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"Contra Haereticos Accingantur": the Union of Crusading and Anti-Heresy Propaganda

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UNF Digital Commons UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations Student Scholarship 2018 "Contra haereticos accingantur": The nionU of Crusading and Anti-heresy Propaganda Bryan E. Peterson University of North Florida Suggested Citation Peterson, Bryan E., ""Contra haereticos accingantur": The nionU of Crusading and Anti-heresy Propaganda" (2018). UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations. 808. https://digitalcommons.unf.edu/etd/808 This Master's Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Scholarship at UNF Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of UNF Digital Commons. For more information, please contact Digital Projects. © 2018 All Rights Reserved “CONTRA HAERETICOS ACCINGANTUR”: THE UNION OF CRUSADING AND ANTI-HERESY PROPAGANDA by Bryan Edward Peterson A thesis submitted to the Department of History in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in History UNIVERSITY OF NORTH FLORIDA COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES June, 2018 ii CERTIFICATE OF APPROVAL The thesis of Bryan Edward Peterson is approved (Date) ____________________________________ _____________________ Dr. David Sheffler ____________________________________ ______________________ Dr. Philip Kaplan ____________________________________ ______________________ Dr. Andrew Holt Accepted for the Department of History: _________________________________ _______________________ Dr. David Sheffler Chair Accepted for the College of Arts and Sciences: _________________________________ _______________________ Dr. George Rainbolt Dean Accepted for the University: __________________________________ _______________________ Dr. John Kantner Dean of the Graduate School iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My thanks and gratitude to the many people whose expertise, dedication, patience, friendship, and love made this study possible. First among them is my advisor David Sheffler, who nurtured my fascination in medieval Christianity and heresy, guided my studies at the University of North Florida, and helped me see this project through to the end. His expertise was invaluable, his patience inexhaustible, and his encouragement inestimable. The contributions of Philip Kaplan and Andrew Holt warrant my gratitude as well, as this study is stronger for it. I must also thank the current and former faculty and staff of the History Department at the University of North Florida, namely, Denice Fett, Daniel Watkins, Chau Kelly, Charles Clausmann, and Marianne Roberts. Their skill as educators and scholars instilled in me the ability and desire to engage in scholarship, and their professionalism and kindness made my time at the University of North Florida a pleasure I will remember fondly. As the acquisition of primary and secondary sources is vital to historical research, I cannot discount the important role played by the staff of the Thomas G. Carpenter Library, who provided me access to many of the sources that are the basis of this study. I am grateful to my fellow officers in the Psi-Eta Chapter of the Phi Alpha Theta History Honor Society as well. I thank Justin Stuart, Samantha Mizeras, Alec Warren, and Will Pate for their friendship, support, and insight. Their company made the stresses of research bearable and the long days and longer iv nights of writing and revising a joy. Finally, my deepest appreciation goes to my parents, Sandra Marringer-Peterson and Frederick Peterson, without whose love and guidance I would not have had the strength to complete this project. For their immeasurable support, I dedicate this work to them. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii ABBREVIATIONS vii ABSTRACT viii INTRODUCTION I. Holy War Against Heretics 1 II. The Albigensian Crusade as a Historiographical Dilemma 8 III. The Making of a Crusade 17 IV. Sources and Translations 20 V. Conclusion 22 CHAPTER 1: CRUSADING PROPAGANDA, c. 1050-1150 I. The Composition of Crusading Propaganda 24 II. Augustine of Hippo and the Foundations of Just and Holy War 25 III. Warfare Post-Augustine and Medieval Canon Law 30 IV. Urban II and Crusading Propaganda 34 V. Beyond the First Crusade: Propaganda in the Mid-Twelfth Century 48 vi VI. Conclusion 52 CHAPTER 2: PERSUASION AND VIOLENCE: HERESY IN THE TWELFY CENTURY I. The Return of Heresy: Evolving Responses to Heretical Dissent 54 II. Early Medieval Anti-Heresy Propaganda 57 III. Heresy Propaganda in the Early Twelfth Century 61 IV. Propaganda in the Mid-Twelfth Century 68 V. Conclusion 76 CHAPTER 3: THE UNION OF CRUSADING AND ANTI-HERESY PROPAGANDA I. An Evolving Discourse 78 II. The Letters of Henry de Marcy 81 III. The Third Lateran Council 90 IV. Innocent