JOHN H. ARNOLD
It was, the annalist of the city Worms tells us, the year of Our Lord 1231:
There came by divine permission a miserable plague and most harsh sentence. For indeed there came a certain fTiar called Conrad Dors, and he was completely illiterate and of the Order of Preachers, and he brought with him a certain secular man named John who was one-eyed and maimed, and in truth utterly vile. These two, beginnings firstly among the poor, said that they knew who were heretics; and they began to burn them, those who confessed their guilt and refused to leave their sects And they condemned many who, in the hour of their death, called out with all their heart to our Lord Jesus Christ, and even in the fire strongly cried out, begging for the help ofthe holy Mother ofGod and all the saints.
Conrad Dors and John were then joined by Conrad of Marburg, a priest who had been the famously harsh confessor of St Elisabeth of Hungary (1217-31) until her recent death. Led now by this second Conrad, and backed by papal authority, the trio continued their work:
In truth, those who confessed to heresy, as many innocent people did to stay alive, had the hair shaved from their heads above the ears, and they had to go around like this for as long as it pleased [the inquisitors]. Those who, in truth, refused [to confess] were burnt. And their will prevailed everywhere, because brother Conrad was a literate man and especially eloquent.
All three inquisitors were, the chronicler said, 'imperfect judges and without mercy', whose reported boast was that 'We would burn a hundred innocent people amongst whom there is one guilty'.676 And burn them they did.
These events in medieval Germany, in the archdiocese of Mainz, are possibly the earliest example of inquisition into heresy in the Middle Ages. Other accounts of Conrad of Marburg's activities stress that practically nobody could escape his clutches, as freedom could be gained only through confessing
To heresy, and moreover by implicating others. This fits weU with a certain picture of the period: zealous inquisitors pursue hapless victims, prosecute indiscriminately, force confessions, and sentence as many as possible to death. Brutal, implacable, illogical: the dark side to an 'age of faith'. Such a time, one might well imagine, was doubtless not only characterised by this unbending demand for religious conformity, but also hostile to any cultural deviation, cared little for individual liberty, and ruthlessly enforced strict sexual and social norms. A more repressive society could scarcely be imagined.
However, before embracing too readily this popular image of medieval repression, we should look a little closer at the events around Mainz. The chronicle cited above was written around the time of the persecutions by an anonymous cleric, and it quite clearly deplores Conrad's actions. Moreover, the archbishop of Mainz wrote to the pope about Conrad's actions in very negative terms, stating that he himself had warned Conrad 'to proceed in so great a matter with more moderation and discretion, but he refused'.677 Conrad accused various powerful noblemen of heresy, but when the case was brought before a synod of bishops and nobles at Mainz in 1233, the charges were dismissed. Three days later, Conrad was murdered, and similar fates overtook Conrad Dors and John. The pope initially wrote of Conrad as a martyr, but unlike some later murdered inquisitors, he was not canonised, probably because of the extent of his infamy. Indeed, at a church council a year after his death, one bishop 'burst out in these words, saying “Master Conrad of Marburg deserves to be dug up and burnt as a heretic”'.678 Conrad may have had papal blessing, but that did not mean that the church as a whole welcomed his actions, nor that every ecclesiastic agreed with his views or methods, nor that the secular powers in his society supported them. As a conclusion to the 'plague', the Worms chronicler reports, a papal nuncio announced that in future, 'in such matters that touch upon inquisition of heretics, the succession and laws of the holy father and sacred scripture are firmly observed, now and in perpetuity'.679 Indiscriminate persecution was to be replaced by the methodical application of law.
What was purely black now perhaps appears more confusingly grey. The picture of a dark Middle Ages remains common today, particularly in popular culture, but also affecting some historical scholarship. The image has, however, a certain history. It was forged particularly after the convulsions of the
Reformation. Protestant historians, from the sixteenth century onward, sought roots for their reforms in the heresies of earlier periods, and hence associated their contemporary struggles with past persecution, depicting an all-powerful and highly repressive Catholic Church. Elements of this viewpoint continued to inform the foundational histories of medieval repression written in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Recent work, however, in part informed by a greater sympathy toward medieval Catholicism, has sought to revise the image.680 Historians have stressed the heterogeneous nature of the medieval church, argued that a degree ofreligious toleration can be identified in medieval intellectual thought, and - where repression is unarguably present - emphasised the extent to which medieval people saw heresies and other deviations as a profound threat to their society and salvation, and hence acted accordingly. Inquisitors, in this light, are less repressive zealots and more educated ecclesiastics working methodically in an attempt to save the souls of their flock.
Such revisions are important. The activities of Conrad of Marburg cannot and should not be taken as representative, tarring the whole medieval church with the same brush. At the same time, however, Conrad's reign of terror did occur, people were killed for perceived transgressions against the faith, and this was not the only occasion when a cleric led a period of fevered persecution against heterodoxy. Moreover, in substituting the rule of canon law for Conrad's zealotry, the papacy did not bestow a regime of benign religious pluralism upon Germany, but replaced unrestrained religious violence with a more subtle - but arguably more powerful - framework of doctrinal policing. The lurid picture that Protestant reformers painted of the medieval church should be abandoned. But that does not necessarily mean that we should hang in its stead a pallid watercolour of tolerance and harmony. Something that captures a more complex shadowing of dark and light is needed.
World History
