shared sacred places 389
practices may have little to do with tolerant or intolerant states or authorities; the fact
that these practices did exist points to the flexibility of religious, linguistic and sym-
bolic boundaries in many areas of human activities in this vast region: they are instances
of the betwixt and between nature of Mediterranean culture.
Shared shrines as places of conflict and violencePractices related to shared shrines challenge top-down analyses about identities
(national, ethnic, local, religious) and about the division between the sacred and the
secular. There is an ongoing debate about whether sacred places are or can become
places of conflict and political manipulation (Breger and Idinopulos,1998; Hayden,
2002; Bowman, 2012b). Religious sites are places where core identities are expressed
and enacted, where the presence of others is therefore often not tolerated. Tensions
can arise during festivals and annual feasts when religious communities come together
to celebrate. During this time access to holy spaces may be denied to members of
other religious groups. Shared religious sites are therefore particularly fragile and vul-
nerable from this point of view. During celebrations of the annual festival in Mar Elyas
monastery in Palestine, people gather around the sanctuary to picnic, listen to music
and bring offerings (bread, candles and oil). Priests welcome visitors and offer them
sanctified bread. According to Bowman, the most prominent feature of sacred space
is its multi-vocality; there are strands of motives and meanings involved in these inter-
actions within a “multidenominational community united by its perception of itself as
a community with shared traditions and practices” (Bowman, 1993: 438). Competitive
sharing involves tolerance but also allows for the taking over of the sacred space by the
most powerful of the religious groups present during times of conflict. Bigelow, who
has worked in both Turkey and India, maintains that shared sacred places are not
inherently conflictual: drawing on her ethnography in the Punjab, she argues that sites
are shared because they are powerful and because they express and facilitate the con-
vergence of complex and contradictory beliefs and actions, rather than provide points
for disputation and the articulation of oppositional identities. “The multireligious
appeal of such places draws from their perceived efficacy, their ecumenical identity,
and the non-sectarian ethos that inheres in these shrines” (Bigelow, 2012: 30).
In the Mediterranean as elsewhere, shared holy sites act as interactive nodes
between individuals, religions, and different gender and age groups that engage in
bodily and discursive practices and experiences. These are occasions for the public
performance of community and common humanity alike; of inclusiveness rather than
exclusivity and conflict. The Mediterranean as a cultural region has been especially
associated with cosmopolitan and multicultural ways of life that include the use of
shared holy places. Historical contextualization and ethnographic analysis of these
unique places enhance understanding of how religious boundaries, connectivity, shar-
ing and intimacy actually work in practice.
Endnote1 In 1984 I spoke to the then priest, a Greek Catholic of Albanian descent, who explained
how he changed his robes and drove his car between services in each church. See the official
tourism website http://www.direction-corse.com/visiter/cargese.php (accessed July 4, 2013).