CMS Digital Talk: Philippe Buc (History at the University of Vienna)

Title: “Warfare and religion in medieval Japan and medieval Catholic Europe.”

Abstract: The talk will compare Japan and Europe, discussing whether and where religion (in Japan a combination of local deity worship, Buddhism, and sometime Confucianism, in Western and Central Europe Catholic Christianity) contribute to the shape that warfare took between ca. 800 and ca. 1600 C.E. A prime focus will be civil wars, given that Japan seldom dealt with foreign armies in this period.

Bio: Philippe Buc was trained in the USA and in France, taught at Stanford from 1990 to 2011, is now Professor of European Medieval History at the University of Vienna (Austria). His most recent book is Holy War, Martyrdom, and Terror: Christianity, Violence, and the West (2015). He now researches the relationship (when any) between warfare and religion in premodern societies.