« Heresy from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages »

« Heresy from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages »

Saturday 14 March 2015, 11am-5pm
TORCH Seminar Room, Radcliffe Humanities, Woodstock Road, Oxford

The past few decades have seen a burgeoning scholarly interest in heresy in early and medieval Christianity. Research on Christian heresy and its representation (‘heresiology’) has proliferated, in particular, in two periods: late antiquity and the later middle ages. However, despite deriving inspiration from similar trends in modern cultural theory and critical historical analysis, these two fields of scholarship have developed largely in isolation from one another. This workshop seeks to bring together historians working on heresy across the late-antique and medieval periods, to consider how and why heresy (or its representation) might change over time and in different contexts, and to think through the possibilities of common (or indeed divergent) approaches.

To register, or for more information, e-mail Robin Whelan (robin.whelan@history.ox.ac.uk). A sandwich lunch is available; please request it on registration and supply any dietary requirements. Thanks are due to the Oxford Centre for Late Antiquity and the Oxford Medieval Studies Network for their generous support.

11:00 Registration and Welcome

11:15 Session 1: Chair: Antonia Fitzpatrick (St John’s)
Richard Flower (Exeter) ‘The birth of scientific heresiology in late antiquity’
Jill Moore (Birkbeck) ‘Set a thief to catch a thief? Family experience of heresy among thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Italian inquisitors’

12:45 Lunch

13:45 Session 2: Chair: Phil Booth (Trinity)
Liz Mincin (St Andrews) ‘Curing the common soul: reexamining the heresiological motif of disease in Middle Byzantium’
Ali Bonner (Jesus) ‘The reception of Pelagius and interactionist theory’

15:15 Coffee

15:45 Session 3: Chair: Robin Whelan (TORCH/Brasenose)
Lucy Sackville (York) ‘The great divide: inquisition texts and the history of heresy’

Plenary Discussion
Conrad Leyser (Worcester) and Kantik Ghosh (Trinity)