Medieval Christianity: Heresy

This short and accessible book introduces readers to the problems of heresy, schism and dissidence over the last two millennia. The heresies under discussion range from Gnosticism, influential in the early Christian period, right trough to modern sects.

This volume presents in English translation an extensive collection of Medieval sources for the history of the popular heresies in Western Europe. More than seventy documents, ranging in date from the early eleventh century to the early fourteenth century and representing both orthodox and heretical viewpoints are included.

This thought -provoking book examines the mysterious history of Christianity - about the turning points that took place in its development, and the turning points that might have been. "Early Christian Heresies" describes the events, the people, the philosophies, the cults, and the ideologies that influenced the new religion at its birth and during its growth; and it attempts to disentangle the main threads that emerge from this labyrinth of ideas,beliefs,and passions. The first five centuries of Christianity are covered here because this was a fluid time when doctrines and beliefs were being formed and many important changes were taking place in the world. As "Early Christian Heresies" makes clear there is a great deal more to be discovered about the recognized doctrines of the Christian religion than first thought.

The seeds of heresy are contained in Christianity itself, which began as a religion of dissent. In the Middle Ages the Church was the main focus of intellectual activity, and its spiritual leaders themselves often questioned the practices and beliefs which heretics openly challenged. The documents analysed in this volume trace the development of popular heresy from its beginnings. Four main themes are presented: the first manifestations of popular dissent in the eleventh century; the emergence of evangelical anticlericalism in the twelfth century; the infiltration of western heterodoxy in the mid-1100s; and the establishment and early organization of Cathar Churches in southern France and northern Italy which ultimately led to the inquisition.

This fourth volume in our series of "Studia", which focuses on the concept of heresy in the Middle Ages, is the issue of the fourth International Conference held by the Institute of Medieval Studies at Louvain from May 13th to 16th, 1973. Its main purpose is to bring about a better understanding of medieval heresy, which is a very important phenomenon not only in the development of Christianity but also in the social, political and intellectual evolution of Europe during the Middle Ages. It was not our intention to confine our topic to theological or philosophical reflections on the notion of heresy.Insofar as medieval theologians and philosophers deal formally and explicitly with the concept of heresy, their investigations quite obviously relate to the matter at hand. But the subject to be scrutinized is much broader, for it includes all the aspects and features of the phenomenon as it manifested itself in the framework of medieval society. It is possible to draw valuable conclusions with regard to the concept of heresy on the basis of an analysis of certain social, cultural or political situations closely related to heretical movements or trends, just as it is possible to discover an individual's implicit ideological background in his concrete behaviour. Thus our main concern has been to emphasize the essential features of the heresy phenomenon rather than the history of any particular sect, even though it is impossible to the historical situation, the origin, the development, and the context of the heretical movements of the Middle Ages.

Replete with terror, passion, and hope, this gripping narrative history explores the intricate mysteries of medieval Europe through the lives of the great heretics whose beliefs and practices challenged the teachings of an all-powerful church. Five centuries of social and spiritual turmoil are covered through a vivid and telling mix of events, personalities, and ideas. A host of figures are discussed in detail, including Bogomil, an obscure priest from the Balkans who introduced Manichean ideas to parishioners; Henry the Monk, who eluded capture and prepared southern France for the Cathars; Marguerite Porete, the great mystic who was burned at the stake; Fra Dolcino, whose brigand followers terrorized northern Italy; and the heralds of the Reformation, John Wyclif and Jan Hus. By the end of the Middle Ages, the courageous lives and beliefs of these and the other heretics discussed had transformed the religious, cultural, and political map of Europe.

The book deals with thinkers and movements that were embraced by many second-century religious seekers but which are now largely forgotten or known only as heretics: Basilides, Sethianism, Valentinus school, Marcion, Tatian, Bardaisan, Montanists, Cerinthus, Ebionites, Nazarenes, Jewish-Christianity of the "Pseudo-Clementines," and Elchasites."

Ancient heresies have modern expressions which influence our churches and culture, creating cruel dilemmas for today's Christian in th forms of error, sin, and various distortions of orthodox faith. In The Cruelty of Heresy Bishop Allison captures the drama and relevance of the Councils of the fourth and fifth centuries, and shows how the remarkable achievements of these early struggles still provide valuable guidelines, embodied in the Creeds, for believers "who are mystified and disturbed by attempts to jettison key doctrines of the faith"--George Carey in the foreword.

