The Invention of Purity

The early modern European era as an epoch when purity appeared as a cultural code.

Concepts of purity help to transform ambiguity into clarity, and thus to homogenise, stabilise and last but not least to harmonise the perception of oneself and the world. Starting off from this theory, Peter Burschel questions the source of this pattern in the early modern European era. His conclusion: starting from the end of the Middle Ages, purity advanced to become a cultural code, giving direction to the fundamental process of social and confessional discipline in the 16th and 17th centuries. In this way it holds the epoch together in a historical-anthropological sense: creating order, providing symbols, governing actions, and remaining incredibly sustainable.

Peter Burschel, born in 1963, Chair for History of the Early Modern Age at the Humboldt University of Berlin and chairman of the Institute for Historical Anthropology in Freiburg i. Br. He is secretary of the almanac of universal history »Saeculum«, and co-editor of journals including »Historische Anthropologie« (Historical Anthropology) and »Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht« (History in Science and Teaching).