The Gift of Fear: Jesus, Torture, and Collective Trauma in Medieval Christianity

The enactment of violence on a collective scale requires that coercive power be structured in both referred and direct ways. While religiously hued authority is often implicated in mass violence, it is not always well-understood how theology itself—highly specific doctrinal reasoning particular to a given religious expression—can serve as a crucial structuring force in coercive violence. Taking the recently theorized notion of “theologized trauma” as a starting point, this study engages the medieval Christian inquisitions through the lens of christology. When inquisitors engaged in Christianized acts of torture, what was their operative view of Jesus Christ and his seemingly irenic message? In exploring this difficult question, fresh dimensions of theologized trauma and communal violence are unearthed. In dialogue with ongoing work on collective trauma and the social construction of meaning, a threefold relation between religious doctrine and structured violence is documented and defended.