Creating Academic Communities: Funeral Monuments to Professors at Oxford, Leiden and Tubingen, 1580-1700 Book

This volume explores 17th-century funerary monuments to professors in three North-European Protestant university towns. It deals with the historical, religious and political background of each of the universities, and subsequently analyses the monuments under thematic headings. The extensive illustrated catalogue and accompanying CD-ROM with full colour images discusses each of the memorials separately, listing all documented memorials erected to professors in these towns, together with an inter-disciplinary approach to their interpretation, biographical data and documentary sources. It therefore constitutes an important source of information for further study of these memorials. Moreover, Stefanie Knoll proposes a typology for the study of funerary monuments, and gives a detailed examination of funerary symbolism and portraiture, also placing particular stress on the importance of inscriptions and monument location. The study argues that funerary monuments were pivotal in creating academic identities, and regards them as active mediators of the image which professors wanted to convey of themselves in order to shape and influence society.Read More