Patrick J.

Geary
Peasant Religion in Medieval Europe
In: Cahiers d'Extrme-Asie, Vol. 12, 2001. pp. 185-209.
Rsum
Le christianisme a commenc comme un phnomne urbain et s'est lentement diffus dans le monde rural, absorbant sans
rupture srieuse les pratiques pr-chrtiennes centres autour des offrandes faites aux divinits locales dans les forts et les
cours d'eau afin d'assurer la fertilit des rcoltes et du btail ainsi que la sant et la protection des communauts locales. A partir
du douzime sicle, le lieu de la pratique religieuse devint la paroisse. Dans cet espace, les paysans taient inclus en tant que
spectateurs dans les crmonies liturgiques officielles, mais ils taient impliqus plus activement dans les groupes pnitentiels,
dans la vnration des saints, dans les plerinages, et dans la formulation et l' accomplissement de vux faits en change d'une
assistance divine. L'valuation savante de telles pratiques a t rendue plus complexe par la polmique chrtienne et par les
dfinitions de la religion en gnral et du christianisme en particulier. Certains chercheurs identifient le christianisme mdival
l'orthodoxie officielle tandis que d'autres affirment que la religion paysanne est un systme culturel complexe en tension
dynamique avec la religion savante. D'autres chercheurs encore prfrent parler de religion locale, plutt que de recourir aux
termes d'lite et de populaire.
Citer ce document / Cite this document :
J. Geary Patrick. Peasant Religion in Medieval Europe. In: Cahiers d'Extrme-Asie, Vol. 12, 2001. pp. 185-209.
doi : 10.3406/asie.2001.1170
http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/asie_0766-1177_2001_num_12_1_1170
PEASANT
RELIGION IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE*
Patrick J. Geary
Le christianisme a commenc comme un phnomne urbain et s'est
lentement diffus dans le monde rural, absorbant sans rupture srieuse les
pratiques pr-chrtiennes centres autour des offrandes faites aux divinits
locales dans les forts et les cours d'eau afin d'assurer la fertilit des
rcoltes et du btail ainsi que la sant et la protection des communauts
locales. A partir du douzime sicle, le lieu de la pratique religieuse
devint la paroisse. Dans cet espace, les paysans taient inclus en tant que
spectateurs dans les crmonies liturgiques officielles, mais ils taient
impliqus plus activement dans les groupes pnitentiels, dans la
vnration des saints, dans les plerinages, et dans la formulation et
l' accomplissement de vux faits en change d'une assistance divine.
L'valuation savante de telles pratiques a t rendue plus complexe par la
polmique chrtienne et par les dfinitions de la religion en gnral et du
christianisme en particulier. Certains chercheurs identifient le
christianisme mdival l'orthodoxie officielle tandis que d'autres
affirment que la religion paysanne est un systme culturel complexe en
tension dynamique avec la religion savante. D'autres chercheurs encore
prfrent parler de religion locale, plutt que de recourir aux termes
d'lite et de populaire.
Providing a synthesis of the studies of European peasant religion in the
Middle Ages demands first that one place the European peasantry within its
spatial, social, and historical dimensions. Second, it requires a review of the
complex and hotly debated question of medieval religion or religious culture.
Both are fraught with difficulties, but without these steps, there is no possibility
of dealing with the complex issues of peasant religion in Europe. The following
essay is divided into three parts. The first presents a chronology of religious
conversion and peasant history to roughly the year thousand. The second
reflects on the methodological and conceptual issues raised by the evidence
presented in the first part. The third then looks at peasant religion in Europe to
the end of the Middle Ages.
* I am grateful to Richard Mower for advice in preparing the revisions of this paper.
Cahiers d'Extrme-Asie 12 (2001) : 185-209.
186 Patrick J. Geary
The Making of the Medieval Peasantry
The western European peasantry derived from the amalgamation of
traditional European populations in the conquered Roman Empire and migrants
from the Germanic regions on the empire's borders across the third through
tenth centuries. Although once the Germanic migrations were termed invasions
and seen as moments of major rupture, increasingly these events are seen as
more gradual and certainly less disruptive than often imagined.1
Nevertheless,
important changes took place in the nature of rural society in this period.
Roman agriculture relied to a great extent on slave labor on large estates
owned by magnates or by the emperor and the state. In addition, an unknown
percentage of agricultural workers were tenant farmers who, while free before
the law, worked the lands of the aristocracy. Small landowners, while not
unknown in western Europe, apparently made up a very small proportion of the
agricultural population and in the course of the third through sixth centuries
seem to have been pressed into economic and political dependence on magnates
who owned vast estates and who dominated public life. In northern and western
Europe, late Roman agriculture was seriously disrupted in border areas during
the third century by internal as well as external problems and a falling
population due in large part to plague. The traditional villa or estate system was
under stress if not disappearing. Even in other areas that experienced less
physical disruption, late Roman agrarian society suffered under the increasing
burden of taxation to support a large and inefficient military. An increasingly
oppressive and differentially enforced tax system drove peasants to abandon the
estates on which they worked and to flee to areas where powerful aristocrats
could provide them protection from state demands. By the fourth century,
imperial laws sought to ensure tax revenues by making trades, including
farming, hereditary obligations and by binding agricultural workers to the lands
on which they lived. These coloni, while remaining free persons before the law,
lost the independence to sell their labor to other landlords or to migrate to
towns or to other less burdensome regions. In regions of Gaul and Spain, rural
populations including both peasants and landlords revolted against central
government agents. These uprisings of "bacaudae" were ruthlessly repressed, but
the result was the disruption of normal agricultural production.2 As a result
1 In general on the European peasantry see Werner Rsener, The Peasantry of
Europe (Oxford, 1994). The literature on peasantry is enormous and the arguments about
the definition of peasant are numerous. In general see Eric R. Wolf, Peasants
(Engelwood Cliffs, 1966); Teodor Shanin, d., Peasants and Peasant Societies: Selected
Readings (New York, 1971).
2 On the Bacaudae see E. A. Thompson, "Peasant Revolts in Late Roman Gaul and Spain," Past and Present 2 (1952): 11-23; Chris Wickham, "The Other Transition: From
the Ancient World to Feudalism," Past and Present 103 (1984), pp. 3-36, esp. pp. 16-17.
