Abstract

During the first half of the 18th century, court-orientated scholarship helped shape a concept of,,ceremony“ that had a great impact on religious practices in a number of ways: First, this scholarship itself fostered a,,politicization“ of church services by subjugating them to the criteria of decorum and political utility. Second, in analogy to courtly ceremonies, church service was understood as a sign of reverence aiming to win grace. A critical religious philosophy, blaming this understanding for superstitious cult practices, foreclosed the full development of an ethical understanding of ceremony that was already recognizable in the philosophical foundations of the older ceremonial sciences. At the end of the century such an understanding continued to be pursued only within the context of justifying Jewish ceremonial law.