The Values of Intangible Religious Heritage Through the Lens of UNESCO

This chapter complements the previous one by providing a complete overview of the issues related to religious heritage. Starting from the concept of Representativeness, it is important to clarify that the standardisation and objectivisation of religious heritage clashes with the genesis of intangible religious heritage, which is made up of subjective and sensitive values. In line with the main treaties recently adopted by UNESCO in the field of intangible heritage, the chapter devotes much attention to the implicit link between intangible and tangible religious heritage in “non-conventional ways”: indeed, this is an under-explored area that requires further investigation. More specifically, the instrumental relationship between intangible elements of religious heritage sites and Outstanding Universal Value with specific identity, cultural and political characteristics and impacts is investigated. The consequences of such an instrumental relationship are relevant, though not yet understood and studied by scholars from this new angle. In this regard, the role of traditions, myths, rituals, pilgrimages and processions, iconography, religious architecture and liturgies is associated with an eternal past rooted in and drawn from that specific religious place. It is this particular relationship that grounds the continuity between the past and the future of a political entity, whether or not internationally recognised by the community of states.