The Cross and the Throne: The Genesis of the Idea of Victimhood in the Context of Political Theology Restricted; Files Only
Galona, Yevgen (Summer 2019)
Published
Abstract
Despite the obvious negative connotations of weakness, misery, and pain associated with the status of the victim, the paradoxical trend is rapidly developing in which victimhood appears to be a desirable identity. In addressing this problem my dissertation presents an interdisciplinary inquiry into the genealogy of victimhood reconstructing the main turning points in the formation of the concept and its cognate sentiments. I argue that our contemporary understanding of victimhood where the victim gains a special social advantage because of society’s ethical disposition to support those who have been unjustly hurt is primarily a remnant of the political theology of the High Medieval period. By analyzing iconography, the devotional tradition, and theological debates on the nature of the Atonement, I demonstrate how the idea of victimhood changed within Christian discourse. I further argue that these transformations cannot be understood outside of the confluence of private piety and the Church’s quest to consolidate political power during the 11th-13th centuries. These transformations became crucial for the Church because the signifiers of victimhood were incorporated into a rethinking of the idea of authority by theologians of the Gregorian reform in their antagonism to the idea of power exercised by secular rulers, an idea that rested, in turn, on the signifiers of glory and triumph. As such, these transformations played a crucial role in the so-called “Papal Revolution” – an attempt by the Church to establish and expand its political influence over secular rulers during the High Medieval period.
Table of Contents
Introduction 1
Chapter 1
The Modern Concern for Victims: Voltaire and the Enlightenment’s
Myth of Compassion 13
Chapter 2
The Origins of Concern for Victims and Their Marginalization within
the Imperial Church 35
2.1 Ancient Pity and Christian Compassion 35
2.2 The Theodicy of Suffering 46
2.3 The Triumphant Christ 52
2.4 “Victim” in Pre-Christian and Early-Christian Latin Texts 61
Chapter 3
The New Sensibility of the High Medieval Period and Christ’s Victimhood 74
3.1 The Suffering Christ 74
3.2 The Devotional Literature and the New Sensibility 93
3.3 Martyrs and Victims 115
3.4 Peter Abelard’s Planctus 129
Chapter 4
Why did Crucifixion Became a Primary Symbol of Christianity? 147
4.1 The Papal Revolution 151
4.2 The Early Sources 160
4.3 Gregory VII 169
4.5 Politics of the Image 176
4.5 St. Clemente Basilica in Rome 186
Conclusion 208
Appendix 216
Figures
Bibliography 245
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