This collection of essays explores how early modern authors, artists, and thinkers engaged with religious practices across cultures through ceremonial performance and visual representation. Using Bernard and Picart’s monumental Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde (1723–1743) as its focal point, the chapters examine how rituals were observed, described, and imagined as vital expressions of belief and identity. Drawing on art history, religious studies, and performance studies, contributors reveal how these depictions both reflected cultural difference and anticipated later anthropological inquiry. The volume situates these insights within broader historical and intellectual contexts, highlighting performance and proto-anthropology as central to understanding religion in the early modern world.

Contributors incliude: Steff Nellis, Pascale Rihouet, Paola Von Wyss-Giacosa, Matthieu Somon, Daniel Purdy, Margaret E. Mansfield, Nicolás Kwiatkowski, Ianka Huygen, Andreas Kwanten, Fleur Syryn, Marthe Theunissen, Jules De Bruycker, and Alexander McCargar