Between Cultural Diversity and Common Heritage

Legal and Religious Perspectives on the Sacred Places of the Mediterranean

Silvio Ferrari, Andrea Benzo

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781472426017
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317175025
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: International Law
• Index: Law

Going beyond the more usual focus on Jerusalem as a sacred place, this book presents legal perspectives on the most important sacred places of the Mediterranean. The first part of the book discusses the notion of sacred places in anthropological, sociological and legal studies and provides an overview of existing legal approaches to the protection of sacred places in order to develop and define a new legal framework. The second part introduces the meaning of sacred places in Jewish, Christian and Islamic thought and focuses on the significance and role that sacred places have in the three major monotheistic religions and how best to preserve their religious nature whilst designing a new international statute. The final part of the book is a detailed analysis of the legal status of key sacred places and holy cities in the Mediterranean area and identifies a set of legal principles to support a general framework within which specific legal measures can be implemented. The book concludes with a useful appendix for the protection of sacred places in the Mediterranean region. Including contributions from leading law and religion scholars, this interesting book will be valuable to those in the fields of international law, as well as religion and heritage studies.

Chapter 1
Introduction: The Legal Protection of the Sacred Places of the Mediterranean

Silvio Ferrari

The Meaning of ‘sacred place’

First of all, what do we mean here? The expression ‘sacred place’¹ by no means has a clear-cut and univocal significance. In Chapter 3, Yuri Stoyanov shows how complex the notion of sacred place is. It is at the crossroads of theological, anthropological, historical, sociological and legal research, each of these tending to define the object of its analysis in different terms. After describing the state of the art of the studies on sacred places, Stoyanov concludes that ‘the multiple religious, spiritual, social and political functions ascribed to’ sacred places in human societies and cultures are reflected in the ‘interpretative and methodological ambiguities’ that affect these studies, so that it remains uncertain how much helpful input they can provide to legal and political initiatives focused on the safeguarding of sacred places. Even leaving aside any ambitious attempt to formulate a theoretical definition and concentrating on the more modest task of elaborating a notion of sacred place through the examination of the places that are commonly qualified as sacred does not help. In Chapter 5, Peter Petkoff continually notes that ‘because of the inherent uniqueness of sacred places, developing a taxonomy of sacred places is virtually impossible […]. Sacred places range from those with very clearly defined borders and physical specifications, to geographical areas, national parks, processions, pilgrimages, sacramental places and places where the faithful congregate and their spiritual leaders teach’.

These remarks are enough to deter any reasonable person from attempting to provide a definition of a sacred place. However, it is necessary to clarify the meaning given to these words in this book.

The expression ‘sacred places’ is used here because it is currently employed to indicate places like the Wailing Wall, Mecca, the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre and so on. However, the book is devoted to ‘religious places’ – that is, sacred places that have an explicit religious significance. Therefore the book does not deal with places that may have a spiritual significance but which are disconnected from clearly identifiable religious traditions and communities, nor does it deal with places whose (sometimes exclusively ‘secular’) sacredness depends on the historical or political events that took place there, like the birthplace of the father of a nation, or a battleground, for example.²

Even within this limited ‘religious’ sphere the expression ‘sacred places’ – as employed in this book – needs to be further circumscribed. Paraphrasing Orwell and without any intention of disrespect, it is possible to say that all places are sacred but some places are more sacred than others. The point is made by Yahya Pallavicini in Chapter 8: ‘Although it is possible for the believer to participate in the presence and the communication with the Lord of the Worlds in all the mosques and in every corner of the earth where God has made a carpet upon which to worship Him, the Muslim knows that the very same Creator has chosen certain places above others to manifest some of His signs, like in Mecca, Jerusalem and Medina’. This remark applies equally well to the sacred places of Judaism and Christianity that share with Islam the faith in a God creator who manifested himself to human beings in specific times and places.³

