Interactive Histories, Co-Produced Communities: Judaism, Christianity, Islam

Our goal is to provide the foundations of a new history of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as co-produced communities, a history that makes clear the many different ideas and ideals that each of these communities has formed, and continues to form, by interacting with or imagining the others.

Learn more
All Sources

Source in the Spotlight

A Jewish Gold Glass from the Catacombs of Rome

Gold-glasses are broken glass-vessel bases with gold leaf decoration. They were found in the catacombs of Rome, inserted into the mortar used for closing the grave’ niches in the walls. They sometimes depict portraits of the deceased ‒ alone, in a couple or as a family ‒ or portray figures from Greco-Roman narratives, biblical episodes or, as in the present case, Jewish ritual objects and iconography.

Learn more
All Case Studies

Latest Case Study

Co-Producing Love and Paradise: The Sicilian School of Poets

The idea of a sensual paradise might seem foreign to medieval Christian devotion. But it was an important motif in the love poetry of the Sicilian School, and likely emerged from interactions between Christian and Muslim poetic traditions in the island’s Norman and Swabian courts. This article explores these hybrid origins – and how nationalist accounts have historically silenced them in favour of exclusively domestic narratives.

Peter of Eboli, Liber ad honorem Augusti (Bern, Burgerbibliothek, Cod. 120.II, lat., f. 101
Learn more
All Events

Event: Open Zoom Seminar

Open Seminar with Cristiana Facchini (Bologna)

FEB 17, 2025, 9:30–11 AM EST, 3:30-5 PM CET Online

Event: Open Zoom Seminar

Open Seminar with Sita Steckel (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main) and Ahmad Khan (American University in Cairo): Co-Producing Heresy

MAR 17, 2025, 9:30–11 AM EST, 3:30–5 PM CET Online

This seminar will be a kind of mini-conference on "Co-Producing Heresy," as a follow-up to our conference on this topic in September 2024. It will include two papers on this topic. First, Sita Steckel (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main) will speak on "Enemies within: Re-using inter-religious and anti-heretical polemic in the mendicant-secular controversy." Next, Ahmad Khan (American University in Cairo) will provide an answer to the question: "How did medieval Muslims think and write about heresy?"

Each presentation will be 45 minutes (30 min talk + 15 min discussion).

About

Who we are

The project is coordinated by Katharina Heyden, Professor for Ancient History of Christianity and Interreligious Encounters at the University of Bern (Switzerland), and David Nirenberg, Leon Levy Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton (U.S.), and includes a network of collaborators across North America, Europe, and the Middle East.

Learn more

Stay informed about our latest news & events

(click below and email us to subscribe)

Subscribe to our mailing list