Piety and heresy in medieval Orvieto: the religious life of the laity, c.1150-1350

Abstract

Piety and heresy were, for the medieval Inquisitor and a great many of his contemporaries, at opposite ends of the religious spectrum, with nothing in common but the mutual suspicion and hatred of orthodox and deviant alike, With benefit of hindsight, however, many points of contact can be seen between the two, and the object of this thesis will be to examine aspects of both piety and heresy within the general context of the religious life of lay people in one medieval Italian community, In the relevant period (from roughly the mid-twelfth to the midfourteenth centuries), Orvieto was a flourishing independent communeo f mediums ize, It was located just within the northern boundary of the Papal States, and came into conflict with the papacy on numerous occasions, generally over the extent of its territorial rights in the contado,

The foundation documents for this study are, on the one hand, an Inquisition Process of 1268/9, recording the trials of somee ighty-eight local mena nd womenw ho had been involved with the Cathar sect prior to that date, and, on the other hand, a codex containing a variety of material relating to the lay confraternities associated with the Franciscan Order in Orvieto from 1313 onwards, The two documents are too far apart in date for there to be any possibility of finding personal links between individual heretics and confraternity members, In a more general way, however, the thesis will examine the sort of people attracted to the Cathar movement, and those who joined lay confraternities or gave them financial, support, An attempt will be made to analyse the nature of the attraction of both heresy and confraternity membership for lay people in Orvieto, and, from this, to determine whether similar people were, in fact, attracted to both for similar sorts of reason, The emphasis throughout will be on people rather than politics, although the political background, and in particular the ongoing conflict between guelfs and ghibellines, is, of course, relevant insofar as it affected the lives of ordinary Orvietan citizens, Some people, for example, may have become involved in heresy for a mixture of political and religious reasons, Nonetheless, Catharism was a religious movemenfti rst and foremost, and it is primarily its religious appeal which is under consideration here, The essence of the thesis is that the key difference between orthodox and heretical expressions of piety lay not so much in theological content, lifestyle or forms of worship, as in the fact that the Church authorities gave approval to the one and not to the other, The Cathar faith was more than Just a deviant form of Christianity, but most ordinary people would have been unaware of the finer points of theology, and would have seen the 'perfect' as holy men and women like many others whose cult was tolerated, if not actively encouraged by the Church, The important fact is that there was a market at this time for religious associations which offered lay people the chance to explore new forms of worship in the company of like-minded people, The proliferation of lay confraternities in the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries is evidence of the Church's recognition of this fact, and of its determination that such associations, if they had to exist, should be officially sanctioned and supervised, so that there was no danger of heresy taking hold once more,

The terminal date of 1350 is not a rigid one, and some late fourteenth century documentation has been taken into account, However, there was a genuine turningpoint in every aspect of Orvietan life around the middle of the century, because of the plague which swept through the town in the summer of 1348. The long-term effects of this disaster are outwith the scope of this thesis to consider, but its immediate impact will be examined in some detail, particularly in relation to the Franciscan confraternity, whose membership soared at precisely the time when the plague was at its worst, Religious reaction to one specific catastrophe will serve as a case-study of the broader relationship between spirituality and the everyday lives of medieval lay people, which this thesis sets out to investigate,