1. Introduction

Sacralisation is a process of distinction and elevation comparable to ⟶heroization, based on the attribution of the extraordinary quality of sacrality to a person. ‘Sacral’ can be defined as that which is assigned to the divine or to powers not available to man himself and thus excluded as ‘sacred’ from the material-physical reality and connected with something extra-worldly.¹This generally follows definitions by Durkheim, Émile: Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse. Paris 1912; see also Dihle, Albrecht: “Heilig”. In: Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum 14. Stuttgart 1988: Hiersemann, 1; Herbers, Klaus: “Sakralität. Einleitende Bemerkungen”. In: Beck, Andreas / Berndt, Andreas (Eds.): Sakralität und Sakralisierung. Perspektiven des Heiligen. Stuttgart 2013: Steiner, 11-14, 12-13. The processes of sacralisation include, for example, divinisation and relating to the divine, through which figures such as martyrs and saints are constituted. It is thus a form of exaltation, honour and distinction that marks the exemplary and generates ⟶admiration or adoration, without the term ⟶‘hero’ being used.²Heinzer, Felix / Leonhard, Jörn / von den Hoff, Ralf (Eds.): “Einleitung: Relationen zwischen Sakralisierungen und Heroisierungen”. In: Heinzer, Felix / Leonhard, Jörn / von den Hoff, Ralf (Eds.): Sakralität und Heldentum. Würzburg 2017: Ergon, 9-18, 10.

The relations between sacralisation and heroization are close, but ambiguous: It is true that religiously founded exceptional figures such as saints, prophets or ⟶martyrs can hardly be explained without some recourse to notions of the heroic. Conversely, however, this does not mean that every hero eo ipso must also be a figure with a sacral connotation; every sacredly distinguished king also a hero.³Admittedly, there are very striking examples of such a superimposition, such as the stylisation of the Saint Olaf, King of Norway (c. 995–1030): Iversen, Gunilla: “Transforming a Viking into a Saint, The Divine Office of St. Olav”. In: Fassler, Margot E. / Balzer, Rebecca A. (Eds.): The Divine Office in the Latin Middle Ages. Methodology and Source Studies, Regional Developments, Hagiography Written in Honor of Professor Ruth Steiner. Oxford 2000: Oxford University Press, 401-429; Jiřousková, Lenka: Der heilige Wikingerkönig Olav Haraldsson und sein hagiographisches Dossier. Text und Kontext der ‘Passio Olavi’. Leiden et al. 2014: Brill. Rather, the nature and intensity of the relationship must be determined in each individual case, but also according to epoch, culture and religion. However, as the relations have a significance that transcends epochal boundaries, they provide a useful analytical heuristic for a variety of heroic phenomena.

