The session focuses on the regulation of urban life of both migrants and long-term residents through orders, council decrees, ordinances, guild statutes, instructions and other forms of written authoritative communication that are spurred by religious motivations, betray religious concerns, or target religious behaviors and misbehaviors. It asks how such regulations sought to fix urban behaviour in cities which were constantly changing and how the movements within the cities influenced the instructions in turn. It takes a broad chronological and cross-cultural view in order to compare urban productions as diverse as anti-idolatrous regulations authored by late antique Christian and Jewish religious specialists, sets of rules like the Muslim hisba, church ordinances of early modern European towns (Kirchenordnungen), and several other textualized strategies to promote or impose a ‘safe urban life’. As suggested by the notion of urban religion, which considers the spatially informed dialectic of co-production of urban life and religious communication, the focus of the panel is twofold: on the one hand, it addresses the regulation of religious life and the ways in which religious texts aim to shape the urban conditions of living and, on the other hand, it looks at how urban spaces, actors, and ideals of urbanity generate more or less binding projects of religious normativity. The panel takes a source-based approach and seeks to take a close look at individual sources and their interpretation to enable meaningful comparisons across cultures past and presents as well as a diverse range of regions.

• Spokesperson: Martin Christ, University of Erfurt
• Co-organizer(s): Emiliano Urciuoli, University of Erfurt | Charlotte Elisheva  Fonrobert , Stanford University
• Keywords: Urbanity | Religion | Authority
• Time period: All periods
• Topic(s): Cultural | Political
• Study area: More than one continent