Believing in Belief: Gibbon, Latour and the Social History of Religion.

This article examines the concept of religious "belief" through a historical and anthropological lens, focusing on medieval Christianity in southern France from the eleventh to the fourteenth century. It critiques the inherited Enlightenment view, exemplified by Edward Gibbon, that treats belief as credulity, and engages with Bruno Latour's application of J. L. Austin's speech-act theory to frame belief as a performative act contingent on specific social and contextual "conditions of felicity." Using examples such as the veneration of saintly relics and inquisitorial interrogations, the article argues that belief should be understood not as a fixed cognitive state but as embodied, variable, and historically situated acts that involve emotional and sensory dimensions. This approach challenges simplistic binaries of belief and unbelief, highlighting the complexity and fragility of faith practices in the medieval period and suggesting a more nuanced framework for social historians studying religion.