On Fri, 26 Jul 1996, Richard Landes wrote:
>
> On Fri, 26 Jul 1996, JH Arnold wrote:
>
[snip]
> > BUT the questions
> > therefore are (1) why didn't the local bishops let him preach his
> > (orthodox) message?
>
> because he made them look bad everyway to sunday.
First, I don't think it was a question of the local *Bishops* but rather
the Bishop in Lyon, who had already formed a dislike for Waldes before he
went to the Pope (for whatever reason, probably because Waldes made him
look bad :>)
>
> > (2) why did the Pope let things get to this stage,
> > and not provide a more structured "rule" for Waldes and his followers?
>
> (this is just a guess [as opposed to my answer to 1 :-) ]): because he
> knew he had put the wammy on them with the insistence on local approval.
This is worth some thought. We should ask ourselves how unussual *was*
Waldes really? He was unussual in that he succeeded, that he had
followers that continued after him. But there were other men (I don't
think there were any women, but maybe they just haven't been found) who
were also self-appointed reformers, without official permission to
preach, or form groups in the twelfth century. Bother Norbert and Robert
of Arbrissel occupied this problomatic position for a while before they
formed sanctioned orders. Similarly the poorly documented activites of
Henry of Le Mans (or Lausanne) and Peter de Bruys have been viewed as the
ore overtly heretical (and anti-clerical) manifestations of popular
religiousity and desires for reform which may have had other proponents
who, being less heretical, did not attract the attention of our
record-writers.
The vernacular bible was raised earlier in this thread. This seems
rather related to my above point. It was not yet forbidden to translate
the bible into the vernacular, and it is my understanding that there were
other copies in circulation, before Waldes. Should we then think that
the Pope would have recognized Waldes as being more problematic than the
other people who had comissioned these translations, or who had done
them? I doubt that it would have marked him as remarkable.
It seems to me, and this is my opinion and can be dismissed :>, that we
tend to rather overstate the organization of religious devotion in the
twelfth and early thirteenth century. Of course there were many highly
organized institutional religious bodies, like the Papacy. But there
were also female monastic "houses" which claimed to belong to orders
whihc did not recognize them (I've seen this with the Cistercians in
particular). There were anchorites, there were beguines... I use female
examples because they are what I know about, but I suspect that there may
well have been male religious whose position was not rigorously defined.
The problem is, if they aren't organized, how do we know about them?
Anyone who has studied the origins of monastic houses will know that many
have very hazy beginings. We know that they existed because they later
organized, but at what point they really formed, and what form they took
then, is often very unclear.
The point of this is just to ask why the Pope would have thought to
create a new order for Waldes, right away.
>
> > (3) how is it that Francis gets to do much the same thing, without
> > hindrance, a bit later on?
>
> well there's Innocent III's dream, there's Francis' personality, there's
> the lesson of how dangerous it is for the church to reject such
> initiatives from the laity that the experience with Waldo taught, and
> there's the wisdom/shrewdness of Innocent (much of which explains the
> dream).
Francis was clearly remarkable for various reasons. I think he also had
strong support from one of the Cardinals, and then there was his ability
to obey the Pope (for example, enclosing his female followers)...
..............................................................................
Omittamus studia, dulce est desipere, : Nicole Morgan Schulman
et carpamus dulcia, iuventutis tenere! : [log in to unmask]
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|