Fifty Years of The Heresy of the Free Spirit in the Later Middle Ages (1972-2022)
Résumés
Cet article examine le milieu intellectuel et social dans lequel a été écrit The Heresy of the Free Spirit in the Later Middle Ages, et la façon dont ses thèmes et l’enseignement de Robert Lerner ont remodelé la façon dont les chercheurs et les étudiants pensent et écrivent sur l'hérésie médiévale. Il met également en lumière les développements récents et les tendances dans le domaine de l'histoire des mouvements religieux et des individus condamnés comme « hérétiques », ainsi que la relation de la catégorie « hérésie » avec d'autres modèles conceptuels tels que l'« orthodoxie », la « magie » et la « superstition ».
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The Heresy of the Free Spirit
- 1 Robert E. Lerner, The Heresy of the Free Spirit in the Later Middle Ages, Berkeley, University o (...)
- 2 “Joseph R. Strayer Dies; Historian and Author”, The New York Times, July 4, 1987, p. 1007. For S (...)
- 3 A bibliography of Grundmann’s work and a long obituary essay by Arno Borst are found in Herbert (...)
1It is testimony to Robert E. Lerner’s scholarship that his masterpiece, The Heresy of the Free Spirit in the Later Middle Ages, remains in print today, fifty years after its publication1. Yet every book has its lineage, mapped out in the preface and acknowledgements, and Lerner’s traces its ancestry back to Joseph Strayer and Herbert Grundmann, to the study of institutional forms, structures, and mindsets and to the contestation and reshaping of these forms by inspired individuals and spiritual movements. A highly influential Princeton academic, Strayer published extensively on political and institutional history (including the Albigensian crusade and Philip the Fair), while moonlighting as a consultant for the CIA2. By contrast, Herbert Grundmann remains best known for his groundbreaking Religious Movements in the Middle Ages (Religiöse Bewegungen im Mittelalter), although Grundmann’s equally influential articles on religion, heresy, and literacy have recently been translated for an Anglophone readership3.
A book in the making
- 4 Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium, Fair Lawn, NJ, Essential Books, 1957; idem, The Purs (...)
2As Robert Lerner himself recently acknowledged, neither the gestation nor the birth of The Heresy of the Free Spirit were without complications. Lerner confessed that he was drawn to the study of medieval religion and dissidence both by Norman Cohn’s The Pursuit of the Millennium, and by the Zeitgeist of the times, one of protest, revolution, and the overturn of established forms in favor of individual experiences4. Historians wrestle perennially with making the past relevant to the present in a responsible manner, and the heresy of the Free Spirit resonated with demonstrations by the disenfranchised and those choosing to opt out of mainstream expectations in the 1960s and 1970s, with manifestations ranging from the civil rights movements and anti-war protests to hippies and Hare krishnas.
- 5 Part of this article summarizes discussions held at the Chicago Seminar on Medieval Culture and (...)
3However, most American graduate students in that period were writing synthetic works, not engaging in archival research, much less in post-war Germany; in contrast, Robert Lerner and many of his students and colleagues combined these activities. While in Germany, Lerner brought Guiard de Cressonessart to Herbert Grundmann’s attention (Grundmann’s reaction was that of enthusiasm: “Hoch interessant!”), while Grundmann lent him the complete typescript of a forthcoming edition of the middle French version of Marguerite Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls, a work notorious for the complexity and subtlety of its religious thought. This generous gift of a little-known work would crucially assist Lerner’s reconstruction of the actual (rather than ascribed) views of this now-famous but then relatively unknown medieval mystic5.
- 6 Howard Kaminsky, A History of the Hussite Revolution, Berkeley, University of California Press, (...)
- 7 To respect Robert’s wishes, no reference to his dissertation will be included here.
4The road from dissertation to monograph was a long and arduous one, and the book was turned down by several university presses before Robert Lerner took a calculated risk by sending the manuscript to the University of California Press. He knew that the press had just published Howard Kaminsky’s A History of the Hussite Revolution (1967) and that his manuscript would likely be reviewed by Kaminsky, notorious for his skewering critiques6. However, despite disagreeing with Lerner’s interpretation of the Taborites, Kaminsky wrote a largely favorable reader’s report; the rest, as they say, is history. However, Lerner remains haunted by the fact that his unrevised dissertation, which dealt with a period much earlier than the much-expanded version published with his imprimatur, remains accessible online. He would prefer to hunt down every electronic and physical copy of his juvenalia (in the pre-internet era typically safely consigned to gather dust on archival storage shelves), but acknowledges that this is no longer possible. The internet, like rumors of heresy, possesses a viral life of its own7.
- 8 HFS, p. 3, 45.
- 9 HFS, p. 3; Gordon Leff, Heresy in the Later Middle Ages: The Relation of Heterodoxy to Dissent c (...)
- 10 This was based, as Robert himself admits, on Grundmann’s earlier article on the “type” of the he (...)
- 11 HFS, p. 5.
5But what made Robert Lerner’s book so very influential? It was partly his argument that the beliefs of those labeled as heretical were actually part and parcel of larger religious currents, that Marguerite Porete and Meister Eckhart breathed the same religious atmosphere, that, in Lerner’s words, the Free Spirit movement “was far more typical of the late medieval search for God and godliness than has commonly been supposed”8. Countering Gordon Leff’s Heresy in the Later Middle Ages, Lerner argued that the cacophonous repetition of allegations of heresy does not prove their veracity9. Well before the publication of Robert Moore’s The Birth of Popular Heresy, Lerner pointed to the very real problems posed by the patterns of thought espoused by medieval theologians, who described heresy as unchanging and had a real penchant for patristic tropes and fantasies of Luciferian orgies and other forms of heretical fornication10. He also highlighted the problems posed by inquisitorial sources, including distortion through torture, through the dynamics posed by a confessing subject, and through the process of recording, not to mention the mental paradigms by which questioners filtered information, with the result that vastly different beliefs were characterized as heresies of the Free Spirit11.
