Essays considering how information could be used and abused in the service of heresy and inquisition. The collection, curation, and manipulation of knowledge were fundamental to the operation of inquisition. Its coercive power rested on its ability to control information and to produce authoritative discourses from it - a fact not lost on contemporaries, or on later commentators. Understanding that relationship between inquisition and knowledge has been one of the principal drivers of its long historiography. Inquisitors and their historians have always been preoccupied with the process by which information was gathered and recirculated as knowledge. The tenor of that question has changed over time, but we are still asking how knowledge was made and handed down - to them and to us - and how their sense of what was interesting or useful affected their selection. This volume approaches the theme by looking at heresy and inquisition in the Middle Ages, and also at how they were seen in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The contributors consider a wide range of medieval texts, including papal bulls, sermons, polemical treatises and records of interrogations, both increasing our knowledge of medieval heresy and inquisition, and at the same time delineating the twisting of knowledge. This polarity continues in the early modern period, when scholars appeared to advance learning by hunting for medieval manuscripts and publishing them, or ensuring their preservation through copying them; but at the same time, as some of the chapters here show, these were proof texts in the service of Catholic or Protestant polemic. As a whole, the collection provides a clear view of - and invites readers' reflection on - the shading of truth and untruth in medieval and early modern "knowledge" of heresy and inquisition. Contributors: Jessalynn Lea Bird, Harald Bollbuck, Irene Bueno, Joerg Feuchter, Richard Kieckhefer, Pawel Kras, Adam Poznanski, Luc Racaut, Alessandro Sala, Shelagh Sneddon, Michaela Valente, Reima Valimaki

The Waldenses, like the Franciscans, emerged from the apostolic movements within the Latin Church of the decades around 1200, but unlike the Franciscans they were driven underground. Not a full counter-Church, like the Cathar heretics, they formed a clandestine religious order, preaching to and hearing the confessions of their secret followers, and surviving until the Reformation. This volume begins by surveying modern historiography. Then, using both inquisition records from the Baltic to the Alps and the Waldenses' own books, the author deals with the asceticism of the Waldensian order, its practice of poverty and medicine, the culture of the Brothers and the preaching of the Waldensian Sisters, the way both used and mythicised history to support their position, and the composition of their followers. The final chapters examine their origins and authorship of the inquisitors' texts, and look through them to see how inquisitors viewed the Waldenses.

Did growing literacy in the later medieval period foster popular heresy, or did heresy provide a crucial stimulus to the spread of literacy? Such questions were posed in the polemic of the time - heretics were laici illiterati but were at the same time possessors of dangerous books which their opponents sought to destroy, and among them were preachers whose skills in dialectic and in exegesis threatened orthodoxy - and have challenged the investigators of heresy and literacy ever since. This collaborative volume, written by a group of established scholars from Britain, continental Europe and the United States, considers the importance of the written word among the main pre-Lutheran popular heresies in a wide range of European countries and explores the extent to which heretics' familiarity with books paralleled or exceeded that of their orthodox contemporaries.

Heresy and inquisition in France, 1200-1300 is an invaluable collection of primary sources in translation, aimed at students and academics alike. It provides a wide array of materials on both heresy (Cathars and Waldensians) and the persecution of heresy in medieval France. The book is divided into eight sections, each devoted to a different genre of source material. It contains substantial material pertaining to the setting up and practice of inquisitions into heretical wickedness, and a large number of translations from the registers of inquisition trials. Each source is introduced fully and is accompanied by references to useful modern commentaries. The study of heresy and inquisition has always aroused considerable scholarly debate; with this book, students and scholars can form their own interpretations of the key issues, from the texts written in the period itself. -- .

Historiographical survey of inquisition texts, from lists of questions to inquisitor's manual, studies their role in the suppression of heresy. Did you see a heretic? When? Where? Who else was there?'. The inquisitor is questioning, and a suspect is replying; a notary is translating from the vernacular into Latin, and writing it down, abbreviating and omitting at will; later there is the reading out of a sentence in public and then, in a few cases, burning. At every stage there is a text: a list of questions, for example, or an inquisitor's how-to-do it manual. The substance and intention of these texts forms the subject of this book. The introduction brings them all together in an historiographical survey of the role of texts in the suppression of heresy, and the volume is crowned by the Quodlibet lecture, in which the doyen of all heresy historians, ALEXANDER PATSCHOVSKY, magisterially surveys the political nature of heresy accusations. Contributors: MARK PEGG, PETER BILLER, CATERINA BRUSCHI, JAMES GIVEN, JOHN ARNOLD, JESSALYN BIRD, ANNE HUDSON, ALEXANDER PATSCHOVSKY.

Heresy and inquisition in France, 1200-1300 is an invaluable collection of primary sources in translation, aimed at students and academics alike. It provides a wide array of materials on both heresy (Cathars and Waldensians) and the persecution of heresy in medieval France. The book is divided into eight sections, each devoted to a different genre of source material. It contains substantial material pertaining to the setting up and practice of inquisitions into heretical wickedness, and a large number of translations from the registers of inquisition trials. Each source is introduced fully and is accompanied by references to useful modern commentaries. The study of heresy and inquisition has always aroused considerable scholarly debate; with this book, students and scholars can form their own interpretations of the key issues, from the texts written in the period itself. -- .

