Misconceptions About the Middle Ages

Stephen Harris, Bryon L. Grigsby, Stephen Harris, Bryon L. Grigsby

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781135986667
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Interest in the middle ages is at an all time high at the moment, thanks in part to "The Da Vinci Code." Never has there been a moment more propitious for a study of our misconceptions of the Middle Ages than now.

Ranging across religion, art, and science, Misconceptions about the Middle Ages unravels some of the many misinterpretations that have evolved concerning the medieval period, including:

• the church
• war
• science
• art
• society

With an impressive international array of contributions, the book will be essential reading for students and scholars involved with medieval religion, history, and culture.

I
The Church

1 Was the Medieval Church Corrupt?¹

Frans van Liere

In the popular imagination, the medieval church was populated by fat monks given to luxurious living, sinister popes who sought to control a superstitious laity by keeping them ignorant of the true tenets of Christianity, and a corrupted clergy who enriched themselves by exacting tithes from impoverished peasants and extorting indulgence money from misguided believers. The medieval church is often depicted as an authoritarian institution in which dissent or criticism was quickly squelched by the powerful arm of the Holy Inquisition, which burned innocent people at the stake for criticizing the wayward lives of the clergy or for the simple act of reading the Bible. All this may seem a caricature, but it is a pervasive one. Consider, for example, a description of the medieval church from William Manchester’s A World Lit Only by Fire: “[T]he Church became the wealthiest landowner on the Continent, and the life of every European, from baptism through matrimony to burial, was governed by popes, cardinals, prelates, monsignors, archbishops, bishops, and village priests.” While, according to Manchester, “reliable reports of misconduct by priests, nuns, and prelates, much of it squalid, were rising,” the medieval Church still “found its greatest strength in total resistance to change.”²

The notion that the medieval church was corrupt is, of course, a gross generalization, and for this very reason evidence can always be found to support it. But generalizations of this type resist historical assessment and tell us very little about historical reality. To come to a more accurate and honest assessment of the medieval church, we have to ask ourselves, firstly, who, or what, was the “Church”? Was it the papacy, the clergy, or the laity? Were the actions of Innocent IV, one of the most worldly popes of the thirteenth century, somehow more representative of the “medieval church” than those of Bernard of Clairvaux, the great twelfth-century monastic reformer? And secondly, what exactly do we mean by “medieval”? The Middle Ages span one thousand years of Church history. The power and influence that early medieval popes had over the church, for instance, differed greatly from that of later medieval popes. To represent “the medieval church” as a corrupt institution is to lump one thousand years of church history together without due regard for historical development.

More serious investigation of the thousand years that comprise the Middle Ages reveals that between 500 and 1500, Christianity established itself firmly in European culture and displayed a great vitality and creativity, diversification of religious ideals, creative experimentation in the realm of political power and theory, and a resurgence of lay piety. The popular image of stagnation, of a “thousand years of uncertainty,”³ is misplaced. In fact, Christianity experienced a transformation that makes it almost impossible to speak of “the medieval church” as if it were a unified entity. This diversity of the medieval church is not only diachronic but also synchronic. There was a rich variety of religious experiences, depending on the differences between social classes and estates, between clergy and laity, between the various monastic orders, and between monks and mendicants. The purpose of the present chapter is not to demonstrate whether or not the medieval church was corrupt (for there is no doubt that in many ways it was) but to argue that the medieval church defies easy generalization, and that “corruption” is not a constructive concept when interpreting medieval church history or medieval religion.

The notion of a corrupt medieval church has it roots in the Protestant historiographical tradition of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, represented by works such as the Magdeburg Centuries of Matthias Flacius Illyricus and the Book of Martyrs by John Foxe.⁴ These polemical histories posited a corrupted Church of Rome as an antithesis to the uncorrupted New Testament Church, and they credited Luther’s Reformation with bringing back the church to its original uncorrupted state. For Flacius Illyricus and Fox, the true church, the church of the martyrs, proved its veracity by being persecuted. They saw in the adversaries of the popes and in most medieval heresies manifestations of this true church, a proto-Protestant movement, which eventually culminated in Luther’s Reformation. In doing so, they created a false dichotomy in the Middle Ages between the corrupted, “official” ecclesiastical hierarchy of the Church of Rome and the true believers, who were persecuted by the Church of Rome, just as the early Christians were persecuted by the Roman Empire. As we will see next, this historical interpretation was problematic at best, and it was very much determined by the situation in which Protestants found themselves in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Their interpretation of the early church was highly idealized and that of the medieval church was heavily anachronistic. While the historical context has changed and very few people still subscribe to the theological model underlying the works of these Protestant historiographers, the influence of this type of historiography persists in popular imagination.

