1 Sep 2016 - 2 Sep 2016 | All day | Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DT |
- Description
- Programme
Description
Registration for the conference is now closed.
Convenors
James A.T. Lancaster (Royal Holloway, University of London)
Andrew McKenzie-McHarg (University of Cambridge)
Summary
Between older forms of anticlericalism which impugned priests for laxity and later forms which questioned their loyalty to the nation, the early modern period witnessed the emergence of its own distinct claim, namely: that priests concocted and peddled fraudulent knowledge. By the seventeenth century this insinuation had found a name: ‘priestcraft.’
This two-day conference will bring together an international group of experts in intellectual history, the history of religion and literary studies in order to consider how the motif of priestcraft offered a means to both understand the history and to undermine the standing of rival confessions and religions. It will represent the first attempt undertaken by scholars to view ‘priestcraft’ from a pan-European perspective. In doing so, participants will examine how the charge of priestcraft drew upon a re-awakening of sceptical philosophy, how the idea resonated with broader interests in simulation and dissimulation and how it was applied as a proto-ethnographic model in attempts to comprehend non-European cultures.
Sponsors
Supported by the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH), and the Lightfoot Fund.
Administrative assistance: events@crassh.cam.ac.uk
Programme
Day One: Thursday 1 September 2016 | |
10.45 - 11.00am | Registration |
11.00 - 11.15am | Welcome |
11.15am - 12.00pm | Justin Champion (Royal Holloway) '“The kingdoms of Elves, hobgoblins and fairies dethroned”: a history of priestcraft from the Reformation to the Enlightenment' |
12.00 - 12.45pm | Panel 1: The Longer Tradition and the Broader Context Chair: Anthony Ossa-Richardson (University of Southampton)
Winfried Schröder (University of Marburg) 'The Theme of Religious Imposture in Late Antique Antichristian Authors and Their Early Modern Readers' |
12.45 - 13.45pm | Lunch |
13.45 - 14.30pm | Michael Hunter (Birkbeck, University of London) 'The Deists and the Decline of Magic' |
14.30 - 15.15pm | Sascha Salatowsky (Gotha Research Library) 'Dangerous Thoughts? The Figure of the Impostor in Early Modern Theology and Philosophy' |
15.15 - 15.45pm | Break |
15.45 - 16.30pm | Panel 2: Theology and Epistemology Chair: Katherine East (Newcastle University)
Diego Lucci (American University in Bulgaria) 'Patristics, Priestcraft, and the Trinity in the Seventeenth Century' |
16.30 - 17.15pm | Tim Stuart-Buttle (University of Cambridge) 'Conyers Middleton and Christian Scepticism' |
Day Two: Friday 2 September 2016 | |
9.15 - 10.00am | Panel 3: The Political Dimension I Chair: Joanne Paul (University of Sussex)
Ariel Hessayon (Goldsmiths) 'Anticlericalism during the English Revolution' |
10.00 - 10.45am | Ashley Walsh (University of Cambridge) 'Priestcraft, Kingship, and the Godly Commonwealth in Eighteenth-Century England' |
10.45 - 11.15am | Break |
11.15am - 12.00pm | Panel 4: The Political Dimension II Chair: Justin Champion (Royal Holloway)
Mark Goldie (University of Cambridge) 'John Locke and Priestcraft' |
12.00 - 12.45pm | John Marshall (Johns Hopkins University) 'Voltaire, Priestcraft and Imposture: Christianity, Judaism and Islam' |
12.45 - 13.45pm | Lunch |
13.45 - 14.30pm | Panel 5: Priestcraft and the Old Testament Chair: Chris Moses (University of Cambridge)
Ruth Smith (University of Cambridge) 'Zadok and other priests in Handel’s biblical oratorios (1732-52)' |
14.30 - 15.15pm | Ulrich Groetsch (University of Alabama) 'Hermann Samuel Reimarus, the Jewish Priests of the Old Testament and the Trope of Imposture' |
15.15 - 15.45pm | Break |
15.45 - 16.30pm | Panel 6: Eighteenth-Century European and Global Variations Chair: Sujit Sivasundaram (University of Cambridge)
Sundar Henny (University of Bern) 'Destabilizing Authority. Strabo and Priestcraft around 1700' |
16.30 - 17.15pm | Alix Chartrand (University of Cambridge) 'The “ignorant and superstitious priests, to whose dictates, this stupid people entirely submit”: British connections between Catholicism and Islam in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Ireland and India' |