Secularizing strategies in the early Middle Ages and the history of pre-modern religion
Many historians and social scientists argue that religion and the secular were invented in Western Europe in the early modern period because it was only there and then that the conceptual distinction between the religious and the not religious became possible. While scholarly attempts to critique th...
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| Format: | Journal article |
| Language: | English |
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Oxford University Press
2024
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| Summary: | Many historians and social scientists argue that religion and the secular were invented in Western Europe in the early modern period because it was only there and then that the conceptual distinction between the religious and the not religious became possible. While scholarly attempts to critique this grand narrative have emerged, most of them in some way privilege the modern Western distinction between religion and the secular as the norm. We can write a different, comparative history by focusing on 'secularizing strategies': the discourses or arguments used to introduce conceptual distinctions between religion and not religion in particular contexts for particular ends. This article shows the presence of such secularizing strategies in the early medieval West by looking at case studies from seventh-century Iberia, Ireland and Bavaria. Focusing on secularizing strategies in this way makes it apparent that distinctions between religion and not religion could appear situationally in many different contexts that do not fit into the standard teleology. This may permit the writing of a history of the religious and the secular which is comparative, global and inclusive of pre-modernity. |
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