With an invitation to come to Berlin in 2013, the Second RefoRC Conference in Oslo was closed last Saturday by Tarald Rasmussen, professor at the theological faculty at the University of Oslo. The annual conference of RefoRC, the academic department within Refo500, brought about 120 scholars from various continents together. ‘Preparing for Death – Remembering the Dead’ was the theme for the plenary papers that focused on art, history and theology. Apart from that some 60 shortpapers on a wide variety of topics related to the sixteenth century reformations were presented.
The comparison between various traditions made clear that the connections between the late medieval tradition and the Reformation were stronger than the breaches when it comes to dealing with death and dying and also that within the protestant tradition the confessional differences were much less than is often thought. Papers dealing with the cultural aspects of death demonstrated how death kept being materialized in e.g. visual arts in and around churches in order to somehow be able to cope with the presence of death.
The attendance of this second conference of the Reformation Research Consortium as well as the variety of disciplines represented, showed that these conferences do meet a need and are widely welcomed as a stimulating initiative. All plenary papers as well as a selection of the shortpapers will be published by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Registration for the Third RefoRC Conference to be held in Berlin May 16th-18th 2013 is now open through the website www.reforc.com.