L'abbazia di Montecassino, fabbrica dell'eresia nell'XI secolo
Résumé
In the Middle Ages the abbey in Monte Cassino played a marginal role in the fight against heretics, limited to the monk Alberic’s participation in the Lateran Council convoked against Berengarius of Tours. Yet, as many as four manuscripts drafted in the Monte Cassino scriptorium from the early XI century show miniatures referring to heresy. These iconographic creations have different meanings. While two pictures of the Samson and the wolves episode (Judges, 15, 1-15) could refer to the old destructions of the abbey by Longobards and Saracens, one miniature showing heretics in the guise of philosophers expresses the monks’ suspicion of dialectics, of philosophy. An image of Bishop Sylvester presiding over the council of Nicaea and treading on three heretics has a highly reformist and Gregorian significance as the heretics invoke the antipopes elected by the emperors. The case of Monte Cassino is thus emblematic of how an anti-heretical discourse can be formulated in the absence of deviant cultural doctrines or practices. At the same time, it shows that the polysemic and multipurpose concept of heresy can be used to give shape to rather insubstantial fears (like that of the dialecticians-philosophers of the early XI century) or to denote political opponents (the antipopes).
