Sunday 23 June 2019



24 June 2019, 09:30 to 26 June 2019, 16:30
King’s College, Strand Campus, London

Organisers: Irene Polinskaya (Classics, KCL), Alan James (War Studies, KCL), Hans van

Wees (History, UCL), Ioannis Papadogiannakis (Theology and Religious Studies, KCL)

 

The conference, hosted by the Departments of Classics and War Studies, and the Sir Michael Howard Centre for the History of War at King’s College London, will mark the launch of a new international research network Religion and War through the Ages dedicated to exploring the nexus between religion and war as a recurring cross-cultural phenomenon attested in a great variety of historical societies from antiquity to the present and presenting a particularly poignant modern challenge.

With wide geographic coverage encompassing the Mediterranean basin, Near East, North Africa, and Europe, and taking Classical Antiquity as a starting point, but looking as far back as the second millennium BCE and forward to the Westphalian settlement of 1648, this conference will be a comparative and cross-cultural exploration of the persistent question about the role of religion in motivating, guiding, and explaining the causes and conduct of war.


PROGRAMME

MONDAY, June 24

9:30-10:00 Registration

10:00-10:10 Introduction 1: Our questions and aims: Irene Polinskaya and Alan James
10:10-10:30 Introduction 2: Modern context: WHETHAM, David (King’s College London) Professional Military Education in the Modern World: The Role and Influence of Religion

10:30-11:30 Session 1: Near East
RICHARDSON, Seth (Chicago) “The plans of the gods are destroyed”: Babylonian scribal views of war and the gods
WANG, Xianhua (Shanghai International Studies University) The Holy War of Eanatum in Light of the Early Dynastic Central Babylonian Tradition

11:30-11:45 Coffee Break

11:45-12:45 Session 2: Near East
NEBIOLO, Francesca (ATER at Collège de France) Gods bless war! Oath and perjury in the Mesopotamian perception of war
GILAN, Amir (Tel Aviv University) Religion and War in Hittite Anatolia

12:45-14:00 Lunch

14:00:15:00 Session 3: Near East
ZAIA, Shana (University of Vienna) The Gods Who March Alongside Me: Religion and War in the Neo-Assyrian Empire
ALLEN, Lindsay (King's College London) Ethnicity, Religion and War: Othering Disruption in the Achaemenid Empire

15:00-15:15 Coffee Break

15:15-16:15 Session 4: Egypt
SPALINGER, Anthony (The University of Auckland) Pharaoh and God before and during Battle: Three Cases from the Egyptian New Kingdom and the Late Period
ALLON, Niv (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) War and Order in New Kingdom Egypt (1550-1070 B.C.)

16:15-16:30 Coffee Break

16:30-17:30 Session 5: Near East
BACHVAROVA, Mary (Willamette University) God as Judge: The Interlocking Hittite Genres of Treaty, Prayer, and Historiography and their Nachleben in the Hebrew Bible
ZUCCONI, Laura (Stockton University) Their Seed is No More: Rhetorical Strategies of Genocide in Ancient Egypt and the Bible

18:00-19:00 Keynote address
MORRIS, Ian (Stanford University) Violence, great men, and the gods: religious and military sources of social power, 10,000 BC-AD 2019

TUESDAY, June 25

09:45-10.00 Coffee

10:00-11:00 Session 6: Biblical Studies
NEVADER, Madhavi (University of St. Andrews) and MEIN, Andrew (Durham University) Religion and War, War and Religion: Jerusalem 586 as Test
WAZANA, Nili (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem) Biblical "Laws of War": A View of War from the Side of the Vanquished

11:00-11:15 Coffee Break

11:15-12:45 Session 7: Greece
VAN WEES, Hans (University College London) Genocidal Gods in Archaic Greece
POLINSKAYA, Irene (King's College London) Cui bono? Religious Motivations in
Greek Wars of the Classical Period
FRANCHI, Elena (University of Trento) Religion as a medium of war memories in
Ancient Greece

12:45-14:00 Lunch

14:00-15:00 Session 8: Rome
CIANO, Nunzia (Universita degli studi Roma Tre) Religion, civil war, and the power of word in Cicero's speeches
BERTHELET, Yann (Liège Université) Military auspices of the Roman generals at the end of the Republic

15:00-15:15 Coffee Break

15:15-16:15 Session 9: Rome
KOLBECK, Benjamin (King's College London) The Early Church and War: The Evidence of Tertullian
PAPADOGIANNAKIS, Ioannis (King's College London) The Christian Emperor at War

16:15-16:30 Coffee Break

16:30-17:30 Session 10: Late Antiquity and Middle Ages
STOYANOV, Yuri (SOAS, London) The Religious Dimension of the “Last Great War of Antiquity” (603-628) and its Medieval Legacies
STOURAITIS, Yannis (The University of Edinburgh) Fighting against their own kind: war between Christians in Byzantine thought

WEDNESDAY, June 26

9:15-9:30 Coffee

9:30-11:00 Session 11: Middle Ages
PLESHAK, Daniil (State University of St. Petersburg) The Virgin Who Gave Birth to Victory: Divine Help to Besieged Cities during Avar-Byzantine Wars
MARIC, Ivan (The University of Edinburgh) The effects of the Arab siege of Constantinople 717-8 on Byzantine ideology and Muslim-Christian polemic
FERNÁNDEZ-SANTOS, Jorge (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid) Queen Regnant and Holy War: Isabel I of Castile

11:00-11:15 Coffee Break

11:15-12:15 Session 12: Middles Ages
BENNISON, Amira (University of Cambridge, Magdalene College) The religious ideology of the Almohads and their imperial conquests in the twelfth-century Maghreb
NEGGAZ, Nassima (University of Oxford, Faculty of Oriental Studies) The Role of Religion in the Mongol Conquest of Baghdad in 1258

12:15-13:00 Lunch

13:00-14:30 Session 13: Early Modern
HONIG, Jan Willem (King's College London) Divine Judgement, Battle and Strategy in the Early Part of the Hundred Years’ War
ROBERTS, Penny (Warwick University) God’s Warriors in the Most Christian Kingdom: a Reconsideration of the French Religious Wars
BJÖRKLUND, Jaakko (University of Helsinki) Huguenots in the Baltics: religious identity and religious motives for service in the Swedish army 1605 – 1614

14:30-14:45 Coffee Break

14:45-15:45 Session 14: Early Modern
RYRIE, Alec (Durham University) Was Religious War a Secularising Force in the Reformation Era?
JAMES, Alan (King's College London) Cardinal-Ministers and Warrior Priests: Religion and the Making of the Westphalian World Order

15:45-16:15 Concluding discussion







Identities and Ideologies in the Medieval East Roman World , edited by Yannis Stouraitis, Edinburgh Byzantine Studies (Edinburgh: Edinburgh ...