| Paper 232-c | Bogomils of Constantinople Held Up to the Light by Gottfried Arnold, 12th Century
(Language: English)
Dick van Niekerk, Independent Scholar, Goirle
Index terms: Byzantine Studies, Ecclesiastical History, Religious Life, Theology |
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| Abstract | Paper -a:
This paper examines the efforts made by the Byzantine Emperor, Manuel I, to force the return of his cousin, Andronikos, from the Crusader States of Antioch and Jerusalem to face imperial justice. This provides insight into the wider state of relations between Byzantium and Antioch during the second half of the 1160s. The specific desire of Manuel to inflict blinding as a punishment is also revealing on the role of punishments and the legal system in self-identity in the medieval world and in the importance of the 'other' in the development of group identity.
Paper -b:
This paper looks at an important, but underexplored, aspect of the uprising of 1381, namely the fate of those rebels after the failure of their cause. Based on the comprehensive sources concerning a local revolt in Cambridgeshire and the Isle of Ely, this paper first examines how the government's suppressive measures impacted on rebels' lives in the localities and discovers that they in general acted with a surprising degree of restraint. This paper also investigates how those rebels reacted towards the suppression and finds that instead of being absolutely meek and compliant, they resisted and struggled for survival by various means. Finally it describes that the rebels who survived benefited from personal and collective royal pardons that removed their criminality.
Paper -c:
The Bogomils of Constantinople get a surprising 'other' place in the medieval history of Christianity in the famous book Impartial History of the Churches and Heresies (1699-1700) of the German church historian Gottfried Arnold (1666-1714). In the description of the story of Emperor Alexeios - questioning the Bogomilian leader Basileos - the author has full sympathy for the last. Not the condemned men and women are guilty, but the condemning persons. Not the Bogomils are 'the others', but the Orthodox persecutors. The Orthodox dignitaries become true heretics and alleged heretics true Christians. The Swiss Jan Konrad Fuessli would imitate later Arnold's pioneering work in his New Impartial History of the Churches and Heresies (1770-1772).
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