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IMC 2009: Sessions

Session 1615: The Power of Discourse: The Old and the New in the Hussite Reformation, IV - From Iconoclasm to Persuasion through Art - Visual and Rhetorical Means in Religious Polemics in the Bohemian Reformation

Thursday 16 July 2009, 11.15-12.45

Sponsor:Centrum Medievistických Studií, Praha
Organiser:Kateřina Horníčková, Department of Medieval Studies, Central European University, Budapest / Centrum Medievistických Studií, Praha
Moderator/Chair:Kateřina Horníčková, Department of Medieval Studies, Central European University, Budapest / Centrum Medievistických Studií, Praha
Paper 1615-aBattle for the Minds: Hussite and Anti-Hussite Strategies of Persuasion
(Language: English)
Marcela K. Perett, Medieval Institute, University of Notre Dame
Index terms: Language and Literature - Slavic, Rhetoric, Sermons and Preaching
Paper 1615-bMemory, Politics, and Identity: Images and Holy Relics after the Hussite Wars
(Language: English)
Kateřina Horníčková, Department of Medieval Studies, Central European University, Budapest / Centrum Medievistických Studií, Praha
Index terms: Art History - Decorative Arts, Art History - Painting, Lay Piety, Liturgy
Abstract

The main question of this session is which ways and arts of strategies of persuasion were developed during the first years of Hussite revolution after 1419, what earlier concepts were behind them and how these worked. The first paper explores the literary and rhetorical strategies of persuasion used by the Hussites and their opponents to gain supports among the laity in 15th-century Bohemia. The second paper analyses the phenomenon of the Hussite destruction of religious images as mass attack of the uneducated crowds against the same images, which were normally venerated as privileged sites of direct access to the holy. Third paper deals with the problem of the persuasion through objects and artworks. They were used either to promote political and religious agenda to win over the faithful back to Catholicism, or, on the other hand, to accentuate specific features of Utraquist own religious identity.