Inquisition and Power

Catharism and the Confessing Subject in Medieval Languedoc

John H. Arnold

• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780812201161
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European Medieval History
• Index: History

What should historians do with the words of the dead? Inquisition and Power reformulates the historiography of heresy and the inquisition by focusing on depositions taken from the Cathars, a religious sect that opposed the Catholic church and took root in southern France during the twelfth century. Despite the fact that these depositions were spoken in the vernacular, but recorded in Latin in the third person and rewritten in the past tense, historians have often taken these accounts as verbatim transcriptions of personal testimony. This belief has prompted some historians, including E. Le Roy Ladurie, to go so far as to retranslate the testimonies into the first-person. These testimonies have been a long source of controversy for historians and scholars of the Middle Ages.Arnold enters current theoretical debates about subjectivity and the nature of power to develop reading strategies that will permit a more nuanced reinterpretation of these documents of interrogation. Rather than seeking to recover the true voice of the Cathars from behind the inquisitor's framework, this book shows how the historian is better served by analyzing texts as sites of competing discourses that construct and position a variety of subjectivities. In this critically informed history, Arnold suggests that what we do with the voices of history in fact has as much to do with ourselves as with those we seek to 'rescue' from the silences of past.

PART I

I

The Lump and the Leaven

The Move to Inquisition

Let us begin with two exchanges of viewpoint on the complex question of “belief.” Both involve bishops and heretics, and both come from what is usually termed “the Middle Ages,” but they belong to different worlds. How one perspective changed to another is one concern of this book; these brief accounts therefore establish the trajectory of our inquiry.

The chronicler of the bishops of Liège tells us that around 1048 the bishop of Châlons-sur-Marne wrote to Bishop Wazo of Liège, asking advice on how to deal with heretics in his diocese. The bishop told Wazo that “there were some countryfolk who eagerly followed the evil teachings of Manichaeans and frequented their secret conventicles, in which they engaged in I know not what filthy acts, shameful to mention, in a certain religious rite.” These “Manichaeans” avoided meat, abhorred marriage, and forbade killing any living thing. The bishop was not concerned with the salvation of the “Manichaeans” themselves; he was more troubled by the effect they were having on the general populace. Thus, he asked Wazo, should he use lethal force against them, “lest, were they not exterminated, the whole lump be corrupted by a little leaven”? Wazo counseled toleration, in part because he felt that heresy was perhaps a cross that good Christians had to bear, and in part because he was worried about reports that certain people were executing as heretics anyone who had a pallid complexion (presumably because pallor indicated fasting, which might mistakenly indicate heretical asceticism).¹

In contrast, the register of depositions made before the inquisitor Jacques Fournier, bishop of Pamiers, records a rather different exchange. Fournier— who, in 1334, would become Pope Benedict XII—was conducting an inquisition into heresy within the Pyrenees. On 25 June 1324, the bishop questioned one Pierre Maury, a poor and illiterate shepherd from the village of Montaillou. Maury talked about many things: the various heretics and their supporters that he knew; the sermons preached by the Cathars; and his life as a shepherd. After prompting Maury’s lengthy exposition of life and heresy in the Sabarthès, the inquisitor became more formal. He questioned the shepherd closely on what the inquisitor had identified as sixty-two heretical “articles” drawn from Maury’s words, no doubt hoping for further information about the Cathars, but also concerned to learn what the shepherd believed. The twenty-fifth “article” concerned annual confession: had Maury heard it said, or did he believe, that the pope, the bishops, and the priests of the Catholic church had the power to absolve men’s sins, or was it the Cathars who had that power? Maury’s answer is interesting in so many ways: he admitted that the heretics ridiculed the Church’s power of absolution, suggesting that the priests amused each other by sharing the secrets confessed to them. The heretics themselves had the power to absolve sin, which they had inherited from the apostles; but there was no need to actually confess these sins, since the absolution they bestowed came through their purification ritual, the consolamentum (or “heretication,” as the bishop then glossed it). For himself, however, Pierre Maury believed that the pope, the bishops, and the priests could absolve sin—but that the heretics could do it better. Therefore, when he went to church (which the heretics encouraged, to help keep their believers concealed) he did indeed make confession, although not of his heretical activities, and without taking communion, as he had heard the priests say that anyone who made communion in a state of sin would do better to take a hot iron into his mouth. And so the interrogation continued on to the next article.²

