The Great Heresies Frassati October 2017

Church History, 1999

Past & Present, 2009

The appeal of martyrs is grounded in their willingness to violate socio-cultural norms and, as a consequence, become extra-ordinary individuals. 1 Some early Christian theologians, such as Clement of Alexandria (d. c.215), believed that all faithful Christians would necessarily ...

Historický časopis, 2023

The study deals with the parts of the work of the Channadic bishop St. Gerard, Deliberatio supra hymnum trium puerorum, in which references to heretics and heresy appear. Gerard mentions the heresy in the broader context of their activities in church history, but he also writes about heretics of his own time, that is, the first half of the 11th century. In this thesis, I analyze Gerard's accounts of the heretics' myths, their teachings, and the heretics' criticisms of the church, church doctrines, and church rites. In the historiography, the heretics of Gerard's work are often identified with the Bogomils. I therefore compare Gerard's data on heretics with reports on bogomils from other sources, especially from the works as Sermon against the Bogomils by Cosmas the Priest, the Interrogatio Johannis, and from several Byzantine sources-the letters of Theophylact to the Bulgarian Tsar Peter, the monk Euthymius of the Convent of the Most Venerable Mother of God in Constantinople, and the letter of Euthymius Zigabenus. In the study I devote attention to the question whether Deliberatio proves the presence of Bogomils in Hungary already in the first half of the 11th century. I further address the question of the nature of the so-called pagan uprising, i.e. the social unrest of 1046 in Hungary, the possible participation of bogomils in the uprising, and the testimonial value of Deliberatio also to these important events of Hungarian history in the first half of the 11th century.

The Church and the Law. Studies in Church History Volume 56 eds., Rosamond McKitterick, Charlotte Methuen and Andrew Spicer , 2020

In contrast with contemporary heresiological discourse, the Codex Theodosianus - a Roman imperial lawcode promulgated in 438CE - makes no systematic gendered references to heretics or heresy. According to late Roman legislative rhetoric, heretics are demented, polluted and infected with pestilence - but they are not seductive temptresses, vulgar 'women', or weak-minded whores. This paper explores the gap between the precisely-marked terrain of Christian heresiologists and (Christian) legislators. Part I, 'Heresy becomes a woman', gives a brief overview of early Christian heresiology. Part II explores late Roman legislation and the construction of the heretic as a 'legal subject' in the Codex Theodosianus. Part III turns to the celebrated account, crafted by Pope Leo I of anti-manichaean trials at Rome (443/444 CE), arguing that they should be understood as part of a much broader, developing, regime of ecclesial power - rather than as concrete applications of existing imperial anti-heresy laws.

Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 2010

Truman State University Press, 2006

2019

Most studies of Donatism tend to focus on its seemingly binary struggle with the other major expression of the Christian faith in North Africa, the Caecilianist church. And for good reason: the majority of our surviving primary sources on the movement are direct products of the polemical war that raged between the two communions. Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to simply characterize the struggle as binary in nature. Like their Caecilianist counterparts, Donatist writers are in fact concerned with a whole range of sub-orthodox beliefs that characterized their own age, including Montanism, the rhetorical construct that passed as “Arianism” in North Africa, and above all Mani. In this presentation, I will focus on the ways in which heretics outside the Caecilianist communion are addressed within Donatist writings. In doing so, I believe we can discover two important points about the dissident communion. First, Donatist concerns about heresy illustrate the fact that the movement was more well-rounded than we often give it credit for: far from merely fighting for its life against Caecilianist opponents, it was actively concerned with other threats to the life of the church. In particular, anti-Manichaean hysteria appears to have been as widespread among Donatist Christians as their Caecilianist counterparts. Second, understanding the perception of heresy within the Donatist communion may help us navigate the tricky question of how Donatists understood the phenomenon of Caecilianism itself. Several texts illustrate that one concern that Donatists had about Caecilianist baptismal theology was its troubling tendency to accept Manichaean baptisms as valid. Whether these anxieties are real or polemically-convenient, they illustrate the relevance of the wider concept of heresy to the Donatist-Caecilianist debate.