Graduate Conference in Medieval Studies at Princeton University
War, Peace, and Religion in the Middle Ages
April 13, 2013
Call for Papers
The Program in Medieval Studies at Princeton University invites submissions for its
twentieth annual graduate conference in Princeton, New Jersey.
Keynote Speaker: Brett Whalen, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
War, Peace, and Religion
Throughout Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, religion deeply influenced practices of,
protests against, and debates about war. Religious difference frequently provoked
medieval warfare, and was an important aspect of conflicts as diverse as the Islamic
conquest of the Middle East and the Iberian peninsula, Charlemagne’s campaigns against
the Saxons, and the Crusades. Religion could also spark violence and conflict on a local
level: the medieval church’s fight to define and ensure orthodoxy often led to the violent
suppression of supposedly heretical religious groups, while many medieval communities
participated in horrific persecutions of religious minorities in their midst. Some saints,
popes, and clerics instigated and directed war to further their religious and political
ambitions, while many others tried to control violent conflict and promote peace.
Religion’s influence on warfare also extended to academic debate and medieval
literature. Theologians, exegetes, and religious writers strove to conceptualize war and
peace in Christian and historical terms, and religious concerns saturated many academic
and social debates over the nature, place, and utility of armed conflict in medieval
Christendom.
How did religion influence the outbreak, practice, containment, and conceptualization of
war in the Middle Ages? Conversely, how did war and peace – real and imagined – shape
medieval religion? We invite the submission of proposals from a variety of disciplines,
time periods, geographies, source materials, and methodological approaches. Potential
topics might include, but are not limited to:
* Conversion by the sword: violent conversion, enlarging Christendom through war,
converting defeated armies.
* Interconfessional conflict between Christians, Jews, and Muslims: the Crusades and the
Reconquista, increased interconfessional exchange as a result of the Crusades, violent
persecutions of Jews.
*The holy warrior: military saints, crusading kings, military religious orders, pious
knights in medieval romance.
*War in religious literature: interpreting biblical warfare, apocalyptic perspectives,
theological approaches to warfare, hagiographic depictions, war and the liturgy.
*War and religion in medieval romance
* The experience of war: local religious responses to warfare, communities coping
through faith, holy men and women as protectors.
* The internal war against heresy: inquisition, crusading against Christians, competing
religious traditions.
* War in religious art: illuminated manuscripts, cathedrals, reliquaries, sculpture.
*Religious responses against war: religious concepts of peace, clerics and conflict
resolution, saintly pacifism.
In order to support participation by speakers from outside the northeastern United States,
we are offering a limited number of modest subsidies to help offset the cost of travel to
Princeton. Financial assistance may not be available for every participant; funding
priority goes to those who have the farthest to travel. Every speaker will have the option
of staying with a resident graduate student as an alternative to paying for a hotel room.
Interested graduate students should submit abstracts of no more than 500 words to Molly
Lester and Leah Klement (warandpeace2013@gmail.com) by January 31st, 2013.
All applicants will be notified by February 10th, 2013. Presentations should be no longer
than 20 minutes.