Religion and Art

Autobiography and biography (which together will be called “life writing”) raise theological questions in ways different from systematic or constructive theology. These forms of life writing tell a story that may or may not be correlated with traditional doctrines. They integrate the first order discourse of symbol and narrative with secondary hermeneutical reflections that interpret and analyze the meaning and truth of religious language. The probing and disturbing questioning in a profound autobiography such as Augustine’s contrasts with the assurances and settled answers expected of theology by religious institutions and communities. Particular religious questions shape specific genres of life writing such as Puritan discourses, nature writing, or African American autobiographies. The theology in autobiography may be either explicit or implicit and involves both questioning and affirmation, as may be seen in works as different as Newman’s Apologia Pro Vita Sua and Edmund Gosse’s Father and Son. Conversion has been a central theme and shaping influence on Christian texts, even when authors challenge this focus and create alternative forms. A central theological question posed by autobiography concerns the authority of individual experience when it contrasts or conflicts with traditional norms asserted by orthodox believers and ecclesiastical hierarchy. In spiritual autobiographies by contemporary writers, we see serious attention given to communal norms for life stories and a search for a distinctive personal apprehension of what is sacred. Autobiographical writing has been stronger in the history of some religious traditions than in others. Yet in the modern world, almost every culture has produced life writing that questions or challenges established patterns of thought and practice. In contrast with autobiography, sacred biography has been an important part of every religious tradition, usually describing an exemplar to be revered and imitated. Its strong didactic interests often curb theological questioning of established norms. While modern scholarly biographies often mute theological questions, some writers raise normative issues and argue for why the subject’s life should be valued. As well as the theology explored within life writing, many works reveal a theology of life writing, that is, beliefs about how this kind of writing may bring the author or readers better understanding of God or deeper faith.

Over the past six centuries, the way believers, theologians, and scholars in Europe have produced, received, and studied copies of the Qurʾanic text has evolved alongside changes in how the text is accessed, moving from manuscripts to replicas, and now to online platforms where the Qurʾanic text and related artifacts are digitally available. The investigation of the role and understanding of the Qurʾan—as an artifact—in Europe requires careful attention to its material form and significance during each specific period, from the Renaissance to the modern period. The Qurʾan has been part of the religious culture of the Western Muslim territories since the beginnings of Islam, as it is expressed, for example, in the manuscript of the Qurʾan copied in the Muslim Palermo in 982–983 ce or the several Qurʾans in Kufic and round scripts written, for example, in Valencia, Seville, or Cordova. Then, it continued to be an object of religious faith copied among the last Muslim communities in modern Spain during the Moriscos periods from the 15th to the 17th century. As a Counter-Reformation measure, the Qurʾan was listed in the Catholic Indices of Prohibited Books in 1559, leading to a ban on both printed and manuscript versions in the Christian West. Similarly, Ottoman authorities banned the importation of printed books in Arabic script until 1588, and the printing and trade of the Qurʾan text in Muslim lands were considered illicit until the end of the 19th century. In Europe, the Qurʾan was used as the basis for the study of the Arabic grammar by scholars in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. The text was approached in its manuscript form with a paleographic and philological interest that was used mainly at the service of theology in a polemical context. In European history, it was only in the 17th to 18th century that the polemic discourse and philological interest were distinguished as two distinct disciplines. In institutions and private libraries, the presence of the Qurʾan as an artifact went hand in hand with the availability of Qurʾanic manuscripts, resulting from the fruit of collectors to war booty, with its richest period in the 19th and then 20th centuries, thanks to scholars and merchants who traveled to the Middle East. Europe as part of the World Wide Web has reached the peak of its connection with the Qurʾan as a material object in its cultural and artistic value thorough digital images and text since the 2010s.