IMC 2020: Sessions
Session 1217: The Borders of Religion, I: Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages
Wednesday 8 July 2020, 14.15-15.45
Organiser: | Conor O'Brien, Churchill College, University of Cambridge |
---|---|
Moderator/Chair: | Mayke de Jong, Utrecht Centre for Medieval Studies, Universiteit Utrecht |
Paper 1217-a | Civis and Civitas on Earth and in Heaven: Citizenship Discourses in the Sermons of Augustine, Maximus of Turin, and Peter of Ravenna (Language: English) Index terms: Language and Literature - Latin, Religious Life, Sermons and Preaching |
Paper 1217-b | Secularising Strategies in the 7th-Century West (Language: English) Index terms: Ecclesiastical History, Hebrew and Jewish Studies, Language and Literature - Celtic, Religious Life |
Paper 1217-c | On the Borders of the City of God: Reading and Using Augustine's De civitate Dei in the Carolingian Era (Language: English) Index terms: Ecclesiastical History, Manuscripts and Palaeography, Religious Life |
Abstract | We often take it for granted that something called 'religion' existed in the past, distinct from other aspects of human behaviour. A growing body of work, however, rejects the existence of 'religion' before modernity, warning against the anachronistic importation of the borders between religion and the secular into earlier periods. These sessions explore whether medieval people drew boundaries around religion and how the conceptual borders they did draw might relate to the modern religion/secular divide. Paper-a examines Christian patristic authors' use of the language of citizenship; Paper-b shows how 7th-century Westerners could deploy 'secularizing' strategies; Paper-c explores manuscripts of Augustine's De Civitate Dei to reveal the broad contours of Carolingian 'religion'. |