Final Report Summary - DEBIDEM (Defining Belief and Identities in the Eastern Mediterranean:The Role of Interreligious Debate and Interaction)
The project broke new ground on multiple intertwined levels, in writing and understanding history as well as in reconceptualising the process of identity formation in the eastern Mediterranean in that it challenged a traditional prevailing emphasis on more formal sources (historiography) or historical approaches by focusing on unconventional, neglected sources that yielded not only extremely significant new historical information, but also priceless insights into the interaction of religious communities and the processes of self-definition. Moreover, the project has significantly expanded the source material in connection with the historical study of the processes of identity-formation allowing this corpus to earn its rightful place in modern historiography. For the first time in late antique/late roman scholarship and early medieval history, sources about the non-elite population in the form of question-and-answer collections have been adduced for the study of religious and cultural identities and analysed on the basis of a coherent set of questions. Through the edition of selected important texts, translations, a monograph, collective volumes and several research articles covering a large variety of subjects concerning the identity formation and the history of interreligious debates and disputation the eastern Mediterranean, the project has shown the relevance of this corpus of texts for the study of the historical and socio-cultural study of religious and cultural self-definition in general. The accessibility to selected sources, through their edition and translation, heightens their visibility offering a rare, important, fuller view on a wider spectrum of belief and social attitudes than we can trace in other types of source but also a better understanding of the issues that figured prominently in contemporary society and the way they led to the formation of its identity and self-definition. Collectively these outcomes will serve as a much-needed tool for further research on the definition of beliefs and communities both in late antiquity and the early middle ages and in general history as well as a priceless teaching aid for the teaching of religious, cultural and intellectual history.