Dr. Johannes Schütz

In the 13th century the Chruch set itself to the task of reforming pastoral care. In doing so, the knowledge and education of clerics became its most central concern. The demand for well-educated priests was perceived as a key to the improvement of the communication between clerics and the lay population. Through clerical experts the control over the interpretation of the world was to be won back from the hands of heretic movements. At about this time the Domincan Order, whose primary aims were to fight heretics and the propagation of the Latin faith, was founded. The order soon became recognized by priests as the prime tool in remedying the Church's lack of legitimacy. Subsequently, the Curia supported the order's expansion througout Europe and ensured its dominant role in pastoral care.
Based on these hypotheses, my project inquires into the role assigned to knowledge as well as the bearers of knowledge within the medieval Church. Using the example of Scandinavia I analyze the promotion of a clerical community to the status of religious experts, who were used by the popes and in order to reconfigure the general relationship between the Church and society. I am looking into how the Dominicans became suited to this task through their learning and how through sermons and confession knowldege among the laity was both ciculated as well as controlled.
Using concepts and theoretical propositions of the social constructivist sociology of knowledge of (P. Berger and Th.Luckmann), I analyze knowledge and experts as decidedly social phenomena, which through social negotiation are delivered into their historically contigent positions. However, the Church also used specific technologies of power in order to influence these processes: Conditions for the validity of knowledge were defined as well as experts installed. In addition I, therefore, use disourse analytical concepts from the work of M. Foucualt in order to elucidate the relations between experts, knowledge and power.
My project is based on a multiplicity of sources: Papal bulls, works of historiography, texts of rule, files from general as well as provincial capitula, handbooks, encyclopaediae, sermons and sums of confession are analyzed with regard to the various aspects of social perception and the Dominican's work.

Publications

• Gelehrte Predigt als dominikanische Innovation. Anmerkungen zur Studienorganisation und Predigtpraxis des Dominikanerordens im 13. Jahrhundert, in: M. Breitenstein, St. Burckhardt, J. Dücker (eds.), Innovation in Klöstern und Orden des Hohen Mittelalters. Aspekte und Pragmatik eines Begriffs (Vita Regularis. Abhandlungen 48), Berlin 2012, p. 247-262.
• Dominican Experts in Medieval Scandinavia. The Order of Preachers and the Dissemination of Knowledge in Northern Societies, in: L. Bisgaard / K. V. Jensen / T. Nyberg (Hgg.), Monastic Culture in North Western Europe in the Long Thirteenth Century, Odense 2013 [to be published soon].