Thirteenth IESHR Lecture by Philippe Buc: Civil war and religion in Medieval Japan and Medieval Europe
The Indian Economic and Social History Association
and
SAGE
are pleased to announce the
Thirteenth IESHR Lecture
by
Philippe Buc
Professor of Medieval European History at
the Universität Wien (Austria)
at
7:00 pm, Monday, 16th September 2019
Stein Auditorium, India Habitat Centre
(Please join us for tea at 6:15 pm)
Civil war and religion in Medieval
Japan and Medieval Europe
Abstract: Japan and West-Central Europe, two small
ensembles placed at vast Eurasia's extremities, have often been compared with
reference to their respective "middle ages". Between ca. 1880 to
1970, the juxtaposition was motivated by the sometime ideological desire to
account for Japan's exceptional and swift modernisation and its entry into the
exclusive club consisting of European and New World military and economic
powers. One axis of comparison was then self-evident: the shared importance of
the warrior class. While also focusing on the wider culture of warfare, this
lecture, however, addresses the differential role played by religions in Japan
prior to ca. 1600 and Europe before ca. 1550 in internal warfare ("civil
war" or "intra-cultural" war). To what extent and in what manner
did the locally present religions -- Buddhism alloyed with what came to be
called Shinto and Christianity -- shape conceptions and practices of war in
both ensembles? Did differences (or sometime analogies) between
Japanese and European religious beliefs and practices impact, for instance, the
scale of atrocities, care for the defeated or the dead, loyalty or
side-switching, and willingness to fight? How, in this context, was rebellion
justified?