›Unanimous in love‹? Precarious Community and the Formation of Communal Bonds in Caesarius of Heisterbach’s ›Dialogus Miraculorum‹

Abstract

The focus of the study is the ›Dialogus Miraculorum‹ by Caesarius of Heisterbach. The doctrinal dialogue, which contains around 750 examples, is not only held together by an instructing monk and an instructed novice. The individual exemplars are also interlinked by intratextual forward and backward references under the prefacing words of Jesus: »Gather up the (leftover) fragments, that nothing may be lost« (John 6:12). Biblical doctrinal topoi are fundamentally intended for performative realisation by the congregation (readers) as followers of Christ. The intratextual network, which can be described in phenomenological terms as a ›temporal community‹, can be understood functionally as a ›pragmatic community‹ that initiates action. This article attempts to show by way of example how this ›pragmatical community‹ can be transformed into a ›personal community‹ in the form of a critical community of faith and understanding in the course of its performative realisation by the reader.