DispRel

This project aims to study the flexibility of religious rules in the three monotheistic religions. We will address this issue through the history of the little-studied legal mechanism of “dispensation”, i.e., the way in which various religious legal systems tempered their prescriptions through exemption procedures. Dispensation (heter in Judaism, al-rukhsa in Islamic law) offered – and still offers – the faithful, under certain circumstances, the possibility to discard the rules of their religion (fasting and other dietary prescriptions, matrimonial rules, vows and oaths, liturgical duties, etc.). However, it has never been investigated over the long term and even less through a comparative perspective. We will conduct the investigation along three parallel lines: 1) an historical and textual analysis, based on manuscript and printed texts (Middle Ages-19th century), of the evolving legal and theological discourse that legitimised dispensation within the three monotheistic religions, and of their possible interplay; 2) an in-depth study of three papal congregations managing dispensations since the Late Middle Ages (Penitentiary, Dataria, Holy Office) in order to reconstruct how Catholic dispensation worked and evolved; 3) a comparison with collections of Islamic legal opinions and rabbinic consultations, mainly from European Mediterranean countries and North Africa (11th-19th century). Our goal is to provide both a general interpretative framework for the functioning of dispensation, and new insights on the dynamics of secularization and religious pluralism that characterise contemporary societies, which will ultimately help address pressing issues such as religious radicalization and the adaptation of religious communities to a secular societal framework.