One example of how Foxe’s anachronistic interpretation of the history of the medieval church led him to dubious interpretations of medieval church history is his description of the crusade against the Cathars, or Albigensians, which lasted from 1209 to 1229. Foxe listed this episode as an example of one of the many persecutions of “people of the reformed religion”⁵ by a corrupted papacy. By the beginning of the thirteenth century, the Cathar church had become a widespread popular movement in southern France, where its popularity was often fueled by resentment against the northern clergy and nobility. The austere asceticism of the Cathar preachers persuaded many that they represented the “true” church, and the bishop of Toulouse, who presided over a bishopric too large to be governed effectively, proved unable to stem the spread of this heresy. In 1209, after some Cathars murdered a papal legate, the Pope called for a crusade, and the king of France took this opportunity to subjugate the rebellious south. This Crusade amounted to cultural genocide, sanctioned by the church, and the struggle against the Albigensians would eventually lead to the establishment of the medieval Inquisition. It was by no means the medieval church’s finest hour. But Foxe’s characterization of the Cathars as followers of the “reformed religion” is quite misleading. Cathar belief combined a stark asceticism for its leaders with moral libertinism for its followers, and held to a dualism reminiscent of early Christian Gnosticism. To equate these doctrines with the Protestant movement of Luther and the later reformers seems questionable at best.⁶

Protestant polemicists used the medieval Inquisition to give the “corrupted” medieval church a distinctly sinister character. Even today, the Inquisition still evokes an image of horror and relentless persecution. Nineteenth-century studies by Protestant scholars such as Henry Charles Lea, while based on substantial archival research, perpetuated this almost mythical image of the medieval Inquisition.⁷ But this image of the medieval Inquisition actually owes more to the situation in the Roman and Spanish Inquisitions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries than to the Middle Ages. The perception of the Spanish Inquisition, undoubtedly influenced by the infamous “black legend,” belongs to early-modern, not medieval, history. One should point out that the Spanish Inquisition, established in 1480 as an independent organization responsible only to the Spanish crown, was quite different from its medieval predecessors. The medieval Inquisition was an initiative of Innocent III (1198–1215), who sought to remedy some of the legal conundrums that the persecution of heresy presented for the medieval ecclesiastical courts. Unlike modern courts, medieval courts did not have the power of prosecution; crimes and misdemeanors could only be brought into court by presentment, that is, if someone demanded reparation for a past crime. Obviously, this did not work very well for tracing and correcting heresy, which had become a matter of concern for the church in the thirteenth century. In 1215, the Fourth Lateran Council referred heresy to episcopal courts and admonished the bishops to hold visitations (called “inquisitions,” or inquests) to elicit testimonies from parishioners, to see if any of the flock had strayed from Catholic doctrine. The medieval Inquisition was thus mainly an information-gathering hearing, in which, however, witnesses could become the accused. Those persisting in doctrinal error after correction were handed over to secular authorities for further punishment. Some procedures of the medieval Inquisition were decidedly unfair from our modern perspective (not to mention that torture was seen as a legitimate way to elicit confessions, which was an accepted notion in medieval secular courts as well). The rights of the accused, for instance, were not always clearly spelled out, nor was it clear whether the person interrogated was a witness or a suspect, and the court was sometimes intentionally vague about the character of the accusation, which made it almost impossible to defend oneself. These measures were intended to prevent heretics from intentionally concealing their beliefs; heretics usually did not feel bound to speak the truth and denied the validity of oath taking, so they had to be “trapped” into confessing to their heresy.⁸ Aiding the bishop in his task were papal judge delegates, who were often mendicants (Franciscans or Dominicans). In special cases, these “inquisitors” were given a certain measure of autonomy and were made responsible only to the Pope. There was never a permanently established “Inquisition” in the Middle Ages; there were only inquisitors.⁹ The image of the medieval Inquisition as a sinister organization is an unfortunate anachronism.

