Imagining the End: Visions of

The Peace of God

,

 

to which Barthélemy objects as ‘seeing

in its popular success the resistance of  an alodial peasantry oppressed by the

“feudal revolution”’.

27

 Whether or not I was right about that, the premise of

my argument, that what people heard when they were called to defend the

peace was not necessarily what they were meant to hear, is not affected by

Barthélemy’s appraisal, and has, as we shall see, a wider application. The

central question that remains is not so much the character of  the popular

response to the call for peace as its depth, and the extent to which it can be

regarded as expressing autonomous popular participation in public affairs

rather than a mere reflexive reaction to ecclesiastical propaganda. To establish

the ubiquity and potency in terms of  social action of  articulate, if  not

necessarily self-conscious, counter-revolutionary sentiment at a popular level

would be strikingly to vindicate the reality of  the revolution itself, as Duby

and Bonnassie have frequently affirmed by the importance which they have

attached to all indications of  popular resistance to the creation of  the new

social order. It will become clear that I agree with Landes, against Barthélemy,

in answering that question positively, though I profoundly disagree with him

as to the reasons for it.

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136

Medieval and Early Modern Periods

The history both of  popular heresy and of  millennial belief  in the eleventh

century long has been, and is at present very much in the condition of

becoming again, a dialogue – if, too often, a dialogue of  the deaf  – between

maximalist and minimalist approaches to the reading of  the sources; that is,

between those who have accepted that contemporary assertions and reports of

heresy or of  the currency of  apocalyptic beliefs were intended literally, reported

more or less accurately what their authors encountered, observed, or heard of

from trustworthy sources, and should be taken broadly at face value, and on

the other hand, those who see such assertions either as rhetorical devices in

debates quite different from those to which they ostensibly relate, or as

exaggerated and over-elaborated interpretations, based on expectations nour-

ished by scriptural and patristic authority, of  incidents which in themselves

were of  various and for the most part modest character and significance.

28

 In

reading the narratives of  the peace rallies substantially as the product of

ecclesiastical rhetoric, Barthélemy – a minimalist in respect of  both phenom-

ena, it need hardly be said – in effect applies a similar critique to these

dramatic descriptions of  how at Charroux, Narbonne, Poitiers and other places

in south-western France between the 



s and 



s, great crowds of  the

faithful rallied around the relics which had been carried from the monasteries,

swearing to protect the property of  the Church and the poor from the

depredations of  the 

milites

 who ravaged the countryside and terrorized its

inhabitants.

The canonical definition of  heresy insists upon what historians have too

often forgotten, that, since error becomes heresy only when pertinaciously

defended, and pertinacity can arise only after public rebuttal and a demand

for recantation, normally from the bishop, it takes two to make heresy. The

bishop must be determined to assert his authority, and the ‘heretic’ must be

determined to stick to his guns. Especially given the high cost of  doing so at

most times and places in early European history, we are bound to assume that

s/he had a good reason for doing so, though it may not always be easily

discernible. It also follows from this definition that the history of  ‘heresy’ is

not one history but two, between which there is no necessary connection,

each party having its own, quite possibly independent, reasons for making its

assertion, and each party being capable of  harbouring quite illusory expecta-

tions or anxieties about the other. Hence, for the sake of  convenience and

without prejudice to any of  the obvious semantic and epistemological issues

which the term raises, I will call ‘real heresy’ the knowing and persistent

propagation of  teachings based on the Gospels but contrary to those of  the

Catholic Church, and hence, at least by logically inescapable implication, the

conscious repudiation of  the authority of  the Church, and specifically of  its

bishops. With the same reservation, I will term ‘perceived heresy’ the con-

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137

Medieval Europe

viction entertained by bishops and other prelates, and by the monastic writers

who shared their outlook and recorded their actions, that heresy was being

propagated.

Leaving aside ‘scholastic’ disputes such as those which raged around

Berengar of  Tours during the middle decades of  the century, all our evidence

for popular heresy in the eleventh century – and indeed the twelfth – is of

perceived heresy. No writings by the (alleged) heretics survive. The starting

point for all discussion of  real heresy therefore, and the basis of  every

controversy relating to its history, is the question of  what may legitimately be

inferred about it from what appears to us as perceived heresy. There is no

denying that the decades after the millennium saw an enormous percentage

increase in surviving reports of  heresy among ‘the people’. They rose from

none at all in the tenth century

29

 to a very small number in the eleventh. It

must be added in justice that current activity is increasing that number, and

seems likely to continue to do so; at the very least, as Daniel Callahan and

Michael Frassetto work through the sermons of  Ademar of  Chabannes they

will make further additions

30

 to the assertion of  his chronicle that in 



‘Manichaeans appeared in Aquitaine, leading the people astray. They did not

eat meat, as though they were monks, and pretended to be celibate, but among

themselves they enjoyed every indulgence. They were messengers of  Anti-

christ, and caused many to wander from the faith.’

31

 This famous comment,

the earliest report of  popular heresy in Western Europe since the eighth

century, but the first trickle of  what over the next 



 years became a raging

torrent, contains almost all the difficulties around which discussion of  the

half  dozen or so episodes (the precise number depending on the interpretation

of  each) reported in the 



s, 



s and 



s has revolved. After the last

of  them, a letter written between 



 and 



 in which Wazo, Bishop of

Liège discussed the discovery of  heretics in a neighbouring diocese and how

they should be dealt with,

32

 there are no more until the twelfth century,

creating a discontinuity in the ‘origins of  medieval heresy’ which has itself

been a source of  much controversy and speculation. It was for long thought

that the dietary and sexual abstinence of  which Ademar complains, asserted

also in reports from Piedmont, the Low Countries and Saxony, together with

his characterization of  the heretics as ‘Manichees’ and the fact that most

reports of  heresy say that it was brought to the district in question by outsiders,

reflect the dissemination from Bulgaria, where it had flourished mightily in

the tenth century, of  the Bogomil heresy which was in turn believed to be

descended through the many gnostic heresies that flourished in late antiquity

from that of  Mani himself. The repudiation of  marriage (as well as the

advocacy of  celibacy), infant baptism, the mass, penance and ecclesiastical

authority, each suggested in some (though none in all) of  these reports, seemed

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138

Medieval and Early Modern Periods

to support that interpretation, which may still be found, presented with

characteristic lucidity and charm, in Sir Steven Runciman’s