PAPERS: abstrac

PANEL 1: RELIGIONS, VIOLENCE AND PEACE

1st Strand. History

Pablo de Paz Amérigo: “Funerary legislation for social order in the Greek Polis”

Abstract: The development of the Greek polis was characterised by a high level of social unrest. In the new framework of the city-state, the different aristocratic factions used the celebrations and events structuring the public and private life of the citizenry to vindicate their family identity, status and partisan interests. The luxury displayed by members of the aristocracy at funeral celebrations can be understood as just one of a number of expressions keyed to fostering the competitive spirit and rivalry between clans. Each and every one of these ritual moments was exploited to underscore the singularity of the deceased and his family in comparison with the rest of the community. As a reaction to these practices, from the beginning of the Archaic period until the 3^rd century BC there appeared a series of legal provisions in different Greek cities that affected the way in which funerals were held. These measures were just one of the initiatives aimed at arresting the struggles and tensions tearing the community asunder. In this presentation, I will analyse the regulations affecting the celebration of private funerals and contrast them with the practices established for those organised by the polis.

Elena Muñiz: “Gregory versus Julian: rhetorical and real violence between Christians and pagans”

Abstract: Gregory of Nazianzus wrote two speeches condemning the deceased Emperor Julian. Both belong to the genre of the steliteutikoi, namely, speeches designed to serve as steles on which someone’s misdeeds were inscribed as a punishment for his wickedness. Both the rhetorical technique employed, whose aim was to ruin the reputation of Julian, and the arguments employed by Gregory feature violence as a fundamental component in the struggle between pagans and Christians in the 4^th century.

Carlos García Mac Gaw: “Religious violence in North Africa: the Contra Gaudentio of Augustine of Hippo”

Abstract:  In this paper, certain factors of North African institutional religious violence between groups of Christians during the first part of the 5^th century (c. 418-422) are analysed on the basis of Augustine of Hippo’s Contra Gaudentio, together with a number of related documents. Starting with a study of the different historiographical perspectives of the conflict, insofar as some of these have come to terms with and naturalised violence, whereas others have analysed it as a structural phenomenon, the factors behind this situation will be examined, particularly the factional violence between Christian groups, state repression, and the seizure of the dissident Church’s assets, according to how these issues are addressed in the selected sources. We believe that, in the case in hand, religious violence was the product of the struggle for the control of the process of semiosis, viz. the production and reception of meanings pertaining to the sacred texts and the ritual praxis between both African Churches (Verón 2013). On the basis of this theoretical approach, special attention will be paid to the attempt to control discursive circulation, addressed in the work of Agustín Verón E. (2013), La semiosis social, 2: ideas, momentos, interpretantes, Buenos Aires.

María Victoria Escribano Paño: “Augustine of Hippo and anti-heretical coercion: the use of biblical arguments as a justification”

Abstract: The rejection of dissident Christians on the margins of alterity adapts to a discourse strategy whereby the use of biblical texts constitutes an effective tool to justify the exclusion of heretics. Indeed, the Scriptures and their interpretation were present in the controversy with heretics. Biblical texts were also quoted as a polemic procedure to demand the enforcement of imperial law against heretic dissidence. The purpose of this communication is to analyse, in a casuistic and contextualised fashion, the biblical texts quoted by Augustine in his correspondence with public officials in charge of executing the law.

Raquel Martín Hernández: “O Lord, send me your wrath! The Christian texts of damnation and violence among peers”

Abstract: Unfortunately, violence and hatred among peers seem to be intrinsic to mankind. This violence can be exercised directly, yet indirectly as well: through accusations, false rumours, etc. In this communication, we intend to study another even more indirect form of violence: the violence of God against someone on the bequest of a third party.  

The “damnation texts” of the Christian era comprise a specific and well-structured corpus that allows us to address the study of indirect violence. These texts are direct proof of old hatreds that people pretended to settle through divine intervention. This was invoked, oftentimes, to act in a tremendously violent fashion in order to settle a grievance or affront that the person performing the curse thought he had suffered. In short, a poorly understood sense of justice that required the participation of netherworld forces.   

We will conduct a typological study of these texts so as to establish their particularities, the ritual mechanisms employed, the relationship between these and their pagan models, and their own idiosyncrasies. All the above will also be analysed, bearing in mind that the use of such ritual mechanisms was totally beyond the pale with respect to both civil and ecclesiastical laws.

Benito Márquez Castro: “An approach to the relationship between violence and religion as an explanation for the Swabian depredations in 5th century Hispania, through the chronicles of Idatius Bishop of Chaves: a historiographical myth”

Abstract: The barbarian horde of the Swabians that entered the Iberian Peninsula in 409 carried out attacks, sacks and depredations all over Hispania throughout the 5^th century. The little information that we have about this period comes almost exclusively from the Chronicle of Idatius, Bishop of Aquae Flaviae (present-day Chaves, Portugal).

It has been traditionally held that this was down to reasons of a religious nature, insofar as many authors believe that the Swabians, who were pagans, acted in this way specifically against people professing Catholic orthodoxy, such as Idatius himself, or even Christian places of worship. 

In this communication, we will analyse these passages, within their immediate context, reconsidering each one of them and putting forward new hypotheses that we view, in our modest opinion, as being more plausible, conjecturing that religion was never behind the violence of the Swabians, but responded instead to political motives.

2nd Strand. Social sciences

María Cruz Cardete: “Transgression and punishment in Ancient Greece: violence in the universe of Pan”

Abstract: In the Ancient Greek world, the gods did not remain sitting on their thrones, far-removed from their worshipers and the lives of these, but formed connections with everything that mortals used in their survival and development. The subversion of order, its related consequences, nearly always in the shape of exceedingly violent punishments, and the restoring of the canonical status quo were not foreign – quite the opposite – to the divine universe, where the rules were broken just as, or even more, assiduously than in the human world. The god Pan is a perfect example of the extent to which the Greek gods transgressed and how discomforting they could be, as well as the utility of violent punishments amending their anti-canonical actions as examples to be followed by mere mortals. Pan’s drawbacks are countless, but as it would be impossible to list them all here, I will focus my attention on three areas of Panic intervention (hunting, music and sex) that reflect, on the one hand, the clash between two very human tendencies (that of establishing rules and that of breaking them) transferred to the realm of the divine, and, on the other, the importance that violence acquired as a corrective and cathartic element of Greek religion.

Marco Antonio Santamaría Álvarez: “Agents of punishment of the guilty in the Greek afterlife”

Abstract:  Greek literary and iconographic sources from several periods bear witness to the punishments suffered by the condemned in Hades. Scholars have frequently focused on the behaviours behind these punishments and the religious doctrines, generally associated with some or other mystical movement such as Orphism or with philosophical currents such as Pythagorism or Platonism, which they reflected. However, there is no set of studies on the agents of punishment and their relationship with the gods of the Underworld and with the Greek religious system in the main.

The punitive role of the Erinyes in Hades, already mentioned by Homer (11 19.259-260) and developed afterwards in literature (Aeschylus, Orphism, Pythagorism) and art (Southern Italic ceramics from the 4^th century BC), is well known, but several allusions to other agents of punishment in the Nekyia (canto XI of theOdisea) have awakened scant interest:  the vultures that devour the liver of Tityus (578), the anonymous daimon who makes the waters of the lagoon recede when Tantalus wants to drink (587) andthe gusts of wind that blow the bough of a fruit tree out of his reach (592), and the force called Krataís that makes Sisyphus’ rock roll down the hill once he has reached the top (597) Pausanias (10.28.7) mentions a daimon called Eurynomos portrayed in a vase painting by Polygnotos in the Lesche of the Knidians in Delphi (5th century BC), who devouered the flesh of the dead, certainly as a punishment, and which perhaps originates from an archaic poem or popular belief. The pseudo-Platonic dialogue Axiochus (371d) introduces a new devolopment in which the wicked are licked clean by wild beats and set on fire constantly by the Avengers (Poinañ, who personify punishment). This communication will endeavour to analyse the function of these agents, the meaning of the punishments they inflicted and their evolution from Homer to Plato.

Ana I. Jiménez Sancristobal: “Dionysius the Cruel: Omestes, Omadios and other violent epithets”

Abstract: Different accounts link Dionysius, Omestes, Omadio, Anthroporraistes and Egobole with human sacrifices, while several later sources refer to the existence of bloody rites related to these epithets of the god. This work will try to elucidate whether these adjectives should be interpreted in the true sense and, consequently, if it can be assumed that human sacrifices were offered to the god, or, on the contrary, whether they should be understood in a figurative sense, that is, the idea that Dionysius could be bloodthirsty and cruel because, in his role as a hunter, he pursued his prey in the domain of wild nature, since the existence of human victims cannot be supported.

Juana Torres: “Verbal and physical violence in conflicts between Orthodox believers and heretics in ancient Christianity”

Abstract: Almost since its beginnings, Christianity was divided into sects with different doctrinal and Christological approaches. The ecclesiastical authorities decided that they had to combat heretical movements in both the disciplinary and doctrinal spheres, resorting to this end to literature to refute their ideas. Thus, I intend to analyse two essential works in the reconstruction of the history of the Luciferian schism, namely, the Altercatio Luciferiani et Orthodoxiby Jerome, and the Libellus precum by the presbyter Faustinus, both from the end of the 4^th century. Two types of violence can be detected in these works: on the one hand, verbal aggressiveness apparent in the lexicon, insults, tone, irony, sarcasm, etc.; and on the other, a more explicit aggressiveness alluding to real physical situations. The aim of this study is to underscore the violence of the arguments employed by these Christian authors to discredit heretical movements, and likewise to reconstruct eventual situations of physical confrontation.  

Laura Navajas Espinal: “The difference between holy war and eschatological combat in the War Scroll: meta-historical concept versus liturgical moment”

Abstract: The War Scroll offers us such a precise description of the eschatological combat between the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness that it seems to suggest a visionary character that distorts the linear patterns of time. Although the influence of the concept of holy war plainly derives from the biblical corpus (in particular Joseph), the characteristics of the War Scroll point to a conception grounded on the specifically liturgical (hence, closer to the ideas derived from Leviticus). In this presentation, I will compare both patterns in order to determine in what way the ritual characterisation of the battle in the corpus of Qumran and its relationship with an angelical anthropology distance themselves from the meta-historical model (“history of salvation”) of battle descriptions in the Bible, so as to construct a model intimately associated with the construction of the sanctuary that transcends linear teleology.