2. Historical overview

Many ideas dating back to Greek antiquity remain of lasting importance for European conceptions of heroism. The dual character of heroes as epic-heroic and religious is fundamental to this thinking: they were often recipients of cult and thus part of the sacred sphere. But already the ⟶Homeric epics refer to the figures of a mythical past as great heroes. Both categories were often separate, were terminological and conceptual in nature, but could also be superimposed, especially in processes of heroization. Accordingly, some transitions from heroism to divinity, from the heroic to the sacred, are fluid.⁴See e.g. Ekroth, Gunnel: “The Cult of Heroes”. In: Albersmeier, Sabine (Ed.): Heroes. Mortals and Myths in Ancient Greece. Baltimore 2009: Walters Art Museum, 120-143; Meyer, Marion / von den Hoff, Ralf (Eds.): Helden wie sie. Übermensch – Vorbild – Kultfigur in der griechischen Antike. Freiburg im Breisgau 2010: Rombach; Horn, Fabian: Held und Heldentum bei Homer. Das homerische Heldenkonzept und seine poetische Verwendung. Tübingen 2014: Narr. Heroization and apotheosis/divinisation have many common features.⁵See Buraselis, Kostas et al.: “Heroization and apotheosis”. In: Thesaurus Cultus et Rituum Antiquorum (ThesCRA) 2. Los Angeles 2004: Getty Publications, 125-214. Late antiquity seems to have shaped, at least in Europe, a tradition in which concepts of the sacred were strongly connected with those of the heroic – albeit with unmistakable, substantial discontinuities and transformations, particularly with regard to the status and role of ⟶violence and sacrifice, as well as to the notion of the divine in post-antiquity, which was for the most part no longer defined polytheistically.⁶Hammer, Andreas / Seidl, Stephanie (Eds.): Helden und Heilige. Kulturelle und literarische Integrationsfiguren des europäischen Mittelalters. Heidelberg 2010: Winter; Heinzer, Felix: “Hos multo elegantius, si ecclesiastica loquendi consuetudo pateretur, nostros heroas uocaremus. Sprachbilder im frühchristlichen Märtyrerdiskurs”. In: von den Hoff, Ralf et al. (Eds.): Imitatio heroica. Heldenangleichung im Bildnis. Würzburg 2015: Ergon, 119-136. It is not only the discussion about martyrs⁷More on this here: Bremmer, Jan N.: “From Heroes to Saints and from Martyrological to Hagiographical Discourse”. In: Heinzer, Felix / Leonhard, Jörn / von den Hoff, Ralf (Eds.): Sakralität und Heldentum. Würzburg 2017: Ergon, 35-66. as heroes that is gaining new currency today, even beyond the boundaries of the Christian-influenced cultural and social space.⁸Weigel, Sigrid (Ed.): Märtyrer-Porträts. Von Opfertod, Blutzeugen und heiligen Kriegern, Paderborn 2007: Fink; Niewiadomski, Jozef / Siebenrock, Roman A. (Eds.): Opfer – Helden – Märtyrer. Das Martyrium als religionspolitologische Herausforderung. Innsbruck 2011: Tyrolia; Pannewick, Friederike: Opfer, Tod und Liebe. Visionen des Märtyrertums in der arabischen Literatur. Munich 2012: Fink. Due to the Christian legacy of a multitude of cultural phenomena, especially in Europe, this tradition has been continued since the Middle Ages via the figures of saints and martyrs, but also via those of ⟶kings and rulers, who can be awarded heroic status as well as sacrality.⁹See also contributions on the ‘sacral kingship’ of medieval and early modern kings: Erkens, Franz-Reiner (Ed.): Die Sakralität von Herrschaft – Herrschaftslegitimierung im Wechsel der Zeiten und Räume. Berlin 2002: De Gruyter; Erkens, Franz-Reiner: Herrschersakralität im Mittelalter. Von den Anfängen bis zum Investiturstreit. Stuttgart 2006: Kohlhammer; Asch, Ronald G.: Sacral Kingship Between Disenchantment and Re-Enchantment. The French and English Monarchies 1587–1688. New York 2014: Berghahn; as well as Heinzer, Felix: “Poesie als politische Theologie, Texte und Kontext der liturgischen Verehrung König Ludwigs des Heiligen”. In: Francia 42 (2015), 73-92; Assmann, Jan: “Sakralkönigtum und Gemeinschaftskunst. Der Alte Orient und das Politische”. In: Junge, Kay et al. (Eds.): Erleben Erleiden Erfahren. Die Konstitution sozialen Sinns jenseits instrumenteller Vernunft. Bielefeld 2008: transcript, 357-371; Herbers, Klaus: “Schlüsselfiguren des christlichen Spanien im Mittelalter. Wege vom Helden zum Heiligen”. In: Heinzer, Felix / Leonhard, Jörn / von den Hoff, Ralf (Eds.): Sakralität und Heldentum. Würzburg 2017: Ergon, 115-128. It is precisely in this context that the symbolic languages of the heroic, of the sacred and of power have many things in common, as is evident in the quality of ‘radiance’ attributed to extraordinary figures. Until modern times these symbolic languages have therefore been used in rather ambiguous and interchangeable ways to elevate figures of present and past.¹⁰Telesko, Werner: Erlösermythen in Kunst und Politik. Zwischen christlicher Tradition und Moderne. Vienna 2004: Böhlau; Telesko, Werner (Ed.): “Napoleon Bonaparte. Der moderne Held”und die bildende Kunst 1799–1815. Vienna 1998: Böhlau; see also Gelz, Andreas: Der Glanz des Helden. Über das Heroische in der französischen Literatur des 17. bis 19. Jahrhunderts. Göttingen 2016: Wallstein; Schröer, Christina: “Helden im Dienst der Revolution. Symbolpolitische Strategien zur Sakralisierung des Nouveau Régime (1789–1799)”. In: Heinzer, Felix / Leonhard, Jörn / von den Hoff, Ralf (Eds.): Sakralität und Heldentum. Würzburg 2017: Ergon, 187-214; Marquart, Benjamin: “Napoleons Golgota. Sakralisierende Heldenverehrung zwischen Restauration und Julimonarchie”. In: Heinzer, Felix / Leonhard, Jörn / von den Hoff, Ralf (Eds.): Sakralität und Heldentum. Würzburg 2017: Ergon, 215-228. Moreover, without heroization, the sacralisation of the nation and the nationalisation of the religious in the 19th and 20th centuries seem inconceivable.¹¹Schulze-Wessel, Martin (Ed.): Nationalisierung der Religion und Sakralisierung der Nation im östlichen Europa. Stuttgart 2006: Steiner.

