Religious and political identity in medieval europe: Purity of faith and heresy

Abstract

This article provides a diachronic and overall view to analyze the creation of an identity in medieval Europe expressed in religious and political terms and created from contrasting an internal cohesion confronted towards external otherness. This imposed a conceptual trajectory, begun in the disquisition between pontifical theocracy and imperial Caesorapapism and following through the acceptance of the plurality of feudal monarchies and a segregating reaction in the late Middle Ages, focused on the purity of faith isolating groups and beliefs that could stain the society. The link between divine guidance and people facilitated that the political discourse at the end of the Middle Ages integrated the influence of messianismmillenarianism.