Waldensians at the Turn of the Fifteenth Century In
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Silviu Ghegoiu WALDENSIANS AT THE TURN OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY IN THE DUCHY OF AUSTRIA. PERCEPTION OF HERESY AND ACTION AGAINST HERETICS MA Thesis in Medieval Studies CEU eTD Collection Central European University Budapest May 2008 WALDENSIANS AT THE TURN OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY IN THE DUCHY OF AUSTRIA. PERCEPTION OF HERESY AND ACTION AGAINST HERETICS by Silviu Ghegoiu (Romania) Thesis submitted to the Department of Medieval Studies, Central European University, Budapest, in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Master of Arts degree in Medieval Studies Accepted in conformance with the standards of the CEU ____________________________________________ Chair, Examination Committee ____________________________________________ Thesis Supervisor ____________________________________________ Examiner ____________________________________________ Examiner CEU eTD Collection Budapest May 2008 ii WALDENSIANS AT THE TURN OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY IN THE DUCHY OF AUSTRIA. PERCEPTION OF HERESY AND ACTION AGAINST HERETICS by Silviu Ghegoiu (Romania) Thesis submitted to the Department of Medieval Studies, Central European University, Budapest, in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Master of Arts degree in Medieval Studies Accepted in conformance with the standards of the CEU ____________________________________________ External Examiner CEU eTD Collection Budapest May 2008 iii I, the undersigned, Silviu Ghegoiu, candidate for the MA degree in Medieval Studies declare herewith that the present thesis is exclusively my own work, based on my research and only such external information as properly credited in notes and bibliography. I declare that no unidentified and illegitimate use was made of the work of others, and no part of the thesis infringes on any person’s or institution’s copyright. I also declare that no part of the thesis has been submitted in this form to any other institution of higher education for an academic degree. Budapest, 26 May 2008 __________________________ Signature CEU eTD Collection iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS...........................................................................................2 INTRODUCTION........................................................................................................3 1. AN OVERVIEW OF THE LITERATURE ON WALDENSIANISM .......................................3 2. THE AIM OF MY RESEARCH AND METHODOLOGY.....................................................6 CHAPTER 1...................................................................................................................9 WALDENSIANS IN FOURTEENTH-CENTURY SOUTH GERMAN LANDS ....9 1.1. THE SUCCESSFUL WALDENSIAN CONTINUITY ...................................................10 1.2. THE AUSTRIAN LANDS ....................................................................................13 CHAPTER 2. ...............................................................................................................16 THE PERCEPTION OF AND THE ACTION AGAINST HERETICS.................16 2.1. THE PERCEPTION: THE TREATISES ...................................................................16 2.1.1. Treatises against heretics .............................................................................17 2.1.2. Treatises against Waldensians......................................................................20 2.1.3. Peter Zwicker’s Treatise...............................................................................24 2.2. THE ACTION: THE INQUISITORIAL PROCEDURES ...............................................27 CHAPTER 3. ...............................................................................................................31 INQUISITION UNDER PETER ZWICKER IN THE DUCHY OF AUSTRIA AND SOPRON............................................................................................................31 3.1. SETTING THE INQUISITORIAL STAGE ......................................................................32 3.2. CASES FROM THE INQUISITIONS IN STEYR AND SOPRON: 1395-1398, 1401.............35 CEU eTD Collection CONCLUSIONS .........................................................................................................42 BIBLIOGRAPHY........................................................................................................46 APPENDIX..................................................................................................................51 FIGURE 1. MAP OF THE REGION OF STEYR....................................................................51 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First of all, I want to thank my supervisor Gábor Klaniczay for his advice and patience during