Herbert Grundmann rides again! Few would deny the importance or impact of Grundmann’s contributions to the historiography of medieval religious history. He continues to have disciples, and his influence is reflected in this book, at least as a theoretical guiding light. The editors, all established scholars with significant publications to their names, suggest several thoughtful ideas for “approaching heresy and radicalism” (the title of the book’s introduction). These include a distinction between clandestine existence and engagement with prevailing social, political and communal structures. Following Grundmann, the authors argue that radical communities or heretical initiatives should not be regarded as simple aberrations from a normative standard. The editors suggest that modern historiography (i.e., proper history as reflected in the book’s essays) departs from earlier scholarship by maintaining a safe distance from medieval categories and vocabulary. What is meant here, again finding guidance in Grundmann, is that traditional divisions like “histories of heresy” privilege the orthodoxy and normative position of the institutional church and in consequence render the “radicals” or “heretics” as incapable of being treated as legitimate and independent subjects in their own right. The editors argue (rightly I would calculate) that ideas, individuals and movements that follow different trajectories or emphasize lesser-treated foci should also be approached as legitimate expressions of Christian faith and community. These are “competing agents within the context” of late medieval and early modern Christianity. More importantly, the nomenclature of heresy (whether words or mentalities) cannot and must not result in the delegitimizing of the efforts, experiences and ideas of the “heretic” or “radical.” They should be subordinated to the conventional milieu of the premodern church (2-3). This applies equally to considerations of theology, liturgy, and communal experiences.
In other words, it is unwise to de-Christianize so-called heretics from the community of the faithful. Failing to recognize the goals and ambitions of the “heretics” or “radicals” results in distortion and unfair privileging of institutions of power. The editors cite Grundmann again with approval when the latter points out the difficulty of finding self-professed medieval heretics. Of course, there are few in the world today who happily identify as terrorists. Heresy, terrorism, orthodoxy, and radicalism are all constructs of specific contexts. The editors warn of the dangers and limitations of these constructs and seek to escape from the restrictions of those taxonomies. The reader is warned about the tendency to embrace ahistorical images of coherence and organization that exist only on paper. Four and a half chapters in this book treat Hussite history. Yet it is manifestly clear that deep and significant differences are at play and that many different kinds of Hussites existed simultaneously and often in conflict with each other. That admonition can usefully be applied to most categories.
Another observation from a rich introductory essay is the commitment to the “prism of radicalism.” The editors perceive pitfalls in the terms “heresy” and “religious movements” and prefer “radical.” There is a brave and thoughtful effort (24) to lionize the superiority of this category and readers will want to ponder the arguments. I remain unconvinced. Are these distinctions without differences? Words are important. Words do create reality. Words also impose limitations which can restrict and distort. Without words and language, communication is difficult. The existing lexicon and conceptual scope for dealing with premodern religious communities should be evaluated and refined and words should not be given sacred or absolute significance.
Theologically, the idea of “radical” is based on the Latin radix (root) suggesting a return to fundamental foundations as a means of asserting or defending a point of view or practice. This contrasts with traditional or conventional approaches and implies serious reflection, critique of basic ideas and practices and possibly a change in those traditions. In this sense, reform ideas and movements are always radical.
Different points of view, approaches, activities and practices (usually in a religious context) may be described as heresy. The distinction is helpful in distinguishing boundaries and determining identity. Categories like these are useful as they indicate how groups identified threats or variations from core commitments and values. Naturally, those designated heretics believed their opponents were the true apostates. The heretic is one who challenges a closed system of teaching or practice. The history of doctrine from the patristic age has been an evolution emerging from the cauldron of conflict and competing ideas. The losers, or those whose ideas failed to win the day or secure majority support, often became victims of intolerance and once that occurs a pattern of persecution results in expulsion or extermination. It goes both ways. Church and state carried out crusades against Hussite heretics and the Hussites engaged in indiscriminate atrocities (supported by the witness of numerous primary sources) against those they considered recalcitrant and steeped in their own heresies and deviant doctrines. Considerations of power and purity prevail.
