R. I. Moore

My path to this book was somewhat circuitous. Recommended to a podcast ("The Rest is History") which, recommended this book about heresy and the Cathars. Yes, I read the blurb on the back cover which promised that this would turn upside down any ideas that I had about the Albigensian crusades, and the inquisition and the repression of the cathars in Southern France (but also in Italy and Bulgaria). R I Moore (Bob) seems to have an impeccable reputation as a historian so I'm inclined to take on trust most of what he claims. He clams for instance that heresy in the church was virtually non existent until about 1100 AD and the term Cathars was not used by the bon homies in the south of France. It was used in Lateran III (1178) and came to be used as a general term for Heretics of any sort (whatever their particular beliefs) but probably only came into common usage in the nineteenth century and more recently with all sorts of fantastic notions about holy grails and the paternity of Jesus.

Moore, also claims that there was no evidence of the heresy of belief in duality (simplistically, a good god and an evil god) in the Languadoc region prior to about 1100. He suggests that the concept emerged from the cathedral schools being established throughout Europe. "There had been no trace of theological dualism in the answers of the boni homines at Lombers or, more importantly, in the questions put to them.......The assumption that dualist heresy was widespread in the region by this time, and that it had originated in the Balkans, was buttressed in the second half of the twentieth century by the conclusion of a distinguished scholar, ably reinforced by another".....[Who were these scholars? They are not named by Moore... rivals of Moore perhaps ?] According to Moore "We certainly cannot exclude the possibility that the spectre [of dualism], by now regularly deployed as target practice in the classrooms of Paris, had been raised by the legate’s party itself"........ I got the impression from reading the book that these "classrooms" started with the completion of the great cathedrals after about 1100 AD but, on checking, I found that Charlemagne had issued a decree in 789 AD that schools be established in every monastery and Bishopric. So they had been around for a long time. Anyway, the fundamental ideas prevalent about the heresy derived from Augustine's description of the Manichean sect. (And he'd been a member for about ten years so, presumably, knew it well). And when the inquisitors went looking for this heresy....they found it. Surprise!! (The fact that it's a heresy was really decided by a vote ...not universal ...by a convention of Bishops who emerged with the Nicean Creed). Arianism...the basic notion being that the Son came into being through the will of the Father; the Son, therefore, had a beginning and was not of the same substance as the father. Hence, it was a form of dualism as well......the idea that Jesus was somehow made of the imperfect worldly material substance......or worse, was truly mortal....was fairly widely held.

Moore says "Augustine was the most influential, in the Latin tradition........His vivid descriptions of the Manichees, of their belief in two gods–one good, who presided over the realm of the spirit, and one evil, who ruled the material universe–and of their refusal to perpetuate the domain of the latter by eating meat or procreating, made this the most feared of all ancient heresies."

I'm left wondering if Moore really has it correct. Certainly, the heresy of Adoptionism (basically the dual nature of Christ) was around in Spain in the year 301 when the Council of Eliberis assembled at Granada (see https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/archdiocese-of-granada) The council included: St. Gregory, Bishop of Elliberis, who assisted at the councils of Sirmium and Rimini, and "was the constant antagonist of the Arian heresy". Obviously, he was not altogether successful because Beatus of Liebana (around 790 Ad) was still fighting against the heresy of adoptionism though most famous for the fantastic (horrific) illustrated books of the apocalypse (the text basically copied from other sources). And Felix, Bishop of Urgell in Lerida, Spain, was actually convicted of the heresy of Adoptionism in 792. The Muslim conquest almost certainly imported dualist ideas into Spain and was regarded, initially by the locals, as just another sect of Christianity. (I have heard the idea expressed that the repression and forced conversions from the donatism and manicheanism expressions of christianity in North Africa had served to open up the people there to the, later, forced conversion to the Muslim religion.......just another sect). So I would be surprised if the widespread ideas of duality had not penetrated the Languadoc region prior to 800 AD (either from Spain or from elsewhere) but were not regarded as unusual, or non christian. In fact, given that most of the ordinary folk were illiterate then they were fair game for any ideas that were spread around ...and arianism and manicheanism certainly had appealing elements. (Such as an explanation for evil in the world, and more acceptable explanations of the crucifixion and the eucharist.

Bottom line....my confidence in Bob Moore, whilst not quite shattered, is certainly shaken.

