Rhetorische Spaltungen

Within the high medieval Latin church, rhetorical attacks not only targeted external enemies and heretics, but also (and perhaps especially) the clergy itself and the emerging new religious orders. For the period c. 1100–1300, these intense bouts of invectivity can be understood to form part of larger processes of inner pluralization of the Latin church, in which established forms of rhetorical disparagement, traditionally used against heretics, Jews and Muslims, were now turned inwards. Two case studies concerning the polemicists Walter Map (twelfth century) and William of Saint-Amour (thirteenth century) illustrate further how the mobilization of supporters in situations of conflict and competition led to “rhetorical schisms” within Latin Christianity. These could establish subaltern counter-publics in which the authority and religious authenticity of ecclesiastical elites were undermined and questioned. The resulting gradual production and dissemination of a repertoire of invectives criticizing the church must be seen as an important factor in the dynamization of the late medieval church. Yet the focus on invectivity shows that this dynamism should not be tied to a “decay” of the late medieval church, but to processes of religious and cultural pluralization during the preceding period

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