Problems in the Study of Religious Dissent in Medieval Europe

David Zbíral

Department for the Study of Religions, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic, http://www.david-zbiral.cz

(Leipzig, University of Leipzig, 19 November 2013)

Introduction

How Christian dissent in medieval Europe has been theorized. History and present state.
Background: my field; “Religious Rationalities as a Factor of Cultural Change in European History”. Upcoming article.
Aims: 1) presenting discussions in this field having a wider theoretical importance; 2) placing them into the context of changes in larger fields (genealogies of religions and their decline, etc.; somewhat rudimentary); 3) establishing a basis for comparisons with other fields and with trends in those fields (discussion).
Structure: 1) origin of dissent, 2) dissent and cultural change, 3) dissent and order, 4) dissent in theories of identity and persecution. Overlaps.

Origin of medieval European religious dissent

Genealogies of heresy. Examples: Waldensianism and Hussitism (e.g. Holinka 1929); Paulician and Bogomil, or even Manichean or Gnostic, origin of Catharism (Döllinger, see Jiménez 2003: 210-211; dominant around 1950, see Runciman 1947; Obolensky 1948; Dondaine 1949, 1950; Bogomils and Origenistic monks of the East in Duvernoy 1979). Finding the source as a strategy of understanding in the history of religions. And in human thinking.
Critique of (at least some) continuities and doctrinal genealogies (e.g. Puech 1945; Morghen [1951] 1991; Duvernoy 1976; Rigo 1990; Hagman 1993; Jiménez 1998; Biget 2003; Zbíral 2007, 2010; Cameron 2001: 147). Weak analogies. Medieval polemists’ idea => bias. Two directions: 1) social and contextual history and 2) “invention of heresy”.
Social and contextual history: Herbert Grundmann; Raffaelo Morghen (vs. Antoine Dondaine); Raoul Manselli. Basis of contemporary scholarship. A different plot / strategy of understanding. Linking “heresy” to Church reform, lay religious movements, social conditions, local contexts. Marxist scholars (e.g. Machovcová and Machovec 1960): criticism of genealogies; social conditions, doctrine unimportant.
“Invention of heresy” scholarship (“deconstructionist” scholarship): source criticism of inquisitional and polemical texts (Grundmann 1965; Lerner 1972; Zerner ed. 1998; Pegg 2001; Brunn 2002, 2006), sometimes combined with the linguistic turn. Heresy as “invented” (constructed) by the authorities. Polemical and inquisitional discourse. Not so much in common with Foucault or Derrida (language-power yes, but discourse as ideology and oppressor more clear). Not much interest in dissidence, more interest in its construction by the power. (Biller and his circle: distinguished opponent; construction, but not an absolute fiction, individual approach.)
One important trend – decline of interest in doctrines and in explanations by doctrines (i.e. also in doctrinal genealogies). Social, economic and political factors. Echoes of the linguistic turn.

Religious dissent and cultural change

Part of larger processes of change. No unchanging essence. Not so shocking, but still worth emphasizing (cf. much scholarship on the tradition of “dualism”). E.g.: the rise of lay religious movements (Grundmann [1935] 1965).
Predecessors of the Reformation. Waldensians, Hussites, Lollards. First genealogies: encounters with the Waldensians; Catholic historians (links between Protestantism and older “heresies”, e.g. Bossuet 1688) × Protestant historians (bridging the gap, succession; see Bedouelle 1979).
Transformative potential of religious dissent (“the innovative potential and transformative dynamism of religious non-conformism” – stolen from this research training group). Older history: Protestant historians (reform of Church). Enlightenment historians? Romanticism? Engels ([1850] 1978). Marxist historians (Machovcová and Machovec 1960; Kalivoda 1997). Somewhat extinct now – more interest either in construction/exclusion/persecution (not in dissidence) or in dissidence but rather “atheoretically”.
Invention and repression of religious dissent as a part of cultural change: how the changing Christian society produced dissent as its “Other” (more later).

Dissent and order

Linked to the previous (change).
Threat to the social order. Polemists. Catholic historians’ apologetics of the Inquisition (e.g. Congar 1959: 454; partly adopting stories legitimizing persecution, e.g. the perversion of heretics). Adopted – interestingly – also by some social historians (e.g. Biget; criticism in Aurell ed. 2005: 70-72).
Also outside apologetic discourses: threat to the order yes, but order is not necessarily positive (see Asad 1986: 355). Influence of counter-culture (Van Engen 1986: 527) and critical post-colonial scholarship on some historians; medieval religious dissent seen as counter-culture. (Analogy in Romanticism?) Link to the idea of a transformative potential.
... more some other time or in the discussion (Durkheim etc.).

