Both at the level of real-life situations and of ideas, the process of the bourgeois revolution had, in the period that runs from its outbreak in the eleventh century to the crisis in the first half of the fourteenth century, the characters of a radical change of which, however, the mediate consequences it entailed were barely perceived. It could be said that the predominant feature of the feudo-bourgeois period was precisely the tenuity of the historical awareness of its actors, that is, its scant perception of the scope of the change taking place. There were without doubt those who suspected. Some noticed the thrust of certain previously inoperative social groups, whose action constituted a new phenomenon; others realised the alarming spread of certain religious and ideological attitudes that were antiquated; and many reacted to the signs of a disturbance in forms of sensibility, which was visible through the acceptance or invention of new fashions or the validity of unusual norms and values. But there were very few who perceived that this constituted a homogeneous set of actions and reactions towards the traditional system, perhaps because the traditional system in turn was not perceived as a homogeneous whole.
Without doubt, the change wrought by the Commercial Revolution was triggered when the Christian-feudal order had not yet produced an expresses doctrine that at the same time defined and justified it. It was precisely on feeling the first attacks directed against its various elements – its economic foundations, its ways of life, its forms of mentality – when its contents were rationalised and a doctrine developed to integrate them. But the change was already launched, and the doctrine of the Christian-feudal order was more of a justification than a definition. Appealing to its charismatic foundations, its universal validity was upheld and the possibility of there being another possible order outside it rejected; and in this way nothing prompted one to imagine that the signs of the change triggered revealed not a mere set of occasional diversions, but a new order in formation, different, above all, from the Christian-feudal order in its fundamentals, despite the fact that nothing and no one expressed it explicitly.
The change triggered by the bourgeois revolution, in effect, was the result of an disturbance in real situations. The system of economic and social relations typical of the Christian-feudal order tended to become fixed, but that tendency was interrupted by the appearance of strong external stimuli that offered a way out for those sectors constrained and instrumentalised by the fixing and institutionalisation of the system. It was they who promoted and triggered the crisis in the system on the one hand by weakening it by dropping out of it and withdrawing their productive force from it, and on the other hand, by gradually erecting another system of socio-economic relations that competed favourably with the one that shored up the Christian-feudal order. During the feudo-bourgeois period these forms of action were not inspired by a deliberate design to modify the overall picture of the current situation, but simply by the desperate individual efforts of each one of those who glimpsed the possibility of escaping from it. This state of mind induced solidarity action, but only in terms of mutual defence and not of an ordered aggressive action; it therefore did not arouse in those who unleashed and enacted the change the sense of acting in the service of general or transcendent ends. The actors perceived their own change, that of their status, but as a single episode, and there were few who noticed the phenomenon as a whole and its significance within their own community, and fewer still who perceived it as a general phenomenon of the area that was being commercialised.
Those who saw the change most clearly were, above all, those who, feeling firmly attached to the traditional order, precociously diagnosed the severity of the danger to their conservation signified by each of the timid attitudes adopted by those who were readying themselves to withdraw from it. They may have been the ones who most helped to establish the doctrine that made explicit the foundations of the Christian-feudal order. And not only because they were endeavouring to formulate it methodically, but because by determining the points threatened by each of the dissident attitudes, they were able to join them with a line that symbolised the battle front. The Christian-feudal order was defined negatively when it needed to justify its sacred validity to the spontaneous interplay of social forces whose actions implicitly negated.
The perception of change by those who felt attached to it originated a nostalgic attitude manifested in a beautification of the past through the retrospective projection of an order that, strictly speaking, people were only just becoming aware of. But while some translated that nostalgic feeling only into bitter lamentations of the ‘state of the world’, resorting generally to old clichés of moral literature, others adopted a combative attitude to defend the traditional order. The latter was an eminently intellectual attitude. Little or none was the action against the new forms of economic activity or the new tendencies in social life, and little or none was it against the new ethical or sensible tendencies. But it was robust against religious and ideological deviations, precisely because those who most vehemently took up the defence of the traditional order were those who perceived, behind the changes in real situations, the threat against the foundations of the Christian-feudal order. They sought intellectually to establish the causes of these deviations and those responsible for them by action or omission; and given the imprecise appearance of the characters of the traditional order, they also tried to fix intellectually what elements were to be defended, discriminating against that it was necessary to preserve and those that it was necessary to restore in order to clean them of the injuries they received in the process of change.