Peasant Religion in Medieval Europe 1 87
large areas of the empire were termed "agri deserti" or abandoned areas,
although they may not have been so thoroughly abandoned by a population as
no longer accessible to the Roman fiscal authorities.3
The settlement of barbarian peoples within the Empire, beginning in the
third century, was in part a response to this depopulation. Defeated enemies
were settled in abandoned areas and used both to return the lands to production
and to provide soldiers for the army. Later, beginning in the late fourth
century, whole barbarian armies, together with their wives and children such as
the Goths, were allowed to settle in Roman provinces. These warriors tended to
settle initially into towns and strategic garrisons, drawing their income from tax
revenue assigned them from rural estates and thus having little effect on the
indigenous peasantry. In regions such as Burgundy and Gaul north of the Loire,
barbarian warriors did merge into the peasantry, but generally this took place
without major dislocation of existing populations or cultural traditions. Large
estates remained the rule, worked by slaves and coloni.4
In the Early Middle Ages (roughly sixth through tenth centuries), slavery
gradually disappeared. Large estates moved from production based on gangs of
slave workers to a system of sharecropping. Slaves and colons alike were
assigned individual plots of land and were expected to provide a fixed annual
payment in kind as well as a specified number of days' labor on that portion of
the estate still worked for the direct benefit of the owner. As the distinction
between forms of labor and economic status blurred, the legal status of slave
and free likewise became less significant with the result that by the eleventh
century chattel slavery was largely unknown outside of border areas (the Slavic
east and the Spanish Muslim frontier). During this same time, the nuclear
family became the basic unit of peasant society, a change that probably
contributed, from the late ninth century, to the first significant population
growth since Antiquity.5
3 On agricultural economy in Late Antiquity see Andrew Watson,
"agriculture" in
G. W. Bowersock, Peter Brown, and Oleg Grabar, eds., Late Antiquity: A Guide to the
Postclassical World (Cambridge, MA, 1999), pp. 279-282; and Tamara Lewit, Agricultural
Production in the Roman Economy 200-400 (Oxford, 1991). On the transition to medieval
forms of agricultural production see Chris Wickham, "The Other Transition: From the
Ancient World to Feudalism."
4 The question of how barbarians were settled into the Empire has been a much
debated issue in recent historiography. See especially Walter Goffart, Barbarians and
Romans AD 418-584: The Techniques of Accommodation (Princeton, 1980); Herwig
Wolfram and Andreas Schwarcz, eds., Anerkennung und Integration, Zu den wirtschaftlichen
Grundlagen der Vlkerwanderungszeit 400-600 (Vienna, 1988); and Herwig Wolfram, The
Roman Empire and its Germanic Peoples (Berkeley, 1997), esp. pp. 112-116.
5 See generally Adriaan Verhulst, "La gense domaniale classique en France au
haut Moyen ge," in Agricoltura e mondo rurale in Occidente neWalto medioevo. Settimane
di studio del Centro Italiano di studi sull'alto medioevo, no. 13 (Spoleto, 1966), pp. 135-
188 Patrick J. Geary
Although assigned to parcels of land, most peasants lived in loosely
organized villages. Recently some scholars have argued that the small, nucleated
village that is familiar since the high middle ages is a relatively late creation of
the tenth and eleventh centuries. However abundant evidence exists of villae
and vici, rural population centers that were also centers of economic and
political authority, to suggest that villages, if not in the same form as today,
were the locus of population residence in the early middle ages.6
The nature of peasant religion in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages
is extremely difficult to assess. Although recently the Christian nature of Late
Roman Gaul has been emphasized, it is generally assumed that Christianity into
the sixth century was largely an urban phenomenon.7 Elsewhere, traditional
religions, incorporated into Roman polytheism without serious disruption,
continued to dominate cultic activities. These focused on offerings to local
divinities in forests and streams in order to ensure fertility of crops and animals
"and on the health and protection of local communities. Certainly the central
institutions of Christianity were urban centered and the episcopal organization
of the Church was based on Roman towns and their administrative districts.
Monasteries were not unknown in Gaul and Italy from the early fifth century,
but these tended to be aristocratic institutions and their connection to the
religious life of the rural population was apparently
minimal.8
Christianity
spread to the countryside in Gaul in a serious manner only from the seventh
century, when bishops began to make a serious attempt to Christianize rural
populations. Although they did not establish anything approaching a system of
rural churches, they did encourage the appearance of rural cult centers in vici
and villae served by a local clergy. Such efforts intensified in the eighth and
ninth centuries, when small private churches established on estates as well as
160; David Herlihy, Medieval Households (Cambridge, MA, 1985); Werner Rosener,
Peasants in the Middle Ages (Urbana, 1992); and the essays in Werner Rosener, d.,
Strukturen der Grundherrschaft imfruhen Mittelalter (Gottingen, 1989).
6 J. Chapelot and R. Fossier, in The Village and the House in the Middle Ages
(London, 1985), argued that villages did not exist in the early Middle Ages. This
argument has been largely dismissed. See Chris Wickham, "Rural Society in Carolingian
Europe," in Rosamond McKitterick, d., The New Cambridge Medieval History
(Cambridge, 1995), p. 529.
7 See in particular Yitzhak Hen, Culture and Religion in Merovingian Gaul, AD 481-
151 (Leiden, 1995).
8 J. N. Hillgarth, d., Christianity and Paganism, 350-750, (Philadelphia, 1986),
provides an excellent selection of sources on the Christianization of Europe in
translation with an intelligent commentary. As much as possible the translations that
follow are taken from Hillgarth's collection. In general on early monasticism see
Friedrich Prinz, Friihes Monchtum im Frankenreich: Kultur und Gesellschafi in Gallien, den
Rheinlnden und Bayern am Beispiel der monastischen Entwicklung (4. bis 8. Jahrhunderi)
(Munich, 2nd edition Darmstadt, 1988).
Peasant Religion in Medieval Europe 1 89
private churches established by monasteries increasingly assumed a role in the
liturgical and pastoral life of the rural population.9
Archaeological evidence points to diffused cult sites in rural areas but the
process of the replacement of traditional agrarian cults by Christianity is
difficult to trace. Written sources describing the religious beliefs and practices
of the peasant population of Europe in this period are extremely rare and either
anecdotal or prescriptive. Those narrative texts that do exist are intended for
elite audiences and present images of the rural population that are deeply
colored by ideology and rhetoric. Nevertheless it appears fairly certain that
local religious centers which had preexisted Roman settlement and that had
been assimilated into Roman cults through the process of interprtatif) romana,
that is, identifying Gallic or Germanic deities with those of the Roman
pantheon, continued to be frequented well into the sixth century. These cult
sites included both temples and sacred groves.10 Peasants looked to rites
associated with these divinities for blessings of their fields and the assurance of
their fertility. As late as 397 in the Alpine region of Trent in northern Italy,
Christian missionaries who attempted to prohibit recent converts from
participating in such rites were murdered.11 However such dramatic actions
were rare. More generally, peasant resistance to religious change continued in a
more passive but highly effective manner.
