Heresy

Why did the new persecutions arise? First, what led to heightened concern about heretics and to lethal punishments for them in the West during the eleventh century? Did the Bogomils - the ‘Beloved of God' - of the Slavic­speaking lands of eastern Europe send proselytisers into Western Europe at this time? The first mention of a heresy spreading from ‘Greece and other lands' appears in 1147, without proof of a connection.^[786] The Bogomils, identified in Bulgaria in the tenth century, are noted only in materials prepared by their enemies.^[787] Scenes of degradation were attached to the Bogomils as well, who were deemed foes of both Orthodoxy and Catholicism.

The Cathars, also called Albigensians, present similar problems of analysis. A sharp controversy characterises the literature. Some scholars write of heretics, the Cathars among them, with disgust, as in ‘heresy, and the horror it inspires', and describe the deviation as an extensive, malign conspiracy against the true flock.^[788] For some writers, the Cathars possessed a well- developed ecclesiastical hierarchy and ceremonies.^[789] Yet contemporary tes­timony about them also came from their enemies, either those who claimed they had formerly been members, ‘Catholic observers', or inquisitors.^[790] In medieval sources, ‘Cathars' (Cathari) seldom ‘refers to an identifiable set either of beliefs or of people'.²⁴ A document previously thought to show both Orthodox influence on the Cathars and the extent of their organised church, the ‘Charter of Niquinta', was once dated to 1167, but in recent studies has been considered an early modern forgery.^[791] Medieval sources do not record a meeting of Eastern prelates and Western heretical clerics.

Certainly there were dissenters, who in some accounts referred to each other as ‘Good Men'. These seem to have been ordinary people, and some­times Catholic priests, who doubted the mysterious teachings of any church. Peasants might deny, for instance, the Immaculate Conception, insisting that Christ's birth resulted from human coitus. Villagers used phrases like ‘Go to the Devil' in everyday speech. But all that does not amount to a large movement.

Whatever the heretics were or were called, victims of persecution died horribly. After the burning at Orleans in 1022, others followed: Milan in 1028, Cambrai 1076, Paris 1210, and more into the mid thirteenth century.^[792] Such events are noted for part of western Europe, but not in Spain, Germany east of Worms, Scandinavia or, at least rarely, in the British Isles. From 1209 to 1229 French forces carried out a campaign known as the Albigensian or Cathar Crusade, largely a cover to extend northern, then royal power into the south. Perhaps 15-20,000 ‘heretics' - in fact we do not know if the dead had broken with church doctrine - were slaughtered in this effort.

Several interlocking processes helped produce the new Western pursuit of heretics. First and broadest was what R. I. Moore has called ‘the forma­tion of a persecuting society'. During the pivotal eleventh century, lepers, Jews, Muslims and heretics became identified as immediate dangers within the good Christian society.^[793] Another step came with the growth of the church, through the gradual development of a complete, approved Bible by the mid thirteenth century, other documents, and rituals; demands to regulate the lives of the laity, at least through the occasional, formulaic intercession of priests; and construction of churches and monasteries. In the year 1000 many Europeans, especially peasants, passed their whole lives without any ‘religious instruction'.²⁸ Many in the West heard sermons only when the local bishop visited their parish.²⁹ A ‘monastic revival' began in the late ninth century, but for the next several hundred years monasteries, nunneries and churches remained islands in a sea of folk largely untouched by organised religion.

The schism between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church in 1054 provided another source of concern about faith and security in the West. The Crusades played their part; they began in 1095 with a stirring call by Pope Urban II for a campaign to drive out ‘that vile race', the Muslims, occupying Jerusalem. The fighting and attendant publicity strengthened Christian unity. A powerful additional factor was the rise of the Big Devil, not found in Orthodoxy, let alone in Asian or African faiths, but in the West newly visible and meant to be frightening in frescoes, mosaics and stone figures.^[794] No equivalent existed in Eastern Europe of the Florence Baptistry's mosaic Satan, a huge figure chewing on souls in his mouth, assisted by snakes writhing out from his ears and anus. In the year 1000 few anywhere in Europe would have seen a depiction of the devil as a figure active on earth. By 1400, that image was common across the West.

