Abbot Majolus of Cluny, Ambassador to the Dead
This paper was part of a intriguing session on monasticism entitled: SESSION IV: Abbots between Ideals and Institutions, 10th–12th Centuries. Here, we meet the unsung hero of Cluny’s early history, Abbot Majolus.
Ruthless Oppressors? Unraveling the Myth About the Spanish Inquisition
From its inception to the present, critics of the Spanish Inquisition has characterized the institution as omnipotent and oppressive and highlighted its role in the expulsion, forced conversion, and execution of supposed heretics.
God’s Warriors from the Czech Kingdom – the Terror of Central and Eastern Europe in the First Half of the 15th Century
The aim of this study is to point out a distinct phenomenon in the history of Central And Eastern Europe wherein part of the population of a fairly small kingdom in Central Europe invoked justified fear throughout the majority of Europe. Czech history is not all that popular a theme of study within the framework of European history. One of the few exceptions is the period of the first half of the 15th century in particular.
Waldensians at the turn of the fifteenth century in the Duchy of Austria: Perception of Heresy and Action against Heretics
The other major field of research that pertains to my current investigation is the inquisition; or the repression of heresy, as Richard Kieckhefer asserts. He notes that there was no such a thing as the Inquisition, because it existed only as mere offices, or functions of carrying out the inquisitorial justice, and did not as an institution as such, not even institutions, as was later the case in the sixteenth century.
Dualist heresy in Aquitaine and the Agenais, c.1000-c.1249
This thesis will examine whether the heresy in eleventh-century Aquitaine was dualist and will then discuss twelfth- and thirteenth-century Catharism in an Aquitainian context.
Literacy as Heresy: Lollards and the Spread of Literacy
An examination of the literacy habits of the Lollards, a heretical sect of the Middle Ages, will, I hope, provide a needed historical context for our concern today with literacy, technology, and responsibility.
Religious Key Terms in Hellenism and Byzantium: Three Facets
The following is a survey of the main semantic variations of love in the Greek and Latin of the Church Fathers and the medieval Latin of Scholasticism
Reflections on The Malleus Maleficarum in Light of the Trial of Joan of Arc
Although Joan’s trial took place in France and The Malleus Maleficarum was published in Germany, they are suitable for comparison because this text became the definitive manual for witchcraft inquisitors across Europe.
Bogomils, Cathars, Lollards, and the High Social Position of Women During the Middle Ages
During the 12th century, if not slightly earlier, Western Europe lived through a period of economic and social upheaval termed by many historians the 12th c. Renaissance. One of its aspects is related to the considerable emancipation of women mostly in Southern France, a development which spread over to Italy, Flanders, and later, England. One can even detect social zones where real emancipation was achieved.
The War Against Heresy in Medieval Europe
No surviving writer suggested on the eve of the millennium that the propagation of heresy of heresy among the people of Western Europe was active, or that any of the heresies of antiquity had survived.
Imagining the Witch: A Comparison between Fifteenth-Century Witches within Medieval Christian Thought and the Persecution of Jews and Heretics in the Middle Ages
This paper will examine how the prominent image of the witch in Christian thought during the early modern period emerged from earlier images of the non-Christian Other, Jews and heretics for example.
Religious Movement as a Necessity for Early Middle Age ‘Heretics’ and the Church
The nature of the ‘Christian Middle Ages’ in Europe and the interaction of ‘heretical groups’ operating within France is anything but the simplistic model that we conjure in our minds when we hear the terms ‘Christian’ Europe and ‘heretics’.
From Other Worldly to Worldly: Materialism, Anomie, and the Decline of Catharism’s Charismatic Appeal
The Cathars believed in a dualist cosmology that posited the existence of two coeternal gods, one good and one evil.
Lollard Theology: A Soteriological Analysis of the English Wycliffite Sermon Cycle
Prototestant ideas are evident throughout Wyclif’s later works and the flood of Wycliffite tracts and writings
which were published in the late 1370’s and 80’s; but they are most clearly and systematically communicated in the collection of English Wycliffite sermons which were compiled, one sermon for each of the services in the church calendar year, sometime near, or soon after, the end of Wyclif’s life.
“The World on the End of a Reed”: Marguerite Porete and the annihilation of an identity in medieval and modern representations – a reassessment
Central to the aims of this thesis is the question “how did Porete „fit‟ the religious landscape of her period?” A seeming obstacle to this pursuit are claims from within the scholarship that Porete did not „fit‟ at all, but was, rather, as an aberration amidst other female mystics of the period.
“Neither Mine Nor Thine”: Communist Experiments in Hussite Bohemia
Because of such circumstances the intoxicating influence of idealism and utopia continued to be pressed forward. One pervasive ideal was communism.
Retroactive Heresy: The influence of early Christian heresies on the identification and reaction to heretical sects
The medieval Church viewed itself as Defender of the Faith, the destroyer of the unbelievers, the wrong believers. These heretics were to be reviled and feared as perverters of God’s word. The perverters of orthodoxy were, ultimately, not to be distinguished from one another, but rather known by catchphrases.
Bogomilism: An Important Precursor of the Reformation
Our particular task here is to give proof of the presence of Bogomil and Cathar ideas and motivations in the works of the brightest reformation triad: John Wycliffe — Jan Hus — Martin Luther, by means of facts, documented links and associations.