The Cross and the Throne: The Genesis of the Idea of Victimhood in the Context of Political Theology

Despite the obvious negative connotations of weakness, misery, and pain associated with the status of the victim, the paradoxical trend is rapidly developing in which victimhood appears to be a desirable identity. In addressing this problem my dissertation presents an interdisciplinary inquiry into the genealogy of victimhood reconstructing the main turning points in the formation of the concept and its cognate sentiments. I argue that our contemporary understanding of victimhood where the victim gains a special social advantage because of society’s ethical disposition to support those who have been unjustly hurt is primarily a remnant of the political theology of the High Medieval period. By analyzing iconography, the devotional tradition, and theological debates on the nature of the Atonement, I demonstrate how the idea of victimhood changed within Christian discourse. I further argue that these transformations cannot be understood outside of the confluence of private piety and the Church’s quest to consolidate political power during the 11th-13th centuries. These transformations became crucial for the Church because the signifiers of victimhood were incorporated into a rethinking of the idea of authority by theologians of the Gregorian reform in their antagonism to the idea of power exercised by secular rulers, an idea that rested, in turn, on the signifiers of glory and triumph. As such, these transformations played a crucial role in the so-called “Papal Revolution” – an attempt by the Church to establish and expand its political influence over secular rulers during the High Medieval period.