CRAFTING HOLINESS WITH PURPOSE

Shaping Holiness Project

How does writing become holy? This question lies at the centre of the research programme of Shaping Holiness. Rather than treating sacredness as an inherent property of texts, the Centre investigates the historical, material, ritual, aesthetic, and intellectual processes through which writing acquires religious authority and becomes a locus of divine presence, communal memory, and cultural identity. Holiness is understood not as a fixed quality but as the outcome of practices of making, interpretation, performance, and transmission through which societies continually produce and negotiate the sacred.

Across cultures and historical periods, writing has served not merely to preserve religious knowledge but to create and mediate it. Holy writings are copied, adorned, recited, carried, displayed, kissed, interpreted, and preserved; they are embedded in ritual performances, visual cultures, and theological traditions that extend far beyond their linguistic content. They are simultaneously texts and objects, images and artefacts, products of skilled craftsmanship and centres of devotional practice. Their authority therefore resides not only in what they say but in the material, visual, and performative conditions through which they come into being and are continually experienced.

Vision

Shaping Holiness is currently being developed as an interdisciplinary research initiative dedicated to the comparative study of holy writings and the processes through which they acquire religious significance. In its present phase, the primary objective is to establish the intellectual, organisational, and institutional structures that will support long-term research and international collaboration. Particular emphasis is placed on creating the framework for an International Fellowship Programme, which is intended to become a central pillar of the Centre’s activities. Scheduled to commence in Summer 2027, the programme will bring together scholars from around the world and at all stages of their academic careers—from doctoral researchers and postdoctoral fellows to established academics—in a shared environment of interdisciplinary exchange. Rather than prescribing specific annual themes, the Fellowship Programme will provide participants with the intellectual space to pursue their own research projects within the broader framework of the Centre’s interest in the materiality, rituality, aesthetics, and theology of holy writings.

The collaboration between the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (BBAW), the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, and the Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung (BAM) forms the institutional foundation of Shaping Holiness.

As the Centre’s long-term institutional home, the BBAW provides an exceptional environment for interdisciplinary exchange and sustained dialogue with neighbouring research projects that share comparable methodological interests in textual cultures, knowledge production, and cultural heritage. The Staatsbibliothek contributes its internationally renowned manuscript collections and expertise in library and manuscript studies, while BAM brings perspectives from conservation science and material analysis, opening new avenues for the investigation of inks, pigments, writing supports, and techniques of production and preservation. Together, these partners actively shape the Centre’s research agenda by contributing their own questions, methodologies, and areas of expertise.

This constellation creates a rare research environment in which manuscript collections, humanities scholarship, and material-scientific investigation converge. It enables the development of innovative methodological approaches through interdisciplinary dialogue and provides the conditions for studying holy writings in all their textual, material, aesthetic, ritual, and theological dimensions.

Rather than providing definitive answers, the Centre seeks to create the conditions for asking new questions: how societies inscribe meaning into material forms, how traditions are continually reinterpreted through writing, and how the making of holy texts reflects broader processes of cultural continuity and transformation.

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Research

The goal is to create a rare research environment in which manuscript collections, humanities scholarship, and material-scientific investigation converge. We want to enable the development of innovative methodological approaches through interdisciplinary dialogue and provides the conditions for studying holy writings in all their textual, material, aesthetic, ritual, and theological dimensions.

Events

We want to bring together scholars from around the world and at all stages of their academic careers—from doctoral researchers and postdoctoral fellows to established academics—in a shared environment of interdisciplinary exchange.