Heresy In Transition

The concept of heresy is deeply rooted in Christian European culture. The palpable increase in incidences of heresy in the Middle Ages may be said to directly relate to the Christianity's attempts to define orthodoxy and establish conformity at its centre, resulting in the sometimes forceful elimination of Christian sects. In the transition from medieval to early modern times, however, the perception of heresy underwent a profound transformation, ultimately leading to its decriminalization and the emergence of a pluralistic religious outlook. The essays in this volume offer readers a unique insight into this little-understood cultural shift. Half of the chapters investigate the manner in which the church and its attendant civil authorities defined and proscribed heresy, whilst the other half focus on the means by which early modern writers sought to supersede such definition and proscription. The result of these investigations is a multifaceted historical account of the construction and serial reconstruction of one of the key categories of European theological, juristic and political thought. The contributors explore the role of nationalism and linguistic identity in constructions of heresy, its analogies with treason and madness, the role of class and status in the responses to heresy. In doing so they provide fascinating insights into the roots of the historicization of heresy and the role of this historicization in the emergence of religious pluralism.

The concept of heresy is deeply rooted in Christian European culture. The palpable increase in incidences of heresy in the Middle Ages may be said to directly relate to the Christianity's attempts to define orthodoxy and establish conformity at its centre, resulting in the sometimes forceful elimination of Christian sects. In the transition from medieval to early modern times, however, the perception of heresy underwent a profound transformation, ultimately leading to its decriminalization and the emergence of a pluralistic religious outlook. The essays in this volume offer readers a unique insight into this little-understood cultural shift. Half of the chapters investigate the manner in which the church and its attendant civil authorities defined and proscribed heresy, whilst the other half focus on the means by which early modern writers sought to supersede such definition and proscription. The result of these investigations is a multifaceted historical account of the construction and serial reconstruction of one of the key categories of European theological, juristic and political thought. The contributors explore the role of nationalism and linguistic identity in constructions of heresy, its analogies with treason and madness, the role of class and status in the responses to heresy. In doing so they provide fascinating insights into the roots of the historicization of heresy and the role of this historicization in the emergence of religious pluralism.

Why the Church must defend the truth. Our ongoing fascination with alternative Christianities is on display every time a never-before-seen gospel text is revealed, an archaeological discovery about Jesus makes front-page news, or a new work of fiction challenges the very foundations of the church. Now, in a timely corrective to this trend, renowned church historian Alister McGrath examines the history of subversive ideas, overturning common misconceptions that heresy is somehow more spiritual or liberating than traditional dogma. In so doing, he presents a powerful, compassionate orthodoxy that will equip the church to meet the challenge from renewed forms of heresy today.

Exhaustively surveying all known cases of academic condemnation at Oxford, including several never studied before, this book seeks to establish the institutional mechanisms and factors that led the university to condemn scholars and their theories.

An edited collection of letters, chronicles, and sermons written, in the main, by clerics and other highly placed church officials during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. R.I. Moore uses them to analyse the beginning and development of popular heresy.

This concise and balanced survey of heresy and inquisition in the Middle Ages examines the dynamic interplay between competing medieval notions of Christian observance, tracing the escalating confrontations between piety, reform, dissent, and Church authority between 1100 and 1500. Jennifer Kolpacoff Deane explores the diverse regional and cultural settings in which key disputes over scripture, sacraments, and spiritual hierarchies erupted, events increasingly shaped by new ecclesiastical ideas and inquisitorial procedures. Incorporating recent research and debates in the field, her analysis brings to life a compelling issue that profoundly influenced the medieval world.

Giovanni Boccaccio devoted the last decades of his life to compiling encyclopedic works in Latin. Among them is this text, the first collection of biographies in Western literature devoted to women.

From the high Middle Ages to the late Middle Ages, heresy evolved from individual outbreaks to more widespread movements. Accused heretics were often motivated by the same concerns as movements that found acceptance within the church, such as a zeal to live the apostolic life. This book explores the growing sense of Christian identity as it developed in agreement with and opposition to closely affiliated groups in the Middle Ages. It documents the development of the idea of heresy, and it listens to the voices that shaped official and unofficial theologies. Developing manuals of heresy and elaborate trial procedures spanning both canon law and secular justice, the church defined religion and religious life more tightly and regulated praxis. Considering nine heretical movements of the Middle Ages, starting with the Petrobrusians and finally ending with the Hussites and late medieval witchcraft, this book examines the shifting line constructed between heresy and orthodoxy, and how the saint and the heretic were often responding in similar ways to the same motivations. Through its investigations, this book considers the reasons for inclusion and exclusion of these various groups and the impact of the development of this heresy-routing apparatus on medieval Christianity's self-identity.