The present collection of papers deals with the organization of the Roman Inquisition and the procedures that it followed after its reconstitution in mid-sixteenth century in the struggle to preserve the faith and eradicate heresy.The principal focus,on the operation of the institution itself,overturns some long-standing assumptions that generally have been associated with it.I argue that the Inquisition was not a drumhead court,a chamber of horrors,or a judicial labyrinth from which escape ws impossible.The Supreme Congregation in Rome watched over the provincial tribunals,enforced the observance of what was for the times an essentially moderate code of law,and maintained uniformity of practice.While moral justice was impossible,given the presupposition of the Church that it had the right,even the duty,to prosecute those who differed in their religious beliefs,legal justice in terms of the jurisprudence of early modern Europe was indeed dispensed by the Roman Inquisition.-Introduction.

The thirty papers which comprise this volume are selected from those delivered at the summer and winter conferences of the Ecclesiastical.History Society in 1971 and 1972.The volume opens with three important,wide-ranging surveys of the nature and types of religious orthodoxy and dissent in the early Christian centuries by W.H.C.Frend, S.L. Greenslade and R.A. Markus.A further group of papers considers the emergence and treatment of earlier medieval heresies,while a number of contributions concerned with Lollardy have their focus in M.J. Wilk's examination of relations between Wyclif and Hus.For developments in more modern times,K.T.Ware supplies,with his discussion of relations between Orthodox and Catholics,a wider perspective to a rich and varied series of papers on more familiar matters in British,Continental and American history which culminate in P.B.Hinchcliff's examination of movements within the African Church.-Flap cover.

Previous discussions of medieval heresy have centered upon the twelfth and following centuries,based on the assumption that its origins lie at the beginning of the eleventh century.In this book,however,Mr.Russell maintains that medieval heresy began not in the eleventh but in the eight century,and that there were numerous and varied heretical manifestations from that time onward.Most writers on this subject have further maintained that Eastern dualist heresy arrived in the West early in the eleventh century,but Mr.Russell seeks to demonstrate that there is no real evidence that Eastern elements entered before the middle of the twelfth century.-Flap cover.

This important book offers the first comprehensive history of religious dualism,the doctrine that cosmos and man are constant battlegrounds for the forces of good and evil and their supernatural protagonists.Yuri Stoyanov traces crucial stages in the evolution of dualism from its early expression in late Egyptian religion and the revelations of Zoroaster to the revival of the "Great Heresy" in medieval Europe.-Back cover.

"The main subjects of enquiry in this volume centre around the major areas in which the honoree, Gordon Leff, has made fundamental contributions. These include learned and popular heresy (Cathars, Wyclif, Lollardy, and the concept of heresy itself); the history of medieval universities and thought (featuring the religious at Paris and Cambridge, Ockham, and Paris theologians' views on the Jews); later medieval religious, and early modern views of the crusades. The book is completed with a bibliography of works by Gordon Leff."--Jacket.

Ancient suthors,borrowing their models,perhaps,from Thucydides or Tacitus,recognized the danger inherent in urban upheaval and popular unrest;but with a general disregard for the substantive issues that provoked dispute,they were inclined to attribute them simply and wholly to a natural perversity on the part of crowds that caused them to resort to violence and foster rebellion for their own sakes.Consequently,judgements of the motives behind insurgent acts of the sordida plebs were summarily reached on the basis of a single criterion.If,as usually was the case,the crowd did something of which upper class literary observers disapproved,its incentive was condemned as base.But if,as it rarely did, an action of the populace gained approval,its inspiration was praised as a rare instance of collective wisdom and the love of truth.-Jacket.

For hundreds of years the Piarist Order of priests has been known for its history of important contributions to education, science, and culture. Throughout Italy, Spain, and central Europe, the order's schools evolved from shelters created to educate poor children into exclusive private academies. Thousands of children were educated at Piarist schools, including Mozart, Goya, Schubert, Victor Hugo, Johann Mendel, and a host of astronomers, kings, emperors, presidents, even a pope. Yet in 1646, the Piarist Order was abruptly abolished by Pope Innocent X, an unprecedented step not seen since the Knights of Templar were suppressed for heresy in the fourteenth century. Fallen Order is the stunning story of how the sexual abuse of children, practiced by some of the leading priests in the order, led to the Piarists' collapse. Karen Leibreich spent several years researching in the order's archives and in the Vatican Secret Archive, and discovered how the founder of the Piarist Order, Father Jose de Calasanz (later honored as the patron saint of Catholic schools) knew of the scandal and tried to keep it a secret. Cardinals and bishops actively participated in the cover-up in an effort to protect the reputation of an important cleric with influential family connections. The complicity of abuse went as far as the pontiff himself, when Pope Innocent X appointed a man known to be a prolific child abuser in charge of an order dedicated to the education of children. Although the Piarist Order was suppressed when the scandal eventually became public, it was later revived and is still in existence today, its turbulent past ignored. A brilliant portrait of seventeenth-century Rome, and the politics, personal rivalries, and Byzantine workings of the Vatican and the Catholic Church, Fallen Order is an explosive account of a history of cover-ups, deception, and shuttling known abuser priests from school to school that is frighteningly similar to the Catholic Church's response to child abuse in the priesthood today. - Publisher.

