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Arnold - Inquisition and Power - Pages 1-15 - Reading Notes
Reading Notes on pages 1-15 of John Arnold's 'Inquisition and power: Catharsism and the confessing subject in medieval Languedoc'
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Inquisition and power: Catharsism and the confessing subjecting medieval Languedoc by John H. Arnold -1-15 (VLE)
References
Footnotes - John H. Arnold, Inquisition and Power: Catharism and the Confesing Subject in Medieval
Languedoc, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001) 1-15.
Bibliography - Arnold, John H..Inquisition and Power: Catharism and the Confessing Sbject in Medieval
Languedoc. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001. 1-15.
Notes and Quotes
- ‘Dealing with stories and silence-words recovered and words lost to death-is the task of every historian.
If we are interested in the subaltern, those silenced beneath the grand narratives of state history and the
condescension of posterity, the possibility of resurrecting such voices gains a particular urgency’ - 2
- This assertion illustrates that in order to discover mentalities within a source it must be looked at past
the superficial text. Essentially what is not in the source is of equal importance to what actually is in
the source
- ‘records that tantalizingly proffered the speech of ordinary lay men and women but which also
constantly reminded one, through their formulaic language, of the additional presence of the inquisitor.’
-4
- This illustrates the importance of the intended or original audience of the source. The author in a
testimony is to an extent not the only person involved in the shaping of their language, as it is
directed towards an authoritative figure to whom people would be expected to speak in a certain
manner.
- ‘Alexander Murray has compared the process of inquisition to "the nearest medieval equivalent of a
tape recorder.”’ - 5
- Demonstrates the way in which cultural historians and those searching for mentalities are focussed on
the type of source and its provenance just as much if not more than the sources content
- ‘The words of the deponents, spoken in their native Occitan in response to inquisitors' questions, were
recorded, in Latin, by the inquisitorial scribes. This question-and-answer transcript was then rewritten as
a past-tense, third-person narrative account of the interrogation’ - 5
- Given that their original words in their language were never actually recorded it is impossible to
determine the accuracy of any translation, as the initial text is more representative of the scribe’s style
of writing than the speaker’s style of speaking
- ‘We do not necessarily have to agree with inquisitors' conceptions of reality, but we must accept that
not only was it their reality, but a reality that they imposed on others namely on the deponents
themselves.’ - 7
- Contributes to the idea that the person who seems to be the speaker of a source is not always so,
and thus we as historians must consider the other voices that have gone into the source in order to
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