Introduction. Discourses of the Holy and the Sacred in the Early Modern Period.

DEL OLMO, ISMAEL; TERESA HIERGEIST

Christian Discourses of the Holy and the Sacred in XVI and XVII century Europe

Peter Lang

Lugar: Berlin; Año: 2020; p. 7 - 22

The holy is indeed vague, it does not have a fixed time or space, it is not materialized in a determined way. Nonetheless, it appears in an indirect manner and leaves its marks, marks which religious communities and the faithful seem to be able to perceive and to name. At times, these traces suddenly and unexpectedly invade the secular world, they ensure a transformation of the perception of space and time, they transcend the lines between subject and object. These traces, and the experiences they convey, are mostly culturally handled and made productive in a number of ways. They are symbolized in texts, images, objects, and places, or performed in rituals and liturgies. Such sacral-cultural manifestations have a central social function: they produce cohesion and identity, and create meaning for a community. Furthermore, what is considered ?holy? and ?sacred? within a community is often codified and governed by an institutional administration, which punishes and stigmatise deviance ⸻ yet another way of producing cohesion and identity. Thus, three levels of investigation regarding the holy and the sacred can be differentiated: the experience, the materialization, and the administration. Discussions over these points concerning the holy and the sacred have been part and parcel of human sciences since their emergence and professionalization in the late XIXth and early XX centuries. These debates are present in works of sociology, anthropology, and religious studies.