Lecturing with Chapter 9

Only one lecture this week (we are still in recovery from the disruption of Obama’s visit to campus), and I devoted it to the rise of persecutions from the 11^th century on. Here’s what I did:

WHAT HAPPENED?

Between 1000 and 1300, certain groups of people began to be

singled out as dangerous and perverse. These were: heretics, Jews,

prostitutes, lepers, and male homosexuals. Before 1000, these groups were

readily accommodated within medieval communities, but after 1050, they began

to experience persecution. First, they were marked out as different,

especially by requirements that they wear special dress, badges, or hats.

Second, they were either segregated from the main community (Jews into

ghettoes; lepers into special leper-houses; prostitutes into brothels or

special neighborhoods) or expelled by either exile (an experience especially

of Jews and lepers) or death (the fate of some heretics and male

homosexuals).

TWO EXAMPLES OF PERSECUTED GROUPS:

1. Heretics. I discussed: what a heretic was; the Waldensians and Cathars as examples; the Church’s response in terms of preaching, inquisition, and crusade.

2. Jews. I reviewed how Jews had long lived in Christian communities before the 11^th century; how their circumstances changed dramatically with First Crusade; how relations were further exacerbated by new Christian pieties (as rehearsed in an earlier lecture); how they were also hurt by new Christian theological ideas that deemed Jews to be abusing the Old Testament; how everyday tensions (moneylending; the special but dangerous protection of kings) did not help; and how the results were attacks and expulsions.

THE IMAGINED “OTHER”:

I talked here about how each of these groups—lepers, heretics, prostitutes, Jews, male homosexuals—was different from the others. Nevertheless, ideas about these groups overlapped in some terrifying ways. All of them were seen as (a) sexually deviant, (b) sources of pollution, and (c) evil agents of the devil. Moreover, ideas about one group seeped into other groups. I read to them the twelfth-century description of heretics (p. 234 of MESH) that illustrated this tendency: heretics were seen, in the passage, not only as guilty of religious error but also as (a) meeting in a synagogue (like Jews), (b) consorting with the devil (like heretics), and (c) engaging in a sexual orgy that included same-sex relations (like male homosexuals).

WHY DID THIS HAPPEN?

These persecutions cannot be explained by the new arrival of these groups in Europe, for Jews, lepers, male homosexuals, prostitutes, and heretics had long been part of medieval society. In other words, diversity itself did not cause these attacks. Historians are still not sure how to explain the growing intolerance of Europeans, but here are some hypotheses:

--frustrated millenarianism? There were many millenarian movements in the

Middle Ages, especially around the year 1000 but also afterwards. It has

been suggested that the purification, anxiety, and frustration of these

movements led to a rise in intolerance.

--centralization of state & church? The High Middle Ages saw not only the

centralization of the power of feudal monarchs but also the growth of the

papal monarchy. For both kings and popes, minorities were (a) a threat to

their power and (b) an occasion (through control or elimination of

minorities) for the extension of their power.

--creating community? As communities grew larger and more complex in the

Central Middle Ages, perhaps cohesion could only be maintained through the

creation of "common enemies" against whom unity seemed necessary.

That’s it. A fun and important lecture. They discuss the Prioress' Tale tomorrow.