The Sacred and the Profane

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Overview

The Sacred and the Profane by the Romanian historian of religion Mircea Eliade, published in 1957, argues that religious people experience the world as divided between sacred and profane, and that the sacred shows itself in particular places, times and objects. The book is short and introduces ideas about sacred space, sacred time, nature and myth. It matters because it shaped the phenomenological study of religion and gave many readers a vocabulary for talking about how religion structures experience.

Context

Eliade was born in 1907, studied in Romania and India, and later taught in Chicago. He wrote the book in the years after the Second World War, when scholars sought to understand religion on its own terms. It first appeared in German in 1957 and was translated into English in 1959. His earlier political associations in Romania are a subject of scholarly discussion.