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Women religious virtuosae from the middle ages: a case pattern and analytic model of types
Sociology of Religion, Spring, 2002 by Barbara R. Walters
Constable (1996:4) views the reforms of the eleventh and twelfth centuries as taking shape in four overlapping stages (cf. Bloch 1961). The first stage (1040 to 1070) encompassed moral reform among the clergy, especially regarding issues of simony and celibacy. The second under Pope Gregory VII freed the church from lay control and established the supremacy of the Pope. The third (1100 to 1130) witnessed the last phase of the investiture struggle and increasingly emphasized monasticism. The fourth (1130 to 1160) culminated in an intense concern for the moral reform of all Christians.
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The fourth stage of reformation gave way to the vast social changes that formed the backdrop of the diverse religious movements in the thirteenth century; it provides the historical context within which the lives and work of the women analyzed herein took shape. Significant socio-economic transformations include the introduction of a monetary exchange system, vast economic expansion, the emergence of a mercantile stratum, urbanization, increased opportunities for lay education, and vernacular translations of the Bible. The contextual transformations resulted in increased participation on the part of new lay groups in existing forms of religious and monastic life as well as increased participation in new heterodox groups.
A common denominator among the burgeoning religious movements of the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries was their root in asceticism fostered by a spirit of reform and the desire to return to the simple lifestyle of Jesus and his disciples (cf. Kaelber 1998). These exemplars in simplicity formed a striking contrast to the Church, a legal entity with the right to taxation as well as the means and will to police and sanction opinions departing from official doctrines (Leff 1967). This was a recurring theme for the Church; Schluchter (1996: 213) well notes that the "most important ideals of the Christian religious movements, poverty and the apostolic life, represented a permanent challenge to the hierocracy."
Late medieval heresies indeed most often grew out of orthodox beliefs and practices from within the church, more especially from heterodoxies that emerged from practicing the apostolic obedience to an extreme (Leff 1967:2). Apostolic imitation of the life of Jesus formed a groundswell of rebellion against the official church opulence of the twelfth century; it was perhaps only the strength and tenacity of the movement that resulted in papal efforts to incorporate unlicensed and proliferating apostolic preachers within the Church. When Innocent III assumed the papacy in 1198 he wielded a double-edged sword. He conceded to the demands for recognition by apostolic preachers and devotees to apostolic imitation so long as they displayed appropriate reverence for the sacerdotal hierarchy and orthodox doctrine. However, at the same time he prosecuted heretics to the fullest, using new means (Grundmann 1955). Henceforth, what became defined as heresy resulted from the failure of groups to gain ecclesiastic recogniti on and from subsequent sectarian developments that transformed the religious impulse into ideologies with explicitly anti-sacerdotal character (Leff 1967; cf. Schluchter 1967:213).
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