Heresy and the Persecuting Society in the Middle Ages: Essays on the Work of R. I. Moore (review)

Robert Moore enjoys the distinction of authoring not just one, but two, of the most influential (and controversial books) on medieval Europe of his generation: The Formation of a Persecuting Society (1987) and The First European Revolution (2001). Too often neglected is Moore's first major foray into the scholarly themes that would define his career, the 1977 volume The Origins of European Dissent. The present volume, despite its somewhat misleading title and subtitle (which perhaps suggests a different set of investigations), represents primarily an attempt to reexamine the themes of Moore's germinal work, especially concerning the sources and nature of medieval heretical movements. Although Moore's later contributions receive some attention as appropriate along the way (as in Edward Peters's chapter), The Origins of European Dissent is clearly the ur-text standing behind the book. Permit me also to emphasize that the collection is in no way a Festschrift for Moore, but rather contains a series of creative (and often critical) intellectual engagements.

The individual chapters composing the book thus hang together very well, illustrating both the strengths and limitations of Moore's general approach to heresy. Virtually all of the contributors focus on the origins and development of, and responses to, Catharism in southern Europe (and beyond, as Malcolm Barber argues) from the eleventh to fourteenth centuries. Moore had famously argued that the Cathars were a "home-grown" or indigenous movement within the West, in contrast with the view that they had been inspired by essentially Eastern heresies, especially the so-called Bogomils. Several of the chapters (including those by Daniel Callahan,Arthur Siegel, and especially Bernard Hamilton) return to this theme to dispute, or at any rate qualify, Moore's interpretation. These contributions provide a lively debate that scholars of heretical practices will find stimulating as well as informative.

Although it is difficult to single out any one chapter in this collection of learned essays, I must admit that I especially like and admire Susan Taylor Snyder's contribution, subtitled "The Blurry Border between Heresy and Orthodoxy." Snyder, a student of Carol Lansing (whose scholarship is also on impressive display here), focuses on a fascinating case study drawn from Bologna ca. 1300 to show that self-declared devotees of Catharism could and did simultaneously associate themselves with the orthodox, apparently without causing discomfort to themselves or consternation to others. She hence directly challenges Moore's apparent assumption across the range of his scholarship that a "bright line"between orthodoxy and heterodoxy was understood by practitioners on both sides of the divide. I look forward to and encourage Snyder's elaboration of this argument in her future scholarship.

The most obvious limitation on display in this volume stems from Moore's almost total disinterest in—and sometimes dismissal of—intellectual history and elite (as opposed to popular) thought about heresy and dissent. Though hardly a Marxist or a materialist, Moore's relentless emphasis on social history implicitly dismisses the power that ideas might have to drive ecclesiastical and secular institutions away from—as well as toward—the suppression of dissent or to aid in the redefinition of heresy. In turn, this is reflected in the focus of the contributions to the collection: authors and teachers who stood accused of advocating heretical ideas—from Abelard and Gilbert of Poitiers in the twelfth century to Marsiglio of Padua and William of Ockham in the fourteenth—are noticeably absent from the essays included here. Personally, I do not think that there must or should be an "either/or" choice between elite ideas and popular practices, as Moore apparently does.

Finally, I found fascinating Moore's own closing chapter, replete with some useful autobiographical reflections on the emergence of his scholarly interests as well as his gracious commentary on the preceding chapters. Moore might, however, have elaborated...