scholarly journals Sorcery, Heresy, and the Authority of the Church

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allison TM Bailey
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Multiple Forms ◽  
Traditional Beliefs ◽  
Fourth Lateran Council ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Middle Ages ◽  
Church Doctrine

This paper argues that there were multiple forms of heresy implemented by the Church to control opposing ideas and knowledge in the Middle Ages. The term “heresy” shift meanings for its original conception to include all beliefs that were opposed to official Church doctrine, including magic and sorcery. The inquisitorial process was implemented as a response to the laity’s attempts to interpret Church doctrine for themselves alongside their traditional beliefs. As he concept of heresy changed, so too did the Church’s view of magic, sorcery, and witchcraft. Before the inquisitorial process became widespread, magic was considered an error that could be fixed through a penitential process. By the time of the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, the church had decided on what constituted heretical behaviour, and who had the right to punish heretics.

Temporal and Spiritual Regalia during the Reigns of St. Louis and Philip III

Traditio ◽  
1964 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 351-383
Author(s):  
Gerard J. Campbell
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Lay Leaders ◽  
Local Conditions ◽  
The World ◽  
The Right ◽  
Gregorian Reform ◽  
Spiritual Freedom ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Middle Ages

The Gregorian reform of the eleventh century mounted a massive attack on lay control over churches and church appointments, yet the degree to which this attack succeeded in attaining its objectives varied from country to country. Local conditions and personalities were important in determining the outcome of the struggle over investiture and other related questions, but neither side achieved a complete victory, because the final agreements between clerical and lay leaders were a compromise which produced the usual mixture of satisfaction and disappointment. The church gained the most substantial victory, for the smothering stranglehold of the laity over the church and churchmen was broken, nevermore to be restored in the Middle Ages. Increased spiritual freedom for the church in subsequent centuries resulted from the struggle of the mid-eleventh century. Nevertheless, the church had not broken completely from its close ties with the world of feudalism. If bishoprics, abbeys, and parish churches were not feudal possessions of kings and nobles, laymen still retained many rights reminiscent of the earlier days when laymen claimed a proprietary right over the churches in their areas. The purpose of this paper is to consider one of these remnants of earlier days: the right of regalia I will examine the right of regalia, temporal and spiritual, together with some related institutions during the reigns of St. Louis and Philip III of France.

scholarly journals De Modo Qualiter Reges Aragonum Coronabuntur. Visual, Material and Textual Evidence during the Middle Ages

Arts ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 25
Author(s):  
Marta Serrano-Coll
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Power Struggles ◽  
Visual Material ◽  
Textual Evidence ◽  
Crown Of Aragon ◽  
Before And After ◽  
The Times ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Middle Ages

The aim of this study is to analyze the coronation ceremonies carried out in the Crown of Aragon throughout the Middle Ages. Although the pope granted most Western monarchies the right to hold these ceremonies in their own kingdoms in 1204, our study will address the mechanisms used to appoint kings both before and after the consolidation of these ceremonies, mechanisms which reflected the power struggles between the parties involved, that is, the prince and the Church. We will examine the elements that remained constant throughout this period but we will also pay particular attention to the alterations that were made and how these had important consequences that went beyond politics and entered religious terrain. Among the changes were the kings’ efforts to participate in priestly orders, the promotion and consolidation of new liturgy with content intended to legitimize the kings, and the use of new iconographies with sacred references. As will be seen, these are only a small example of the mechanisms used by the sovereigns of the Crown of Aragon to re-emphasize their links with God, which had been weakened by the transformations to the anointing and coronation ceremonials and the resulting tensions with Rome, particularly during the times of Peter IV (1336–1387).

