This module is not currently running in 2024 to 2025.
This module examines the rise and spread of popular religious movements in Western Europe from the eleventh to the early fourteenth century and considers how some of these movements became seen as heresy and were associated with political dissent, ideas of persecution and social and economic change. It also considers the leadership of the Medieval papacy and its contribution to the transformation and condemnation of religious and heretical movements. The module finally explores the reasons why popular religious movements provoked such strong reactions and compares and contrasts the treatment of these religious and heretical movements with that given to other social minorities (especially women, lepers and homosexuality).
The course will draw on narrative, hagiographical, documentary and visual sources. The course will require students to engage with primary sources, and to think critically about theoretical approaches toward the above mentioned themes.
3 hours per week
B. BOLTON - 'The Medieval Reformation', 1983
B. HAMILTON - 'The Medieval Inquisition', 1981
F. ANDREWS - 'The Early Humiliati', Cambridge, 1999
P. BILLER - 'The Waldenses, 1170 – 1530: Between a Religious Order and a Church', 2000
M. LAMBERT - 'Medieval Heresy', 1992
R. I. MOORE - 'The Formation of a Persecuting Society', 1987
W. WAKEFIELD & A. EVANS (eds.) - 'Heresies of the High Middles Ages', 1969
See the library reading list for this module (Canterbury)
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