Abstract

The History of Religious Beliefs and Ideas represents the Eliadian opus magnum, as the Romanian scholar notes in the pages of his Journal. The work, published in three volumes, contains, from a historical perspective, the ideas about the sacred and the profane that Eliade developed in previous works from a phenomenological perspective. Although criticisms have been leveled at Mircea Eliade’s presentation of religious data in this monumental work, The History of Religious Beliefs and Ideas remains a point of reference for both the study of the history of religions and the analysis of Eliadian thought and contribution to the discipline.