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Defining Heresies: Catholic Heresiologies, 1520–50

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

David Bagchi
David Bagchi*
Affiliation:
University of Hull
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Extract

Few historians nowadays would endorse a simple causal connection between the Reformation and the rise of toleration. Indeed, reformations Protestant and Catholic have become almost synonymous with ‘confessionalization’ and ‘social disciplining’. Nonetheless, the transition from the persecuting society of the Middle Ages to something approaching a pluralist society was an early modern phenomenon which has attracted renewed attention in recent years. This transition was facilitated by the breakdown of the traditional understanding of heresy. The role of Protestantism in de-stabilizing the heresy discourse of mid-seventeenth century England has been expertly delineated by Ann Hughes in her study of Thomas Edwards’s Gangraena and the responses to it. But it would be a mistake to suppose that the Catholic understanding of heresy was entirely stable during this period. As I hope to show in this survey of Catholic heresiologies from the period 1520 to 15 50, controversialists encountered difficulties when they tried to conscript patristic and medieval heresy discourses into the sixteenth-century conflict. An instability at the heart of the traditional definition of heresy – over whether heresy is primarily a doctrinal error or a moral failing – seemed at first to provide a solution to these difficulties. Ultimately and ironically, however, it made their case vulnerable to a Protestant charge of subjectivism.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 43: Discipline and Diversity , 2007 , pp. 241 - 251
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2007

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References

1 Notable among recent studies, in addition to those mentioned elsewhere in these notes, are Laursen, John Christian, ed., Histories of Heresy in Early Modem Europe: for, Against, and Beyond Persecution and Toleration (New York and Basingstoke, 2002)Google Scholar, and Hunter, Ian, Laursen, J. C., and Nederman, Cary J., eds, Heresy in Transition: Transforming Ideas of Heresy in Medi eval and Early Modem Europe (Aldershot, 2005)Google Scholar. The essays in Nederman, and Laursen, , eds, Difference and Dissent: Theories of Toleration in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Lanham, MD, 1996)Google Scholar include examples of the way in which the ‘history of heresy’ genre was developed to promote toleration of religious diversity, while Walsham, Alexandra, Charitable Hatred: Toler ance and Intolerance in England 1500–1700 (Manchester, 2006)Google Scholar amply refutes any notion that persecution and toleration were binary opposites in the early-modern period. Francisca Loetz’s Mit Goti handeln: von den Zücher Götteslästeren der frühen Neuzeit zu einer Kulturgeschichte des Religiösen, Veröffentlichungen des Max-Planck-Instituts für Geschichte 177 (Göttingen, 2002) sheds important light on the Reformed construction of heresy at official and popular levels.

2 Hughes, Ann, Gangraena and the Struggle for the English Revolution (Oxford, 2004).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Denzinger, H. and Schönmetzer, A., eds, Enchiridion Symbolorum Definitionum et Declarationum de Rebus Fidei et Morum (36th edn, Barcelona, Freiburg im Breisgau, and Rome, 1976), 1451–92 Google Scholar. Full text in Tomassetti, G. et al, eds, Bullarum, Diplomatum et Privilegiorum Romanum Pontificum Taurinensis editio, 25 vols (Turin, 1857–72), 5: 750a.Google Scholar

4 See Cajetan, , Opuscula omnia (Turin, 1582)Google Scholar, fols 184a-186a. English trans, ‘The Five Articles of Luther: Justification for their Condemnation’, in Wicks, Jared, ed, Cajetan Responds: a Reader in Reformation Controversy (Washington, DC, 1978), 145–52.Google Scholar

5 On the contested reception of Exsurge Domine and other formal condemnations of Luther, see Bagchi, David V. N., Luther’s Earliest Opponents: Catholic Controversialists, 1518–1525) (Minneapolis, MN, 1991), 179, 201–4, 252 Google Scholar, and the sources cited there.

6 Latomus, , De quaestionum generibus (1525) in idem, Opera omnia (Louvain, 1579)Google Scholar, 88v-89r. The reference is to Decretum Cratiani, pars II, C.24 q.1 (CIC 1: 966).

