THE MEDIEVAL INQUISITION AND TWO BEGUINE MYSTICS: MARGUERITE PORETTE AND MECHTHILD OF MAGDEBURG Marguerite Porette from France and Mechthild of Magdeburg from Germany whose visionary books The Mirror of Simple Souls and The Flowing Light of the Godhead, respectively, survived to this day and carry striking similarities in terms of imagery, symbolism and thematic patterns. Ironically, the books led to Porette’s burning at the stake together with her book whereas Mechthild got away with just being branded as a borderline heterodoxical mystic. A Brief History of the Inquisition As a word, inquisition derives from the Latin ‘inquisitio’ which means ‘inquiry’. So, the term inquisition refers to a judicial technique carried out by inquisitors assigned by the pope to inquire into heresy in a specific area. It was Pope Gregory IX who instituted it. Inquisition, as an institution, owes its existence to the Roman Catholic Church, which was the one and only church in medieval times, and its objective of creating an ecumenical church uniting all western Christendom under one dogma or set of orthodox beliefs. The inquisition was a set of mobile ecclesiastical tribunals rather than an established organization. The beginning of the inquisition coincides with 1230s. By the end of the thirteenth century, it was in full blast. It started in 1231 by the order of Pope Gregory IX in order to suppress a particular heresy, the Catharism. This was the first inquisition, and it is called the Medieval Inquisition. It was the culmination point of earlier attempts at extirpating Cathars, “the best-organized and most dangerous of the various heretical movements existing in western Europe in the thirteenth century” in Bernard Hamilton’s words. When Cathars were wiped out by the 14th century, the Inquisition continued to operate by persecuting other groups such as witches and sorcerers as well as the Knights Templar, who were crusaders that went astray in the eyes of the Church. They were charged with corruption and hoarding wealth concealed from the Church. They later developed links with the Freemasons. The inquisition was employed mostly in southern France and northern Italy. The inquisitors were mostly chosen from friars among the mendicant orders of Franciscans and Dominicans, because they were thought to be “pious, educated and highly mobile”. The earlier attempts of the Papacy to establish the inquisition with bishops failed because bishops were elder men with settled ways. They were not equipped to wander from village to village in mountaneous places in pursuit of heretics. The Franciscan and Dominican friars, on the other hand, adopted an apostolic way of life, refused to own property or wealth both individually and communally, begged for their bread and imitated the life and teachings of Jesus Christ and preached his teachings wherever they went. So, they were perfect for the job. This was shaky ground indeed, because the Church itself had enormous wealth and prided itself on the richness of its ceremonies, rituals and attires. However, because of the devotion of these friars to the orthodox church dogma and to the Pope, they proved to be very useful for the Church and became its police and judge. Ironically, many other orders or sects with very similar ideas and ways of life came to be persecuted by the Franciscans and Dominicans. The Dominican Order, or the Order of Preachers, was established by a Castilian nobleman and priest, St Dominic Guzman. The order was licensed by Honorius III in 1217. The Franciscan Order was established by St Francis Bernadone of Assisi and was licensed by Innocent III. The friars worked with local bishops but were authorized directly by and accountable only to the Pope. The sentences they issued were predominantly penances such as wearing clothes with crosses on them, or going on pilgrimages. Initially, the aim was not necessarily to punish the heretics but rather to find them out, make them confess their erroneous ways and repent so that they can be gained back to the Church. A comparatively small number of cases ended up in execution. Heretics who refused to confess and repent and those who lapsed into heresy after reconciliation were handed over to the civil authorities and burned at the stake. However, the second variety of the inquisition, namely the Spanish Inquisition, established in 1478 by Ferdinand and Isabella and sanctioned by Pope Sixtus IV in order to persecute mainly Jews, had a stable organization led by Torquemada, the infamous Inquisitor General of Spain. This was an independent organization initiated by Pope Sixtus IV in 1478. Propelled by the religious zealotry of the Spanish crown, King Ferdinand V and Queen Isabella, the Spanish Inquisition targeted mainly conversos or New Christians, that is to say Jews who had to convert to Catholicism as the only alternative to being expelled from the country without their wealth or without the promise of welcome in another country. Faced with the danger of extinction, some chose to be baptized, but this time they were discriminated against and finally persecuted