The Sleep of Behemoth: Disputing Peace and Violence in Medieval Europe, 1000–1200

6. Exporting Peace: Ecclesiology and Evangelism

190  Chapter 6 Exporting Peace Ecclesiology and Evangelism In 1143, Evervin, the abbot of Steinfeld, wrote a troubled letter to Bernard of Clairvaux, relating the final testament of a group of men accused of heresy and then slaughtered by a mob in Cologne: We maintain this much, that we do not pertain to this world:You lovers of the world have peace with the world,since you are of the world. Pseudoapostles, corrupting the word of Christ, and seeking their own benefit, led you and your fathers astray; [but] we, and our fathers, having been born as apostles, remain in the grace of Christ, and shall continue in it unto the end of this age.1 Even the abbot was taken aback at their conviction, perhaps both relieved and disturbed that the decision on their fate had not been his. These men 1. Bernard of Clairvaux,Epistolae no. 1572,PL 182:678A: “Nos hoc sustinemus,quia de mundo non sumus: vos autem mundi amatores, cura mundo pacem habetis, quia de mundo estis. Pseudoapostoli adulterantes verbum Christi, quae sua sunt quaesiverunt, vos et patres vestros exorbitare fecerunt: nos et patres nostri generati apostoli, in gratia Christi permansimus, et in finem saeculi permanebimus.”See Herbert Grundmann,Religious Movements in the Middle Ages: The Historical Links between Heresy, the Mendicant Orders, and the Women’s Religious Movement in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Century, with the Historical Foundations of German Mysticism, trans. Steven Rowan (Notre Dame, IN, 1995), 10. EXPORTING PEACE 191 presented themselves as reformers,successors to the lifestyle of Christ’s apostles .2 But this claim of a separate peace, and one divorced from world, placed the men in a perilous position, especially at a time when monks and canons were embracing the Augustinian argument that all of creation,body and soul, letter and spirit, must participate in the economy of salvation. The vita activa of early twelfth-century churchmen raised several concerns for its practitioners and critics: the definition and place of secular activities; the tension between a universal community and an unblemished one; the sense of living through significant events of salvation history rather than after them, and the corresponding need to fashion the present according to the demands of scriptural past and future. While bishops had always been political beings, the reform of twelfth-century monks and canons asked religious simultaneously to separate themselves from earthly demands and to model themselves on mortal weaknesses. Cistercians like Bernard emphasized a combination of self-reliance, introspection, internal discipline, and charity. Canonial movements sought a more active component to the regular life and thus worked to dismantle incompatibilities between the cloister and ministry . New groups emerged around a variety of approaches to “living well,” defined broadly as living in imitation of the apostles. In French and Italian cities, laymen began to preach and to take vows of wandering poverty. As Latin Christians made their way northeast in the aftermath of the First Crusade , accounts emerged of evangelical work among the pagans of the Baltic, both missionary and military. These expansionist attitudes left churchmen open to criticisms of curiositas,too great an interest in the affairs of the world. But was the vita activa a symptom or an antidote of “peace with the world”? The Cologne apostles had reflected anxieties that dogged late eleventh- and twelfth-century evangelists: fears of contamination as they explored and exploited a newly constituted secular landscape. Canons, bishops , and monks responded with blueprints for the coordination of their active church, while defending its purity. Biblical commentators interpreted the first evangelical missions, conducted by Christ’s disciples in Galilee, in order to discover how servants of the living church both exemplified true peace and conveyed it to others. It had become necessary for the clergy to demonstrate that while secular engagement would not disrupt the peace of the church, conveyance of the true peace to the world must be a disruptive process that exploited secular instruments such as carnal seduction,emotional assault, and physical force. 2. Bernard, Epistolae no. 1572, 676A-680A. 192 THE SLEEP OF BEHEMOTH Peace in Models of Ecclesial Community Ironically it was an outcast Donatist,Tyconius,who voiced the imperative for a church that embraced all manner of persons, regardless of taints that might accrue. In response to violent clashes between Donatists and Catholics in the late fourth century, the Theodosian court at Ravenna had issued repressive legislation. In light of these persecutions...