In 2007, the World Health Organization (WHO) launched their Age-Friendly Cities (AFCs) program in response to the global trend towards aging populations and increasing urbanization (WHO, 2007). The WHO anticipates that by 2050, approximately 22% of the global population will be over the age of 60 with the majority residing in sub/urban areas (WHO, 2007). In the Canadian context, one in four residents will be 65 years or older by 2036 with well over 70% residing in (sub)urban communities (PHAC, 2011). Moreover, the intensity of older adults will be most acutely felt in small and mid-sized cities where the mean older adult dependency ratio will grow by 103% and 90% respectfully by 2036 (Hartt and Biglieri, 2018). Given the certainty of demographic change and the heterogeneity of the older adult population (Garvin et al, 2012; Stafford and Baldwin, 2018), there is a time sensitive need to understand how to support older adults who desire to age in place – that is, to live safely and independently in their existing communities (WHO, 2007).

Aging in place, wellbeing, and mobility

Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, there has been a renaissance of academic literature linking built environments and human health in order to address the rising rates of chronic diseases, a warming climate, loss of green space to urban sprawl, and automobile dependency (Frank et al, 2003, 2006). Geographers and planners have played an important role in acknowledging the importance of local built environments to population health and wellbeing throughout the life course (Laws, 1993; Frank et al, 2006; Andrews et al, 2007; Gilroy, 2008; Cutchin, 2009; Garvin et al, 2012; Kerr et al, 2012). In the North American context, the design of many urban built environments has been widely critiqued as not conducive to an active and healthy lifestyle and generally unsupportive of aging in place (Frumkin, 2002; Frank et al, 2003; Gilroy, 2008; Mercado and Páez, 2009; Zegras et al, 2012; Cerin et al, 2017). The challenges of active living in many Canadian built environments is exacerbated for older adults who have limited mobility as they age due to (1) shrinking activity spaces over time (Shoval et al, 2011), (2) onset of physical and cognitive disabilities for some (WHO, 2007), and (3) loss of driving abilities for others (Rapoport et al, 2013).

Over the last hundred years, the word Literat has acquired a negative, almost noxious connotation in German usage. No one refers to himself this way, and no writer wants to be called a Literat – the word has nearly become an insult. Karl Gutzkow (1811–1878), for example, the programmatic leader of the ‘Young Germany’ movement, used it to disparage ‘abstract literacy’ in a review of Briefe aus Paris, in the Deutsche Jahrbuchern (V, 1196), ‘A dubious character, an actual Litterat who writes in order to write, not to help realise a single moral idea important to his life’, and again, ‘A true Litterat does not think of himself, but of his consumer’. Gutzkow later recalled the emerging usage of the word during his youth in Ruckblick auf mein Leben: ‘One called these people “Literaten” in contempt, who appeared to have embodied in themselves nothing but a writing pen.’ In German, this insulting quality hovers around the term, while the corresponding French word ‘lettre’ still bears positive connotations of the scholar, the studied person, the scientifically or literarily educated person (like letterato in Italian, also letrado in Spanish). Indeed, in the eighteenth century, homme de lettres was a highly regarded, coveted title of honour far beyond France, even in Germany. And in Georges's dictionary, the Latin adjective litteratus was rendered into German as ‘knowing literature, learned, academically educated’, words of praise without the disreputable connotation of Literaten. Evidently a recent shift in meaning correlates to a related change in the valuation and appreciation of writing, of letters, and to transformed attitudes toward and relationships with literature. Most surprising, however, is that, on closer observation, the phenomenon of shifting meanings of litteratus may be traced even further back; it is in fact characteristic of the early centuries after antiquity and thus highly revealing for educational and intellectual history.

Although the counter-concept of illitteratus was common in classical and medieval Latin alike – defined according to Georges as ‘unlearned, unknowing, not scientifically educated’, in French as illettre, in Italian as illetterato, preserved in Spanish as iletrado and iliterato – it never made its way into German, nor did the corresponding Greek word.