with the suspicion of judaizing, or lapsing into their old faith. This organization survived till the beginning of the nineteenth century. The third variety of the inquisition was the Roman Inquisition, or the Holy Office, established in 1542 by Pope Paul III to fight the Reformation, or the new and very extensive heresy of Protestantism in Italy. It tried to find out “suspects” who included even bishops and cardinals. Cardinal Carafa, who later became Pope Paul IV, was the ardent leader of this organization. The first Index of Forbidden Books came out in this period (1559). It was the Holy Office who put people like Galileo and Bruno on trial. The fervent persecutions and executions of the inquisition went on until the 19th century and continued its existence under the title of the Congregation of the Holy Office issuing and updating an Index of Forbidden Books until 1960s blacklisting many modern European writers. Today, it still nominally exists as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to give opinions on theological questions. Heresy Going back to the issue of creating dogma that went hand in hand with heterodoxy and heresy, we can say that Christian dogma was in the making from the time of St Paul, consolidated along the way with the teachings of prominent church fathers such as St Augustine and church councils such as the Council of Nicea in 325 because from its beginning, Christianity had to deal with dissenting opinions in the absence of a solid system or dogma. Dogma could only develop, of course, as problems arose with arguments challenging the traditional reading and interpretation of the Scriptures. That is to say, first you need established, orthodox dogma in order to have heresy that dissents and threatens its established opinions. However, these dissenting opinions were not always very threatening. Appropriately, the name heresy, hairesis in Greek, etymologically means only a choice, or a chosen belief. Later, it came to mean any deviation from the prescribed Church teaching. Some of the early heresies that forced the Church to come up with written formulas of the Christian creed were Arianism, Pricillianism, Manicheanism, Nestorianism and Donatism. The serious threat came with the Catharism from the twelfth century onwards. It had theological links with Manicheanism and Bogomilism, which originated in Bulgaria. Bogomils or Bougres were also dualistic. Actually, they were only nominally Christian, because they rejected the Church and its sacraments such as baptism, marriage, and eucharism (communion) accusing them of being the creation of the Devil or the Evil God and His manifestations. Like the Manicheans, they were dualists in that they believed there were two realities, or worlds, created by two gods. The Evil God, or the Devil, created and resided over the physical world and all kinds of bodily acts such as eating meat, having sex, and getting married whereas the Good God created the spiritual realm. Cathars sympathizers were only supposed to show a simple adherence to Christ’s teachings and lead a poor way of life devoted to prayer. Their baptism was not performed with holy water but with laying on of hands by the Cathari priests or perfecti. The popular appeal of the Cathars among ordinary people in much of western Europe, especially France and Italy, can be attributed to two main factors: 1.) ordinary people were not expected to lead an austere, strict life. They could go to church, receive communion, make confession, get baptized, get married, eat meat and so on. The strict lifestyle was only reserved for the perfecti. Ordinary people just received consolamentum, which literally means comforting, or last rites just before they died, which duly concerned the Church very much because this meant many Catholics died as heretics. 2.) The medieval church was not theologically well-equipped. The parish priests in towns were mostly very ignorant or corrupt, so they could not catechize (give religious instruction to) their congregation in the proper church creed. Most people were not in the habit of regularly going to church unless, by chance, there was an occasional visit from the bishop of their diocese. So, people were hungry for any religious instruction that was readily satisfied by the Cathar priests and bishops. Cathar practices are very well documented in Emmanuel LeRoy Ladurie’s seminal work on Languedoc Montaillou . Another medieval heresy, the Waldensians were not as obtrusive and different from general Christian creed as the Cathars and therefore survived until today even though they were also persecuted from time to time. They were also known as the Poor Men of Lyons. Later, they took the name of their founder Peter Waldo (or Valdes). They condemned the corruption in the Church, simplified their worship, rejected the authority of priesthood and certain sacraments and practices such as infant baptism and the veneration of the saints and martyrs. In other words, they were reformers. They were adopted by (Jan) John Hus and his followers known as the Hussites during the Renaissance