MARIANNE MOYAERT is Professor of Comparative Theology and the Study of Interreligious Relations at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, KU Leuven, Belgium. She specializes in the comparative theology of religions, interreligious hermeneutics, and research into the religio-racialization. She has authored and edited several books including Fragile Identities: Towards a Theology of Interreligious Hospitality (2011), In Response to the Religious Other: Ricoeur and the Fragility of Interreligious Encounters (2014), and Interreligious Relations and the Negotiation of Ritual Boundaries: Explorations in Interrituality (2019).

List of Text Boxes xiv

Introduction 1

1 On the Notion of Religionization 2

2 Mechanisms of Religionization 4

Naming/Renaming 4

Categorization and Classification 5

Essentialization 5

Governance 6

3 The Particular Contribution of This Book 6

4 The Risk of Systematization and How I Seek to Avoid It 7

5 The Use of the Text Boxes 9

6 A Word of Gratitude 10

Notes 11

References 11

Part 1 Religionization in Early Christianity: Christians, Heretics, Jews, and Pagans 13

1 The Creation of Key Religionized Categories in Early Christianity 15

1 Religio and Its Counterpart Superstitio 16

Religio in Antique Times 17

Antiquity and Ethnicity of Religio 17

Pax Romana, Pax Deorum 18

Superstitio and Religio 19

2 Christians as Targets of Religionization 21

Christian Apologists and Ethnoreligious Reasoning 23

Crafting a Sense of Christian Ethnicity 23

Crafting Christian Religio as the Most Ancient 26

3 Christians against the Nations: The Distinction between Religio Vera and Falsa 27

Religio as True Worship of the True God 27

4 Crafting the Jew as Un- Christian 30

Jews, Christ- following Jews, and Christians from Gentiles 31

Adversus Iudaeos 32Anti- Jewish Typologies 33

The Supersessionist Logic 35

The Deicide Charge 36

5 Making the Figure of the Heretic 38

The Notion of Heresy 39

Adversus Haereses 40

6 Conclusion 43

Note 43

References 43

2 The Coercive Turn: Institutionalizing Religionized Categories 46

1 On Heresiology: Epiphanius' Panarion 48

The Microscopical 'Ethnographic' Work of Epiphanius 48

Epiphanius' Universal Account of History 50

2 When Heresiology Intersects with Imperial Law 51

3 The Codex Theodosianus and the Criminalization of Heresy 52

The Codex Theodosianus: De Haereticis 54

Augustine and the Persecution of Heretics 56

4 The Constantinian Turn and the Destruction of Paganism? 56

The Pagan as a Hermeneutical Figure 57

The Codex Theodosianus: De Paganis 59

5 Anti- Jewish Rhetoric and the Establishment of Jewish Tradition as Religio Licita 61

Anti- Jewish Rhetorics: Chrysostom as a Case in Point 62

Augustine's Doctrine of Jewish Witness: A Different Sound 64

The Codex Theodosianus and the Jews 66

6 Islam Enters the Scene 67

Early Christian Interpretations of Islam 67

Jews and Ishmaelites and Their Place in Christian Imagination 70

Christian Saracen Law 71

7 Conclusion 72

Notes 73

References 73

Part 2 Body Politics in the Aftermath of the Gregorian Reform 77

An Ongoing Spiritual Drama 78

References 79

3 Unification, Purification, and Dehumanization 81

1 The Time of the Crusades and Dehumanizing Saracens 82

The Emergence of Crusading Ideology 82

The Saracen as Pagan 84

Defiled, Monstrous Black Bodies 86

The Danger of Blurring Religious Boundaries 87

The Conflation of Jew and Muslim 89

2 The Deteriorating Fate of the Jews 91

Flashback: The Jews and the Legacy of Antiquity 92

The Jews under the Frankish Merovingians and the Carolingians 92

The Jew: From Unwilling Witness to Enemy, Child Murderer, and Usurer 93

Crusading Ideology and the Jew as Christianity's Internal Enemy 94

Jews and Usury 94

Blood Libels 95

Blackness, Disfiguration, and Bodily Afflictions 96

3 The Return of the Problem of Heresy 98

Flashback on Heresiology 98

The Disappearance and Return of the Problem of Heresy 98

The Cathars and Waldensians 99

Polemical Depictions of Heresy 100

Heretics as Foxes 100

Heretics as Morally and Sexually Perverse Creatures in the Service of Satan 102

The War on Heresy 104

Preaching 104

Crusading 104

The Inquisition 105

4 The Fourth Lateran Council 106

5 Conclusion 109

Notes 109

References 109

4 The Spanish Catholic Monarchy and Religio- racialization 113

1 The Reconquista and the Re- Christianization of the Iberian Peninsula 114

Reclaiming Space: Converting and Cleansing Mosques 116

Law Making 117

On the Jews (De los judíos) 118

On the Moors (De los moros) 119

2 The Long Road towards Blood Purity Laws 120