Christian bishops attempted to eliminate such practices by appealing to
landowners to eliminate cult sites on their estates and to take responsibility for
the actions of their peasants. In a sermon of Maximus of Turin (died 415), the
bishop warns landowners that by keeping silence and permitting sacrifices to
idols, they are consenting to these practices. "You therefore brother, when you
observe your peasant sacrificing and do not forbid the offering, sin, because
even if you did not assist the sacrifice yourself you gave permission for it."12
Maximus described rustic cult sites as follows:
And if you went into the fields you would see wooden altars and stone
images, suitable to a rite in which insensible gods are served at moldering
9 In general on conversion of the countryside see Peter Brown, The Rise of Western
Christendom (Oxford, 1996), pp. 95-111; Arnold Angenendt, Das Friihmittelalter. Die
abendlndische Christenheit von 400 bis 900 (Stuttgart, 1990); C. E. Stancliffe, "From town
to country: the Christianisation of the Touraine 370-600," Studies in Church History 16
(1979), pp. 43-59; and Paul Fouracre, "The Work of Audoenus of Rouen and Eligius of
Noyon in Extending Episcopal Influence from the Town to the Country in Seventh-
Century Neustria," Studies in Church History 16 (1979), pp. 77-91. On the conversion of
England see Henry Mayr-Harting, The Coming of Christianity to Anglo-Saxon England.
Third edition, (University Park, 1991).
10 Hillgarth, Christianity and Paganism, p. 54, citing Caesarius of Aries, Sermon 53.
11 Hillgarth, p. 53.
12 Maximus of Turin, Sermon 107, Hillgard, p. 56.
190 Patrick J. Geary
altars. If you woke up earlier [than you usually do] you would see a rustic
reeling with wine. You ought to know that he is what they call either a
devotee of Diana [that is, an epileptic or one who is moon-mad] or a
soothsayer...13
For Maximus and other Christian bishops, the gods to whom peasants offered
sacrifice were not figments of the imagination but demons, dark powers
opposed to the Christian God. Thus the continuation of pagan rituals was
understood as the veneration of the Devil and his agents. In the words of
Martin of Braga, a sixth century Spanish bishop, "The demons took their names
so that [the rustics] might worship them as gods and offer them sacrifices and
imitate the deeds of those whose names they invoke. The demons also
persuaded men to build them temples, to place there images of statues of
wicked men and to set up altars to them, to which they might pour out the
blood not only of animals but even of men. Besides, many demons, expelled
from heaven, also preside either in the sea or in rivers or springs or forests; men
ignorant of God also worship them as gods and sacrifice to them."14
Such bishops encouraged the use of force against peasants to end sacrifices
to local deities, and thus they concentrated their efforts on inspiring the elite to
police the masses. At the same time, they willingly redirected local fertility
rituals toward the Christian God. An example of this is the establishment in
Rome of the Major Litanies, a procession held in Rome on April 25, which was
the date of the Robigalia, a procession to propitiate the god Robigus and thus
prevent rust-blight from attacking the young wheat. In time these litanies
spread throughout western Europe.15
This approach of suppression, enlistment of secular authorities, and
accommodation to traditional rituals when possible continued in subsequent
centuries and is evident in religious and secular legislation through the tenth
century. Thus, for example, in the sixth century King Childerbert I (ca. 533-558)
decreed that "any men who, once admonished, shall not at once cast out images
and idols, dedicated to the devil, made by men, from their fields, or shall prevent
bishops from destroying them, shall not be free, once they have given sureties,
until they appear in Our Presence."16 Equally condemned were individuals who
claimed ability to control the weather or who presided at sacrifices. Such
condemnations in Spain, Gaul, and Italy suggest that these practices were
widespread and continued well into the ninth century and even beyond.
13 Ibid.
14 Martin of Braga, On the Castigation of Rustics, Hillgarth, pp. 58-59.
15 See Paul de Clerck, "Litanie," in Andr Vauchez, d., Dictionnaire encyclopdique
du Moyen Age (Paris, 1997), I, p. 898.
16 MGH Capitularia I, no. 2. P. 2. Translation, Hillgarth, p. 108.
Peasant Religion in Medieval Europe 1 9 1
At the same time that veneration of idols, auguries, and the like were being
condemned and suppressed, the rulers of the barbarian kingdoms that
developed within the boundaries of the Roman Empire were supporting
Christian churches by granting them and their clergy important roles in the
control of ordinary life. Churches became places of exile to which individuals
fleeing public justice or private retribution could find temporary haven. Bishops
were given control over marriage and the authority to punish those whose
marriages were deemed incestuous. Clergy were accorded particular protection
from violence or the powers of public justice.
The assumption of the Frankish kingship by the Carolingian family in the
mid-eighth century marked a major increase in public support given the church.
Under the Carolingian rulers, particularly Charlemagne (768-814), the
monarchy actively supported the implantation of orthodox Christianity within
the kingdom. Churches were accorded a tithe or one-tenth of agricultural
production for their support; royal authorities sought to ensure that the clergy
serving in rural churches, whether under the authority of bishops or private,
proprietary churches, had a minimum competency in liturgy and lived according
to church laws. Bishops were required to visit the churches in their dioceses and
to ensure that the population did not practice "pagan rites"
including sacrifices
for the dead, auguries, divinations, sacrifices, or incantations.17 Sacred groves,
stones and fountains where rituals were performed were to be destroyed.18
Bishops and their clergy were to teach the basics of Christian belief in their
dioceses, so that the people would believe that:
Father and son and holy spirit were one God, eternal, invisible, who
created heaven and earth, the sea and all that are in it, and that there is
one deity, substance and majesty in three persons of the Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit. And let them teach that the son of God is incarnate of
the holy spirit and born of Mary ever virgin for the salvation and
redemption of the human race, he died, was buried and rose again on
the third day and ascended into heaven, and how he is to come in divine
majesty to judge all men according to their individual merits and how
the impious will be sent into eternal fire with the devil for their sins,
and the just to life eternal with Christ and his angels. Likewise it is to be
preached to them concerning the resurrection of the dead, that they
might know and believe that that they will receive the reward of the
same body."19
In terms of practice, Carolingian rulers ordered that Sundays be kept free from
work and that all attend church on Sundays and feast days.
Capit. IV, p. 45 c. 6.
Capit.. I, p. 59 c. 65.
Capit. I, p. 612 c. 82.
