Between 1200 and 1450, Alsace and Swabia saw a vast growth in the number of pious laywomen who pursued the vita apostolica in the secular world. Their appearance corresponded with rapid urbanization and the appearance of the Franciscans and Dominicans in the fledgling cities of …
The wood-panel paintings created by the Franciscan order in the thirteenth century present a dramatic transition from a static, stoic Byzantine style to increasing degrees of naturalistic, realistic, emotional, and corporeal representations. As a driving force behind the iconogr…
This work seeks to explore the concept of religious toleration as it has been conceived by key thinkers at important junctures in the history of the West in the hopes of identifying some of the animating principles at work in societies confronted with religious difference and di…
This dissertation begins the work of a full critical edition and translation of Wyclif’s treatise, De incarnatione Verbi (DIV). Chapters 1–4 include full codicological surveys of all eight surviving manuscripts that contain the text; justify the proposed stemma codicum in light …
This thesis extends recent scholarly interest in the practical processes of Late Antique Roman law and on the integration of the episcopate into Roman power structures in the fourth century, the first century of imperial patronage of Christian communities. It confirms the "minim…
The concepts of orthodoxy and heresy mostly refer to the politics of domination between competing groups to determine which one shall be considered the bearer of the 'correct' beliefs. The winning party would claim its teachings orthodox, while the losing party would be condemne…
This dissertation studies a textual tradition which documents the earliest and hitherto little known phase of two formative processes in Shi'i thought which are tied together in a dialectical bond. One of the processes was, broadly speaking, the opposition between the believers …
The Matter of Sanctity explores the role of material devotion in the construction and veneration of non-canonical saints in later medieval southern France. In particular, it examines the ways in which two lay religious movements—the beguines and the Beguins—utilized sacred matte…
Medieval French monk Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay teaches modern readers that the motivations and justifications for the thirteenth century Albigensian Crusade were thoroughly rooted in Christian Scripture. Rather than making a predictable attack on the Catholic Church, this disserta…
Peter the Hermit: Straddling the Boundaries of Lordship, Millennialism, and Heresy demonstrates how eleventh and early twelfth century wandering preachers established millennial spiritual lordship over their popular movements. Peter the Hermit's Popular Crusade exemplifies this.…
This dissertation identifies the production of a format of Byzantine heresiology in its historical context as "Comnenian heresiology." The Dogmatike Panoplia (or Panoplia Dogmatica) is a characteristic socio-religious product of the Comnenian era (1081-1185) and it reveals that …
This thesis is a study of the place of the Khawarij, the first sectarian movement in Islamic history, in the Islamic tradition. Its focus is on the historical, and historicizing, process by which the Khawarij were transformed from protest movement to symbol of religious extremis…
The purpose of this dissertation is to demonstrate that the Cathar community of Languedoc, far from being heretics as is generally thought, practiced an early form of Christianity. A few scholars have suggested this interpretation of the Cathar beliefs, but none have pursued it …
At the turn of the 13th century the regional church in southern France was caught between the powerful forces of heresy, inquisition, and papal power. At this time southern France marked the locus of influential heretical movements. Parisian reformers and Cistercians blamed loca…
This dissertation is a study of the Inquisitor events in the Order of Saint Jerome at the end of the fifteenth century. In the year 1485 the first of a series of Inquisitions was established in the Jeronimite chapter of Guadalupe, in Caceres Spain. The names of thirty friars wer…
In its characterization of witches as a devil-worshipping and mostly female heretical sect, the Kyteler case as prosecuted by Richard de Ledrede in 1324 serves as an exceptional model for later Continental witchcraft trials, and consequently has been discussed by several histori…
This dissertation explores the complexities of Epiphanius of Salamis on Cyprus (ca. 315-403 AD) as a thinker and an ecclesiastical authority in the late Roman world through a critical examination of the Panarion , an encyclopedic manual that compiled information on the beliefs, …
The thesis of this dissertation is that the identity of catholic Christianity in the early second century was marked by a unified confession of the unique incarnational christological narrative, that is, the account of the Son/Logos who came from heaven, became incarnate, suffer…
One of the most prominent of the groups that modern scholars have called "Jewish Christian" is the Ebionites. This designation of the Ebionites, however, is not explicitly supported by the primary sources, none of which used the title. Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen, Eusebius, and…