Again, once it is accepted that some sacred places are deemed to be more important than others it is impossible to define precisely what elements differentiate the first from the second group. Sacred places are living entities and as such are in constant evolution. Politicians, diplomats and lawyers know very well how difficult it is to define them and for this reason they have frequently avoided any definition and have drawn up lists of sacred places, as happened with the sacred places of the Holy Land.⁴ However, while it is useless to strive for a definition, it may be helpful to look for some signs that show the particular importance of a sacred place. This search has been performed in Chapter 2 by Andrea Benzo. After establishing that ‘no universally accepted definition of sacred place exists’ in international and domestic legal instruments, Benzo proposes a ‘definition by induction’ based on four features that recur in the sacred places considered in this book (the link to a manifestation of the sacred; the role played by a place as a historical landmark; the veneration of believers coming from different parts of the world; the consensus developed through history on its sacred character). It is interesting to note that similar features are recalled in the decision of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in the Kordic and Cerkez case.⁵ The Appeal Chamber, reversing a judgment given three years before by the Trial Chamber, made a distinction between the general protection provided in international instruments for places of worship and the special protection granted to places of worship that ‘constitute the cultural or spiritual heritage of peoples’, specifying that ‘cultural or spiritual heritage covers objects whose value transcends geographical boundaries, and which are unique in character and are intimately associated with the history and culture of a people’.⁶ Not always does a single sacred place possess all these features, but they all point in the same direction and give us some helpful indications for appraising the particular sacredness attributed to a specific place.

Starting with the four indicators identified by Benzo, a group of sacred places can be set apart that have a special significance in the religious traditions of the Mediterranean. They are the subject of the contributions collected in this book. The fact that there is no neat line separating these sacred places from other places of worship and veneration reflects the continuity between these two groups of places, and the wide grey zone between them should be regarded as the buffer area that unites instead of separating places that have different importance but the same quality, because in the end the sacredness of places ‘derives from the uses to which they are put’.⁷

There is also a geographical limitation that should be taken into account before concluding these introductory remarks: this book deals with the sacred places of the Mediterranean area.

It is a fact, recently reaffirmed by the Council of the European Union, that ‘Europe and the Mediterranean region share a common history and cultural heritage’⁸ which also includes its religious and sacred legacy. Many sacred places of the Mediterranean are associated with three religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – which share a monotheistic creed and believe in a God who manifested himself to humans in specific times and places. These two elements – monotheism and revelation – constitute the foundation upon which these religions developed their respective conceptions of sacred place. History of divine revelation offers a chain of events – all geographically located – that make a particular place sacred: the most important sacred places of Judaism, Christianity and Islam are connected to a divine manifestation or command, directly (when it is God himself who gets in touch with human beings) or indirectly (when the divine message is manifested by men and women of God, like saints, prophets, sages). Monotheism paves the way (better: should pave, as this point is too frequently forgotten) for respecting the ‘other’, as God is the same for all human beings,⁹ and consequently for recognizing the universal openness of each sacred place. This historical and theological background – marked by the dialectics between the particular and universal dimension of sacred places – opens up the possibility of identifying a protection framework that takes into account the elements of commonality shared by the sacred places of the Mediterranean area and distinguishes them from the sacred sites revered in other parts of the world.

From a political point of view, the development of such a protection framework is required by another fact that marks the sacred places of the Mediterranean: they are so many and so close to each other that they are constantly in danger of becoming elements of conflict. The proximity of the sacred places is such that sometimes they physically overlap and the same place is sacred to two or more religions. This frequently gives rise to tensions that need to be prevented, or at least reduced, through an effective system of safeguards.

After many years of neglect, the European Union seems to have understood that peace and stability in the Mediterranean region cannot be attained without dealing with the issue of sacred places. In 2010 the EU President Manuel Barroso called upon all the interested parties to cooperate in the effort ‘de faire des grand sites religieux des espaces de paix et de culture’,¹⁰ and two years later the EU Commissioner for Education affirmed that ‘the sacred places of the Mediterranean are an important part of our [European] identity’ and can give a relevant ‘contribution to intercultural dialogue’.¹¹ These statements show that there is a growing awareness that the European Union, together with the States of the Southern shore of the Mediterranean and other stakeholders, has a precise interest in taking the initiative to promote the recognition of some guidelines providing effective protection to sacred places and contributing to the peaceful development of the whole region.

