Eastern Religions and the West: The Making of an Image (original) (raw)
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The article strives to contribute to the discussion about medieval development of thinking about “religion” by exploring selected Christian missionary accounts about non-Christians in Mongolian empire and India. The contact with religious plurality in these areas, together with missionary zeal, encouraged new ways of thinking about “religion”, which challenged the existing terminology concerning “religion” (terms lex, secta, fides, ritus). Analyses of missionary terminology and descriptions of various “religions” reveals a tendency to implicitly accept general comparability of Christianity with non-Christian traditions. Not in terms of truthfulness, however in terms of typology – Christianity comes to replace and upgrade previous ways of life. In this context the question of relationship between religious practice (religion as worship) and faith (religion as system of beliefs) becomes very important. The question of (non)reception of missionary thinking about “religion” within European audience is also briefly outlined.
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Review and Expositor, 2013
This article reflects on the encounter between so-called Western and Eastern traditions, mainly during the modern period. It draws attention to the problematic nature of this encounter during a period of Western colonialism, and the impact of post-colonial criticism and perspectives. It examines the significance of the missionary movement, the development of comparative religion, and the recent emergence of dialogue as a more appropriate means of encounter between various traditions. It concludes with a discussion on the nature of plurality and pluralism, and argues that the church needs to develop a more adequate theology of religions that reflects present realities whilst remaining faithful to its historic witness.
Introduction: Spiritual Communities across Medieval Eurasia
This introduction to a book section in the VISCOM publication Meanings of Community across Medieval Eurasia (Leiden: Brill 2015) explores the pitfalls and possibilities of a comparative study of "medieval" religious communities (specifically, Christian monasteries, Islamic (Zaydi) hijras, and Tibetan Buddhist gom pa). The entire book has been published open access online at http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/books/9789004315693
Viator, 2005
In their exploration of the Mongol Empire during the 13th and 14th centuries, Western merchants and missionaries experienced for the first time the contact with peoples and cultural traditions which had been almost completely unknown in the times past. Unexpectedly, some features of the Hindu, Buddhist, and Taoist use of religious images proved to look quite similar to Western practices and contributed to suggest a feeling of affinity between European and Far Eastern devotional habits. Such a feeling relied on at least three important issues: first of all, the widespread use of three-dimensional statues (instead of icons, as in the Christian East) caught the Westerners’ imagination; second, they were struck by the complex and highly developed iconographic code employed by the religions of the Far East; third, they understood that the “idolaters” of Asia shared the Christian conception of the sacred image as a reproduction of a much older archetype, being an authentic, original or even ‘acheiropoietic’ portrait of a divine personage.
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Envisioning Medieval Communities in Asia: Remarks on Ethnicity, Tribalism and Faith
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This chapter is written from the perspective of historical anthropology, and as a conceptual contribution to the debates that feature in this volume and at the symposium that preceded it. In particular, it follows the work of my colleagues Johann Heiss and Guntram Hazod (see Chapter 2 in this volume), with whom I have had the opportunity to share many years of collaborative research. The following remarks on ethnicity, tribalism and faith draw upon the medieval contexts of southwestern Arabia and of Tibetan-speaking Central Asia. My primary concern here is to outline and to elaborate some of the conceptual tools that historical anthropology has to offer for historical analyses of such contexts. Before that, some methodological considerations are offered to outline the background and orientations. Introductory Methodological Considerations The desire to conceptually and methodologically bridge the gaps between medieval history and historical anthropology follows a pragmatic as well as a theoretical rationale. The pragmatic dimension is informed by joint efforts invested by Walter Pohl, Guntram Hazod, Johann Heiss, myself and several other researchers to set up a large research network in both local Viennese and international academic contexts, and to elaborate and submit a corresponding grant proposal to that purpose to the Austrian Science Fund. The grant proposal and research network in fact resulted from this volume and the preceding conference, and consequently bore the same title, 'Visions of Community'. In these pragmatic contexts, historians of Asian and European medieval periods cooperate with historical anthropologists with some expertise in the relevant periods in southwestern Arabia and Tibet. It is this particular pragmatic setting of trans-and interdisciplinary research within a specified set of contextualized research problems that defined
in Charlotte Methuen, Andrew Spicer and John Wolff (eds), Christianity and Religious Plurality (Studies in Church History, 51. London: Boydell Press, 2015), 2015
A mong the richest, and strangest, sites for religious encounter during the medieval period was the network of Mongol encampments on the Eurasian steppe. In the middle decades of the thirteenth century, a vast empire was administered from these itinerant cities. In consequence, they were crammed with a transient population of people drawn, summoned or seized from diverse societies across the continent. Within these cities, physical space, approved gestures and permitted actions were heavily ritualized according to shamanistic practice, but as long as these customs were respected, the Mongols encouraged an atmosphere of relative egalitarianism among the various faiths represented in the camps. 1 Indeed, they actively sought the services of the clerical classes of the different groups, requiring each to offer prayers and blessings within public and private ceremonies. 2 This meant the permanent presence in the camps of shamans, priests, monks, imams and others, who embodied the authority of their faith in that place. These individuals seem to have spent their time competing for the favour of powerful Mongols, forming brief alliances, differentiating themselves or exhibiting signs of syncretism, quarrelling and drinking together. How far the rest of the non-Mongol population of the camps participated in these peculiar * In writing this essay, I have benefited from discussions at the meetings of the AHRC-funded network, 'Defining the Global Middle Ages', conversations with Miles Larmer, Caroline Dodds Pennock and Miriam Dobson, and the opportunity to present a version at
WRITING, DESCRIBING, PERSUADING: MUSLIMS AND TIBETAN BUDDHISTS IN JESUIT SOURCES (1570 – 1721)
In this article, the reports of two specific missions located outside the territories under Iberian rule will be examined. First, there will be a presentation of how Akbar (1556-1605), the Mughal ruler, was described as a reasonable man during the first years of the Mughal mission, the same period when the missionaries participated in debates that took place in the sovereign’s presence. The second case presented depicts the experience of the Order in India. There will be an analysis on how dialogue was considered a prudent method of conversion for the Tibetan people – specially the Tibetan ruler – since they were considered a “pious people”. After the missionaries discarded this category (“pious people”), another strategy was considered, including the possibility of abandoning the mission. Therefore, by the end of the present study, the necessary articulation between the elaboration of categories and the choice of specific strategies of conversion will have been demonstrated. In addition, it will be also shown that these were the representations that contributed to the (re)elaboration of the European mental picture of the world during the XVIth and XVIIth centuries, contributing to the composition of the nouvel savoir of the modern period.