- 12 HFS, p. 16, 19; Michael D. Bailey and Sean L. Field, eds., Late Medieval Heresy: New Perspective (...)
- 13 HFS, p. 35, 43.
- 14 HFS, p. 45.
- 15 HFS, p. 46-47, 55.
6Crucially, Lerner confined his study to the region north of the Alps, although many of his graduate students, including Sean Field, Michael Bailey, Jennifer Kolpacoff Deane, and Louisa Burnham, studied not only those regions but also the south of France, Italy, and Spain. All emphasized that many mystics considered orthodox proved nearly indistinguishable from those accused of the heresy of the Free Spirit in their desire for union with God, their wish to minimize or dispense with the sacramental ministrations of the Church, and their belief that one could violate moral law without sin12. Mocked for their excessive piety, which some saw as a hypocritical pious cover for devious activities, the beghards and beguines became the subject of attacks precisely because their aspirations toward the apostolic life (vita apostolica) and poverty were so very similar to those of other religious movements of the era, including the mendicant orders. Detractors of the mendicant orders found these other religious individuals and communities easier prey, while some friars sought to vigorously differentiate themselves from other apostolic groups by decrying their competitors as heretical or hypocritical13. At the Second Council of Lyon (1274), this impulse led Humbert of Romans and Guibert of Tournai to attack the beguines and beghards for their mendicancy and translations of the Bible14. The nadir perhaps came with the Council of Vienne’s Ad nostrum, which defined the heresy of the Free Spirit and tied it directly to the beguines and beghards. Soon, even orthodox Franciscan tertiaries and beguines were targeted for seeking the apostolic life15.
- 16 HFS, p. 63.
- 17 HFS, p. 71, 76; Sean L. Field, “The Heresy of the Templars and the Dream of a French Inquisition (...)
- 18 HFS, p. 71, 82-3.
- 19 HFS, p. 72; note 12 above.
7And yet, as Robert Lerner stressed, despite a lively and long-rooted tradition of Flemish and Rhineland mystics, there is absolutely no evidence for a heresy of the Free Spirit in Germany until after the Council of Vienne (1311-1312)16. France and the Low Countries, by contrast, saw a certain number of beguines accused of heresy, including Marguerite Porete, part of a spate of false allegations used by Philip the Fair and his ministers to target other groups as well, such as the Templars and powerful clergymen17. Crucially, extracts from Marguerite’s book were taken out of context, presented to Paris theologians, and condemned. These extracts then became the basis for Ad nostrum, which was later used to question and sentence beghards in Germany18. Lerner’s student, Sean Field, and many other scholars have investigated the lines of inquiry laid down by Lerner, who stressed that Marguerite had sent her book to at least three authorities, who approved it, and that copies of it not only circulated in regions noted for their mystical inclinations (including the monastery of Villers and the Liège area), but were also translated into French, Latin, Italian, and English, and were perused by a wide range of audiences19.
- 20 HFS, p. 125.
- 21 HFS, p. 164-5.
- 22 HFS, p. 171, 173, 181.
8Lerner’s book also painstakingly traces anti-heresy investigations in Germany, Prague, Silesia, and other regions, and notes that inquisitors in the West dredged up a strange assortment of beliefs in their nets20. Precisely because the common kernel of “Free Spirit” beliefs appears to have been orthodox mysticism and the vita apostolica, those accused of heresy and those now considered largely orthodox, such as Meister Eckhart, shared similar mystical vocabularies. This led to a predicament for mystics including Eckhart, his orthodox followers, Henry Suso, Johann Tauler, Jan van Ruysbroeck, and Gert Groote, who struggled to differentiate their beliefs from those attributed to the heresy of the Free Spirit. Orthodox theologians such as Jean Gerson supported the devotio moderna and the beghards and beguines, but worried about the speculative errors attributed to the beghards21. In contrast, John Wenck attacked Nicholas of Cusa, patron of orthodox beguines, as falling into the “error” of Eckhart and of the beghards condemned in 1317. And yet there is absolutely no proof for an organized sect of the Free Spirit in the medieval period, much less one that influenced the later Protestant Reformation22.
- 23 HFS, p. 229-30.
- 24 HFS, p. 231, 233.
- 25 R. E. Lerner, The Age of Adversity: The Fourteenth Century, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press (...)
9The Heresy of the Free Spirit concludes by examining the social and cultural contexts of the varied religious movements of the later Middle Ages. Lerner argues that although the beliefs may appear similar, they were not connected by causality. Similarly, although many condemned for heresy were women, the proliferation of mysticism cannot be attributed either to the Grundmunndian Frauenfrage (the supposed surplus of single women) or a Marxian union with the divine as religious opium for the masses23. Those accused of heresy often lived in urban environments and were not necessarily poor; after all, renunciation requires possessions to abandon. Many were literate, not “ignorant rabble”24. However, the quest for union with the divine and freedom from outward forms might have gained popularity due to the cluster of fourteenth-century calamities (war, famine, plague, climate change) which Lerner so eloquently outlined in his earlier work, The Age of Adversity: The Fourteenth Century25.
The Legacy of The Heresy of the Free Spirit
- 26 Many have questioned these binaries. See, for example, the works cited in note 12 above; Christi (...)
- 27 For the patristic period, see Kevin Madigan, Medieval Christianity: A New History, New Haven, CT (...)
- 28 Robert I. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe, 9 (...)
- 29 See John van Engen, “Multiple Options: The World of the Fifteenth-Century Church”, Church Histor (...)
- 30 See for example the chronological range of essays in A Companion to Heresy Inquisitions, ed. Don (...)
