Melancholy held a flexible position in early modern discourse and clinical practice both as an idea connected to inner feeling and an explanation for bodily and mental disturbances. This ambivalence became a vehicle for developing debates about self-examination and salvation, while also pushing the parameters of what legally and culturally constituted mentally impaired states. These developments were born from the dynamics of the emerging differentiated disciplines of theology, medicine and law, but were also the product of the way ordinary people thought about and dealt with troubled mental states in Nordic Lutheran societies. This volume’s geographical and temporal focus allows us to not only grapple with the deeper specificity of melancholy and its ambiguity in an important transitional period, but also allows us to develop an interdisciplinary approach, bringing together scholars working with methods from theology, forensic psychiatry, church-, medical-, legal-, literary-, social- and maritime history. In turn, this allows us to integrate ‘top down’ and ‘bottom up’ approaches while also establishing national comparisons that expose early modern intersections across cultural and disciplinary contexts.
Tine Reeh, from 2017 Associate Professor at University of Copenhagen, is a church historian with a strong focus on archival sources and interest in the cultural significance of Christianity. Her doctoral work on secularization (20th century), led her to pursue work on individualisation in Christianity (18th century). Her field is Danish church history, and 2 years in the US (Princeton, UC Berkeley) plus at Forschungszentrum Gotha, Germany, helped set it within an international horizon. She held a three year collective grant on religion and UNESCO World Heritage from Independent Research Fund Denmark (2017–2020) and is currently leader of the interdisciplinary, collective research project, Managing Melancholy: Dynamics of Theology and Medicine in 18th Century Denmark-Norway (VELUX Foundations). Elected member of Selskabet for Danmarks Kirkehistorie (Danish Society of Church History) in 2014, from 2025 chair. From 2023 member of the scientific board of Interdisziplinäres Zentrum für Pietismusforschung, Martin Luther Universität Halle-Wittenberg.
Catherine Beck is a social historian of medicine and the maritime world, specializing in the history of madness and disability at sea in the long eighteenth century. In 2022, she moved from the UK to Denmark to undertake an EU H2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Copenhagen working on her project MADSEA, Madness, Religiosity and Environment: belief and materiality in community responses to mental difference and distress among early modern Seafarers. Beck is currently a Guest Researcher at the University of Copenhagen and will begin a new postdoctoral fellowship at Lund University in September 2025. Her publications include her monograph Patronage and the British Royal Navy 1775–1815.
Herman J. Selderhuis ist Professor für Kirchengeschichte an der Theologischen Universität Apeldoorn, Direktor von Refo500, Wissenschaftlicher Kurator der Johannes a Lasco Bibliothek sowie Präsident des Internationalen Calvinkongresses.
Dr. Christopher B. Brown is Associate Professor of Church History at Boston University.
Dr. Günter Frank ist Direktor der Europäischen Melanchthon-Akademie Bretten und außerplanmäßiger Professor am Karlsruher Institut für Technologie.
