Two Glasgow academics have organised a roundtable discussion with three world-renowned authors as part of a conference looking at medieval heresy. Both are members of the Glasgow Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.

The event entitled ‘Heretics at the Airport’, part of the International Medieval Congress, takes place in Leeds on 14 July and has been organised by Dr Andrew Roach, Senior Lecturer in History, and Jim Simpson, senior lecturer in French at the University of Glasgow.

The theme of the conference is ‘Heresy and Orthodoxy’ to commemorate the 800th anniversary of the Albigensian Crusade, when the Catholic Church in France launched a campaign against the Cathars of Languedoc, a dualistic Christian sect, for their heretical beliefs.

Authors Kate Mosse writer of Labyrinth and Sepulchre; Katie Grant, children’s author and journalist; and Rene Weis, professor of English at University College London and the author of the best-selling non-fiction book The Yellow Cross, will talk about the heresy as presented in contemporary popular literature.

Medieval heresy has become a popular subject in literary circles thanks to authors such as Dan Brown (The Da Vinci Code) and Umberto Eco (The Name of the Rose) and Dr Roach believes that the history of the period is still relevant today.

He said: “Eight hundred years ago, Europe was in the grip of a fundamentalist spasm. It’s not really clear whether there was a widespread rejection of the church amongst the people, or if the idea of heresy was used by the church in order to scare people into giving the church and the state extra power. There are obvious parallels to the current fight against terrorism today.”

In recognition of the medieval expertise of the University of Glasgow, Andrew and Jim were made responsible for co-ordinating 500 papers in 150 sessions.

The Glasgow academics have been eager to include a wider range of scholars in the event and have arranged sessions featuring scientists and economists, including Robbie Mochrie of the school of management at Heriot-Watt University and Paul Ormerod of Volterra Consulting, and former Honorary Professor at Glasgow.

Around 30 academics and postgraduate students from Glasgow will present papers at the congress which takes places form 13-16 July.

Dr Roach added: “There does seem to be a growing interest in medieval history – last year we had 400 students in our medieval history programme. One of the great strengths of Glasgow is our interdisciplinary centre for medieval and renaissance studies. We’ve got one of the largest medieval history teams in the UK and an excellent library.”

A full programme of events can be found at http://www.leeds.ac.uk/ims/imc/. For more information, tickets for special events or other inquiries, call the IMC office on 0113 343 3614 or at imc@leeds.ac.uk


For more information contact Stuart Forsyth in the University of Glasgow Media Relations Office on 0141 330 4831 or email s.forsyth@admin.gla.ac.uk

Notes to Editors
The International Medieval Congress (IMC) is organised and administered by the Institute for Medieval Studies (IMS) at the University of Leeds. Since its start in 1994, the conference has established itself as an annual event with an attendance of over 1,500 medievalists from all over the world. It is the largest conference of its kind in Europe.

Drawing medievalists from over 40 countries, with over 1,100 individual papers and nearly 400 academic sessions and a wide range of concerts, performances, readings, round tables, excursions, a book fair and associated events, the Leeds International Medieval Congress is Europe's largest annual gathering in the humanities.

First published: 10 July 2009

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