10But what of the legacies created by Robert Lerner’s study? The rest of this article will sketch the concrete impact of Lerner’s monograph and of his mentorship of multiple scholars. And yet, despite the labors of Robert Lerner, Herbert Grundmann, and many others, the study of medieval piety has still too often been presented as a series of bipolar categories mutually defined by their dyadic opposites: lay/clerical, popular/academic, Latin/vernacular, orthodox/heretic, authoritarian repression/dissent, tolerance/persecution26. Periodization has also presented its problems: many works have examined the struggle to define Christianities and orthodoxies in late antiquity, yet there is a perceived “Dark Age” lull in religious ferment27. In contrast, Robert Moore famously argued for the “rebirth of heresy” in the eleventh century and the gradual development of a “persecuting society” which accompanied the rise of economies and urban societies, bureaucracies and learning, contested claims to the apostolic life, and intolerance of groups redefined as “outside” of the Christian fold (lepers, Jews, heretics, Muslims)28. However, in the later Middle Ages a multiplicity of religious options appeared which blurred many of the categories just mentioned29. The precise relation of the developments of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to the “persecuting societies” of the central Middle Ages and the early modern era’s reformations, witch trials, and religious wars remains contested30.
Spectrums of beliefs and practices
- 31 See note 12 and notes 26 to 30 above; Henrik Lagerlund, ed., Rethinking the History of Skepticis (...)
11But as Lerner’s work has shown us, there are also issues in the historiography of religion which span multiple regions and chronological periods. One such issue is the need to socially, religiously, and politically contextualize the continual (re)conceptualization or (re)construction of religion, orthodoxy, and heresy. One cannot understand the mentalities and worlds of persecutors and persecuted, unless, as Grundmann argued, one acknowledges that beliefs and practices which sometimes became labeled as heresy could share the same spiritual ideals, language, and praxes as those labeled orthodox, while many movements and individual inclinations elude or elide scholars’ artificially imposed categories and paradigms. In the minds of modern readers and diverse medieval authors, what precisely differentiated and still differentiates heresy, orthodoxy, mysticism, superstition, magic, skepticism, unbelief, and curiositas31?
- 32 M. D. Bailey and S. L. Field, “Historiography, Methodology, and Manuscripts: Robert E. Lerner an (...)
- 33 Barbara Newman, “Who or What was a Heretic in the Late Middle Ages?” in Bailey and Field, eds., (...)
- 34 See the discussion below; Peter Biller, Caterina Bruschi, and Shelagh Sneddon, eds., Inquisitors (...)
12Moreover, as a recent Festschrift dedicated to Robert Lerner suggests, this spectrum of beliefs and practices and the struggle to define heresy were central to the genesis and (re)definition of what we call “European culture”32. From the dawn of Christianity to the early modern era, religious movements proved endlessly adaptable. The definition of what constituted orthodoxy and heresy was retooled according to the agendas of persecutors and in reaction to broader religious, political, and social contexts. Tasked with detecting and prosecuting heresy, canon lawyers and theologians often, although not always, stressed that by comparison to superstition or ignorance, heresy was an individual’s calculated choice to pertinaciously cling to beliefs and practices condemned by orthodox authorities. Inquisitors believed this to be the case for Limoux Negre, Marguerite Porete, and John of Morigny, all of whom produced writings which were condemned yet continued to defend the very beliefs deemed divergent by some religious figures33. However, the criteria for the manifestation of heresy could shift: early inquisitors focused on practices as detectible and measurable indicators of belief, while later inquisitors such as Jacques Fournier, Bernard Gui, and Nicholas Eymeric targeted the beliefs themselves34.
- 35 See, for example, Malcolm Barber, The Trial of the Templars, 2nd edn, Cambridge, Cambridge Unive (...)
- 36 Notable surveys which do cover later periods include, but are not limited to: Malcolm Lambert, M (...)
- 37 See notes 29-30 above; Malcolm Vale, “Huizinga’s Autumntide: The Centenary of a Masterpiece”, En (...)
- 38 See note 25 above; Alexander Russell, Conciliarism and Heresy in Fifteenth-Century England: Coll (...)
- 39 See note 35 above; Lerner, Heresy of the Free Spirit; Richard Kieckhefer, Repression of Heresy i (...)
- 40 Bailey and Field, “Historiography”, p. 8-9; Bernard McGinn, The Harvest of Mysticism in Medieval (...)
13Throughout the central and later Middle Ages, an impressive range of individuals and groups were persecuted as heretics. As regional inquisitions effectively drove “Cathars” and Waldensians into hiding or exile, other individuals, groups, organizations, or communities were labeled and targeted as suitable for prosecution, including the Templars, the Spiritual Franciscans, the beguines and beghards, mystics, practitioners of magic, and even some converted Jews. However, many of those targeted would have perhaps described themselves as devout Christians exploring and adding to the proliferating and creative spectrum of religious options which defined the middle and later medieval periods35. Nonetheless, later medieval “heresy” is still given short shrift in surveys of heresy and collections of translated documents intended for undergraduate classrooms36. This may have to do with attitudes toward the later Middle Ages (1300-1450), a period often unfairly maligned as the “waning” of the accomplishments of the “High” Middle Ages or as the unsavory and chaotic precursor to the “dawn” of the “Renaissance” or “Reformation” or “Early Modern era”37. However, despite famine, war, and the relocation of the papal seat to Avignon, the early fourteenth century also witnessed state-building and intellectual and cultural innovations then tested by the Black Death and its effects, then further tested, in the later fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, by papal schism, conciliarism, and the proliferation of pious and reforming communities, some of whom were labeled as Wycliffites, Lollards, and Hussites38. It was partly in response to these phenomena and trends that secular and religious authorities sometimes envisioned systematic heresies where in fact none existed, as in the infamous trial of the Templars and in the cases of the imaginary “Heretics of the Free Spirit” and “Luciferians” pursued by multiple inquisitors39. While the concept of heresy was redefined to target both erudite and “common” religious practices, blasphemy, and lapsed Jewish converts to Christianity, the later Middle Ages also saw movements and ideas originating in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries transformed through the transmission of texts between groups and across time periods and the “harvest of mysticism”40. If later medieval religion was indebted to ideas from earlier periods, as The Heresy of the Free Spirit urged fifty years ago, historians ought therefore to work to break down unhelpful periodizations which so often still dominate discussions of medieval religion.
- 41 Elliott, Proving Woman; Kenneth Baxter Wolf, The Life and Afterlife of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, (...)
