Erin Lambert

The resurrection of the dead, wrote a sixteenth-century German pastor, was more debated than any other article of the Creed. Through German and Dutch Lutheran, Anabaptist, Reformed, and Catholic songs and images of resurrection, this dissertation asks how devotional practices construct religious identities. Scholars have long understood such divisions through doctrine and politics. By examining the embodied actions of singing, seeing, and listening, this dissertation argues that the divisions between Christians cut to the bone. Each group rendered differently the body’s resurrection and the reconstitution of the community, revealing utterly divergent conceptions of personhood and communal identity. The religious conflicts that divided Europe took shape in the gaze on an image and voices raised in song.