Panel 3: The Pen and the Sword: Ruling through Words
Event Title
'Of the Wretched God of the Manichaeans': Archaeology of a Text
Location
Campus Center, Room 3545, University of Massachusetts Boston
Start Date
29-3-2014 9:00 AM
End Date
29-3-2014 10:30 AM
Description
The Albigensian Crusade (1209-1229) was among the bloodiest conflicts of the medieval period, and yet little is known about the rhetoric which compelled orthodox Christians in Languedoc to take up arms against the dissident Cathars. Scholarship on crusade preaching has focused primarily on sermons against Muslim occupation of the Levant, and studies which have focused on the domestic preaching campaigns for the Albigensian Crusade have tended to focus on the role of the Dominicans and the early development of the Inquisition. As a result, the important role of the Cistercians in preaching this crusade has been neglected. The Cistercians, however, offer a remarkable insight into the intersection of monastic intellectual culture and emerging scholastic thought, and the way in which those two traditions were combined to create powerful polemics against religious dissent.
This paper will address the way in which Cistercian monks at the Burgundian abbey of Pontigny in late-twelfth century constructed polemics against the Cathar dissidents in Languedoc. It will focus in particular on the Pontigny copy of Augustine’s Contra Faustum Manichaeum, a manuscript which contains hundreds of marginal notes which seek to interpret and clarify the text in a variety of ways. The main Augustinian text was copied in the late twelfth century, a period during which many monks of the Cistercian order were leaving their cloisters to preach against rapidly spreading dissident movements in the south of France. I argue that the marginal notes, probably written shortly after the copying of the manuscript itself, represent attempts to further understand the Augustinian text with the intent of constructing polemics against the Cathars. The themes drawn out by the notators of the Pontigny Contra Faustum will be compared with the theological discourse raised in other Cathar sermons, most of which have been reconstructed through secondary mentions of the sermons in chronicles, treatises, letters, statutes, exempla, and other sources. This project not only seeks to understand the Cistercian methods for writing sermons against dissidents, but also to further comprehend the ways in which the monks of Pontigny re-interpreted an important patristic text of late antiquity for contemporary audiences.
'Of the Wretched God of the Manichaeans': Archaeology of a Text
Campus Center, Room 3545, University of Massachusetts Boston
The Albigensian Crusade (1209-1229) was among the bloodiest conflicts of the medieval period, and yet little is known about the rhetoric which compelled orthodox Christians in Languedoc to take up arms against the dissident Cathars. Scholarship on crusade preaching has focused primarily on sermons against Muslim occupation of the Levant, and studies which have focused on the domestic preaching campaigns for the Albigensian Crusade have tended to focus on the role of the Dominicans and the early development of the Inquisition. As a result, the important role of the Cistercians in preaching this crusade has been neglected. The Cistercians, however, offer a remarkable insight into the intersection of monastic intellectual culture and emerging scholastic thought, and the way in which those two traditions were combined to create powerful polemics against religious dissent.
This paper will address the way in which Cistercian monks at the Burgundian abbey of Pontigny in late-twelfth century constructed polemics against the Cathar dissidents in Languedoc. It will focus in particular on the Pontigny copy of Augustine’s Contra Faustum Manichaeum, a manuscript which contains hundreds of marginal notes which seek to interpret and clarify the text in a variety of ways. The main Augustinian text was copied in the late twelfth century, a period during which many monks of the Cistercian order were leaving their cloisters to preach against rapidly spreading dissident movements in the south of France. I argue that the marginal notes, probably written shortly after the copying of the manuscript itself, represent attempts to further understand the Augustinian text with the intent of constructing polemics against the Cathars. The themes drawn out by the notators of the Pontigny Contra Faustum will be compared with the theological discourse raised in other Cathar sermons, most of which have been reconstructed through secondary mentions of the sermons in chronicles, treatises, letters, statutes, exempla, and other sources. This project not only seeks to understand the Cistercian methods for writing sermons against dissidents, but also to further comprehend the ways in which the monks of Pontigny re-interpreted an important patristic text of late antiquity for contemporary audiences.
Comments
PANEL 3 of the 2014 Graduate History Conference features presentations and papers under the topic of "The Pen and the Sword: Ruling through Words."