- 42 Sylvain Piron, “The Dissemination of Barthélemy Sicard’s Postilla super Danielem”, in Bailey and (...)
- 43 The debate over the degree of the construction of “Catharism” still rages, but is handily summar (...)
- 44 For the burgeoning literature in these fields, see Jessalynn Bird, “Recent Trends and Future Dir (...)
14Similarly, many scholars have noted that orthodox religious authorities keen to extirpate heresy publicized the mysticism, asceticism, and charity of religious women including Marie d’Oignies and Elizabeth of Hungary as orthodox alternatives to the supposed attraction of heretical “good men” and “good women”. Virtually identical tools and procedures (inquests, ordeals, the examination and transferal of bodies) were used to promote saints and condemn heretics and notorious or criminal sinners41. However, others rightly stress the need to probe important regional differences and to scrutinize the relationship of heterodoxy to popular religion and religious protest. Two of the contributions to Lerner’s Festchrift do just that by showing that manuscripts of the works of Peter John Olivi’s disciples and Marguerite Porete were read by orthodox readers as well as “heretical” ones42. Most importantly, historians of the high Middle Ages need to move past heated debates over the construction of Catharism and other heresies by Latin Christian polemicists and writers and the institutionalization (or lack thereof) of anti-heresy inquisitions43. However, two useful points have emerged from these debates. Authorities and reformers tended to label competitors as heretics and to ascribe to them a range of beliefs and practices that they probably lacked. Therefore, the thought worlds of both the persecuted and the persecutors deserve further study, as does the relationship between inquisitorial institutional practices and individual inquisitors (and their victims and surrounding communities)44.
Investigating the inquisitors
- 45 Bird, “Recent Trends”, p. 1270.
15Clearly, many of the issues and methodologies which Robert Lerner highlighted in The Heresy of the Free Spirit continue to inform the study of heresy. If the “real” character and nature of some beliefs and practices are difficult to reconstruct, the individual mentalities and personalities of persecutors continue to receive copious attention, as do the factors which enabled persecutors to engage in persecution: bureaucracies, literacy, and record-keeping; the growth of schools and religious orders that trained individuals in theology and law; the increasing use of inquests for many purposes; greater focus on preaching, pastoral care, sacraments and confession; contested concepts and expressions of sanctity and piety; the growth of secular and religious governments and their jurisdictional wrangling. The extremely varied inquisitions of the high and later Middle Ages were shaped by the nature of their (re)defined targets, the personalities of those involved, and the networks of collaboration and communication knitting together both the victims (“heretics” and their supporters) and their prosecutors (ecclesiastical and secular authorities, including inquisitorial staffs and the “trustworthy men” required for denunciation and purgation). We ought to remember that much of the ritual of inquisition was designed to forge the communal consensus necessary for prosecution and rehabilitation; no inquisition could succeed without the assistance of local religious and secular authorities45.
- 46 Bird, “Recent Trends”, p. 1270-1274.
- 47 Bird, “Recent Trends”, p. 1274-1277.
- 48 Hill, Inquisition in the Fourteenth Century, p. 1, 22, 27, 47, 54, 114-32.
16Moreover, multiplicities of religion were joined by multiplicities of inquisitions. Inquests were a multi-tasking tool used in secular and ecclesiastical courts to reform and investigate a wide range of (in)famous activities. Inquisitions functioned as consumers, as removers and creators of key political and social players, and as confiscators and redistributors of wealth; recent studies have delineated the lingering effects of inquisitions on specific and local cultures, economies, and communities. But much more work remains to be done. Resistance and non-cooperation, opposition and appeals were also a choice and should not be ignored. The variation of inquisition and heresy over regions and through time and the potential tensions between the demands imposed by inquisitorial office and the requirements of religious vocations also deserve careful study46. For example, recent studies on the inquisition in Italy show different patterns in the institutional structure, staff, goals, and local ripple effects than those found for inquests held in southern France, Germany, and Spain. And, as a spate of new works on regional inquisitions and individual inquisitors have outlined, we ought to remember that a Bernard Gui was neither a Jacques Fournier nor a Nicholas Eymeric47. For example, Derek Hill’s close reading of the manuals produced by Gui and Eymeric notes that differences in local contexts and personality shaped their goals, methods and targets. Unfortunately, while Gui valued consensus-building and the rehabilitative functions of inquisition, and employed customized questioning to uncover the secret beliefs of “heretics” who seemed pious (particularly the Béguins), his Practica and Sententia were overshadowed by the widely popular Directorium written by Nicholas Eymeric. Eymeric saw the inquisition as a judicial organ charged with punishing criminals; his zealous recourse to torture and deceptive interrogation techniques was accompanied by a focus on “relapsed” conversos and sorcerers, although his attempts to define the boundaries of orthodoxy soon led him to target blasphemy and magical practices, with the result that his approach shaped later anti-magic and ant-witchcraft manuals48.
- 49 Välimäki, Heresy in Later Medieval Germany; Peter Biller, The Waldenses, 1170-1530: Between a Re (...)
- 50 See notes 39 and 49 above; Eugene Smelyansky, Heresy and Citizenship: Persecution of Heresy in L (...)
17Although previously often overlooked in many surveys of medieval heresy focused on heresy in the central Middle Ages and in the Languedoc, later medieval inquisitions are now receiving due attention. In his preface to the Heresy of the Free Spirit, Robert Lerner thanked the now well-known scholar of heresy, Peter Biller, for his advice. In turn, Lerner’s work, together with that of Peter Biller and Richard Kieckhefer, has also influenced several recent studies into later medieval inquisitions in Germany and Central Europe, including those of Peter Zwicker, Martinus of Prague, and Heinrich Angermeyer49. As Reima Välimäki notes, Zwicker was simply one of a long line of those prosecuting Waldensians in Bohemia, although he and his associates reshaped and revived local practices. In particular, Zwicker transformed earlier polemical treatises and interrogational methods, broadcasting his message through publicly staged ceremonies, but also in translations and sermons which could be transmitted by others. A reimagined Waldensianism became a religious diagnostic criteria used to survey and label suspect beliefs during an era which saw the fight against heresy shift from the legal to the pastoral sphere. This pastoralization united coercion to persuasion in order to combat heresy (reconceived partly as anticlericalism, anti-sacramentalism, or critiques of indulgences) and to buttress the concepts of authority and salvation cast into doubt by the Great Schism. Such redefinition could also be used to accuse rival reformers and critics of heresy, while similar charges of harboring heretics could be weaponized in ecclesiastical, political, and social conflicts between and within cities. This proved particularly true in the case of the roving inquisitors originally studied by Richard Kieckhefer and Peter Biller and now recently revisited by Eugene Smelyansky: Martin of Prague, Heinrich Angermeyer and Peter Zwicker50.