This book intends to be a step in this direction. After a few contributions that provide a general overview of the notion of sacred places in anthropological, sociological and legal studies (Part I), three chapters then examine this notion in the light of Jewish, Christian and Islamic theological and legal thought (Part II). Understanding the meaning of sacred places in these three religious traditions is the starting point for discussing how sacred places can be protected: Part III offers a detailed analysis of the legal status of the most important sacred places of the Mediterranean. This examination aims at identifying a set of legal principles (contained in the Declaration published at the end of the book) that can be applied to all of them and that can provide a general framework within which more specific legal measures (if needed) can find their place. However, before starting this long journey, it is necessary to address two other preliminary topics, discussing why and how sacred places should be protected.

The Importance of Sacred Places

The importance of sacred places is widely recognized all over the world. They have valuable religious, cultural, political and economic significance: sacred places are a living testimony of the religious faith of a community, provide people with a sense of identity, play a vital role in safeguarding cultural diversity, help in fostering the social cohesion of a population and attract millions of pilgrims and visitors. To give an idea of the importance of the sacred places issue, suffice it to say that 20 per cent to 30 per cent of the properties inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List have been included specifically for their religious or spiritual association.¹²

On the other hand, sacred places are a catalyst for conflict, as clearly demonstrated by the wars in the Balkans after the collapse of Yugoslavia. Precisely because sacred places are important for building and maintaining the identity of a community, destroying them is a blow that weakens the strength of the people whose history, culture and religion are symbolized by these places.¹³ Demolishing or desecrating the defeated enemy’s sacred place or, worse, converting it into the conqueror’s sacred place – the mosque into a church and vice versa – is one of the most common and age-old tactics aimed at demoralizing the enemy population and breaking its will to resist.

For these reasons, there is wide agreement about the need for adequate protection of sacred places. Recently UNESCO has underlined that religious and sacred sites require specific policies for protection and management that take into account their distinct spiritual nature as a key factor in their conservation and that such policies cannot be sustainable without in-depth consultation with the appropriate stakeholders.¹⁴ It has also been recognized that as the existing standard-setting instruments may not adequately address the matter, ‘it is particularly timely to define an integrated strategy for the development of a World Heritage Thematic Programme for Religious Heritage in collaboration and close coordination between all stakeholders, and that this Programme should create an action plan for the protection of religious heritage worldwide aimed at enhancing the role of communities and the avoidance of misunderstandings, tensions, or stereotypes’.¹⁵

While this recent evolution is welcome, approaching the question of sacred places exclusively from the angle of their protection may be reductive as it limits the contribution they can provide to developing the traditions of the three monotheistic religions of the Mediterranean and, as a result, to encouraging the growth of a healthy civil society. Protecting sacred places is the precondition for enabling them to perform their religious and civil role and so the emphasis should not be placed on protection as preservation but on protection as enhancement of sacred places.¹⁶

The need to shift from the first to the second paradigm (from protection-preservation to protection-enhancement) can be better explained by looking at the Mediterranean area as a whole as well as at the three monotheistic religions that developed in this part of the world.

The concept of sacred space in the Jewish, Christian and Islamic tradition is based on the tension between two principles. These religions teach that the presence of God cannot be confined to a specific place, as God inhabits the whole universe.¹⁷ This teaching, however, is not in contradiction with the belief that God manifested himself in specific places that are termed sacred because they are directly connected to divine revelation. As already said, the belief that God revealed himself to human beings in specific places is central to the development of the notion of the sacred place in these religions. Sacred places, according to John Paul II in 1980, are the ‘geographical point of tangency between God and man, between the eternal and history’.¹⁸ They enshrine God’s revelation, but the forms through which revelation is expressed are constantly reshaped, so that they remain able to reflect the growing understanding of the divine message on the part of the faithful and to answer the changing needs of the religious community. This is the meaning of the encounter between the eternal (representing God’s absoluteness and permanence) and history (symbolizing the relative and changeable elements that are part of human nature) evoked by John Paul II. The same idea can be expressed in the words of Martin Heidegger to define the nature of works of art: ‘creative custodianship of truth’. The truth of divine revelation is entrusted to the faithful community, which has the responsibility to guard it as a living heritage through a constant process of formulation and reformulation of the doctrines, practices and rituals that keep revelation alive in th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• Notes on Contributors
• Preface
• 1 Introduction: The Legal Protection of the Sacred Places of the Mediterranean
• PART I WHAT IS A SACRED PLACE?
• PART II SACRED PLACES AND RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS
• PART III THE SACRED PLACES OF THE MEDITERRANEAN
• Appendix
• Index