Fictions of Sacrifice

This interdisciplinary edited collection reconsiders how sacrificial ideas – encompassing guilt, justice, punishment, atonement, and community formation – shaped debates over sovereignty, legal authority, religious identity, and the cultural imagination in early modern political theology. Major works in Reformation and early modern historiography still tend to overlook how deeply intertwined religion, politics, and literary culture were in this period, often framing secular modernity as the product of a steady cultural break from religion. These essays juxtapose early modern understandings of sacrifice and sovereignty with modern debates, revealing how foundational the category of sacrifice was to both religious and political discourse. From conflicts between Catholics and Protestants to the contested meanings of martyrdom, from legal and inquisitorial texts to travel narratives, poetry, and drama, this volume traces how sacrificial language structured early modern visions of collective life.