Religious studies

The fifteenth entry is il sincretismo, and its own history is odder than anything it describes. Behind it stands the Greek synkrētismós, and Plutarch is the writer who takes it apart for us. The Cretans, he says, quarrelled among themselves without pause, yet the moment an outsider attacked the island they dropped every quarrel and stood together; that closing of ranks was what the word named. The pieces are syn-, together, and the name of Crete itself. So the first picture holds no religion whatever, and no mixing either: it is an alliance of enemies. Erasmus brought the word back in exactly that sense, holding the Cretans up to scholars who were tearing one another apart, and only afterwards did it drift towards what it says today, the joining of elements that arrived from different places. One consequence is worth carrying into this list. In English, « syncretism » is very often a reproach, a polite way of saying that a tradition has been watered down. Il sincretismo here carries no such verdict: it reports where the pieces came from, and stops.