What are we to make of these two encounters? As other scholars have noted, the bishop of Châlons’s account of “Manichaeans” was modeled on St. Augustine’s description of heresy.³ The true Manichaeans—a dualist sect founded in Persia by a man called Mani in the third century C.E.—died out in the West in the sixth century. They had however left an “after image” for the Middle Ages. Their spirit lived on in the minds of orthodox churchmen, searching for ways to understand the reappearance of heresy in Christendom.⁴ The unorthodox beliefs ascribed to the heretics at Châlons might or might not have been influenced by this past model, but this is not my concern here. The account of these heretics, like most of the heretical occurrences in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, is known only from scant evidence. We cannot build a rounded picture of these “Manichaeans” from other sources; and even if we could, our image would depend entirely upon the language and logic of the medieval commentators. Of greater interest therefore is the way in which the image of Manichaeanism structures the depiction of heresy: in particular, the distinction drawn between the few, dangerous heretics (perhaps led by an individual heresiarch), and the passive, if easily corrupted, laity. This distinction is neatly formulated as the relationship between “the lump and the leaven.” As we will see, this view (if not this specific phrase) was shared by other members of the Church in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and was the key structuring perspective of their fight against heresy.

The encounter between the man who would become pope and the Pyrenean shepherd points—through its very existence—to a massive change. This interrogation, which in its entirety runs to about forty-three thousand Latin words, would never have occurred in the eleventh century. Indeed, it would probably not have occurred even in the first half of the thirteenth century. Why? Simply because no bishop, inquisitor, or other literate churchman would ever have thought it desirable, necessary or even possible to ask an illiterate shepherd about his beliefs. It would be literally unthinkable: something outside the bounds of conceivable behavior. But by the early fourteenth century the process that made this conversation not only possible but necessary—the process of inquisition—had become the primary method for combating heresy within Christendom. At the very least, we therefore need to ask ourselves how it is that this change came about.

We also need to pay close attention, at every stage of this trajectory, to the various discourses that forged the available evidence. There is no surviving representation of the speech of the heretics in Châlons-sur-Marne, and the possibility of envisaging these heretics other than through the eyes of their persecutors is limited. In the case of Pierre Maury, and the many others recorded within the registers of inquisition, the situation is different. Maury presents for himself a position of belief that is neither wholly Cathar nor properly Catholic: he believes in the power of both, although (unsurprisingly, given the number of heretics he knew) he tends to think that the Cathars have the greater force. But even in this simple matter of weighing the two sides against each other, Maury explodes the intrinsic binary opposition of heresy and orthodoxy. As he talked, he described a position for himself that was circumscribed by neither side, although negotiating both. By the end of his confession, through the production of his words impelled by the inquisitorial context, Maury was fixed, perhaps for the first time, as both Catholic and heretic: Catholic, in that he repented of his errors and “rejoined” the Church; heretic, in that it was heresy of which the bishop absolved him, and—if, as was intended, the punishment can be taken to name the crime—it was his past heresy that had him condemned to strict imprisonment on bread and water in the jail of the inquisitors.