period preparing the way for the Reformation. Before the inception of the Inquisition, through several Papal Bulls, the Church tried to suppress heresy with the help of the secular authorities and bishops. However, this did not work, because secular authorities, together with mobs of people, took the liberty of persecuting suspected heretics themselves without having recourse to an interrogation or a trial and simply burned them. This practice increased in alarming proportions especially in the northern parts of Europe. Another extreme was the lax attitude of authorities, as well as that of ordinary people, towards heretics in the south, especially in France. The Church was not happy with either case and wanted to exert its authority, because after all, this was ecclesiastical territory: The State should not have acted alone. Moreover, it went against the real aim of the Church since it primarily wanted to gain those heretics back to the Christian faith as dictated by the Church and save their souls. However, if the state officials killed them first, naturally salvation was not possible. Also, the opposite reaction, that of tolerating heretics for various reasons, like having liasons with them, angered the Church, which wanted assistance from the kings and lords in eradicating heresy. To facilitate their assistance, Pope Innocent III specified the punishment for heretics in his Bull called Vergentis in senium in 1199, allowing secular lords to confiscate the lands of the heretics. So when that failed, the Church decided to mobilize bishops to seek out and investigate heresy in their dioceses. Pope Lucius III issued a Bull in 1184 called Ad abolendam for this purpose. However, this failed as well, because bishops were busy men dealing with worldly stuff like managing estates, and they had no intention of trudging along towns to find out heretics. In 1209, what is also known as the Albigensian Crusade was launched against them in Languedoc by the sanction of Pope Innocent III after he was sufficiently annoyed with the failure of his peaceful methods that ended with the assassination of one of his legates probably on orders from the Count of Toulouse. The crusade lasted for twenty years. Even though it was not totally successful in terminating the heresy of Catharism, it still managed to persecute and burn many cathars without ever giving them a chance to recant. A council was gathered to discuss matters of orthodoxy and the definition of heresy as well as how to punish heretics. This was the Fourth Lateran Council which assembled in Rome in 1215 and was the biggest of its kind. It was totally representative of the Latin Christendom, and consequently, its decisions were binding. It codified the much needed orthodoxy, which was a prerequisite to define heresy. It required all adult Catholics to attend church, make confession to their parish priest, and receive Holy Communion once a year in Easter. The plan was to single out heretics who would refuse to comply with these practices. Canon III dictated that all heretics who refused to repent should be excommunicated and handed over to secular authorities who would confiscate their property and burn them at the stake. If someone was suspected of heresy, but not convicted, they had to prove their innocence by supplying a number of witnesses who would swear to their orthodoxy. If they could not do this within a year, their heresy would be considered proven. Within twenty years of the Council, secular authorities in parts of western Europe, where heresy posed a threat, adopted the decrees of the Council. But still, the question of who was to enforce those decrees remained because of the ineffectiveness of bishops as inquisitors since they were neither mobilized nor equipped to deal with the theological challenges presented by the volatile nature of the heretic ideas. The solution presented itself as was mentioned before with the foundation of two Mendicant Orders: the Dominicans and the Franciscans. Dominicans, who were specifically trained in theology for the instruction of the laity neglected by ignorant local clergy or greedy friars, seemed to be a perfect choice as inquisitors in Languedoc, where they participated under the leadership of their founder St Dominic Guzman in the campaign to restore faith among hereticated inhabitants of the region before and during the Albigensian Crusade. Franciscans were not initially as equipped as Dominicans in matters of theology since their founder St Francis of Assisi emphasized following the Gospels verbatim for guidance rather than pursuing rigorous doctrinal study. However, Gregory IX, who had licensed the Order, wanted to make use of them, too as inquisitors along with Dominicans. Thus, they set to work in Languedoc in 1233 and inquired into heresy until 1324. Bernard Gui’s Manual and the Beguines The discourse of persecution reflected in the Inquisitors’ Manuals, which were written for the benefit and guidance of young inquisitors, is very interesting. Manuals written in a solemn, judiciary style are really intriguing. Bernard Gui, as an