Crusading Ideology and the Ideal of Christian Visigothic Descent 120

Increasing Anti- Judaism 122

The Conversionist Programme of the Mendicant Orders 122

Conspiracy Theories: Treason, Ritual Murder, and Poisoning 123

Economic Motives 123

Political Instability 124

3 Forced Mass Conversions 125

Questions about Authenticity 125
Conversos Destabilize Boundaries 126

4 Law Making: Limpieza de Sangre 128

5 The Catholic Monarchs and the Purgation of the Spanish Monarchy 130

6 The Religio- racial Project of the Spanish Catholic Monarchy: An Exceptional Case? 133

7 Columbus, New Worlds, and the Question of Religion 134

First Encounters 135

No Religion 136

8 Conclusion: Blurring Boundaries between Racialization and Religionization 139

Notes 141

References 142

Part 3 The Long Reformation 145

5 The Turn Inwards 149

1 Mediation, Fear of Death, Excess, and Corruption 151

The Church and the Mediation of Salvation 151

Death, Purgatory, and Intercession 153

Corruption, Abuse, and the Practice of Indulgences 153

Catholic Piety under Critique 154

2 The Modern Devotion 155

Geert Grote: The Fountain of Modern Devotion 156

The Brethren of the Common Life and the Reinterpretation of Religio 157

3 Christian Humanism 159

In Praise of Folly 159

Scripture as the Cornerstone of Christian Life 161

Erasmus on Judaism 162

4 Martin Luther 164

A Reformed and Purified Christian Norm 165

5 Erasmus and Luther: Profound Disagreements 166

Reforming Christian Faith and Projecting False Religion onto the Enemies of God 168

6 The Colonial Project and the Question of True Religion 171

Context 171

Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda 172

Bartolomé de las Casas 173

José de Acosta 174

7 Protestantism and the Rejection of the Principle of Mediation 175

8 Conclusion 177

Notes 178

References 178

6 The Fragmentation of Religion and the Re- creation of Society 181

1 Polemics and the Dehumanization of Religious Others 182

Sexual Slander 183

Corrupted Souls and Diseased Bodies 184

2 Protecting the Socio- political Order: Expulsion, Confiscation, Torture 187

Rituals of Purgation 189

Iconoclasm 189

Humiliating, Killing, and Exhuming Heretical Bodies 190

3 The Legal Establishment of the Fragmentation of Religion 190

Peace Treaties and the Redefinition of the Binary of Orthodoxy/Heresy 191

The Peace of Augsburg 192

4 Religionization as Confessionalization 195

Confessionalization and the Making of Bounded Communities 197

The Propagation of True Christianness 197

Ritual 199

Space 201

Education 202

Censorship 203

Discipline 204

5 The Parting of the Ways and Confessional Identity Markers 204

6 Conclusion 205

Notes 206

References 207

7 Reconfiguring True Religion in Terms of Toleration 211

1 Sebastian Castellio: Beyond Coercion 213

Context 214

Preface Dedicated to Count William of Hesse 215

Dedication to Duke Christoph of Württemberg 218

2 John Locke on Toleration 220

Toleration as a Characteristic of Being a True Christian 221

True and False Religion 222

The Magistrate 223

What Is a Church? 224

The Scope of Tolerance: Jews, Muslims, and Pagans 226

Extending Toleration to the Pagans 227

The Limits of Toleration 227

Crafting Judaism, Islam, and Paganism as 'Religions': Legal and Political Consequences in Europe and Beyond 228

3 Voltaire and the Problem of Fanaticism 229

Context 230

The Case of Jean Calas 230

The Fanatic as a Rhetorical Figure 231

Refuting Theological Religion 233

Christianity 234

Judaism 235

Islam 237

Deism/Theism 238

Deism, Orientalism, and the Construction of the Religion of India 240

Comparing Religions in Voltaire's Work: Decentring and Recentring Christianness 242

4 Conclusion 243

Notes 244

References 245

Part 4 The World Religions Paradigm and the Turn to Dialogue 249

1 What Is the World Religions Paradigm? 249

2 Old Patterns of Religionization Function as Building Blocks 250

Interiorization 251

Confessionalization 251

Religio- secularization 252

3 Gathering Data in a Context of Colonization 253

4 The World Religions Paradigm: Another Emancipatory Myth? 255

Notes 256

References 256

8 Religio- racialized Taxonomies Based on Comparative Philology 257

1 The Fixation on Creating 'Scientific' Taxonomies of Race 259

Biblical Taxonomies 259

Ethnographic Explorations 260

Comparative Philology 261

2 Romantic Musings about Language as the Gateway to the Spirit of People 262

Comparative Philology, Grammar, and Race 263

3 The Discovery of the Indo- European Language Family 265

Oriental Jones and the Indo- European Hypothesis 265

The Indo- European Myth as Colonial Ideology 266

4 Friedrich Schlegel's...