On Fri, 26 Jul 1996, Dennis D. Martin wrote:

> > this description strikes me as a bit ingenuous. Waldo was subject to alot 
> > of hostility from the clergy both local and at the papal court, and for 
> > more than his desire to preach -- his translation of the bible comes to 
> > mind. telling him that he needed local permission to preach was a way for 
> > the pope to finesse his problem, but essentially, given the hostility of 
> > local clergy, a way of saying no.  as for the approach to the 
> > Franciscans, it was hardly as smooth or as consistent as you suggest.  if 
> > the Waldensians went from believing themselves to be the champions of 
> > Catholicism to thinking of the Church as the whore of Babylon, it is 
> > hardly the result of a non-hostile church.
> > 
> > rlandes

> One can trade accusations of "ingenuousness" ad infinitum.  One man's 
> caution (required of responsible leaders) is another man's hostility.  Do 
> I detect a certain "hostility" toward the Catholic church (or is it merely 
> critical caution) in the 
> way certain modern writers deal with topics of dissent and heresy in the 
> medieval church.  One is, of course, entitled to one's hostility, 
> critical caution, enthusiastic affirmation etc. toward the movements one 
> studies.  I would not find it helpful simply to dissolve everything into 
> a tired postmodernist "everyone is biased and it's all a hermeneutic 
> game".  But I would suggest that we all approach these matters with 
> commitments for and against.  Mine is that of a believing Catholic; I do 
> not hesitate to admit it.  I only ask that others admit theirs as they 
> evaluate medieval sources and that we all try not to use such admitted 
> commitments to discredit each other a priori.

i admit that i find some of the apostolic "heretics" more sympathetic than
many of their ecclesiastical opponents, but i wd not approve of a
"commitment for or against". then we end up with protestant and catholic
historiography. we have better things to do than grind ideological axes. 
but i do think that my sympathy for commoners, my suspicion that my
clerical sources are not telling me the story that i wd hear were i in the
tavern (imagine the difference btw the court and the tavern the day after
the emperor paraded naked... where wd you rather get your info?), does
make me run things by differently from those (yourself?) concerned with
making the cautious and socially conservative ecclesiastical position look
reasonable.  i admit that i find the inquisition a deep and abiding stain
on the medieval church (by its own values as well as mine), one whose
roots lie in the oxymoron of "imperium christianum", and which i make it
one of my goals as a historian to explore.  but sympathy does not mean
advocacy -- it helps us understand, but it does not permit us to ignore
the sources.  even sources whose account i do not believe, i feel i must
explain how they came to tell the tale they told and why they were
preserved in subsequent generations. 
 
> The question of "hostile" and "cautious" receptions thus remains.  The 
> fact that other movements of similar spiritualities were accepted 
> and the Waldenses and others were not raises questions about whether 
> "hostility" alone can be an adequate explanation.  Some movements or 
> individuals may have been rejected on the basis of unfair, false 
> accusations, poor investigation etc.  I am not suggesting the 
> authorities' behavior in this regard in the Middle Ages is above 
> criticism.  

wd hope not.

> What I am suggesting is that simply to explain the Waldenses' 
> denouement into heresy because of hostility on the part of the 
> authorities is too simplistic.  

agreed. i did not. but i do consider it a major factor which needs 
explaining.

> And I am suggesting that the question of 
> who was authorized to preach (and to translate scriptures etc.) was a 
> matter of legitimate importance within the medieval Church's life.  Any 
> organization needs to have rules if anarchic fragmentation is not to 
> result.  That doesn't mean that all rules and all interpreting of rules 
> by authorities in an organization is above criticism, but it does mean 
> that simple chip-on-the-shoulder claims of meanspirited and hostile 
> authorities does not get us very far in understanding medieval popular 
> religion.  

not my position; and i will guard against sounding like it is. i think 
the hostility to lay preaching goes far deeper than mean-spiritedness; it 
has to do with the fact that an aristocratically-staffed church which has 
committed itself to the stability of an aristocratically dominated 
society is stuck with a body of canonical texts which systematically 
undermine the claims of an aristocracy to dominion.  they are 
understandably nervous about commoners' readings of these texts. how else 
can we explain the resistance of so many clergy to the translation of a 
text which was itself a translation (and in the case of the words of 
Jesus, even in the original was a translation)?  this is not to say that 
xnty cannot produce a stable and (reasonably) just society (by its own 
standards); but it does suggest that there was more than one person in 
medieval europe who found the argument: "we need this for the sake of 
social stability" a bit self-serving and not very convincing.

> And, given the last 30 years in Western European and American 
> popular culture, I think that a bias stemming from a now 
> deeply engrained chip-on-the-shoulder anti-institutionalism is a greater 
> danger to scholarly interpretations of the Middle Ages than is a 
> pro-authority, traditionalist bias.

harumph! i don't think we need to decide which is worse. let's find a way 
to make the insights from both sets of "sympathies" give us a fuller 
picture of what went on.  the last thing we need is to retreat from the 
insights into social history of the last generation into another round of 
conservative, pro-authority, readings of so complex a phenomenon as the 
relgious world of the middle ages.

> But then, perhaps I am prejudiced in my assessment of the last 30 years 
> in the West!  (Let she who is without bias cast the first stone!)

being of the male persuasion, i don't think i'm allowed to toss too many
stones. (ingenuousness not being a stone, but a stick). i consider myself
in the annales school of mentalite. rather than dodge-stone, lets work on
building some new structures. 

rlandes


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