POWER &PURITY This page intentionally left blank This page intentionally left blank POWER &P U R I T Y Cathar Heresy in Medieval Italy CAROL LANSING New York Oxfordd • Oxford University Press 1998 Oxford University Press Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogota Bombay Buenos Aires Calcuttaa Cape Town Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madras Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi Parrs Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto Warsaw and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Copyright © 1998 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, Without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lansing, Carol, 1951- Power and purity : Cathar heresy in Medieval Italy / Carol Lansing. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-19-506391-0 I. Albigenses— Italy—History. 2. Albigenses—Italy—Orvieto— I history. 3. Italy- -Religion. 4. Orvieto (Italy)—Religion. I. Title. BX4891.2.L36 1997 273'.6-DC20 96-44937 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Primed in the United States of America on acid free paper This book is dedicated to my sons, Nicholas and Philip Gould. This page intentionally left blank This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgments THE ARCHIVAL RESEARCH FOR this book was funded by research fellow- ships from the Fulbright Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies and a summer stipend from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Without their support the study would not have been possible. Friends and colleagues have helped me in numerous ways. The gifted and generous director of the Orvietan Archivio di Stato, Marilena Caponeri Rossi, consistently helped with sources and paleographic prob- lems, and her staff invariably responded with courtesy and speed to my endless requests. Lucio Riccetti, the leading historian of medieval Orvieto, has many times given help and suggested documents. I am especially grate- ful to Sabine Eiche. Dom Luigi Farnese of the Archivio Vescovile has been kind as well. Paolo Corsi provided excellent microfilm copies. I owe a great debt to Marvin Becker and to conversations that began when I studied with him at Michigan. Tom Tender has been an unfailing source of support and challenging ideas, as well. Ed English gave generous and meticulous help with particularly difficult documents as well as thoughtful comments on chapters. Dyan Elliot and George Dameron read VIII i ACKNOWLEDGMENTS portions of the work and made challenging and useful suggestions. Many colleagues and former colleagues have aided me with aspects of the proj- ect. Anne Barton gave invaluable help with references. The students in my undergraduate seminars on medieval heresy raised provocative questions and helped me to clarify my ideas. Vorrei ringraziare specialmente Mario c Monalda Rosati di Osarella e Orvieto. Contents O N E Introduction 3 The Cathar Community 7 Repression and Heresy 12 Definitions and Sources I 5 Part 1 The Politics of the Catbars 2 1 TWOo The Murder of Parenzo zo 2323 Pope and Bishop in Orvieto 25 Cathar and Papal Rector 29 The Early Cathars 37 T H R E E Orvietan Society and the Early Popolo 43 Social Structure and Family 44 Clientage 51 The Rise of the Popolo 54 Early Efforts Against the Cathars 57 X CONTENTS F o u R The Cathars 60 Minor Elites 61 Furriers and Artisans 66 Florentine Cathars 71 Part rt II The Beliefs of Italian Cathars 79 F I v E Belief and Doubt 81 Cathar Believers 84 Skepticism and Doubt 96 Doubt and Authority in Orvieto 103 s I x Sexed Bodies, Married Bodies, and Dead Bodies 106 Creation and Sexual Difference 108 Sexual Difference in Cathar Practice 116 Marriage 120 Bodies of the Dead 125 Part III Orthodoxy and Authority: The Cathars Become Heretics 135 S E V E N Inquisition, Repression, and Toleration 137 Guelf Dominance and the Sentences of the Inquisitors 139 Repression and Power 145 Protest and Popular Toleration: 1 he Tumult in Bologna 151 EIGHT Corpus Domini and the Creation of Adam and Eve 158 Papal Curia and Corpus Domini 161 Civic Authority 166 Creation Retold 1 68 APPENDIX A: The Statement of Andreas and Pietro 179 APPENDIX B: A 1212 Marriage Case from the Bishop's Court 183 Notes 187 Works Cited 245 Index 261 P OWER &PURITY FIGURE 1-1: Map of Orvieto at the end of the thirteenth century. (Map by Michael De Gennaro.) O N E Introduction IN THE ITALIAN TOWN of Orvieto at the end of the twelfth century, debate over the sacred and its relation to authority centered on whether a corpse was rotting. Cathar missionaries had enjoyed considerable success among