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The article presents the summary of a conference that focused on King Louis the Pious' reign over the Carolingian Empire from 814 to 840. It was was held March 16-19, 2011 in Limoges, France. Topics under discussion included how the Holy Roman Emperor Louis the Pious dealt with pagans in his empire, the monastic reforms that Louis the Pious ordered in his kingdom, as well as the challenges presented by the invasion of the Normans in Louis the Pious's Frankish Empire.

The article seeks to develop a theoretical framework for interpreting social rituals and the notion of social and cultural imitation, specifically concerning the connections between religion, religious rituals and liturgy, and society. It draws on theories and scholarship from the fields of evolutionary biology, cognitive science, anthropology, social theory, and history. The model is developed with illustrative examples of Europe in the Middle Ages, especially reforms of religious practice and liturgy in the Carolingian Empire and the religious movement of the Cathars, and Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries, especially the Zulu-Christian syncretistic religious groups of the Nazareth Baptist Church of South Africa and the Church of Saints.

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