Nolite turbare circulos meos? Een speelse reactie op Paul Posts 'Het verleden in spel? Volksreligieuze rituelen tussen cultus en cultuur'.

Abstract

The author questions, in a playful way and just for the sake of argument, three aspects of the model advocated by Post in his essay Het verleden in het spel? He argues, in the first place, that social elements, regarded by Post as mere ‘facilitating factors’, have received unsufficient attention in the model. In the second place he questions Post’s view on the particular nature of public feasts in the post-war era. Was there a growth in the number of feasts as compared to earlier periods, for instance the 20s and 30s of this century or the nineteenth century, and is the ‘traditionalizing’ or ‘historicizing’ function of feasts that fundamentally new as Post thinks it to be? In addition to this, he asks if it wouldn’t be worthwhile to incorporate in the model the relation of traditionalizing to ‘modernizing’ elements in feasts and in liturgy. Referring to his first remark, the author wonders finally if attention to the growing participation of the faithful in liturgy, as in society as a whole, wouldn’t offer a more fruitful line of approach in explaining changes in liturgy as well as in public feasts than focusing on the gradual dissociation of functions as proposed by Post.