European Social Science History Conference, Belfast 2018
Network “Family and Demography”

A forgotten spiritual kinship? Confirmation, confirmands and their confirmation godparents
(16th-21st centuries)
 
Organizers: Cristina Munno (Université de Louvain-La-Neuve, Belgium), Vincent Gourdon (CNRS, Paris, France), Guido Alfani (Università Bocconi, Milano, Italy).

In some Christian denominations, and especially Catholicism, baptism was not the only sacrament able to establish ties of spiritual kinship between individuals or families. The candidates for Confirmation, called Confirmands, were supposed to receive this sacrament from their bishop, with the spiritual help of a “sponsor”, a confirmation godparent. If theologians and religious authorities tended to consider “appropriate to emphasize the unity of the two sacraments” [baptism and confirmation] by designating as confirmation sponsor “one of the baptismal godparents” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, art. 1311), we can doubt that these recommendations were strictly followed by the populations in the past. As for baptismal godparenthood, we may think that other social and familial goals were playing a more important role when choosing the confirmation sponsor, thus creating a new spiritual kinship and a ritually recognized social relationship. Moreover the great change taking place in theological interpretation of this sacrament could influence the individual and collective uses of these spiritual ties.
This session organized by the Patrinus network aims to explore this new topic which has been dramatically underexplored until now in comparison to baptismal godparenthood. Contributions studying models of confirmation godparenthood in Europe or America and the selection of confirmation godparents, their evolution or diversity across time and space, are welcome.
 
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