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IMC 2023: Sessions

Session 1706: Texts and the Repression of Medieval Heresy: Twenty Years After, III

Thursday 6 July 2023, 14.15-15.45

Sponsor:Centre for the 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:Robert Shaw, Oriel College, University of Oxford
Paper 1706-aRebels, Idolaters, Heretics: The Stedinger at a Conjunction of Discourses
(Language: English)
František Novotný, Department for the Study of Religions, Masarykova univerzita, Brno
Index terms: Ecclesiastical History, Social History, Theology
Paper 1706-bThe Spatial Diffusion of Witchcraft Accusations: The Case of Vaud, 1440-1461
(Language: English)
Larissa de Freitas Lyth, Departamento de História, Universidade Federal do Paraná, Brazil
Index terms: Ecclesiastical History, Geography and Settlement Studies, Mentalities, Social History
Paper 1706-cWritings of the Bosnian Vicar Bartholomew of La Verna and Repression of the Krstjani in 1459-60
(Language: English)
Paweł Cholewicki, Department of Medieval Studies, Central European University, Budapest
Index terms: Ecclesiastical History, Monasticism, Politics and Diplomacy, Religious Life
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.