The genesis of the idea of freedom of religious conscience in the Middle Ages

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mykhailo Babii
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
The State ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Freedom Of Conscience ◽  
Complete Control ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Middle Ages

Abstract. The article is devoted to the idea of freedom of conscience, the processes of developing its understanding in the Middle Ages, the opposition of various approaches, which are represented by thinkers of the Western and Eastern Christian tradition. These traditions were formed and developed within the framework of interpretive assessments of the relationship between the state and the church, known as Caesaropapism and Papоcaesarism. The peculiarities of Western Christian and Eastern Christian approaches to issues of freedom of conscience, which were formed by the nature of state power and its relations with the church, are analyzed. The Catholic understanding of relations was based on the independence of the church from the state, on its freedom, on the opposition of the spiritual and the earthly, on the supremacy of the former over the latter. It is claimed that the Roman Catholic Church has always claimed complete control over the secular state. According to the Orthodox view, the "spiritual and secular" should be integrated into one "symphonic" system with the leading role of the state. The church "gave its freedom" to the Caesars. The mechanism of the emergence of religious alternatives to the official teachings of the church, in particular heresies, sectarianism, schism, which served as a breeding ground for the emergence of religious freedom, freedom in the church. The role of the rationalist and anti-church component, philosophical and theological concepts, which were determined by a significant increase in scientific knowledge and the development of philosophical teachings, which also led to ideas of freedom of conscience, is emphasized. During this period, the genesis of the idea of freedom of conscience was played by the substantiation of the idea of human rights, in particular, the right to freedom of conscience and religion. The Middle Ages are presented as a specific era, which is associated with previous periods in the intellectual - philosophical and theological - understanding of freedom of conscience, in which despite all the negative socio-political, religious processes, persecution of freethinkers, formed principles of freedom of conscience and theoretical justification future paradigm. During this period, it was mainly about freedom of religious conscience, about the freedom of the church, about conscience, freedom of will, and not about freedom of conscience. It was important to substantiate the idea of the right of the autonomous mind, the doctrine of "natural light", the distinction between the concepts of "sacred" and "secular". At the same time, freedom of religious conscience can be said only for Christian believers, all others - infidels, "schismatics", heretics - were outlawed, society considered them as enemies of the state and the church. Heretical movements, which originated in the bosom of the Christian church and were determined by the context and events of the Middle Ages, became the environment where the ideas of freedom of conscience, including freedom of religious conscience, religious tolerance received "energy" for their development and manifestation as a public demand.

The ‘Mendicant Problem’ in the Later Middle Ages

1999 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 217-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. N. Swanson
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Canon Law ◽  
Special Role ◽  
Secular Clergy ◽  
Grass Root ◽  
Fourth Lateran Council ◽  
Mendicant Orders ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Middle Ages

Almost from their foundation, the mendicant orders proved problematic. Their insistence on poverty, their preaching skills, and their responsiveness to contemporary spirituality challenged the Church at many levels, providing standards against which the secular clergy might be judged and found wanting. Their dependence on papal privileges which limited episcopal oversight, and their claims to a special role as confessors and preachers, threatened the Church’s current order, especially in parishes. By undermining the parish priest’s authority — jurisdictionally by offering confession and absolution, financially by encouraging burial in their houses — the friars in fact undercut some of the aims of the early thirteenth-century reformers, most notably by disrupting the demands of Omnis utriusque sexus, the decree requiring annual confession to the ‘proprius sacerdos’, issued at the Fourth Lateran Council. The most important resolution of these ‘grass root’ problems was provided in Boniface VIII’s Super cathedram of 1300, which by 1326 applied to all four of the main mendicant orders, and formally became part of canon law when enshrined in the Clementines. Unfortunately, Super cathedram seemed incompatible with Omnis utriusque sexus, and debate on the resulting discrepancy persisted throughout the Middle Ages, despite attempts at resolution such as Vas electionis of 1321.

Stages in Diplomatic Production

2020 ◽  
pp. 610-618
Author(s):  
Olivier Guyotjeannin
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Middle Ages

This chapter examines administrative documents of the Middle Ages and the major scholarly studies of them. It surveys the number of preserved documents and the problems surrounding the lack of documents in different periods and places. The author discusses the role and influence of the Church in the increased production and preservation of documents beginning in the eleventh century, leading to an enormous increase in the production of documents during the last three centuries of the Middle Ages.

