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Entangled Christianities: 100-1500 CE
Entangled Christianities: 100-1500 CE
Date: 24-26 November 2025
Location: Orthodox Academy of Crete (Chania, Greece)
We are pleased to announce the international conference "Entangled Christianities: 100-1500 CE," to be held on 24-26 November 2025 at The Orthodox Academy of Crete (Chania, Greece). This conference aims to bring together junior and senior researchers to explore the complex interactions, influences, and transformations within Christianity from the 2nd to the 15th centuries.
About
This conference explores the diverse manifestations of global Christianities from the early first to the mid-second Millennium CE and its “entanglement” with diverse local cultures and contexts. For example, what did it mean to be Christian in medieval Kiev? What enabled Christians in the Middle East to maintain their faith identity under Muslim domination? To what extent did Christianity lend a sense of homogeneity to its practitioners through its eclectic nature and vast global reach? We invite papers dealing with the theme of “entanglement” and the complex influences, interactions, and intersections within and between different varieties of global Christianity across the period 100–1500. The history of Christianity is not a monolithic narrative but a tapestry woven from diverse threads of doctrine, theology, practice, and belief. Entangled Christianities aims to unravel the individual threads that form this complex tapestry to gain a more nuanced understanding of the overall makeup of historical Christianity in its global contexts.
Background
The spread of Christian communities across Afro-Eurasia was far from homogenous, but it gave rise to a rich diversity of regional and local expressions where beliefs and practices were shaped by the various linguistic, intellectual, cultural, and social contexts into which the faith was transposed. Christianity began as a minority Jewish sect and developed according to its contact with Hellenistic culture and thought; adaptation, evolution, and inculturation continued to shape the religion as it spread outward to the corners of the known world, including Ireland, China, Scandinavia, and Ethiopia. While core tenets of belief provided a centralizing focus, there was significant diversity across time and place in understanding the biblical canon, sacred language, liturgy, theology, ecclesiastical governance, and other crucial aspects of Christian belief and practice. Moreover, regional and peripheral varieties of Christianity existed in relation to – and often in tension with – great centres of power and influence; lateral influence between regional Christianities also played a significant role in cultivating distinct Christian identities. Within this rich panoply, there was nonetheless a strong sense of “unity in diversity” and an appreciation of “universal” belonging; at the same time, alternative communities were distinguished based on doctrinal and ecclesiological differences with other Christianities.
Contexts of Entanglement
Entangled Christianities seeks to investigate historical Christianity in its global contexts by examining the diversity of Christian worlds and landscapes of belief in the period 100–1500. Adaptation and evolution are at the heart of Christianity’s development. The conference will consider Early Christian communities in the Levant, North Africa, and the Mediterranean cultural zone; Roman and Byzantine Christianities and their idiosyncratic regional forms across the Latin West and Greek East; and the linguistic and regional multiplexity of Christian communities, including the Arabic, Anglo-Saxon, Armenian, Baltic, Celtic, Chinese, Coptic, Ethiopian, Frankish, Georgian, Gothic, Indian, Irish, Kievan (Rus’), Nubian, Persian, Slavic, Sogdian, Sub-Saharan, and Syriac contexts, among others. We particularly welcome and encourage contributions dealing with these and other Christian traditions.
We welcome papers that deal with alterity, cross-fertilization, distinctive identities and practices, innovation, intercultural encounters, otherness, regional diversity, syncretism, and translation. We are interested in papers about the various cultural expressions of Christianity and their entangled nature. Papers may address how Christianity was transmitted and received in these centuries; how particular forms of Christianity were shaped by – and in turn shaped – the cultures they encountered; and the dynamics of influence and exchange between different varieties of Christianity, and particularly between the “centres” and “peripheries” of Christendom.
Theoretical Context
The study of the diffusion of Christianity always had a “global” dimension (relating to the mandate given in Matthew 28:19: “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations…”), even before recent initiatives towards “Global Late Antiquity” and the “Global Middle Ages” in English-speaking scholarship. There is a long scholarly tradition in various languages exploring the spread of Eastern Christianities from Central and East Asia to the Indian Ocean and Africa, the mobility of clerics from Ireland and Britain between the Northern Atlantic and the Holy Land, or the encounter of many Afro-Eurasian Christianities within the Mongol World Empire, for instance. New approaches towards an “entangled history” (or “histoire croisée”), however, motivate us to intensify these earlier attempts towards connecting the multiplicity of Christian traditions. Furthermore, current debates in Global History on “strange parallels” as well as “great divergences” in the political and socio-economic dynamics of various world regions invite us to think about similarities and differences between Christianities in new ways, as well as their possible interplay with other historical pathways. This also leads to reflection on the role of Christianity and other religions as one “layer” within a multiplexity of networks radiating from the Mediterranean across the entirety of Afro-Eurasia, which also supported and, in turn, profited from the spread of religious beliefs.