Late medieval heresy
- 51 M. D. Bailey, Battling Demons: Witchcraft, Heresy, and Reform in the Late Middle Ages, Universit (...)
18Later medieval heresy manuals therefore provide invaluable glimpses into the mentalities of inquisitors. Heresy became a moving target, as some groups of dissidents were eliminated and others were (re)defined, including the Spiritual Franciscans and their lay followers and learned heretics. An increasing alarm concerning demonology and harmful magic (maleficia) and an attempt to extend the inquisition’s reach to both characterizes the manual of Nicholas Eymeric, as well as Johannes Nider’s Formicarius (1437) and Heinrich Kramer’s Malleus maleficarum (1486). However, it is worth noting that Eymeric’s indefatigable prosecution of Astruch Piera, an Iberian Jew, as a presumed practitioner of nefarious magic led the king of Aragon to exile not Astruch, but Eymeric. Because the trial of individuals accused of maleficia was traditionally reserved to secular judges, some inquisitors sought to win jurisdiction over magic by associating it with crimes under ecclesiastical jurisdiction: blasphemy, demon-worship, idolatry, and heresy. Many scholars, including Robert Lerner’s and Richard Kieckhefer’s student Michael Bailey, have delineated the application of theories, manuals, and processes initially wielded against heresy to the prosecution of those accused of magic and witchcraft. Yet, as Bailey has rightly noted, although Nider zealously attacked witchcraft, the Hussites, and the “heresy of the Free Spirit,” he stalwartly defended the beguines against other ecclesiastical authorities51. Tolerance of some individuals and groups could accompany intolerance of others.
- 52 Frances Kneupper, “Disputing Prophetic Thought: The 1466 Questio quodlibetalis of Johannes of Do (...)
19As Michael Bailey recently noted, both he and his mentors, Richard Kieckhefer and Robert Lerner, have long probed the relationship between heresy, common and learned magic, superstition, and witchcraft, as did those living in the later medieval and early modern periods. Just as it is difficult to recover what condemned heretics really believed (as opposed to the beliefs ascribed to them by their persecutors), so too, unless historians uncover the rare treasure of a magical manual written by an actual practitioner of magic, it can be difficult to distinguish between magic as imagined by those hunting witches and what rituals might have been actually practiced. Bailey stressed that Robert Lerner discovered precisely that for the “heresy of the Free Spirit,” by locating and investigating the actual writings created by those accused of heresy by their detractors. This somewhat unusually provided a glimpse into personal religious beliefs as described by pious “deviants” themselves, views which contrasted starkly to the checklist of common errors ascribed to the imaginary “heresy of Free Spirit” by inquisitors and copied from case to case in inquisitorial records. Another Lerner mentee, Frances Kneupper, has also reexamined later medieval debates over anticlericalism, skepticism, and the translation and interpretation of the scriptures by the Wirsberger family in Bohemia and by other groups labeled as “Wycliffites” and “Lollards”52.
- 53 Prudlo, Companion; and for the phrase “mission creep”, see Werner Thomas, “The Metamorphosis of (...)
- 54 Hill, Inquisition, p. 42-3, 54; Välimäki, Heresy, p. 17, 69.
- 55 Valentin Portnykh, “Le traité d’Humbert de Romans (OP) De la prédication de la sainte croix: Une (...)
- 56 See, for example, Prudlo, Companion.
- 57 Ames, Medieval Heresies.
20In these and many other instances, the historian encounters the problem of inquisitional “mission creep,” both in the central and later Middle Ages and the early modern period53. This leads us to yet another historiographical question: if there are continuities between anti-heretical attitudes and materials of the high and later medieval periods, might there be similar continuities between the later medieval and early modern eras? If Nicholas Eymeric repurposed and modified Bernard Gui’s manual for a new mission and new victims, Eymeric’s own manual also influenced and was adapted for later anti-witchcraft manuals. Similarly, earlier materials which originated in specific contexts and anti-heretical campaigns were recycled in later periods. Bernard Gui infused his personal encounters with “Waldensians” with descriptions and accusations drawn from the much earlier works of Pseudo-David of Augsburg and Stephen of Bourbon; Peter Zwicker adapted and enriched materials from Moneta of Cremona’s anti-heretical treatise54. Anti-Waldensian paradigms and treatises were redeployed to describe the Hussites, while printing technology meant the circulation of manuals and treatises both new and old55. Late medieval culture influenced early modern culture and not only in the importation of inquisitional structures into hitherto untouched geographic regions56. Perhaps, as Christine Caldwell Ames suggests, we ought to recognize the influence of medieval models of piety and heresy not only on the Brethren of the Common Life but on Lutheranism, Calvinism, and Zwinglianism. Certainly, Catholic, Protestant, and early modern civic authorities vigorously delineated and enforced the parameters of acceptable forms of piety, as testified by a host of early modern blasphemy and witchcraft trials57.
- 58 See for example, Deeana Klepper, “Disentangling Heretics, Jews, and Muslims: Imagining Infidels (...)
- 59 Sylvain Piron, “Un avis retrouvé de Jacques Fournier”, Médiévales, 54, 2008, p. 113-134.
- 60 Samantha Kelly, “Heretics, Allies, Exemplary Christians: Latin Views of Ethiopian Orthodox in th (...)
