Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. Dissenters and heretics, whether as convenient bogeymen or living social facts, have shaped the lives of nations, communities and individuals across the centuries, exerting a profound influence on both the operations of power and constructions of theology as well as shaping the map of relations between religion and culture across Europe and beyond. In this regard, the histories of medieval European Christianities often seem driven from their edges as central views respond to and negotiate with the dissent and resistance in the borderlands, whether geographical or social in nature. The book concentrates on the limits of orthodoxy in the Middle Ages in relation to deviance, religious dissent and heresy. In this context, Kallistos Ware's examination of the ongoing history of debates in the Orthodox Church provides an Eastern perspective on the question of the body of the faithful.