This week we'll look at a different side of spiritual revival: dissent and the growth of lay religious movements outside the bounds of the medieval church. The list of medieval dissenters compiled by Professor Jill Raitt of University of Missouri-Columbia is meant to give you some perspective across time and an appreciation for recurring concerns; please realize that the list is hardly exhaustive. The introductory material in Peters provides a closer look at the Poor Men of Lyons/Waldensians than Lynch provides and helps to establish links between the religious impulses we explored last week and dissenting/heretical movements.When you read the primary sources (in Peters as well as the web document on Waldo's conversion), pay careful attention to the nature of the various sources and how different texts paint different pictures of Waldo and his followers. On Friday, we'll be looking at the radical wing of the Franciscan movement and the church's effort to maintain orthodoxy through the use of inquisition.
Paper
Topic: (For instructions on writing the short
papers, click here.) This week's paper
is based on your reading of the documents in Peters and the web
document The Conversion of Waldo. What do you think
motivated Waldo and his followers in the early days of the movement?
How would you define their goals? How do their critics reshape
their concerns? Pay attention to change over time: how does Walter
Map's depiction of Waldo and his followers differ from later
depictions like those of David of Augsburg or the Passauer Anonymous,
for example? What might account for the change? |