UVM Theses and Dissertations
Format:
Print
Author:
Morse, Nathan
Title:
Dept./Program:
History
Year:
2006
Degree:
MA
Abstract:
Around AD 384, Priscillian of Avila became the first Western European heretic to be executed, though on a charge of witchcraft, not heresy. The Eastern Church continued to kill heretics, but the Roman communion ceased all such executions, until AD 1022. In that year, the bishop of Orléans fled, and fourteen Orléans clergymen were consequently charged with heresy and burned. Soon after, the Milanese town council burned members of a distant town who had been questioned and found guilty of heresy. In 1051, the German emperor, Henry III, executed 'heretics' in Goslar, apparently for their refusal to eat meat. After this, there was another pause, of more than fifty years, before the western church resumed executing dissenters.
What changed? Why did Western Europeans suddenly find heresy a crime worthy of the death penalty? That is the question I am trying to answer in this thesis. Why did the church and secular leaders who ordered the executions find them necessary? To answer that big question, I look at what those churchmen wrote about the cases. There are other cases of heresy during these decades that did not require the death penalty, so I inquire into why some heretics were killed, while others were not. Were some of the heretics killed for reasons other than what they believed?
The accused in each case were killed for different reasons. In Orléans, two coalitions of powerful families had competed with each other for King Robert's favor for years. When, around 1005, the king divorced his wife from one family and married a princess, Constance, from the other, the rejected faction fought back. After they failed in two attempts to oust Constance, they discovered that her confessor held heretical beliefs. They forced the king to deal with the situation publicly, at the Synod of Orléans in 1022, where it became clear that there really was a heresy. Because his queen was in danger of death, the king publicly repudiated the heresy by burning the accused priests.
It is harder to understand why the lay elders of Milan took the same action six years later. The accused heretics were from a different province, so the elders were not facing the same pressures King Robert had. There were no economic or cultural reasons for the Milanese leaders to kill the villagers from a distant castle. Perhaps they were trying to prove to the people that they were better leaders than the nominal leader of the Milanese church, and thus the town, Archbishop Aribert. Or perhaps the chronicler, Landulf the Elder, was covering up the fact that the archbishop ordered the executions. In Goslar, only three men recorded any original information about the case. We know that the accused heretics did not represent any kind of threat to the emperor, and very little threat to the church. Politics do give us our best answer, however.
The emperor was trying to keep the loyalty of the aristocrats, and aristocrats held almost all the leadership positions in the German church. Perhaps Henry was trying to show his support for his bishops and archbishops in dealing with any arising religious opposition. In all three cases, along with roughly a dozen other outbreaks of dissent between 1000 and 1050, the western church was facing new opposition from the newly literate laity, and its churchmen increasingly relied on coercive force to maintain their positions. Politicians and clergy alike used accusations of heresy to maintain their control of their lands and people. All three cases of execution can be boiled down to politics, and the unstable balance of power between the church, the monarchy, and the nobility.
What changed? Why did Western Europeans suddenly find heresy a crime worthy of the death penalty? That is the question I am trying to answer in this thesis. Why did the church and secular leaders who ordered the executions find them necessary? To answer that big question, I look at what those churchmen wrote about the cases. There are other cases of heresy during these decades that did not require the death penalty, so I inquire into why some heretics were killed, while others were not. Were some of the heretics killed for reasons other than what they believed?
The accused in each case were killed for different reasons. In Orléans, two coalitions of powerful families had competed with each other for King Robert's favor for years. When, around 1005, the king divorced his wife from one family and married a princess, Constance, from the other, the rejected faction fought back. After they failed in two attempts to oust Constance, they discovered that her confessor held heretical beliefs. They forced the king to deal with the situation publicly, at the Synod of Orléans in 1022, where it became clear that there really was a heresy. Because his queen was in danger of death, the king publicly repudiated the heresy by burning the accused priests.
It is harder to understand why the lay elders of Milan took the same action six years later. The accused heretics were from a different province, so the elders were not facing the same pressures King Robert had. There were no economic or cultural reasons for the Milanese leaders to kill the villagers from a distant castle. Perhaps they were trying to prove to the people that they were better leaders than the nominal leader of the Milanese church, and thus the town, Archbishop Aribert. Or perhaps the chronicler, Landulf the Elder, was covering up the fact that the archbishop ordered the executions. In Goslar, only three men recorded any original information about the case. We know that the accused heretics did not represent any kind of threat to the emperor, and very little threat to the church. Politics do give us our best answer, however.
The emperor was trying to keep the loyalty of the aristocrats, and aristocrats held almost all the leadership positions in the German church. Perhaps Henry was trying to show his support for his bishops and archbishops in dealing with any arising religious opposition. In all three cases, along with roughly a dozen other outbreaks of dissent between 1000 and 1050, the western church was facing new opposition from the newly literate laity, and its churchmen increasingly relied on coercive force to maintain their positions. Politicians and clergy alike used accusations of heresy to maintain their control of their lands and people. All three cases of execution can be boiled down to politics, and the unstable balance of power between the church, the monarchy, and the nobility.