Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 To avoid evil: anti-heretical polemic
- 2 To retreat from sin: texts for edification
- 3 Who walks in shadow: the canon-legal perspective
- 4 High is the heart of man: inquisition texts
- 5 De heresi
- Appendix Perfecti as a term to denote heretics
- Bibliography
- Index
- YORK MEDIEVAL PRESS: PUBLICATIONS
Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 To avoid evil: anti-heretical polemic
- 2 To retreat from sin: texts for edification
- 3 Who walks in shadow: the canon-legal perspective
- 4 High is the heart of man: inquisition texts
- 5 De heresi
- Appendix Perfecti as a term to denote heretics
- Bibliography
- Index
- YORK MEDIEVAL PRESS: PUBLICATIONS
Summary
I once heard, said Stephen of Bourbon, about a heretic who used the Scriptures to preach his error. In this way, he was successful in converting a certain young man to his belief. Once he was sure of the youth's conversion, the heretic told him that, in fact, he did not believe the Gospels, nor indeed in any of the Scriptures that he expounded. Confused, the young man asked the heretic, why then did you preach them to me? The heretic responded that, as a bird catcher mimics the whistle, or the voice, of his prey in order to capture them because the sound of his own voice would frighten them away, so the heretics use the Bible in order to lure people from the Catholic faith.
The story appears in the vast collection of exempla written by Stephen in the middle years of the thirteenth century. It is a neat story, but with several overlapping layers, not all of which are immediately apparent. Most immediately, it presents a first-hand account: a heretic preaching his error to the people in an effort to win converts. His preaching, which is at the forefront of the story, would seem to depend at least initially on a use and exposition of the Catholic Scriptures for its support. That use of Scripture, though, is a more loaded image than it seems: first, it suggests literacy on the part of the heretic, and, secondly, it effectively constructs a pretended appearance for that heretic, and the idea that the public face of heresy is not the same as the one visible to the initiated.
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- Information
- Heresy and Heretics in the Thirteenth CenturyThe Textual Representations, pp. 1 - 12Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2011