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Examines the various heretic movements and individuals throughout Christian history, from the time of Christ's crucifixion to the 16th century.

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CHOICE Review

In ancient Greece, "heresy" meant a philosophical school or party, but with the rise of Christianity came to be applied by Christian apologists to any theological departure from revealed Catholic doctrine. Clifton's encyclopedia chronicles the age-old conflict between orthodoxy and heterodoxy in the Christian West. Although most heretical literature was destroyed by the church triumphant, making it hard to reconstruct the beliefs and ideas of heretical groups, Clifton uses primary sources wherever possible to allow heretics to speak for themselves. Focusing on Christian heresies from the beginnings of the church to the Reformation, Clifton's literate articles introduce gnostics, arians, monophysites, and other exotic plants of divergent theology. He provides valuable biographies of heretics (including people who were simply freethinkers e.g., Abelard) and of heresy hunters (e.g., Epiphanius and the deplorable Conrad of Marburg). The work's useful bibliography and index, ample illustrations, and excellent cross-references make it a pleasure to browse. There are a few errors: Bulgarians are not of Tartar stock, and the Orthodox church accepts seven Ecumenical Councils, not two. Should be used with Herv'e Masson's Dictionnaire des h'er'esies dans l'Eglise catholique (1986) and Leon Cristiani's Heresies and Heretics (1959). For all library collections supporting philosophy, religion, and theology. A. N. Vinh; Yale University

Booklist Review

A work listing "heretics, organized heresies, and schools of thought or key ideas that were judged heretical," the Encyclopedia of Heresies and Heretics provides an alphabetically arranged overview of the key heretical movements and individuals from roughly the time of Jesus' crucifixion to the sixteenth century. Not counting cross-references, the work features 127 entries ranging from Abelard, Peter to Wycliffe, John. Entries vary in length from just over 50 words (Concorezanes) to close to 5,000 words (Albigenses, Albigensians; Gnostics; and Witchcraft). A few illustrations--primarily reproductions of woodcuts or other artwork--are scattered throughout the volume; a 10-page subject index completes the work. Clifton, a free-lance writer who has been a contributing editor to the journal Gnosis and editor of a recently released volume on witchcraft entitled The Modern Craft Movement (1992), has written a work clearly intended for the general reader and not the scholar. His well-written introduction provides a survey of the various heretical movements throughout the history of the Christian church up to the time of Luther, at which point "the line between heresy and reform grows faint." (It is odd, however, that an entry is not devoted to Luther himself.) The entries are written in a manner that assumes virtually no knowledge of the subject matter. For example, in the Tanchelm entry, the author parenthetically defines the Holy Roman Empire as "chiefly a German empire" and Flanders as "an area chiefly within present-day Belgium." The use of bibliographies at the ends of entries is also omitted "in order to keep the text uncluttered and more accessible to the casual or nonspecialized reader." Unfortunately, this makes the work of limited value to those trying to find additional information on a given subject. Such users must instead scan through the 58 items of the unannotated bibliography in the back of the volume. Most entries in the book under review may be found in such larger works as the New Catholic Encyclopedia or the Encyclopedia of Religion, both of which also feature more extensive bibliographies. The specificity of subject matter in the Encyclopedia of Heresies and Heretics duplicates information already available in many libraries, and the lack of bibliographies limits the work's usefulness as a first-choice source. Nevertheless, it is a unique volume that high school, public, and academic libraries that cater to clients interested in church history may wish to consider as a secondary source of information. (Reviewed Feb. 1, 1993)

Notas de autor provistas por Syndetics

Chas S. Clifton has published extensively on Gnosticism and other heresies.