More on "Religious Ceremonies of the Known World"
Lynn Hunt, Margaret C. Jacob, and Wijnand Mijnhardt, who write extensively on Religious Ceremonies, argue that the huge book is a radical display of religious toleration for the eighteenth century. They argue, “[Bernard and Picart] wanted to show the public that acquired religious ceremonies and customs had obscured the universality of religion. They aimed at transforming prejudice into inquisitiveness, because they were certain that knowledge would lead to the acceptance of deviant religious teachings and practices” (126). This conviction led the two men to discuss religions previously not granted validity in the Protestant European canon, including Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and indigenous religions of people all over the world.
For Picart, the chance to illustrate world religions and cultures must have been invigorating. According to the three Religious Ceremonies scholars, he “tried to depict the kaleidoscope of the world’s religious activities from the inside, from the point of view of the religious tradition in question" (5). This must have been an arduous undertaking, especially when one considers that Picart had never left Europe before beginning the illustrations. Due to this lack of first-hand knowledge, Religious Ceremonies of the Known World is a fascinating combination of anthropology and philosophy, narrative and history. Its illustrations are created but reliant on real stories and real evidence, albeit from skewed European sources.
Together, Picart’s illustrations and Bernard’s writing show a world where the “sacred” was in flux (4). As exploration increasingly began to bring the world closer together, questions of the correctness of a certain religion began to infiltrate the minds of the highly educated. Picart’s pictures, for example, showed how “everyone in the world has some kind of religion… All peoples, in particular, pay special attention to birth, marriage, and death. Peoples are more alike more than they are different in their attitudes toward religion” (158). It is true that Picart includes illustrations of both marriages and funerals in a majority of the religions and cultures covered. The moments of community, whether in rejoicing or in mourning, captivate us.
Religious Ceremonies of the Known World, while mostly forgotten to the modern-day world, has enormous value for understanding lenses of different and foreign religions in Europe in the eighteenth century. Concepts of religious acceptance or at least toleration become rooted in a history, rather than the notion that they appeared in much more recent times. The fascinating combination of storytelling, fact-finding evidence, and vibrant engravings leave readers with the dawning idea that the world is more alike than different, and that good can be found in all things that guide people to a moral sense. This is truly radical, and not just for Bernard and Picart, but for our world, too. Rarely do we look outside ourselves, ready to learn with an open mind and heart about something so superficially different, so other, from us. Diving in reveals a complex beauty, difficult to describe or grasp, but worth searching for.