Papal Legates against the Albigensians: The Debts of the Church of Valence (1215–1250)

Traditio ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 68 ◽  
pp. 259-276
Author(s):  
D. Dudley Stutz
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Detailed Treatment ◽  
Northern Portion ◽  
Rhone Valley ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Middle Ages

In 1232 Pope Gregory IX (r. 1227–41) imposed a tenth of episcopal revenues on prelates of Occitania to subsidize the church of Valence, which owed 10,000 poundstournoisto various bankers of Vienne, Rome, Lyons, and Siena. In 1865 B. Hauréau first noted the event when he edited one of the main documents in theGallia christianavolume concerning the ecclesiastical province of Vienne. With the publication of Gregory IX's register from 1890–1908 most of the facts of the tax were more widely available. In 1910 Ulysse Chevalier briefly mentioned the tax in his monograph on the long tenure of John of Bernin, archbishop of Vienne (r. 1218–66). In 1913, Heinrich Zimmermann cited Hauréau's text in a note in his detailed treatment of early thirteenth-century papal legations. Recently Alain Marchandisse reviewed eight of the eleven papal letters pertaining to the tax in his study of William of Savoy (d. 1239) as bishop-elect of Liège. These scholars provided no reason for the debt or why the papacy would take such measures to ensure payment. Perhaps they did not study this tax further because a church indebted to moneylenders is not in itself surprising. It appears that the church of Valence acquired the debt, very large compared to the church's income, when bishop-elect William of Savoy (r. 1225–39) waged war against Adhémar II of Poitiers-Valentinois, count of the Valentinois (r. 1189–1239). Struggles between bishops and the local nobility occurred on a regular basis throughout the Middle Ages, so what in this unimportant Rhone-valley diocese interested the pope enough to impose taxes on prelates of Occitania over twenty years to ensure payment of this debt? Adhémar II faithfully supported Raymond VI (r. 1194–1222) and Raymond VII (r. 1222–49) of Saint-Gilles, counts of Toulouse, throughout their struggle with the papacy during and following the Albigensian crusades. Adhémar II was also their vassal for the Diois, which borders the Valentinois on the southeast and comprised the northern portion of the marquisate of Provence. These lands had been reserved for the church in the Treaty of Meaux-Paris (1229), which ended the Albigensian crusades. Thus William of Savoy as bishop-elect of Valence defended the papacy's claims on the marquisate of Provence, which the papacy deemed part of the larger struggle between the Roman church and the counts of Toulouse. The facts on the nature of the debts and the steps the papacy took to aid the diocese show that the local struggle between the bishop of Valence and the count of the Valentinois embodied a part of the larger struggle between the papacy and the counts of Toulouse over the marquisate of Provence, which began as early as 1215.

The Maaseik embroideries

1984 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 65-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mildred Budny ◽  
Dominic Tweddle
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Form Part ◽  
The Church ◽  
Made In ◽  
The Middle Ages

Among the relics in the treasury of the church of St Catherine at Maaseik in Limburg, Belgium, there are some luxurious embroideries which form part of the so-called casula (probably ‘chasuble’) of Sts Harlindis and Relindis (pls. I–VI). It was preserved throughout the Middle Ages at the abbey church of Aldeneik (which these sister-saints founded in the early eighth century) and was moved to nearby Maaseik in 1571. Although traditionally regarded as the handiwork of Harlindis and Relindis themselves, the embroideries cannot date from as early as their time, and they must have been made in Anglo-Saxon England. Indeed, they represent the earliest surviving examples of the highly prized English art of embroidery which became famous later in the Middle Ages as opus anglicanum.

The Church and Economic Activity in the Middle Ages

1973 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 365
Author(s):  
G. ◽  
J. Gilchrist
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Economic Activity ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Middle Ages
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