“We” and “the Other”: Theorizing the construction of identity, control, exclusion and persecution

Anthropology: role of the “Other” in the construction of identity.
Helped by historical/political factors: 1) discourses of minorities, pluralism, multiculturalism, 2) confronting the Holocaust (medieval persecutions of the Jews and the homosexuals > other minorities).
Linked with “invention of heresy” scholarship.
Norman Cohn: scapegoated minorities. Continuity of persecution from Antiquity: Christians, heretics, templars, witches (Cohn 1975). Jews are not his focus here. Elsewhere: totalitarian regimes, conspiration theories as a motor of persecution, the Holocaust. Persecuting stereotypes as a pure invention.
Robert I. Moore: the productive side of the persecuting power (influence of Foucault). Period of change (11th-13th century). Ecclesiastical and secular elites create their oponents and then persecute them in their search for deeper control; the power needs them (Moore [1977] 1985). Moore 1987: the formation of a persecuting society. The changing European society searches for its “Other” to define itself. Found in heretics, homosexuals, lepers, Jews (also Moore 2000, 2012). Many continuations (including Zbíral 2007).
Talal Asad: heresy produced by the claims of the Church to control more areas of life, i.e. by social disciplining (Asad 1986).
Influence on Ginzburg (2004): line of persecution; but against radical “inventionism”.
Dominique Iogna-Prat: influenced by Moore (Iogna-Prat [1998] 2000: 30-31), uses Moore’s narrative in the analysis of particular sources. Cluny. Monastic ecclesiology. Changing Christendom defining itself by its margins: the Jews, the Saracenes, the heretics (Iogna-Prat [1998] 2000).
David Frankfurter: close to Cohn. How rumors of demonic conspiracy give birth to persecution (Frankfurter 2006). Medieval part not very good but overall an interesting contribution to the paradigm.
“Parasitizing” the paradigm I: persecution from below, local conditions (Nirenberg 1996).
“Parasitizing” the paradigm II: medieval tolerance (Nederman and Laursen ed. 1996; Laursen and Nederman ed. 1998; Nederman 2000).
Some more strands: textual repression (Biller and Bruschi ed. 2003); good faith of the oppressor (partial breakup with Protestant, Enlightenment and liberalistic views of the Inquisition; see Caldwell Ames 2005, 2009; Sullivan 2011; Kieckhefer 2013; panels at the IMC 2014).
Trends: new theories of power; power in language. Diffuse Foucault.

Futurology, or Possible emerging fields

Back to theories of dissidence, not only those of persecution. Sociology, social formation, place in society and in historical change (perhaps building on the idea of a transformative potential?).
(Modernized) study of polemical discourses (not as “Church’s ideology”). Media, persuasion.
A metahistory (White 1973) needs to be written.
Inspirations from cognitive studies: 1) transmission of ideas; 2) diversity is not an explanandum – it is normal; unity is not and requires considerable resources (Albert 2005); 3) experimental results (e.g. emotional reaction to some topics or metaphors > persecution; modulated by culture but only partly); 4) reducing cultural relativism and seeking (again) for human universals > larger anthropological frameworks for studying dissent.
Inspirations from psychological study more generally (after an almost total ban): memory, suggestive inquiry.

Summing up

Aim: 1) presenting ongoing discussions in the study of medieval religious dissent, focusing on those with a wider theoretical importance; 2) searching for their contexts; 3) basis for comparison with other fields.
Long continuities of some discussions: repressive power; threat to social order vs. potential for reform and transformation.
Some innovations: linguistic turn, new view of power.
Origin: traditional strategy of doctrinal genealogy. Criticism > 1) social and contextual historiography, 2) “deconstructionist” scholarship. Decline of doctrines in theorizing (linked to a “deconfessionalization” of Europe – decline of the political importance of doctrines in the European society?).
Role of dissent in the construction of identity. Theories of social control, exclusion, persecution.
Prospects (emerging fields): back to theories of the dissidence itself; cognitive and psychological inspirations.

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