192 Patrick J. Geary
In areas in which Christianity had never been established, or in areas such as
England and parts of Germany in which Christianity had largely disappeared
during the Barbarian migrations, the process of Christianization of the
countryside operated somewhat similarly. Pope Gregory I (590-604) instructed
Augustine of Canterbury, a bishop he sent to convert the Anglo Saxons, not to
destroy pagan temples but rather to remove the idols, bless the edifice with holy
water, and put relics of the saints in the place of the pagan cult objects. In
general this became a pattern for Christian accommodation to traditional
religious usage. Saints were substituted for local divinities and populations were
urged to venerate the physical remains of these saints. In regions such as
Saxony, in which Christianization was an integral part of conquest, conversion
was much more violent. For over thirty years, the Frankish kingdom fought to
subdue the Saxons, for whom religious cult was an integral part of their
independence. The central cult site of the Saxons was plundered and destroyed
by Charlemagne, and thousands of Saxons were slaughtered while others were
offered death or baptism. Here, practices such as cremation of the dead,
consorting with "witches" sacrifices to the gods, were punishable by death, as
were failure to keep the Christian fast of Lent or refusing baptism. At the same
time, the Christian church was privileged in Saxony both by material
concessions, protection extended to the clergy, and also considerable latitude
granted clergy to mitigate the otherwise draconian punishments specified
against the newly subjected Saxons.20
In regions such as Bavaria, where Christianity had survived the withdrawal
of Roman institutions in the fifth century and popular Frankish and especially
Anglo-Saxon missionaries complained of indigenous clergy, poorly educated
and subject to no bishop but celebrating their liturgies in the open country in
the huts of farmers. The Anglo-Saxon missionary Boniface particularly
complained that these priests did not teach doctrine or demand confessional
adherence from the people that they baptized, and when he attempted to
eliminate this clergy they were protected by the people. Boniface complained to
Pope Zacharias that these local clergy "live according to their own caprice,
protected by the people against the bishops, so that these have no check upon
their scandalous conduct. They gather about them a like-minded following and
carry on in their false ministry, not in a catholic church, but in the open country
in the huts of farm laborers, where their ignorance and stupid folly can be
hidden from the bishops."21
At the same time that Carolingian bishops, supported by royal authority,
20 In general on the conquest and conversion of the Saxons see Angenendt, Das
Frubmittlealter, pp. 296-299.
21 Letter 64, Ephraim Emerton, ed. and transi., The Letters of Saint Boniface, (New
York, 1940), p. 144.
Peasant Religion in Medieval Europe 1 93
were attempting to convert pagans and to introduce ritual and doctrinal
conformity in Christian communities throughout their empire, churchmen
were also introducing the practice of private confession of sins and penance as a
basic form of religious and social correction. This practice, which originated in
Ireland and then spread first to England before reaching the Continent in the
eighth century, encouraged priests to investigate the personal and private lives
of ordinary Christians. To this end, booklets called penitentials, often
anonymous or attributed on very weak grounds to well-known religious leaders
of the past, listed offenses into which confessors were to inquire as well as
penances, usually periods of fasting, that were to be done to expiate specific
offenses.22 Penitentials distinguished between clerics and laity and cover a wide
spectrum of activities from public deeds such as murder to questions of sexual
practice and "pagan" rituals. In the tenth century penitential of Bishop
Burchard of Worms, for example, the priest was to ask if an individual has
employed diviners; has made knots and incantations "and those various
enchantments which evil men, swineherds, ploughmen, and sometimes hunters
make"; has been present at or consented to the practice of women who begin
their weaving with incantations; and if he or she has collected medicinal herbs
with evil incantations rather than with the Lord's prayer.23
The extent to which such penitentials reflect actual popular practice is
widely argued. Some scholars, noting that many of these practices appear in
texts from the seventh to eleventh centuries assert that they are simply literary
topoi, repeated by subsequent compilers even if the practices described long
ceased to exist. Others argue that the decision to include them in manuals of
confessors suggest that they continue to be practices alive in rural societies. We
shall return to this question, but in any case these penitentials do make clear
that however successful, by the ninth and tenth centuries, European peasant
population was drawn very directly and personally into official Christian belief
and practice. Through access to liturgy and preaching and through the intimate
examination of actions, the vast majority of Europe's population was, by the
year thousand, in direct contact with official Christianity.
22 For an introduction to the vast literature concerning penitentials see C. Vogel,
Les 'Libri paenitentiaks1 [Typologie des sources du Moyen ge occidental 27] (Turnhout,
1978); Arnold Angenendt, "Thologie und Liturgie des mittelalterlichen Toten-
Memoria," in Karl Schmid and J. Wollasch, eds., Memoria: Der geschichtliche Zeugniswert
des liturgischen Gedenkens im Mittelalter (Munich, 1984), pp. 79-199, esp. pp. 118-164.
Many of these Penetentials are translated by John T. McNeill and Helena M. Gamer,
Medieval Handbooks of Penance: A Translation of the principal Libri Poenitentiales (New
York, 1938).
23 Burchardus, Deere torum Libri XX. PI 140: Book 19, cols 949-1018, entitled
Corrector et Medicus, is Burchard's penitential. For a translation of portions of Burchart's
Corrector, see John T. McNeill, pp. 321-345. The quote is from p. 330.
194 Patrick J. Geary
Interpretation
How all of this legislative and anecdotal evidence is to be interpreted in
order to understand peasant religion is extremely controversial. An essential
problem is that without exception scholars attempting to study religion are
either themselves either Christians who see themselves a part of the tradition
they are studying, or at least they are using the language and assumptions of
Christian values as though they were analytic categories and tools for
interpreting the past. Religion itself is hardly an analytical category but rather
a product of western historical and polemical development. Religio is a Roman
term derived from the word "to bind" and since early Roman times refers to
those activities that bind humans and deities, both in the passive sense of being
constrained and in the active sense of a sense of obligation. Rhetorically the
term has contrasted, since Roman times, with superstitio, but the use of these
terms is always polemical and changes through history. Thus essentialist
definitions of religion and their contrast with magic or superstition are of little
use historically, just as attempts to define a religious sphere from a secular
sphere imply anachronistic assumptions about human behavior that destroy the
integrity of social thought and practice. Generally, such essentialist definitions
imply a post-Reformation and in particular a nineteenth century notion of
religion characterized primarily by a set of personal beliefs and secondarily
appropriate ritual practices. For many scholars, then, the types of peasant
behavior described above were considered superstition or pagan survivals if not
outright paganism. Christianity consisted in orthodox belief such as that
demanded by the Carolingian rulers and participation in the sacramental
system of the Church.
Thus until recently many scholars argued that peasant religion did not
become Christian until after the reformation of the sixteenth century. Prior to
that time, peasants and indeed much of Europe's population was seen to be
engaged in magical or superstitious practices that were survivals of pagan folk
tradition. Keith Thomas, writing about the later middle ages goes still
further, arguing that "the magic of the medieval church" included not only
the myriad practices by which sacred objects such as relics, crosses, and holy
water were used to ensure miraculous outcomes in healing, protection,
divination, and the like, but even the central rituals of the Christian church,
especially baptism and the Eucharistie transformation of bread and wine into
the body and blood of Christ.24
A less extreme position is that taken by scholars who will see the
Christianization of Europe as complete by the year thousand, although the
24 Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (New York, 1 97 1).
