Religious violence in a historical dimension
About the book chapter:
What is religious violence? For the first time, historians are consistently pursuing this question using their own methods. They question the usefulness of definitions of religious violence and examine the relationships between the exercise of violence, its religious framing and legitimization. By analyzing different times, cultures and regions, they reveal specific characteristics of religious violence. The contributions address well-known phenomena such as Roman gladiator fights, the persecution of religious groups in the Middle Ages or the First World War, but also forms of violence that have hardly been dealt with to date. Above all, the authors question traditional assumptions. They historicize concepts and deconstruct theories. In the end, new questions and methodological suggestions are provided for further research into an enduring problem of our time.
