Transnational History and Social Network Theory:A Brief Introduction to Theory and Terminology

To provide an outline of the theoretical foundations uniting the articlesin this volume, as well as to streamline a shared vocabulary, this chapterwill give a brief (and certainly not exhaustive) overview of recent ideas onTransnational History and Network Theory, together with their theoreticalbackgrounds. It is our intention to show how these models can be used toapproach the flow of religious texts among individuals, groups, networks,and spaces, as well as through connecting links, during the late MiddleAges and the early modern period. This overview will also ask how wemay arrive at a better understanding of connectivity and the functioningof networks, especially in the case of the Europe-wide and in some casestransatlantic dissemination of religious texts and the creation of widelyshared values concerning lay communities of interpretation