Between the discovery of printing and the invention of radio, language and writing were so closely combined that the concept of ‘literature’ covered all linguistic creations and forms. It was only under ‘literature’, and along its margins, that mere speech or expressions that were ‘not yet literature’ existed. And speech was so little heeded or valued as a subject worthy of intellectual effort that the same term applied for ‘speaking’ as for literature. That ‘speech’ was not and did not need to be ‘writing’ was often all that would be said about it; that poetry achieved its effect through word and language, not text and reading, was increasingly forgotten in the reading centuries. Only in certain individual genres of artistic word usage did the distinction not entirely vanish, as it shaped how a listener or reader would grasp the presentation or book. The fact that drama was still spoken and heard rather than simply read – as was once the case for all poetry – seemed a shortcoming since mere ‘book dramas’ were not deemed ‘stage worthy’. Even if one finally becomes accustomed to reading drama, opera texts are usually a struggle, not to mention film scripts – even good film scripts. Many contemporary experiences make the differences between text and ‘spoken word’ even more palpable and clear: for example, the effect and linguistic power of political speeches strike the listener immediately but remain muted to the newspaper reader; the meaning and value of marching tunes and communal songs cannot be appreciated if only seen in print; and radio plays and musicals can certainly be good without being easily readable. The impact of language that does not pass through the detour of script or book is unmistakeably expanding today; that the listener is resuming his place alongside the reader cannot fail to have an effect on our language and composition. Yet it also raises new questions for looking back on ‘literature’ and makes possible new insights into its historical meaning.

During the Middle Ages, ‘literature’ and composition, text and spoken word, were distinct to a much higher degree than today. The modern field of ‘literature’ can ignore this fact because, for us, only the text survives; we only know poetry so far as it became literature.

‘The History of Heresy’ is a subject that strikes modern ears as old fashioned, a research topic from a bygone era. It evokes thick folios and historians motivated by theology or even dogma – for example, Sebastian Franck and Flacius, Gottfried Arnold and Mosheim, Fuesslin or Walch. Yet this very sense of distance between their research world and ours should give us pause; those same men played such formidable roles in analysing medieval heresy over the centuries that one can discern a significant portion of our intellectual history within the history and turning points of ‘heresy studies’. Is there not therefore a deeply intractable problem lying within that intellectual history? And should we assume that this problem has already been resolved or managed for us? Certainly not resolved. For several reasons, we are no longer confident that those earlier works, documents of their own time, can teach us to recognise and understand heresy in the Middle Ages. First of all, our knowledge has since been incomparably expanded in detail and clarified through the critical work of the nineteenth century. Those efforts yielded new editions and analyses, including inquisitorial protocols and treatises on heresy, and enabled distribution of these new understandings in summary form – most impressively in the History of the Inquisition by the American H. C. Lea. Yet this body of work is not sufficient to meet today’s demands on medieval intellectual-historical knowledge. For while recent sociological reflection has taught us much about the socio-ethical aspects of heresy, it offers little about its historical and intellectual significance; the ‘sects’ remain largely inexplicable, treated as separate phenomena without meaningful connection vis-a-vis each other, or to the ‘actual’, official Middle Ages to whose historical margins they are relegated. Thus do their origins and trajectories remain unclear, their importance in the general life of the times misunderstood.

In fact, the very process of research in intellectual history fundamentally negates the possibility of a distinct ‘history of heresy’, as it does not recognise a definitive break between ‘heretical’ and ‘orthodox’; one will never successfully find a meaningful, internally coherent, seamless development of ‘Heresy’. On the contrary, every heretical movement must be understood as a single intelligible facet of the broader spiritual development of its time.

In the proposal defining this colloquium's objective and framework, Monsieur Le Goff posed the following questions: ‘Is heresy a matter for simple people or for the learned? Were there popular heresies and learned heresies? Did they play the same roles in the process of spiritual awareness? How did learned theorising and popular belief relate to the development of that heresy?’