One of his other great themes is that the Inquisition was not a huge force but rather small groups of individuals who had been given special powers by the Pope. "‘The inquisition’ of popular legend did not exist at any time in the middle ages. Each inquisitor was personally appointed and operated independently, at first for particular occasions, later with general responsibility in a designated area......Their common intellectual formation in the theology of the [cathedral] schools, with its growing emphasis on the reality of evil........and the cult of their martyred brethren, gave the Dominican inquisitors a formidable coherence of outlook and expectation soon matched by their Franciscan counterparts." Though none of this came as a surprise to me. Maybe I had been conditioned by earlier readings (such as Montaillou and a Short History of the Cathars) to understand that the insidious power of the Inquisitors was due, in part, to the back-up they were able to demand from local authorities, their demands for people to inform on others, and their immunity from normal rules for evidence or proof. The 1184 papal bull, "Ad abolendam, said that ‘all counts, barons, governors and consuls of cities, and other places’ must undertake on oath to give the church every support and assistance in its endeavours, on pain of losing their lands and offices, being excommunicated and having their goods confiscated for the use of the church. The inquisition were assisted greatly by the fact that a high proportion of their victims were illiterate and didn't understand either their own doctrines accurately or the "rules" that were being applied by the inquisitors, or the correct doctrines of the catholic church. Their own beliefs were a jumble of part catholic, part, witchcraft and part biblical based beliefs. As Moore says "Those accused of spreading heresy in the early eleventh century had one thing, and only one thing, in common: they claimed to live the apostolic life........The only rational appraisal that the sources support is that in the first half of the eleventh century heresy among the common people did not present any coherent or concerted challenge either to the authority of the church or to the structure of society..........Anyone might pick up such ideas, in any number of ways. But those who did so would become heretics only, as Gerard of Cambrai demonstrated at Arras, if they refused to abandon them in the face of episcopal correction." In later years, it seems that even where people abandoned their ideas or had "correct" ideas, they were still condemned or had their property seized ...which made them paupers.

Idealists and enthusiasts had no need of papal mandates to make the connection regularly proclaimed by the reformers, that only those who led the apostolic life were fit to preach. From there it was a short step to claim that living the apostolic life was all the licence a preacher needed......Clement and Everard did not know Latin, his assumption here must be that they, or their leaders, had access to a translation of at least this much scripture into the vernacular. We shall see again that such translations did exist, particularly of the Acts of the Apostles, although churchmen increasingly disapproved of them.

I found it interesting that "The Jews of northern France at this time were prosperous, reflecting their essential role as connected to an international trading network and as specialists in the uses of money, indispensable to the opening up of new land to cultivation and the establishment and growth of markets that underlay the economic take-off of western Europe in the twelfth century.......Wherever the Jews went, they had schools.....In denying the incarnation and the resurrection of Christ, Judaism pointed directly at the areas in which Christian scholars were experiencing the greatest difficulties in working out a logical and compelling account of their own theology,"

Some "nuggets" from Moore which I found interesting follow:
"Against the Petrobrusians is our only source for the teaching of Peter of Bruys. It attributes five principal heresies to him: (i) ‘that children who have not reached the age of understanding cannot be saved by Christian baptism’ and cannot benefit from the faith of godparents on their behalf; (ii) ‘that there should be no churches or temples in any kind of building, and that those which already exist should be pulled down. Christians do not need holy places in which to pray, because when God is called he hears, whether in a tavern or a church, in the street or in a temple, before an altar or in a stable, and he listens to those who deserve it;’ (iii) ‘that holy crosses should be broken and burned, because the instrument on which Christ was so horribly tortured and so cruelly killed is not worthy of adoration;’ (iv) ‘that they deny the truth that the body and blood of Christ is offered daily and continuously in church through the sacrament’; and (v) ‘that they deride offerings by the faithful of sacrifices, prayers, alms, and other things for the dead, and say that nothing can help the dead in any way.".....Doesn't sound very different from the views of the Protestant church that I grew up in!
There was a "contradiction in the business of reform that long remained unresolved. It owed both spiritual respectability and intellectual coherence to a universal ideal derived from the neoplatonist spirituality of the late Carolingian schools, expressed in the apostolic life and given programmatic form and Europe-wide circulation by the Gregorian papacy and its agents. But for practical support in local conflicts it appealed to popular indignation arising from grievances.....So Henry and Peter of Bruys were formidable spokesmen for the little community. They possessed an articulate and consistent theology, characterised by stark individualism and an uncompromising rejection of large and abstract structures of authority in favour of those firmly rooted in the community itself. They denounced clerical vice and avarice, and repudiated most sources of clerical income and power. They denied the authority of the church fathers to interpret the scriptures and insisted on their own right to do so. They maintained that marriage was a matter for those concerned and not a sacrament of the church. They advocated the baptism of adults, not of infants, and confession in public before the community, not in private to priests.......They represented a challenge increasingly difficult for the reformers to ignore."

