Religion: a matter of faith
To understand the Middle Ages, it is crucial to consider people's beliefs, and how those beliefs were translated into action. Religious ideas played a key role in developing a sense of belonging within medieval communities - but they also served to exclude others. Religion provided the foundation on which medieval ideas of authority and statecraft rested, but also served as justification for oppression and abuse of power. It is precisely this ambiguity that makes it relevant to consider religious ideas and practices as an integral part of everyday social, cultural and political life.
Within our section, we focus especially the way Christianity is an integral part of the history of Europe. More generally, however, the concept of religion is much broader. Therefore, we are in constant dialogue with our colleagues at home and abroad on this subject, in order to add much-needed comparative and global perspectives to our research.
Theory and practice
Religion (often 'Christianity' in the Western context) helps explain all kinds of human behaviour. In doing so, we are well aware that it is not the only explanatory model. Religiosity is one of the many building blocks of an identity. This realisation informs our research. We try to understand the background of certain phenomena and developments by considering religion as a social lubricant within a community. We see this, for example, in the way integration and exclusion processes are justified on the basis of Christian thought - how it is determined who 'we' are, and who does or does not belong. We aim to build our study of religious history on a broad theoretical and interdisciplinary basis: philology, archaeology, anthropology, sociology and even economics are all needed to better interpret the religious component in history. The same applies vice versa, of course!
Researchers in this theme
dr. Kay Boers
Email: k.boers@uu.nl- Late Antiquity, Roman history, Citizenship, Violence, Victim Rights, Religious Tolerance, Literature and Space, Censorship, Rhetoric, Narrative and Discourse, Latin Language and Literature, Early Middle Ages
- Early Middle Ages, Corruption, Social Justice, Food History, Justice, Medieval Manuscripts, Medieval Culture
- Medieval Culture, Power, Religion, Public Religion and Politics
- Cultural History, Manuscripts, Media History, Medieval History, Dutch History, Paleography, Early Middle Ages
- Archaeology, Medieval Culture, Medieval History, Medieval Manuscripts, Medieval Religions, Early Middle Ages