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Documents recording the interrogation of sixteen women and the nature of their unusual spiritual practices, now available in a full edition and, for the first time, a full English translation. In September 1332, in the town of Świdnica, an important economic and communication centre of what was then Silesia, a group of sixteen women stood before the Dominican inquisitor, John of Schwenkenfeld, to testify about the local community of beguines, who called themselves the Hooded Sisters or the Daughters of Odelindis. We are fortunate that the original records of this heresy interrogation have survived, preserved as a notarial instrument drawn up shortly afterwards, eventually transferred to the...
The volume unites conversations with four masters of Medieval Studies from east-central Europe: János Bak from Hungary, Jerzy Kłoczowski from Poland, František Šmahel from the Czech Republic, and Herwig Wolfram from Austria. The interviews, made by younger colleagues, reveal engaging life stories, with numerous observations, anecdotes and experiences. The four scholars grew up before and during the war, under Nazi occupation, emerged as young scholars in the difficult post-war period, and, for most of their careers worked in the shadow of the Iron Curtain, two of them spending most of their lifetimes under communist regimes. The conversations focus on ways in which open-minded young inte...
This book reexamines the origins and growth of the medieval inquisition which provided a framework for the large-scale operations against religious dissidents. In the last quarter of the twelfth century, the papacy launched concerted efforts to hunt out heretics, mostly Cathars and Waldensians, and directed operations against them all across Latin Christendom. The bull of Pope Lucius III Ad abolendam of 1184 became a turning point in the formation of the inquisitorial system which made both the clergy and the laity responsible for suppressing any religious dissent. From a comparative perspective, the study analyzes political, social and religious developments which in the High Middle Ages gave birth to the mechanism of repression and religious violence supervised by the papacy and operated by bishops and, starting from the 1230s, papal inquisitors, extraordinary judges delegate staffed mostly by Dominican and Franciscan friars.
Teresa Pac provides a much-needed contribution to the discussion on shared culture as foundational to societal survival. Through the examination of common culture as a process in medieval Kraków, Poznań, and Lublin, Pac challenges the ideology of difference—institutional, religious, ethnic, and nationalistic. Similarly, Pac maintains, twenty-first century Polish leaders utilize anachronistic approaches in the invention of Polish Catholic identity to counteract the country’s increasing ethnic and religious diversity. As in the medieval period, contemporary Polish political and social elites subscribe to the European Union’s ideology of difference, legitimized by a European Christian heritage, and its intended basis for discrimination against non-Christians and non-white individuals under the auspices of democratic values and minority rights, among which Muslims are a significant target.