"If there was a moment when the war on heresy was formally declared, it was May 1163. A council of the church, meeting at Tours under the presidency of Pope Alexander III and the patronage of Henry II, king of England and duke of Aquitaine, declared that: In the district of Toulouse a damnable heresy has recently arisen, which, like a cancer gradually diffusing itself over the neighbouring places, has already infected vast numbers throughout Gascony and other provinces, and hiding itself like a serpent in its own folds, undermines the vineyard of the Lord........The clergy are to be proactive. It is no longer enough to wait for heretics to reveal themselves by preaching or evangelism."

"New measures against heresy and a new conviction of its universal, underground presence, set in train the events that led to the Albigensian Crusade, the establishment of the papal inquisition and the subjugation of the lands of the count of Toulouse to the French crown.......Faithful men who had not been touched by any rumours of heresy were made to promise to give us in writing the names of everyone they knew who had been or might in the future become members or accomplices of the heresy, and to leave out nobody........It must be doubtful whether they all did so simply on religious grounds. The chance to settle scores and undermine rivals is unlikely to have been missed in a community experiencing all the opportunities and all the stresses of rapid commercial growth.
....Some of those present steadfastly maintained that they had heard from some of the heretics that there are two gods, one good and one evil: the good god had created everything invisible and everything that could not be changed or corrupted, while the evil one created the sky, the earth, man, and other visible things."

"Innocent III had charm, dynamism and vision......but he presided over two of European history’s infamous atrocities......In 1204 Constantinople, the greatest Christian city in the world, was besieged and looted by an army of crusaders initially raised to recover Jerusalem from the Muslims. In 1208 Innocent launched another crusade, ostensibly against the Albigensian heretics of the lands between the Rhône and the Garonne, whose relentless succession of sieges, lootings and burnings set a new level of savagery in wars between Christians.......Even for so clear-headed a man as Innocent III it was not easy to distinguish between heresy as a religious force and as a political one. These events framed the conditions in which the papacy acquired the habit of using every weapon in its spiritual armoury–crusading, privileges for its allies, excommunication and anathematisation as heretics for its enemies–in defence of its territorial interests......Whatever their relations, both pope and emperor faced another power that both despised, but which was potentially greater than either of them. The towns were now growing explosively in size and wealth, and ever more vigorously engaged in dominating and enlarging their contados.......The particular combination of grievance and alliance between different groups and interests, between those within the city and in the contado, between the factions in the city and the claims and claimants of rival cities, of wider lordship, of empire or papacy, was unique in every case, but all were drawn from the same list of ingredients......Thus within a few weeks of his accession Innocent gratified the ambition of every political agent and every would-be tyrant for a handy way to disqualify his opponents, before or after the event......The property of heretics was to be confiscated. They were to be declared infamous, incapable of holding office and denied access to the courts, and these penalties were to be extended even to their catholic descendants."

"On 24 June 1209 what Arnold Amalric called ‘the greatest Christian army ever’ mustered at Lyon, from every part of France, from Germany north and south, from Provence and Lombardy–20,000 horsemen and 200,000 others......they proceeded to Béziers, which on 21 July was sacked, plundered and destroyed by fire. The entire population was massacred......the lordship of Béziers and Carcassonne fell to Simon de Montfort, a minor lord from the Île de France with close ties to the Cistercian order......Simon’s reverse became a triumph when Pedro, having surrounded the greatly outnumbered crusaders in the village of Muret contrived to expose himself to an unexpected charge from the desperate defenders and was killed......Three or four hundred presumed heretics found in the town were taken to a meadow outside the walls where ‘our crusaders burned them alive with great joy’. The same rejoicing attended the burning of sixty more at Cassès a few days later."

"An exuberant variety of religious belief and practice existed more or less everywhere in Europe......Were it not for the screen of terrible suffering and lurid accusations through which we view all this in retrospect, the good men and their followers might not appear so very different from many other pious sectaries in the Europe of that time......Yet the witnesses deposed that, when William had asked him whether he believed in two gods, Pier replied that ‘he could in no way reach certainty about this.’ Striking as they are, his views hardly amount to a coherent body of doctrine......Rather, they warn that even the most ardent votaries of any faith do not necessarily understand or endorse what theologians, or historians, may regard as the obvious, necessary corollaries of what they say."

"There was no clear line between Cathars and catholics.......Conversely, scepticism of the powers and claims of the catholic clergy was widespread. The imperfections of their lives, relished in the telling and deeply resented, were openly, not to say exultantly, discussed and easily led to doubt of their teaching........The Dominican inquisitors were, as Dominic had insisted, products of the schools, where everything began with the elementary precept of Aristotle that a thing could not be both an and not a.......That is why the idea of conversion–or, from the other point of view, apostasy–is commonly associated with the language of treason and perfidy. This is another reason for caution in weighing the testimony of converts."

