Literary Reaction to Conversion. The Case of Jiří Sovka of Chrudim (original) (raw)
Related papers
Introduction: Conversion Narratives in the Early Modern World
Journal of Early Modern History, 2013
In the early modern world the process of describing a conversion experience was often as important, and problematic, as the conversion itself, and the resulting texts illustrate the extent to which conversion and its effects permeated cultural forms. Charting the discursive nature of conversion narratives, which were frequently translated into foreign languages and crossed international boundaries, this introduction discusses the problems inherent in narrating religious change, considers the current historiography, and outlines the premise for this collection.
Conversion of Ajarians to Orthodox Christianity: Different Narratives and Perceptions
Europe-Asia Studies, 2019
Based on field research and interviews conducted in both Ajaria and Tbilisi, this article focuses on the different interpretations of the conversion of ethnically Georgian Muslim Ajarians to Orthodox Christianity. It is argued that Orthodox Christianity is an important aspect of self-identification and the national narrative of all Georgians. For many Muslim Ajarians, conversion appears to be a pragmatic act, with the ultimate goal of being recognised as 'fully Georgian' by both state and society. AJARIANS, WHO ARE ETHNICALLY GEORGIAN WERE, UNTIL the late 1980s, predominantly Muslim. 1 They converted to Islam when the region was part of the Ottoman Empire: in the official view of the Georgian state, their conversion was a 'forceful' one. Although there are no official data on how many have converted to Orthodox Christianity since the 1980s, and more particularly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Muslim Ajarians tend to see their conversion as a result of policies of 'encouragement' implemented by the Georgian state and the Orthodox Church. The peculiarity of the Ajarian case is that the switch to Orthodox Christianity is not defined by the Georgian Orthodox Church as a conversion but, rather, as a 'return' to their essential Georgian identity.
History and Religious Conversion
The Oxford Handbook of Religious Conversion, 2014
This chapter divides the way historians describe the process of conversion to Christianity and conversion to Islam into four categories: acculturation, adhesion or hybridity, syncretism, and transformation. Acculturation is when religious change accompanies the incorporation of a people and its territory into a conquering empire or socioeconomic system. Adhesion or hybridity is when the person or group adopts new beliefs and practices alongside the old. Syncretism occurs when the convert(s) reconcile or fuse old and new beliefs and practices to create a new religious synthesis. Transformation is when converts attempt to completely replace the old with the new. Conversion is also accompanied by the conversion of sacred spaces. Analyzing conversion from ancient to modern times, this chapter presents these four categories of conversion, offers historical examples of each, applies the term "conversion" to the transformation of space, and concludes with a final example to illustrate these interrelated aspects of religious change.
2013
The paper focuses on narratives that recount the conversions of medieval rulers to one of the universalist religions. Taking as examples the extant tales about the Arpads of the Carpathian Basin, who had converted to Christianity during the 10th century, as well as the Qarakhanids of Central Asia, who had adopted Islam at about the same time, the paper explores how such narratives might be used in a fruitful way. Conversion tales were mostly recorded only a century after the first rulers and nobles had changed faith and are thus not likely to be extraordinary revealing about the events of the royal conversions themselves. Instead, the paper argues, conversion narratives, as they are among the earliest written sources which have come down to us from within the newly converted realms, make first-class sources for the history of the time when they were written down. Thus, they provide information on contemporary notions and mentalities, on political rivalry and factional strive as well as the state of affairs in the processes of Islamisation and Christianisation in the respective realms.
Public Reconvertions to Orthodox Christianity in the Ottoman Empire, 1730-1820
Mihai-Dumitru Grigore (ed.), Orthodoxy on the Move: Mobility, Networks, and Belonging between the 16th and 20th Centuries, Cluj-Napoca: Babeș-Bolyai University Press [Studia Universitatis Babes Bolyai - Theologia Orthodoxa 68:1], 2023
The christianization of Muslims turned upside down the one-way logic of religious conversion under Ottoman rule, which dictated that a non-Muslim (Christian or Jew) could become a Muslim, but a Muslim could not abandon their faith. The conversion of Muslims to Orthodox Christianity constituted thus an act of defiance of Ottoman political order, and the converts were exposed to the charge of apostasy that could cost them their lives. Given the above, it is not surprising that abandoning Islam for Christianity was a marginal phenomenon; it occurred either outside Ottoman territory or after losing an Ottoman region to a Christian state. However, the period between 1730 and 1820 saw the emergence of a particular form of Christianization that was a double conversion; namely, the public renouncement of the Muslim faith by Christian converts to Islam who proclaimed their return to Christianity wishing to wash out the sin of apostasy with an atoning death. Several of them were executed and were hailed by Greek-Orthodox subjects of the sultan as martyrs for the faith. In this study I analyze the dynamics of double conversion from three points of view: that of the makers, that is, of those who promoted reconversion to Christianity at the price of death, provided it with a theoretical framing, and formed networks of training and support for the double converts; that of the actors, namely, of the double converts themselves, of their social backgrounds, and of the reasons behind their fatal decisions; and that of the public, of the various social groups and individuals who witnessed this liminal form of conversion, assessed it and responded to it. The interpretation endeavours to shed light on a radical aspect of Greek-Orthodox confessionalization at a time of intense sociocultural conflict and political upheaval, and to highlight the complexity of responses to, and instantiations of, modernity.
