Call for papers: Pages of Prayer

The ERC-StG PRAYER project is organizing the conference ‘Bound for Devotion: The Prayer Book as Object and Practice, 1300–1800’, which will take place 1-3 July 2026 in Leiden and aims to shed new light on prayer across late medieval and early modern Europe by exploring the broader ecosystem of prayer books. See the call for papers for more information and send us your abstract by 1 October 2025!

We particularly welcome proposals for 20-minute papers (in English) on the following topics:

• The material book as instrument in prayer practice
• The nature of prayer books and prayer texts; prayer books as miscellanies, repositories
• Co-transmission of prayer texts across manuscripts and/or printed books; dynamics within
  cycles or series of texts
• The language(s) of prayer books; vernacular, Latin, and multilingual prayer
• Social functions of prayer; communities of prayer and the role of the book
• Customization and personification of prayer and prayer books
• Multisensory experience of prayer as elicited by prayer books and their material context,
  including the function of mental and pictorial images (in- and external to the book), music,
  space, light etc.
• Connections and overlaps between private forms of prayer and liturgy, and between lay and
  professional prayer
• Production (centers) of handwritten and/or printed prayer books; how do changes in
  production process affect prayer books in terms of content and appearance?
• Methodological reflections on the study of late medieval and early modern prayer books,
  including digital and computational approaches