This international conference gathers intellectual, cultural and social historians of early modern war to investigate the relationship between military violence, normative authority, and human suffering during the Thirty Years’ War. We ask whether this conflict made contemporaries revisit and revise the boundaries between legitimate and illegitimate military violence. This the second conference of the Project “Massacre and the Law: Atrocity, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Thirty Years’ War” funded by the Fritz-Thyssen-Stiftung (Ref. 10.24.1.015GE).

The Thirty Years’ War still counts as one of the bloodiest conflicts in European history. This conference investigates the impact the conflict had on contemporary norms regulating military violence. It joins scholars in the history of the conceptualization of just war and just conduct in war whose starting point are legal, theological, and philosophical texts with cultural and political historians who reflect on norms of military violence with reference to testimonies and records describing military conduct and the political and social impact of war. Inviting colleagues to share and discuss their research, the conference aims to arrive at a richer and more nuanced understanding of the interaction between the norms, practices, and experience of military violence in early modernity.

Advance registration with the organisers is required. Please, contact Ms Deborah Pileggi-Karrer. Staff and Guests of the HAB are cordially invited to attend the conference.

Bildbeschreibung: Sebastian Vrancx (1573-1647), “Soldaten plündern einen Bauernhof” (c.1620).