Hüter der Wirklichkeit

In the 13th century the Church set itself to the task of reforming pastoral care. In doing so, the knowledge and education of clerics became its most central concern. At about this time the Dominican Order, whose primary aims were to fight heretics and the propagation of the Latin faith, was founded. The order soon became recognized by popes as the prime tool in remedying the Church’s lack of legitimacy. Subsequently, the Curia supported the order’s expansion throughout Europe and ensured its dominant role in pastoral care.Based on these hypotheses, this book inquiries into the role assigned to knowledge as well as the bearers of knowledge within the medieval Church. Using the example of Scandinavia it analyzes 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. It looks into how the Dominicans became suited to this task through their learning and how through sermons and confession knowledge among the laity was both circulated as well as controlled. Thus, the social meaning of knowledge and experts and the techniques of power used by the church to spread a socially constructed reality are focused.