Conversion to Islam in the Balkans: Kisve Bahası Petitions and Ottoman Social Life, 1670-1730
2004
Given the paucity of monograph-length studies on Ottoman Balkans from the Ottomanist perspective, every new publication in the field is bound to attract considerable interest. That will undoubtedly be the case with Anton Minkov's study, especially because it deals with a topic that does not cease to intrigue audiences both in the Balkans and in general-the process of conversion to Islam. The title of Minkov's study suggests that the work focuses on the process of conversion to Islam in the Balkans, in the period between 1670 and 1730. Nevertheless, the first three chapters of the book, comprising more than a half of the study, focus on the period prior to the 17th century and deal exclusively with published literature on the topic of conversion to Islam in the Balkans, Anatolia, and central Muslim lands in the early centuries of Islam. The first chapter introduces the theories of conversion to Islam previously set by scholars, and features a long review of R. Bulliet's famous Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period: An Essay in Quantitative History and D.C. Dennet's Conversion and the Poll Tax in Early Islam, by which Minkov pays homage to his methodological models and introduces his own quantitative methodological apparatus. By taking over Bulliet's terminology and categorization of converts into "innovators," "early adopters," "early majority," "late majority" and "laggards," Minkov sets out to re-read the demographic data collected by Speros Vryonis in his Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor and the Process of Islamization from the Eleventh through the Fifteenth Century. He concludes that conversion in Asia Minor in the pre-Ottoman period was a gradual and primarily social process "operating in a fashion similar to the mechanism of innovation diffusion in human societies" (page), which is a restatement of Bulliet's theory. The second chapter moves into the discussion of the existing scholarship on Islamization of the Balkans and summarizes the theories on the conquest of the region by the Ottomans. Minkov juxtaposes the so-called "catastrophe" and "blessing" theories of the conquest held by the Balkan and Turkish scholars, respectively, while offering that he himself is in favor of the thesis that the Ottoman conquest did not cause a major disruption in the economic and social life of the population, as it allowed room "for the continuity of local traditions and life patterns" (34). On the basis of a numerical analysis of the information extracted from published Ottoman tax registers Minkov concludes that the two first phases of conversion process, those of "innovators" and "early adopters," were completed by 1530. According to his calculations, the "early majority" phase in the Balkan context sets in at the end of the 16th century, while in the second half of the 18th conversion to Islam in the Balkans comes to a halt. The third chapter deals with "Forms, Factors and Motives of Conversion to Islam in the Balkans" and is probably most interesting for a reader with general interest. Here Minkov engages the Balkan (especially Bulgarian) nationalist historiography's thesis about the primarily forced nature of conversion to Islam in the Balkans. He goes over the fabled methods of forced conversion, such as slavery, devshirme (the "infamous" child levy), punitive mass conversions, the phenomenon of neomartyrdom, and marriage and concubinage, consistently arguing against their impact on the process of Islamization. Minkov is most fascinated with the transformation in the institution of the devshirme in the beginning of the 17th century, when the levying of Christian children within the domains of the Ottoman Empire was discontinued and the janissary ranks began to be filled by sons of janissaries and voluntary converts interested in tax privileges associated with janissary status. He concludes this chapter by stating that the reasons and factors of conversion can be grouped as economic, social, and religious-cultural, and that there cannot be a single explanation for conversion. In the fourth chapter Minkov finally introduces documents that form the basis of his contribution to the discussion on conversion to Islam in the Balkans-636 petitions submitted by 88 REVIEWS