.

This project address the issue of religious thought and the perception and use of money in society principally by looking at the church and money in relation using the Middle Ages as laboratory. In so doing we will address medieval people's interactions w ith religion, with language, with the economy, and with the material culture and physical environment in which they lived and in their conception of life and afterlife. Many of the major intellectual, theological, social and economic questions that woul d dominate the remainder of the western Middle Ages and resonate beyond were given first form during the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth century. The urban map of Europe was formed, states took on recognisably modern shapes, bureaucracy saw its birth tog ether with the invention of the University with new ideas about learning. These changes developed within the framework of Western Christendom and were fuelled by and based on the rise of a money economy albeit in its infancy. In a mutually dependent manne r how that economy was described and developed by contemporaries derived from these other cultural changes. Economic change was both a pre-condition and a consequence of cultural change. Importantly, this is a period in which the range of evidence avai lable for scientific scrutiny increases, allowing insight onto key questions regarding the evolution of an economic mentalité at both individual and societal level. In this evolution religion and money played a critical role. The interrelation between rel igion and money in this period is one which modern scholarship has addressed but obliquely, rather than in a multi-dimensional manner warranted and commissioned by the evidence. To address the challences presented an interdisciplinary approach is non-neg otiable. This project draws on disciplinary practisioners who are open to and engaged by genuine collaborative research.