The Agreements of the Holy See with States (19th-21st Centuries): Models and Transformations, from Confessional States to Religious Freedom
Summary
This conference will explore the international legal agreements signed between the Holy See and individual states, which often but not always took the form of concordats and similar conventions. Its central focus will be to examine these conventions in light of diplomatic practices, as well as in relation to the political and religious dynamics of the nineteenth through the twenty-first centuries, notably the principles and requirements that comprised modernity. This entails assessing the historical evolution of the typology, method, content, scope, and spaces concerned. Particular attention will be paid to relations between the Church, the state, and the society entering into these agreements along with the resulting transformations, from confessional states or states with a particular relation to the Catholic Church to the renewed approach of these relations after World War Two and especially after Vatican II, based on the concept of religious liberty. The aim of this conference, which is open to different disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, is to cut across approaches in history, law, sociology, and political science.