Orvie- tans. Catharism was a dualist faith that spread in southern France and Italy in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The papacy considered it heretical because the Cathars attacked Catholic teachings and the authority of the clergy: the missionaries in Orvieto preached that no aspect of the material world or the human body can be sacred. In response, Pope Innocent III sent: a young Roman named Pietro Parenzo to serve as papal rector and to combat heresy in the town. When Parenzo was abducted and murdered, the bishop blamed the Cathars, installed Parenzo's body in the cathedral, and rejoiced that the corpse, instead of decaying, gave off a sweet perfume and performed miracles. One day in 1200, as pilgrims moved towards Parenzo's tomb in the cathedral, someone hurled a piece of rotten meat at the procession from an upstairs window of a nearby house. I he gesture scoffed at Parenzo, the bishop, and the pilgrims, a vivid denial of the bishop's claims for the purity and sanctity of Parenzo's corpse. 3 4 INTRODUCTION The Cathar faith enjoyed a long and remarkable success in Orvieto. Decades after this incident, in 1268—69, two Franciscan inquisitors sen- tenced eighty-five people for heresy, a group that included nine former civic officials, along with their families. Among them were important and powerful men—civic treasurers, a prior of the guilds, and council mem- bers, as well as merchants, moneylenders, and a group of furriers. The friars called a number of them "the progeny of a brood of vipers," winch meant that they belonged to families that had been heretical for genera- tions. One man was named as a descendant of one of Pietro Parenzo's killers. Two of the sentences describe the beliefs of these Orvietan heretics. One is very brief: a youth is quoted saying that he believed the Cathar holy persons to be the best people in the world and salvation to be possible through them. A second recounts the faith of a furrier named Stradigotto. He believed that this world and all visible things were created by the devil; that human souls are spirits that fell from heaven and will only he saved through the hearts of the Cathars; that there will be no future resurrection of hu- mankind; that the priests of the Roman Church do not have the power to absolve men who have confessed and are contrite from sin; that those living in matrimony are living in a state of damnation; that baptism in material water as it is performed in the ritual of the Roman Church does not aid in salvation. Stradigotto, by this statement, was a dualist who believed that: the physical world was the work of the devil. The creation of humankind was a disas- ter, in which angels who were pure spirit fell from heaven and were trapped in bodies. The goal of human life is salvation through purifica- tion, possible only "through the hearts of the Cathars." The sentence stressed ideas that derive from the conviction that physicality is the source of evil and can in no form be made sacred. Thus, a resurrection of human flesh is unthinkable, and baptism in water can have no spiritual value. In this view, marriage is a state of damnation because the procreation of children only perpetuates the cruel imprisonment of spirit in flesh. The Catholic clergy have no power through the sacraments: they cannot ab- solve sin or aid in salvation, Catharism was a collection of dualist beliefs and practices that was adopted by some western Europeans beginning in the mid—twelfth cen- INTRODUCTION 5 tury. The faith, derived from the Bogomils of tenth-century Bulgaria, en- joyed its greatest success in western Europe in the independent towns. Cathar ideas were taught by holy men and women called perfects, who lived lives of voluntary poverty, abstained from sexual relations, and ate a rigorous diet. Perfects stayed in modest hospices, and traveled in pairs to preach and minister to the laity. Most Cathar believers did not emulate the austere lives of the perfects, but lived the ordinary life of the laity. They heard the perfects preach and took part in rituals that included a bow of formal reverence to the perfects and the consolation, a laying on of hands by a perfect that purified the soul, enabling its escape from the material world at death. Despite sporadic efforts by the papacy, bishops, the early inquisitions, and mendicant preachers, as well as some secular authorities, the Cathar faith enjoyed considerable popularity in many Ital- ian towns in the 1240s and '50s. Catharism only faded in Italy after vigorous attacks by local inquisitions, often backed by powerful Guelf regimes, that began in the late 1260s.