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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Amongst various features still being evaluated as characteristic of West Frankish society in c.1000 AD, one of the most striking, is that into the middle of the century a range of essentially unrelated and geographically widespread sources speak of ‘heresy’ newly affecting the populace. But how should we interpret these apparently diverse phenomena? Of the models which heresiologists explore, too often overlooked is that proposed by Janet Nelson in this very forum in 1971. Her thesis, that a ‘crisis in theodicy’ produced a cognitive need for new explanations which ‘heresy’ answered, whilst not explicitly anthropological, focused on understanding phenomena within societal wholes. This explanation was challenged by the anthropologist Talal Asad, who argued that heretical activity simply indicated urban movements over which clerics were unable to extend their authority.
1 The most recent overview of the sources and interpretation of popular heresy in c.100 is in Lambert, M. D., Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation (3rd edn, Oxford, 2002), 32–40.Google Scholar
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3 Asad, T., ‘Medieval Heresy: an Anthropological View’, Social History 11 (1986), 345–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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5 Originating with George Duby, La Société au Xle et Xlle siècles dans la région mâconnaise (Paris, 1953).
6 Barthélémy, Dominique, La Mutation de l’an mil a-t-elle eu lieu? Servage et chevalerie dans la France des Xe et XIe siècles (Paris, 1997)Google Scholar; Cheyette, F. L., ‘George Duby’s Maâonnais after Fifty Years: Reading it Then and Reading it Now’, JMH 28 (2002), 291–317 Google Scholar.
7 Nelson, ‘Society, Theodicy and the Origins of Heresy’, 68–72.
8 Sacrorum conciliorum: nova et amplissima collectio, ed. J. D. Mansi, 54 vols in 59 (Graz, 1960–1), 29: 89–90.
9 Mackinney, L. C., ‘The People and Public Opinion in the Eleventh-Century Peace Movement’, Speculum 5 (1930), 181–206.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
10 Most importantly in Head, Thomas and Landes, Richard, eds, The Peace of God: Social Violence and Religious Response in France around the Year 1000 (Ithaca, NY and London, 1992) and Moore, R. I., The First European Revolution, c.970-1215 (Oxford, 2000), 102–5 Google Scholar.
11 Moore, R. I., The Origins of European Dissent (2nd edn, Oxford, 1985), 23–45 Google Scholar; Lobrichon, G., ‘The Chiaroscuro of Heresy: Early Eleventh-Century Aquitaine as Seen from Auxerre’, in Head and Landes, eds, Peace of God, 80–103 Google Scholar. Relevant sources are the ‘Letter of Héribert’, in Lobrichon, ‘The Chiaroscuro’, 85–6, and Ademari Cabannensis Chronichon, ed. P. Bourgain et al., CChr.CM 129 (1999), 170, 180.
12 Frassetto, M., ‘The Sermons of Adémar of Chabannes and the Letter of Héribert. New Sources Concerning the Origins of Medieval Heresy’, Revue Bénédictine 109 (1999), 324–40 Google Scholar; Taylor, Claire, ‘The Letter of Héribert of Périgord as a Source for Dualist Heresy in the Society of Early Eleventh-Century Aquitaine’, JMH 26 (2000), 313–49.Google Scholar
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21 Nelson, ‘Society, Theodicy and the Origins of Heresy’, 65.
22 Durkheim, Emile, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, trans. Swain, Joseph Ward (2nd edn, Glencoe, 1965), esp. 262–3, 465–70.Google Scholar
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26 Douglas, Mary, Purity and Danger: an Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London, 1966)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Asad, ‘Medieval Heresy’, 346.
27 For discussion of schools influencing Nelson’s and Asad’s types of interpretations, see Barnard, Alan, History and Theory in Anthropology (Cambridge, 2000), esp. 61–79, 120–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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29 Wallace, A. F. C., The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca (New York, 1970), 97–8.Google Scholar
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31 Kehoe, Alice Beck, The Ghost Dance: Ethnohistory and Revitalization (Fort Worth, TX, 1989)Google Scholar.
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34 Ibid, 30.
35 Ibid.
36 But see Nelson’s more recent words of warning about overestimating the stability of the Carolingian era in her review of Head and Landes, eds, Peace of God, in Speculum 69 (1994), 163–9.
37 Wallace, ‘Revitalization’, 263–75, 270.
38 Nelson, ‘Society, Theodicy and the Origins of Heresy’, 69–70, 72.
39 See Landes, Richard, Relics, Apocalypse and the Deceits of History: Ademar of Chabannes, 989–1034 (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1995), 175–6 and 199–203.Google Scholar
40 Glaber, Rodulfus, The Five Books of the Histories, ed. France, J. and Bulst, N. (Oxford, 1989), 89–91.Google Scholar
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