Carlos Alarcón Cabrera: “Religion, power and repression”

Abstract: In this communication, I intend to reveal the quasi-religious bond between Hitler and the Germans during the inter-war period and World War II, and how this link drove him to attempt to stage a cultural revolution that buried the past and created a new German man. Precisely, this link can only be explained by bearing in mind the history of the last two decades of the German Empire, which collapsed as a result of the evolution and outcome of World War I. In these turbulent times, the unifying political tendencies were successfully mobilised and ended in the creation of the II Reich, thanks above all to the initiative of Prussia and, in particular, to that of Bismarck. The Germans living in the tempestuous 19^th century were largely heirs to the cultural and religious tradition of the Reformation, decisive for understanding the slow penetration of enlightened ideas in Germany. As Weber demonstrated, the Lutheran and Calvinist influence was instrumental in the birth of the capitalist spirit, but equivocally it did not avoid the belated introduction of industrialism in Germany, which in addition contributed to delaying the arrival of political liberalism.    

However, Weber did not seem to perceive the importance that such an influence also had on the almost obsessive devotion of the Germans to the establishment, presupposed as an earthly extension of divine authority. This almost shadowy authoritarian framework, which covered religion and politics, was a factor of inhibition that encouraged paralysis and subservience to the Kaiser, as a prolongation of the irrational and submissive faith in God that Lutheranism and Calvinism preached. And it allowed several consecutive generations of Germans to be willing to surrender their freedom to a saviour guide, to a Führer who would lead them to glory and real happiness. The bond that Hitler forged with the Germans derived from the vertigo that these felt as a consequence of their conquest of political liberty following three centuries of imperial autocracy, of a freedom that, after the country’s defeat in World War I, was not only accompanied by the disappearance of the Empire, but also by the vertiginous Spartacist revolution, the humiliation of the Treaty of Versailles and destabilising hyper-inflation. But this link, as Fromm underlines, not only constituted a senseless lifeline for the German people, but also for Hitler himself.

3rd Strand. Knowledge and Communication

Ramón Teja: “History from the point of view of the “losers”: violence in Christianity as an instrument of domination of ‘the others’: (Jews, heretics, etc.)”

Abstract: The history of Christianity can be addressed from two totally opposite perspectives: from the point of view of the “victors”, as official historiography does, or from that of the “victims”. The latter will form the basis of my approach, although I will try to be as historically objective as possible and, in keeping with the ideals of Tacitus, narrate the story Sine ira et studio. Instead of a history of successes, I will focus on the study of several failures, to wit, those cases in which the ecclesiastical authorities, both Catholic and Protestant, resorted to violence in order to impose their views on dissidents: Jews, heretics, etc. To this end, I will concentrate on several paradigmatic cases from different periods: the destruction of the temples at the end of Antiquity; the repression of the Waldensian heretics in medieval France; the anti-Jewish programmes of medieval Spain and the conversion of the country’s Moors in the 16^th century; and those condemned to the stake in the Geneva of Calvin. My aim is not to highlight the fact that violence was employed by all the Churches that regarded themselves as the authentic earthly representatives of a God whose glory had to be protected. As Calvin stressed to justify the death sentence passed on Michael Servetus and “other heretics”, “we may not through too much severity exclude the indulgence or mercy of God.”

Igor Ochoa Soto: “Religious violence, war, and political propaganda in the Etruscan world”

Abstract: The ritual sacrifice of the Phocians in the forum of  Caere after the Battle of Alalia (540-535 BC), that of the Roman prisoners in the forum of Tarquinia in 358 BC, or the popular representations of the mythical throat-slitting of the Trojan prisoners, reflect an image that combines the ideas of violence, cruelty and religion in Etruria. In spite of the different rationales, this sequence easily evokes the recent decapitations of Westerners broadcasted by the Islamic State.

On the basis of this vision, and by means of a multidisciplinary approach, grounded above all on textual exegesis and iconological analysis, the purpose of this communication is to probe into the different types of violence that unexpectedly appear in the Etruscan religious context.

Thus, what is proposed here is a reflection on both the forms of ritual violence considered legitimate and the non-formal, and therefore illegitimate, ones. This should help to shape a vision of the phenomenon, which, as occurs today, cannot be regarded as unambiguous in the case of the Etruscans, neither in its motivations nor in its procedures. The relationship between violence and religion cannot be explained solely on the basis of an analysis of religious reality, insofar as different political, social and propagandistic aspects also have to be taken into account.

Arturo Calvo Espiga: “The meaning of war waged for religious motives: revolving around a debate on the Rome of Pius V”

Abstract: In an initial approach, the idea is to address the involvement of M. Fabio Benvoglienti in a curious controversy, discussion or dialogue provoked in Roman and Italian clerical and academic circles by Cardinal Da Mula in the last third of the 16^th century. The issue discussed by several men of laws and letters revolved around the legitimacy of the war waged by Christians against non-Christians, as well as against their own coreligionists. To my mind, this controversy was kindled, to a certain extent, by the historical situation through which Europe was going and by the opinions and theses defended by Machiavelli and Erasmus. Openly or furtively, these ideas circulated in the clerical circles and universities of the time.

Shahram Nahidi: “Pedagogical Challenges of Teaching Interreligious Dialogue as an Academic Course: the Case of the KAICIID Online Course on Interreligious Dialogue”

Abstract: Using Moodle as its platform, the KAICIID Online Course on Interreligious Dialogue is a three-credit first year bachelor's degree course developed through an ongoing collaboration between KAICIID and six universities in Europe and North America. The methodology of this 12-module online course includes a diversity of academic approaches and voices mirroring the interdisciplinary nature of the course's subject. However, the fact that its linguistically diverse students come from various fields of study, cross-curricular academic backgrounds, and different personal needs calls for a pedagogy that can at once value difference and heterogeneity, as well as create and support a sustainable coherence amongst these various components. In a way, dialogue is at the same time the theme of the course as well as a major pedagogical tool in the process of learning. This presentation will share some of the challenges encountered while developing this online course. It will also suggest pedagogical strategies that can be implemented in any classroom (virtual or physical) with a high level of diversity among students studying an interdisciplinary subject matter such as interreligious or intercultural dialogue.

Patrice Brodeur: “Theoretical and methodological points on the use of ‘interreligious dialogue’ by international organizations included in the new online KAICIID Peace Map”

Abstract: The new online KAICIID Peace Map, launched on 21 September 2015, includes a directory containing over 450 international organizations using 'interreligious dialogue' as a methodology, to different degrees and in different ways. This directory is the result of an empirical research carried out through an online methodology of key word searches in ten languages, covering the concept of 'interreligious dialogue' and its equivalents both in English (ie: such as 'interfaith dialogue') and in how these are translated into nine other languages. This presentation will summarize the results of one particular study of the variety of ways 'interreligious dialogue' is defined online by the organizations included in the KAICIID Peace Map, as well as their usages of 'interreligious dialogue' as a methodology to promote a broad variety of often interdisciplinary and cross-sectorial fields that, broadly speaking, aim to promote justice and peace. This study is limited to what is found online, and its results do not go beyond organizational discursive self-representation. There is no way through this limited research to assess how and to what extend such representations are translated into concrete activities, let alone how impactful these might or not be.

PANEL 2: RELIGIONS, CONFLICTS

AND MEANS OF RESOLUTION

  

1st Strand. History

Miriam Valdés Guía: “Peace as a victory in war: the Nike cult in ancient and classical Athens”

Abstract: Here, we will address the Nike cult in relation to war and, specifically, to peace as a vindication of victory in armed conflicts through myth and ritual in the Archaic and Classical periods. On reviewing the Nike cult from the Archaic period onwards, we will inquire, above all, into the controversy surrounding the architectural project of the temple of Nike with respect to the famous Peace of Callias (449), as well as into the descriptions of victory and peace in subsequent ages; special attention being paid to Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, where the bastion of Nike played an important role in the sex-strike staged by the women in the Acropolis in attempt to achieve peace with Sparta. The mythical and cultural descriptions of war and peace stress the role that the Greeks gave peace as an affirmation of victory. 

Simón Luis Gutiérrez Castro: “Conflict and politicisation of (Indo-)Iranian religious concepts in the Achaemenid inscriptions”

Abstract:  The use of religion to justify political power (and the exercise of violence) has been a constant in universal history, a good example of this being the Achaemenid Empire. From the combined analysis of Achaemenid and Avestan texts (despite the different intentions of each corpus: religious in the case of Avesta, less clear in the inscriptions, although in any case instrumental) it follows that specific religious concepts underwent a process of conflict and subsequent politicisation among the Western Iranians, which however does not seem to have occurred among their Eastern counterparts (Lecoq, pp. 163 and167). This phenomenon can be seen in three interrelated aspects:

- The internal structure of the texts of the inscriptions

- The vocabulary employed in the inscriptions

- The location of the inscriptions and royal tombs

These testimonies reveal the assimilation of the figure of the monarch with two other important Avestan figures, the sao Ciianto future eschatological saviour and the mythical sacrificer. The internal conflict represented in Zoroastrianism by the figure of the archetypal sacrificer Zarathustra and its denunciation of bloody sacrifices is resolved, in this case, with the politicisation of the figure of the prototypal sacrificer, which is transferred from the priestly class to the king.

In conclusion, the Achaemenid king is exemplified as the chosen of Ahura Mazda. Thus, the rebellion against the monarch is a subversion of the cosmic order and represents an obstacle for the final victory of the forces of Good.

Juan Antonio Álvarez-Pedrosa Núñez and Julia Mendoza Tuñón: “War and the transfer of religious elements: the success of Apollo with the first Achaemenid kings”

Abstract: The conflict between the Achaemenid Empire and the Greeks at the time of Darius and Xerxes has become, by virtue of the Greek classics, a prototypal motive for the clash between two apparently antagonistic civilisations. Nevertheless, in the midst of war there was time for the exchange of cultural elements. One of these was the transfer of religious motifs in both directions. The aim of this communication is to analyse the acceptance and success of Apollo, as the Greek oracular divinity par excellence, by and with the first Achaemenid kings. To this end, the following data will be critically analysed: 1) Nicolaus of Damascus recounts how Cyrus spares the life of Croesus at the last moment due to a prophecy made by the Sybil Herophila: educated by Iran priests, Cyrus recognised in the said prophecy a link between his national religion and the oracle of Apollo. 2) According to Herodotus, Darius ordered his general Datis to return the gilded statue of Apollo that one of his Phoenician ships was carrying as booty to the Delian Apollo’s sanctuary. 3) We will examine the authenticity of a letter in which Darius requests Gadatas, satrap of Asia Minor, to exempt the gardeners working in the sacred orchard of Apollo from taxes in gratitude for the true prophecies givento his ancestors. 4)Pausanias tells us that Xerxes transported the statue of Apollo at Didyma to Ecbatana. Although this information can be interpreted as a punishment against the city of Miletus, it can also be understood in a ritual sense, with a completely different meaning. 5) Several authors hold that Xerxes founded a city in Bactria for the priestly clan of Miletus, unlike the rest of the citizens who were deported to Susa and then to the Persian Gulf; an unequal treatment into whose causes we will probe.