The traditional account [of heresy]has depended at crucial points not on the earliest or best informed sources but on texts constructed often long after the events.......it exposes the ‘dualist tradition’ and ‘the Cathars of the Languedoc’ as largely mythical, the question is sometimes asked, ‘How could so many good scholars have got it so wrong?’.
Some reservations but overall I liked the book. Five stars from me.… (más)

My favorite history books annoy both sides in an ongoing argument, and that's what Moore can do here. He'll really piss of those who want medieval heretics to stand in as great martyrs to conscience who were cruelly mistreated by imperialistic, colonising, hegemonic etc etces. He'll also piss of those who see in heresy a genuine danger that needs to be resisted (though not, generally, persecuted).

His argument is, in short, that the 'heretics' of the high middle ages were by and large people who pushed the church's own reformist principles a little too far. The Papacy wanted priests to be better educated, celibate, less corrupt, and less abusive... the 'heretics' were often just people who thought and believed this, but were on the wrong side of other conflicts. They weren't really heretics at all; the problem was that they stood in the way of, for instance, the French king's desire to centralize or bring what we now know as France under his power. Or, later, you could be labelled a heretic for defending traditional, local forms of religion against these universalizing reforms.

Moore discusses dozens of cases, and shows how all of the prosecutions or inquisitions of heresy were the result of many small events: political struggles, yes, but also the increasing use of clerics all educated to see centralized government as a good; the habit of tarring those who disagreed with you about strictly temporal matters as heretics; the very odd belief that 'disagreeing with the pope' was an instance of heresy, even when the pope's opinion was, roughly, "I want that land"... on and on.

The question of how many Cathars there were before the Albigensian Crusade, Moore suggests, is like the question how many witches there were in Europe before the witch-hunts: the persecuted peoples were more or less invented by the persecuted. Those who died did not die for their beliefs; they were not Luther and his 'here I stand.' They were just unfortunates caught up in political squabbles and massive sociological change, eliminated because they had land or wealth that others wanted. There's no moral about holding fast to your beliefs. The moral of the story is, as ever, those with the armor will win.

The downside to his attention to detail is that the book is more or less a mess. Far too many chapters, far, far too many sections, and too much repetition. At the sentence level, though, Moore writes very well.… (más)

This book provides a radical reassessment of Europe from the late tenth to the early thirteenth centuries. Professor Moore argues that the period witnessed the first true revolution in European society, characterized by a transformation in the economy, in family structures, and in the sources of power and the means by which it was exercised. Together these changes brought into being for the first time an autonomous city-supporting civilization in non-Mediterranean Europe. The circumstances and outcome of this transformation, he demonstrates, not only shaped medieval and modern Europe but established enduring and fundamental characteristics which differentiated Europe from other world civilizations.The process at the heart of change involved social, cultural and institutional transformations whose implementation required extensive popular participation. On occasion it required the use or threat of popular violence, in part consciously sanctioned and led by some of those challenging for power within the social elite: once the revolution had been achieved this popular enthusiasm had to be subdued and contained. These developments were far from simple and anything but uniform. The differences which resulted both within Europe and between Europe and other world civilizations were of lasting significance… (más)

It is the argument of this that however the tremendous extension of the power and influence of the literate is described, the development of persecution in all its forms was part of it, and therefore inseparable from the great and positive achievement with which it is associated. Whether they might have taken place without it is another question, and one which, perhaps thankfully, historians are not called upon to answer.

The above is how Professor Moore concludes this harrowing taxonomy on the persecution and peril inflicted upon heretics, Jews, lepers, homosexuals and prostitutes across Europe during the High iddle Ages. The period chronicles cited indicate a sort of change of attitudes and stiffening of response around the 11th century. The narrative ascribed to each of these offenses appeared very similar. Around p. 100 we begin to probe for causality. Moore then broaches whether these events constitute either a nascent form of Durkeheimian deviance or a Webernian consolidation of central power. Without a doubt the dislocation of the populace form the feudal/manorial to the urban really disoriented people. Couple that with the emerging cash economy and all bets were off. The author gauges the limits of available information and won't speculate further. Then citing Foucault he does offer another thesis about the threat posed by Jewish scholarship. This learned community was thus a rival to the new literate (Christian) class which were becoming the stewards of power. This last argument isn't quite convincing. The rich bibliography made this an enjoyable excursion on a winter evening.
… (más)