Dear Daron,
Your question about the possible anti-clerical tendencies among the orthodox
laity is a very intriguing one. And very difficult to answer! It is namely
not easy to detect sentiments of dissent among the orthodox lay groups,
since each group knew, as was pointed out by Richard Landes and others, that
their key to survival was to emphasize their clerical contacts and
co-operation with the church authorities.
I am familiar with the 13th-16th century Dominican penitent women in Italy.
The sources that I am familiar with- mainly hagiographies, but also Rules,
chronicles, letter collections, and some medieval fiction concerning these
women- do not suggest (not surprisingly!) that Italian Dominican penitent
women would have been directly accused or suspected of anti-clericalism.
Yet, in the early fourteenth century the Dominicans did have trouble in
reassuring their contemporaries that their penitent women were not Beguines,
but formed a religious association of their own. In fact, the Dominican
penitent order remained for several decades in a fairly uneasy and undefined
institutional position, which made Dominicans wary that their penitents
would be suspected of being Beguines- and consequently, supporters of
supposed anti-clericalism- at the time that the institutional church grew
increasingly suspicious of such independent lay groups as the Beguines.
While the Franciscan Rule for their penitents was approved in 1289, the
Dominican Third Order Rule gained its papal approval only in 1405.
Therefore, the Dominicans has to make sure that their penitents were not
confused with other lay associations, especially not with the Beguines. In
fact, Thomas "Caffarini" of Siena (d. 1434) even emphasizes in his
collection of documents about the Dominican penitent order, that even if the
Dominicans were still missing the ultimate confirmation of their penitent
Rule, their lay members were not to be confused with the Beguines.
Thus, I would suggest that the lay groups like Dominican, and also for
example Augustinian, penitent order, that successfully existed long before
the actual papal confirmation of their Rule, had to over and over reassure
the church authorities of their clerical ties, even when they were not
actually suspected of direct anticlericalism. In this sense, I would suggest
that the Franciscans, whose Rule was papally sanctioned early on, had a bit
easier time. This, however, is only fair, knowing that the Franciscan
idealists elsewhere anyway run into a lot of trouble with the established
church.
Maiju (Lehmijoki-Gardner)
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