Peasant Religion in Medieval Europe 1 95
nature of this Christianity is much disputed. A recent variation on this theme is
a study of Valerie Flint entitled The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe, in
which she argues that practices condemned as magical in late Antiquity by
Christians came in the course of the early middle ages to be incorporated into
Christian practice itself.25 These included astrology, demonology, onirology, as
well as the use of crosses and relics as talismans and prayers as charms. For her,
the compromise between Christianity and magic was a significant and,
ultimately, positive step in the accommodation of medieval Christianity to the
realities of preexisting belief and practice.
Among scholars less willing to see medieval Christianity as a magical
system, there has been a strong tendency to distinguish between popular
religion and official or elite religion, although such distinctions continue to
generate enormous disagreement. At one extreme are those who argue that the
only religious system operative in the Middle Ages was Christianity, which
reached the entire population. The most articulate proponent of this approach
is John van Engen, who has argued that medieval Christendom, gradually
created in the course of the early Middle Ages, included all of society in a
common system of belief and practice directed by the clergy and summarized in
Church teachings. Taking the Carolingian program of expanding access to the
sacramental system of Christianity as well as the determination to inculcate
doctrinal conformity, he argues "in medieval Christianity religious culture
rested ultimately on 'faith' or 'belief,'
meaning professed assent to certain
propositions as well as inner conviction."26 This unity of belief united peasant,
priest and king, and was diffused downward in society through the work of
bishops, priests, and monks in the exercise of their pastoral care. Texts of the
sort cited above hinting at practices labeled by bishops and clerics as
superstition or magic, he sees as evidence of increasingly marginalized survivals
or mere commonplaces repeated from the fifth century to the eleventh in
conciliar decrees, polemical texts, and royal edicts but not reflecting actual
practice. In this model, then, peasant religion is identical with official
Christianity, diffused downward through the entire society. Peasant religion
differs in no essential way from the Christianity of the clergy or the elites.
A variation on such an approach is that of the late Italian historian Raoul
Manselli, who distinguished between popular religion and "folklore."27 Popular
religion he saw as a diffused version of officiai Christianity taught to the
masses. "Folklore," in which he included "pagan survivals" hinted at in texts
such as the penitentials and Carolingian legislation, he saw as not religion at all
25 Valerie I. J. Flint, The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe (Princeton, 1991).
26 John van Engen, "The Christian Middle Ages as an Historiographical Problem,"
m American Historical Review 91(1986), pp. 519-552. Quote is from page 545.
27 Raoul Manselli, La religione popolare nelMedioevo (secc. VJ-XII) (Turin, 1974).
196 Patrick J. Geary
but rather popular traditions, acts, magic formulae, or stories that have no
religious significance.
For scholars who wish, on the other hand, to grant a religious meaning to
the cultural practices of Europe's peasantry that fall outside of the officially
sanctioned Christianity, difficulties arise in defining the relationship between
the culture of these people and that of others. The most simplistic model,
elaborated rhetorically but not defended in any sustained manner and in fact
repudiated by scholars such as Jean-Claude Schmitt, to whom it is most often
attributed, would posit two medieval cultures.28 The first, elite culture, is
dominated by the written word, belongs to the clergy, and is expressed in Latin.
The other, popular culture, is oral, vernacular, and belongs to the masses.
Sources such as the penitentials are the primary evidence for the existence of
the second, since it is by its very nature incapable of leaving testimony itself.
The problems with such a formulation are numerous. First, such a vision
suggests that Europe's population belonged to separate, distinct cultural
spheres, an impossibility if one understands culture in an anthropological sense.
Moreover, the social categories of elite and popular do not coincide with the
other elements of the definition, clerical, lay, vernacular, Latin, oral and
written. Lay aristocrats had considerable access, directly or through secretaries,
to written culture, both in Latin and increasingly, in the vernacular. The
"ecclesiastical proletariat" consisted of poorly educated priests who were drawn
from, and shared the cultural horizons, of the communities they served.
Moreover, in both ritual and belief, peasant and priest, serf and king, shared
much in common.
For all of these reasons, scholars such as Schmitt prefer to talk about
medieval culture as "... multipolar (and not dual), interactional (and not
subordinate to univocal currents), and attentive to other mediations and
mediators."29 Rather than suggesting a simple opposition between Church and
populace, one must consider the specific positions within the "religious field" of
urban and rural clergy, monks, parish priests, and the various social classes that
comprised the laity. Relations across this complex matrix are not simply the
result of "vulgarization" of an elite cultural model down the sociocultural
ladder, but a complicated process Schmitt refers to as the "folklorization" of
learned culture whereby elements most characteristic of peasant tradition are
absorbed by learned, Latin clerical tradition.
28 At least some have so interpreted Jean-Claude Schmitt, "'Religion populaire' et
culture folklorique," Annales 3 1 (1976), pp. 941-953.
29 Jean-Claude Schmitt, Religione, folklore e societ nelPOccidente mdivale (Rome,
1988), especially his introduction, pp. 1-27, which was translated as "Religion, Folklore,
and Society in the Medieval West," in Lester K. Little and Barbara Rosenwein, eds.,
Debating the Middle Ages: Issues and Readings (Oxford, 1998), pp. 376-387.
Peasant Religion in Medieval Europe 1 97
For similar reasons, some scholars have largely avoided the term popular
religion, popular culture, or folkloric culture altogether, preferring to talk
instead of "local religion." William Christian, in two extremely important
studies of religion in sixteenth century Spain, argues that "the only defensible
distinction involved between popular religion and whatever else it is being
compared with is that between religion as practiced and religion as
prescribed."30 He prefers instead to talk about "local religion,"
by which he
means to underscore that all practice takes place in a specific community, and
over time religious "practice becomes practices" as forms of prescribed religion
are carried on in a particular place with an inherent conservatism that in time
produces local variation. Of course, some people, a minority, did not think in
local terms, and yet these are with rare exceptions those who controlled literary
traditions and thus are our primary access to the records of culture. One must
then use these sources with great care and pay particular attention to what Jean-
Claude Schmitt, following Aron Gurevich, terms the bearers of a "middle
culture," those persons who serve intentionally or not as intermediaries
between local and universal traditions.31 In the second half of the Middle Ages,
roughly the eleventh to the sixteenth century, such intermediaries become
somewhat more common, and through them we are able to trace out more of
what can be termed the outlines of local religion of Europe's peasantry.
However, we must understand that these traditions are not the exclusive
domain of the peasantry and ought not to be assumed to be either a separate
religious culture or mere superstition in opposition to "real" Christianity.
