By the autumn of 2023, I had been researching the latter-day prophet, Ursula Jost, for around two and a half years. Having just returned to London from Birmingham after presenting my first paper at that year’s German History Society conference, I was feeling rather pleased with myself about how it had gone. This was well and good. However, in a casual meeting with a senior academic over coffee, I was asked whether I had actually seen fit to visit the city that was the centre of my research? My answer was a sheepish ‘no’. I was thus given a friendly, yet stern, warning: Without the benefits that some local knowledge can bring, I was in danger of falling flat on my face come the viva. A field trip was vital.

My time in Strasbourg was to be brief, so I needed to be efficient with how I spent it. Whilst on the FlixBus from Stuttgart, skirting the northern and western reaches of the Black Forest, I decided this meant the next four days should be a period of continuous observation of my surroundings, starting from then. Almost exactly four hundred years before, the region through which we were driving was one of upheaval – it was one of the theatres of the Peasants’ War, a major and traumatic conflict which took place around the same time as Ursula Jost had a large number of her prophecies. Geographer or travel diarist I certainly am not, but still I considered that there may be useful information here for me to ‘read’.

In the far distance, dark mountains loomed ominously over the landscape. A quick consultation of Google Maps let me discover these were likely part of the Vosges mountain range, to the south of the city, amongst which some of the largest Alsatian peasant bands held their assemblies during the military upheavals of the Bundschuh and the Peasants’ War. One of Ursula’s most memorable images from this period involved a large crowd dragging first a stout man in a trough, followed by a priest, into a chasm in front of a mountain range. Was she drawing on these local topographical features, in conjunction with contemporary political events, in her prophecy? Though impossible to know for sure, it was these kinds of informed speculations, I was beginning to realize, which could make my project that much richer.
Coming into the city, I was struck by just how much water there was around. I had seen from maps and photographs that this was a city surrounded by rivers and suffused with canals. The Rhine runs to the east of the city, marking the boundary between modern day France and Germany, and the smaller Ill branching its way throughout the urban landscape. Seeing this confluence in person, however, had a different effect to acknowledging it on the map – Strasbourg is a watery place indeed. One cannot go far without either crossing a picturesque bridge or stumbling upon a canal path. The Krutenau neighbourhood, in which the Josts lived, is located just to the south of the city centre in the shadow of the imposing Cathedral, and is bounded to north and south by these significant water bodies. Scribbling furiously in my notebook, I recalled the widespread fear in the early sixteenth century that an apocalyptic deluge was soon to sweep over the entirety of the Christian world. Ursula’s many intense references to death by water in her visions were therefore clarified in a way that was not possible from within the British Library’s reading room, as it was revealed to likely result from both the apocalyptic anxieties of the age and her constant proximity to water bodies that threatened to overflow into her own home.

The headline event of my trip was the exploration of Strasbourg Cathedral, the spire of which is visible from all over the city. By the time Ursula’s prophecies were underway, the Cathedral more or less looked as it does now, with the magnificent St Laurence transept on the north side having been completed just a few years prior to the city’s Reformation. The magnificent western façade, wonder of gothic architecture, dominates the city’s main square, which once played host to the annual civic Schwörtag, but now is mainly filled with cafés, ice cream parlours, and souvenir shops. It is bedecked with all manor of Biblical and mythological carvings, mostly resembling the ancient patrons who funded them. The most prominent and numerous are the carvings of Christ’s Pasion, the Virgin Mary with Child, the saints, angels, virtues and vices, and the Tempter with the wise and foolish virgins. Many of these figures reappear within Ursula’s account of her own visions, and the sculptures’ magnificence and ubiquity on the Cathedral mean you do not have to wonder much as to how she came to visualise them.

Armed with pen and notepad on a pleasingly warm, sunny Tuesday, I entered through the north portal and found myself in darkness, within the heart of a breathtaking gothic masterpiece. There was no time to contemplate, however. I applied my headphones, switched on the guided tour I had bought the previous evening, and set to scribbling. The Cathedral is full of treasures, not least the gigantic and spectacular rose window, resembling a wheel of wheat sheafs. The wonderful astronomical clock, dating from the later sixteenth century, appeared to command the most popular attention, but it was the pulpit that was the highlight for me, both aesthetically and historically. This marble seat was built for the legendary Strasbourg preacher, Johann Geiler von Kayserberg, in 1485, and was named in his honour. It is a miniature archive of late-medieval spirituality; Christ in his Passion is to be found flanked by his mother and beloved disciple, alongside detailed miniature representations of Old Testament prophets, saints, and evangelists. In a pleasingly human touch, on the pulpit stairs, a loving tribute to Geiler’s own sleeping dog is to be found. But the seat also appears to possibly bear some of the scars of the iconoclastic movements of subsequent years. It is difficult not to wonder what figures once occupied the now-empty spaces around the base of the pulpit, flanking the Crucifix and Christ’s Mother, and where they may have ended up. Were they the victims of iconoclastic violence, or simply of the decays of time?

Before I knew it, six hours had passed in the cathedral and its adjoining museum in the Fondation de l’Œuvre Notre Dame. The following day, and for the rest of my remaining stay in Strasbourg, I divided my time between three main pursuits. The first was to make use of the Bibliotheque Nationale et Universitaire, where I did my utmost to apply and improve my rather spotty French in order to learn more about the general history of the city – including its many architectural revolutions over the last many centuries. Second was to visit the numerous museums of the city, not least the Musée historique de la ville de Strasbourg, which is brimming with invaluable pieces of civic heritage, as well as a gigantic scale model of the city produced in the early eighteenth century by François de la Devéze. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, was general perambulation around the picturesque streets and waterways, to give myself a good sense of the urban topography, the location of the city’s many significant religious foundations, and, more inscrutably, the ‘feel’ of the place. This is of course different to what it would have been in the 1520s, but was exhilarating and valuable nonetheless.The value of this trip was at least twofold. Most obviously, brief though my stay was, I felt my knowledge of the city – its history, culture, and artistic heritage – has grown immeasurably more detailed and intimate. I now know more what others are referring to when writing the city’s history. More crucially, I now understand more of what Ursula herself obliquely refers to in her visions. Her breathtakingly vivid accounts of divine apparitions, deluges, battles, and miracles seem more obviously to derive from her own experiences living in Strasbourg, surrounded by its politics and its sublime visual culture. Beyond this, and in a way I did not anticipate, my time in Strasbourg re-ignited my drive towards the historical work. Strasbourg is a city with a living, vibrant history – visible in practically every small cobbled street and parish church. The German History Society’s small grant enabled me to undertake a brief research trip that may well have saved me from the perils of too much time in the library, and breathed life into a project that my well have suffered for it!

Harry O’Neill is a final year PhD student at Birkbeck, University of London. His current research focuses on the eschatological visions of Ursula Jost, in particular how these arose as both a cultural construction and as a product of her own individual psyche.