experienced inquisitor, seemed to be the obvious choice to begin with. Moreover, it is fascinating that some friars belonging to mendicant orders very similar to, and sometimes just a branch of the Franciscans or Dominicans, came to be considered heretics whereas the Franciscans and Dominicans themselves became their inquisitors. Why does this happen? And how did those friars pose a threat to the Roman Church? Beguines, like the Spirituals and the Fraticelli, were an example of such mendicants. So, I will specifically look at that part of Bernard Gui’s Manual dealing with the Beguines. Lastly, I would like to talk about a case of a Beguine woman, called Na Prous Boneta, who was tried and sentenced by the Inquisition. The original sentence is cited in Lea‘s work. Heresy is defined as “a theological opinion or doctrine held in opposition to the ‘catholic’ or orthodox doctrine of the Catholic Church” according to OED. So, in order to exist, heresy had to wait until there emerged a concrete body of orthodox doctrines. By definition, heresy could not exist without a corresponding set of doctrines and that only came about with Thomas Aquinas whose Summa Theologica and Summa contra Gentiles formed the doctrinal basis of the Church. It would not be wrong to say that his work is still influential today. In the thirteenth century, two major heresies that the Inquisition went after were the dualist Cathars and the Waldensians or the ’poor men of Lyons’. Other important heresies started to emerge with the foundation of the mendicant orders. Pope Innocent III approved of the foundation of the Franciscan order. It quickly became popular and similar groups appeared such as the Spirituals, the Fraticelli, the heresy of the free spirit and the Beguines. The common property of all these mendicant groups was that they were based on the poverty principle. The friars lived in ascetic poverty imitating the life of Christ and trying to amend the abuse and luxury they observed in the Church. In time, a division occurred in the Franciscan Order. Some friars followed the poverty principle to the letter after the fashion of their zealous leader, St Francis of Assisi. They came to be called the ‘spirituals’. Whereas more mellow followers of the order came to be known as the ‘community‘. They were leading an active life of preaching and aiding the church in stamping out heresy. The dichotomy between these two groups within the order became severe and led to some Italian spirituals’ imprisonment. Moreover, Peter John Olivi, a leader of spirituals also known as the Beguines was persecuted in southern France. Pope John XXII supported the community against the spirituals. When the spirituals refused to conform, they instantly became heretics. This is one of the most interesting phenomena related to the whole question of heresy and the legitimacy of the Inquisition; the seemingly haphazard labeling of one group orthodox and the other heretical, in the same organization. However, it is not so arbitrary after all if it is looked at from the vantage point of obedience or disobedience, conformity or non-conformity to the wishes and whims of the powers that be, in this case the Church and the Popes. They must have perceived the obstinately rigid followers of the poverty principle as a direct threat to their snug, luxurious way of carrying on with their office. Since the Church and the Pope as the omnipotent agent of religious and social life in the Middle Ages determine the discourse in the Foucauldian sense of what is acceptable, canonized and orthodox or simply the ‘good’ and what is not acceptable, heretical, heterodoxical and uncanonized or simply the ‘bad’, some friars instantly become candidates for the stake. Now let us look at some of them, namely, the Beguines more closely. The etymology of the name Beguine is not just “to beg” but also probably “to pray”. They were a sect with close affinities with the Spirituals who were a part of the Franciscan order. In fact, they called themselves “poor brothers of penance of the third order of Saint Francis” . They were mostly seen in Provence, Toulouse, Beziers, Carcasonne and Narbonne. They based their doctrines on Brother Peter John Olivi’s writings such as Lectura super Apocalipsim. His apocalyptic vision suited the mood of the times perfectly. St Francis was representative of a new and more spiritual age for him. Interestingly, there were many women in the order. They were poor widows or orphan daughters of Crusaders. They lived communally in ‘houses of poverty’ or Beguinages. Some did manual work, some begged. All Beguines were against personal as well as common property. Marked by their ecstatic visionary experiences, they were sometimes accepted and honored as mystical, like St Mechthild of Magdeburg’s, the writer of The Flowing Light of the Godhead, and were sometimes persecuted as heretical and burned at the stake as in the case of Marguerite Porette, the writer of the Mirror of Simple Souls. The Beguines in southern France were not only persecuted for their reluctance to conform to the mainstream ’community’ of the Franciscans but also for their support of the Spirituals and for aiding them to run away from the Inquisition. They were finally wiped out by the Inquisition in the 1340s. Inquisitors and Their Manuals Inquisitors are essential to the existence and legitimization of the Inquisition, and they try to do their best by setting down their experience and wisdom on paper for the benefit of other and younger inquisitors. St Raymond of Penafort wrote his Directory in 1242 for the inquisitors in Barcelona. Bernard of Caux and John of St Pierre wrote their Processus inquisitionis in1244 for the inquisitors in Narbonne. Another famous example of such guide books is Malleus Maleficarum by Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger written in 1488. We will be concerned here with Bernard Gui, though. He was a famous Dominican inquisitor who got this office in Toulouse in 1307, twenty-eight years after he joined the order. He became a bishop in 1324. Bernard Gui’s Manual was finished in around 1323, but he continued to work on it continuously. It has five parts. The first three are concerned with inquisitorial procedure. The fourth part contains documents such as papal bulls and aims to establish the inquisitor’s authority. In the last part, Gui deals with different types of heresies. His work actually entitled Practica officii inquisitionis heretice pravitatis (The Conduct of Inquiry Concerning Heretical Depravity) was printed by Douais in 1886. Nicholas Eymeric, the Inquisitor in Aragon followed suit and his Directorium Inquisitorum, fashioned after Gui’s manual, written in approximately 1360, became very popular. Gui employs a traditionally juridical approach in his manual. He has a deliberately serene but unmistakably partial and judgmental tone. He keeps using such adjectives and noun and adjective phrases for the Beguines as “blinded, insane heretics, masters of error rather than disciples of truth, seduced by their own imagination, schismatic, temerarious, believers of insane fables.” He itemizes the long section on Beguines in this fashion: First comes a general introduction where he identifies Beguines in their historical context. Then he talks about their “pestiferous errors and erroneous opinions” by associating them with their leader Brother Peter John Olivi. Next, he elaborates on their life style and refers to their “houses of poverty” as the “school of the Devil”. Although they read not only the works of Olivi, but also “the commandments, the articles of faith, legends of the saints, and the Summa of Vices and Virtues”, Gui believes this is just a cover-up and an “imitation of the school of Christ” because it is done “in secret and by simple laypersons” instead of being performed by the clergy and in the Church. The fourth section deals with “the outward signs by which they can be recognized to some extent”. Here, we learn about their special way of greeting one another, sitting and praying a certain way in church. In the following long section, we are given a detailed account of the Beguine doctrines. Here, Gui goes over the basic tenets of the Beguines item by item and relates how they accept the poverty rule of St Francis very astutely, how anyone who goes against this rule becomes a heretic since it is identical with contradicting the Gospel of Christ, how Pope John XXII became a heretic and even Anti-Christ in their eyes by issuing Quorumdam which allows Brothers Minor, or the community of the order of the Franciscans, to store wheat and wine for the future and thus breaking the rule of poverty. This serious charge against the Pope alone is enough to make them eligible for the stake, of course. They are consequently said to deny the sacraments given by the Pope and his church and look upon their brothers who died for their beliefs as martyrs and Olivi as an “uncanonized holy father”. They are charged with calling the Roman Church “carnal” as opposed to their “spiritual and evangelical” church. Then comes the examination and questioning process and the specific questions to be asked the contemporary Beguines. Gui advises his successors to use a manner of examination “fitting the specific case at hand” so that “the truth will more subtly and more easily be discovered, while deceit will more quickly be detected”. This is followed by what to do with the “cunning and malice” of obstinate heretics who do not cooperate with the examiner. Here, he refers to their refusal to inform on their friends based on the gospel principle of not harming their friends and neighbors. To him, understandably, this telling on friends and neighbors is nothing against the gospels. Just the contrary, he sees it as righting the wrongs, revealing the truth and reconciling with the path of the righteous and the godly. He recommends that other inquisitors should make the heretics swear to “tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth” which is horrifyingly similar to the discourse of the modern judicial system. The ninth section gives the format of two types of sample excommunication sentences. For the sentence of