Description
Book SynopsisRighteous Persecution examines the long-controversial involvement of the Order of Preachers, or Dominicans, with inquisitions into heresy in medieval Europe. From their origin in the thirteenth century, the Dominicans were devoted to a ministry of preaching, teaching, and pastoral care, to save souls particularly tempted by the Christian heresies popular in western Europe. Many persons then, and scholars in our own time, have asked how members of a pastoral order modeled on Christ and the apostles could engage themselves so enthusiastically in the repressive persecution that constituted heresy inquisitions: the arrest, interrogation, torture, punishment, and sometimes execution of those who deviated in belief from Roman Christianity.
Drawing on an extraordinarily wide base of ecclesiastical documents, Christine Caldwell Ames recounts how Dominican inquisitors and their supporters crafted and promoted explicitly Christian meanings for their inquisitorial persecution. Inqu
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"This rich, exhaustive, and highly focused study sets a new standard for thoroughness among scholars seeking to comprehend the inner logic and workings of religious persecution in medieval Christendom." * Speculum *
"I know of no other book that so systematically reviews the question of how Dominicans themselves thought about the relationship of interrogation and torture, truth and pain, persecution and divinity. There are few topics more vital-especially at present-than a study into the relationship of religion and violence. Righteous Persecution is an important and lasting contribution to scholarship." * Mark Gregory Pegg, Washington University *
Table of Contents
Introduction
PART I: IN THE GARDEN
Chapter 1: The Wolves and the Sheep
Chapter 2: Holy Inquisitors
Chapter 3: The Burning Torch
PART II: INQUISITION AS DIVINE DISCIPLINE
Chapter 4: Souls and Bodies
Chapter 5: The Deserved Punishment
Conclusion
List of Abbreviations
Notes
Select Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
