Clocks and ˈclock timeˈ were an integral part of early modern piety by shaping the spiritual life of Christians and playing a mediating role between people and God. This function is particularly evident in devotional books, with titles such as Horologium, Uhr, Ührlein, Zeitglöcklein, Zeiger, Weyser, or Wecker. These works belong to different genres and range from collections of sermons in which the clock metaphor is used as a warning, through texts that structure the devotions of the faithful according to the hours of the day, to books that encourage a partial knowledge of God through His creation. What these written ˈclocksˈ have in common, despite their differences in content, is that they claim the characteristics of clocks and alarms through their titles, layouts, and illustrations, while at the same time firmly locating the mechanical timekeeper in the everyday piety of their readers.

The aim of my project at the Herzog August Bibliothek is to examine this group of books and their illustrations, which have not yet been systematically investigated, and to analyse them against the background of an increasingly mechanistic conception of the world and the human body in the seventeenth century. I intend to show that these ˈclocksˈ did not, or did not primarily, evoke common associations with the transience of all earthly things. Instead, they often tried to inspire optimistic mechanisation and optimisation efforts in their readers’ devotion or attempted to lead them to a spiritually conscious and vigilant life through the contemplation of a creation ordered according to mechanistic laws, or through the reflection on celestial signs that were supposed to wake people up like an alarm clock.

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