Research
In the Netherlands, HERILIGION was focused on a variety of performances of Passion plays. This subproject took the Dutch Easter celebrations as an instance of using the religious past in shaping a present-day secular-but-religiously-based Dutch national identity.
An important backdrop for this work package was formed by intense debates on religion, national identity and secularity in the Netherlands. The notion that the Dutch nation was built on a Judeo-Christian past has become common sense, implying that this past was part of a Dutch heritage, which should be treasured as an inherent dimension of Dutch culture. This mobilization of a ‘Judeo-Christian heritage’ was to be understood against the background of a growing anxiety about the increasing presence of Islam, the arrival of (openly religious) non-western immigrants, and a perceived decline of knowledge on the ‘true meanings’ of Christian Holidays.
This Dutch ‘passion for the Passion’ was concentrated around three forms of expressions:
1. Performances of the Matthew Passion, which in the Netherlands is Bach’s most famous composition. Tracing the developments of the Matthew Passion from its deeply religious origin to multiple, secularized ‘high society events’, the subproject explored the relation between contemporary national identity and the religious past of the Netherlands and Europe.
2. Numerous open-air Passion Plays performed all over the country. This tradition refers to both a shared European (medieval) past and a specific Dutch interpretation. A recent version of Jesus being played by a Muslim in the 2015 Tegelen Passion Plays indicated the complex interplay between religious identities, processes of authentication and heritage formation.
3.The (since 2011) annual performance of The Passion, a contemporary musical Passion Play in the streets of a Dutch city on Good Friday, broadcast live on primetime national television. Initiated by Christian broadcasting corporations and staged by Dutch celebrity singers, religious heritage and secular spectacle meet in The Passion, but the event serves simultaneously as a spectacular missionary activity. In Holland HERILIGION focused on the current tendency to value Passion performances as ‘religious traditions with heritage qualities’, as illustrated by the enlisting of the Tegelen Passion Plays (whose premiere always opens with an Eucharist) on the National Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage (2014)
The research consisted of ethnographic fieldwork, focussing on performers, audience and organizers of passion performances. This approach was informed by conceptual debates on (post)secularity and national identity. The research was executed at the Meertens Institute of Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences by postdoctoral researcher Ernst van den Hemel in collaboration with principal investigator Irene Stengs and in joint affiliation with Museum Catharijneconvent.
In Denmark HERILIGION focused on two World Heritage Sites in Denmark, namely the Roskilde Cathedral and the Jelling Mounds, Runic Stones and Church. In the words of the World Heritage Centre, “built in the 12th and 13th centuries, [Roskilde Cathedral] was Scandinavia's first Gothic cathedral to be built of brick and it encouraged the spread of this style throughout northern Europe. It has been the mausoleum of the Danish royal family since the 15th century. Porches and side chapels were added up to the end of the 19th century. Thus it provided a clear overview of the development of European religious architecture.” This heritage clearly fuses religious and secular (royal) authority, but the Cathedral continues to function as a church.
“The Jelling burial mounds and one of the runic stones are striking examples of pagan Nordic culture, while the other runic stone and the church illustrate the Christianization of the Danish people towards the middle of the 10th century.” Again, this refers to religious heritage, but HERILIGION questioned how the Jelling mounds sacralize the Danish nation and its Viking ancestry.
HERILIGION studied the use, presentation and experience of and at heritage sites in these various parts of presently multi-religious Denmark against the backdrop of the non-separation of Church and State. HERILIGION used primarily ethnographic methods involving heritage managers, clergy, congregation and visitors, in combination with historical and media methods. The research was executed by a junior researcher under supervision by Oscar Salemink and Ulla Kjær of the Danish National Museum, and in joint affiliation with the University of Copenhagen and the National Museum.
The Polish project focused on Kraków and explored how - within this particular cityscape - contemporary attitudes towards various religious/spiritual heritages were being formed and practiced. The city carries a deep symbolic meaning for Polish people as a former Polish capital, old royal residence, national mausoleum and 'sacred city' (where kings, local Christian saints, Jewish tzadiks, national heroes, artists and poets are buried). Kraków – whose historic centre is enlisted as UNESCO world heritage site – can be seen as an arena where contemporary discourses on religion(s), heritage(s), past(s) are being articulated and negotiated by city council, politicians, churches and religious institutions, inhabitants, tour operators, museums, tourists, and pilgrims… Our aim was to ethnographically observe, experience and analyze the complexity of relations between official and stereotypical images of the city's heritage, its various usages (also in politically burdened contexts), internal 'life of the city', the local experiences and grass root activities that emerge in relation to particular religious-heritage sites, objects and practices.
Especially, we focused on:
1. Lived Catholicism in the context of the heritagization, museumification and festivalization of the cityscape (the heritagization of the cityscape in relation to Catholic World Youth Day in 2016, promoting the city as the 'city of John Paul II', challenging and redefining 'Catholic heritage' in relation to other Christian denominations and religious traditions and their places within the city, e.g. the popularity of chakra near Kraków's cathedral; the celebrations of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation as a part of the city's heritage);
2. The politicization of 'religious heritage' in relation to specific religious sites, objects and practices (especially during political demonstrations performed within the cityscape in 2016-2017);
3.Kraków's Nativity Scene/Christmas Crib tradition as an 'intangible heritage' of the city's inhabitants;
4.Jewish heritage – forgotten synagogues and abandoned Jewish praying houses within contemporary imagery on 'religious-spiritual heritage' of Kraków (also in relation to the heritagization of Kazimierz as a ‘Jewish district' within Kraków's cityscape).
