University of Sheffield
14th to 16th April 2016

Throughout history, religious groups across the world have claimed exemption from their rulers’ demands, with a considerable degree of success. Such exemptions were prevalent in the pre-modern world, from Buddhist monks’ accumulation of tax-free lands to Latin clerics’ assertion of ‘benefit of clergy’ and Islamic charitable waqf. Although the particular forms of exemption varied according to religious practices and the nature of the political systems in which they operated, a common set of core similarities is apparent.

A full appreciation of these exemptions’ significance in the pre-modern world however been impeded, on the one hand by their embedding in traditional narratives such as the rise of the modern (Western) state, to which they are often represented as obstacles, and on the other by the conceptual difficulties posed by the categories at the historian’s disposal, such as ‘religion’, ‘secular’, and indeed ‘state’, when applied to the pre-modern period.\

This conference, supported by the AHRC, seeks to engage with these problems ascontribution to developing a comparative global historical understanding of religious exemption from state demands in the pre-modern world. The conference, held at the Department of History in Sheffield from Thursday evening (14th April 2016) through to Saturday morning (16th April 2016), will address three key questions. Firstly, how common were these exemptions on a global scale, and what kind of commonalities did they share? Secondly, what kind of structural role did these exemptions play: did they weaken the states that conceded them, or did they rather – as some recent research has suggested – strengthen them, whether by providing legitimacy or by supporting the informal networks underpinning the formal exercise of power? Thirdly, how should the demarcation they created best be conceptualised in an age thought not to have been structured by the modern secular/religious distinction?

Programme :

Thursday 14th April 5pm

Public lecture : R.I. Moore: “Treasures in Heaven: Defining the Eurasian Old Regime?”

Chair: Charles West

Friday 15th April

9.30-10am : Conference Registration and coffee

10-10.15am : Introduction – Charles West

Session 1, 10.15am-12 noon. Exemption after Late Antiquity
Chair/discussant: Naomi Standen

Antonello Palumbo – Exemption not granted: the confrontation between Buddhism and the Chinese state in Late Antiquity and the ‘First Great Divergence’ between China and Western Eurasia Conrad Leyser – Clerical exemptions in the long fourth century
Uriel Simonsohn – Conversion, Manipulation, and Legal Exemption: A Few Case Studies from the Early Islamic Period

Session 2, 1.30pm-2.45pm. East and West.
Chair/discussant: Martial Staub

Andrew Wareham – Gifts of power: Hwiccan kings and their religious foundations Dominic Goodall – Gifts of power: Khmer kings and their religious foundations

Session 3, 3pm-4.30pm. Monastic exemptions
Chair/discussant: Julia Hillner

Rutger Kramer – The Exemption that Proves the Rule: Alcuin, Theodulf and Charlemagne in Conflict (802)
Thomas Kohl – Forging immunities: religious exemption, justice, and territories in eleventh century in the medieval West
Kriston Rennie – Monastic Exemption: The Long Road to Protection

Session 4, 5-6pm. Legal exemptions.
Chair/discussion: Ed Roberts

Anne Duggan – Clerical exemption in the learned law from Gratian to the Decretals
Judith Green – From Symbiosis to Separate Spheres? Clerical Exemption in Twelfth-Century England

Saturday 16th April

Session 4, 9.30am-10.30am. States and exemptions.
Chair/discussant: Julia McClure

Mario Poceski – The Sociopolitical Positioning of the Buddhist Sangha vs the Imperial State in Medieval China Stuart Airlie – ‘The grim regalia of destruction’: points of tension between sacred and secular authority in Christian Europe c.400-c.1100

Session 5, 11am-12 noon
Roundtable and conclusion

Abstracts : ici

Source : University of Sheffield