3. Relations between the heroic and the sacred

3.1. Similarities of the concepts

The heroic and the sacred exhibit striking similarities as phenomena, symbolisations and discourses of the extraordinary.¹²Eßbach, Wolfgang: “Welche Religionsbegriffe eignen sich zur Analyse sakraler Dimensionen des Heroischen?” In: Heinzer, Felix / Leonhard, Jörn / von den Hoff, Ralf (Eds.): Sakralität und Heldentum. Würzburg 2017: Ergon, 19-34. This is evidenced by the theoretical approach to the phenomenon of the sacred chosen by the DFG Research Unit 1533 “Sakralität und Sakralisierung in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit” (Sacredness and Sacralization in the Medieval and Early Modern Period) at the University of Erlangen between 2011 and 2017.¹³Herbers: “Sakralität. Einleitende Bemerkungen”, 2013; Herbers, Klaus / Düchting, Larissa (Eds.): Sakralität und Devianz. Konstruktionen – Normen – Praxis. Stuttgart 2015: Steiner. The Erlangen Research Unit refrained from an a priori definition of the sacred in order to concentrate on processes of sacralisation and thus focus on their dynamics. It understood sacralisations to be processes of boundary work, in which, as in the case of heroizations and ⟶heroisms, media and forms of communication, languages and expression, but also the blurring of their semantics and definitions become relevant.¹⁴Herbers: “Sakralität. Einleitende Bemerkungen”, 2013, 13; Nehring, Andreas: “Ambivalenz des Heiligen – Religionswissenschaftliche Perspektiven zu Sakralität und Devianz”. In: Herbers, Klaus / Düchting, Larissa (Eds.): Sakralität und Devianz. Konstruktionen – Normen – Praxis. Stuttgart 2015: Steiner, 9. Furthermore, the ⟶affective power of the heroic, which evokes astonishment and fascination, closeness and distance, also appears to be fundamentally related to the sacred – at least in Rudolf Otto’s characterisation of its effect between tremendum and fascinans – even if this does not define the sacred either comprehensively or analytically with sufficient precision.¹⁵Otto, Rudolf: The Idea of the Holy. An Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and its Relation to the Rational. Transl. by John W. Harvey. London 1923: Oxford University Press. (Original text: Otto, Rudolf: Das Heilige. Über das Irrationale in der Idee des Göttlichen und sein Verhältnis zum Rationalen. Munich 2014 [1917]: C. H. Beck.)

3.2. Dependence on context

From a diachronic perspective, it becomes clear that the establishment of monotheistic religions since late antiquity often brought about a separation of their heroes from those of antiquity. Sacral qualities which ancient heroes in polytheism as well as heroes of the Hindu tradition possessed had to be defined in a different way in monotheistic religions, since the ancient fluid transition between the human and the divine was no longer conceivable.¹⁶Steiner, Karin: “Mensch, Held, Gott. ‘Fluid identities’ in hinduistischen Traditionen”. In: Heinzer, Felix / Leonhard, Jörn / von den Hoff, Ralf (Eds.): Sakralität und Heldentum. Würzburg 2017: Ergon, 129-142; Bremmer: “From Heroes to Saints and from Martyrological to Hagiographical Discourse”, 2017.

However, it is also clear that ⟶martyrs, Christian saints, Jewish and Hindu heroes, and figures heroized in Islam, just like the heroes of ancient Greece, are ‘open’ figures whose meaning is subject to diachronic transformations.¹⁷Lang, Bernhard: “Elija, Mose und Josef. Drei biblische Gemeinschaften, ihre Leitgestalten und die Vielfalt des antiken Judentums. Eine These über alttestamentliche ‘Helden’”. In: Heinzer, Felix / Leonhard, Jörn / von den Hoff, Ralf (Eds.): Sakralität und Heldentum. Würzburg 2017: Ergon, 87-104; Oberhänsli-Widmer, Gabrielle: “Die Entheroisierung des Mose im klassischen Judentum”. In: Heinzer, Felix / Leonhard, Jörn / von den Hoff, Ralf (Eds.): Sakralität und Heldentum. Würzburg 2017: Ergon, 105-114; Pink, Johanna: “Helden der Verkündigung, Helden des Kampfes. Nāǧiḥ Ibrāhīm und die ägyptische Ǧamāʿa islāmiyya ab 2011”. In: Heinzer, Felix / Leonhard, Jörn / von den Hoff, Ralf (Eds.): Sakralität und Heldentum. Würzburg 2017: Ergon, 245-262; Pannewick, Friederike: “Grenzgänger des Umbruchs. Der symbolische Kampf um das Gedenken an Helden und Märtyrer des ‘Arabischen Frühlings’”. In: Heinzer, Felix / Leonhard, Jörn / von den Hoff, Ralf (Eds.): Sakralität und Heldentum. Würzburg 2017: Ergon, 263-286. They too become easier to explain if the processes of attribution that consitute these figures are examined as forms of heroization. This makes it easier to compare attributions of extraordinariness that lie outside the realm of religion and cannot be considered solely in the context of religious discourse. However, the question of sacralisations as special or intensified forms of heroization also brings additional facets to the discourse on the heroic. Heroes are predominantly sacralised in certain historical contexts, especially when religiously based symbolic discourse promises a high degree of acceptance or legitimacy. This might have to do with which forms of attribution of extraordinariness were more effective, more convincing, and more connectable for social and political discourses in certain contexts and epochs.

