Communicating Vessels

Abstract

The objective of this article is to analyse several ways of handling religious diversity that were practised in medieval Latin Christian Europe, paying particular attention to the interdependencies between the following fields of religious diversity: first the presence of other religions than Latin Christianity within Medieval Europe, which is all too often reduced to Iberian ‘convivencia’. Second, religious diversity within Christianity is stressed, drawing particular attention to the so-called and frequently overlooked Oriental churches. A third block deals with the mechanisms the Christian Latin Church developed in order to control religious plurality, of which the demarcation between orthodoxy and heresy was only one. The development and institutionalisation of varied forms of religious life can also be understood as an attempt to channel diversity. Seen from this angle, the vivid world of sainthood—the fourth field—might be interpreted as a form of transcendental pluralism and as a flexible ‘market’ that catered to societal and religious change. Some final reflections are dedicated to the theological consequences European religious diversity heralded within Latin Christianity. Intra-religious diversification and inter-religious demarcation were closely related.

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