"Kantik Ghosh argues that one of the main reasons for Lollardy's sensational resonance for its times, and for its immediate posterity, was its exposure of fundamental problems in late-medieval academic engagement with the Bible, its authority and its polemical uses. Examining Latin and English sources, Ghosh shows how the same debates over biblical hermeneutics and associated methodologies were from the 1380s onwards conducted both within and outside the traditional university framework, and how, by eliding boundaries between Latinate biblical speculation and vernacular religiosity, Lollardy changed the cultural and political positioning of both. Covering a wide range of texts - scholastic and extramural, in Latin and in English, written over half a century from Wyclif to Thomas Netter - Ghosh concludes that by the first decades of the fifteenth century Lollardy had partly won the day. Whatever its fate as a religious movement, it had successfully changed the intellectual landscape of England."--Jacket.

"Arius" is widely considered to be Rowan Williams' magnum opus.Long out of print,and never before available in paperback,the re-issue of this extremely important book in a form and at a price which will be attractive to non-specialists,as well as scholars,is a major publishing event.-Back cover.

"Arianism has always been regarded as the archetypal heresy. It did affirm the divinity of Christ as the Son of God, but, unlike orthodoxy, it regarded the divinity as secondary and inferior to that of the Father, the one Supreme God. Recently many scholars have presented a more positive view of the religious intentions of Arianism than has been customary in the past. Yet the Nicene Creed, which was designed explicitly to outlaw Arianism, remains one of the primary expressions of Christian orthodoxy. Maurice Wiles traces the history of how Arianism has been viewed in later Christian thought, particularly where scholars or religious groups have adopted broadly Arian views. The main example of a re-emergence of Arian ideas is among the leaders of the new scientific Enlightenment in the early eighteenth century, especially Sir Isaac Newton and his disciples, William Whiston and Samuel Clarke. The longest section of the book deals with how and why their beliefs took this form, and why this approach disappeared again around the end of the century. A final section considers the interaction of belief and critical judgement in British Arian scholarship during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries."--Jacket.

Although always condemned,self-love - "that most undramatic of emotions," the author calls it - has yet never ceased to shape the cultural traditions of the West. From at least the second century, the literary and philosophical attitudes of Europe have organized their sensibilities around an experience of the self, the glorification of individual worth, and a sense of the unfettered "purity" of inward experience. Paul Zweig's fascinating and ambitious book searches out and traces this thread which has run through our cultural history. His study begins with the Gnostics of the early centuries of the Christian era, who embodied an uncompromising individualism, and ends with the nineteenth-century exemplars of the spirit self-love. In traversing the intervening centuries, the author fastens upon "moments" in our history in order to dramatize and clarify this experience of self-cultivation and self-exaltation, examining, among others, the love poetry of Provence, the sonnets of Shakespeare, Milton, Kierkegaard, Melville, and Baudelaire.

Bauer takes issue here with the long dominant view that heresy in the first Christian centuries consistently represented a later perversion of an original orthodoxy.The self-revelation of Jesus was said to be followed by the disciples' propagation of the gospel,resulting in churches which had a basic harmony in faith and doctrine.Heretical groups were to be found only on the fringes of the orthodox church.After studying Christianity in various sectors of the Roman Empire,Bauer discovered that contrary to past interpretations,the line between orthodoxy and heresy is far from clear.He argues that in some areas the initial form of Christianity was actually heretical according to later standards,and that orthodoxy as defined by the church councils triumphed at a relatively late date.-Jacket.

The papers in this volume fall into four sections: heresy, religious movements and the Church; Wyclif, his path into dissent and his doctrines; philosophical themes, including the decline of scholasticism in the 14th century; and Christian, Augustinian and Franciscan concepts of man.

