Dissent and order in the Middle Ages

by Jeffrey Burton Russell

"The study of the conflict between religious orthodoxy and heresy in the Middle Ages has long been a controversial field. Though the sectarian differences of the past have faded in intensity, the varieties of academic correctness that today inform historical studies are quite likely to give rise to a number of interpretations, sometimes providing more information about the sympathies of contemporary historians than the beliefs, feelings, and actions of Medieval people." "In this book, Jeffrey Burton Russell provides a fresh overview of the subject from the Council of Chalcedon (451 A.D.) to the eve of the Protestant Reformation. The fruit of many years of thought and scholarship, Dissent and Order in the Middle Ages is a concise introduction to the full range of religious and social phenomena encompassed by the book's title. While tracing the intellectual battles that raged between the champions of orthodoxy and the partisans of dissent, Russell grounds these conflicts, which often see