Alessio  Quaglia: “‘Minime romano sacro’: Gauls and Greeks buried alive in the Forum Boarium”

Abstract: Human sacrifice is a practice far-removed in time and space, whose violence pertains to barbarians or an uncivilised past. In the historical period, Roman religion was familiar with and practiced human sacrifices: at least in three times of crisis, two Gauls and two Greeks were buried alive in the  Forum Boarium  on the order of the viri sacris faciundis. Defining this act as minime Romano sacro and highlighting the Sibylline (and, therefore, not local) influence on the recommendation, Livius and Plutarch downplayed the Roman character of the rite.  Many are the explanations that have been put forward and many the attempts made to inquire into the origin of a rite regarded as foreign (Greek, Etruscan, Italic, etc.). With this communication, after emphasising (in accordance with Fraschetti) how the model of live burial stems from previous (and internal) experiences of Roman religiosity, we will propose, through the adoption of the anthropological category of “hybridisation”, another interpretation, different from the predominant military one (the annihilation of Greeks and Gauls), glimpsing in the minime Romanum sacrum,  established by the guardians of the Sibylline Books, a “reconstruction” and “reinterpretation” of the well-known purification rite by means of the pharmakoia, in the light of the local practices of treating impure beings and the new concept of Terra Italia.

Silvia Alfayé: “Who wants to kill a dead person? Violence, magic and necrophobia in Ancient Rome”

Abstract: In different necropolises of the Roman Empire, there is archaeological evidence of practices of extreme violence against the dead buried there, including post-mortem mutilation and nailing. Similar acts are also mentioned in several ancient literary sources in relation to the carrying out of magic rituals of a necrophobic nature.

This communication will endeavour to provide answers to several questions raised by these cases of funerary violence  –meanings, motivations, ritual agents, etc.– studying their relationship with eschatological beliefs and the fear of the malign potential of the deceased witnessed in the Roman period, and with the use of aggressive magic as a coercive ritual strategy that allowed, paradoxically, both the living and the dead to secure peace.

Pablo Sánchez de Mayo: “The critique of religious violence against animals in Porphyry of Tyre’s De abstinentia: the case of bloody sacrifices”

Abstract:  Porphyry of Tyre (c. 232-304 BC) was one of the main exponents of Neo-Platonism, a philosophical concept with a strong religious element that reached its zenith in the 3^rd century AD. In addition to the work in which he talks about his teacher Plotinus, he is also known for his writings devoted to lambasting the Christians at a moment when the controversy between Christianity and “paganism” was at its height. Also featuring among his oeuvre is a work entitled De abstinentia, in which he explains his standpoint on the repudiation of meat consumption and, in general, of violence against animals, basing his explication on the defence of its rationality and its ensuing ethical considerations.  

Specifically, this communication will focus on analysing Porphyry’s criticism of religious violence against animals, particularly as to the issue of sacrifices, in which animals were frequently used in Antiquity. The Neo-Platonic philosopher criticised the need to use animals to honour the gods, a posture in line with his repudiation of meat consumption, also attesting man’s lack of legitimacy to use other “animated beings” in their own interests without taking into account the interests of these. In this communication, the ideas of Porphyry will be set forth, as well as the way in which he defends them, which usually meant resorting to previous authors to justify his own stance vis-à-vis religious violence against animals. The thought of Porphyry is also framed in a context already existing in the classical world and in which aspects related to ethics, purity and also medicine and dietetics appear.

2nd Strand. Social sciences

Julio Trebolle Barrera: “Figures of the ‘God of Storms’. The violence or benevolence of nature and political power”

Abstract: The division of the sciences into “natural” and “human” (or of the “spirit”) categories has led to the study of nature and life being included in the pure sciences (biology, bioethics, neuroethics, etc.), meaning that the human sciences avoid natural phenomena, sticking to those of societies and individuals. Likewise, religions have nothing to do with the origin and evolution of the universe or life, both spheres of the natural sciences. But “the awakening of the forces” of nature in tsunamis, typhoons, droughts and what have you force us to rethink the “meaning” of nature and man’s relationship with it.

The religions of Antiquity did not establish such a defined dichotomy between man and nature. In the Ancient East and in the religion of Israel, the figure of the “God of Storms” (Enlil, Ningirsu, Ninurta, IshkurIDagan, Adad, Baal, Yahweh) simultaneously represented the violent or benevolent force of nature and the foundation of political power, also violent or benevolent. When the religion of Israel became the “biblical religion” and ancient Judaism, this figure began to progressively disappear.

Apocalypticism  then recuperated it, placing it at the end of time. 

Santiago Montero: “Violence in the Roman festival calendar: men and animals”

Abstract: In this communication, the eruption of violence in the Roman religious calendar as part of the ritual will be analysed. Some festivals, such as the Lupercalia, the Equus October and the Matralia, reveal the presence of a certain degree of violence among the participants, although a far cry from its intensity at festivals held, for instance, in Ancient Egypt. Nonetheless, it was in the spectacles with animals and the sacrifices held as part of the festival programme where man exercised a greater degree of violence thatcould be somewhat cruel.

Matías Maldonado Araya: “Messianism and violence in Emmanuel Levinas”

Abstract: References to a time of plenty, freedom and justice are commonplace in the monotheistic religions. In the Jewish tradition, this idea -which we will briefly call “messianic time”- has led to different and even contradictory interpretations. However, they all have a common denominator: this time transpires in history and publically, instead of in a possible hereafter or in the intimacy of the heart. By the same token, messianic intervention is always accompanied by destructive and catastrophic elements; hence its inevitable association, at least initially, with phenomena such as violence and war.

Owing to its peculiar nature, Jewish messianism became fertile ground for philosophical and political reflection, encouraging interpretations that transcended by far the context in which it appeared. This communication probes into the use of this notion in the works of Emmanuel Levinas, focusing fundamentally on his important production in this regard: his yearly participation in the colloquia of Jewish intellectuals in Paris, his multiple Talmudic comments, and his articles in the press on intellectual and political issues  with a bearing on Israel.

Precisely, I will first inquire into Levinas’ interpretation of Jewish messianism in writings specifically devoted to matters related to Jewish tradition and, secondly, I will analyse the way in whichhe deals with the destructive and catastrophic potential that, according to Scholem, any messianic intervention implies.

Francisco Díez de Velasco: “Violence and religion in the work of Ángel Álvarez de Miranda”

Abstract: Although at the time when he was writing the  paired opposite violence/religion had not aroused the interest that it does now, Ángel Álvarez de Miranda proposed a number of examples of the application of historical-religious analysis to several phenomena of this kind. He devoted the greatest amount of time to the Mexican case in his essay, “Carácter de las religiones de Méjico y Centroamérica”, published in Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos,  65 (1955), pp. 167-184. It contains a very novel and sophisticated approach, although rooted in the analytical dynamics of the School of Rome of which he formed part. Hence, the purpose of this communication is to analyse the particularities of his analysis and the role played by violence in his teaching and research proposals.

Rafael Escobedo: “The United States and anti-Protestant violence in Francoist Spain”

Abstract: In accordance with the Article 6 of the Lex fori of the Spanish people, smacking of stale ecclesiasticism, in Francoist Spain religious freedom did not exist, although there was indeed “tolerance” towards the private worship of non-Catholic creeds. Until this state of affairs changed, forced by the conciliar statements emanating from the Second Vatican Council, the religious tolerance practiced by Francoism was the result of a difficult and precarious balance between the fundamental principles comprising the very identity of the regime, the National Catholic fervour displayed by many of its supporters, and the need to ingratiate itself with the Western Bloc led by the United States.   

In this context, the small minority of Spanish Protestants was aware of the repercussions that any outrage it might suffer could have on international public opinion, particularly in North America, Franco’s chief international ally. These offenses were nearly always of a legal character, carried out by the state and its agents, but there was also a proliferation of acts of physical violence illegally perpetrated by groups of trouble-makers, whose media repercussions abroad went hand in hand with coverage of the regime’s sustained and systematic repression.

Carmen Castilla Vázquez: “The module ‘Religious pluralism and globalisation’ in the Social and Cultural Anthropology BA programme of the University of Granada: a didactic proposal”

Abstract: Among the numerous possibilities of rapprochement offered by interreligious dialogue, we will present a teaching proposal, developed in the framework of theSocial and Cultural Anthropology BA programme of the University of Granada, which addresses the analysis of religion from a cultural perspective. The module “Religious pluralism and globalisation” deals with issues such as gender, immigration and conflicts associated with religion, with the challenge of seeing the religious phenomenon in our currently globalised world as it really is. We understand that the analysis of these matters, using the ethnographic method, could help our students to acquire the necessary and pertinent skills that allow them to delve deeper into this field of study.

PANEL 3: RELIGIOUS VIOLENCE AND GENDER

1st Strand. History

Guillermo Manzano y Lara Ros: “Uncomfortable myths: sexual assault in Roman religion”

Abstract: Since the assault Rhea Silvia Mars as myth originated in the identity of Rome, the reason forviolently forcing  certain women-mythical or historical-is the centre of some turning points in the evolution of Rome as a state. The origin of the founder of the city itself as a result of a violent act which involves the downfall of the mother is indicative. The hinge point involved the sexual assault-and abduction of the Sabine ritual involves the integration of women -matrons dishonoured- in the community as well as the “sabinos” in the “civitas” after the battle, involves projecting the rape in key ritual and most uncomfortable, not necessarily a negative keyword. Similarly, the myth of Lucretia by Tarquin assault as ultimate cause of the rebellion against the monarchy and the birth of the Roman Republic, is again resort to rape as a turning point in the historical development.