Without a doubt, there were learned heresies throughout the Middle Ages – that is to say, dogmatic, theoretical and intellectual heresies that were the work of theologians or philosophers such as Abelard, Gilbert de la Porée, the Latin Averroists of the thirteenth century and many others. After being accused of divergence from Church orthodoxy, they were condemned as heretics. In view of such learned heretics, one cannot generally assert (as did Monsieur Le Goff) that ‘there is no such thing as an isolated heretic’. To be sure, learned heretics could have followers who were not disciples in heresy, and thus could teach without a heretical sect necessarily being formed. And since the Church sought at all costs to isolate learned heretics, the inverse could also take place; in other words, learned heretics belonged to a social group composed not of fellow heretics, but rather of fellow learned persons. They vied with each other for intellectual standing (‘more wise than it behoveth to be wise’, as St Paul said in Romans 12. 3), without consciously opposing either the faith of the Church or Catholic dogma.

Yet at times learned heretics were indeed at the origin of a popular heresy or of a heretical sect. For example, John Wyclif was certainly a very learned theologian, a master of Oxford University, who only became a heretic after a long life as a professor and without ever wishing to create a heretical sect. Wyclif had almost no learned disciples in England, and it was only after his death that the Lollards became sectaries. On the other hand, despite his posthumous condemnation, his doctrines became popular in Bohemia through professors at the University of Prague. Likewise, Jan Hus died on the pyre at Constance in 1415 without having founded a heretical sect; the group that derived from his doctrines and bore his name did not form until several years after Hus's death. What is certain is that neither Wyclif nor Hus were members of any heretical community, belonging instead to their clerical university group.

The following bibliography is drawn mainly from two lists: (i) the first section of Hilda Lietzmann's ‘Bibliografie Herbert Grundmann’ and (ii) the list of Grundmann's works in the ‘Literature Database for the Middle Ages’ of the Regesta Imperii. It lists published works and articles, together with a selection of encyclopaedia articles and Grundmann's Monumenta reports. The reader should go to Lietzmann's bibliography for its selection of reviews and its fuller lists of Grundmann's short notes, commemorative pieces, Monumenta reports and encyclopaedia articles.

The numbers as well as the contents of Lietzmann's bibliography – 1–95, covering 1926–71 – are followed below. Nos. 60a and 95a denote her afterthought additions. But within the range 1–95 the other numbers followed by letters are our additions, as are also nos. 96–107.

References to Grundmann's works in this volume's Introduction and its translation of Arno Borst's memorial of Grundmann use these bibliography numbers.

1. Studien uber Joachim von Floris, Beiträge zur Kulturgeschichte des Mittelalters und der Renaissance 32 (Leipzig and Berlin, 1927 (Ph.D. dissertation, Leipzig 1926); improved reprint no. 93 below; Italian translation, no. 103.

2. ‘Der Typus des Ketzers in mittelalterlicher Anschauung’, Kultur- und Universalgeschichte. Walter Goetz zu seinem 60. Geburtstage (Leipzig and Berlin, 1927), pp. 91–107; reprinted in no. 98; English translation in this volume, chapter 1.

3. ‘Mystik und Aufklärung im Mittelalter’, Zeitschrift fur deutsche Bildung 4 (1928), 449–55; reprinted in no. 98.

4. ‘Über den Apokalypsen-Kommentar des Minoriten Alexander’, Zentralblatt fur Bibliothekswesen 45 (1928), 713–23; reprinted in no. 99.

5. ‘Die Papstprophetien des Mittelalters’, AKG 19 (1929), 77–138; reprinted in no. 99.

6. ‘Kleine Beiträge über Joachim von Fiore’, ZKG n.s. 11, 48 (1929), 137–65; reprinted in no. 99.

7. ‘Liber de Flore: eine Schrift der Franziskaner-Spiritualen aus dem Anfang des 14. Jahhunderts’, Historisches Jahrbuch 49 (1929), 33–91; reprinted in no. 99.

8. Alexander von Roes, De translatione imperii und Jordanus von Osnabrück, De prerogative Romani imperii, ed. Herbert Grundmann, Quellen zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters und der Renaissance 2 (Leipzig and Berlin 1930).

