A Persecuting Society

Flashcards about Violent Geographies lecture

First Crusade

Launched by Pope Urban II (1095-99) to regain Jerusalem from the Muslim world for Christendom.

Sanctified Violence

The notion cemented by the unlikely victory of the First Crusade seen as a sign from God.

St. Augustine's Doctrine of 'Just War'

A set of conditions under which killing is permissible, including proper authorization, good intentions, and restrained violence.

Papal Inquisition

Established by Pope Gregory IX in 1231 as a war against internal enemies, complementing the Crusades.

Robert Moore (1987)

Authored 'Formation of a Persecuting Society,' highlighting a permanent change in Western society where persecution became habitual.

Fourth Lateran Council (1215)

A meeting of church leaders that set out legal requirements for Christian life and defended the Catholic Church against lepers, Jews, and heretics.

Heretics

Persecuted via the Papal Inquisition from the 12th C to 1970s for heresy using special legal procedures and torture, with a particular interest in witchcraft.

Malleus Maleficarum

A bureaucrats’ manual for the investigation and persecution of witches.

•             Court records show mostly acquittals or convictions for lesser crime of magic

•             Many accused involved in folk medicine and healing – what we would today call complementary medicine

Ordeals (Purgation)

Abolished by the Fourth Lateran Council which was the Judgement of God.

•             Provoking God by putting innocents in peril, requiring a miracle to survive

•             Humans now to sit in judgement on diabolical crimes

•             Made palatable to sceptics by reintroducing torture to find the ‘truth’

•             Torture = the systematic investigation of the body; became the heart of the Inquisition

Spanish Inquisition

Led by the Spanish state in the late 15th century, focusing on Jews and leading to the expulsion of unconverted Jews in 1492.

•             Techniques spread worldwide, eg to the Americas

Roman Inquisition

Established by Pope Paul II in 1542, focusing on Protestantism and other ‘free thinkers’.

•             Established central bureaucracy

•             Template for later genocides etc

•             Introduced requirement for verbatim transcripts of examination and torture to ensure correct processes

Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms

A case of Menocchio, a miller accused of heretical utterances.

•             He was unusually well read for a peasant

•             Denounced by a priest

•             Burnt at the stake

Bauman, 1989

Argued that the Holocaust was not an aberration but made possible by modernity, challenging the notion that the modern world is not violent.

Hot Violence

Rage, fury, mob violence; inefficient, hard to sustain and control.

Cold Violence

Rational and routine violence; a technique.

Division of Labor

A modernist concept that removes morality and ethics from work, substituting technical for moral responsibility.

Dehumanizing Nature of Bureaucracies

Where humans become categories and quantities, no longer subjects of moral demands but objects for processing.

Horrorism

Coined by Adriana Cavarero to describe violence against the helpless, often associated with state violence.

•             Helplessness depends on circumstances: people are made helpless; especially women and children

•             Terrorism should be associated with states, non just non-state actors

Terrorism

First appeared after the French Revolution; terror used against enemies and billed as ‘public safety’.

•             1793 – 94: terror = use of the guillotine against internal enemies