This conference explores sound and auditory perception in relation to images, objects, and Catholic spaces of worship in the early modern period. Moving beyond the visual and textual frameworks that have long shaped interpretations of sacred images as a “Book of the Illiterate” – a notion traditionally attributed to Gregory the Great – it asks what this concept might still offer when reconsidered through broader sensory, affective, and embodied perspectives. Focusing on the Catholic redefinition of art as a “universal language,” closely tied to confessional and missionary ambitions, the conference examines how images functioned as intersensory forms of communication within a global context of cross-cultural exchange, shaped by the constant interaction of the visual and the auditory. Bringing together scholars from history, art history, musicology, and auditory history, it aims to aims to foster an epistemological shift in how we understand and study religious art.

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