My project focused on the usage of heresiological language in works from the fourth to the ninth centuries in Spain and Gaul. In particular, I looked at the application of such terminology in church councils, which continued to pursue the theme of heresy well into the seventh century, when it was hardly applicable to contemporary realities. I especially looked at the recurrence of ‘Bonosiacs’ – a late third-century schismatic theology – in Merovingian and Visigothic conciliar legislation. The terminology of Christology and Marian virginity was repurposed as part of the Adoptionist controversy that erupted in the eighth and ninth centuries in Spain and Carolingian Francia. With it, references to old ‘heresiarchs’ and their heterodox teachings resurfaced, among whom one might find the Bonosiacs. The goal of my project was to recontextualize these heresies as part of an ongoing discussion about the migration of conceptual frameworks in the early medieval West.

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