Rituals of the Heavenly & Earthly Kingdoms. The Sacred, Secular, and Sacramental Powers in Premodern Europe.

The conference program available here: https://psalmnetwork.wixsite.com/psalm/conference-2020

The central goal of this online event is to begin to more accurately describe the relationship between the ‘secular’, ‘sacred’, and ‘sacramental’ as evinced by the historical phenomena, and from there to build a richer conceptual framework for describing all of these categories and their interplay in premodern Europe. By proposing the concept of the ‘sacramental’, this conference aims to complement the recently revived debate on premodern theologies of the political (University of Cambridge 2018 and University of British Columbia 2019). 

Moreover, recent discussion of premodern theologies of the political has focused predominantly on the most well-known works (i.e., those of Augustine, Gregory the Great, Bede the Venerable, and so forth), or on the influence of these key texts on other, lesser-known sources, (i.e. Carolingian exegesis of Scripture). And, while such scholarship has presented serious challenges to the previous linear conceptualizations, it nevertheless has perceived these theologies as primarily the product of individual thinkers, without accounting for ways in which they may have been shaped and even embodied by the worship practices of the Churches.

Therefore, this conference also aims to contribute to the ongoing debate an additional perspective; namely, that rituals (ecclesiastical liturgies and the symbolic actions of civic powers) were important influences defining and propagating the theologies of the political witnessed in the most well-known works. We would like to analyze to what extent the rituals of the Churches and civic powers, mediated through texts, may have shaped theological-political ideas in premodern Europe, and conversely, how theologies of the political influenced the performed liturgies of the Churches and of civic powers.