Meaning of "contumelist"

J.M. Coetzee writes this sentence in Elizabeth Costello:

He is here simply to protect her, to bar the way against the relic-hunters and the contumelists and the sentimental pilgrims. (p. 30 in the 2003 Penguin edition).

More context: 'She' is an ageing famous novelist who is flying home after receiving an important award and 'he' is her son who is accompanying her and apparently has a complicated relationship with the mother. (Bear with me, I've only finished Chapter 1 so far).

What is exactly a contumelist?

EDIT

From Merriam-Webster:

Definition of contumely

plural contumelies :harsh language or treatment arising from haughtiness and contempt; also :an instance of such language or treatment

Contumelist is indeed a very rare noun. A Google Books search finds exactly one instance of it—in "Thomas Stukely: An Historical Memoir," in Bentley's Miscellany, volume 44 (August 1858) where it is applied to a person guilty in 1569 of the crime of slander against Queen Elizabeth I:

He [Stukely] had recently had a fray with an English officer, constable of an adjacent garrison castle, who, when confronted with him at the council-board in Dublin, charged him not only with railing against the queen, and even slandering her, but with conspiring, with certain proclaimed rebels, to "levy war against the queen's majesty and her subjects." Among the articles deposed in that, when told publicly by William Hore, knight of the shire, how her majesty had given away the office of seneschal from him, he commenced railing, and coarsely exclaimed, "He did not care a ——— for the queen or her office." The contumelist was committed to close prison in the Castle on the 8th June, 1569, on the special charge of "slander spoken of the queen's majesty." We know not the precise calumny uttered against the maiden monarch, but may well believe that this breach of the injunction "no scandal against Queen Elizabeth," was the "mere flash and outbreak of a fiery mind," the false witness of a sorely disappointed man. Probably the "slander" was more political than personal, and less heinous than the disrespectful expressions of another supposed natural son of the eighth Harry, namely, Sir John Perrott, who, in consequence, died broken-hearted in the Tower, an instance how difficult it is for a crowned head to forgive the wounds inflicted by a slanderous tongue.

Clearly, the root word for contumelist is contumely—but that word has had different meanings through the years, to judge from dictionary entries for it.

From John Bulloker, An English Expositor: Teaching the Interpretation of the Hardest Words Used in Our Language (1616):

Contumelie. Reproach ; spite, disgrace.

From Henry Cockeram, The English Dictionarie: or, An Interpreter of Hard English Words, second edition (1626):

Contumely, Disgrace, reproach.

From Edward Phillips, The New World of English Words: Or a General Dictionary (1662):

Contumely, (Lat) injury, reviling.

From Thomas Blount, Glossographia Anglicana Nova: Or, A Dictionary, Interpreting Such Hard Words of Whatever Language, as Are at Present Used in the English Tongue (1707):

Contumely, (Lat.) Reproach, Abuse, scurrilous Language.

From John Kersey, A New English Dictionary; or, A Compleat Collection of the Most Proper and Significant Words, and Terms of Art Commonly Used in the Language, second edition (1713):

A Contumely, a Reproach, an outrageous Affront.

From Nathan Bailey, An Universal Etymological English Dictionary, second edition (1717):

CONTUMELY, {Contumélie, F. of Contumelia, L.} Abuse, Affront, Reproach, scurrilous Language.

Thomas Dyche & William Pardon, A New General English Dictionary; Peculiarly Calculated for the Use and Improvement of Such as Are Acquainted with the Learned Languages (1740):

CONTUMELY (S.) an affront, abuse, or reproach.

From Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language, volume 1 (1756):

CONTUMELY. s. {contumelia, Lat.} Rudeness ; contemptuousness; bitterness of language ; reproach. Hooker, Tillotson.

From John Ash, The New and Complete Dictionary of the English Language, volume 1 (1775):

Contumely (s. from contumelious [meaning "Contemptuous, rude, reproachful, inclined to reproach, productive of reproach"]) Rudeness, reproach, bitterness of expression.

From Noah Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language (1828):

CONTUMELY, n. {L. contumelia, from contumeo; con and tumeo to swell.} Rudeness or reproach compounded of haughtiness and contempt; contemptuousness; insolence; contemptuous language. [Cited example:] The oppressor's wrong; the proud man's contumely. Shak.

From Webster's New International Dictionary (1909):

contumely n.; pl. -LIES. {L. contumelia, prob. akin to contumax insolent : cf. O[ld] F[rench] contumelie. Cf. CONTUMACY.} 1. Rudeness compounded of haughtiness and contempt scornful insolence; despiteful treatment; disdain; contemptuousness in act or speech. [Examples omitted.] 2. An instance or exhibition of contumely; an insult. 3. The suffering of contumely; humiliation.

From The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (1971):

Contumely sb. {a OF. contumelie, ad. L. contumēlia abuse, insult, reproach ; in origin prob. cognate with CONTUMAX, in which the stem part tum is of disputed etymology.} 1. Insolent reproach or abuse; insulting or offensively contemptuous language or treatment; despite; scornful rudeness : now, esp. such contemptuous treatment as tends to inflict dishonour and humiliation. [Examples, from 1386 forward, omitted.] 2. (with a and pl) An instance of contumely; an insult[,] an insolent reproach, a piece of scornful or contemptuous insolence. [Examples, from 1450 forward, omitted.] 3. Contemptuous insult as it affects the sufferer : disgrace, reproach, humiliation. [Examples, from 1555 forward, omitted.]

From The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, fifth edition (2010):

contumely n., pl. -lies 1. Rudeness or contempt arising from arrogance; insolence. 2. An insolent or arrogant remark or act. {Middle English contumelie < Old French < Latin contumēlia; akin to to contumāx, insolent.}

None of these dictionaries—not even the OED—mentions the word contumelist, but we may infer that it describes a person swelled up with self-importance who has the insolence to criticize, reprove, demean, or otherwise insult a person who is objectively much superior to the critic.

Looking at the larger context of the quotation in Coetzee's novel, we find this language:

What is the truth of his mother? He does not know, and at the deepest level does not want to know. He is here simply to protect her, to bar the way against the relic-hunters and the contumelists and the sentimental pilgrims. He has opinions of his own, but he will not speak them. This woman, he would say if he were to speak, whose words you hang on as if she were the sybil, is the same woman who, forty years ago, hid day after day in her bedsitter in Hampstead, crying to herself, crawling out in evenings into the foggy streets to buy the fish and chips on which she lived, falling asleep in her clothes.

It thus appears that the son sees his task as being to protect his psychically delicate mother from souvenir hounds ("the relic-hunters"), fawning idolators ("the sentimental pilgrims"), and insolent iconoclasts ("the contumelists"). This last group, presumably, is inclined to view a famous person such as the mother as fair game for their aggressive rudeness and desire to humiliate. A shade of bitter jealousy may also lurk in the contumelist's impulse to disparage.