Marianne Ritsema van Eck

Academic interests

I am a historian of religion specialized in late medieval and early modern period, with a particular interest in religious expressions at the intersection of visual, material, and textual culture. My areas of expertise are Franciscan studies, the cult of the saints, pilgrimage and travel to the Middle East, historical cartography, and Italian sacri monti.

As Postdoctoral Fellow at the Norwegian Institute in Rome, I develop the project St Helena and the city of Rome: re-inventing the late antique Christian past in early modernity (ca. 1450-1650).

Courses taught

• ROMA2020 – Roma – place and symbol

Background

Before coming to the Norwegian Institute in Rome, I was assistant professor in medieval history at Leiden University in the Netherlands. In June 2017 I defended my PhD dissertation at the University of Amsterdam with the distinction cum laude.

In my first book, The Holy Land in Observant Franciscan Texts (Brill 2019), I analyse the development of the complex Observant Franciscan engagement with the Holy Land during the early modern period. I am developing a second book project about Franciscan sacri monti in Italy (c. 1250-1700).

Publications

Monographs

• The Holy Land in Observant Franciscan Texts (c. 1480–1650): Theology, Travel, and Territoriality. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2019.

Journal articles 

• “Genealogy as a Heuristic Device for Franciscan Order History in the Middle Ages and Early Modernity: Texts and Trees”, Franciscan Studies 77 (2019): 135-169. 
• “Custodes de l’Espace Sacré: La Construction de la Terre Sainte Franciscaine au Travers des Textes et des Sacri Monti (vers 1480-1650): Position de Thèse”, Études Franciscaines, n.s. 12, no. 1 (2019): 187-91
• “Graffiti in Medieval and Early Modern Religious Spaces: Illicit or Accepted Practice? The Case of the Sacro Monte at Varallo”, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 131, no. 1 (2018): 51-72.
• “Encounters with the Levant: The Late Medieval Illustrated Jerusalem Travelogue by Paul Walter von Guglingen”, Mediterranean Historical Review 32, no. 2 (2017): 153-188.

book chapters

• “Franciscaanse Jeruzalems in Italië: drie Sacri Monti nader bekeken (ca. 1480–1520)”, in Jeruzalem: Van Eden tot Heden, ed. by Thomas Hart & Josephine van den Bent, as part of Zenobia book-series (Hilversum: Verloren, 2020): 217-231.

Public engagement

• Blog post: “A Spectacular ´Map Theatre´: The 1593 edition of Christiaan Adrichem´s Theatrum Terrae Sanctae at Leiden Special collections,” in Leiden Special Collections blog (Leiden University, April 2020).
• Blog post: “Fake news in fifteenth-century Rome: The miraculous discovery of the Titulus Crucis relic”, in Leiden Medievalists Blog, ed. by Marlisa den Hartog, Thijs Porck, and Jerem van Duijl (Leiden University, May 2018).