Orthodox Christian writers (Justin,Irenaeus,Hippolytus,Eusebius,Epiphanius, and others) wrote about the persons and movements they considered heretical.
Hultgren and Haggmark here glean excerpts from these and other writers concerning heretical figures and movements of the first two centuries,including Gnostics, Marcion, Montanus, Ebionites, Adoptionists, and others,plus excerpts on the origins of Gnosticism.Agenerous introduction surveys the first two centuries,outlining the significance of the figures and movements for the study of Scripture and the history of doctrine,and introductions are provided for each of the figures and movements discussed.-Back cover.

The claim that our churches today-across the denominational board-have fallen into apostasy is a heavy charge.It is the charge brought by Peter Berger,widely recognized as America's foremost sociologist of religion,in the Erasmus Lecture published here.Berger speaks both as a social scientist and as a Christian believer.In the former capacity, he offers an analysis of "the new knowledge class" in American religion,an analysis that has already come in for a great deal of lively discussion.As a committed Christian,Berger defines the gospel from which the churches have apostasized in a way that some participants in this conference thought altogether too Lutheran.As the reader will see,however,all participants agree that,by whatever definition,apostasy from the gospel is an issue as urgent today as it was when Paul wrote to the Galatians.Christians in the Reformation traditions have customarily said that the church is always in need of reformation.Since the Second Vatican Council,Roman Catholics have regularly said that as well.But the general proposition that the church is always in need of reformation can become routine,and the sense of urgencybe lost.When the language of "crisis" is thrown at thoughtful people from every direction,they tend to become skeptical.That said,this book is nonetheless premised upon a recognition of crisis-the crisis of whether much of the church has abandoned the gospel and therefore ceased to be church.The people in this book believe that it is not only legitimate but imperative to ask whether this has happened.Believing that,they are prepared to run the risk of historical pretension in urging a New Reformation.In sum,this is not simply another academic conference.It is an earnest wrestling with the future of Christianity in the world.-Foreword.

What is a heretic? What were the heresies in the long and varied history of Christianity? Msgr. Cristiani has answered these questions by describing the heresies that developed from the divisions, breaches of unity, and divergences of opinion about the meaning of Christianity's message. Heresy arises, the author believes, "from the diversity of minds, from personality, from temperament and ultimately, from the fact of human freedom." Christianity had hardly proclaimed its message initially when the Judaizers and the earliest Gnostics proposed their selective interpretation as to its meaning. Various theories on the divinity of Christ, the Trinity and the Incarnation gave rise to the early heresies. The author gives us an excellent exposition on the Middle Ages with their special problems and inevitably, their heresies. A more detailed account is given of the events and theories that constituted what is called the Protestant Revolt, with the basic facts and doctrines concerning Luther, Zwingly, Calvin and Anglicanism. The final chapter is a discussion on the contemporary ecumenical movement, its aims, and its achievements thus far.

Several scholars,notably Jeffrey Russell,have warned that popular heretical movements may have started as as early as the ninth century and we must not ne misled by the scarcity of sources into making fundamental judgements about the appearance of popular heresies in the eleventh century.Russell's words are backed by the extensive character of his learning and the sharpness of his judgement.Faced with a choice,however,I have decided to begin the book's focus with the eleventh century,because from it can be traced the progressive awareness on the part of churchmen of religious dissent,which peaks first in St.Bernard's Sermon on "The Song of Songs" of 1144 (below,no.16),then in the encounter with Catharism and Waldensianism( below,chaps.III and IV),and finally in the institutionalizing of means of detecting and dealing with heresy (below,chaps.V and VI).-Introduction.

"Kantik Ghosh argues that one of the main reasons for Lollardy's sensational resonance for its times, and for its immediate posterity, was its exposure of fundamental problems in late-medieval academic engagement with the Bible, its authority and its polemical uses. Examining Latin and English sources, Ghosh shows how the same debates over biblical hermeneutics and associated methodologies were from the 1380s onwards conducted both within and outside the traditional university framework, and how, by eliding boundaries between Latinate biblical speculation and vernacular religiosity, Lollardy changed the cultural and political positioning of both. Covering a wide range of texts - scholastic and extramural, in Latin and in English, written over half a century from Wyclif to Thomas Netter - Ghosh concludes that by the first decades of the fifteenth century Lollardy had partly won the day. Whatever its fate as a religious movement, it had successfully changed the intellectual landscape of England."--Jacket.