Syllabus
* Mandatory:
ARMSTRONG, K.: Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014.
RÉMOND, R.: Religion and Society in Modern Europe. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, 1999.
* Recommended:
PETERS, F. E.: The Monotheists: Jews, Christians and Muslims in Conflict and Competition. Volume 1: The Peoples of God. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003.
SOUTHERN, R. W.: Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970.
TURNER, B. S.: The Religious and the Political: A Comparative Sociology of Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Annotation
“Deus vult”: Holy War and Religious Conflict in the History of Western Christianity aims to introduce undergraduate students to the problematic question of religious conflict and “holy war”, providing them with basic theoretical framework and focusing on diverse case studies of its application throughout the history of Western Christianity. While fundamentals of this module are Europocentric, it reaches beyond the “vieux continent” as it includes cases from other parts of the world.
1) Religious conflict and holy war: Theoretical framework.
2) Early Christianity and religious conflicts in late Roman Empire
3) “The Others”: Pagans, Jews and Muslims in Christian Europe
4) Heresy and heretics in the Western Church
5) Jihad, Reconquista and birth of Crusading movement
6) Rise and fall of Crusades
7) “American genocide”: Religious aspects of New World’s conquest
8) Protestant reformation and religious wars: Case of colonial Brazil
9) Colonization in religious perspective: Christianization and native resistance.
10) Secularism and wars against religion
11) Civil wars: Cases of Lebanon and Northern Ireland
12) Religious conflict in 21th century, vol.1: Christians as oppressed
13) Religious conflict in 21th century, vol. 2: Christians as oppressors.