Congratulations to Dr Suzanna Ivanič for winning the Society for Renaissance (SRS) Biennial Book Prize 2022 for Cosmos and Materiality in Early Modern Prague (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021)
“From the wolf and lynx teeth found in a set of prayer beads, with a Lutheran sermon book in a sixteenth century burgher’s house in Prague, this jewel of a book sketches in a rich material environment in which Catholic and Lutheran customs happily co-existed alongside a range of popular religious practices, often within the same households. Making compelling use of objects, inventories, texts, and the natural matter within them, Ivanič challenges dichotomous understandings of confessional division in a century of religious upheaval. The complexity of personal devotion emerges, experienced within a cosmos shaped by the physical, social and the spiritual, in which individuals escaped confessional straitjackets to negotiate their own relationship with the divine. Its engagingly evidenced micro-histories of multi-confessional Prague and its clockmakers, butchers, and other burghers are triumphs in their own right. Yet Ivanič’s arguments and the convincing insight of her material lens also hold profound and lasting implications for our understanding of religious and social change throughout Europe.”
This is a momentous achievement! To read more visit the SRS Book Prize 2022. 