Medieval Mission and Martyrdom Under the Mongolian Rule: Conceptualizing "Religion"?
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| Year of publication | 2016 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | The presentation strived to contribute to the discussion about medieval development of thinking about “religion” by exploring selected Christian missionary accounts about non-Christians in Mongolian empire. What kind of terminological and conceptual problems were the Christian missionaries facing when describing Asian religions? The contact with religious plurality in these areas, together with missionary zeal, encouraged new ways of thinking about “religion”, which challenged the existing terminology concerning “religion” (terms lex, secta, fides, ritus). Analyses of missionary terminology and descriptions of various “religions” reveals a tendency to implicitly accept general comparability of Christianity with non-Christian traditions. The presentation mapped certain problems that the missionaries had to face and suggests, that this experience with religious plurality provoked thinking about "religion" as general category. |
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