“Die geystlich Straß”: Stations of the Cross of the Late Middle Ages as Immersive Ensembles of Salvation in Urban Contexts

Florian Abe

The doctoral project is dedicated to a late medieval group of Way of the Cross structures, especially in the northern Alpine region. Unlike the Italian Sacri Monti, these structures transpose the holy places into an urban context by superimposing the topography of the terra sancta onto that of the local city. The project examines the means by which the Passion is evoked topologically, temporally, and in its spiritual content. Of central importance is the question of how the individual media contained in the Stations of the Cross interact as an overall ensemble and shape the pilgrims’ experience of salvation. These media include the stone reliefs with pictorial representations of Christ’s suffering, the free-standing sculptures representing the figures at the crucifixion and the lamentation of Christ, and architecture such as copies of the Holy Sepulchre and Calvary chapels. The aim is first to develop an appreciation of the Stations of the Cross as complex, spatially immersive structures that in a differentiated way relate the specific representational media to evocations of the events of the Passion events and, second, to identify urban configurations as experiential spaces with layers of religious, social, and artistic meaning.