Heretics and Scholars in the High Middle Ages 1000-1250 (review)

Reviews 211 Fichtenau, Heinrich, Heretics and Scholars in the High Middle Ages 1000-1250, trans. Denise A. Kaiser, University Park, Pennsylvania, The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998; cloth; pp. viii, 431; R.R.P. US$45.00. Heresy and scholasticism are usually studied by quite different people. While historians of heresy focus on issues of protest and social control, historians of scholasticism tend to ignore religious groups w h o refuse to have anything to do with the schools. Heinrich Fichtenau's Ketzer und Professoren: Haeresie und Vemunftglaube im Hochmittelalter (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1992), n o w available in a fluent English translation by Denise Kaiser, offers an exciting introduction to two related subjects not normally linked in a single monograph. Fichtenau, author of Living in the Tenth Century: Mentalities and Social Orders, translated by Patrick J. Geary (Chicago, 1991), is s t i l l relatively little k n o w n in the English speaking world. Whereas French historians of mentalities tend to be more interested in ideology, Fichtenau explores the internal logic of ideas as well as the social process by which they were generated. Whether he is describing the beliefs of Cathar heretics, the elaborate mythic constructions of twelfth-century cosmologists or the ambitions of scholastic theologians to interpret Christian belief within a rational framework, he always takes these ideas seriously. Fichtenau's guiding concern is with the variety of ways by which medieval people sought to break from unthinking adherence to orthodoxy. The first of the book's three sections deals with heresy. The major problem here is one of evidence. Historians almost always have to rely on hostile testimony, invariably shaped by pre-existing fears about the resurgence of ancient heresies. While aware that some heretics accused of 'Manichaeism' in the Latin West m a y 212 Reviews simply have been reform minded ascetics on the wrong side of ecclesiastical authority (as is probably the case with the 'heretics' of Soissons condemned by Guibert of Nogent), Fichtenau marshals the evidence for considering Catharism to have been a significant dualist movement, which refused to accept any of the doctrines and structures of orthodoxy. Rejecting Morghen's thesis that sectarian groups developed from evangelical movements seeking to reform the Church from within, he maintains that Catharism provided an alternative mythology to that of orthodox belief, based on the goal of personal liberation. Fichtenau's approach is radically different from that of R. I . Moore, whose The Formation ofa Persecuting Society (Oxford, 1987) does not appear to be in his bibliography. Whereas Moore looks at accusations of heresy as evidence of paranoia within the religious establishment, Fichtenau teases out the logic of the dualist position as a rejection of the structures and doctrines of orthodoxy. The central section, comparing the religious mythology of Cathars and Bogomils with the philosophical mythology of Platonist cosmologists, is perhaps the most stimulating part of the book. Fichtenau observes that Cathar dualism is in its way inspired by a rational vision of the cosmos, that separates the world of matter from that of spirit. H e notes a certain parallel here with Platonist mythmakers, w h o argue that all creation emanates from Natura rather than directly from G o d himself. His comments on the cosmology of Alan of Lille are suggestive, but perhaps gloss over the radical differences between Catharism and Platonism in the twelfth century. Those two movements differed radically in their attitude towards books. Whereas Cathars rejected any books that did not offer enlightenment, Platonist Christians were reinterpreting the literature of orthodoxy within the parameters of reason. Reviews 213 In the third section Fichtenau presents a vivid picture of scholastic enquiry as inspired by a desire to submit all knowledge to the analysis of reason, a desire that led some scholars, like Abelard and Gilbert of Poitiers, to be accused of heresy. His mastery of a wide range of literary sources is impressive. H o w many historians have read what H u g h of Honau, a disciple of Gilbert, has to say about the sinfulness of rejecting the pursuit of knowledge? In some ways, Fichtenau's vision echoes that of laique historians of scholasticism in...