HIST 3006A – Medieval Religious Life
Fall 2024
Instructor: Professor Marc Saurette
Popular representations of religion during the Middle Ages focus on Christianity – depicting medieval people as dogmatic fundamentalists with a propensity to burn witches and heretics. Churchmen tend to be presented even worse – as Inquisitors who delight in lording their religious authority over anyone who loves freedom. They especially hate non-Christians.
The medieval reality was, well, somewhat different. Our class will explore the reality of medieval religion in what we now call Europe during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. We will answer how it was that people following different religions (Christianity, Islam and Judaism) could co-exist during the Middle Ages, how religion could open up opportunities (for women especially) and how religious disagreements were resolved. Our examples will tend to focus on medieval Christianity and how it saw its relationship to other religions.
We will consider three major historical events:
- the negotiated surrender of Toledo in 1086 to King Alphonso VI,
- the life of Raingarde de Montboissier, a nun at Marcigny who died in 1134,
- and the heresy trial of Peter Abelard in 1141.
The surrender of Toledo is often described as the beginning of the Christian Reconquista (reconquest/crusade) against Muslim kingdoms in Iberia (aka Spain), but the surrender of Toledo makes clear how religious identity is not as set-in-stone as modern people often think. Politics in eleventh-century Iberia was not determined by religion – Christian knights such as El Cid would fight for Muslim kings and Muslim lords, such as Sisnando Davidez, would pledge fealty to the King of Léon. The Jewish, Christian and ruling Muslim communities of Toledo co-existed in close quarters and, in 1086, came together to negotiate the transition to Leonese rule. Our goal will be to consider how religion played a role in how Toledo surrendered and was transformed afterwards.
Our second focus will be a nun at the twelfth-century Benedictine convent of Marcigny. Raingarde de Montboissier was the mother of one of the most powerful churchmen of the twelfth-century, Abbot Peter the Venerable, but was renowned as a holy woman in her own right. Her story – moving from aristocratic woman to nun to object of veneration – showcases how the religious life opened up options for women’s autonomy and encouraged particularly female forms of authority and devotion.
Our third focus is the Council of Sens in 1141 – where university professor, theologian, and sometime-monk, Peter Abelard, was formally accused of heresy by Bernard of Clairvaux. We consider less the details of the accusation and more the social and political background to this process which involved the King of France, the heads of two rival monastic networks, the most important bishops of the realm and the powerful Papal Curia. This trial showcases the growing institutionalization of the medieval Church and foreshadows the powerful bureaucracy that would develop into a papal monarchy.
Among the people we will be learning about are:
- Alphonso VI, King of Léon-Castille. This king of Léon-Castille survived defeat at the hands of his brother Sancho, (returning from exile in the Muslim kingdom of Toledo after Sancho’s unexpected death), the invasion of a powerful Almoravid army and the rumours that he killed his brother Garcia. This king oversaw a kingdom and its Church in the midst of transforming itself. Like his father Fernando, Alphonso made an alliance with the Church to cement his power, but he nonetheless showed tolerance for non-Christian religions.
- Yahya ibn Ismail ibn Yahya (al-Qadir), King of Toledo was nepo-baby unable to rise to the challenge of ruling Toledo. Al-Qadir survived two different citizen revolts against his rule but could not defend against the might of Alphonso VI, who forced the surrender of Toledo as his seat of power. He ruled over a multi-ethnic and religiously diverse kingdom, which lived on long after his departure.
- Raingarde de Montboissier, wife, mother, and nun who left behind the trappings of her privileged aristocratic life to retire to a life of poverty, religious devotion and unceasing service to others. A long letter written by Peter the Venerable to his siblings records the life and memory of this woman and shows the complicated position women held in both secular and religious life during the early twelfth-century. Her story highlights the particular importance of religious reputation, and the bodily nature of female spirituality.
- Peter the Venerable (de Montboissier): the abbot of Cluny and head of (at the time) the largest network of monks/nuns in the medieval Christian Church. He was friend to Peter Abelard, enemy to Bernard of Clairvaux, and hater of anybody who wasn’t his kind of Christian (not the nicest guy, I admit, and not atypical of his generation). He was beloved in his lifetime and venerated for centuries afterwards. He is one of a million monks named Peter.
- Peter Abelard: a charismatic schoolmaster and self-proclaimed bad boy of theology. He spent his life trying to overturn the “old school” and argue that his way of thinking and teaching was the future (spoiler: he was right). He ruffled a lot of feathers and made some poor life choices. He writes about these poor decisions in his quasi-autobiography, A History of My Calamities which recounts, among other things, his involuntary castration.. He retired to the monastery of Cluny at the end of his life, and thus ended his life as another monk named Peter.
Heloise: a gifted thinker, an abbess of the Paraclete (a convent she largely founded). She was “tutored” by Abelard, bore his child (whom they named Astrolabe) before entering the religious life as a nun. She left behind correspondence with Peter Abelard and Peter the Venerable, wrote a rule for her monastery and generally did some really cool stuff.