Religious Practice 1000-1500
Carolingian churchmen, like reformation theologians, placed great
emphasis on belief. There is little evidence to suggest that this emphasis was
universally shared either by the clergy or the laity of Europe. Even among elite
clerics, concerns about orthodoxy (that is, right confessing) were matched by
concerns about orthopraxis, right behavior. Thus, for example, the uniform
performance of rituals, the acceptance of the "right" date for the celebration of
Easter, the proper means of tonsuring clergy, were all central issues of concern.
In examining peasant religion, it is all the more proper to concentrate on
practice, rather than to be seduced into anachronistic concerns about right
belief. Belief grew in importance within the educated clergy from the eleventh
30 William A. Christian, Jr., Apparitions in Late Medieval and Renaissance Spain
(Princeton, 1981); ibid., Local Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Princeton, 1981).
Citation p. 178.
31 See in particular Aron Gurevich, Medieval Popular Culture: Problems of Belief and
Perception, transi. Jnos M. Bale and Paul A. Holllingsworth (Cambridge, 1988).
198 Patrick J. Geary
century, and by the thirteenth century concerns about deviant belief as well as
practice gave rise to the Inquisition, a system of church courts responsible for
inquiring into the orthodoxy of individuals.32 In time, as we shall see, this
inquisitorial apparatus itself generated heterodox belief among ordinary people
by forcing them to explain motivations behind their actions and thus to
privilege belief systems over practice. For most people, however, systems of
practice focused on the local community, saints, the liturgy, and formulaic
prayer were at the heart of their religion.33
Social and geographical organization: Parishes and Guilds
In the two centuries following the millennium, the gradual expansion and
systematization of local churches was completed with the establishment of a
parish system. Parishes, subdivisions of dioceses, each with its own church
and, at least in theory, its own priest, became the basic unit of Christian
geography. The parish often coincided with a village or lordship, thus
reinforcing the formation of European village systems that remain largely
intact until today. Individual Christians were expected to be baptized in their
local church, to attend Mass and receive the sacraments there, and to be
buried in the parish churchyard.34
Within the community that made up the parish, smaller groups called
confraternities or guilds, which in rural parishes tended to be organizations
within the parish whose function was to maintain the church and pay for its
lighting. In addition, guilds often had individual altars in the church at which
masses were sung for the souls of their members. In the later Middle Ages in
England, smaller groups maintained the church's lighting and provided for its
upkeep. The names of some of these, the maiden's light, the plough light, the
yeoman's light, for example, suggest that these were often groups of people that
may have been organized by age and occupation and may have had social as well
32 John Shinners, has collected an excellent range of sources illuminating medieval
popular religion in his Popular Religion 1000-1500 (Peterborough, Ontario, 1997). For
ease of access, I have quoted from his translations whenever possible.
33 See Herv Martin, Mentalits mdivales XT -XVe
sicles, 2nd edition (Paris, 1998),
esp. pp. 370-376, for a brief summary of peasant religious culture in the later Middle Ages.
34 In general on the development of parish structures see Le Istituzioni ecclesiastiche
de Ha "Societas Christiana" dei secoli XI-XII. Diocese, pievi, e parrochie. Atti della sesta
Settimane internazionale di studio. Milano 1-1 settembre 1974 (Milan, 1977); Michel
Aubrun, La paroisse rurale en France des origines au XVe sicle (Paris, 1986). The
importance of the rural English parish at the end of the Middle Ages has been
illuminated by Kamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars. Traditional Religion in England
1400-1580 (New Haven, 1992).
Peasant Religion in Medieval Europe 1 99
as religious functions.35 Parish, guild, and light provided religious structures in
which ordinary Christians participated.
Parish churches then were the center of ordinary religious activity and were
the crucial point at which local tradition and universal norms intersected and
interacted. There were performed the rituals of baptism, marriage, and burial
that marked one's progress through life. There peasants received what religious
instruction was available to them, although repeated complaints by ecclesiastical
reformers suggest that the level of education of the local clergy was often so
minimal that one must assume that little was conveyed to the laity.
Preaching seems to have centered to a great extent on the threat of
damnation and the need for repentance. From the twelfth century, the doctrine
of purgatory, a place of punishment that awaits sinners who have repented but
not done sufficient satisfaction for their sins, gained an increasingly prominent
place in religious devotion and popular practice. Progressively, ordinary people
were encouraged to prepare themselves for death with a variety of prayers,
penitential practices and the acquisition of indulgences, that is, remissions of
the punishment due them, through good works such as pilgrimages, prayers,
and charity, and especially the purchase of indulgences authorized by the
Church. These indulgences were sold by pardoners, often members of religious
orders who traveled through the countryside with a papal or episcopal license to
preach and sell these indulgences to ordinary people, with the hierarchy
receiving a percentage of the revenues.36
In fact, the ignorance, sexual promiscuity, venality and corruption of the
clergy, combined with their frequent absenteeism, were major and long
standing complaints within the laity. Anti-clericalism was endemic to medieval
society and in no way detracted from religious devotion. Along with devotional
prayers, charms, and religious expressions, the commonplace book of a fifteenth
century village overseer contains the verse:
Carmelite friars sailed in a boat near Ely.
They were not in heaven since they fucked the wives of hell.
They all got drenched because they had no helmsman.
35 On Guilds and confraternities see Catherine Vincent, Les Confrries mdivales
dans le royaume de France (XIIP-XV sicle) (Paris, 1994); Barbara Hanawalt, "Keepers of
the Lights: Late Medieval English Parish Guilds," Journal of Medieval and Renaissance
Studies 14(1 984), pp. 2 1 -3 7; Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: 1 47- 1 50.
36 For a general orientation to medieval preaching see Roberto Rusconi,
Predicazione e vita religiosa nella societ italiana da Carolo Magno alia Controriforma,
(Turin, 1981); Jean Longre, La Prdication mdivale (Turnhout, 1983); Volker
Mertens and Hans-Jochen Schiewer, eds., Die Deutsche Predigt im Mittelalter :
Internationales Symposium am Fachbereich Germanistik der Freien Universitat Berlin, vom
3.-6. Oktober 1989 (Tubingen, 1992).
200 Patrick J. Geary
The friars with knives go about and [screw] men's wives.37
Such expressions should not be seen as any evidence of lack of committed
religious devotion but rather a deep distrust of the clergy who were expected to
provide needed religious direction and who all too often appeared, in the eyes
of many peasants, less than worthy.