the period I worked on this thesis. I am grateful to Cristian Gaúpar for helping me with the Latin translation of the sources, and to Judith Rasson for her correction of my English grammar and style. My gratitude goes also to Ovidiu Ghitta, who encouraged me to go on this field of study, and to Maria Crăciun and Adrian Andrei Rusu for supporting me before coming to Budapest. Last, but not least, I appreciate the friendship of all my colleagues and especially I want to thank Tanja Tolar and Edina Ádám for letting me know that I’m not the only one stressed out. CEU eTD Collection 2 INTRODUCTION Refusing to take oaths, rejecting the Church’s authority, preaching in hidden places, abhorring the killing, and many others, such were the markers by which an inquisitor identified a Waldensian heretic. If these were more a myth than a reality then the research on Waldensianism should shift altogether. Looking with an attentive eye at the sources the historian can find actual facts among constructed images and stereotyped refutations. My intention is to bring together the perceptions and the realities that can be traced among them. 1. An overview of the literature on Waldensianism The history of Waldensianism has received substantially less attention than that of Catharism, being a much quieter dissenting movement than the latter, but nevertheless important. Still, with its almost generalized Western European dispersion in the later Middle Ages, few books can be considered as standard reference.1 More intense preoccupations among scholars of Waldensianism have been related to local developments, like the works of Gabriel Audisio and Christine Thouzellier on the CEU eTD Collection 1 The most important until today remains Jean Gonnet and Amedeo Molnár, Les Vaudois au Moyen Âge (Turin: Claudiana, 1974) (hereafter: Gonnet and Molnár, Les Vaudois). Other works include Gabriel Audisio, The Waldensian Dissent: Persecution and Survival c.1170-c.1570, tr. Claire Davison (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999) (originally published in French in 1989 as Les ‘Vaudois’: naissance, vie et mort d’une dissidence (xiie-xvie)) (hereafter: Audisio, The Waldensian Dissent); Amedeo Molnár, Storia dei valdesi, vol. 1: Dalle origini all’ adesione alla Riforma (Turin: Claudiana, 1974); Grado G. Merlo, Valdesi e valdismi medievali (Turin: Claudiana, 1984); Euan Cameron, Waldenses: Rejections of Holy Church in Medieval Europe (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000). 3 regions of Provence and Languedoc,2 of Grado Giovanni Merlo for Piedmont,3 or that of Peter Segl related to the Waldensians and Cathars in Austria.4 Although these studies brought a great deal of information about details of Waldensian life in different places, there has been a need for a more integrated approach. Such subjects as the ethics of the Waldensians, or their practice of medicine were tackled in the 1980s by scholars like Romolo Cegna and Peter Biller.5 This path of research still requires historians to make the necessary connections between the anthropological and sociological approaches and the bulk of data preserved not only in the inquisitorial accounts and treatises, but also in the literature and correspondence of the Waldensians themselves. The other major field of research that pertains to my current investigation is the inquisition; or the repression of heresy, as Richard Kieckhefer asserts. He notes that there was no such a thing as the Inquisition,6 because it existed only as mere offices, or functions of carrying out the inquisitorial justice, and did not as an institution as such, not even institutions, as was later the case in the sixteenth century. Others followed suit, like 2 Gabriel Audisio, Les vaudois du Luberon: Une minorité en Provence (1460-1560) (Mérindol: Association d'Etudes Vaudoises et Historiques du Luberon, 1984); idem, Une grande migration alpine en Provence (1460-1560) (Turin: Deputazione subalpina di storia patria, 1989); Christine Thouzellier, Catharism et valdéisme en Languedoc à la fin du XIIe et au début du XIIIe siècle. Publications de la Faculté des Lettres et Sciences Humaines de Paris, Série “Recherches,” Vol. 27 (Paris, 1965). 3 Grado G. Merlo, Eretici e inquisitori nella società piemontese del Trecento (Turin: Claudiana, 1977). 4 Peter Segl, Ketzer in Österreich: Untersuchungen über Häresie und Inquisition im Herzogtum Österreich in 13. und beginnenden 14. Jahrhundert, Quellen und Forschungen aus dem Gebiet der Geschichte, vol. 5 CEU eTD Collection (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1984). 5 Romolo Cegna, Fede ed etica valdese nel quatrocento (Turin: Claudiana, 1982); Peter Biller, “Curate infirmos: The Medieval Waldensian Practice of Medicine,” Studies in Church History 19 (1982): 55-77 (republished in idem, The Waldenses, 1170-1530: Between a Religious Order and a Church (Aldershot: Ashgate Variorum, 2001) (hereafter: Biller, The Waldenses),