Religious Education In Pre Modern Europe

Although religious education is a much-debated topic in present-day History of Religions, its study focuses almost exclusively on contemporary phenomena. Furthermore, this field of study still lacks a comprehensive theoretical framework to structure research. The volume presented here explores religious education from a historical perspective, focusing on source material from pre-modern Europe. Scholars from the History of Religions, Theology, Classical Philology, Medieval Studies and Byzantine Studies contribute their expertise to analyse selected aspects of religious education in Antiquity, Byzantium and the Middle Ages, highlighting the diverse concepts of education, educational contents, actors, media, methods, ideals and intentions at play, and anchoring their case studies in the broader panorama of European history. Based on this material, the editors propose a systematic framework to map the research field.

Although religious education is a crucial topic in present-day History of Religions, its study focuses on contemporary phenomena and is still undertheorised. The present volume proposes a comprehensive theoretical framework based on interdisciplinary case studies of religious education in pre-modern Europe.

Exploring the nexus of music and religious education involves fundamental questions regarding music itself, its nature, its interpretation, and its importance in relation to both education and the religious practices into which it is integrated. This cross-disciplinary volume of essays offers the first comprehensive set of studies to examine the role of music in educational and religious reform and the underlying notions of music in early modern Europe. It elucidates the context and manner in which music served as a means of religious teaching and learning during that time, thereby identifying the religio-cultural and intellectual foundations of early modern European musical phenomena and their significance for exploring the interplay of music and religious education today.

The project "Religious Education at Schools in Europe" (REL-EDU), which is divided up into six volumes (Central Europe, Western Europe, Northern Europe, Southern Europe, South-Eastern Europe, Eastern Europe), aims to research the situation with regard to religious education in Europe. The second volume outlines the organisational form of religious education in the countries of Western Europe (England, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Belgium, France, Luxembourg, Netherlands). This is done on the basis of thirteen key issues, which allows specific points of comparison between different countries in Europe. Thereby the volume focusses the comparative approach and facilitates further research into specific aspects of the comparison.

Drawing together a number of case studies from diverse parts of Europe, Living with Religious Diversity in Early Modern Europe explores the processes involved with groups of differing religious confessions living together - sometimes grudgingly, but ofte

The interplay between knowledge and religion forms a pivotal component of how early modern individuals and societies understood themselves and their surroundings. Knowledge of the self in pursuit of salvation, humanistic knowledge within a confessional education, as well as inherently subversive knowledge acquired about religion(s) offer instructive instances of this interplay. To these are added essays on medical knowledge in its religious and social contexts, the changing role of imagination in scientific thought, the philosophical and political problems of representation, and attempts to counter Enlightenment criteria of knowledge at the end of the period, serving here as multifaceted studies of the dynamics and shifts in sensitivity and stress in the interplay between knowledge and religion within evolving early modern contexts.

The European Convention on Human Rights guarantees freedom of education, including the opportunities to create and operate faith-based schools. However, as European societies become more religiously diverse and ‘less religious’ at the same time, the role of faith-based schools is increasingly being contested. Serious tensions have emerged between those who ardently support religious schools in their various forms, and those who oppose them. Given that faith-based schools enjoy basic constitutional guarantees in Europe, the controversy around them often surrounds issues of public financing, degrees of organisational and pedagogical autonomy, and educational practices and management. This volume is about the controversies surrounding religious schools in a number of Western European countries. The introductory chapter briefly analyses the structural pressures that affect the position of religious schools, outlining the relevant institutional arrangements in countries such as Denmark, Germany, France, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Scotland. The following chapters provide a detailed analysis of the discussions and controversies surrounding faith-based schools in each country. Finally, the two concluding chapters aim to provide a bigger, comparative picture with regard to these debates about religious education in liberal democratic states and culturally pluralist societies. This book was originally published as a special issue of Comparative Education.

Drawing material from all European languages and concentrating on the experiences of ordinary people, this book provides a social and historical analysis of how a largely illiterate population in Europe in the 16th century became by 1800 one of mass literacy.