Liturgy
The central religious ritual of the Christian church was the Mass. Individual
Christians were expected to attend Mass weekly, although since the ritual itself
was entirely in Latin and, on Sundays and holy days celebrated at a high altar
well-removed from the congregation, ordinary Christians had little knowledge
of what was being done or said. Popular devotion in the Mass centered on the
eucharistie wafer, the host, transformed into the body of Christ in the Mass. In
the thirteenth century, all Christians were enjoined to receive communion at
least once a year. More generally, however, the laity was satisfied with looking
at the host, a kind of visual communion seen as powerful and even potentially
dangerous in itself.38
Access to Christ was, after all, a dangerous and rare thing. In the
hierarchical world of the Middle Ages, ordinary Christians were more
comfortable with access to the saints, seen as the particular friends of God and
particularly appropriate intercessors on behalf of the living. The cult of saints
was an integral part of Christianity from its earliest centuries, and was as we
have seen a fundamental element in early Christianization. Every church had to
contain the physical remains of a recognized saint, be it the body of the saint or
only a small portion of the saint's remains. These remains, enshrined in
ornamented containers or reliquaries, became the focus of local religious
devotion. From them the community took its corporate identity and to them
the local community looked for protection and support.39
37 Translated John Shinners, Medieval Popular Religion, p. 371, from Cameron
Louis, The commonplace book of Robert Reynes of Acle: an edition of Tanner MS 401 311
(New York, 1980).
38 On the cult of the eucharist see Miri Rubin, Corpus Christi: the Eucharist in Late
Medieval Culture (Cambridge, 1991).
39 Very generally on saints and relics see Stephen Wilson, d., Saints and their Cults:
Studies in Religious Sociology, Folklore and History (Cambridge, 1983); Arnold Angenendt,
Heilige und Reliquien. Die Geschichte ihres Kultes von friihen Christendum bis zur Gegenwart
(Munich, 1994); Sandro Sticca, d., Saints: Studies in Hagiography (Binghamton, NY,
1996); and Edina Bozky and Anne-Marie Helvtius, eds., Les Reliques, Objets, cultes,
symboles. Actes du colloque international de VUniversit du Littoral-Cte d'Opale (Boulogne-sur-
mer) 4-6 septembre 1991 (Turnhout, 1999).
Peasant Religion in Medieval Europe 20 1
The fundamental devotion to saints was manifested in vows and
pilgrimages. For help in times of distress, whether periods of famine or illness,
personal problems such as debt or conflict, loss of animals or oppression by
local magnates, peasants made vows to their saints, which they then had to
fulfill. These vows, private contracts as it were, between individuals and saints,
were at the heart of local religion, and preserved the ancient sense of religio as
that which bound the faithful to the divine. Vows took many forms. Often, a
peasant vowed, in return for a cure or the return of lost livestock to make a
pilgrimage. The journey might be to the local saint or might be to a regional
saint's shrine. The great, international pilgrimage sites such as Compostella,
Rome, or Jerusalem, were hardly within the possibility of ordinary people,
although some seem to have undertaken such trips, which were usually expected
to be one-way. Vows often included the promise of a payment, in money or in
kind, in return for, or in expectation of, a favor.40
The decision of which saint should be chosen for a particular vow drew on
many factors. Local tradition played an important role, with local saints known
for certain types of miraculous interventions. Some were part of the wider
Christian tradition and were encouraged by local and regional clergy. Others
were strictly local and even condemned by the wider Church, such as the appeal
to Saint Guinefort for help with weak and ailing children in southeastern
France, even though Guinefort happened not even to have been human but
rather a martyred, saintly
dog.41
The coincidence of a natural disaster and a saint's day might also be a sign
of the appropriate saint to handle a particular situation. When villagers near
Madrid noticed that it hailed for several years in a row on St. Anne's day, they
vowed to observe her vigil.42 Similarly, in Guadalajara, a village observed the
feast of Saint Benedict because on that day ten olive mills had burned. In
another village Saint Barbara's Day was celebrated because on that day
lightening had hit the village church and burned a number of people in it.
Prayers
All Christians were encouraged to know the Lord's Prayer, {Pater Noster)
the Hail Mary {Ave Maria), and the Creed {Credo) and to be able to list the ten
40 On pilgrimage see in general Jonathan Sumption, Pilgrimage: An Image of
Medieval Religion (Totowa, 1975); On the importance of vows see William A. Christian,
Local Religion, pp. 23-69.
41 Jean-Claude Schmitt, Le Saint lvrier. Guinefort, gurisseur d'enfants depuis le XIIIe
sicle, (Paris, 1979). English translation, The Holy Greyhound: Guinefort, Healer of Children
since the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge, 1983).
42 Christian, Local Religion, p. 33.
202 Patrick J. Geary
commandments and the seven deadly sins. To clerical elites, the ability of
individuals to recite these prayers, along with their reception of the eucharist
and annual confession, was a strong indication of the quality of their religious
training and orthodoxy. Thus, for example, in the early sixteenth century a
Spanish peasant, Juan de Rabe, who explained that he maintained himself "by
working, by digging, plowing, and herding
sheep," was able to recite the Ave
Maria and the Pater Noster, but not the Credo or the Ten Commandments.43
However these prayers were often recited in order to ward off evil or to
accomplish miracles with no concern for their content. Other prayers, too, were
indistinguishable from charms except for their invocation of apostles, prophets,
and saints. A fifteenth century rural artisan in England, Robert Reynes, who
was somewhat literate, has left for example, a commonplace book that contains
a prayer to St. Apollonia against the toothache and other prayer-charms against
malaria and fever.44 Knowledge of Christian belief did not mean that individuals
used this knowledge in ways that coincided with officially sanctioned practice.
Spirits and Demons
Reynes' commonplace book also contains a formula for conjuring angels
into a child's thumbnail for purposes of divination.45 Such conjuring was
common, and was part of a much wider concern, that of the spirit world.
Official Christianity taught that there was a heaven, earth, and hell, with an
intermediate place of temporary punishment, Purgatory, developing an
increasingly elaborate topography in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.46
These places were inhabited by the living, by the dead, and by angels and devils,
all of whom one might encounter on earth, the battle-ground for human
destiny. However, in widespread popular belief there were other powers and
beings that fit with great difficulty into these neat categories. There were the
"good people," spirits who had best be called "good" because they could do
such evil; fairy kings and ghosts; witches and evil beings that lay in wait for
mortals. These beings lived in their worlds that did not quite conform to the
topography of heaven or hell, and people might visit these realms at their own
peril.47 All of these powers had to be dealt with, fended off, or propitiated,
43 Christian, Apparitions, p. 153.
44 Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, p. 73.
45 Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, p. 73; translation, Shinners, Medieval Popular
Religion, p. 337.