Understanding the myth as the origin and part of the religion and the Roman civic essence itself, the emphasis is placed on such abuses along the legendary history of Rome makes the perception of the assault on decent woman becomes the usual fear and a resource for the humiliation of the enemy in the Roman imagination. Also-and purely historical level will differentiate between women who should be protected by law-will-what of abuse -married matrons, maidens, widows, namely social counterparts vir as a citizen and legislator. In front of them, the rest -thrall and women not considered respectable- fall outside such protection, opening the door to a creation of Gender in Roman society restrictive type.

The interweaving law, sexual morality and pudicitia-essential latter in those "decent" women- involves the assumption by the Roman legislature that not all women are biologically speaking part of the female gender, with only their social counterparts they belong .

Thus, the issue of sexual violence against women, is seen as a historical engine and in part mythical discourse trivializing violence and frank relationship with religion as mythical story or being a consequence or part of the speech itself particularly exclusive society of Rome genre.

Andrés Piquer: “Eros and Monstruum: the Song of Songs, femmes fatales, religion, demons”

Abstract:  The relationship between Eros and religious references has been a constant since remote Antiquity. Both in the making of feminine divinities and in the iteration of sexual purity regulations or in mystical-philosophical-ritual speculation with respect to the creator-creature relationship, love and sex not only feature prominently in the praxis connected with religion, but also in the ideological-literary construction based on the production of texts and/or their interpretation. On the basis of the Song of Songs, a text that is central to the Eros-religion relationship in the West, this work analyses the degree to which it reflects a representation of eroticism and femininity that, to a large extent, constitutes an exercise of appropriation and/or characterisation based on violence, typical of the assimilation patterns of a fearful and repressive establishment in the sphere of emotions and sexual dynamics. On the basis of a study of the text in relation to its close Eastern parallelisms and its traditional exegesis in Judaism and Christianity, the historical and literary patterns in this process of “poetic violence” or mythical-poetic violence will be proposed, thus attempting to determine to what extent the literary interpretation of the fantasy of Eros in religious terms is rooted in the discourse of violence-repression or, paradoxically, has itself contained the seed of a liberating subversion since ancient times.    

Claudia D’Amico: “‘No one can say, “This is Jezebel.”’ Violence and foreign women in the biblical Books of Kings”

Abstract: The Hebrew Bible is a political text that not only contains an account of past events, but also a prescriptive interpretation of the culture in which it had been shaped. Its narratives, therefore, construct the way in which power relationships should be and mark the identity limits that define a community. In the intersection of gender, race and class, the foreign woman becomes a real threat for the worldview that the biblical discourse endorses and intends to uphold: her erotic body, inherently religious and implacable in its otherness, jeopardises the unique status of the “chosen” that the people of Israel hold. The aim of this communication is to analyse the use of violence against foreign women in the Book of Kings as an effective tool for controlling feminine otherness in its two main physical and epistemic aspects, namely, both in the realm of history through annihilation and in that of discourse by means of invisibility and deletion.

Israel Muñoz Gallarte: “The pearl and the serpent: an ethical confrontation”

Abstract: Perhaps one of the most beautiful and enigmatic texts of the  Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles is  that known as the Hymn of the Pearl (Acts of Thomas108-113), on whose meaning the existing literature is a long way from reaching a consensus. As A.F.J. Klijn wrote in an article dealing with the Hymn of the Pearl – “The So-called Hymn of the Pearl (Acts  of  Thomas ch. 108-113),” Vigiliae  Christianae, vol. 14, no. 3 (1960) 156 – a coherent study of the poem should be able to provide answers to two principal questions: “What is meant by the pearl? And who  is  the protagonist in this hymn?” In this keynote, an attempt will be made to give a valid meaning to this passage, placing it in a suitable conceptual context, and to put forward a consistent hypothesis as regards these questions that still remain unanswered.

  

2nd Strand. Social sciences

Cristina Expósito de Vicente: “Visual parallelisms of violence: Old Testament women and advertising in the 21st century”

Abstract: In the collective imaginary of Western modernity, the figure of the femme fatale has had a strong presence, being embodied by different figures with powerful sexual connotations. Featuring among these are the representations of biblical characters, such as the vindictive Judith, the exotic Salome or the treacherous  Delilah. These characters are framed in cycles of violence, submission and promiscuity where they are veiled with eroticism and enigma. But these archetypes find a parallelism in the 21^st century, thus reiterating the negative light in which the aforementioned biblical characters have been interpreted. The world of advertising and television offer us revamped Judiths plugging cigarettes, new Salomes exhibiting spring-summer collections, and dangerous Delilahs seducing us with perfumes. The aesthetic wake of evil, seductive women, shaped by a patriarchal universe, has thereby prevailed until the present day, representing an incomplete chapter of history. 

María Jesús Alonso Seoane: “Gender deconstruction and reconstruction in religions”

Abstract: Evidence suggests that religions marginalised women. Yet what women can really reproach them for is their contribution to defending, extending and disseminating the patriarchal model, a source of inequality and violence. Nonetheless, religious founders talked about equality, which included women. This communication intends to open lines of research into religions with a decolonising focus. What this involves is the deconstruction of the gender roles assigned to religious elements: the masculine associated with God, the virtuous and the absolute; the feminine with evil and sin. Following in the footsteps of feminist theology, the intention is to make inroads not only into the masculine deconstruction of God, but also into the feminine reconstruction of the sacred places that originally existed in each religion, thus contributing to explain the imaginary construction of the patriarchal model; something which currently prevails in nearly all cultures and religions, justifying numerous forms of violence. To this end, I will centre on the critical comparative analysis of the different religions, proposing a model that evinces that the majority of religions have branches that contribute to extending the patriarchal system, whereas others, in their very bosom, have been far-removed from the patriarchate.

Ana Silva: “Feminine genital mutilation, human rights and Islam”

Abstract:  Feminine genital mutilation is an ancestral practice involving the total or partial extirpation of female genitals. The WHO currently estimates that around 140 million women in the world have undergone ablation. Throughout history, it has been practiced mainly in predominantly Muslim areas of Africa and the Middle East. This situation has led to its association with certain Islamic precepts. However, the ritual of ablation predates the advent of Islam, having been reported by civil and religious authorities  at an earlier time. Its practice implies a violation of women’s basic human rights. Governments and international bodies have been working for over 40 years to eradicate it by means of preventive measures and criminal penalties. This communication addresses Islam’s disassociation from feminine genital mutilation and its treatment in the international legal context of human rights.  

Florentino Aláez: “Heretical mysticism in the thought of the Transition”

Abstract: During the transition there was a growing interest in heterodoxy, as evidenced in the proliferation of scholarly studies of the Spanish Inquisition and religious dissidence in general, in new journals and collections addressing this issue, in articles in the press, and on radio and television programmes. Within this tendency it can be seen that readers and researchers paid a certain amount of attention to medieval, and above all modern, heretical mysticism. José Ángel Valente and María Zambrano wrote about Miguel de Molinos. Julio Caro Baroja and Fernando Sánchez Dragó have offered their personal perspectives on the Spanish heretics of the 16^th century. Our aim is to inquire into the role that this topic would play in the new thought emerging at the time and its potential relationship with anti-clericalism.

PANEL 4: MONOTHEISMS, VIOLENCE AND DIALOGUE

1st Strand. History

Ignacio Sanz Extremeño: “The revolt of the Maccabees in apocalyptic Jewish literature”

Abstract: After defeating the Ptolomies, Antioch IV Epiphanes seized power in Egypt and, therefore, in Judea and Jerusalem as well. Around 168 BC he issued a decree prohibiting Jewish religious practice. According to the Books of the Maccabees, between 167 and 160 BC Mattathias and his five sons resisted and then revolted against these impositions.

Although Jewish apocalypticism, as a literary genre, predates the Maccabee Revolt, what is indeed true is that the situation brought about by the Seleucid opposition and its reaction favoured the evolution and further definition of the unique  features of this literature. In the words of J.L. Collins: “An apocalypse is a genre of revelatory literature with a narrative framework in which a revelation is mediated by an otherworldly being to a human recipient, disclosing a transcendent reality which is both temporal, insofar as it envisages eschatological salvation, and spatial, insofar as it involves another supernatural world.” 

The purpose of this communication is to analyse how the Maccabee Revolt is treated in apocalyptic literature.

Soraya Planchas Gallarte: “Dionysius: god of war and peace”

Abstract: Ancient writers referred to the duality in the figure of the god Dionysius in several instances. One of these dualities is mentioned by Plutarch in Vit Demetr (2, 3.6), where he describes the divinity as “god of war and peace.” This description is apparently reinforced by the identification of Dionysius with other gods of the same nature. Due to the interest in the presence of both adjectives in the figure of the same divinity, in this communication we will endeavour to analyse the meaning of that duality, while also considering the god’s identification with other divinities with the same attributes.

Juan Manuel Cortés Copete: “From dialogue to war: Hadrian and the Temple of Jerusalem”

Abstract: A series of ancient Jewish traditions praise the Emperor Hadrian, despite his responsibility for eradicating the Jewish people from the Holy City. Featuring among these traditions is the alleged intention of the Emperor to rebuild the Temple of Jerusalem, which is supported by several Christian sources. The archaeological and epigraphic study of the Temple of Shechem could provide evidence of the veracity of these ancient traditions. The temple reconstruction project would have gone against the Emperor’s interests and was probably frustrated by the fears of a sector of the Jewish oligarchy that it would bring about their dissolution in the Empire.

Rossana Barcellona: “Razionalizzare la violenza nel cristianesimo tardoantico: signa divini e umani  poteri”

Resumen: Le tragedia della cronaca rinnovano continuamente l'attenzione su binomi altamente problematici come violenza/religione, guerra/monoteismi, inducendo una generale tendenza a leggere nei monoteismi abramitici -con la loro concezione patriarcale ed esclusivista- la causa fondamentale dell'intolleranza e dell'aggressivíta. In realtà i monoteismi hanno ripreso funzioni di legittimazione della guerra -forma di violenza organizzata, fra gruppi rivali individuati sulla base di fattori geopolitici, identitari, culturali- già proprie e tradizionali delle religioni non monoteiste (Filoramo 2004).

