IMC 2023: Sessions

Session 1506: Texts and the Repression of Medieval Heresy: Twenty Years After, I

Thursday 6 July 2023, 09.00-10.30

Sponsor:	Centrum pro digitální výzkum náboženství / Dissident Networks Project (DISSINET), Masarykova univerzita, Brno
Organisers:	Robert Shaw, Oriel College, University of Oxford David Zbíral, Department for the Study of Religions, Masarykova univerzita, Brno
Moderator/Chair:	David Zbíral, Department for the Study of Religions, Masarykova univerzita, Brno
Paper 1506-a	'Sub vestimentis ovium lupus rapax': Shaping the Image of Heretics in the Early Sources on Heresy in the West, c. 1000-1150 (Language: English) Lidia Hinz-Wieczorek, Wydział Historii, Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza, Poznań Index terms: Biblical Studies, Ecclesiastical History, Social History, Theology
Paper 1506-b	The Repression of Heresy in Medieval Confessors' Guides: The Case of Alan of Lille's Liber Poenitentialis (Language: English) Anne Greule, Historische Institut, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena Index terms: Biblical Studies, Ecclesiastical History, Mentalities, Theology
Paper 1506-c	Heresy Constructed and Heresy Denied in Texts: The Case of Hussite Radicalism (Language: English) Pavlína Libichová Cermanová, Centre for Medieval Studies, Czech Academy of Sciences, Praha Index terms: Biblical Studies, Ecclesiastical History, Rhetoric, Social History
Abstract	The publication of Texts and the Repression of Medieval Heresy, edited by Caterina Bruschi and Peter Biller (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2003), underlined a key development in modern scholarship on medieval religious dissent: the understanding that texts - inquisition trial records and manuals, learned treatises, chronicles, and other histories, etc - not only furnish our knowledge of 'heresies', but themselves played a critical role in the shaping and instrumentalising reactions to them. Twenty years on from the publication of this influential volume, this panel seeks to take a still broader perspective on the importance of texts for the framing and attempted suppression of dissidence. It will take in not only the writings associated with persecuting authorities but also those of the persecuted themselves. It will also expand the temporal and thematic scope of discussion, featuring research related to all periods of the Middle Ages and addressing not only the most well-known medieval heresies (e.g. Catharism and Waldensianism) but also the more obscure, as well as the closely related matter of witchcraft and its persecution.