Urban Religion in Mediterranean Antiquity: Relocating Religious Change

Urciuoli, Emiliano Rubens; Rüpke, Jörg

doi:10.4000/mythos.341

Cited by 13 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…First, with reference to urbanization, it explains the transformations in human settlements towards densification and differential nucleation as the set of processes and states of affairs that make possible other processes and states of affairs concerning religion. Second, with regard to religion, it suggests to look at religious phenomena in cities as outcome of specific uses of, and action on, spaces by religious agents instead of seeing them as characteristics of a specific, spaceless and/or space-insensitive, religion (Urciuoli and Rüpke 2018). Third, applied to specific religions, the notion permits to observe an urban religion in the making by interpreting different phenomena either overlooked or approached without an eye to the urban, as diverse but interlaced trajectories of citification.…”

Section: Adapting Religious Practices To Urban Conditionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Entangling Urban and Religious History: A New Methodology

Christ,

Fuchs,

Iori

et al. 2023

Archiv Für Religionsgeschichte

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Religion and urbanity are successful and momentous inventions of humankind. Since the late Upper Palaeolithic, groups of people have been observed to seasonally or permanently settle down (Graeber and Wengrow 2021). From the early Neolithic, in many places around the world, they started forming settlements that gradually not only grew in size but also increasingly sought to distinguish themselves from their surrounding communities through spatial and social arrangements. Thanks to architectural features, their size, a specific political (self-)governance, their sociability and way of life as well as religious practices, these social formations were ascribed an urbanity by contemporaries that transformed them into what is generally called cities in the first place. Cities have fundamentally changed in many respects in the course of 6,000 years (Smith 2019); in the early 21st century, more than half of humanity lives in them.Evidence from as early as the Paleolithic already supports understanding religion as relevant communication with special beings. Like urbanity, it is equally subject to historical change. Our understanding of the historicity of religious practices, ideas and institutions includes a view of their space-producing effects, from lived to imagined spaces, and their interplay and repercussions. In such a perspective, one can ask how people come together in religious practices, what mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion they develop along the way, and how they form and shape places and spaces. The products and conditions of this coexistence also include the material and immaterial constellations, the architectures, practices and discourses that constitute urbanity.Both religion and urbanity are subjects of research in many different disciplinary fields. The disciplinary divides have been detrimental in conceptual terms as well as for historical understanding. This article brings together a range of scholars from a variety of disciplinesincluding history, archaeology, religious studies, sociology and anthropology -currently part of the Humanities Centre for Advanced Studies in the Humanities Religion and Urbanity: Reciprocal Formations. Of course, the disciplinary background of each author influences their take on the reciprocal formation of religion and urbanity. At the same time, and as this article shows, paying close attention to the reciprocally formative relationship of religion and urbanity is beneficial to all these fields of research.

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Section: Adapting Religious Practices To Urban Conditionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Entangling Urban and Religious History: A New Methodology

Christ,

Fuchs,

Iori

et al. 2023

Archiv Für Religionsgeschichte

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Further, urban dynamics had, over history, a great impact on the development of Buddhist doctrines, architecture, and art as well as practices. In this sense, Buddhism can be certainly considered an urban religion (Urciuoli and Rüpke 2018). Despite the clear connections with the urban world -without mentioning the fact that the saṃgha could not have developed in the form it did without patronage activity -it seems that the city space and its lifestyle continued to be perceived as incompatible with the Buddhist way of life.…”

Section: 1mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Current research aiming at unfolding urban dynamics beyond the topographic boundaries of contemporary cities has revealed that sociospatial settings coproducing the urban can be found outside the city itself, thus leading us to rethink the rural-urban dichotomy. Against the background of this field of research, this article explores the connectivity between the urban and rural sociospatial contexts in historic northwestern South Asia through the lens of urban religion (Urciuoli and Rüpke 2018). First, I reassess the centrality of the rural in conceptualizing ancient cities and urban religions in South Asia by using ancient literature and archaeological evidence.…”

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confidence: 99%

Releasing Urban Religion beyond the City Wall: The Spatial Capital of Early Buddhist Monasticism in NW South Asia

Iori

2023

Numen

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This paper examines the complexity of the entanglement between rural and urban space in historic South Asia through the lens of urban religion. The article is organized in two stages. First, ancient literature and archaeological evidence are used to rethink the centrality of the agrarian space in the formation and development of ancient cities and urban religions in South Asia. Second, by using the concept of spatial capital as an analytical tool I examine how the geographical assets held by Buddhist monastic institutions in the countryside affected the economic and social mobility of urban actors in the city. This second section uses the ancient city of Barikot (Swat, Pakistan) during the first three centuries of the Common Era as a case study. On this ground, I argue a direct connection between the prominent role of the saṃgha in the transformation of social, economic, and political aspects of the ancient urban society in South Asia and its ability to master geographical space and relativize distances.

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“…Here, a broader and international characterisation of the research history would be too extensive. However, a strand of research in archaeology that addresses Antiquity aims to integrate religion into urban studies, inspired by contemporary ethnographic studies of religion in modern cities (Lätzer-Lasar et al 2021;Raja 2019;Rüpke 2020;Urciuoli and Rüpke 2018). This research is part of this study's theoretical background.…”

Section: Research Historymentioning

confidence: 99%

When God came to Town - Urban Development and Religious Practices in early medieval Odense, Denmark

Haase

Bjerregaard²

2022

DJA

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This article presents a contextual approach to studying the role of the urban environment in introducing Christianity to Denmark between 900 and 1250. We consider sensory experience and apply the concept of lived religion to the highly varied and sometimes limited archaeological material from St Alban’s church in Odense, its cemetery, and the surrounding settlement, to show that the urban environment played an active role in integrating Christianity into everyday life. The church and king used the urban environment to stage their authority. The message of Christianity was propagated through religious practices, such as celebrating Saint Cnut with spectacular processions, and dress accessories with religious motifs. These practices facilitated the transformation from an elite-oriented missionary religion promoted by the king and the elite to a widely accepted religion integrated into the everyday lives of Odense’s inhabitants.

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Urban Religion in Mediterranean Antiquity: Relocating Religious Change

Cited by 13 publications

References 48 publications

Entangling Urban and Religious History: A New Methodology

Entangling Urban and Religious History: A New Methodology

Releasing Urban Religion beyond the City Wall: The Spatial Capital of Early Buddhist Monasticism in NW South Asia

When God came to Town - Urban Development and Religious Practices in early medieval Odense, Denmark

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