Il contributo si propone di esaminare alcuni momenti della riflessione cristiana sulla relazione fra volonta divina e umana belligeranza, sviluppatasi a partire dall'epoca costantiniana. L'obiettivo è mostrare come la tendenza a razionalizzare la guerra e ad assimilarla dentro valori cristiani, sia leggibile alla luce della doppia categoria di continuità e rottura: cíoe in línea con la concezione della religione imperiale; ma anche in opposizione con i valori 'pagani', attraverso l'elaborazione di una teología política destinata a confluiré nel concetto di teodicea (Prinzivalli 2010). Si mostrerà come la tendenza alla legittimazione della guerra diventi per corso inevitabile, ma anche funzionale alla costruzione di quella ideologia cristiana medievale, che avrebbe presto legittimato la guerra come cosa buona e giusta (Grado Merlo 2012).

L'indagine ha come fulcro i primi due libri del De Gubematione Dei di Salviano di Marsiglia. In essi il richiamo agli episodi di violenza delle Sacre Scritture mira a dimostrare che gli effetti di ogni guerra, quali che siano, testimoniano insieme la giustizia e la misericordia di Dio verso il suo popolo. Il quadro offerto sembra evocare il concetto precristiano di pax deorum, quella condizione di 'armonia' frau omini e dei, dalla quale la religio romana tradizionale faceva discendere il favore divino e, dunque, anche l'esito positivo dei conflitti militari (Sfameni Gasparro 2010), per tradurlo nella visione provvidenziale cristiana. Le guerre subite dai contemporanei sono, nella rappresentazione di Salviano, necessaria punizione per la degenerazione morale della christianitas gallo-romana. Cosí nelle pagine di chi racconta, il successo riportato nel 312 da Costantino su Massenzio o la vittoria sui Visigoti del franco Clodoveo, ottenuta a Vouillé nel 507, sono segni inoppugnabili del favore divino accordato a due sovrani, cui si ascrive il merito della svolta religiosa dei rispettivi dominio.

Alberto Elías González Gómez: “Monotheism, socio-epistemic violence and experience of the living God”

Abstract:  For many, monotheism is to religion what imperialism is to politics, and abysmal thought to epistemology. The concept of a sole true God has socio-historically resulted in imperialisms and cognitive absolutism, which sustain and accompany the different types of violence present in our society. Monotheism would be apparently contrary to pluralism, and any attempt to base a commitment to dialogic peace-building on this experience, condemned to failure. Can mystic knowledge vis-à-vis the experience of a living God contribute to dialogic peace-building in such a fragmented, violent society as our own? In this paper, the author endeavours to offer a critique of the criterion of the totalizing-abysmal truth stemming from certain epistemologies, and which is expressed in different kinds of social violence. This will be followed by an explanation of the mystical experience of the living God as one in which truth is accepting and being receptive to the dialogic listening to otherness, from which we can conceive and build peace processes.

Alessandro Saggioro: “Communio, pax, tranquillitas: idee in trasformazione nelle leggi post-costantiniane”

Abstract: This paper will consider some laws in which the concepts of "communio", ''pax'', and "tranquillitas" are connected. Starting from the ancient meanings of these words, the paper will show a process of conceptual transformation at work in these sources and other sources strictly connected. Close to the peaceful and identity perspective, it will be possible to find out the other one, violent and persecuting. This research has the general aim to understand how, in the Christian tradition, the two lines of thought coexist, sometimes in a communicative and programmatic ambiguity.

Silvia Acerbi: “The intolerance of the Roman Papacy vis-à-vis the Oriental Orthodox Churches: past and present”

Abstract: In the mid-5th century, the historian Socrates of Constantinople ended his Church History alleging that the history of the Church up until his time had not been one peace, but one of wars between bishops: “On ending our story here, we express our desire that the Churches throughout the world, cities and nations live in peace. Since, if peace reigned, those who propose to write history would not have the wherewithal to do so. Nor we … would have had the wherewithal to do so if those who love conflicts had chosen peace” (C.H. Vil. 48.6). Indeed, the history of the Church from the 4^th century onwards was one of wars between bishops which, under the guise of dogmatic disputes concealed, more often than not, the struggles for power and prestige of their Episcopal sees. This conflict, surfacing above all at conciliar assemblies, prompted Gregory Nazianzen, one of its most illustrious representatives, to make the following allegation: “I have never known any council that has ended on a happy note, or that has put an end to evils, instead of increasing them. There is nothing more than continuous confrontations and struggles for power” (Ep. l30). Half a century after the Cappadocian bishop had made this pronouncement, the facts proved him right on the occasion of the council that, together with that of Nicaea, has been considered the most important in the history of the Church, to wit, that of Chalcedon in 451. The agreements of this council triggered two of the most far-reaching fractures suffered by the Church throughout its history: that of the Oriental Orthodox Churches, called “monophysites”, versus the “duophysites” led by Rome and Constantinople; and that which pitted one against the other and culminated in the schism between the Catholic Church and the Oriental Orthodox Churches which still continues today.

The objective of this communication is to highlight the responsibility that the Church of Rome had in this schism, inasmuch as its bishops claimed, from Leo the Great, as Bishop of the “First Rome”, onwards, the status of “bishops of the Universal Church” which their counterparts in the “Second Rome” and other Eastern sees, in particular Alexandria and Antioch, could not accept. I propose to analyse the weapons that the Roman bishops resorted to in these struggles for power and influence, such as the discredit and humiliation of their Eastern opponents that led to an accusation of heresy devoid of any theological foundation. Lastly, I will consider the current ecumenical movement, since the issue of Roman primacy is still the main stumbling block for dialogue between the Churches: the solution lies in that they acknowledge all the rights and privileges in force during the period of union between East and West, namely, before the systematic controversy initiated after Chalcedon by Leo the Great and his successors against their colleagues in Constantinople. What is ultimately intended is to change, on the basis of an objective study of the past, the Roman perception of its relations with the Oriental Churches.

  

Kerasia  Stratiki: “La mort violente de la figure héroïque”

Abstract : Dans la religion grecque ancienne, la mort violente de l'héroïne et du héros apparaît souvent comme mythème étiologique de la fondation d'un culte héroïque. Ainsi, les héroïnes tuées par une déesse deviennent des héroïnes éponymes du culte, leur nom devenant une épithète de la déesse (par exemple Artémis Callisto). D'autres héros meurent violemment parce qu'ils n'ont pas respecté le culte de la divinité (meurtrière), comme Pyrrhos/Néoptolème et Apollon ou Hippolyte et Aphrodite. De nombreux mythes mettent en scène de jeunes chasseurs qui ratent le passage àl'âge adulte, tel Actéon, châtié àmort par Artémis pour s'être rendu coupable d'hybrisàson égard, une hybrisque l’on rencontre également dans le mythe de Linos, tué par Apollon. Mais il y a aussi le cas des enfants morts violemment qui jouissent d'un culte central dans une cité (les Médéides notamment) ou d'un culte associé àla fondation des jeux panhélleniques (tel Ophéltès/Archémoros ou Mélicerte/Palémon). Enfin, même la mort des guerriers dans le champ de la bataille conduit àleur héroïsation.

2nd Strand. Social sciences

Carlos Molina Valero: “Hercules, Kakasbos and Athena in Lycia? Gods of war and their relationship with the local dynasties of Xanthos during the period of Achaemenid domination”

Abstract: In this communication, an attempt will be made to identify the possible relationship between the local dynasties of Xanthos during the period of Achaemenid domination in Lycia.

Lycia was a region that enjoyed a certain degree of independence from the Great King (at least until its incorporation into the satrapy of Caria, in the hands of the Hekatomnid dynasty). Xanthos was probably the most independent area of Lycia, and we know of a series of local dynasties that governed the region.

Despite the lack of sources and the difficulties arising from their interpretation, we can trace the presence of some or other warlike god. Specifically, it is assumed that there were at least two: Santa and, afterwards in the Hellenic period, Kakasbos (maybe one the same divinity through assimilation). Thus, an attempt will be made to discover a possible relationship between this god and the Lycian dynasts, as well as other divinities that have some bearing on military feats: as is the case of Athena and Hercules on Lycian coins, or that of the famous King Kaunos in the stele of the Temple of Leto. We hope this will allow us to obtain an overview of these divinities in Lycia and their relationship with the power of these dynasts. 

Enrique Santos Marinas: “War, peace and interreligious dialogue”

Abstract: After the recent meeting in Cuba between Pope Francis and the Patriarch Cyril, the dialogue between the top representatives of the Catholic Church and the Russian Orthodox Church has returned to the headlines. In the mass media, the accent was put on the fact that it was the first meeting between the leaders of both Churches since the Great Schism of 1054. Although that is not altogether true, since at that time the Russian Orthodox Church did not exist as such, insofar as it was not an independent entity, but under the aegis of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, of the Greek Orthodox Church. And nor is it true bearing in mind that throughout history there have been rapprochements and meetings between representatives of both Churches. The most famous of these took place during the Council of Ferrara-Florence between 1438 and 1439, when the Metropolitan of Kiev and Moscow Isidore II signed the bull promulgating the union of the Greek and Latin Churches. But it was not the only instance. Another less known one occurred during the peace talks of 1581-1582 between the King of Poland Stephan Báthory and the Tsar Ivan IV “the Terrible” on the occasion of the War of Livonia. To ensure the success of the negotiations, the Holy See’s envoy, the Jesuit priest Antonio Possevino, an experienced diplomat and negotiator, acted as intermediary. If his mediation achieved a positive political outcome, the same cannot be said as regards spiritual matters, inasmuch as the hopes of Pope Gregory XIII for preparing a meeting between the Churches were dashed.   

In this communication, we will review all the documents pertaining to those talks that have come down to us, from both the Latin and Russian camp, in order to analyze the intercultural and interreligious aspects of the meeting.

Iván Ruíz-Larrea García: “Buddhist Christians in Spain, the experience of a fruitful dialogue”

Abstract: The crisis of modern man after the horror of two major wars and the subsequent nuclear threat has led to the relentless search for new models of spirituality. In Spain, the consequences of the Civil War and the years of dictatorship have resulted in an increase in secularism and social estrangement with ecclesiastical institutions and Christian worship.

In Spanish Christianity it has been possible to note, since the democratic transition,  a gradual spiritual renewal in certain groups, which strive to satisfy the existential needs of individuals in a religious thaw that contemplates the use of oriental meditation techniques, and which is having a wide reach. There are several priests and Christian groups that employ these techniques or even admit to being followers of religious traditions such as Zen Buddhism, without prejudice to their Christian identity. From an anthropological perspective, we will address these aspects, while focusing on several of these Christian groups, and analyse the value of interreligious dialogue that allows for the renewal of traditional creeds and offers individuals novel ways of responding to their existential concerns, thus fostering a culture of peace and respect for the other.

