Violence and the Construction of the Heretical Identity in the Cistercian Anti-Heretical Discourse

• Autoři: NOUTSOU Stamatia
• Rok publikování: 2015
• Druh: Další prezentace na konferencích
• Fakulta / Pracoviště MU: Filozofická fakulta
• Popis: The aim of this paper, which is a part of my PhD research on the issue of the Cistercian attitudes towards violence against the religious dissidence, is to examine the interplay between the way that the Cistercian monks perceived the heretics and their approaches on the violent persecution of the religious dissidents. The question of the medieval heretical identities and the way that was constructed in the polemic tetxts has been a subject of much scholarly research. In this framework the the work of Herbertrt Grundmann, was very influential, as he analyzed the rhetorical topoi (Sackville 2011: 4) of the medieval anti-heretical texts and the stereotype of the medieval heretic as it was embodied in the same texts (Grundmann 1927). Another important aspect of the research on the heretical identities is the notion of the “construction” of the heretical identity as it was presented by the works of R. I. Moore (Moore 1987). Very briefly, after investigating the persecution of the heretics, the Jews and the lepers Moore’s main point is that those who were in power in the twelfth century “shaped the ‘reality’ of what they so genuinely feared” (Pegg 2010) and constructed a view of heresy in order to reinforce their own power and control in the society (Moore 1987: 116-143). In the context, the collection of articles under the title Inventer l’hérésie? explores the same question of the construction of heresy (Zerner 1998) with the tendency to reject the concept heresy as being a merely textual reality, used by the ecclesiastical writers to attack their opponents (Moore 1998: 266). More recently, studies in the medieval inquisition focusing on issues of power, analyzed also the relation between the inquisitors and the heretical identity. (Given 1997, Arnold 2001) Regarding the Cistercian anti- heretical discourse, B. Kienzle (Kienzle 2001: 10-12) analyzed in her study how the Cistercians fought heresy by reconstructing the Cistercian preaching against the religious dissidents and by reconstructing the Cistercian preaching and writing against heretics in order to find the underlying rhetorical pattern. While Kienzle’s aim is to deconstruct the anti-heretical texts in order to “determine the underlying patters and how the writers characterized the dissidents” (Kienzle 2001: 13), I will focus on the question how the particular heretical identity that the Cistercians constructed was influenced or influence their attitudes towards the violent persecution. Building on the results of the recent studies, in this paper I will analyze the anti-heretical discourse in the writings of two specific Cistercian monks, in order to find how the heretical identity was modified in the crucial years before the Albigensian Crusade. One of the questions, that will posed, is how the changes in the attitude towards the violent persecution of the heretics were mirrored in the way that the Cistercian monks constructed the heretical identity and the way that the changes in the understanding of the heretics influenced the actions of the Cistercians. In order to do that I will analyze the writings of the Caesarius of Heisterbach and more particular, the passages referring to violence. How the use of violence is justified by the picture of the heretics that the Cistercian author constructed? This is the first question that will be posed. The second step of this inquire will be to compare this author with previous Cistercians attitudes towards both violence and heretical understanding, as they were expressed Bernard of Clairvaux' anti- heretical discourse, in order to find how the heretical identity was modified from the first Cistercian endeavor against heresy (Bernard's mission in 1145) to the beginning of the Albigensian Crusade.