CRS Faculty Seminar: Ádám Mézes on Material Aspects of Posthumous Magic in Early Modern Moravia

CRS is pleased to announce the launch of the CRS Faculty Seminar Series, an informal, internal lecture and presentation series for our Religious Studies community at CEU taking place the first Thursday of every month from 12:40-14:00. 

Our third lecture will be on 3 March when Dr. Ádám Mézes, ACRS PhD Alumni and Visiting Lecturer at the Department of History will discuss his research on Material Aspects of Posthumous Magic in Early Modern Moravia.

Abstract: The present paper discusses various material aspects of executing the returning dead. Relying on sources including investigation protocols, parish chronicles and administrative correspondence, I will examine the objects surrounding the figure of the revenant in the 17-18th-century Bishopric of Olomouc in the Habsburg Monarchy. I will discuss the attitudes and practices related to the revenant expert’s specialized tools, the former personal property of the revenant, and the objects that had come into contact with it. Attention will also be directed at the monetary costs of the investigative process and at the material aspects of the community rituals and feasts meant to finalize the revenant’s incomplete death. By doing so, I hope to give insights into how bad deaths came to be rectified through negotiations between gravediggers, members of the local community and the clerical and secular authorities of a region freshly converted from Protestantism to Catholicism.

Bio: Ádám Mézes earned MA degrees in History and English Language and Literature at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE, Budapest). Subsequently, he completed an MA in Comparative History at Central European University (CEU). He defended his PhD in 2020 at CEU after submitting a dissertation on medical experts and the retuning dead on the southern Habsburg borderland in the 18th century, earning the Advanced Certificate in Religious Studies from CEU’s Center for Religious Studies. During his PhD studies, Ádám held visiting student positions at Cornell University and the University of Cambridge and taught courses at ELTE. He also was an external member of the East-West ERC Research Group in Religious Ethnography. In his research, Ádám tries to combine approaches from cultural history, the history of science and religious studies. Currently, he is working on publishing his dissertation and is teaching a course at CEU.

Join us in person in QS51 ROOM A-516 or On-line in the following Zoom event:

https://ceu-edu.zoom.us/j/95644820517?pwd=YU5QMXVlYXI4WnJEVi9GUnlsQTY1Q… 

Meeting ID: 956 4482 0517 / Passcode: 095199