IMC 2024: Sessions

This session explores how various fifth century writers and churchmen engaged with the concept of incorrect belief. The first paper (Dahm) seeks to provide a new interpretation of the Church History of Socrates, identifying how the author sought to highlight the ever-recurrent threat of heresy by drawing a circular link between controversies of his own time and the heresies of the previous century. The second paper (Duncan) demonstrates how Quodvultdeus utilised a heresiological interpretation of Christian history to create a lineage of ‘correct belief’ for the ‘Catholic’ Church, whilst simultaneously condemning those outside the church - separating wrong from right. The third paper (McCulloch) discusses how churchmen tackled the more practical issues surrounding wrong belief; namely, how might a bishop justify lending support to a theology declared orthodox at one church council, only for that same doctrine to be condemned as heretical at the next? This panel will catalogue the Late Antique fear of ever-encroaching heresy, attempts to categorise it and justify its denouncement, and finally the practical realities of such conversations.