Seminar: “By Night They Fly: Demonic Transports of Heretics Amidst Transmission of Later Medieval Imagination”
František Novotný (Mellon Fellow, PIMS)
This lecture will present an argument about the connection between heresiology and demonology in central and later medieval exempla. It starts with four examples of sources which mention or hint toward a motif unusual for medieval heresiology: Marvellous transport of the heretics to remote places with demonic aid. I will argue that these mentions likely appeared in the sources not because of one-sided application of heresiological stereotypes “from above” during inquisitorial trials, but rather due to mutual exchanges of motifs between learned-literary and popular-oral spheres of imagination. Subsequently I will put emphasis on the conjunction between heresiology and demonology in central- and later medieval exempla and sermons literature, prominently Caesarius of Heisterbach and Stephen of Bourbon. In this respect I will be building upon the argument formulated by Jean-Claude Schmitt about the story of Saint Dominic’s encounter with Cathar women, specifically its transmission between written and oral culture. I will refer to a category I call “preachers’ demonology” and will attempt to discuss how the fluid interface between cultures of the preachers and their lay audiences could result in occasional enrichment of learned heresiology with motifs such as the demonic transport.
Image: Veneration of the Nabuchadnezzar’s Column-Idol in Babylon: A common template for medieval descriptions of heretical demonolatry. Munich: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Cgm 5, fol. 170v. Printed in: Nina Rowe, “Devotion and Dissent in Late-Medieval Illuminated World Chronicles”, Art History 41/2 (2018), 12–41.