Finally, the widespread switch in the West starting in the eleventh century from ‘feudal' or accusatorial court procedures to inquisitorial ones, based on Roman law, made secular courts much more active in gathering evidence. Inquisitorial procedures in secular courts are not to be confused with the activities of the Inquisition itself, although the various Holy Offices also sought evidence. Accusatorial trials had theoretically relied on the judgement of God, as revealed through ordeals like those of fire or combat, to determine guilt or innocence. Now men needed to find evidence. On the Continent, courts gathered indications, or indicia, that a crime had been committed, for example that Marie died of stab wounds and a bloody knife was found in Pierre's hut. Sadly, indicia of witchcraft could be as flimsy as general reputa­tion or even, in the worst instances, an ugly face. In German lands, two indicia were enough to bring someone to trial. But the ‘queen of proofs' for verdicts by inquisitorial courts was a confession, a desired outcome that promoted torture.

The many changes in Western attitudes and practices that began in the eleventh century raise doubts about the idea that churchmen ‘believed that heresy was the work of the devil'.^[795] ‘Belief is a slippery concept; one's beliefs may change from morning to night. It is possible to hold contradictory beliefs at the same time. If those in authority over us repeatedly say that a certain thing is true, we may come to believe it, or just accept it.³² When fear of an enemy within is spread often and widely, a populace may perceive a dire threat. Did churchmen believe that they were faced by implacable enemies in the form of heretics, organised to both replicate and mock the official church, and spread throughout Christendom by the devil? That is possible; much more recently, it seems that many Germans became convinced in the 1930s and 1940s that they faced a powerfulJewish/Bolshevik conspiracy. Americans fell under the nonsensical sway of Senator Joseph McCarthy in the early 1950s. In these instances, long-standing anxiety among the upper classes about enemies within contributed heavily to the popular perception of imminent danger. A similar atmosphere characterised Western Europe by the early eleventh century.

As the campaign against heresy progressed in the West, especially in France, the image of the heretic and of the witch began to overlap. In 1180 heretics in Besangon were accused of making a written pact with the devil that permitted them to commit maleficia. During a trial of heretics held in Chalons-sur-Marne in 1239, a defendant told an inquisitorial court that a demon assumed her image in bed next to her husband, allowing her to travel, presumably at super speed, to a distant gathering of fellow heretics. Visits to a sabbath attended by the devil were mentioned in a trial of heretics in Toulouse, France, in 1275. The theological faculty of the University of Paris decreed in 1239 that if evil deeds were conducted using power conferred by the devil, witchcraft was indeed a heresy.

Where it did, maleficia as described in books and trials related not only to improper faith but also to tangible evil acts. Witchcraft became linked to ‘core crimes', among them stealing, harming a free citizen, murder or damaging property, which every society sees as wrongdoing. Punishments for witchcraft tied to such acts became ferocious, although not necessarily more so than for convictions that did not refer to diabolical aid.

On the other hand, charges of heresy in Western Europe ultimately came to rest on word more than on deed. One might say the wrong thing, have or endorse the wrong books, omit the proper rituals or engage in improper ones. Heresy in the strict sense related more to established religious authorities' control of thought and worship, less to issues of secular power. The Reformation rocked Christendom and made the clerics of the dominant faith in any area hypersensitive to manifestations of the other sides' beliefs. Yet, as the shifting alliances across religious lines of the Thirty Years War and the stalemate between Protestantism and Catholicism by the 1640s at the latest showed, it was bad practice to waste blood and energy by obsessively pursuing heresy. Uncovering heretics became a maintenance task for what­ever faith dominated a jurisdiction. For that reason as well, punishments became milder.