Department for the Study of Religions

25 Jun 2024

Adverse effects of meditation – a new paper by LEVYNA & colleagues

In a single-group observational study published in the Journal of Religion and Health, S. Kotherová with J. Cigán and colleagues showed that one-fifth of their Samadhi meditation participants (first timers) got post-meditation nausea symptoms – this result indicates that meditation can cause adverse effects in some practitioners.

19 Jun 2024

Graduate in Necromancy - A curriculum inspired card game from CEDRR

Complete a Master’s degree in Necromancy in a new solo card game. Now playable in a web browser.

27 May 2024

Did medieval inquisitors fear accusations of sexual misconduct?

It is a familiar image: a woman in distress, surrounded by men examining her soul in a dimly lit inquisitorial chamber. In fear of physical torture, she confesses to crimes she never committed. We bring you an online version of our article originally published in History Today.

21 May 2024

Variation and order in the stories of guilt in Peter Seila's register: From Seeing to Belief

The inquisitional register of Peter Seila (1241-2, Languedoc) is evidence of a thorough investigation trying to weigh the extent of guilt carefully. Allow detailed counting of individual misdeeds of 649 people.

Call for papers for IAHR 2025 Panel

Call for papers for a panel at the 23rd Quinquennial World Congress of the International Association for the History
of Religions (IAHR), Kraków, Poland, August 24–30, 2025

30 Apr 2024

Tereza Menšíková at Global Digital Humanities Symposium 2024

Tereza Menšíková recently attended the prestigious Global Digital Humanities Symposium 2024, held this year at Michigan State University.

10 Apr 2024

Map: Heresy and occupation in Bologna around 1300

DISSINET has developed an interactive map of the occupations, dissident religious affiliations, and locations of residence of nearly 900 persons suspected of heresy in the inquisition register of Bologna, 1291–1310.

29 Mar 2024

Towards a corpus of medieval inquisition records: First numbers

Building upon the invaluable work of modern editors, the DISSINET project is building a textual corpus of medieval inquisitorial material, which now contains 15 registers, totals over 1.6 million tokens, and ranges from North-Central Italy through Languedoc to England, and from the 1230s until the 1520s.