Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe

by Edward Peters

Book Overview

Throughout the Middle Ages and early modern Europe theological uniformity was synonymous with social cohesion in societies that regarded themselves as bound together at their most fundamental levels by a religion. To maintain a belief in opposition to the orthodoxy was to set oneself in opposition not merely to church and state but to a whole culture in all of its manifestations. From the eleventh century to the fifteenth, however, dissenting movements...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0812211030
• ISBN13: 9780812211030
• Release Date: January 1980
• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.9" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Essential materials

There is nothing else available like this collection of original sources from the Middle Ages on the theory and reality of heresy and its persecution. Peters presents foundational texts, well-chosen and diverse in character: not just theoretical tracts and official pronouncements, but also court records, popular stories about saints, and other material. The commentary that Peters provides is very limited. For an area of knowledge where there's an awful lot of myth and rumor and gossip -- Templars, witches, underground cults, the like -- this collection is sober and solid. We need to understand the idea of heresy and what it meant (and means): this book is an important resource for doing that.