Anti-Inquisitorialism to Antimendicantism

2019 ◽  
pp. 146-168
Author(s):  
Janine Larmon Peterson
Keyword(s):  
Local Communities ◽  
Spiritual Authority ◽  
Secular Clergy ◽  
Holy Man ◽  
Mendicant Orders

This chapter addresses inquisitors and the rise of anti-inquisitorial and antimendicant sentiments. Inquisitors were the ones who had the power to destroy the cult of a regional holy man or woman through an official condemnation of heresy. Since all inquisitors were friars, at times lay observers viewed the mainstream members of the wealthy and powerful mendicant orders as less spiritually worthy than those they prosecuted. Inquisitorial activity in local communities therefore consistently fueled the flames of acrimony. In addition, mendicant inquisitors often clashed with other members of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, in particular the secular clergy and the traditional monastic orders. Some of these other clerics viewed the mendicants as upstarts who interfered with their spiritual authority and received seemingly excessive and unwarranted papal favors. The chapter then details the process by which laypeople's anti-inquisitorial attitudes became antimendicant ones, as well as how other clerics' antimendicant views led them to support anti-inquisitorial actions.

Mulieres sanctae

1973 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 77-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brenda M. Bolton
Keyword(s):  
Urban Communities ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Religious Feeling ◽  
Secular Clergy ◽  
History Of ◽  
Mendicant Orders ◽  
The Church

The early thirteenth century was an extraordinary period in the history of piety. Throughout Europe, and especially in urban communities, lay men and women were seized by a new religious fervour which could be satisfied neither by the new orders nor by the secular clergy. Lay groups proliferated, proclaiming the absolute and literal value of the gospels and practising a new life-style, the vita apostolica. This religious feeling led to the formation, on the eve of the fourth lateran council, of numerous orders of ‘poor men’ and shortly afterwards, to the foundation of the mendicant orders. From this novel interpretation of evangelical life women by no means wished to be excluded and many female groups sprang simultaneously into being in areas as far distant as Flanders and Italy. Yet how were such groups to be regarded because current attitudes to women were based on inconsistent and contradictory doctrines? It was difficult to provide the conditions under which they could achieve their desire for sanctity as they were not allowed to enter the various orders available to men. How then were men to reply to the demands of these women for participation in religious life? That there should be a reply was evident from the widespread heresy in just those areas in which the ferment of urban life encouraged the association of pious women. And heretics were dangerously successful with them! For the church, the existence of religious and semi-religious communities of women raised, in turn, many problems, not least the practicalities involved in both pastoral care and economic maintenance. Only, after 1215, when it attempted to regulate and discipline them, did it realise the widespread enthusiasm on which their movement was based.

Archbishop FitzRalph and the Friars at the Papal Court in Avignon, 1357 - 60

Traditio ◽  
1975 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 223-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Walsh
Keyword(s):  
Secular Clergy ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Papal Court ◽  
Mendicant Orders ◽  
Legal Battle

On November 8, 1357 Archbishop Richard FitzRalph of Armagh preached the Proposicio ‘Nolite iudicare,’ known also as the Defensio Curatorum, before a full consistory of cardinals at Avignon. This was the opening round of a legal battle in the papal courts over the pastoral functions and privileges of the four orders of mendicant friars, Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians, and Carmelites. The case of the archbishop of Armagh versus the procurators general of the mendicant orders may with some justice be regarded as the climax of the long struggle between the friars and the secular clergy. The episode is unusually well-documented, but although much attention has been devoted to FitzRalph's sermons against the friars preached in London during the winter and spring of 1356–7 and to his dialogue on poverty and dominion De pauperie Salvatoris, little consideration has been given to the later developments which followed the transfer of the case to the papal curia. There the dispute became the subject of an inquiry heard by a tribunal of cardinals. Copies of the statements by both parties to the dispute survive in a number of manuscripts, English and continental, and it is possible to trace in some detail the progress of these curial proceedings.

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.

A Court in Decline? Examining the Regality Court Records of Melrose, Roxburghshire, 1657–84

2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Vivienne Dunstan
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Local Population ◽  
Local Area ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Court Records ◽  
Seminal Work

McIntyre, in his seminal work on Scottish franchise courts, argues that these courts were in decline in this period, and of little relevance to their local population. 1 But was that really the case? This paper explores that question, using a particularly rich set of local court records. By analysing the functions and significance of one particular court it assesses the role of this one court within its local area, and considers whether it really was in decline at this time, or if it continued to perform a vital role in its local community. The period studied is the mid to late seventeenth century, a period of considerable upheaval in Scottish life, that has attracted considerable attention from scholars, though often less on the experiences of local communities and people.

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