Politics and Prayer

During the Sung, local elites began to honor eminent and morally worthy men connected with their area by erecting shrines to them. By discussing the identity of these former worthies, the reasons for their enshrinement, the nature of the shrines, the identity of their builders, the forms of rituals performed at the shrines, and the relationship of these shrines to other religious practices in the Sung, Neskar argues that the shrines were sites not only of religious reverence but also of political dissent and debate and of contention over literati learning. The shrines to former worthies reflected changing elite concerns, behavior patterns, and self-conceptions even as they embodied and promoted a vision of literate virtue particular to shrine builders and commemorators.