7 Bernard of Luxembourg, O. P., Catalogus haereticorum omnium pene, qui a scriptoribus passim literis proditi sunt, nomina, errores, & tempora quibus vixerunt ostendens, a F. Bernardo Lutzenburgo sacrarum literarum professore quatuor libris conscriptus. Quorum quartus Lutheri negotium nonnihil attingit [Cologne, 1522].

8 Ibid., 13r, m2r.

9 Gebweiler, Hieronymus, ed., Contenta in hoc libello. Ysidorus de sectis et nominibus haereticorum. Divi augustini libellus aureus de fide & operibus. S. Hieronymi liber de perpetua gloriosae Virginis Mariae virginitate. Epistola eiusdem contra Vigilantium de venerandis sanctorum reliquiis (Strasbourg, 1523)Google Scholar; Gui [Terreni] de Perpignan, Summa de haeresibus et earum confutationibus (Paris, 1528).

10 ‘[A]liqua ex diversis auctoribus lectu non iniucunda congessimus … sperantes & senibus & pueris horum lectione nonnihil profectus accessurum’. (Gebweiler, Ysidorus, Aiiiir-v). The second reprinting of Gui’s work (optimistically described as ‘diu desideratum, & nunc primum in Germania editum’ in the publisher’s title-page puff) was Cologne, 1631.

11 The two already mentioned were the only ‘Catholic’ editions. Lutheran, A., Cornarius, Janus, edited Epiphanius’s Panarium (Basel, 1542)Google Scholar. Joannes Sichardus, a humanist associate of Philipp Melanchthon, compiled the patristic miscellany Antidotum contra diversas haereses (Basel, 1528). Desiderius Erasmus edited Irenaeus’s Opus eruditissimum in quinque libros (Basel, 1526, 1528, 1534, and Paris, 1545); but his preface, containing only the briefest allusion to current affairs, clearly flagged his edition as a work of scholarship, not Catholic polemic.

12 Koch, Konrad (‘Wimpina’), Sectarum, errorum, hallutinationum, & schismatum, ab origine ferme Christianae ecclesiae, ad haec usque nostra tempora, consisioris Anacephalaeoseos, Una cum aliquantis Pigardicarum, Vuiglefticarum, & Lutheranarum haeresum: confutationibus, librorum partes tres (Frankfurt on Oder, 1528).Google Scholar

13 Castro, Alfonso de OFM, Adversus omnes haereses libri XIIII (Paris, 1534)Google Scholar. The references in this paper are to the Paris, 1541 edition.

14 Préau, Gabriel du, De vitis, sectis, et dogmatibus omnium haereticorum, qui ab orbe condito, ad nostra usque tempora, proditi sunt, elenchus alphabeticus (Cologne, 1569)Google Scholar; Illyricus, Matthias Flacius, Catalogus testium veritatis qui ante nostram aetatem reclamarunt papae (Basel, 1556)Google Scholar. On the Protestant subversion of the genre, see esp. Cameron, Euan, ‘Medieval Heretics as Protestant Martyrs’, in Wood, Diana, ed., Martyrs and Martyrologies, SCH 30 (Oxford, 1993), 185–207.Google Scholar

15 Castro, Adversus haereses, 3r.

16 Ibid., 2v.

17 Ibid.

18 Ibid., 3r.

19 On the essential (diabolical) unity which the summarists saw as underlying the many disagreements between heretics, see Bagchi, D. V. N., ‘Tyndale, More, and the Anatomy of Heresy’, Reformation 2 (1997), 261–81, esp. 274–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20 De moribus haereticorum, Avr-v.

21 ‘Similitudo ingenij ac morum magnam ubique vim habet’ (ibid., Aviv).