46 See Jacques Le Goff, The birth of purgatory (London, 1984).
47 Jean-Claude Schmitt, "Temps, folklore et politique au XIIe sicle. propos de
deux rcits de Walter Map ("De Nugis Curialium" 1,9 et IV, 1 3)," in Le temps chrtien de la
fin de l'Antiquit au Moyen ge III' -XIII' sicles [Colloques internationaux du Centre
Peasant Religion in Medieval Europe 203
enlisted or at least constrained into neutrality, and for this the powers of
Christianity offered some help. Thus prayers could bind spirits, sacred symbols
and rituals such as the sign of the cross could be used to protect people and
livestock, and ritual objects, such as the Eucharist, could be employed to bind
supernatural powers to the needs of mortals.
Heterodoxy
It is wrong to exclude such practices as charms, incantations, and
manipulations of the sacred from an understanding of peasant religion, either
dismissing them as "magic" or as a perversion of "true" Christianity. These
practices were essential aspects of what peasants needed for security and
protection in a world dominated by unseen forces, human, diabolical, and
divine. In the particular communities of parishes across Europe, local traditions
combined with the broader traditions of Christianity to produce meaningful if
particular customs. In some churches in the South of France, young men
dressed in horse costumes and danced in church on the vigil of the local saint's
feast.48 In Friuli in Northern Italy, faithful Christians believed that at night
their spirits left their bodies to do battle with evil spirits that would otherwise
destroy the fertility of the region's crops.49 Everywhere, old women gathered
herbs at certain times of the moon while reciting either Christian prayers or
other formulas to use as medicines or love potions. Through most of the
Middle Ages, such practices seldom drew the attention of ecclesiastical
authorities. However, other sorts of practices and beliefs did draw the attention
of authorities and led to an increasing focus on the beliefs of ordinary people
and their relationship to church discipline and practice.
In the South of France, an alternative form of religion, Catharism, spread
apparently from the Balkans and took root in the regional aristocracy and in
villages. This dualistic tradition, propagated by
"perfecti," emphasized the
reality of a force of evil as well as one of good and the need to purify one's life.
In peasant communities from Italy to the Pyrenees, this Catharism combined
with an anticlericalism and a peasant materialism to gain adherents. Cathars
national de la recherche scientifique 604] (Paris, 1984), pp. 489-515. See also his Les
revenants : Les vivants et les morts dans la socit mdivale (Paris, 1994), English translation
Ghosts in the Middle Ages: The Living and the Dead in Medieval Society (Chicago, 1998).
48 Jean^Claude Schmitt, "Jenes et danse des chevaux de bois. Le folklore
mridional dans la littrature des 'exempla' (XF-XiV6 sicles)," in La religion populaire
en Languedoc du XHIe sicle la moiti du XIV sicle, Cahiers de Fanjeaux 1 1 (Toulouse,
1976), pp. 127-158.
49 Carlo Ginzburg, The Night Battles: Witchcraft & Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and
Seventeenth Centuries (Baltimore, 1983).
204 Patrick J. Geary
rejected the sacramental system of orthodox Christianity as well as the authority
of the hierarchy. Ordinary villagers were particularly impressed with the purity
of life of the "perfecti" and the contrast with their own local clergy.50 In
England and, later, in Bohemia, peasants were drawn to a less radical heterodox
tradition, that of Lollardy, which also opposed sacraments performed by
unworthy and venial priests.51 Elsewhere, particularly in Italy, various groups
espousing radical poverty attracted popular followings that combined
opposition to clerical control and veniality with a rejection of various aspects of
orthodox sacramentality.52
None of these movements were primarily peasant in origin.
They all began
among the educated elites and spread only later into the peasantry. Likewise,
none of these movements (except perhaps Catharism in limited areas in the
south of France) were ever majority movements, but they presented a clear
threat to the monopoly of the institutional church. In order to combat these
movements, the Church established inquisitions in various regions of Europe to
uncover heterodox belief, to correct it through preaching and instruction and,
where necessary, through imprisonment or even, with the assistance of secular
authorities, through physical punishment and execution. Certain religious
orders, particularly the Dominicans, were at the forefront of preaching against
heresy, and it is through the collections of exempla or short, moral stories
useful for preaching compiled by Dominicans and others that we learn much
about heterodox belief and practice in medieval society.53 Inquisition records,
such as those compiled by Jacques Fournier, provide detailed testimonies of the
beliefs and practices of ordinary people accused of adhering to heretical sects,
although the conditions of these interrogations leave room for questioning to
what extent peasants actually presented their beliefs and to what extent
inquisitors forced the accused to confess to beliefs that they would never have
previously
held.54
50
Anne Brenon, Les Cathares, vie et mort d'une glise chrtienne (Paris, 1996).
51 K. B. McFarlane, John Wycliffe and the Beginnings of English Nonconformity
(London, 1952); Ann Hudson, The Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard
History (Oxford, 1998).
52 The classic account of the beginnings of such movements is Herbert Grundmann,
Religiose Bewegungen im Mittelalter published in 1935 and translated by Stephen Rowan
as Religious Movements in the Middle Ages (Notre Dame, 1995).
53 Generally on the medieval inquisition: H. Maisonneuve, tudes sur les origines de
l'inquisition (Paris, 1960); Grado G. Merlo, Contro gli eretici (Bologna, 1996). On
exempla: Claude Brmond, Jacques Le Goff, Jean-Claude Schmitt, L'Exemplum
(Turnhout, 1982).
54 The classic study that uses Fournier's registers to reconstruct the social and
mental world of French peasants is Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Montaillou, Village occitan
de 1294 1324 (Paris, 1975).
Peasant Religion in Medieval Europe 205
Many of the practices and beliefs uncovered by inquisitorial courts were
not related to any heretical movement, but nevertheless struck learned judges
as deviant. These included various fertility rituals, incantations, and local
practices they deemed superstitious or diabolical. Since Antiquity, deviation
had been seen as the work of the devil, and popular attempts to bind spiritual
powers without the intervention of the Church were increasingly seen as
witchcraft, that it, working in a pact with the devil to gain supernatural power.
Across the continent, inquisitions uncovered witches, generally marginal
women in small villages, and convicted them of an increasingly detailed series
of crimes involving pacts with the devil. By the end of the Middle Ages, witch
hunts were increasingly popular, although the great witch craze would come in
the sixteenth century.
Conclusions
European peasant religion was fully integrated into Christianity from at
least the eighth century. However in its myriad local manifestations it
emphasized the need to bind supernatural powers in the service of agrarian
communities. Peasant worship focused on the parish church in which rituals of
life and death were performed and on the local saints to whom one looked for
protection. Peasants understood the basics of Christian teaching and knew
some of the formal prayers and rituals of the wider church, but incorporated
these into their daily lives. Such practices were neither heterodox nor were they
"pagan survivals" or "superstition."
They were the essential bonds that tied
rural communities to the powers that controlled them and that they, with the
help of religion, could control.
206 Patrick J. Geary
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