turning his attention to this one, it seems fair to suppose that his scepticism
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
without attention to the role of this highly volatile, highly powerful apocalyptic
144
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
145
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
Dostları ilə paylaş: