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Ritual, Culture, And Power: Politics And The Shrine Of Notre-Dame De Cambron, 1322-1329, Benjamin Wright

The Hilltop Review

Does religious ritual transform political identities? Political identities often rise out of culture; and cultures in turn are shaped by the countless manifestations of religious ritual. It should come as no surprise that this triangle of ritual, culture, and power is used as a tool for the construction of the homogeneous political identities upon which nation states are created. The case study of the religious cult center of Notre-Dame de Cambron, a 14th century pilgrimage shrine in Belgium a few miles from the French border, provides one example of this triangularity. In the midst of its bicultural region, Cambron's shrine …