This is the first volume to be published by York Medieval Press, under the aegis of University of York's Centre for Medieval Studies in association with Boydell & Brewer, with the aim of promoting innovative scholarship and fresh criticism on medieval culture. It has a special commitment to interdisciplinary study, in line with the Centre's belief that the future of medieval studies lies in areas in which its major disciplines at once inform and challenge each other. The attitudes towards the human body held by different branches of medieval theology are currently a major focus of scholarly attention. This first volume from York Medieval Press includes studies of the metaphor of man as head and woman as body, Abelard, women and Catharism, the female body as an impediment to ordination, women mystics, and the University of York's 1995 Quodlibet Lecture given by Eamon Duffy on the early iconography and lives' of St Francis of Assisi..... Thenew scholarly essays collected here explore ways in which the human body - a major focus of attention in recent work on literary theory and cultural studies -was treated by several branches of medieval theology; they are derived in the mainfrom a conference held at York in 1995, under the title This Body of Death', together with further invited papers on the same theme. It includes the first of the Annual Quodlibet Lectures in medieval theology, Eamon Duffy's masterly study of the early iconography and lives' of St Francis of Assisi. PETER BILLER is Senior Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of York; A.J. MINNIS is Professor of Medieval Literature at the University of York. Contributors: PETER BILLER, ALCUIN BLAMIRES, DAVID LUSCOMBE, W.G.EAST, A.J. MINNIS, DYAN ELLIOTT, ROSALYNN VOADEN, EAMON DUFFY

Penance and confession were an integral part of medieval religious life; essays explore literary evidence. Penance, confession and their texts (penitential and confessors' manuals) are important topics for an understanding of the middle ages, in relation to a wide range of issues, from medieval social thought to Chaucer's background. These essays treat a variety of different aspects of the topic: subjects include the frequency and character of early medieval penance; the summae and manuals for confessors, and the ways in which these texts (written by males for males) constructed women as sexual in nature; William of Auvergne's remarkable writing on penance; and the relevance of confessors' manuals for demographic history. JOHN BALDWIN's major study "From the Ordeal to Confession", delivered as a Quodlibet lecture, traces the appearance in French romances of the themes of a penitent's contrition, the priest's job in listening, and the application of the spiritual conseil and penitence. PETER BILLER is Professor of Medieval History at the University of York; A.J. MINNIS is Douglas Tracy Smith Professor of English, Yale University. Contributors: PETER BILLER, ROB MEENS, ALEXANDER MURRAY, JACQUELINE MURRAY, LESLEY SMITH, MICHAEL HAREN, JOHN BALDWIN

Medicine and religion were intertwined in the middle ages; here are studies of specific instances. The sheer extent of crossover - medics as religious men, religious men as medics, medical language at the service of preaching and moral-theological language deployed in medical writings - is the driving force behind these studies. The book reflects the extraordinary advances which 'pure' history of medicine has made in the last twenty years: there is medicine at the levels of midwife and village practitioner, the sweep of the learned Greek and Latin tradition of over a millennium; there is control of midwifery by the priest, therapy through liturgy, medicine as an expression of religious life for heretics, medicine invading theologians' discussion of earthly paradise; and so on. Professor PETER BILLER is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of York; Dr JOSEPH ZIEGLER teaches in the Department of History at the University of Haifa.Contributors JOSEPH ZIEGLER, PEREGRINE HORDEN, KATHRYNTAGLIA, JESSALYN BIRD, PETER BILLER, DANIELLE JACQUART, MICHAEL McVAUGH, MAAIKE VAN DER LUGT, WILLIAM COURTENAY, VIVIAN NUTTON.

Penance and confession were an integral part of medieval religious life; essays explore literary evidence. Penance, confession and their texts (penitential and confessors' manuals) are important topics for an understanding of the middle ages, in relation to a wide range of issues, from medieval social thought to Chaucer's background. These essays treat a variety of different aspects of the topic: subjects include the frequency and character of early medieval penance; the summae and manuals for confessors, and the ways in which these texts (written by males for males) constructed women as sexual in nature; William of Auvergne's remarkable writing on penance; and the relevance of confessors' manuals for demographic history. JOHN BALDWIN's major study `From the Ordeal to Confession', delivered as a Quodlibet lecture, traces the appearance in French romances of the themes of a penitent's contrition, the priest's job in listening, and the application of the spiritual conseil and penitence. PETER BILLER is Professor of Medieval History at the University of York; A.J. MINNIS is Douglas Tracy Smith Professor of English, Yale University. Contributors: PETER BILLER, ROB MEENS, ALEXANDER MURRAY, JACQUELINE MURRAY, LESLEY SMITH, MICHAEL HAREN, JOHN BALDWIN

Essays on medieval history inspired by, and engaging with, the work of Jacques Le Goff. The essays in this volume arise from the proceedings of a conference held in 1994 to celebrate the life and work of the eminent French medievalist Jacques Le Goff. Set within thematic sections -popular religion and heresy, the body, royalty andits mystique, intellectuals in medieval society, and others -many of the challenges raised by Le Goff are reassessed and reapproached. There is an explicit historiographical focus in a section on the reception and influence of Le Goff, with particular reference to the Annales school of history with which he is strongly identified; the volume also indicates the problems which animate current research in medieval studies, especially in certain areas of social and cultural history. MIRI RUBIN is Professor of History, Queen Mary, University of London. Contributors: ALEXANDER MURRAY, PETER BILLER, ANDRE VAUCHEZ, R.I. MOORE, OTTO GERHARD OEXLE,LESTER K. LITTLE, WALTER SIMONS, ADELINE RUCQUOI, ALAIN BOUREAU, JEAN DUBABIN, WILLIAM CHESTER JORDAN, PETER LINEHAN, MIRI RUBIN, GABOR KLANICZAY, AARON GUREVICH, ROBIN BRIGGS, STUART CLARK

Peter Biller's innovative study challenges the view that medieval thought was fundamentally abstract. He describes what medieval people 'thought' about population, studying the texts which constrained their thought, and examining the medieval realities which shaped it, such as birth, birth-control, sex-ratio, marriage ages, length of life, and the population of the Holy Land.