That the historiographical model of the Protestant polemicists cannot withstand critical historical analysis also becomes clear when examining, for instance, the residence of the popes in Avignon (1305–78), which is often used as an example of the degeneration of the medieval papacy and the corruption of the medieval church. The Avignon papacy probably owes its bad name to Petrarch (1304–74), who called Avignon the “Babylon of the West.” This theme was picked up by Luther, who called the Avignon period the “Babylonian captivity of the papacy.”¹⁰ Umberto Eco’s novel The Name of the Rose popularized the notion that papal corruption and luxury reached it apex in this period. In the fourteenth century, however, the fact that the popes had departed from Rome and taken up residence elsewhere was not really seen as a problem. In fact, medieval popes rarely resided in Rome. The idea of Rome as the inalienable turf of the representative of Saint Peter is of more recent date, and, as is often the case, later ideals may have been projected onto a nonexistent medieval reality. Medieval canon lawyers were clear on the matter: “Where the Pope is, there is Rome.”¹¹ Was the Avignon papacy corrupt? In some ways, yes. The problems the papacy faced in this period were manifold, and not all of them were adequately addressed. It is true, for instance, that the Avignon popes were inclined to nepotism, but one might see this as an attempt of the popes to build a reliable curia in a period when the increased political prestige of the papacy led to undesirable party struggles between French and Italian cardinals. The Avignon papacy had persistent financial troubles, which the popes tried to meet by creating novel means of taxation. This gave them a bad name, but it did not mean that the popes were living in luxury.¹²

The myth of the luxury of the papal court in Avignon probably resulted from the persistent and ongoing controversy between the popes and the Franciscan order on the subject of the poverty of Christ, an outgrowth of the failed attempt by John XXII (1316–34) to reform the Franciscan order’s finances in 1323. For the Franciscans to maintain a state of absolute poverty, which they said was necessary to follow Christ and lead a life of evangelical perfection, their property was officially owned by the Holy See. But in 1323, John XXII returned the ownership of these goods to the order, with the argument that absolute poverty was not essential to the life of evangelical perfection, since Christ had had ownership over temporal goods while he lived on earth. In the long run, the discussion that ensued was to have widespread ramifications for political discussions about the secular power of the papacy. Some Franciscans saw the Pope’s position as an attack on one of the founding principles of their order. They started a diatribe against the Pope, in which the accusation of luxury was a persistent theme. Not surprisingly, this theme was eagerly picked up later by Protestant polemicists for their own ideological reasons. But modern students of the papacy should be careful not to take this polemical literature at face value.¹³

The Avignon popes were generally able popes, most of whom were dedicated to the reform and abolition of clerical abuses. John XXII was intent on reforming church administration and sanitizing church finances, which were in a disastrous state after the rule of his predecessor, Clement V. His successor, Benedict XI (1334–42), was a stern ascetic, dedicated to ending nepotism, corruption, and malpractice among the clergy. He reduced the papal bureaucracy and the distribution of benefices and tried to ensure that benefices were only given to clergy of good repute. He greatly reduced the number of clergy residing in Avignon. The beneficial effect of most of these measures was, however, undone by the largesse of his spendthrift successor, Clement VI (1342–52). One of the unwanted effects of the reform policy of the Avignon popes was, however, an ever-increasing centralization and bureaucratization of church leadership. This, in turn, gave cardinals an opportunity to use their position to gain favors for friends and relations, which made them susceptible to bribery. Still, even one of the harshest critics of the papal court in the late fourteenth century, Nicholas de Clamanges, admitted that the corruption at the papal court was nothing compared to the corruption in some of the secular courts of the time, like those of France and Burgundy.¹⁴

Another instance that has often been cited to show the corruption of the medieval church is the Western ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright page
• Preface
• Introduction
• PART I The Church
• PART II War
• PART III Science
• PART IV The Arts
• PART V Society
• Bibliography
• Contributors