Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe

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Edward Peters
University of Pennsylvania Press, Sep 22, 2011 - History - 320 pages

Throughout the Middle Ages and early modern Europe theological uniformity was synonymous with social cohesion in societies that regarded themselves as bound together at their most fundamental levels by a religion. To maintain a belief in opposition to the orthodoxy was to set oneself in opposition not merely to church and state but to a whole culture in all of its manifestations. From the eleventh century to the fifteenth, however, dissenting movements appeared with greater frequency, attracted more followers, acquired philosophical as well as theological dimensions, and occupied more and more the time and the minds of religious and civil authorities. In the perception of dissent and in the steps taken to deal with it lies the history of medieval heresy and the force it exerted on religious, social, and political communities long after the Middle Ages.

In this volume, Edward Peters makes available the most compact and wide-ranging collection of source materials in translation on medieval orthodoxy and heterodoxy in social context.

 

Contents

Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe
1
THE DEFINITION OF ORTHODOXY AND HERESY IN LATE ANTIQUITY AND THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES
13
II THE PROBLEM OF REFORM DISSENT AND HERESY IN THE ELEVENTH AND TWELFTH CENTURIES
57
III THE CATHARS
103
IV THE WALDENSIANS
139
PREACHING PENITENCE AND PASTORALISM
165
CRUSADE AND CRIMINAL SANCTIONS
189
VII INTELLECTUAL POSITIONS CONDEMNED IN THE THIRTEENTH AND FOURTEENTH CENTURIES
217
VIII THE SPIRITUAL FRANCISCANS AND VOLUNTARY POVERTY
235
IX PEASANT CA THARS IN THE ARIEGE IN THE EARLY FOURTEENTH CENTURY
251
X THE AGE OF WYCLIF AND HUS
265
Sources and Acknowledgments
309
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About the author (2011)

Edward Peters is Henry Charles Lea Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania. His publications include The Magician, the Witch, and the Law, Torture, The First Crusade, and, with Alan C. Kors, Witchcraft in Europe, 400-1700: A Documentary History, all available from the University of Pennsylvania Press.

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