21Similarly, as many scholars have shown, it is useful to compare which groups were conceptualized as either enemies of Latin Christendom or potential objects of toleration or conversion by persuasion or coercion58. It also becomes essential to parse and compare attitudes towards Judaism, Islam, schismatic Greeks and eastern Christians, pagans and “learned” or “popular” heretics by individuals, such as Jacques Fournier, whose activities, as bishop and as pope Benedict XIII, showed a profound concern for policing the boundaries of the faith and Christendom through reform, inquisition, diplomacy, crusade, and mission. Jacques wrote many theological works in addition to his famed inquisition register and advised John XXII on the supposedly heretical character of certain magical practices, on the doctrine of the Beatific Vision, and on various suspicious writings, including Peter John Olivi’s Lectura super Apocalypsim and some of the works of Meister Eckhart, William of Ockham, Michael of Cesena, and Durand of Saint-Pourçain59. When Jacques Fournier was elected pope, as Benedict XII, he sought to expand and defend Latin orthodoxy through internal reform and the employment of diplomacy, crusade, and mission against the Armenians, Greeks, and Mongols. Another of Lerner’s students, Samantha Kelly, has similarly shown that faced with the threat of a growing Ottoman empire, Latin Europeans dramatically revised their image of the Ethiopian church from “heretics” to “allies” at the very same moment that the Greeks were being condemned as schismatics or heretics (although this too would shift with reunion attempts at the council of Florence)60.
- 61 See, for example, Irene Bueno, Defining Heresy: Inquisition, Theology and Papal Policy in the Ti (...)
- 62 Vale, “Huizinga’s Autumntide”; Bernard McGinn, The Harvest of Mysticism in Medieval Germany, Fre (...)
22Other Avignon popes engaged in doctrinal negotiations with the Greeks and multiple crusades, even while attempting to defend and expand Latin orthodoxy through the evolution of papal government, institutions, and courts as “key cultural spaces.” Some, such as Clement V, would attempt to intervene in the trial of the Templars, while others, such as John XXII, would enlarge the definition of heresy to embrace magical practices61. As Lerner underscored in the conclusion of the Heresy of the Free Spirit, religious ferment and innovation is therefore inextricably tied to social changes and contexts, to the “Age of Adversity”, or perhaps to ages and their peculiar adversities. Whether we title it the “Autumn” or “Waning” of the Middle Ages, as did translators of Huizinga’s masterwork, or the Harvest of Mysticism, as did Bernard McGinn, the religious climate of the later Middle Ages is a complex and fascinating place which we continue to understand better due to the efforts of Robert Lerner, his colleagues, and the many scholars he has mentored62.
Notes
1 Robert E. Lerner, The Heresy of the Free Spirit in the Later Middle Ages, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1972; rev. and repr. University of Notre Dame Press, 1991 [henceforth HFS]
2 “Joseph R. Strayer Dies; Historian and Author”, The New York Times, July 4, 1987, p. 1007. For Strayer’s work, see “Strayer, Joseph Reese”, Regesta Imperii OPAC: Literature Database for the Middle Ages, http://opac.regesta-imperii.de/lang_en/autoren.php?name=Strayer%2C+Joseph+Reese.
3 A bibliography of Grundmann’s work and a long obituary essay by Arno Borst are found in Herbert Grundmann (1902-1970): Essays on Heresy, Inquisition, and Literacy, ed. Jennifer Kolpacoff Deane, tr. S. Rowan, Woodbridge, York Medieval Press, 2019. See also H. Grundmann, Religiöse Bewegungen im Mittelalter: Untersuchungen über die geschichtlichen Zusammenhänge zwischen der Ketzerei, den Bettelorden und der religiösen Frauenbewegung im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert und über die geschichtlichen Grundlagen der deutschen Mystik, Darmstadt, Matthiesen, 1935; Herbert Grundmann, Religious Movements in the Middle Ages, tr. S. Rowan, University of Notre Dame Press, 1995.
4 Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium, Fair Lawn, NJ, Essential Books, 1957; idem, The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages, rev. ed., New York, Oxford University Press, 1970.
5 Part of this article summarizes discussions held at the Chicago Seminar on Medieval Culture and Intellect’s 5 November 2022 meeting in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of Robert Lerner's Heresy of the Free Spirit, with special thanks to its organizers, Tanya Stabler, Richard Kieckhefer, and Daniel Hobbins, and to comments made by Richard Kieckhefer, Barbara Newman, Robert Lerner, Michael Bailey, and Daniel Hobbins.
6 Howard Kaminsky, A History of the Hussite Revolution, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1967.
7 To respect Robert’s wishes, no reference to his dissertation will be included here.
8 HFS, p. 3, 45.
9 HFS, p. 3; Gordon Leff, Heresy in the Later Middle Ages: The Relation of Heterodoxy to Dissent c.1250-c.1450, Manchester University Press, 1967.
10 This was based, as Robert himself admits, on Grundmann’s earlier article on the “type” of the heretic. See Herbert Grundmann, “Der Typus des Ketzers in mittelalterliche Anschauung”, in Kultur- und Universalgeschichte: Walter Goetz zu seinem 60. Geburtstag, Leipzig and Berlin, 1927, p. 91-107 (now translated in Deane, ed., Herbert Grundmann (1902-1970), p. 16-29); HFS, p. 4, 20, 27; Robert I. Moore, The Birth of Popular Heresy, London, Edward Arnold, 1975; repr. Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1995.
