Continuity, authority and the place of heritage in the Medieval world

This essay supports the contention that knowledge of the past should be seen as a political resource. Furthermore, the interpretation of a particular version of the past is related to power differentiation and the legitimisation of authority. The subjective use of the past is not a recent phenomenon and in this paper, the use of the past is related to the construction of identity and ecclesiastical organisation during the Medieval period. Bourdieu's notion of habitus is used as a way of grounding the rhetoric of legitimisation, with particular reference to ecclesiastical authority. Hagiographical accounts and legends correspond to discourses of power and are related to the (re)production of a religious identity that legitimated Church authority. The essay pays special attention to west Cornwall where such institutional power is related to an identity that is generated via contemporary notions of heritage and a particular sense of past.