Reviews for Formation of a Persecuting Society: Authority and Deviance in Western Europe 950-1250

The average rating for Formation of a Persecuting Society: Authority and Deviance in Western Europe 950-1250 based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-01-06 00:00:00 Andrea Kula This is a nice, if completely joyless, companion piece to Medieval Heresy. It's an attempt to answer why medieval society began to persecute heretics, Jews and Lepers (amongst others), essentially anybody different. One of the principal drivers for Moore is the attempt to gain political power on the part of the persecutors hence the ringleaders in anti-Jewish riots tended to be those most indebted to Jewish lenders, and why in some cases the protectors of Jewish communities might include the religious and civil authorities who depended on their medieval style high finance. Lots of interesting material here, including the reinterpretation of the brief life of little Saint Hugh (otherwise known for his appearance in one of The Canterbury Tales)., who Moore argues was most likely the victim of sexual and physical abuse at the hands of his parents who then dumped him in a well once he died, the parents then blamed the Jews for their own crime and the little saint was then to emerge as a reminder of the intrinsically bizarre and horrible religious practises of the Jews, which becomes then one of the ways in which anti-Semitism was built into and memorialised in local culture, if not with a nod to Chaucer even emergent national cultural communities. Power in Moore's thesis, becomes intrinsically linked with persecution rather than the kind of roots we prefer to imagine for our democratic aspirations of consultation and consensus. Instead the foundations of western European culture for Moore, include the mass-manipulation of people against the vulnerable and marginal for personal gain.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-09-22 00:00:00 Karen Tabora Sometimes I think it is too easy for the study of history to turn into an endless series of over-corrections. Some flaws are found in a traditional narrative, they're picked up by a historian with a particularly open sense of imagination, and they're woven into a new narrative, often situated at the opposite end of the ideological spectrum. It's not a bad thing in and of itself: it's how the process is supposed to work, and ideally it means that eventually these oscillations to either side get small enough to begin to zero in on the truth. Unfortunately, sometimes they get bigger, false dichotomies get set up, scholars on each side dig some trenches, batten down the hatches, and start writing prickly academic articles at each other. The Formation of a Persecuting Society self-consciously places itself in this sort of environment, and is very aware that it's about to ruffle some feathers. The medieval response to heresy has always been a touchy subject. Since the Reformation it's been characterized by many as the classic example of medieval close-mindedness and lack of Enlightenment (with a capital E); more recently, historians have noted that the medieval version of the inquisition may have saved more lives that it cost, by transferring the fickleness of mass violence into a trial that was at least somewhat controlled and based on the rule of law. It offers up two drastically different views of what medieval society was, and how its relationship to the present should be conceptualized. My favorite thing about Moore's book is that it never turns into a polemic. It very easily could have (and some of the books it has inspired, such as Mark Pegg's A Most Holy War: The Albigensian Crusade and the Battle for Christendom, embrace that polemic and dive right in). Moore pushes back on the recent idea that the medieval persecution of heretics was simply an inevitable response to the flowering of heresy in the 12th century and a welcoming tempering of the resulting popular demand for violence, but he does so in a way that - at least most of the time - is subtle and incisive. He doesn't feel the need to insist that everything that everyone has said before is wrong. This can, unfortunately, be kind of rare. R.I. Moore's basic premise is this: suggesting that the increased persecution of heresy in the 12th century resulted from the increased presence (an influence) of heretics is the wrong way to approach the issue. Instead, he argues that the eleventh and twelfth centuries marked a period of drastic change in almost every realm of life, a process which naturally engendered quite a bit of fear, concern, and suspicion. Amidst this tumult, the medieval church (and the medieval state) were both in the process of growing, centralizing, and defining what exactly they were as institutions. This process of centralization, while it created all of the lovely things associated with the twelfth century renaissance, also created an atmosphere and philosophy of persecution. To centralize and to unify, he argues, also means to exclude. When medieval clerics came upon something they didn't understand, he argues, they tended to define it as the other, and feared that its spread could bring down the whole operation altogether. This - quickly and probably not intentionally - led to the rise of exaggerated claims of heresy and dissension that were probably a part of the clerical imagination as much as actuality. It's not a perfect book by any means. The claims are sweeping for a 150 page essay, and they're nearly always suggested more than proved. Anthropological evidence from modern-day Africa is inserted rather awkwardly, without adding much of substance to the argument. There are attempts to include the persecution of lepers and Jews along with heretics which don't really work: they're very interesting asides, but lepers were not excluded from medieval society in a way that's analogous to heretics and lumping them together (and even claiming that they're "essentially identical") is very misleading. There is an odd claim near the end that most clerics thought that Judaism was actually the biggest threat to the unity of Christianity, a claim that is hugely unsupported and has a conspiracy-theory vibe that's at odds with the rest of the book. The degree of difference between Carolingian and twelfth century attitudes, particularly the presence of anti-Semitism, is often exaggerated. The use of evidence tends to be a bit cherry-picked, other authors have used it to draw drastically different conclusions (see Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages). Despite all of these weaknesses, I still quite liked the book for two reasons: (1) I think he's right in his big-picture assertion, even if I'd disagree with lots of the details. One can't really be a heretic without a clear, definitive authority to define orthodoxy, and that's not something that emerged until the 11th and 12th centuries. The medieval conception of cultural unity can be lovely, but it also inevitably excluded people, and that's something that should be openly acknowledged. I think the broad assertion that the 12th century didn't only bring more heretics, but also brought a Church that was increasingly concerned about their presence and often inflated their potential as a threat as a result, is absolutely correct. (2) More personally, I like that this argument was made, at least about 80% of the time, with moderation. The inquisition is usually painted as either a group of close-minded monsters or as a group of mostly-benevolent administrators, and I like the Moore paints them as a group of well-intentioned people whose concerns and fears resulted in actions and decisions that often had very damaging results.