Thirteenth International Conference on Religion & Spirituality in Society

Abstract

Often regarded as a “Dark Age,” the Middle Ages have been routinely overlooked and under-appreciated by social theorists. This is a major oversight that must be corrected if theorists are to understand the continuing impact of the Middle Ages on contemporary western society (encompassing Western Europe and the Anglosphere)– one example being the usage of Templar symbology among contemporary Christian nationalists. This paper highlights the dominance of the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages (500-1500 C.E.) and its brand of internationalism, along with how its control of thought, documentation, and narrativity continues to impact the collective memory of western culture to this day. This is done through a historical discursive and documental analysis of the memory and narrativity of two cases, the Knights Templar and the Cathars. Findings address a large epistemological gap in the sociological imagination- principally, the continuing impact of the Papal hegemony on the development and reproduction of Western European culture, collective memory, and narrativity.