Project leader: Dr. Andris Levāns (UL)

Project No: lzp-2024/1-0296

Project coordinator: University of Latvia (UL)

Project partners: Latvian Academy of Culture (LAC)

Project implementation: 01.01.2025.–31.12.2027.

Total project funding: 300 000 EUR, including the LAC part of the project: 120 000 EUR

Funded by: Latvian Council of Science Contacts: PhD Gustavs Strenga, gustavs.strenga@lka.edu.lv

The project ‘Public Speech in the Culture of Livonia: A Political and Social Phenomenon in the European Performative Tradition (1200-1600)’ (No. lzp-2024/1-0296) is funded by the Latvian Council of Science

The object of research is public speech in Livonia in the context of medieval European performative culture. The research group will focus on public speech as a phenomenon of political and social communication in medieval Livonian urban communities. The research will reveal that public speech was a frequently used medium and tool of social/political influence in the public communication and ritual practices of different social groups – civic elites and non-elites, clergy and monastic communities, artisan brotherhoods and guilds – through which community identities were established, stabilised or deconstructed. The research material of the project team will be documentary and epistolary texts, chronicles and other groups of written sources; the content of these texts, produced in the 13th-16th centuries both in Livonia and in European intellectual centres and shaped by the rhetorical traditions of biblical, classical and humanist thought, reveals the presence of public speech. The analytical study of public speech as a cultural experience and tradition has not been systematically carried out in either Livonian or Northern European historical societies and is therefore considered innovative.

The contribution of this project to Latvian society is new knowledge that will stimulate interest in important issues of Baltic and European history in the early modern period. The knowledge that public speech in Livonian historical communities was an indispensable tool for their cohesion and decision-making will highlight the importance of public communication and its historical tradition in the Baltic Sea region in contemporary Latvian public discourses. The acquisition of such knowledge will provide representatives of Latvian society from all walks of life with a deeper understanding of their belonging to the Western European cultural tradition and its democratic decision-making practices.