John S. Ott (c2008, 2012, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022)
Department of History
Portland State University
HST 355U - Late Medieval Europe


Reading Guide #4 : Study Questions
for
(1) The Jewish Martyrs of Blois (1171) and "The Host and Libels against the Jews"
(2) Thomas of Celano, Life of St Francis; The Franciscan Rule
(3) Bernard Gui, Manual of the Inquisitor of Heretical Depravity and Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae


I. Medieval Jews and the roots of medieval antisemitism
A full introduction to the events discussed in Ephraim of Bonn's Sefer Zekhirah, Robert of Torigny's Chronicle, and Hillel of Bonn's martyr poem of 1171 is given with the source documents themselves; please consult the texts.

The sources on "the Host and Libels against the Jews" (1303) are found in a single collection of 56 stories concerning alleged Jewish sacrilege, host desecration, and other myths. These anti-Semitic stories accused Jews of committing atrocities, ranging from child murder and crucifixion (known as the "blood libel," in that the blood of the children was said to be used in Jewish religious rites, e.g., baked into the matzah bread used Passover) to stabbing the consecrated bread of the Eucharist (which often bled as a result). Attributed to a Dominican (see below, section III, on this thirteenth-century religious order) named Rudolf of Schlettstadt (in the Alsace region of eastern France/western Germany), the stories featured here all involved the Eucharistic 'host', which was believed to become the real flesh of Christ upon the consecration of the sacrament by the priest. Tales such as these, which were first recorded in the late  circulated widely in manuscripts and through word of mouth, contributing to a widespread beliefs that Jews, if allowed the opportunity, would seek to destroy the elements of the Eucharist. Two of the stories here (nos. 1 and 8) refer specifically to a sustained regional attack on Jews in Germany in 1298, known to scholars as the "Rintfleischbewegung" or 'Butchers' Revolt'. "Rintfleisch" (mod. German, Rindfleisch, or "butcher") was the nom-de-guerre given to the leader of a mob that attacked the Jews of Röttingen, about 35 km south of Würzburg, in April 1298. The mob then moved on to other cities, and anti-Jewish attacks spread to the regions of Franconia and Bavaria in southern Germany. It is no coincidence that the lord of Röttingen, Kraffto von Hohenlohe, was deeply in debt to the city's Jews at the time of the attack. By the time the mob's fury was extinguished, hundreds of Jewish communities and thousands of Jews had been killed or driven from their homes.

II. The profit economy, Francis of Assisi, and the transformation of religiosity
Francis (baptized Giovanni di Bernadone) was born to an Italian father (Pietro) and French mother (Pica)in Assisi in 1181 and died 3 October 1226. His father was a successful cloth merchant.

As a young man he worked in his father Pietro’s cloth business and joined the partisan forces in Assisi when the city broke into civil war in 1201-1202; he was captured and jailed in Perugia until perhaps 1204. While there he experienced a severe illness. When, upon recovering, he was tempted to join a wealthy man on a military expedition to Apulia, a vision of a house filled with weapons changed his mind. Taking this as an ill omen, he canceled his trip. With a friend (unnamed), he then began to retreat to a grotto to pray and repent. A second event occurred shortly thereafter: while praying at the rural church of San Damiano, the crucifix spoke to him, telling him to rebuild it. He did so; it would be the first of several. After selling his father’s merchandise and giving away the money while at market, Pietro dragged him before the bishop of Assisi, Guido II (1204-1228), who became in the event a patron and protector of Francis. After that, Francis withdrew from the city, and according to Thomas of Celano, his biographer, his conversion was completed in 1208 when he heard the Gospel of the Mass concerning Christ’s apostles. Soon thereafter he began attracting followers and in 1209 composed a rule for their lifestyle consisting of biblical passages. The following year, he succeeded in gaining an audience with the pope, Innocent III, and his group was formally endorsed as an order and licensed to preach. A second rule (papally-approved) followed in 1223. Francis remained a layman, and was never a priest.

Francis attracted to his side both men and women. Clare Scifi (1194-1253) was the first; she became an ardent follower after hearing Francis preach during Lent in the year 1212, and joined him at age 18. She was soon followed by one of her sisters (who took the name Agnes), and later still by another sister and her mother. As with Francis, Clare’s father fought to bring her back into the household. She dwelled initially in two Benedictine abbeys, but she moved along with other women followers of Francis into the rebuilt church of San Damiano, over which Francis presided. She became abbess in 1216, and composed the rule of the new group, which observed far stricter poverty than the Benedictine Rule required, in 1253. This arose not least because she rejected the rule prepared for them earlier by Cardinal Ugolino of Ostia (1206-1227, the future Gregory IX), as being too lax on issues of common property. She was canonized in 1255.

