Discourses of purity in transcultural perspective (300-1600) / / edited by Matthias Bley, Nikolas Jaspert, Stefan Köck.

• Superior document: Dynamics in the History of Religions, Volume 7
• TeilnehmendeR: Bley, Matthias,; Jaspert, Nikolas,; Köck, Stefan,
• Place / Publishing House: Leiden, Netherlands ;, Boston, Massachusetts : : Brill,, 2015.; ©2015
• Year of Publication: 2015
• Language: English
• Series: Dynamics in the history of religion ; Volume 7.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (380 p.)
• Notes: Description based upon print version of record.

While comparative studies on purity and impurity presented in the last decades have mostly concentrated on the ancient world or on modern developments, this volume focusses the hitherto comparatively neglected period between circa 300 and 1600 c. E. The collection is innovative because it not only combines papers on both European and Asian cultures but also considers a wide variety of religions and confessions. The articles are written by leading experts in the field and are presented in six systematic sections. This analytical categorization facilitates understanding the functional spectrum that the binomial purity and impurity could cover in past societies. The volume thus presents an in-depth comparative analysis of a category of paramount importance for interfaith relations and processes of transfer.

Table of Contents

Preliminary Material -- An Introduction to Discourses of Purity in Transcultural Perspective / Nikolas Jaspert -- 1 Early Medieval Churches as Cultic Space between Material and Ethical Purity / Miriam Czock -- 2 Some Brief Notes on Purity in Chinese Daoism / Hermann-Josef Röllicke -- 3 An Almost Tangible Presence: Some Thoughts on Material Purity among Medieval European Jews / Ephraim Shoham-Steiner -- 4 From ‘Clean’ to ‘Pure’ in Everyday Life in Late Imperial China: A Preliminary Enquiry / Paolo Santangelo -- 5 Discourses on Purity in Western Christianity in the Early and High Middle Ages / Hans-Werner Goetz -- 6 Purity between Semantics and History: Notes on Daoist Soteriology and Interreligious Encounters in Early Medieval China / Licia Di Giacinto -- 7 Purity of Language: A Short-Lived Concept in Medieval Hebrew Poetry / Elisabeth Hollender -- 8 Domum immundam a perversis violata mundavit. Viking Defilement in Early Medieval Francia / Matthias Bley -- 9 Washing Away the Dirt of the World of Desire—On Origins and Developments of Notions of Ritual Purity in Japanese Mountain Religions / Stefan Köck -- 10 Patterns of Intensification of the Laws on Ritual Purity in Medieval Jewish Ashkenaz / Hanna Liss -- 11 Religious Texts and the Islamic Purity Regime / Stefan Leder -- 12 Sons of Damnation: Franciscans, Muslims, and Christian Purity / Christopher MacEvitt -- 13 Purifying the Pure: The Visuddhimagga, Forest-Dwellers and the Dynamics of Individual and Collective Prestige in Theravāda Buddhism / Sven Bretfeld -- 14 Registers of Genealogical Purity in Classical Islam / Aziz al-Azmeh -- Index.