Responsables et référents

Contact

Pierre Lory

Partnership organisation

This research programme is undertaken in partnership with the following institutions:

Institut Français du Proche Orient (IFPO, Damas)
Istituto di Culture Mediterranee (Lecce)
Centre Paul-Albert Février (MMSH, Aix-en-Provence), as an axis of its cross programme on « Comparatist approaches of the three monotheisms »
Venice, Lecce and Naples Universities (UNO: Università di Napoli Orientale)
Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale (IFAO, Cairo)
Institut français d’archéologie orientale (IFAO), Le Caire, Égypte
l’Institut français d’archéologie orientale (IFAO), Le Caire, Égypte
Bose monastic community (Italy)

Purpose and spatial-temporal scope of the research

This program aims at a comparative study of Jewish, Christian and Muslim spiritualities grounded on themes they are sharing out.

Comparative approach requiring coherence and diversity, our research is spatially and temporally bounded to Egypt and Bilâd al-Shams and to the 7th-16th century period, from the emergence of Islam until the beginning of Ottoman dynasty. Owing to the regional multicultural and multilinguistic background it is proper to take into account corpus belonging to various languages, such as Arabic, Syriac, Greek, Coptic, Hebrew, Judaeo-Arabic ones, etc.

Field of research: mysticism, the product of an individual experience and of a socio-historical context

Regarded as the quest and fulfilment of a direct and personal relation with Divine, mysticism is a complex phenomenon, as much intimately experienced as collectively carried out, as much out-of-time as historically defined.

This complexity has to do, on one hand with the significance of a vivid experience, unutterable and out of reach of any historical investigation and, on the other hand with its “public” range when delivered by the mystic himself, using to frame it out, worldly representations particular to his community’s religious and linguistic traditions.

Thus, either individual or collective, mystical experience can give birth to genuine trends and is confronted with and influenced by already existing and well-established religious tendencies resulting themselves from previous developments.

Perceptible under all latitudes and at all times, mystical currents, like their interpretation and manifestation, are historically determined. The part they play exceeds the mere frame of faith when they rise among religious groups and societies provided with traditions specific to their coexisting communities. They turn into potential factors for the renewing of ethical and religious ideas, of worshipping practices, of language, of social relationships.
Those elements are ascertaining the interest of a research on mystical experiences and trends which came out within the three monotheisms at Middle Ages, as well as on situations of contact between individuals and religious communities in multicultural societies and this with reference to documentary sources.

Methodological frame: a comparatist approach

Comparatist approach will be applied to the above-defined frame and to mystical phenomena in its numerous aspects (individual patterns, social practices, doctrinal components, institutions, literary production, consequences on actors and surroundings). It will also help showing off several forms of adjustment going with mysticism (links with official religion, inter-communities relations, perception of common historical events, etc), in a context of multireligious and multicultural society, paying specific attention to contact cases and to cross-cultural phenomena.

Programme schedule

This programme will run over a four-year period (2008-2011). It has been spilt into three steps.

A preliminary workshop (Lecce, May 17th, 2008) intended for the scientific responsibles of the programme and the representatives of partner institutions
A preparatory round table (2009): the participants will present their papers (in Arabic, English, French or Italian) dealing with one or several themes among their wide range listed at the end of this document. Comparatist perspectives will either discuss a peculiar theme or transversal axis combining several prospects (such as the “mad in love” taken up from the typological, theological, political viewpoint).
The final conference (2010) will deal with the previously selected subjects emphasizing relationships between the three mystical trends in encounter situations.
Publication of proceedings (2011): the papers of the final conference will be published in one of the required language along with a summary in the other ones, in a “double entry” book (Arabic and European languages).

How comparing what is comparable

The aim of comparison meets an answer in the set of common themes which means to provide criteria of analysis shared by the three religions. The proposal of a single set of themes for scholars in different specializations, far from intending to restrict their freedom, seeks

1) to determine the constitutive features of mystical phenomena (ideas, practices, historical situations of religious communities, as well its relations with society as a whole)

2) to underline transversal themes likely to comparison.

This method already taken up for a similar comparative study of Muslim towns, under Jean-Claude Garcin’s direction, has brought about decisive results and appears has a prompting reference. Truly, while dealing separately each issue in order to initiate comparison on precise aspects, its does not impede bringing together various themes nor paving the way for wider considerations.

Let’s note, finally, that additional themes, specific to one of the three religions or deemed as worth of interest will be introduced on the request of participants.

The selected themes

1. Collective practices and individual experiences

1.1 Practices

Spiritual exercises: asceticism, retreat, contemplation, meditation
Rituals: prayers, reciting God’s names, Holy Scriptures readings
Pilgrimage and peregrination
Virtues observance
Spiritual guides and disciples

1.2 Experience of divine

Illumination, inspiration, ecstasy
Spiritual states
Union and transcendence
Divine love, madness in love
Language and mystical experience

1.3 Mysticism and ways of life

Recluse life and community life: buildings, economic organisation, rules of life
Marriage and celibacy
Means of subsistence and material possessions: renunciation versus worldly life and carrying on a profession

2 Doctrines and literary production

2.1 Doctrines

Knowledge and gnosis
Notion of holiness (typology, degrees and hierarchy, holy women)
Representations of God
Conceptions of the world (cosmogony, cosmology, eschatology)
The idea of “perfect man”

2.2 Literary productions

Literary genres (hagiography, poetry, treatises and handbooks)
Vocabulary expressing mystical experience

3 Social and institutional background

3.1 Mysticism and society

Social environment and groups (social origin, gender, age, geographic distribution)
Mystics’ social role and self-representation
Perception of mystics by their society
Economic implications; religious foundations

3.2 Mysticism and institutions