The Rule and the Folk

The Emergence of the Clergy/Laity Divide and the Forms of Anticlerical Discourse in China's Late Antiquity

Bibliographic Data

ID3974813
AuthorsAntonello Palumbo (University of London, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume61
Issue1
Pages30-86
Publication date2021-08-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueHistory of Religions (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0018-2710 • E-ISSN: 1545-6935
PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/714918
OpenAlexW3204752897
LanguageEN
References cited29

Notwithstanding its origins in modern Europe, the term “anticlericalism” seems appropriate to describe different forms of opposition to groups of religious professionals in other cultures, whose historical trajectory may offer in turn important insights into the value of the term as a category of analysis. After a preliminary definition and inventory of the varieties of anticlerical discourse, based on the relative position of its targets and producers, this study focuses on China and the role of Buddhism in the contested emergence of the clergy/laity divide during Late Antiquity (second–eighth centuries AD). Buddhist monastic elites introduced to China the radically novel idea of a society divided in two bodies, respectively devoted to worldly and otherworldly pursuits, and thus laid the foundations of a “laity” and a “clergy” that were not there before. They grafted these new concepts onto the local categories of “rule” (dao 道) and “folk” (su 俗) that small, inward-looking groups of Taoist seekers of transcendence had used earlier to bound themselves out from the common people. The rise of an organized, translocal Buddhist monasticism since the late fourth century sparked significant hostility from native social networks of Confucian literati and officeholders; it also reverberated in internal debates within guilds of Taoist householder ritualists. Its staunchest critics, however, came from the ranks of Buddhist ascetic minorities and grassroots religious movements. Insider and outsider critiques of the clergy converged on the rejection of the monks’ institutional charisma, and eventually undermined the very notion of a transcendent rule, which can be seen as largely coextensive with an idea of “religion” as a separate sphere of social life and human experience

Aesthetics · Ancient history · Asceticism · Buddhism · Charisma · China · Monasticism · Sociology · Theology · Chinese history and philosophy · Eurasian Exchange Networks · History · Indian and Buddhist Studies · Philosophy · Religious studies

Tools

Open DOI