Boris Briones: “The Chilean Society of Religious Sciences: education, tolerance and interreligious dialogue”

Abstract: Until the moment of its creation, an entity devoted to the study of religions, in plural, from a non-denominational perspective had not existed in Chile. At the end of 2015, the Chilean Society of Religious Sciences (SChCR) was created. With an academic background, this entity is linked to formal research in the scientific field of the religious phenomenon.

The enormous challenges faced by the SChCR stem from problems of tolerance towards religious plurality and the stigmas existing in the country vis-à-vis the study of religions from a non-denominational perspective, which frequently ends up by linking the discipline to theology, or generating a religio-centrism when faced with different postures.

The recent creation of this society facilitates the development of religious studies in Chile, a country where there is a formal separation of Church and State, and where many Oriental religions are unknown due to the lack of followers and because they are not included in the census. 

As the promoter of the popularisation of religious sciences, the society has taken it upon itself to implement outreach initiatives, with the aim of heightening public awareness of the scientific study of religions, and fostering tolerance and interreligious dialogue. In this communication, the work and promotion of the SChCR will be discussed.   

Manuel Jesús Cartes Barroso: “Media coverage of interreligious dialogue in Spain”

Abstract: In the current situation of international instability, with dangerous armed conflicts (some of a religious nature) raging, interreligious dialogue and different initiatives implemented by secular and religious institutions with this purpose in mind have the opportunity to reveal another potential form of coexistence in a multicultural world, especially in societies like that of Spain. On considering that it is an issue of certain interest for public opinion, as well as the important role played by the mass media in educating and informing, we ask ourselves how this topic is analysed. In this paper, we therefore intend to address an approach to media coverage of interreligious dialogue in the national popular press in Spain. 

José Barrientos Rastrojo: “The experiential commun(icat)ion necessary for the resolution of religious conflicts: from offline dialogue to exchanges in the Internet of cloud computing”

Abstract: Although logic, concept and structured definition are suitable for resolving many religious conflicts, they are useless in other cases. This is due, among other reasons, to the fact that the framework in which the solution and dialogue has to be applied must be based on experiential contexts or take into account the distance separating ideas and beliefs. According to Ortega y Gasset, ideas are possessed and modified by rationalist reflection, whereas beliefs are the foundation on which life itself is edified. This circumstance implies that a decline in beliefs is the basis of existential suicide; thus, if someone tries to deprive someone else of his beliefs, he is putting his life at risk, and consequently the other will be seen as an adversary who he can only hope to defeat or, alternatively, forfeit his own existence.

This paper establishes the difference between a rationalist and an experiential dialogue, since it does not only have a bearing on the subject’s ideas, but also on his beliefs. Likewise, a look will be taken at the configuration of dialogue and its elements in rationalist and experiential structures, to wit, the value of words, the transformation of communication into communion, and the importance of gestures and symbols, among others.  Lastly, the consequences of this analysis will be determined in the sphere of offline dialogue and in that of telematic media, drawing from studies by authors such as Sherry Turkle, Manuel Castells, and Nicholas Negroponte on the capacity or incapacity of social networks to develop an authentic communication.

Francisco Javier Vallina: “Modernity, non-violence and religion: the need for enlightened auctoritas (religious and secular) in the delegimitisation of sacred violence”

Abstract: Disciplinary analyses of the origin, development and perpetuation of sacred violence in the behaviour of predominant social groups, political structures and cultural milieus have been, especially on the basis of the academic paradigms of the 19^th century, essential and productive for the development of precise approaches to gain insights into and a certain articulation and understanding of such a complex phenomenon. Yet they have been insufficient to obtain an understanding of its aetiology, structure and function that contributes to arresting the barbarism that erupted in the 20^th century and which still prevails today in ever-changing ways, precisely at a time when many of the distinguishing characteristics of progress, exceptionally scientific and technological development, seem to point to an indisputable paradigm.  

Consequently, we intend to reflect upon such shortcomings, emphasising the following: a) the need for a multidisciplinary and multi-causal methodology; b) the integration of symbolic rationality in analysis; c) the religious authorities’ acceptance of the civil ethics of human rights and of the legitimisation of democratic law; d) an identical acceptance of social and cultural plurality, as well as individual freedom of conscience; the principle of separation between state and religious creeds; e) a critique of the reciprocal legitimisation of powers and political and religious positions; f) the respect for and valuing of the “depository of meaning” of religions and their spiritual and cultural heritage; g) reading and interpreting texts on the basis of an academically sanctioned hermeneutics and the need for this general education; h) cooperating in the eradication of religious violence and all forms of political theocracy; i) the interaction of interreligious and civil dialogue, and its media role; j) redefining a post-secular laity open to the humanistic interpellations of religions. These conditions call for an enlightened religious and civil auctoritas still pending in many places and spheres which assumes its responsibilities in the difficult challenge ahead of establishing a global peace culture.

Raquel Lázaro Cantero: “Violence in religion and against religion. Religious freedom in current society”

Abstract: There is no end of studies on religious violence. Nonetheless, apparently the violence of one’s own religion is not considered religious, but human; therefore, it is possible to suffer violence or exercise it against different objects and in the different facets of human behaviour; which, without a doubt, includes the religious kind. Therefore, in the same way as it is possible to find violence in certain religious experiences – rites, sacrifices, ascetics, false and misguided jealousy, etc. – it is also possible to exercise it against religious beliefs. We live in a society that offers examples of both possibilities. Religious freedom is apparently a right claimed by many, precisely when violence is being exercised against religion; additionally, there are certain violent acts in religious behaviour that are bad in the religion of  others, but desirable inone’s own. To kill someone who refuses to convert to a specific creed, for instance, is bad in someone else’s religion; conversely, to use violence so as to avoid the lowest passions is good for oneself and for society as a whole. Our intention is to briefly analyse certain demonstrations of violence in religion and against religion as the basis for adequate interreligious dialogue, on the one hand, and to demonstrate the precarious state of the right to religious freedom in most of the world today, on the other.

3rd Strand. Religions

Sara Colantonio: “L’Islam italiano e il dialogo negato in nome della verità teológica”

Abstract: I conflitti inter corsi negli ultimi venti anni del XX secolo portarono all'organizzazione di numerose manifestazioni per la pace. In questi incontri vedeva la luce un nuovo metodo per parlare di pace: il dialogo interreligioso. In Italia Giovanni Paolo II nell'aprile del 1986 tentava di sanare secoli di antisemitismo incontrando il rabbino capo Toaff nella Sinagoga di Roma, il 21 giugno1995 -dopo dieci anni dalla prima pietra e venti dall' autorizzazione- veniva inaugurata la Grande Moschea di Roma, la piú grande d'Europa, pronta ad accogliere per la preghiera 2000 musulmani.

Due grandi appuntamenti a carattere mondiale di questi anni avevano nella pace e nella religione, seppur con accezioni diverse, la chiave e il punto di partenza: la Giornata Mondiale di Preghiera per la Pace di Assisi de11986 e la Conferenza di Madrid per il conflitto israelo-palestinese del 1991.

Il paper propone di analizzare come una delle principali e più artive associazioni islamiche di quegli anni, il Centro Islámico di Milano -da cui nascerà l’UCOII- si pronunciò in mérito a questi appuntamenti attraverso il suo principale organo di comunicazione, "Il Messaggero dell'Islam" e come si pose quindi nei confronti della pace e del dialogo interreligioso.

David Villar Vegas: “Violence and Judaism: The Eliseus cycle as an example of intolerance in the Yahvist religion”

Abstract:  One of the issues raised in this congress on violence, peace and religion is whether violence is really intrinsic to religions, an idea that has been associated with the monotheistic religions by quite a few people, whether they be specialists in the field or not. We therefore believe that a communication that endeavours to settle this issue as regards Judaism, one of the three major monotheistic religions, has a special bearing here.

What will be addressed is the first attitude of intolerance and violence in this religion – according to Rainer Albertz – depicted in the Bible in the shape of the rebellion of the prophet Elisha and the revolution of Jehu. Although this cycle of stories might have appeared long after the events occurred, the reality described is timeless or, better said, characteristic of all periods, including the current one, and needless to say distinctive of the origins of Yahvism. Special attention is paid to addressing the tension existing between history and what transpired in Jehu’s time, and the “historical effectiveness” of the developments narrated in this cycle of stories and the ambiguity of events or accounts in which the persecutors are also victims or the persecuted become intolerant, something that has been repeated throughout history especially in modern and contemporary times.

  

Elena Sol Jiménez: “Spirituality as non-violence: the Gnostic Christians”

Abstract: The Christianity of the first centuries was characterised by the variety of groups and theological interpretations, to such an extent that the conflict between Orthodoxy and heresy has been a constant in the history of the Church from a very early stage. This conflict was frequently of a coercive or violent nature, for which those who finally constituted what the distinguished theologian Origen called the great Church, the one that ultimately prevailed, were ultimately responsible.

However, the Gnostic currents of the 2nd and 3rd centuries, maligned by the “Orthodox” Christian groups, distanced themselves from any form of coercion and violence. Their spiritualism and absence of links with the ecclesiastical hierarchy were expressed by their independent attitude with regard to the rest of the Christian groups, which received hardly any criticism, unlike the great Church’s aggressive attitude towards the Gnostics.

Is the profoundly spiritual and intellectual character of Gnosticism the reason behind its lack of aggressiveness towards other movements? Or was it the Gnostic groups’ characteristic independence the reason behind their lack of ambitions of universality and, therefore, desire to provoke conflicts? By answering these questions, we intend to demonstrate that violence does not form part of religion per se more than any other historical factor, as shown by the analysis of the Gnostic phenomenon in Christianity.

Daniel Caballero Payá: “The religion of the other transcends wars: Zoroastrianism in the Pseudo-Clementines”

Abstract:  The Pseudo-Clementines comprise two texts, the Homiliae and the Recognitiones, attributed to Pope Clement of Rome, though written around the 2^nd and 3^rd centuries AD. They were produced in a historical context marked by the protracted Parthian Wars that raged between the Roman Empire and Parthia between the 1^st and 3^rd centuries. The content of the texts is principally theological, but the story of Zoroaster is narrated in both. In their early contacts with the Persians and their religion, the Greeks had already identified Zoroaster as a prophet or mythical hero, but in the texts in hand (Homiliae 9:4-6; Recognitiones 4:27-29) we discover a novelty: he is identified with a king of the Mesopotamian region, with a huge knowledge of magic and astrology, a clear confusion with Zoroastrianism and the Chaldean religion. Moreover, by describing Persian worship and its transmission an etiological explanation is given for what the Graeco-Roman world had interpreted as a cult of fire, thereby providing an explanation for the religion of the Parthian Empire. The aim of this communication is to trace the textual and narrative link running from Ctesias the Cnidian, the first person to identify Zoroaster as a king, to the Pseudo-Clementines.