III and the Albigensian Crusade 92 V. Conclusion 100 CONCLUSION 103 BIBLIOGRAPHY 109 VITA 116 vii ABBREVIATIONS CSEL Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum PL Patrologia Cursus Completus series Latina RHC Recuil des historiens des croisades: historiens occidentaux viii ABSTRACT This study assesses the intersection of crusading and heresy repression in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. The event that encapsulates this intersection was the Albigensian Crusade, a two-decades long conflict that befell the south of France, or Occitania. The papacy, aligned with northern lords and other willing Christians, took up arms to defend the Church from the Cathar heresy’s corrupting influence. This conflict marked a new development in Christian acts of violence. While the Church had crusaded against many different enemies—even branding some as heretics—before 1209, the Church had never called a crusade for the explicit purpose of stamping out a heretical group. This study aims to answer two questions: how did the scope of crusade broaden to incorporate heretical groups and how did methods for countering heresy shift to include crusading? To answer these questions, this study analyzes two strands of ecclesiastical propaganda. Propaganda consisted of written works that functioned as tools to educate, inform, persuade, and inspire in others certain beliefs and actions. These were texts that defined, promoted, and celebrated the practice of crusading; and texts that defined, maligned, and condemned heresies and those adhering to them. These two strands of propaganda began to intertwine in the late twelfth century, resulting in a modified anti-heresy discourse in which crusading against heretics became a theologically justifiable idea. This study argues that the call for crusade against the Occitan heretics was the end result of theological developments that began in the 1170s. What’s more, the ix institutionalization and codification of these strands of propaganda created the theological precedent for framing the Albigensian Crusade as a holy war, allowing the idea of crusading against heretics to take root in anti-heresy discourse in the years preceding Innocent III’s papacy and his call for crusade in southern France. 1 INTRODUCTION I. Holy War Against Heretics The Albigensian Crusade was a major theological and institutional development for the medieval Roman Church. At the behest of the papacy, many Christians from northern France and the papal states became soldiers of Christ. Between 1209 and 1229, these pilgrims of the sword took up arms to defend the Lord’s Church from the vile corruption of heresy. For mitigating the existential threat these Albigensian usurpers of orthodoxy and orthopraxy posed to Christendom at large, the Church’s holy warriors received indulgences, lessening the burden of purgatory and expediting their salvation. Waging a holy war, however, was not the Catholic Church’s initial response to the perceived threat of heretical deviance. A phenomenon of Christianity’s earliest centuries, Christian heresy reemerged as a major concern of the Roman Church in the eleventh century. The peril heresy posed to Christendom was rooted in a heretic’s obstinate refusal to submit to correction, an act which endangered the Church’s spiritual and institutional efficacy and undermined its authority.1 From the perspective of many churchmen, heresy was a non-Christian evil.2 When the medieval Church first recognized the dangers posed by heresy, many churchmen 1 Karen Sullivan, Truth and the Heretic: Crises of Knowledge in Medieval French Literature (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2005), 2. 2 Malcolm Lambert, Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2007), 3-4. 2 relied on preaching to counter the spread of heretical ideas.3 Continuing well into the twelfth century, preaching entailed missions into territories considered rife with heretics as well as the production and diffusion of anti-heretical polemic. Church officials preached to crowds of onlookers from pulpits and on street corners, debated heretics on matters of doctrine and belief, and composed polemical treatises detailing how and why heresy impeded salvation and weakened the Church’s spiritual legitimacy.4 The objective of this form of preaching was to persuade the heretic to return to the orthodox fold. As scholar R.I. Moore observes, the Church transitioned away from relying on preaching alone during the central Middle Ages, between the tenth through thirteenth centuries. While never ceasing altogether, preaching against the spiritual and moral ills of heretical deviance gave way to a more persecutory mentality and methodology. Moore rejects the notion that persecution and the violence associated with it were endemic to medieval society, arguing
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