This blog, Patria Hierosolymitana: Conceptions of Heimat in the ecclesiastical institutions of the Middle Ages (ISSN 3054-3592) examines how the Holy Land has long exerted a unique fascination and carried an emotional and ideological significance matched by few other places, often functioning as a spiritual homeland even for those who have never set foot there. Since October 2024, the Collaborative Research Centre 1671 at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg has been exploring the idea of Heimat (homeland) from multiple disciplinary perspectives. Within this framework, the subproject “Jerusalem, Der ferne Ursprung: Heimatvorstellungen palästinischer Orden des Mittelalters / Jerusalem, the Distant Origin: Conceptions of Homeland in the Palestinian Orders of the Middle Ages (TP A04) investigates how orders and ecclesiastical institutions that originated in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem understood and articulated their notion of the Holy Land as a homeland.
This blog, edited by John Aspinwall and Nikolas Jaspert, extends the subproject’s reach. While a central focus lies on the medieval religious orders founded in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem—such as the Templars, the Hospitallers, and the Carmelites—the blog also considers other ecclesiastical institutions that traced their roots back to Jerusalem and the Holy Land. Assuming a comparative and transregional perspective, it asks how these communities conceptualised Jerusalem as both a point of origin and a distant, spiritual homeland. Which images of their Heimat did they construct in Latin Europe, i.e. far from their home in the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem? How did they compensate for the loss of their homeland, and what strategies did they employ to make it present spiritually and materially?
Contributions to the blog examine texts, artefacts, architecture, liturgy and other sources to trace how distant notions of Jerusalem and the Holy Land were materially and affectively “domesticated” in Latin Europe. In doing so, they explore how ideas of Heimat and sacred geography intersected in the textual, liturgical, material, and architectural expressions of these institutions. Particular attention is paid to the ways in which engagement with an imagined homeland becomes especially urgent for diasporic communities, thereby linking medieval configurations of belonging, memory, and symbolic space with contemporary debates on displacement and identity.
Entries will be published on a regular basis and will feature work by members of Collaborative Research Centre 1671’s subproject, international experts, and early-career researchers. By making cutting-edge research accessible to both academic and interested public audiences, the blog not only accompanies the subproject’s scholarly outputs but actively broadens and internationalises ongoing debates on medieval institutional memory, identity formation, and the enduring significance of Jerusalem and the Holy Land as Heimat.