excommunication, there is a grace period to see whether the heretic repents, and if not, the sentence becomes permanent. Afterwards, the secular authorities take over the case. A copy of the sentence is available to the accused upon request. “Advice concerning the guile and deceit of those who, not wanting to reply clearly and lucidly, do so ambiguously and obscurely” and some other information on the veneration of Brother Olivi by the Beguines conclude the part of his manual on the Beguines. Na Prous Boneta Na Prous Boneta is considered “an inspired prophetess” among the Beguines. She was persecuted, imprisoned and later released in 1315. She was tried again because of her visions in 1325 by the inquisitor of Carcasonne, Henry de Chamay, and was consequently burned at the stake. In the eleven-page-long translation of the statement of Na Prous Boneta given to a notary for the Inquisition, it is possible to witness a heart-wrenchingly sincere and lucid account of a devout woman’s mystical vision. We first learn that she is the daughter of Durand Bonnet, she comes from the parish of Saint-Michel de la Cadiere in the diocese of Nimes and that she lived in Montpellier since she was seven. She gets arrested with the suspicion of being a member of the heretical group Beguines and is imprisoned at Carcasonne. Her testimony is taken on August 6, 1325 in which she talks about her mystical experience that started in the church of the Franciscans in Montpellier. Jesus Christ appears to her in an abundance of bright light and overwhelms her. She is resembled by Jesus to the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist. Even though she humbly protests at such a high comparison, she comes to gradually accept her role as the carrier of the Holy Spirit. She wants to share all this wonderful experience with others but hesitates at first. Finally she confides in some male friends. She gets to be persecuted because of her frank expression of her visions. Otherwise, probably no one would be able to detect her, but she does not try to avoid persecution or death since she is very much exalted in her mystical experience. She goes on to talk about the nature of divinity in compliance with the teachings of Beguines and Olivi. She is apparently very well-versed in all the doctrines of the Beguines. She is clearly under the influence of the apocalyptic vision of Brother Olivi since she refers to the dawn of the Third Age when the Everlasting Gospel is promised to her. She says Elijah is St Francis and Enoch is Olivi. According to her, the papacy lost its jurisdiction and therefore most of the sacraments also lost their significance except those of matrimony and penance since it can function without the aid of external intervention. She is very compassionate towards lepers and Spirituals who were burned at the stake. She likens them to innocent masses killed by King Herod. She fearlessly and rapidly answers her examiners. It is obvious that she is not afraid of death, and in the end, she willingly accepts her fate. Her testimony and sentence provide a very typical inquisitorial procedure and demonstrate a case of what is called “an obstinate, unrepentant heretic” by the Inquisition. Or from a different perspective, here is a heroic woman who is ready to die for what she believes in. In looking at Christian dogma-making-in-progress before, during and a little after the thirteenth century in the form of papal bulls, councils, and preaching by the mendicant orders as well as some of the inquisitors’ manuals and interrogation records of the inquisition, especially two beguines, one French and one German, came under detailed scrutiny. Their cases have generated a great deal of scholarly interest. That is namely because the cases of Marguerite Porette and Mechthild of Magdeburg, two visionary women, burned at the stake and accepted as a mystic, respectively. They both had highly personalized as well as stylized mystical visions, strikingly similar in many respects, which they described in The Mirror of Simple Souls and The Flowing Light of the Godhead, respectively. The books demonstrate the oddly whimsical nature of the latter author’s being labeled as canonical, or at least borderline heterodoxy, versus the former author’s being labeled a heretic, deserving nothing less than public immolation. The history of the Inquisition is fascinating not only because it testifies to the very complicated dynamics between religion and culture/society but also because it is a faithful reflection of all the perversities, cruelties, atrocities, intolerance, obsessions, devotions, and tendencies of self-sacrifice that human beings are capable of. Also as a long enduring judicial institution, it provides us with excellent sources of information in its archived documents about the otherwise would-be-obscure daily life and customs of pre-modern society, thus proving invaluable to social/cultural historians of diverse schools such as those of the Annales and microhistorians/local historians. Historians of mentalities or ideas have a lot to thank the Inquisition for, as well.