9. ‘Zur Geschichte der Beginen im 13. Jahrhundert’, AKG 21 (1931), 296–320; reprinted in no. 98.

10. ‘Dante und Joachim von Fiore. Zu Paradiso X–XII’, Deutsches Dante- Jahrbuch n.s. 5, 14 (1932), 210–56; reprinted in nos. 16 and 99.

Inquisitors’ Questions (Interrogatoria)

The first papal inquisitor in northern France during the 1240s was the Dominican Robert le Petit. Known as le Bougre, he earned a villainous reputation for having forced many innocent people into compromising confessions in order to convict them of heresy and condemn them to death by fire. As complaints mounted, he was recalled by Pope Gregory IX and actually imprisoned by his religious order. The chronicler of the Senones cloister in the Vosges in the bishopric of Toul, the Benedictine Richer, recounted a particularly astonishing story. Robert was very learned and eloquent, second to none in Paris, but – it was said – thought about and desired fame excessively. Using diabolical means, he prepared a document (cartula) that he only had to place upon one's head to cause that person helplessly to declare everything the inquisitor wanted to hear. One day, during his sermon, he saw a beautiful woman, and he asked her to come to him after the sermon. Expecting that he wanted to hear her confession, she went to him alone; but he pressed her with flattery and threatened that if she would not yield to his desire, he would convict her of heresy and have her burned. But she remained determined. The next day he displayed her to the public, laying his hand on her head and asking her whether she belonged to the heretical sect. She agreed and rejected his second question, which was whether she wished to return to the Catholic faith, declaring she would rather die than renounce the sect. And so Robert could say, ‘You have heard how this woman confesses to her shame’, and arrested her.

All marvelled at this, for they had never heard the like from her. Her son, however, a gifted young cleric, asked everywhere how to save his mother from a heretic's death. A sympathetic friend, who knew the Dominican well, advised: ‘When your mother is publicly heard again tomorrow, step up next to her, and when Master Robert lays his hand on her head, grab his hand – you are certainly stronger than he is – and take away the cartula you find under the hand; hold onto it and ask Master Robert to ask his mother again about her faith.’

In 1928, the young Dr Grundmann invoked Joseph Bernhart's warning against any man ‘who steps out into the deep night with a weak flame, barely illuminating his own face’. In 1950, the mature Professor criticised the German attitude ‘Everyone walks through the darkness of history with his own light, and he feels enlightened in his blindness’. And in his old age the President of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica elaborated on Goethe’s phrase ‘Where it is going, who knows? He can hardly recall where he came from’, saying in 1967: ‘We historians attempt to recall this and to grasp how it came about; we do this by projecting into the future, always with the wish that it will lead to the good life.’ Where his own thought and action originated, and where it was headed, Herbert Grundmann was reluctant to say; when he did so it was tailored to a certain audience. But now that this life that clarified so much has been fulfilled, one may try to illuminate the face of the man who lived it. The motivation should be neither private curiosity nor professional reverence; a life so frankly consistent across forty years as these three citations indicate could teach us how we might live with history today – and that we must know.

Grundmann never hid where he came from but, rather, mocked himself with the remark that he shared his speech patterns with Otto the Great, ore iucundo saxonizans (‘with a mouth fit for Saxon’). Among his ancestors who worked as small-scale peasants and artisans in eastern Saxony, he particularly loved a teacher who – a bit of a black sheep in his family – emigrated to America. As determined as he was to move beyond his predecessors’ horizons, however, he retained their values: thrifty and industrious management, respect for solid craftsmanship, and quiet self-confidence based on accomplishment. His father rose from trading in yarn to become the joint owner of a stocking factory, and wished that his only son would eventually take over and expand the firm. But the young Grundmann resisted commercial gain in the absence of artisanal merit; even in his childhood he subscribed to Jesus’ motto of voluntary poverty (Matthew 19. 21) which Valdes and Francis had encountered in a similar setting.