Poverty Heresy And The Apocalypse

An important and innovative study of medieval heresy with a wide potential audience across religious, political, social and economic medieval history.

This is the first study to examine the rise and fall of a medieval religious group, the Order of Apostles, that began with orthodox support but ended in the fires of heresy. Originating in 1260 in Parma the group was founded by Gerard Segarelli who believed that a life of apostolic poverty was the true path of Christian devotion. Segarelli was initially supported by the Church but as his cohort grew in number and fame he was charged with heresy by the powerful Franciscans, was tried, and burnt as a heretic. The Order's control was assumed by Fra Dolcino who led the Apostles into direct opposition to the Roman Church and was himself executed in 1307. This is an important study presenting new findings in the history of medieval heresy, as well as placing the Order of Apostles within the larger context of political, economic and social history. By examining the rise and fall of the Apostles Pierce shows the dramatic consequences of the transformation of European society during the high Middle Ages.

In Suspect Saints and Holy Heretics Janine Larmon Peterson investigates regional saints whose holiness was contested. She scrutinizes the papacy's toleration of unofficial saints' cults and its response when their devotees challenged church authority about a cult's merits or the saint's orthodoxy. As she demonstrates, communities that venerated saints increasingly clashed with popes and inquisitors determined to erode any local claims of religious authority. Local and unsanctioned saints were spiritual and social fixtures in the towns of northern and central Italy in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In some cases, popes allowed these saints' cults; in others, church officials condemned the saint and/or their followers as heretics. Using a wide range of secular and clerical sources—including vitae, inquisitorial and canonization records, chronicles, and civic statutes—Peterson explores who these unofficial saints were, how the phenomenon of disputed sanctity arose, and why communities would be willing to risk punishment by continuing to venerate a local holy man or woman. She argues that the Church increasingly restricted sanctification in the later Middle Ages, which precipitated new debates over who had the authority to recognize sainthood and what evidence should be used to identify holiness and heterodoxy. The case studies she presents detail how the political climate of the Italian peninsula allowed Italian communities to use saints' cults as a tool to negotiate religious and political autonomy in opposition to growing papal bureaucratization.

Between Orders and Heresy foregrounds the dynamic, creative, and diverse late medieval religious landscapes that flourished within the spaces of social and ecclesiastical structures. This collection reconsiders the arguments put forward in Herbert Grundmann’s monumental book, Religious Movements in the Middle Ages, and challenges his traditional interpretive binary, recognized as the shared origins of many medieval religious movements. The contributors explore the social relationships fostered between secular clergy members, including parish priests, local canons, and aristocratic confessors, and examine the ways in which laypeople inspired and engaged in devotion beyond religious orders. Each essay in the volume considers a major theme in medieval religious history, such as the implementation of apostolic ideals, pastoral relationships, crusade connections, vernacular traditions, and reform. Organized to historicize and challenge the deeply embedded historiographical tendencies that have long distorted the complex dynamics of the late medieval world, Between Orders and Heresy is a major assessment of medieval religious belief and activity beyond and between the binary of orders and heresies

One of the world's leading scholars of religious trends shows how climate change has driven dramatic religious upheavals. Long before the current era of man-made climate change, the world has suffered repeated, severe climate-driven shocks. These shocks have resulted in famine, disease, violence, social upheaval, and mass migration. But these shocks were also religious events. Dramatic shifts in climate have often been understood in religious terms by the people who experienced them. They were described in the language of apocalypse, millennium, and Judgment. Often, too, the eras in which these shocks occurred have been marked by far-reaching changes in the nature of religion and spirituality. Those changes have varied widely--from growing religious fervor and commitment; to the stirring of mystical and apocalyptic expectations; to waves of religious scapegoating and persecution; or the spawning of new religious movements and revivals. In many cases, such responses have had lasting impacts, fundamentally reshaping particular religious traditions. In Climate, Catastrophe, and Faith historian Philip Jenkins draws out the complex relationship between religion and climate change. He asserts that the religious movements and ideas that emerge from climate shocks often last for many decades, and even become a familiar part of the religious landscape, even though their origins in particular moments of crisis may be increasingly consigned to remote memory. By stirring conflicts and provoking persecutions that defined themselves in religious terms, changes in climate have redrawn the world's religious maps, and created the global concentrations of believers as we know them today. This bold new argument will change the way we think about the history of religion, regardless of tradition. And it will demonstrate how our growing climate crisis will likely have a comparable religious impact across the Global South.

This study is a reconsideration of Jan Hus, a late medieval Bohemian priest who was burned at the stake six hundred years ago. His death sparked a social revolution. This book considers his role as a priest and reformer in Prague, his martyrdom in Germany, and his legacy. It attempts to provide an evaluation of Hus in the context of the medieval world, especially by engaging in alternative perspectives of his life and work. The core themes and arguments are revisionist. These include seeing Hus properly as a heretic, exploring Hus as a medieval man interested in more than preaching, religious practice, and reform. The book sets out to challenge traditional assumptions and seeks less to contribute to monument-building than to challenge the prevailing views about Hus and the interpretation of his life and thought. A conscious effort has been undertaken to explore the historical relevancy of Hus and to assess his contemporary significance. The book also places Hus into a comparative context with the Reformation of the sixteenth century.

Surveying the broad panorama of medieval Franciscans at prayer, this book offers a nuanced perspective on Franciscan beliefs and spiritual practices that underscores the depth and breath of their mutual passion for the divine and the world they shared.

A People's Church brings together a distinguished international group of historians to provide a sweeping introduction to Christian religious life and institutions in medieval Italy. Each essay treats a single theme as broadly as possible, highlighting both the unique aspects of medieval Christianity on the Italian peninsula and the beliefs and practices it shared with other Christian societies. Because of its long tradition of communal self-governance, Christianity in medieval Italy, perhaps more than anywhere else, was truly a "people's church." At the same time, its exceptional urban wealth and literacy rates, along with its rich and varied intellectual and artistic culture, led to diverse forms of religious devotion and institutions. Contributors: Maria Pia Alberzoni on heresy; Frances Andrews on urban religion; Cécile Caby on monasticism; Giovanna Casagrande on mendicants; George Dameron on Florence; Antonella Degl'Innocenti on saints; Marina Gazzini on lay confraternities; Maureen C. Miller on bishops; Agostino Paravicini Bagliani and Pietro Silanos on the papacy and Italian politics; Antonio Rigon on clerical confraternities; Neslihan Şenocak on the pievi and care of souls; Giovanni Vitolo on Naples.