The research was performed by senior researchers and a PhD student employed at the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, Jagiellonian University, in Kraków (Anna Niedźwiedź – principal investigator, Monika Golonka-Czajkowska – senior researcher, Kaja Kajder – PhD student) and a senior researcher working at the Historical Museum of the City of Kraków (Magdalena Kwiecińska). The scientific team collaborated with the Tygodnik Poszechny Foundation (represented by Marcin Żyła) and with the Ethnographic Museum in Kraków (represented by Urszula Sobczyk). In November 2017, the Museum hosted an exhibition: "Maps of the city: heritages and the sacred" which presented the HERILIGION's first outcomes to a broader public.
The Sacred in a Secular Context
Considering that secularization has impacted social life in the United Kingdom as much as any other nation-state in the 20th Century, what have been the implications of secularization for the conceptualization of the sacred? The research was conducted by Dr Ferdinand de Jong and Dr Clare Haynes, each researching this question in a specific context.
A Space Set Apart: St Peter Hungate, Norwich 1933-2019
This historically significant medieval church was under immediate threat of demolition in 1933, when, in a bold move, the City of Norwich developed a new kind of partnership with the Church of England to convert it into Britain’s first ecclesiastical museum. For 60 years it operated as one of four Norwich museums, exhibiting religious objects from the main museum collections as well as from parish churches in the City and the Diocese of Norwich. After the Museum was closed in 1995, it was re-opened under the stewardship of a trust, now called Hungate Medieval Art, and it operates still as a museum and as a space for contemporary art, which is site specific or in some way sympathetic to the Trust’s aims of promoting medieval art in Norfolk.
Although it is now a museum, St Peter Hungate is still considered a church. While the objects on display (which include the building and its fittings) are presented using the language and techniques of heritage, the medieval architecture, stained glass and monuments speak in different ways of the religious past of the building and, for some, a religious present. How does this work? It has been said that heritage is based on “a secular gaze” in its focus on history as the formative past of individuals, places and nations. However, heritage also involves the setting apart and other quasi-ritual behaviours that are strongly reminiscent of religious activities. Indeed, so much so, that some scholars speak of the ‘sacralization’ of heritage. Thus, multiple and conflicting ideas of sacred and secular may potentially operate at the museum.
In this study, Dr Clare Haynes (Senior Research Associate) focused on the history of the museum and its display practices. Using archive materials including photographs and guidebooks, inventories and City of Norwich committee papers, she traced the ways in which St Peter Hungate/Hungate Medieval Art has been used, and regarded, as a space set apart.
Conservation and Interpretation of the Abbey of St Edmund
The Abbey of St Edmund in Bury St Edmund is a ruin, situated next to St Edmundsbury Cathedral. The Abbey is named after Edmund, king of East Anglia, who was defeated in battle with the Danes and martyred. His martyrdom has been memorialised throughout the Middle Ages and has survived the Dissolution, even though the incorrupt body has been lost were found under a car park in Leicester, rumours have it that St Edmund’s body lies buried under the tennis courts, located in the ruins of the Abby of St Edmund.
Associated in the Heritage Partnership, stakeholders have started to explore St Edmund’s heritage “to deepen public understanding of the life and times of St Edmund and the Medieval Abbey at Bury St Edmunds”, and, “to encourage people of all ages, beliefs and interests to experience the spiritual, historical and environmental significance of the Abbey Ruins and the Abbey Gardens in the modern world.” The research project “The Conservation and Interpretation of the Abbey of St Edmund” examined how the legacy of St Edmund was conceived and received in this context. The leading question was how Christian faith is understood as heritage today. Member of the Heritage Partnership, this question was explored by anthropologist Dr Ferdinand de Jong.
In order to inquire into the main research question of this project 'How the heritagization of religious sites, objects and practices relates to religious and secular experiences connected to these; and in particular to secular and religious forms of sacralization linking past, present and future' the Portuguese team focused on the heritagization processes connected with four strategic sites that highlighted the multifarious intersections between the secular and the religious approaches to heritage.
In each of these sites we investigated the paradoxes and tensions inherent in the heritagization of religious sites, objects and practices. An ethnographic approach was used, using the methods of participant observation, Informal interviews and talks, and the analysis of local documents. The four case studies were:
1. Sintra: One of Portugal’s best-known UNESCO World Heritage sites that is increasingly being used and reclaimed by Neopagans, New Agers and by followers of the Afro-Brazilian religions as a sacred place.
2.The Catholic shrine of Fátima: The second most important Marian pilgrimage site in Europe that is emerging as a location for inter-religious dialogue and used by other Christian denominations as well as Muslims, Hindus and practitioners of Afro-Brazilian religions and New Agers.
3.Mértola: An archaeological site that is being used by governmental and non-governmental organizations (among which the institutional representatives of Portuguese Islam) as a key symbol for Portugal’s Islamic past and the necessity of peaceful cohabitation and tolerance.
4.Mouraria: The (Moorish) neighbourhood in Lisbon which, due to the historical and contemporary presence of Muslims, is being celebrated as a place of cultural and religious richness.
Furthermore, the subproject also explored the dialogues established with similar and mirroring processes in the lands of origin of the migrants that brought new religions into the country. Through a comparative approach that combined methods from the anthropology and religious studies, HERILIGION analysed the paradoxes and tensions inherent in the heritagization of religious sites and the sacralization of secular/cultural spaces.