Tom908

was it simply self presevation of the Catholic faith? as i see no evidence otherwise. It could be argued that the church was trying to save people under heretical influence from hell, but the inquisitions and crusades attest to this.

david II

I think heresy would be seen as a problem in any religious society. Partly because the church sought to eliminate competition but also because people really believed that heretics were going to hell and taking others with them (not the heretics themselves, of course).

Salah

It was about control and power. A person who didn't believe the Church's doctrine wasn't under their power, and was perceived as a threat to the status quo.

tjadams

True. If someone was allowed to challenge doctrine that was immune from questions and present a solid case, then it would be as Bolingbroke wrote,
"...men have been burned under one reign, for the very same doctrines they were obliged to profess in another. You damn all those who differ from you." [1]

[1] Andrew Burstein, Jefferson's Secrets: Death and Desire at Monticello (New York:Basic Books, 2006), 245.

johnincornwall

£££££££££££££££££££

As well as loss of control, loss of 'faithful' means loss of revenues, especially if contagious!

Louise C

heresy was viewed the way dangerous diseases are today. To allow heresy to spread was akin to allowing a deady disease to spread unchecked. in 'Strange Historiess' Darren Oldridge writes:

'It was the unquestioning assumption of most medieval and Renaissance thinkers that one true church existed in the world. This belief was implicitinthe authoratiative creeds of Christianity; it was spelt out succinctly in the affirmation of the Nicene creed that "we believe . . .in one holy Catholic and apostolic church." Much flowed from this idea. The teachings and sacraments of the church offered the faithful a way to salvation, this was, after all, the promise of scriputre and the raison d'etre of Christianity. But if there was only one church, it followed that salvation was possible only withint the doctrinal and institutional framework of that church. Its enemies posed a threat to salvation and this threat had to be faced in some way. Atfirst thiss reasoning may seem naive, but one needs only to accept its basic assumption for the argument to become compelling.

A modern analogy may be useful. Today it is widely assumed that there are "laws of nature" which govern physical phenomena. Only a relatively small number of people undresstand these laws at a sophisticated level, but very few would deny that they exist. It would seem ridiculous tomost westerners to suggest that these laws are inconsistent; that they rules of geometry might change from day to day, or that water might occasionally flow uphill. Even professional scientists engaged in areas where the normal rules do not seem to apply - such as quantum mechanics - assume that therre must be an underlying unity that is not yet fully understood. This is the fabled "theory of everything". The belief underpinning this view is that nature can work in only one way. Religion was understood in a similar fashion in medieval and Renaissance Europe. Through the diligent study of God's revelation, it waspossible to map out the path to salvation. This could be done because the laws of god were constant and unified, just like the principles of nature. There was, of course, a correcway to undersstand these laws, and there were many ways to get them wrong. In modern society, corect knwoledge of natural laws is believed toconfer material benefits: effective medicine is one obvious example. Material advantages also flowed fromthe correct undrestanding of religion in the pre-industrial world, but the benefits of this knolwedge also extended to the fate of the soul after death. Today we believe that poorly trained or misinformed doctors are a threat to physical health; in the sixteenth century, the threat posed by false doctors of religion was immeasurably worse. In the memorable phrase of the elizabethan divine William Perkins, theology was "the science of living blessedly forever."

Since there was only one correct version of this science, the religious disputes of the medieval and Renaissance period centred on the identity of the "true church". Very fesw people argued tht true religion could be found in more than one set of practices and beliefs, just as few people today assume that every description of the natural world is accurate. The earliest heretics in western Europe presented themselves as the only authentic Christians. The twelfth-century Cathar movement in Italy and southern France established its own priesthood and bishops. In the eyes of its leaders, the Cathar community was emphatically seperate fromthe counterfeit church of Rome, which belonged to the devil. The Protestant reformers of the sixteenth century were equally convinced that they were the sole custodians of Christianity. When Martin Luther reflected on the state of religion in Europe and the wider world, he concluded that true knowledge of God existed only in one tiny part of the earth "If we make anaccount, we shall find that we have the Gospel now only in a corner. Asia and Africa have it not, the Gospel is not preached in Europe. Only the "litte corner" of Saxony really undrstood God's word.'

Linschoten

Good post, hits the nail on the head! One has to remember that during the Reformation, people on either side of the dispute were willing to be burnt at the stake rather than abjure their beliefs.

Louise C

Thanks. I recommend 'Strange Histories' by Darren Oldridge highly. It explains very lucidy why people in the medieval and early modern period believed the things that they did.

Louise

DreamWeaver

Heresy in the medieval is innately linked to the political order. To be a heretic is to be seen as someone who upsets and overturns the established order of things. God is on high, the Church is his representative on earth, the order of things as backed by the church is approved by god. Kings and nobles rule because the church (and therefore assumedly god) legitimise them. To be a heretic and ignore or subvert the message of god, as laid down by his representatives, is to subvert the divine order of things. A religious as well as politcal act.

Essentially, if people are going to start ignoring the church and its authority and teachings, what are they going to start questioning and ignoring next? What might they attempt to change?

Though heresy is obviously a matter of religion, it was tied in the minds of medieval man to much larger things. The established order, secualr as well as ecclesiastical had to stamp it out, for their own preservation. Thus it becomes a bit of a circle. Heretics crop up, churhc and state clamp down on them, they rebel against oppression, heretics are rebelious so have to be clamped down on when they turn up.

Linschoten

Religion and the matter of 'incorrect' belief was intimately caught up with matters of power and control, but that is very different from assuming, as some people seem to do, that orthodoxy was simply something that was imposed for the sake of power and control, and that people were not vitally concerned about religious 'truth'. Heretics didn't believe in freedom of religious thought, they just thought that the orthodox had got it wrong and were really heterodoxical.