22 Ibid., Aviir-Civ(on Arianism), Cviiir-Eiiir(on Mani, Faustus, and other Manichees), Givv-Gviiiv(on Islam).

23 Ibid., Bivv, Civv.

24 Ibid.,Bviv.

25 Ibid.,Bivv

26 Ibid., Giiir.

27 Ibid., Ciiir.

28 Ibid., Aviiiv.

29 Augustine, De utilitate credendi, ch. 1 (PL 42, 65–92, at 65).

30 ‘Sed una mater superbia omnes [haereticos] genuit; sicut una mater nostra Catholica omnes Christianos fideles toto orbe diffusos’ (Augustine, Sermo 46, ch. 8 [PL 38, 270–95, at 280]); ‘Superbia, mater omnium haereticorum’ (idem, Contra epistolam Manichaei, ch. 6 [PL 42, 173–206, at 177]).

31 Especially comprehensive lists of the intrinsic and extrinsic causes of heresy are given by Castro (Adversas haereses, 21v-29r) and Brunus (Johann Cochlaeus, ed., D. Conradi Bruni iureconsulti libri sex de haereticis in genere [Mainz, 1549], 15–28).

32 Speculum haereticorum (Cracow, 1540), sigs Cviiir-Dviir.

33 Cochlaeus, Johann, ed., Breve D. Conradi Bruni jureconsulti Introductorium de haereticis. E sex libris eius excerptum, Hoc tempore summopere consyderandum et tam scitu necessarium quam lectu iucundum. Tribus capitulis compraehensum (Mainz, 1548)Google Scholar; idem, ed., D. Conradi Bruni jureconsulti libri sex, De haereticis in genere (Mainz, 1549)Google Scholar; and idem, , ed., De seditionibus libri sex, rationibus et exemplis ex omni doctrinarum et authorum genere locupletati, authore clariss. et doctiss. viro D. Conrado Bruno jureconsulto. Joannis Cochlaei theologi De seditiosis appendix triplex, contra quosdam rebelles huius temporis (Mainz, 1550).Google Scholar

34 Fabri, Johann, Fructus quibus dignoscuntur Haeretici, Eorum quoque Nomina, Ex Philastro, Epiphanio, Augustino, Eusebio, &c. Et quibus armis devincendi (Ingolstadt, 1551).Google Scholar

35 Ibid., Biir-Biiv.

36 Hosius, Stanislaus, A Treatise of the Beginning of Heresies of Our Time, translated by Richard Schacklock and intituled by him ‘The Hatchet of Heresies’ (Antwerp, 1565)Google Scholar. Hosius’s original was book one (‘De haeresibus nostri temporis’) of his Verae, christianae, catholicaeque doctrinae solida propugnatio, una cum illustri confutatione prolegomenorum, quae primum Ioannes Brentius adversus Petrum a Soto Theologum scripsit, deinde vero Petrus Paulus Vergerius apud Polonos temere defendenda suscepit (Cologne, 1558).

37 Lindt, Willem van der (Wilhelmus Lindanus), Certaine Tables sett furth by the right Reverend father in God, William Bushopp of Rurimunde, in Ghelderland: wherein is detected and made manifeste the doting dangerous doctrine, and haynous heresyes, of the rashe rablement of heretikes, translated by Lewis Evans, and by hym intituled, ‘The betraing of the beastlines of heretykes’ (Antwerp, 1565)Google Scholar. Lindt, Van der’s original was In hoc libello contenta tabulae grassantium passim haereseon anasceuasticae, atque analyticae authore D. Wilhelmo Lindano Dordraceno, Doct. Theologo atque Palatij Haghen. Decano. Quibus subtexitur Sectae Lutheranae Trimembris Epitome, per Fridericum Staphylum Regis Rom. consiliarum (Antwerp, 1562).Google Scholar

38 On Barthlet, see Brett Usher, ‘Bartlett, John (fl. 1562–1567)’, ODNB.

39 Barthlet, John, The Pedegrewe of heretiques. Wherein is truely and plainely set out, the first roote of Heretiques begon in the Church, since the time and paβage of the Gospell, together with an example of the of spring of the same (London, 1566)Google Scholar. Facsimile reprint as The English Experience 76 (Amsterdam and New York, 1969), 2v.

40 Ibid., 2c-3e.