Santiago López-Pavillard: “On the spiritual origin of religious violence from a shamanistic perspective”

Abstract:  Is there any relationship between religion and violence? If so, how can it be substantiated? This keynote endeavours to address this issue from the perspective of spiritual practices, and on the basis of data obtained in anthropological field research conducted in both Spain and Peru, keyed to the study of shamanistic practices of the High Amazonic type.

Shamanistic practices occur in a distressingly ontological context: in that of a realty in which Good and Evil coexist. From this viewpoint, the human being is inhabited by spirits or energies both ethically positive and negative, entities that are also described in terms of light/darkness and health/illness.

Considering spirituality as a series of practices, such as those of shamanism, which seek to directly experience these forces, religion would be an intellectualisation of the spiritual world defined as comprising a set of beliefs keyed to salvation in the netherworld, versus an animistic knowledge geared to conducting healing rituals in the here and now.

The basis of the relationship between violence and religion would be the fact that the former is constituted as a type of symbolic practice whose reference (the spiritual) is of an ontological nature. A potential method of analysing the issue of the link between violence and religion could be through the nature/culture debate, in such a way that a better understanding of the cultural management (religions) of metaphysical realities (the spiritual world of an ambivalent nature) could contribute to the pursuit of that peace which, as with violence, is also intrinsic to religions. 

Aura Fernández Tabernilla: “Images as a vehicle for violence: from negative witchcraft to a tool of empowerment in Wicca”

Abstract: The different, the misunderstood, has been pursued since time immemorial, thus jeopardising the established order. In the religious sphere, fear, the natural consequence of violence, is one of the most effective tools of power and control wielded by the authorities against dissident subjects and groups. One of the most detrimental stereotypes is that revolving around witchcraft, which still prevails in the current collective imaginary with the same attributes that it was given by the Church during the inquisitorial trials: practices of black magic based on demonic orgiastic rituals; occasionally, it is given the cold shoulder, provokes incomprehension or leads to the derision of fledgling spiritual movements such as Wicca or Modern Witchcraft. All considered, the fight against otherness, as was shown in the witch trials, has helped to construct a new discourse of feminine and social empowerment within this “New Age” religion that seeks both to denounce religious violence and to build a new model of thought and community action.

This communication reflects on the influence of the negative image of witchcraft that has prevailed through its popular representations on the perception of Wicca, and its use as a tool of empowerment.

Guayasén Carballo Hernández: “The eschatology of the jihad in the Sunni conception of holy war”

Abstract: This proposal seeks to address the role played by eschatology in the Sunni conception of “holy war”. We identify two facets in this concept: the material facet, which is obtained through war booty taken from the defeated for the cause of Allah (to spread his word); and another spiritual facet, which is obtained after death or martyrdom in “paradise”. The combination of both dimensions serves expansive political-military purposes and are very effective mechanisms for motivating the warrior to participate in war. The eschatological study of the jihad (final judgement, paradise and hell), on the basis of the Quran and the Hadiths (principally through the most important “canonical” text, the Sahih al-Bukhari), reveals to us a whole range of factors that help to establish rules of conduct on campaign, as well as to foster an efficient doctrine of death that helps the warrior to overcome his fear, thus converting him into an efficient tool at the service of politics. This analysis will help us understand the notion of jihad from a material (political) and spiritual (individual) perspective, and the “vertical” interpretation of history and doctrine made by today’s Islamic fundamentalism.

Luis Santamaría del Río: “Violence and non-violence in Jehovah’s Witnesses”

Abstract:  Throughout history, Jehovah’s Witnesses, a non-proprietary name for a religious movement of a Christian origin with a global presence, have stood out for their refusal to do military service or participate in wars, which seems to show them in a pacific light. Notwithstanding this, many ex-members talk of psychological violence within the organisation. In this work, the publications of Jehovah’s Witnesses will be analysed to discover the doctrinal basis of this alleged internal violence and external non-violence, and to ascertain whether they have their origin in theoretical teaching.

PANEL 5: IDENTITIES, VIOLENCE

AND RELIGIONS

1st Strand. History

Francisco José Navarro Sánchez: “Zion in the imaginary of the religions of the Book: light of the world, land of promise and centre of conflict”

Abstract: This work presents an approach to the endemic phenomenon of peace and violence that, in both and alternate senses of the word, has been developed over the last millennium by the major monotheistic religions in their struggle for the control of the Holy City of Jerusalem. What is proposed here is a study of the events and sacred places of Judaism, Christianity and Islam that have prevailed in the memory of these religions through the tradition of their holy books and which constitute the imaginary of their identity, homeland and “God”. By means of a socio-political analysis of a historical nature, and using as a benchmark specific milestones of war and concord during the period of the Crusades, the intention here is to examine the apologetic discourses employed to legitimise the possession of this land that as a sacred place, breaking the barriers of the profane world, established contact between God and human beings. On the basis of the primary sources of the period and the oeuvre of Hans Küng, this line of research intends to evaluate the religious alliances and problems originating from the alleged divine will to turn the infidels towards the chosen religion.       

Teresa Sardella: “Lapidazione e altre pene di morte. Legge di Dio e leggi degli uomini nel Mediterraneo antico, tardo antico e nel cristianesimo”

Abstract: La legittimazione della violenza tramite la religione può riguardare la condanna a morte, la tortura e la guerra: diverse tra loro prevedono diverse giustificazioni e motivazioni. Soprattutto la pena di morte apre continue questioni, articolate non solo sulla sua legittimitá/ giustezza/utilitá, ma anche sui relativi criteri di applicabilità nel rispetto di vigente leggi costituzionali e sui metodi 'migliori' per eseguirla (USA 2015).

Nel Mediterraneo antico, ebraismo e mondo ellenistico romano, e poi il cristianesimo, danno significati diversi alle varíe modalità di condanne a morte. Si aprono questioni sulle motivazioni sociali e religiose. E, spesso si pongono problema sulla stessa definizione di condanna a morte in ordine all'autorità legittimata a emanarla e ad eseguirla (per esempio nel caso della vendetta privata).

Diamo solo alcuni esempi riguardanti la violenza inflitta per uno specifico delitto: l'adulterio. Nell'Antico Testamento, la morte tramite lapidazione è un atto purificatore, risanatore di un vero male: l'adulterio, esso stesso una 'violenza' nei confronti del sistema sociale (Deut. 22,13-21). Nell'Impero romano, le diverse condanne rispondono alle logiche di una società patriarcale, oltre che essere una risposta alla rottura della sacralità sociale: così con la Lex Iulia de adulteriis, del 18 a.c., dove la violenza di sangue si traduce nella relegatio in insulam o con l'uccisione degli adulteri da parte dei parenti maschi della donna, dove la privata vendetta è violenza legittirna e pertanto impunità. Con significati diversi, pasando attraverso le leggi dei regni romano-barbarici, la concessione di impunità arriverà fino al diritto italiano, con il delitto d'onore (art. 587 del Codice penale) abrogato solo nel 1981 (legge 442): la laicità del diritto rinvia ancora all'uso del sangue in un contesto sacrale.

Rispetto all'ebraismo e al mondo ellenistico romano, la catena della pena violenta per gli adulteri è interrotta dalla svolta evangelica (Iov. 8, 1-11), che non determina, però, sviluppi univoci. Nel cristianesimo maturo, il diritto canonico recepisce il messaggio nel senso del rifiuto della 'violenza' di sangue, ma mantiene intatto il senso della necessità veterotestamentaría di espellere i colpevoli dalla società: questo il significato della scomunica, una violenza sociale (Damaso, Ep. ad Gallos). Anche Giustiniano, pur operando nel senso di non voler comminare la morte, operò con durezza, stabilendo la reclusione dell'adultera in monastero, quale sostituzione della condanna a norte (Nov. 107.15; Nov. 134.10.1).

Belén Cuenca Abellán: “The Arab conquest of the Iberian Peninsula and the Mozarabic Chronicle of 754: real or fictitious violence? Divergences between written sources and archaeology”

Abstract: Seven hundred and eleven is a year that has left its mark on Hispanic historiography. For the study of the Islamic conquest of the Iberian Peninsula, contemporary sources are practically conspicuous by their absence. Yet one of the few texts available to us, the Mozarabic Chronicle of 754, would have a huge influence on shaping the idea that we currently have of the Islamic invasion. The remoteness of the events that it narrates and the unequivocal way in which traditional historiography has endorsed this version are very telling, without seeing in it the least bit of subsequent propaganda. In line with the most recent studies of the Arabists González Ferrín and López Pereira, and the historians Ruiz Souza and Calvo Capilla, this work seeks to inquire into the truth behind that Arab conquest that has been described as bloody, violent and destructive, and which is depicted in the Mozarabic Chronicle, on the strength of the archaeological remains that have come down to us and the processes of Arabisation and Islamisation. The arrival of the Arabs occurred in a complex reality of generalised chaos, prior to the consolidation of Islam as the religion of the Iberian Peninsula.

Benjamín Tébar Toboso: “The evolution of the Moors and Christians festival in Castile-La Mancha through the photography”

Abstract: The Moors and Christians festival has existed since the moment when the Iberian Peninsula was reconquered by the Christians. Since that time, it has gone through periods of popularity and decline coinciding with Spanish triumphs against the infidels in any place and at any time. The conquest of Granada, the expulsion of the Moriscos, the African war, the landing at Alhucemas, and the Franco dictatorship coincided with the festival’s finest hours. Its celebration always follows the same thread; the place’s conquest by the Moors, the fierce battle with the Christians, the triumph of the Christians against the enemies of the faith, and the conversion of these to Catholicism. The festival makes the most of these rites to celebrate the miraculous appearance of some or other image of Christ or the Virgin and the election of these as patrons or protectors of the place. We will analyse this evolution and the roles of the Moors, with their oriental trappings, and the Christians, decked out in their period military costumes.

