medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Dear colleagues,
Below please find a CFP for 50th International Congress on Medieval
Studies, Kalamazoo, May 14-17, 2015
Religious Persecution and Heretical Identities in Medieval Europe
Intensification of religious persecution in the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries, especially of the persecution of heretics, ushered in a new
understanding of religious 'otherness.' Defined through anti-heretical
polemics, inquisitorial manuals, papal decrees, and urban regulations,
religious beliefs became associated with particular external signs and
behaviors. Multiple tropes perpetuated from one generation of
anti-heretical texts to the next, speak of heretical violence,
secretiveness, sexual and social abnormality, in an attempt to portray
heretics as dangerous and intolerable. In other words, heretical
identities created an inexorable link between belief and behavior in order
to facilitate detection and prosecution of heterodoxy. Over time, this
understanding became internalized by the persecuted groups, influencing
their own understanding of licit and illicit behavior and belief.
Simultaneously, this junction of internal and outward signs of heresy was
also contested through competing claims on religious truth and by attempts
to discipline heretics or incorporate them back into orthodox communities.
As a result of these contesting definitions, medieval heresy emerged as a
polysemic category, constantly negotiated and modified by the persecutors
and the persecuted alike.
The panel, "Religious Persecution and Heretical Identities in Medieval
Europe" proposes to look at a variety of ways in which understandings of
heretical identities were framed, modified, and shared by the parties
involved. By inviting papers that focus on different geographical and
cultural contexts over the course of the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries, this panel hopes to problematize the construction of heretical
identity—and identity in general—over time and to examine the levels of
communal and institutional agency involved in this process. The panel will
draw attention to the ways, in which religious difference was understood
and negotiated by ecclesiastical and secular authorities, and by the
persecuted groups, and the extent to which this process affected their
actions and beliefs. The panel also seeks to complicate current
understanding of the role persecutions of heresy played in institutional
contests over space and authority, in a variety of settings. We are
particularly interested in bringing together papers, which approach the
idea of religious heterodoxy from a wide spectrum of perspectives, borne
out of an analysis of inquisitorial manuals, medieval intellectual
debates, popular religion, and urban religious culture.
Please send your abstract, along with the participant information form
(which can be found
here:
http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/congress/submissions/index.html#Paper), to
Eugene Smelyansky at [log in to unmask] by September 15, 2014. All proposals
received but not accepted will be forwarded to the Medieval Institute, so
that they may be considered for inclusion in the General Sessions.
-------------------------------------
Eugene Smelyansky,
PhD Candidate, History Department,
University of California, Irvine
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