Walter POHL – Andre GINGRICH (Eds.)
medieval worlds • no. 7 • 2018
VERGING ON THE POLEMICAL: EXPLORING THE BOUNDARIES OF MEDIEVAL RELIGIOUS POLEMIC ACROSS GENRES AND RESEARCH CULTURES
Justine L. Trombley
S. 137 - 152
doi:
10.1553/medievalworlds_no7_2018s137
Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften
doi:
10.1553/medievalworlds_no7_2018s137
Abstract:
This article examines the style and rhetoric of a fourteenth-century treatise written against the condemned mystical work The Mirror of Simple Souls. The treatise addresses thirty-five extracts from the Mirror which are refuted as errors. Rather than merely a list of erroneous propositions, the text is a polemical narrative which employs various genres and literary styles from the canon of anti-heretical writings. The article notes how these various genres are combined to produce a comprehensive condemnation of the Mirror, and examines the rhetoric used to address it. The text is shown to go beyond merely refuting the Mirror’s doctrine. It also personifies the text by connecting it to the broader concept of heresy through the use of standard tropes that are usually used to describe the person of the generalised »heretic«. This makes it unique in the history of the Mirror’s reception, and shows how an anonymous text was assessed and characterised with tactics more often applied to human agents, rather than texts.
polemic; anti-heretical texts; Marguerite Porete; The Mirror of Simple Souls; heresy; condemned texts; textual refutation
Published Online:
2018/06/29 15:07:25
Document Date:
2018/06/29 15:02:00
Object Identifier:
0xc1aa5572 0x00390b16
Rights:All rights reserved.For questions regarding copyright and copies please contact us by email.
MEDIEVAL WORLDS provides a new forum for interdisciplinary and transcultural studies of the Middle Ages. Specifically it encourages and links comparative research between different regions and fields and promotes methodological innovation in transdisciplinary studies. Focusing on the Middle Ages (c. 400-1500 CE, but can be extended whenever thematically fruitful or appropriate), MEDIEVAL WORLDS takes a global approach to studying history in a comparative setting.
MEDIEVAL WORLDS is open to regular submissions on comparative topics, but also offers the possibility to propose or advertise subjects that lend themselves to comparison. With a view to connecting people working on related topics in different academic environments, we publish calls for matching articles and for contributions on particular issues.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Verging on the Polemical: Towards an Interdisciplinary Approach to Medieval Religious Polemic
Sita Steckel
Escalations and/in the Different Contexts of Polemical Engagements
Anti-Jewish Polemics in Business Documents from Late Medieval Austria
Birgit Wiedl
Good and Bad Friars: Polemical Patterns and Strategies between Franciscans in the Early Fourteenth Century
Melanie Brunner
Obediencia, reformatio and veritas: Ecclesiological Debates during the Western Great Schism (1378-1417)
Bénédicte Sère
Polemics Investigated in a Late Fifteenth-Century Fastnachtspiel (Shrovetide Play)
Claudia Daiber
Embedding and Disembedding Polemical Texts
The Text as Heretic: Mixed Genres and Polemical Techniques in a Refutation of the Mirror of Simple Souls
Justine Trombley
Transfers of Anti-Waldensian Material from a Polemical Treatise to a Didactic Text
Reima Välimäki
Magistra magistrorum: Hildegard of Bingen as a Polemicist against False Teaching
Andra Alexiu
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