I ought to have remembered in my comment yesterday to mention two
very fine papers in Monique Zerner's Inventer l'heresie, in which
(i) J-L Biget works out the construction of the "Albigensian"
stereotype and building up of propaganda against Touolouse as a nest
of heresy far better and more learnedly than I ever could, but to a
similar conclusion (and, by the way, noticing the text again reminded
me that it is the Toulousain, not Gascony, that the Conc. Tours
identifies as the source of the heresy complained of: Gascony is
just described as infected by it)
(ii) Benoit Cursent describes fascinating events in Gascony which
would undouibtedly have been labelled heresy if tehy had heppened in
Touolouse, but weren't because it didn't suit anyone to call them so
at the time
Claire's new comments are intereesting and well worth considering,
but I would urge a general caution against supposing that people
called "heretics" might have been Cathars just because we don't have
any other name for them (or because they disapprove of sex or meat).
No doubt they might, but as V. H. Galbraith once remarked to me in a
different context, they MIGHT have been archimandrites. The point
from which we have to learn to start is that until the reorganised
and Gregorianised church got hold of them, which in many regions was
not until well into the thirteenth century (and of course some would
say, much later) the people of Europe, especially in the countryside,
disposed of an immense variety of religious beliefs and traditions,
most of them (I would say, but some wouldn't) essentially Christian
in origin and content, but containing all kinds of local bits and
bobs that we mostly know nothing about. That an educated churchman
coming across such beliefs for the first time (even as early as
Robert of Arbrissel, though I don't know the episode to which Claire
refers) was inclined to describe them as resembling some heresy or
other that he thought he knew a bit about isn't in the least
surprising, but it isn't evidence either.
Many thanks to Bob Moore for his
comments. I have some more of my own on the subject of the
possibility of the Council of Tours and other sources of propaganda
against `Gascon' heretics being most obviously related to heresy in
the Agenais, as he suggests. The following evidence perhaps supports
this, and also indicates that there were heretics, or those
considered heretics, perhaps even Cathars, in the Agenais before the
1160s:
Sometime before 1150 Abbot Herve of Le Bourdieu at Deols refers to the
existence of heretics called not only `Manichaean' but also `Agenais'.
They opposed marriage and, perhaps more significantly, the eating of
meat. If the Bogomil-derived heresy was gaining success in some parts
of the west in the 1140s, this account certainly sounds interesting (I
don't find convincing the view that Churchmen used terms like
`Manichee' indiscriminately against heretics/dissidents - but thats
another matter ). Why these became known as `Agenais' I don't know:
As attached to the heretics of the Agenais as I am, I'm reluctant to
boldly propose that they were the first Cathars in the Languedoc!
We know a little more about two other incidents in the Agenais, one at
Gontaud and one at Gavaudun, occurring in c.1155-60. Their position,
and a reference to Saint-Bernard having preached against the latter
group, make it possible that they could have been related to the heresy
of Henry of Lausanne. But the same reference to Bernard, who also
encountered `Arians' at Toulouse, and Abbot Herve's reference makes a
connection with early Catharism also seem possible (notwithstanding
and with respect for Bob Moore's views on the nature of the `Arians' at
Toulouse). In c.1155 Agen's bishop made an appeal to the abbot of near-
by La Grand-Sauve for help in restoring the lapsed faith of the people of
Gontaud, and a religious community was established there. The castle of
Gavaudun, in contrast, was thought irredeemable and was attacked in
c.1160 by the army of the bishop of Perigueux.
Then we have evidence which more clearly supports the thesis that
Henry II was gunning for the heretics of the Agenais!: In 1178 Robert of
Torigny referred to the Cathars of Toulouse as `heretics who are called
Agenais'. However, as Bob Moore has suggested in relation to
Toulouse in the same year, there is a problem asserting any grand plan
for 1178 emerging as early as the council of Tours. Perhaps the account
in fact originates with that from Deols. In either case, those in the
Plantagenet sphere were under the impression that such beliefs were in
the Agenais specifically before 1178, and, I suspect before the 1160s.
But I would value opinions on the earliest - though unlikely - possible
incidence of Catharism in the Agenais. There is a case, made by Bernard
Hamilton for one, and which I find convincing, that Bogomils first
transmitted their ideas westward in the early decades of the twelfth
century (although I think there's no actual evidence for their
transmission into the west of France specifically). Well, we know that in
1114 Robert of Arbrissel preached at Agen against an unidentified
heresy. If dualists were in France that early, could those at Agen have
been early Cathars? Its seems unlikely of course, but its also rather early
for them have been related to the heresies of H. of Lausanne or P. of
Bruys. Of course many of us make a case for the spontaneous arising of
`heresy', or rather subversion, out of social discontent/alienation from
the cleric elite. But I think that if these heretics were people of that type,
rather than doctrinal dissidents, Robert of Arbrissel would have been
less likely to preach against them and more likely to attempt to recruit
them.
Claire
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