Heresy and Literacy, 1000–1530

Peter Biller editor Anne Hudson editor

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Cambridge University Press

Published:6th Jun '96

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Heresy and Literacy, 1000–1530 cover

Collective volume exploring connections between literacy and heresy in late medieval Europe.

Did literacy foster popular heresy, or did heresy provide a crucial stimulus to the spread of literacy? This volume considers the importance of the written word in pre-Lutheran heresies, and explores the extent to which heretics' familiarity with books exceeded that of their orthodox contemporaries.Did growing literacy in the later medieval period foster popular heresy, or did heresy provide a crucial stimulus to the spread of literacy? Such questions were posed in the polemic of the time - heretics were laici illiterati but were at the same time possessors of dangerous books which their opponents sought to destroy, and among them were preachers whose skills in dialectic and in exegesis threatened orthodoxy - and have challenged the investigators of heresy and literacy ever since. This collaborative volume, written by a group of established scholars from Britain, continental Europe and the United States, considers the importance of the written word among the main pre-Lutheran popular heresies in a wide range of European countries and explores the extent to which heretics' familiarity with books paralleled or exceeded that of their orthodox contemporaries.

'To be called 'idiotae et sine litteris'... what exactly did it mean? How literate was the heretic? One of the objects of Heresy and Literacy 1000-1530 is to answer these questions. This is a fine collection of sixteen elegant essays.' The Heythrop Journal
'... a rich collection of articles with not a single dud in it.' Malcolm D. Lambert, Journal of Ecclesiastical History

ISBN: 9780521575768

Dimensions: 228mm x 152mm x 20mm

Weight: 482g

340 pages