11 HFS, p. 5.
12 HFS, p. 16, 19; Michael D. Bailey and Sean L. Field, eds., Late Medieval Heresy: New Perspectives. Studies in Honor of Robert E. Lerner, York, York Medieval Press, 2018; Sean L. Field, Robert E. Lerner, and Sylvain Piron, eds., Marguerite Porete et le Miroir des simples âmes: Perspectives historiques, philosophiques et littéraires, Paris, Vrin, 2013; Sean L. Field, The Beguine, the Angel, and the Inquisitor: The Trials of Marguerite Porete and Guiard of Cressonessart, University of Notre Dame Press, 2012; Louisa A. Burnham, So Great a Light, So Great a Smoke: The Beguin Heretics of Languedoc, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 2008; Letha Böhringer, Jennifer Kolpacoff Deane, and John van Engen, eds., Labels and Libels: Naming Beguines in Northern Medieval Europe, Turnhout, Brepols, 2014; Jennifer Kolpacoff Deane, A History of Medieval Heresy and Inquisition, 2nd ed., Lanham, MD, Rowman & Littlefield, 2022; Jennifer Kolpacoff Deane and Anne E. Lester, eds., Between Orders and Heresy: Rethinking Medieval Religious Movements, University of Toronto Press, 2022; and the works by Michael Bailey cited below.
13 HFS, p. 35, 43.
14 HFS, p. 45.
15 HFS, p. 46-47, 55.
16 HFS, p. 63.
17 HFS, p. 71, 76; Sean L. Field, “The Heresy of the Templars and the Dream of a French Inquisition”, in Bailey and Field, eds., Late Medieval Heresy, p. 14-34.
18 HFS, p. 71, 82-3.
19 HFS, p. 72; note 12 above.
20 HFS, p. 125.
21 HFS, p. 164-5.
22 HFS, p. 171, 173, 181.
23 HFS, p. 229-30.
24 HFS, p. 231, 233.
25 R. E. Lerner, The Age of Adversity: The Fourteenth Century, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1968.
26 Many have questioned these binaries. See, for example, the works cited in note 12 above; Christine Caldwell Ames, Medieval Heresies: Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2015; John H. Arnold, Belief and Unbelief in Medieval Europe, London, Bloomsbury Academic Press, 2005; John H. Shinners, Medieval Popular Religion: A Reader, 2nd edn., Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2006.
27 For the patristic period, see Kevin Madigan, Medieval Christianity: A New History, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 2015. For a new treatment of “Dark Age” heresy, see Bernadette Filotas, Pagan Survivals, Superstitions and Popular Cultures in Early Medieval Pastoral Literature, University of Toronto Press, 2005, esp. p. 100-105.
28 Robert I. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe, 950-1250, New York, Blackwell, 1987; rev. ed. New York, Wiley-Blackwell, 2007; Robert I. Moore, The War on Heresy, Boston, MA, Harvard University Press, 2014.
29 See John van Engen, “Multiple Options: The World of the Fifteenth-Century Church”, Church History, 77, 2008, p. 257-284; notes 12 and 26 above.
30 See for example the chronological range of essays in A Companion to Heresy Inquisitions, ed. Donald S. Prudlo, Leiden, Brill, 2019.
31 See note 12 and notes 26 to 30 above; Henrik Lagerlund, ed., Rethinking the History of Skepticism: The Missing Medieval Background, Leiden, Brill, 2010; Frances Andrews, Charlotte Methuen, and Andrew Spicer, eds., Doubting Christianity: The Church and Doubt, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2016; and the forthcoming history of curiositas by Richard Newhauser and Edward M. Peters.
32 M. D. Bailey and S. L. Field, “Historiography, Methodology, and Manuscripts: Robert E. Lerner and the Study of Later Medieval Heresy”, in Bailey and Field, eds., Late Medieval Heresy, p. 1-14, at p. 1.
33 Barbara Newman, “Who or What was a Heretic in the Late Middle Ages?” in Bailey and Field, eds., Late Medieval Heresy, p. 238-249, at p. 239; Louisa A. Burnham, “Unusual Choices: The Unique Heresy of Limoux Negre”, in Bailey and Field, eds., Late Medieval Heresy, p. 96-115; M. D. Bailey, “Magic, Mysticism and Heresy in the Early Fourteenth Century”, in ibid., p. 56-75.
34 See the discussion below; Peter Biller, Caterina Bruschi, and Shelagh Sneddon, eds., Inquisitors and Heretics in Thirteenth-Century Languedoc: Edition and Translation of Toulouse Inquisition Depositions, 1273–1282, Leiden, Brill, 2011, esp. p. 71.
35 See, for example, Malcolm Barber, The Trial of the Templars, 2nd edn, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2006; David Burr, Spiritual Franciscans: From Protest to Persecution in the Century After Saint Francis, University Park, PA, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001; notes 12 and 17 above.
36 Notable surveys which do cover later periods include, but are not limited to: Malcolm Lambert, Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation, 3rd edn, Oxford, Blackwell, 2002; Edward M. Peters, Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1980; repr. 2011.
37 See notes 29-30 above; Malcolm Vale, “Huizinga’s Autumntide: The Centenary of a Masterpiece”, English Historical Review, 136, no. 580, 2021, p. 672-693; Bailey and Field, “Historiography”, p. 4-11.
38 See note 25 above; Alexander Russell, Conciliarism and Heresy in Fifteenth-Century England: Collective Authority in the Age of the General Councils, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2017; Francis Oakley, The Conciliarist Tradition: Constitutionalism in the Catholic Church, 1300-1870, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008; John Van Engen, Sisters and Brothers of the Common Life: The Devotio Moderna and the World of the Later Middle Ages, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008; John H. Arnold, “Voicing Dissent: Heresy Trials in Later Medieval England”, Past and Present, no. 244, 2019, p. 3-37; Helen Barr and Ann M. Hutchison, eds., Text and Controversy from Wyclif to Bale: Essays in Honor of Anne Hudson, Turnhout, Brepols, 2005; Thomas A. Fudge, Jan Hus Between Time and Eternity: Reconsidering a Medieval Heretic, Lanham, MD, Lexington Books, 2016; Marcella K. Perett, Preachers, Partisans and Rebellious Religion: Vernacular Writing and the Hussite Movement, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018.
39 See note 35 above; Lerner, Heresy of the Free Spirit; Richard Kieckhefer, Repression of Heresy in Medieval Germany, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1979.