In the last chapter of this book we will revisit other deponents like Pierre Maury and investigate further the possibilities of reading their speech. Before that point we need to understand how it is that such speech came into being, how it was that the words of peasants gained import and meaning to bishops and popes. But I have brought Maury in here, at the beginning, to remind us of where we are going—and therefore of the historical specificity of each stage of our journey. In this chapter 1 discuss the way in which the Church’s approach toward heresy and attitude toward the laity changed from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries, from excising the “leaven” to the individualizing discourse of the Inquisition. It might be helpful, at the beginning, to distinguish broadly four different periods to this change. The first is the time before the Albigensian Crusade (begun in 1209), when the problem of heresy was largely conceived as the problem of the heresiarch. The Church saw the laity as simple, illiterate folk, as the “lump” who might foolishly follow learned heretics, but did not in themselves present an active threat. From the time of the Crusade up to and including the earliest tranche of legislation for inquisition in the 1230s, a second view emerged: that since the laity provided support and shelter for heretics, they themselves were potentially dangerous, and should therefore be addressed directly. However, those targeted by this new view were mainly the nobility and not the general populace, since it was the nobility who provided the greatest material protection to the Cathars. A third phase of inquisitorial legislation followed in the 1240S and 1250S, when the first inquisition manual was written. In this period the construction of the lay person as “simple” and “easily led” still pertained, but was joined by a new concern to investigate the laity in contact with heretics, and to gain confessions from witnesses that were not simply confessions of information but also confessions of faith. This phase saw the emergence and construction of what I have chosen to call the “confessing-subject.” In the fourth period, the 1250s to the 133os, the confessing-subject became the primary paradigm of the lay person in contact with heresy, and their speech —prompted by inquisition—produced a new arena to be policed by the Church. This chapter mainly deals with the first two periods, and elements of the third. Chapters 2 and 3 concentrate on the third and final periods. However, the arrangement of chapters is thematic, not narrative; and although this crude chronology acts as a kind of framework, it does not dictate the shape of our inquiry.

As we will see, this periodization does not describe hermetic boundaries or simple processes. Elements from each viewpoint haunt later developments: even in the fourteenth century, the image of the illiterate “lump” still lurked within the inquisitors’ construction of the confessing subject. The reasons for the changes described so briefly above had nothing to do with “progress” or the “improvement” of the Church’s combat against heresy; nor were they changes that anyone deliberately willed or intended (although, as we will see, they were intrinsically bound up with power). Nonetheless, they occurred, forming part of one of the greatest shifts in the way in which the medieval subaltern was viewed by the elite. The eye of power had refocused its gaze.

The Background to Heresy

Heresy reappeared in the Christian West around 1000.⁵ We are not concerned here with the wider analysis of medieval heresy, but it may be helpful to draw out a few points about its appearance, and the Church’s reaction to it, over a broad period. There are various interpretations of the origins, beliefs, and sociology of heresy,⁶ but most historians agree that the few earliest appearances, in the years 1000 to 1050, are discrete and unconnected, usually centering around one individual or small group of individuals, such as the heretics at Chàlons-sur-Marne described above.⁷ For unknown reasons, there is no instance of heresy recorded in the second half of the eleventh century. During the years 1100-1150 there were individual heresiarchs, such as the wandering preachers Henry of Lausanne or Peter of Bruys, but, in contrast to the eleventh century, these heretical outbreaks are usually linked by modern commentators to the reforming energies of the Church and can be seen as part of a growth in European spirituality during this period.⁸ Brian Stock has suggested that the growth in literacy may be a factor in the appearance of the heresies of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, arguing that the sources depict a learned individual or group interpreting scriptural texts for a wider community. Robert Moore has largely concurred, although he emphasizes that it is often the leader rather than the text that is prominent in the sources. Moore has usefully distilled the essence of the interpretation by describing heresy before the mid-twelfth century as “the cult of the heresiarch.”⁹

At a certain, disputed, point these individual reformers were superseded, firstly by the Church’s own apostolic revival, and secondly by dualist heresy infiltrating from the East, which can be confidently identified as Catharism by the 1170s.¹⁰ The Cathars were a clearly organized group, present in Italy, northern France, and Languedoc. They possessed bishops and dioceses, rituals and sacraments, and were wholly opposed to the orthodox Church. The core of their belief was the presence of two opposing gods. The good God created the spirit; the bad God created all corporeal matter. From this binary flowed their basic tenets and practices: no eating meat or any other product of coition, as everything physical was the product of the bad God; no respect for orthodox ceremonies such as marriage and baptism, since these colluded with the flawed nature of corporeal matter; salvation could come only through their hands (via the ritual of the consolamentum) and was a purification of the soul, which would join with the good God upon death. Those purified elite in the sect were known as the “perfect” (perfecti) or “good men” (bons hommes). Alongside the Cathars, another sect arose: the Waldensians. They were originally part of the Church and seem to have sprung from the same reforming desires and apostolic...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Note on Texts and Translations
• Introduction
• Part I
• Part II
• Conclusion
• Abbreviations
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Acknowledgments