IMC 2020: Sessions

Session 1317: The Borders of Religion, II: The Later Middle Ages

Wednesday 8 July 2020, 16.30-18.00

Organiser:	Conor O'Brien, Churchill College, University of Cambridge
Moderator/Chair:	Amanda Power, St Catherine's College, University of Oxford
Respondent:	Conrad Leyser, Worcester College, University of Oxford
Paper 1317-a	Religion and Religions in Medieval Iberia (Language: English) Lucy Pick, Center for the Study of Gender & Sexuality, University of Chicago, Illinois Index terms: Hebrew and Jewish Studies, Islamic and Arabic Studies, Language and Literature - Latin, Religious Life
Paper 1317-b	Religion on the Margins of Gain (Language: English) Simon Stuart Yarrow, Centre for the Study of the Middle Ages, University of Birmingham Index terms: Anthropology, Economics - General, Religious Life
Paper 1317-c	Christian King or Classical Demi-God?: Virtue and Rulership in Giles of Rome's De Regimine Principum (Language: English) Susie Heywood, Department of History King's College London Index terms: Learning (The Classical Inheritance), Philosophy, Political Thought, Theology
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 studies the terminology used to describe 'religion' and religions in 13th-century Iberia; Paper-b suggests studying religion as a kind of economic or evaluative practice in pursuit of marginal gains; Paper-c reveals the porous boundaries between 'theology' and 'philosophy' in Giles of Rome.