The Collectif d’Anthropologie et d’Histoire du Spirituel et des Affects (CAHSA), in collaboration with the Fribourg Institute for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies, invites proposals for an interdisciplinary conference on the topic “Religion and Pleasure (16th-18th century).” The conference will be held December 11-13, 2025 in Fribourg (Switzerland).

Fear, guilt, asceticism, retreat, self-emptying or self-annihilation, and sacrifice often seem to be central to religious experience in modernity, closely linked to what Jean Delumeau called “the hatred of the flesh” (Delumeau, 1983). Bodily pleasures, whether regulated, contested, or forbidden, are readily posited as an obstacle to truth and redemption in an “age of suspicion.”

However, it becomes clear that religion entertains a more complex and nuanced relationship to pleasure when we look more closely at the traces of Christian culture from the 16th to the 18th centuries as preserved not only in texts but also in material objects, architecture, iconography or music. Rereading the Church Fathers, and Saint Augustine in particular, presents an opportunity not only for clergymen and theologians, but also for laymen and laywomen to reconsider pleasure in its nuance and complexity. Irreducible to a merely negative signifier as a sign of concupiscence, pleasure is at least considered as a useful tool to reach the hearts of Christians and to bring them to greater and truer pleasures. A group of thinkers as diverse as Lorenzo Valla, Marsile Ficin, Érasme, Gassendi, Angelus Silesius ou Pascal even consider pleasure as a ‘motor’ of individual or collective spiritual experience that may find expression in ecstatic visions cast in semi-erotic language. Or else, these thinkers consider pleasure as it manifests itself in the tenderness of spiritual friendships, or, in liturgical contexts, when waiting for the eucharist, praying in community, listening to a sermon etc. Pleasure can even become an intrinsic and major aspect of divine grace reflected in terms such as “douceur, délectation, délices, ravissement, joie, volupté céleste, flamme” (Sellier ; 1995 [1970]). Thus pleasure, oscillating between aesthetic impression and bodily (and at times violent) sensation, may be considered a key component of religious experience and expression

Nonetheless, the ambiguity of pleasure – a path to the divine and source of temptation all at once – makes it a suspect entity for numerous spiritual movements. In this respect, the example of the Reformation is emblematic because it breaks with the ostentatious esthetic of Catholicism in the name of a return to an inner faith that is purged of any sensuous excess, since images and music were suspected to further idol worshipping more than strengthening the faith of believers. Religion also forestalls forms of pleasure deemed deviant: both on the Catholic and the Protestant sides, worldly pleasures – game, dance, strolls, and above all theatre – become increasingly indicted and condemned. (Thirouin, 2007; Diekmann and Wild, 2011). These condemnations illustrate the extent to which the status of pleasure in regard to religion was a matter of debate throughout the Modern era. They also serve as a reminder that the status of pleasure turned out to be complex, often problematic and ambiguous from an ethical or moral point of view (Religion and the Senses in Early Modern Europe, 2012). These tensions motivated various ways of regulating pleasure in religious practices, oscillating between mystical valorization and moral rejection, between divine ecstasy and ascetic rigor. In addition, they illustrate confessional distinctiveness and points of conflict with regard to the role of the body, the senses, and the imaginary in religious experience.

As part of its next in-person event, the CAHSA colloquium proposes to engage in a reflection about the complex relationship between pleasure and religion in the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth centuries. For this purpose, the organizing committee invites proposals for papers that may address the theological or philosophical discourse about the interaction – often ambiguous, sometimes even polemical – between religious culture and pleasure, and literary and visual representations of this encounter. Suggested areas of focus include, but are not limited to, the following:

● Definition and theory of spiritual pleasure in theological doctrines (such as Port-Royal’s “délectation victorieuse” or the “panhédonsime” that Jacques Le Brun sees in Bossuet’s works)

● Opposition and complementarity between pleasure of the spirit and of the flesh (for example in the context of Christian mysticism)

● The articulation of pleasure and pain in religious discourse

● Pleasure as an affect to either fight off or to nurture; the role and purpose of pleasure in moral edification

● Pleasure opposed to religion (cf. in certain philosophical traditions such as materialism and epicurism)

● The forms of spiritual pleasure: shape and use of rhetorical figures, visual or musical themes

● Terminology, either with a synchronic or diachronic approach: for example, for the French context, notions such as “délectation,” “concupiscence,” “douceur,” “suavité,” “satisfaction”

● Ways of expressing pleasure and the grammar of emotions (in French, but also in other languages; cf. the importance of neologisms among mystical writers or German pietists)

● Ways of translating religious pleasure: How to transpose the grammar of emotions into another language

● Pleasure in devotional acts (liturgy, prayer, processions, ceremonies, etc.) as represented in the discourse of a given era

● Confessional approaches to pleasure (specificity; differences between Catholicism and Protestantism, but also more broadly between Christianity and other religions)

Please submit a 350-500-word proposal (written in French or English), accompanied by a current CV, to the addresses below by July 11, 2025.

Groupe CAHSA : groupecahsa@gmail.com">groupecahsa@gmail.com

Arnaud Wydler (Université de Fribourg) : arnaud.wydler@unifr.ch">arnaud.wydler@unifr.ch

Joy Palacios (University of Calgary) : joy.palacios@ucalgary.ca">joy.palacios@ucalgary.ca

​The organizing committee will notify candidates of their acceptance by September 15, 2025. For those who present papers, there will be a registration fee of 50 CHF ($80 CAD) for full-time faculty and 15 CHF ($25 CAD) for graduate students, part-time faculty, and independent researchers.

Organizing committee :

Arnaud Wydler, Université de Fribourg

Anne Régent-Susini, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle

Corinne Bayerl, Université d’Oregon

Joy Palacios, University of Calgary