Timeframe
The broad period under consideration has been chosen deliberately to emphasize the notion of entanglement. We welcome papers dealing with “Early Christianity,” “Late Antiquity,” “Byzantium,” or the “Middle Ages”; the overlaps, continuity, and transformations across these periods; and, in particular, related or contemporary contexts for which these traditional historiographical labels might not apply. On the one hand, the first and second centuries CE were the time of Christianity’s emergence as a distinct organized religion. On the other hand, the centuries before and after the middle of the second Millennium saw not only the division and fracturing of the Western Church but also decisive changes in the geopolitical environment in other Christianities with the rise and fragmentation of the Mongol Empire, the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the expansion of the Ottoman, Muscovite, Safavid, or Moghul Empires, or the end of Christian dynasties in Nubia and the rise of the “Solomonic” dynasty in Ethiopia. Thus, the times around 1500 mark a watershed in the history of Christianities even before the start of the so-called “European expansion.”
Throughout these centuries, Christianity was the fulcrum around which textual, intellectual, cultural, and social activity moved. It offered a unifying thread that bound, connected and entangled different epochs and communities across time and place. Periodization in Christian Studies, however, is complex because Christianity developed asynchronously. We hope to encourage consideration of the overlaps, continuity, and transformation within Christianity over time.
Structure and Future Publication
The conference will consist of plenary sessions, allowing for greater engagement with each represented context. The conference will create an inclusive space for genuine knowledge exchange between junior, mid-career, and senior scholars. We intend to publish a volume of conference proceedings with a high-ranking industry publisher, which may be of particular interested to our junior colleagues in the early stages of their publishing careers.
Ethos
1. The conference aims to provide a space for scholars of different Christian traditions to meet and exchange knowledge. Scholars of Christianity in any context are familiar with core tenets and sacred texts and, therefore, are uniquely placed to appreciate how the same faith evolved and developed in different environments. The benefits of speaking to scholars working on similar texts and topics in different contexts are manifold. The conference seeks to provide a space for genuinely interdisciplinary exchange between experts working on distinct but related Christian worlds. The traditional exchange between disciplinary experts will also be possible. The conference is intended as a space for learning but also sharing one’s specialist insight. As such, we encourage in-depth yet accessible presentations.
2. Our aim is to create a venue dedicated entirely to historical Christianity with an appreciation of its entangled and interconnected nature. Large-scale, interdisciplinary conferences exist for the subjects of Late Antiquity, Medieval Studies, and Byzantine Studies. However, scholarly perspectives that centre an appreciation of historical Christianity purely on its own terms are frequently peripheral to the thematic concerns of such meetings. A conference dedicated especially to minority Christian traditions would provide a welcome space for knowledge exchange among specialists of historical Christianity, particularly its smaller subdisciplines.
3. At the same time, the conference connects to the Orthodox Academy’s mission by highlighting the deep temporal embedding of the modern Orthodox Church’s global dimension on all continents – and the role of the Eastern Mediterranean as a hub of Christianities to the East, West, North, and South.
Topics
We invite papers on any form of Christianity from the period 100–1500, in particular papers that speak to our theme of “entanglement.” Potential topics for papers include, but are not limited to:
· Interaction between different varieties of Christianities and between Christianity and other religions or thought systems
· Theological developments and innovation
· Scriptural transmission and biblical translation
· Missionary activity and the spread of Christianity
· Cultural, social, political, and economic influences on Christian practice and belief
· Church councils, doctrinal disputes, and ecclesiology
· Heresy, schism, and reform
· The development, transmission, and evolution of Christian liturgy, ritual practice, and the sacraments
· Travel, migration, pilgrimage, and sacred landscapes
· Material culture and the exchange of ideas (including archaeology, art history, architecture, and iconography)
· Textual transmission and philology
· Monasticism and religious orders
· Gender roles in different forms of Christianity
· How language has shaped Christianity and how Christianity has affected language
· Use, transmission, and influence of the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha
· Historiography and periodization
· Channels of influence between Christianity and other Abrahamic religions
· Deathscapes: Christianity and the anthropology of death
*Please send your abstracts of 300 words (max.) by 28 February 2025 to Zoe Tsiami at ztsiami@oac.gr, accompanied by a small biographical note and your current affiliation.
Organizing Committee
Dr. John J. Gallagher (University of St Andrews and Orthodox Academy of Crete)
Peter Konieczny (Medievalists.net)
Dr. Johannes Preiser Kapeller (University of Vienna)
Professor Hagith Sivan (University of Kansas)
Ph.D.(c) Zoe Tsiami (University of Thessaly and Orthodox Academy of Crete)
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