Conclusion: The Narrow Road to Martyrdom

The conclusion of this collection of studies endeavors to recapture five major questions that this special issue of the Journal of Jesuit Studies poses on the subject of martyrdom: Is this gesture a form of imitation of Christ (or imitatio Christi) or is it itself a sacrifice? How does it get rid of the shadow of suicide or voluntary death? How do the singularity of its experience and the community within which and in the name of which it is exercised articulate? Can martyrdom be defined as a renunciation of human love, and in this sense as the ultimate step in a process of conversion? How does martyrdom take its place in the writing of the religious history of the modern era, in particular, as far as the Society of Jesus is concerned, in the historiography of the nineteenth century? These five questions open this collection of essays to a field of research that remains to be pursued.

Central Europe

Central Europe is still imagined as an area dominated by Christianity, for the most part the Catholic Church, in close alliance with Christian rulers who minimized the impact of both the Protestant Reformation and minorities such as Judaism. This idea rests, however, on an oversimplified picture of the religious history of the region. Recent research has shown that the reality was more complex, and that historians still know very little about what the overwhelming majority of people believed or how they practised their religion. Christianity has never completely monopolized the religious landscape of Central Europe and has itself been constantly changing. The history of Christianization, Reformation, empires, and nationalism present in Central Europe as well as state socialism, the Cold War and today’s relative pluralism give an idea of this complexity.

Hagiography, Historiography, and Identity in Sixth-Century Gaul

Gregory of Tours, the sixth-century Merovingian bishop, composed extensive historiographical and hagiographical corpora during the twenty years of his episcopacy in Tours. These works serve as important sources for the cultural, social, political and religious history of Merovingian Gaul. This book focuses on Gregory’s hagiographical collections, especially the Glory of the Martyrs, Glory of the Confessors, and Life of the Fathers, which contain accounts of saints and their miracles from across the Mediterranean world. It analyses these accounts from literary and historical perspectives, examining them through the lens of relations between the Merovingians and their Mediterranean counterparts, and contextualizing them within the identity crisis that followed the disintegration of the Roman world. This approach leads to groundbreaking conclusions about Gregory’s hagiographies, which this study argues were designed as an “ecclesiastical history” (of the Merovingian Church) that enabled him to craft a specific Gallo-Christian identity for his audience.

Hagiography, Historiography, and Identity in Sixth-Century Gaul

Gregory of Tours, the sixth-century Merovingian bishop, composed extensive historiographical and hagiographical corpora during the twenty years of his episcopacy in Tours. These works serve as important sources for the cultural, social, political and religious history of Merovingian Gaul. This book focuses on Gregory's hagiographical collections, especially the <i>Glory of the Martyrs, Glory of the Confessors, and Life of the Fathers</i>, which contain accounts of saints and their miracles from across the Mediterranean world. It analyses these accounts from literary and historical perspectives, examining them through the lens of relations between the Merovingians and their Mediterranean counterparts, and contextualizing them within the identity crisis that followed the disintegration of the Roman world. This approach leads to groundbreaking conclusions about Gregory's hagiographies, which this study argues were designed as an 'ecclesiastical history' (of the Merovingian Church) that enabled him to craft a specific Gallo-Christian identity for his audience.

‘Awakening the echoes of the ancient faith’: the National Pilgrimages to Iona

This article examines two pilgrimages to Iona held by the Scottish Roman Catholic Church in 1888 and 1897, the first pilgrimages held in Scotland since the Reformation. It argues that these religious journeys disrupted the calendar of historic commemorations of Victorian Scotland, many of which emphasized the centrality of Presbyterianism to Scottish nationality. By holding pilgrimages to “the mother-church of religion in Scotland” and celebrating mass in the ruins of the Cathedral there, Scottish Catholics challenged the prevailing narrative of Scottish religious history, and asserted their right to control the theological understanding of the island and its role in a “national” religious history. At the same time, Catholics’ veneration of St. Columba, a figure widely admired by Protestant Scots, served as a means of highlighting their own Scottishness. Nonetheless, some Protestant Scots responded to the overt Catholicity of the pilgrimages by questioning the genuineness of “pilgrimages” which so closely resembled tourist excursions, and by scheduling their own, explicitly Protestant, journeys to Iona.

The Bible: A Very Short Introduction

The Bible: A Very Short Introduction explore the material, cultural, and religious history of the Bible. The Bible is both one of the most read and the most influential books in the world. Its stories form the heart of Western civilization, while biblical language is interwoven into literature and everyday speech. As a source of shared Abrahamic beliefs, it has both drawn communities together and given them new life and fuelled bitter disputes. This VSI examines how the books of the Bible have been read and interpreted by different communities across the centuries, including post-colonial and feminist readings of the Bible. It also surveys the Bible’s role in art, music, poetry, and politics.

“And the zasu Changed his Shoes”: The Resurgence of Combinatory Rituals in Contemporary Japan

It is often assumed that the combinatory practices that have characterised Japanese religious history were wiped away by the separation of Buddhism and Shinto imposed by the Meiji restoration. Yet field evidence attests that shinbutsu rituals are still performed today in major Shinto institutions. This paper offers a reflection on the nature of contemporary combinatory rituals through three study cases: rituals that continue premodern traditions at Kasuga and Hiyoshi Taisha; new rituals created to emphasise the combinatory as the proper dimension of religion in Japan; exorcistic rituals recovered as a contribution to the current health emergency.