The friars crossed the Alps in 1217 and soon headed overseas. In 1219, Francis accompanied the Fifth Crusade to Damietta and met with the Ayyubid sultan of Cairo, al-Kamil, in an attempt to convert him or perhaps negotiate an end to the violence. The following year, he was removed from – or handed over – the leadership of the Franciscans, to another brother, Peter (who died shortly thereafter), before it passed conclusively into the hands of Elias (minister general from 1232-1239). In that same year, five Franciscans were murdered in northern Africa, in what is now Morocco (1220). Friars traveling in southern France and Germany in these early years were often suspected of heresy. A more ‘professional’ attitude toward the missions appears from 1221, when the rule was devised, and expansion was fast thereafter, to England (1223/4), Ireland (1230), Scotland (1232) – 72 'provinces' in all were established by 1239, later reduced by half.

In late September 1224, while in the midst of a 40-day fast, Francis received the stigmata. Following his death two years later, he was declared a saint in 1228 and his biography commissioned.

Thomas of Celano entered the Franciscan order in 1214/15; he started the first version of Francis’s life at the pope's request (Gregory IX) following Francis' canonization in 1228, and had finished it by February 1229, when it was approved by the pope.  There would be a second life written a few years later (between 1232-1239, perhaps starting as late as 1244, adopted in 1247/8), also by Thomas, incorporating new material from the recollections of his close friends (the three companions, Leo, Rufino, Angelo, who wrote between 1244-1246).  A new official biography was adopted in 1266, Bonaventure’s Legenda maior. Commissioned earlier, in 1256, and written by Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, then Minister General of the Order (1257-1274), it utilized Thomas’ second 'life' while suppressing earlier material. The older versions of the life were ordered recalled and destroyed by the General Chapter meeting of 1266.


III.  Religious dissent, the Inquisition, and the pursuit of heretics

Together these readings cover a considerable period: 200+ years, a period which saw great changes in institutional and doctrinal attitudes toward the religiously heterodox in Europe. Guibert's brief description of heretics at Soissons is the oldest, and dates to 1115; Bernard Gui's Manual is the most recent, and was composed about 1323/24. Finally, four short pages are excerpted from the Summa theologica of Thomas Aquinas, a work he composed in stages from 1263 until his death in 1274. Thomas Aquinas is perhaps the best known philosopher-theologian of the later Middle Ages, though his work gained more respect after his death than during his own lifetime. He wrote broadly on diverse subjects, but is most famous for his synthesis of Christian theological tradition and the philosophy of Aristotle, whose works had been translated into Latin from Arabic copies and made available in northern Europe beginning in the mid-to-late twelfth century. Although Aquinas's views on heresy and unbelief were not universal, see if you detect overtones of his philosophy in Bernard's Manual. Both men belonged to the Dominican Order of Preachers, who filled the ranks of the Inquisitors. The Dominicans, formally known as the Order of Preachers and authorized in 1216 by Pope Honorius III, were established by Dominic Guzman with the aim of combatting heresy by preaching and conversion.

Bernard Gui (b. 1260/1 - d. 31 December 1331) was a Dominican preacher and Master of Theology who served as the prior of several Dominican convents in southern France from 1290-1307, until he was commissioned as an inquisitor by the pope and headquartered in the diocese of Toulouse in southern France. He was a prolific writer, and toward the end of his career composed the Practica inquisitionis heretice pravitatis [Manual of the Inquisition of Heretical Depravity], drawing on his experience of nearly 25 years as an inquisitor. The work is divided into five parts, the last of which details the known and presumed tenets of the principal religious minority groups of the day, including: Cathars, Waldensians, Beguins, as well as sorcerers, demon-invokers, and others. Many of the sections of this work draw on the earlier works of other authors; his section on the Beguins (whose leadership included some women), however, concerns his own direct dealings with that group, a branch of the Franciscan Order.

The sections of the manual we are reading concern a group known to inquisitors as the 'False Apostles' (but who referred to themselves as the Apostolic Brethren). Followers of Gerard Segharelli, an Italian layman who took up the apostolic life and preached extreme poverty around 1260, the Brethren lived lives of preaching and itinerancy. However, as new preaching orders had been specifically outlawed by the church in 1274, Gerard and his followers were condemned and imprisoned. Gerard himself was burned at the stake for heresy in 1300. His successors continued his work, and like a number of later medieval religious orders comprised of laymen, took on increasingly apocalyptic views.

A second brief section concerns sorcerers, who were just beginning to become of interest to the Inquisition, and the final section of the text details how heretical beliefs should be legally abjured in the courts.

As you read, compare these three works for their content, tone, portrayals of "heresy," and methods for determining groups identified as deviant from the religiously orthodox. Come to class prepared to discuss the representation of heresy and the threat (real or imagined) that it was presumed to pose for "faithful" Christians and the institutional Church/papacy.  What does the proliferation of heresy suggest about official/institutional attitudes toward religious authority and orthodoxy in the late Middle Ages?