40 Bailey and Field, “Historiography”, p. 8-9; Bernard McGinn, The Harvest of Mysticism in Medieval Germany, Freiburg, Herder and Herder, 2005.
41 Elliott, Proving Woman; Kenneth Baxter Wolf, The Life and Afterlife of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2010; Jessalynn Bird, “The Wheat and the Tares: Peter the Chanter’s Circle and the Fama-Based Inquest Against Heresy and Criminal Sins, c. 1198-c. 1235”, in Proceedings of the Twelfth International Congress of Medieval Canon Law, Washington, D.C., 1-7 August, 2004, ed. U.-R. Blumenthal, K. Pennington, and A. A. Larson, Monumenta Iuris Canonici, Series C: Subsidia, 13, Vaticano, 2008, p. 763-856.
42 Sylvain Piron, “The Dissemination of Barthélemy Sicard’s Postilla super Danielem”, in Bailey and Field, eds., Late Medieval Heresy, p. 35-55; Justine L. Trombley, “New Frontiers in the Late Medieval Reception of a Heretical Test: The Implications of Two New Latin Copies of Marguerite Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls”, in ibid., p. 157–77.
43 The debate over the degree of the construction of “Catharism” still rages, but is handily summarized in Antonio Sennis, ed., Cathars in Question, Woodbridge, York Medieval Press, 2016. For the debate over the institutionalization of the inquisition in various regions, see Richard Kieckhefer, “The Office of Inquisition and Medieval Heresy: The Transition from Individual to Institutional Jurisdiction”, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 46, 1995, p. 36-61; Jill Moore, Inquisition and Its Organisation in Italy, 1250-1350, Woodbridge, York Medieval Press, 2019, p. 2, 7, 12-16, 24-57, 99-266; Prudlo, ed., Companion to Heresy Inquisitions; Biller et al., eds., Inquisitors and Heretics, p. 35–116; Derek Hill, Inquisition in the Fourteenth Century: The Manuals of Bernard Gui and Nicholas Eymerich, Woodbridge, York Medieval Press, 2019, p. 58-91; Reima Välimäki, Heresy in Late Medieval Germany: The Inquisitor Petrus Zwicker and the Waldensians, Woodbridge, York Medieval Press, 2019; Caterina Bruschi, “Familia inquisitionis: A Study on the Inquisitors’ Entourage (XIII–XIV Centuries)”, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome – Moyen Âge, 125/2, 2013, p. 537-572, [on line] http://journals.openedition.org/mefrm/1519.
44 For the burgeoning literature in these fields, see Jessalynn Bird, “Recent Trends and Future Directions in the Study of Medieval Religion, Heresy and Inquisitions”, English Historical Review, 135, 2020, p. 1260-1286, esp. p. 1266-1279.
45 Bird, “Recent Trends”, p. 1270.
46 Bird, “Recent Trends”, p. 1270-1274.
47 Bird, “Recent Trends”, p. 1274-1277.
48 Hill, Inquisition in the Fourteenth Century, p. 1, 22, 27, 47, 54, 114-32.
49 Välimäki, Heresy in Later Medieval Germany; Peter Biller, The Waldenses, 1170-1530: Between a Religious Order and a Church, Aldershot, Variorum, 2001; P. Biller, “Aspects of the Waldenses in the Fourteenth Century, including an Edition of their Correspondence”, D.Phil. dissertation, University of Oxford, 1974.
50 See notes 39 and 49 above; Eugene Smelyansky, Heresy and Citizenship: Persecution of Heresy in Late Medieval German Cities, New York, Routledge, 2022.
51 M. D. Bailey, Battling Demons: Witchcraft, Heresy, and Reform in the Late Middle Ages, University Park, PA, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003; idem, Magic and Superstition in Europe: A Concise History from Antiquity to the Present, Lanham, MD, Roman & Littlefield, 2007; idem, Fearful Spirits, Reasoned Follies: The Boundaries of Superstition in Late Medieval Europe, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 2013.
52 Frances Kneupper, “Disputing Prophetic Thought: The 1466 Questio quodlibetalis of Johannes of Dorsten”, in Bailey and Field, eds., Late Medieval Heresy, p. 178-194.
53 Prudlo, Companion; and for the phrase “mission creep”, see Werner Thomas, “The Metamorphosis of the Spanish Inquisition, 1520–1648”, in Prudlo, Companion, p. 198-227.
54 Hill, Inquisition, p. 42-3, 54; Välimäki, Heresy, p. 17, 69.
55 Valentin Portnykh, “Le traité d’Humbert de Romans (OP) De la prédication de la sainte croix: Une hypothèse sur son utilisation dans les guerres saintes du XVe siècle”, Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 109, 2014, p. 596-604; and notes 52 to 54 above.
56 See, for example, Prudlo, Companion.
57 Ames, Medieval Heresies.
58 See for example, Deeana Klepper, “Disentangling Heretics, Jews, and Muslims: Imagining Infidels in Late Medieval Pastoral Manuals”, in Bailey and Field, eds., Late Medieval Heresy, p. 137-156.
59 Sylvain Piron, “Un avis retrouvé de Jacques Fournier”, Médiévales, 54, 2008, p. 113-134.
60 Samantha Kelly, “Heretics, Allies, Exemplary Christians: Latin Views of Ethiopian Orthodox in the Late Middle Ages”, in Bailey and Field, eds., Late Medieval Heresy, p. 195-214; Newman, “Who or What”, in ibid., p. 246-248.
61 See, for example, Irene Bueno, Defining Heresy: Inquisition, Theology and Papal Policy in the Time of Jacques Fournier, Leiden, Brill, 2015; eadem, ed., Pope Benedict XII (1334-1342): The Guardian of Orthodoxy, Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press, 2018; Constantinos Georgiou, Preaching the Crusades to the Eastern Mediterranean: Propaganda, Liturgy and Diplomacy, 1305-1352, New York, Routledge, 2018.
62 Vale, “Huizinga’s Autumntide”; Bernard McGinn, The Harvest of Mysticism in Medieval Germany, Freiburg, Herder and Herder, 2005.
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