The Cultural Career of a ‘Minor’ Vice: Arrogance in the Medieval Treatise on Sin
Kiril Petkov
This essay explores the conceptualization of arrogance in medieval moral theology as presented one its main genres, treatise on sin and vice. In period between fifth fifteenth centuries concept was consistently applied to brand immoral thus render illicit power relations claims, social restructurings cultural forms, denied validity by mainstream for reasons. Initially subsumed under pride, gradually uncoupled itself became playground competition agency. Tracing stages arrogance’s conceptual evolution, highlights how treatises vice, through their formulation arrogance, reflected relationship dynamics normative value within a series specific historical contexts: Merovingian political theology, Carolingian state-building, twelfth-century clash rationalism mysticism, erosion status society high order diffusion legitimacy-producing discourses late Middle Ages.