Imagining the End: Visions of

mutationisme

 from several points of  view before

turning his attention to this one, it seems fair to suppose that his scepticism

about the revolutionary character of  religious events around the millennium

arises from the wider concern. He sees this as one of  a range of  interpretations

of  various issues – others include the end of  ancient slavery and the imposition

of  serfdom, the emergence of  chivalry and so on – each of  which falsely

asserts sudden change around the millennium in its own particular concern,

and thus contributes to a general account of  revolutionary change of  whose

falsity Barthélemy is increasingly convinced, and he has set himself  to rebut

each strand of  the argument in its own terms. On the other hand, when

Landes comments, for example, that ‘These changes are incomprehensible

without attention to the role of  this highly volatile, highly powerful apocalyptic

discourse’, or that ‘In the terms of  James C. Scott the millenarian is “the

most fullthroated of  hidden transcripts” whereby those not in power express

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Medieval and Early Modern Periods

their resentment towards those in power’

49

 it is not entirely clear whether he

is suggesting that the revolution is evidence for millenarianism or that mil-

lenarianism is evidence for the revolution. For my own part I see some

advantage in starting with the religious question not only because it is the

simpler, but also because up to now there has been no substantial attempt, as

far as I know, to characterize religious change in the tenth, eleventh and

twelfth centuries in the terms of  the broader ‘evolution or revolution?’ debate.

It therefore offers, to some degree, an independent check.

To characterize religious change in the period between the late ninth and

late twelfth centuries is obviously in itself  to risk oversimplification. Never-

theless, what I see resembles Barthélemy’s account much more than it does

that of  Bonnassie, or of  Poly and Bournazel. Whether we take the history of

monasticism, for example, or of  the supersession of  monasteries as centres of

worship, education and social organization by cathedrals and then by parish

churches, or the definition and relative prominence of  the sacraments, or the

ways in which and the extent to which the Church made increasing demands

on the energies, resources and docility of  the faithful, everything changed,

changed utterly, between the age of  Nicholas I and that of  Innocent III, but

there is no single moment – certainly not around the millennium – at which

a sudden or violent rupture is apparent, except to the extent, which on the

whole diminishes with the progress of  research, to which such changes seem

to be associated with the assertion of  papal supremacy from the pontificate

of  Leo IX (



–



) onwards.

And yet to say that change is gradual and cumulative is not to deny that

we may legitimately seek to identify moments at which quantitative change

becomes qualitative. However slowly and steadily heat is applied to water, or

a salt solution is evaporated, there is a moment at which the water becomes

steam, or at which there is no longer enough liquid to absorb the salt and

crystals begin to form. The process is continuous, but this moment is import-

ant in itself, and the change from liquid to vapour, or from liquid to crystal

is a real and objective change, even though it can be neither understood nor

properly described except in the context of  the long and slow transformation

of  which it is part. So it is with heresy. There is no doubt that assertions that

heresy is current among ‘the people’ are a marked (even though not very

numerous) feature of  the early eleventh century, as they had not been of  the

previous 



 years. Nobody has suggested that this can be accounted for by

a change of  documentation, and I cannot myself  suggest how it might be.

The question is what it portends. In the first place, and this is almost a

tautology, it registers a change in the minds of  those who made the assertions,

whom we assume, without much justification (as Wazo of  Liège’s opposition

to the coercion of  those suspected of  heresy will always remind us)

50

 to have

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Medieval Europe

been in this respect more or less typical of  holders of  ecclesiastical office in

general. But to what was the change a response? Their need for more flexible

and effective dialectical weapons with which to conduct their arguments

among themselves? For that we have quite a lot of  direct evidence. An

increasing sense of  their pastoral responsibilities, producing greater sensitivity

to divergences of  doctrine and conduct among their charges? For that, little

direct evidence, but a certain amount of  circumstantial evidence, for example

in Gerard of  Cambrai’s defence of  the cult of  the dead. The objective reality

of  organized and conscious popular defiance of  ecclesiastical authority in the

name of  religious teachings that were contrary to those of  the Church? For

that, very little evidence from what appear to be the obvious sources, and

have always been treated as such, but which we have seen on examination to

be overwhelmingly reflective of  division within the Church, or between the

Church and its lay patrons, and not, until the twelfth century, between Church

and ‘people’.

Yet that is not the whole story. Even supposing, on the basis of  this analysis,

that the fear of  popular heresy was entirely, in the first place, a product of

rivalry and tension within the elite, as the fear of  sorcery had been at the

court of  Louis the Pious, or as I suspect the occasional allegations of  leprosy

which we find at this time to have been,

51

 it became sooner or later a real fear.

Much the same may be said about millenarianism. Landes has assembled a

good deal of  evidence that it was thought to be current, and that this thought

was alarming not only to Ademar and Radulfus Glaber but, for instance, to

the seniors of  the scriptorium at St Martial whom he has detected editing

Bede’s