What was heresy

A sect must be small enough to be a distinctive part of a larger religious body. Studying medieval heresy also entails study of secular governments. It is important to note that the Church never executed anyone for heresy. Rather, the Church turned heretics over to secular governments for execution.

Therefore, heresy was also part of political self-definition and exclusion. Lollards lived in 14th- through 16th-century England and may have been inspired by the teachings of John Wyclif, a controversial philosopher and theologian at the University of Oxford.

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June 28, 0. Learn more about Jews and Christians. These regions did not host the highest number of heretics by coincidence. They were the witnesses of the Gregorian reforms and their disappointing failure.

Religious reform movements ebbed and flowed in the s to s A. The Cluniac and the Cistercian reforms attempted to improve monastic life but failed. In the end, they looked very similar to what they wanted to improve. The movement began in the middle of the 11 th century, led by the papacy. It was a top-down reform movement that aimed to do what the Cluniac reform proposed. The Gregorian reformers wanted to improve standards and morals for the secular clergy, by enforcing certain rules that had been neglected for a long time.

Their first aim was clerical celibacy. Traditionally, priests were supposed to remain celibate for life. Yet, during the tenth century, the tradition was neglected without much opposition. The Gregorian reformers tried to separate priests and sometimes bishops from their wives to rescue celibacy.

Their other goal was to stop simony, the outright sale of important church offices. There are two major reasons for that. Firstly, it may have been the case that people accused were in conflict with the ecclesiastical authority — ie priests who were causing problems for their bishops by being outspoken about the shortcomings of the church.

In this case, being accused of heresy was about ecclesiastical discipline. Secondly, lay people who were accused may have been in conflict with the church over property or revenues.

From the late 11th century, the Roman church went through a process of reform — based, in the first place, on the demands that its appointments should be made without the intervention of secular authority, and that its priests should be celibate. The first meant that considerable wealth — ie land — was at the disposal of the church.

That was acceptable to the lay nobility on the basis of clerical celibacy, so that churchmen could not use church land to found rival dynasties.

For example, priests who refused to compromise were condemned. This was the main source of accusations of heresy in the 12th century.