Heresy and the Making of European Culture by Andrew P. Roach James R. Simpson

Author:Andrew P. Roach, James R. Simpson [Andrew P. Roach, James R. Simpson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, History, Medieval
ISBN: 9781317122494
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2016-04-22T04:00:00+00:00

The Manichean Menace

In the case of dualism in southern France, most historiography is still dominated by an understanding of Catharism posited most convincingly by Bernard Hamilton,9 who has demonstrated links with Eastern dualism that were perhaps previously assumed rather than really proven, the heresies concerned being so similar.10 His conclusion is that Catharism derived from a dualist sect in the Balkans, the Bogomils. It is generally accepted that this belief system tapped into social conditions and preoccupations in the Languedoc in the second half of the twelfth century,11 although this is taking on increasingly subtle nuances,12 and few consider that the new belief was adopted uniformly as a coherent system of belief, neatly ‘replacing’ Catholicism at all social levels.13 Its elite practitioners, ascetics who had received the ritual consolamentum after a period of preparation, were perhaps the only adherents of the sect that fully understood its dualist cosmology.

The menace was nonetheless recognized by the clergy and it seems likely that it was they who informed the secular reaction to the phenomenon at an elite level, as argued influentially by R.I. Moore.14 Good examples of this are the complaint of Count Raymond V of Toulouse that ‘the two principles’ were being taught in his lands, and the subsequent action taken at Toulouse and Lavaur by comital and royal representatives against the heresiarchs responsible.15 The dualist nature of what was occurring was surely not identified by the Count himself but by theologically learned men, finding a category and language that would resonate with other clergy so that they would understand the seriousness of the threat and encourage and support the efforts of the Count and the kings against it.

This was possible because dualist sects and even whole societies had been encountered by Christians for hundreds of years. The most famous of these, the Manichees, provided a template for medieval understanding of dualism in the eleventh century. Bogomilism itself had made inroads into the West by the 1140s, and was recognized as dualist by Bernard of Clairvaux and Eckbert of Schönau, who first called its practitioners ‘Cathars’.16 To the clergy, it was straightforward: the Manichees were back! They continued to identify the strange new belief as dualist into the period of the Albigensian crusade. Without necessarily ever conversing with a member of the sect, excitable Cistercians such as Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay knew what the ‘heretics’ were. Just like his uncle and fellow crusader Abbot Gui of les Vaux-de-Cernay, he did not need to examine one to know that the dissidents in the Languedoc were dualists, because the authoritative Cistercians he knew of had said that they were.

Like Gui’s, this is the kind of self-reinforcing, cart-before-horse truism on the part of medieval clergy that historians are on the lookout for. But does this prove that what was in evidence in southern France was merely a Cistercian fantasy? That order’s conclusions were no different from those of the Franciscans and Dominicans, who actively engaged, debated with and then interrogated people they refer to as

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