3.3. Intensified heroizations

A question worth exploring is how the use of symbolic languages of the sacred can intensify heroizations. Case studies on the 17th century, but more specifically observations on historical changes since the late 18th century suggest that sacralisation offers a way to conceptualise divine will, providence and predestination, sacrifice, repentance and redemption, and transfer these to heroic figures.¹⁸Schlüter, Andreas: “Leidenshelden im Transzendenzdruck. Skizze einer aristokratischen Heldenfiguration in England und Frankreich (ca. 1586 bis 1646)”. In: Heinzer, Felix / Leonhard, Jörn / von den Hoff, Ralf (Eds.): Sakralität und Heldentum. Würzburg 2017: Ergon, 143-166; Zwierlein, Anne-Julia: “‘The only righteous in a world perverse’. Sakraler Heroismus, Republikanismus und ‘einsame Gerechte’ bei John Milton und Lucy Hutchinson”. In: Heinzer, Felix / Leonhard, Jörn / von den Hoff, Ralf (Eds.): Sakralität und Heldentum. Würzburg 2017: Ergon, 167-186. This aspect, which in the long 19th century manifested primarily in the auto-sacralisation of nations at war, can hardly be overestimated in its potential to create meaning. Religious codes offered an almost inexhaustible reservoir of interpretations, motifs and topoi to communicate heroizations suggestively or ‘powerfully’. This function became particularly clear where, as in France since the Revolution, a political salvation framework of revolution, republic and nation replaced the sacralisation of the monarch whilst partly adopting older religious forms of representation.¹⁹Schröer: “Helden im Dienst der Revolution”, 2017. In the embodiment of Napoleon, the semantic potential unlocked by the intersection of the heroization of war, nation and religion became particularly clear and at the same time contradictory. It conveyed the image of an almost permanent history of upheaval, which produced ever new promises of salvation, but whose relative duration was becoming increasingly short.²⁰Marquart: “Napoleons Golgota”, 2017.

3.4. Resonant communication

At the level of politics of history and memory, the appropriation of heroizations and sacralisations gave rise to distinct communities of experience, fate and sacrifice. This collective self-interpretation transcended the distinction between victors and losers, since it was precisely the defeated or martyr who could function as the moral champion, and the renunciation of violence could become a model of (un)heroic superiority.²¹Pink: “Helden der Verkündigung, Helden des Kampfes”, 2017. The appropriation of defeats and upheavals, stories of loss and sacrifice could also give rise to suggestive attributions of meaning, which political movements could refer to. In this way, it could be argued that heroizations with religious connotations create unique spaces in which collective experiences and expectations can resonate. At the same time, such spaces are characterised by a particular concentration of communicative contacts and ideas, images and interpretations conveyed by ⟶media. In this sense, the connection between sacralisation and heroization should be understood as a communicative event that stimulates the discursive bundling of self-interpretations through reference points, projections and memories. But this never resulted in any stabilising unambiguity. The overlapping of heroizations and sacralisations led to idiosyncratic dynamics of interpretation and competition, and thus to polysemies which often escaped control.

3.5. Excercise of power

A further question that arises is whether the use of the sacred can enhance the latent potential of power inherent in the heroic and thus increase the dominance and oppression exercised over the individual. Even more so than heroization, sacralisation might be regarded as an instrument for establishing and exercising power. However, one must not equate claim and reality here, because the coupling of sacralisation and heroization has repeatedly led to ambiguous patterns of justifying and criticising power.²²For example Gölz, Olmo: “Khomeini’s Face is in the Moon. Limitations of Sacredness and the Origins of Sovereignty”. In: Heinzer, Felix / Leonhard, Jörn / von den Hoff, Ralf (Eds.): Sakralität und Heldentum. Würzburg 2017: Ergon, 229-244.

3.6. Ambivalences

Sacredly connoted manifestations of the heroic always contain aspects of the antithetical, even of resistance. They thus tend to reinforce the ambivalence that is always present in the field of heroism. Biblical as well as extra-biblical prophets and martyrs demand allegiance. However, because of the absoluteness of their claim, they also provoke rejection and resistance. Paradoxical as it may appear at first sight, it is precisely through the analysis of religious stylisations of heroic figures that, in contrast to an affirmative view of the hero, aspects of relativising distance, criticism and questioning are revealed.