“Augustine of Hippo Refuting Heretic,” (Illuminated manuscript, thirteenth century, from Morgan Library, New York, M. 92, ©Morgan Library)
Making Selves and Marking Others: Heresy and Self-Definition in Late Antiquity
Colloquium at Princeton University, Department of Religion, January 16-18, 2005
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“Augustine of Hippo Refuting Heretic,” (Illuminated manuscript, thirteenth century, from Morgan Library, New York, M. 92, ©Morgan Library) |
This colloquium will explore the ways in which late antique groups and communities defined their own socio-political borders and created secure in-group identities by means of discourses about “heresy” and “heretics.” At the same time, we will examine how such discourses could serve to regulate interaction and deflect attention away from unwanted connections between groups. On the one hand, proximity of conflict often adds to its perceived danger, such that many late antique groups (and particularly those with strong and exclusivist truth-claims) responded fiercely to competing claims at the borders of their own identities. On the other hand, representations of “heresy” frequently fall in between the familiar and the foreign, between the repression of acknowledged cultural transgressions such as “magic” and the marginalization of more “alien” religious formations.
In our view, new scholarly approaches to “heresy” and “heretics” enable us better to understand the dynamics of group definition in Late Antiquity. We thus invite contributors to consider the different functions of “heresy”-making discourse, as a simultaneous process of perceiving, describing and disqualifying groups of (re)imagined dissenters, often by branding them with labels such as “Sons of Darkness,” “eclectic Philosophers,” “Heretics,” “Minim,” “Christians,” “Jews,” “Gnostics,” or “Manichees.”
“Gratian, Decretum: Causa 23, Heretics Suppressed,” (Illuminated manuscript, thirteenth century, from Stiftsbibliothek, Admont, lat.9) |
The colloquium will combine presentations from all pertinent fields that reconsider the phenomenon of “heresy” in late Antiquity in the broadest possible scope. Topics of particular interest include [1] examples of the ways in which late antique groups defined themselves as righteous, pious, truthful and wise, in the process of marking imagined communities as vicious, perverted, or laughable by contrast; [2] cases when authors or groups sought to prevent dangerous encounters by describing the “other” in highly conventionalized terms established through heresiological traditions and the creation of clichés and stock characters; and [3] cases when heresy-making discourses effectively “push with the left and bring in with the right,” in as far as the proclamation of a radical divorce from “heretics” allowed for a domestication of their ideas and practices. |
“Ambrose of Milan Expelling Jews or Arians,” (Illuminated manuscript, fifteenth century, from Morgan Library, New York, M. 672-5, ©Morgan Library |
List of Speakers
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“Carinus the Heretic Raises Notched Sword and Plunges Dagger into the Back of Peter Martyr” (Illuminated manuscript, thirteenth century, from Morgan Library, New York, M. 72, ©Morgan Library) |
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“A Jew and Five Christians Pray to God,” (Woodcut, fifteenth century, The Illustrated Bartsch, vol. 84) |
The conference will be held January 16-18, 2005, at Bobst Hall, 83 Prospect Avenue, Princeton, New Jersey. Click here for detailed map or PDF.
Conference organized by Peter Schäfer, Holger Zellentin, and Eduard Iricinschi, sponsored by the Department of Religion, the Program in Judaic Studies, the Program in the Ancient World, and the Group Study of Late Antiquity at Princeton University.
Admission is free. For organizational purposes, please send an email to Holger Zellentin or Eduard Iricinschi if you plan to attend.
Parking, Hotel and Motel Accommodations