José Cruz Díaz: “The legal framework of Judaism in Spain: from the Pragmatics of 1499 to the Royal Charter of 1802”

Abstract: On the basis of a comparative analysis of royal legislative action, on the one hand, and the law created by the statutory self-regulating capacity, on the other, the chief aim of this communication is to outline the key aspects of the legal framework applied to the Jews in Spain since the 16^th century, namely, from the closing of the legal cycle as regards their expulsion to the Napoleonic invasion of the Peninsula.     

Antonio de Diego González: “The orphans of the jihad. Identity and non-violent resistance strategies of the ṭarīqa Tijāniyya in Senegal”

Abstract: This communication explores the strategies of identity and non-violent resistance of the tarïqa Tijäniyya, one of the main African Sufi organisations in Senegal during the colonial period. Beginning with the military defeat of shaykh al-Fütïen in 1865, we will trace the path from armed jihad to non-violent resistance against the French authorities in Western Africa. To this end, we will analyse the social and intellectual contributions of Mälik Sy and 'Abdoulaye Niasse, the two principal leaders of the Tijäniyya at the time. Both belonging to the generation of the jihad, they developed strategies to reinforce the non-violent resistance of the community and, in this way, avoid armed struggle. The former did so by means of an individual social ethics, while the latter resorted to mystical abilities, yet without undermining the importance of Islamic orthodoxy and the Sufi tradition. In the proposals of Sy and Niasse, it was precisely the balance between religious law (sharï'a) and Gnostic reality (hqïqa) that facilitated coexistence during colonial domination. Lastly, we will demonstrate the continuity of these proposals in contemporary Islam in Africa through the contributions of Ibrahim Niasse, the son of al-Häjj 'Abdoulaye.

2nd Strand. Social sciences

Salvador Pérez Álvarez: “Positive laicism as an institutional guarantee of social order in the face of religious diversity in contemporary Spanish society”

Abstract: In Spain, the recognition without constraints of the equal right to ideological freedom of all citizens and immigrants with different cultural identities has led over time to a much more secularised but plural society from an ideological and cultural standpoint; these have been the determining factors in the evolving interpretation of this constitutional principle. Under the influence of the nomenclature employed to conceptualise this principle in other legal systems closer to home, in 2001 the Constitutional Court began to refer from the outset to the non-religious nature of the state in terms of positive secularism as synonymous expressions and not, however, as differentiated legal categories. To my mind, the shift from one expression to the other is a clear reflection of the evolving interpretation of the EC and its alignment with social awareness in Spain as to this increasingly more plural cultural and ideological social phenomenon. In this context, the effective establishment of the basic rights involved in real and effective conditions of equality has led to the elevation of positive state secularism to the status of institutional guarantee that, as the said Court has appreciated, does not only refer to constitutionally protected legal institutions like, for instance, marriage, but also includes all those principles that nowadays constitute “architectural elements indispensable for constitutional order”.

Fernando Amérigo Cuervo-Arango and Daniel Pelayo Olmedo: “Identity, minorities, the right to be different and pacific coexistence. Old and new issues revolving around a central legal concept: state secularism”

Abstract: Globalisation has brought about a substantial change in world society. New conflicts flare up and, even when their political and economical causes might seem similar to those of previous centuries, it is evident that some of the major conflicts of the 21^st century are related to a new way of understanding respect for personal identity and different identities, and the search for a framework of pacific coexistence in an increasingly more multicultural society. Identity is a concept not only based on the protection of the personal sphere free from any interference, but also includes respect for the right to express it and to act in accordance with it. Thus, the protection of identity has been clearly highlighted in the legal framework in two instances: 

Firstly, respect for the identity of individuals as a demand deriving from due respect for human dignity, the free development of personality, the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, and all the elements that form part of its fundamental core. Originally, the traditional homogeneity that the national state system produced in the model of protection of the identity of its citizens meant that it was enough to establish a framework for protecting the freedom of being and acting in conformity with that identity, that is, a mere notion of tolerance towards the existence of different identities (freedom of thought, conscience, religion, speech, etc.), which fluctuated between a greater of lesser degree of recognition depending on whether open demonstrations were permitted or not (in the religious aspect, for instance, worship). The legal embodiment of the protection of human rights served as a catalyst to guarantee respect for and the right to identity. Nonetheless, with the effects of globalisation, the basic problem faced by European legal systems it not only the recognition of that right, but also to ensure that new individuals and collectives become integrated into society, respecting their identity, but without this involving, in any case, the violation of human rights, the system of values that these represent, or the regulations deriving from them governing democratic coexistence.     

Secondly, the pressure or, in some cases, discrimination that the protection of a homogeneous identity in national states brought to bear on those who did not share that identity led to the need to propose legal formulas for the protection of minorities. The legal concept of minorities has been associated with the so-called strong identities. By means of their structuring, recognition and protection, individuals discovered the legal formula that allowed them not only to have their own identity, even if it was not predominant in society, but also to share it in a supportive way with other people and to retain their differences, being able to openly display them and even perpetuate them via their transmission to future generations. For international organisations like the United Nations or the Council of Europe, the establishment of legal frameworks governing the respect for minorities (Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities, Resolution AG 47/135 of 1992, and the 1995 Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities of the Council of Europe) basically involved finding legal constructs that not only allowed for this, to wit, the respect for the difference of these groups with regard to formal equality, but also to establish legal criteria that brought this in line with a model of material equality, which meant achieving the commitment of the states to establishing the necessary conditions to implement them through positive actions and legislative policies of recognition. Therefore, the regulation and protection of minorities has been geared to constructing a model of pacific coexistence in increasingly more plural societies.    

From this general perspective, now on the subject of the religious aspect of identity, we believe that the eradication of violence, hate and discriminatory behaviours, and the building of lasting peace call for new arguments in which core legal concepts, such as state secularism, ought to play an essential role, above all concerning the plurality of groups and religious beliefs. This is so because in the case of religious identity, laity and, more specifically, the model of positive secularism work in two essential directions. Firstly, their elements of separation and neutrality allow for the existence of new religious identities in a framework of formal equality. Secondly, because their positive character implies the positive attitude of states keyed to fostering the right conditions and removing obstacles for the exercise of that different identity is real and effective (material equality). 

In conclusion, we consider that we will be in a position to offer a series of elements that, from a legal perspective, will allow us to construct a model of pacific coexistence between different religious identities, grounded on respect for the free and open exercise of different beliefs, without forgetting due respect for the rights of everyone else and their differences, and the pursuit of pacific coexistence.

Rafael Ruiz de Andrés: “Post-secularism: commitment or entelechy in the face of religious violence?”

Abstract: The paired opposite secularisation-modernity is apparently insufficient to meet current challenges. However, Habermas’ commitment to a post-secular society – a society that acknowledges that secularisation itself is rooted in religious discourse and, in turn, creates public spaces for faith – developed in parallel with the threat of religious violence. This is structured on two levels: on the one hand, Islamic fundamentalism versus the existential instability of the socio-political framework; and on the other, the anti-Islamic and nationalist discourse, including an extensive list covering, for example, the Pegida, the National Front, and the Republican front-runner D. Trump. In this context, can the post-secular proposal offer a dialogic framework that integrates religions with Modernity-Postmodernity? Or does its emergence in the midst of violence make this inevitable? This communication will delve into the practice necessary to make the post-secular theory an effective response to the current situation. If post-secularity continues to be a mere proposal, we run the risk that, while scholars debate on the creation of places of encounter between religions, fundamentalism of one kind or another will prevail in the streets.

Javier Bustamante Donás: “Religion, virtual identity and violence in the cloud”

Abstract: In this keynote, we will take a closer look at religious identity building via social networks and in cloud computing, as well as the influence of information and communication technologies on the mediation of conflicts of a religious nature. We will also analyse how the most sophisticated uses of technological media can promote the violence or radicalisation of individuals or identity groups, especially in virtual communities. Despite the clichés about virtual communities being frequently superficial and far-removed for daily life, the current expansion of beliefs and the dissemination of violent practices related to religious beliefs have a lot to do with the topology of social networks. Recognising these dissemination mechanisms of beliefs in the field of cloud computing, big data and virtual communities is a strategic resource for understanding the development of fundamentalist movements and the growth of fundamentalism. 

Ángel Hristov Kolev: “The process of regeneration in Bulgaria”

Abstract: In historical terms, Bulgaria did not avoid falling under the communist yoke, with all the negative connotations associated with the design of a totalitarian state, where public liberties were conspicuous by their absence, and whose ultimate consequences were the revocation of freedom of conscience, ideology and religion, or the violation of such essential rights as freedom of association, assembly, demonstration, and academic freedom. One of its darkest chapters was the process of forced regeneration of the Muslim population, due to its disastrous assimilationist nature, which seen from a certain distance just goes to show how the progress of peoples and civilisation can only be achieved by taking two steps forward and one step back. On the basis of the aforementioned, this study aims to analyse the following issues:     

1) The causes that led the communist regime to eradicate the religious identity of Bulgarian Muslims.

2) The resistance of the Muslim community marked by a series of violent anti-communist demonstrations.

3) How the current phenomenon of Islam’s growing visibility in Bulgaria should be understood. What is involved is an attempt to re-Islamise the country, which formed part of the Ottoman Empire, or, alternatively, it constitutes in some way a religious renaissance, after the terrible persecutions of the communist period.

Jorge Cuesta Fernández: “Christianity and Islam. Divergences and common features in apocalyptic terms: the End of the World and the Anti-Christ”

Abstract: Since coexisting together, Christianity and Islam have been at loggerheads for political reasons such as the Reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula, the Crusades in the Holy Land, and the most relevant historical developments of the last quarter of the 20^th century. However, by approaching the primordial literature that both religions have produced (the Bible, the Quran, and the Patristic and Hadith literature) it is possible to glimpse the existence of common features, above all as regards apocalyptic or eschatological issues, such as the resurrection of the dead or the advent of a hostile individual who will undermine the communities of both Abrahamic, or monotheistic, creeds until their complete and utter defeat and destruction at the hands of a character who is a kindred spirit and staunch defender of Christians and/or Muslims. In the case of the Christians, this character is none other than the Anti-Christ, whereas in that of the Muslims, the character’s Islamic counterpart goes by the name of AI-Dajjal. The objective of this communication is to describe the common denominators of the eschatological beliefs of both religions in order to demonstrate that there is more that unites Christians and Muslims than divides them, especially concerning the said issues.