While the editors prefer the word “radical” this too, like “heretic,” has its own pejorative and offensive character. For example, I published a book over twenty years ago on a religious/theological movement which attracted criticism for its use of the word radical and its cognates to describe certain beliefs and activities. All said, what is important—and this book reflects that virtue—is that categories are unavoidable but “radicals” and “heretics” are both legitimate Christians and reformers and must be taken seriously on their own terms.
Radical Religious Communities consists of the aforementioned introductory essay followed by ten chapters divided into four parts. Part one addresses the social status of German prophets and their readers (Frances Kneupper), the relation of Czech nobles to the community of Tábor (Robert Novotný), and Hussite memory at Tábor after the Hussite period (Zdeněk Vybíral and Zdeněk Žalud). Part two deals with the relationship between the Táborites and Thomas Müntzer (Pjecha and Matthias Riedl) and law and justice in Anabaptist Münster (Phillip Haberkern). Part three looks at Waldensian radicalism and conformism at Strasbourg (Georg Modestin), Wyclifite views of fasting (Michael Van Dussen), and inquisitorial trials in Piedmont in terms of books, ideas, people and manuscripts (Marina Benedetti). The last section returns to Hussites to consider eucharistic heresy and its implications (Cermanová) along with views of internal factionalism observed from outside the Hussite movement (Soukup). The volume includes a solid bibliography (279-322) and a basic index.
What these essays achieve is appropriate emphasis on context, the persuasive violence that often accompanied the religious radicalism treated in the volume, the absence of doctrinal consistency and unassailable evidence for diversity within groups often called Waldensian, Lollard, and Hussite. It is likely that each of the writers understand their contribution as introductory, partial, or suggestive, perhaps as a trailer for a larger study. If true, this makes quibbling about minor points unhelpful. Modestin raises a crucial point when he asks what does a community mean or understand about radical identity (155)? The role of interpretation is critical, and several writers often signal this vital aspect in understanding history. The history of religion and religious practices in the period between 1300 and 1700 is one that cannot be understood or evaluated without coming to terms with the concept and deployment of power. It is the latter that creates both orthodoxy and heresy.
Importantly, we learn that flagellation was sacramental to some radicals replacing traditional religious rites governed by a formal sacerdotal system (34-5) and that prophecy indicated holiness to others (44). The widely-attested radicalism at Hussite Tábor did not appear ex nihilo but instead was predicated upon previous structures as Novotný shows while avoiding universal judgments (69). The famous Hussite military leader Jan Žižka gets renewed assessment but as Vybíral and Žalud point out the reputation of Tábor as the epicentre of Bohemian radicalism is often out of touch with reality leaving the door ajar for mythistory to intrude.
It is unavoidably tempting to speculate about causal connections and influence. Was Müntzer inspired by radical Hussites (as Pjecha and Riedl carefully consider)? Was Žižka really the center of a Táborite ethos? What caused uniqueness amongst Strasbourg Waldensians? What prompted eucharistic heresy and were those commitments unable to avoid a harvest of immorality and violence? Historians want to know. Pjecha and Riedl advise caution. There is much to commend the observation that influence is a problematic component in intellectual history (102). Who was more important to Hussites—Wyclif, Matěj of Janov, Jan Hus or Jakoubek of Stříbro? This historical challenge is generally treated with circumspection throughout the book. Haberkern warns that since the chronicler Herman von Kerssenbrock was a zealous Catholic his version of events at Münster should be treated with caution even when his conclusions are confirmed by other sources (131). It is useful to understand where a writer is coming from but this neither validates nor invalidates arguments and interpretations. The British historian Patrick Collinson once said that the best authority on the European Reformation was the Oxford scholar Diarmaid MacCulloch because as a lapsed Christian, who did not subscribe to any form of religious dogma, he was supposedly more objective than a practicing believer. The argument is not irrelevant but it is also not terribly persuasive. It reminds me of the confession of a church-going, Bible-believing attorney who admitted that the teaching and ethics of Jesus played no role in his legal practice. Some of the most innovative interpreters of the Lutheran Reformation, like Bob Scribner, have been devout Roman Catholics.
