The construction of Christian self-image and the manufacture of the heretic in the polemics of the sixteenth century

Abstract

The main goal of this paper is to understand the logic that guides the mechanisms of Polemics in Christian apologetical speeches and, having asserted that, to underline the rhetorical strategies with which the polemist builds and validates for himself the ethos both of a true Christian and of the “advocate of the Truth”. Meanwhile, at the same time, he fabricates the image of the “enemy”, the heretic, the “false master” for his adversary. In order to achieve that, we will comment on the techniques of appropriation of an auctoritas practiced by the author when he speaks about himself, along with the satirical aspects of the drawing of an “other” — a caricature whose goal is not only derision, but also exclusion.  And we will do so using a “heretical” book, in which the author, a persecuted man himself, reproduces, notwithstanding, the same process employed by those who sought to establish an “official” religion. Our corpus is the heretical Christianismi Restitutio, by Michael Servetus, published in 1553.