From time to time the aim of maintaining distance from medieval categories and vocabulary and presumed “confessionally loaded labels,” like heresy (22), is not reflected in the book and occasionally one gets a sense of a continued subscription to the artificial medieval/early modern bifurcation even though everyone knows that nothing of significance happened on New Years’ Eve in 1499.
Radical religious communities may be committed to reform rather than revolution as Kneupper points out (54). What is arresting is the phenomenon of being trapped in the text. Haberkern notes that Münster radicals, though convinced of the spiritual bankruptcy of the Latin church, were unable to venture too far from the Bible (138, 144) in articulating and defending their innovations. Benedetti includes a close adherence to the gospel as a radical feature of Waldensians in the Alps (196). Radical lifestyles often prevailed. Hussites at Tábor and Anabaptists at Münster made no effort to conceal themselves while many Waldensians tried to hide. Their survival depended on secrecy (204). Radical approaches might be social or religious, or perhaps both, but they need defining (155). Van Dussen rightly points out that it is difficult (perhaps because ultimately it is impossible) to speak of a unified Lollardy (166). If Modestin pondered the ways in which medieval Waldensian Christianity could contribute to a better understanding of radical religious communities, I was unable to easily see in what ways fasting might be thought radical. Van Dussen’s edition of the entry for Ieiunium in the Floretum (178-93) is admirable and part of a larger project so we might expect further elaboration.Soukup endeavors to underscore the medieval assumption of the unchangeable nature of heresy (drawing upon the fifteenth-century German theologian Johannes Nider) and connects this to the prevailing assumption that the true church was incapable of schism. Splitters were never real Christians (262, 278). Soukup makes the important observation that the fissiparous tendencies within Hussitism discredited their theologies and reforms in the eyes of their detractors while posing insurmountable obstacles to addressing and resolving their grievances (276).
The contribution that resonated most with me was Cermanová’s “Murder by Night, Fornicate by Day: Radical Sects and Negotiating the Eucharist Heresy in Hussite Bohemia.” The essay captures radical ideas and practices, hostile perceptions of Hussites by outsiders (mapping on to Soukup’s essay), and the idea that Utraquism was a weapon. In his commentary on the Apocalypse, the Czech theologian Jakoubek of Stříbro considered communion in both kinds as the “sword of Gideon by which enemies are defeated” while the conservative Hussite Jan Příbram, a strident critic of Táborite doctrine, described their eucharistic theology as inspired by the devil (222). With such controversial foundations it was predictable that religious dissent in Bohemia was demonized and amalgamated into a vicious and alarming stereotype. Eucharistic error led to racy tales of sexual indulgence and appalling narratives of brutality and murder and by extension to the unwholesome and shocking desecration of the eucharist itself. As Cermanová demonstrates, perversion and violence were linked directly to eucharistic heresy. It is little wonder Christian Europe reacted with such fury.
Radicals came in all shapes and sizes. One application of Augustinian and Wyclifite thought concluded that conduct had no correlation to salvation whatever. Other radicals cultivated a sacramental devotion imagining that the incarnation was captured in the eucharist—a moment wherein believers experienced a fragment of eternity. In 1437 Milan, the inquisitorial trial of an arithmetic teacher named Amedeo Landi revealed he was altogether too enamored with the heretic Jan Hus and had the temerity to say so publicly. This roused the friar Bernardino of Siena who denounced such radical utterances from his pulpit where he called for Landi to be banished in order to protect the people of Milan from further contamination and prevent their descent into heresy. Landi was indicted on these charges. At Sangerhausen, a town in Thuringia, in 1414 an inquisitor took aim at some flagellants. Some were sent to the pyre. One of their number who had not been condemned rode up on a horse, announced his proud association with the doomed, threw himself into the flames and perished with his colleagues. All of these events appear in this stimulating collection of essays buttressing the central thesis that religious communities are not motionless and those most dynamic and robust are also most obviously radical. The editors have assembled an important contribution worthy of sustained consideration.