In this effort and in the one that demanded finding the effective means of action, the groups resistant to change showed their existence and fixed with varying degrees of exactitude the sectors where it manifested itself. Perhaps it was Dante Alighieri and Juan de Meun who most acutely felt the entirety of the situation, not only in light of the length and variety of their observations, but because of their clear tendency to relate them all to a radical attitude: profanity.
I. SITUATIONAL CHANGES
In seigneurial society the condition of the have-nots did not attract the attention of moralists, perhaps as a result of a consensus reached over the long duration of the system or of the palliative effect of seigneurial paternalism. But as the monetary economy and urban life became more developed, the presence of socio-economic differences became ever more pronounced; and just as the social features of the new rich sharpened, so did those of the new poor, the wretch who lacked money in a society in which, unlike the rural sphere, money was essential to meet primary needs. The Roman de Renart described the contrast with characteristic cruelty: ‘Ye know that when a rich man comes to court, he is offered water and there are those who will hold his sleeves; he is then served meat seasoned with garlic and then all kinds of different dishes. But the poor man, who has nothing, is like the excrement of the devil. Room is not made for him at either fire-side or table; he eats on his knees, and the dogs come to steal the bread from his hands. If he is given anything to drink, it is little; if to eat, but one plate. The servants toss him a few bones drier than burning coals.’[1] And both the old William of Lorris and the modern Juan de Meun cursed the hour that the poor man left Hell to disturb the world.[2]
Within Juan de Meun’s system of thought, Poverty, which the vices have taken from Hell, is the one that will irrupt into the world with its companions to inaugurate a new era. Before, when there were ‘no pilgrimages, and no one left their land to explore foreign climes’; when ‘men knew nothing of navigation’, ‘they found in their native soil everything they could wish for’ and ‘all were equally rich’, ‘simple folk who lived good lives and loved each other naturally,’[3] then, said Juan de Meun, men were happy. But Poverty introduces ‘the passion for acquisition’. ‘Since the human race fell into the hands of this mob,’ he adds, ‘it changed its old way of living; men did not stop evildoing; they became false and deceitful; they clung on to their properties, divided up the soil, set boundaries, and on setting them they fought one another taking from each other what they were able; the stronger had the best part; and while they ran in search of the booty, the good-for-nothings entered their caverns and snatched from them what they had saved.’[4] This renewed version of the antique image of the successive ages entailed a perception of contemporary forms of economic life and once more stirred up the problem of new wealth, monetary wealth.
That wealth was precisely what suggested Dante’s reflections in the Convivio. The experience of the individual cases of economic advancement, as well as the contrast between the attitudes of the old aristocracy and those of the newly enriched sectors moved Dante to reject the thesis that the nobility came from ancient wealth: ‘And I say that this view is almost everyone’s,’[5] he wrote before starting his reasonings to invalidate it. Dante’s argument is almost a tirade. ‘It remains only to be proved now,’ he said, ‘how vile are riches and how remote and distant they are from the nobility.’[6] The nobility is perfection whereas riches are vile and imperfect. ‘Their imperfection can briefly be seen in three things in a manifest way: first, in their indiscreet arrival; second, in their dangerous accretion; third, in their harmful possession.’ The analysis of the first of these three traits corresponds to a direct experience of the new ways of economic life. ‘I say that their imperfection can first be recognised in the indiscretion of their arrival, in which no distributive justice shines forth but the most complete iniquity does, which iniquity is precisely the effect of imperfection, because if the manners whereby the latter come are considered, they may all be compiled in three ways: because, either they come from sheer luck, as when, without intention nor hope they come by any unexpected discovery, or proceed from the mind aided by reason, as by mutual testament or succession, or proceed from reason aided by luck, as when they come by licit or illicit profit; licit, I mean, when they are deserved by art, goods or service; illicit, when they proceed from theft or robbery. And in each of these three manners is seen the iniquity that I mean, for the hidden riches that are found or earned are more frequently offered to the wicked than to the good, and this is so obvious that it does not need to be tested.’ The relationship between wickedness and enrichment forms the core of his argument. ‘And I say that inheritances bequeathed or reciprocated fall much more frequently to the wicked than the good, and of this I do not wish to present any testimony; but may each man turn his eyes around about him and he will see what I keep quiet in order not to abominate anyone. And I say that more frequently to the wicked than the good the advantage precisely befalls, for the illicit never touch the good because they reject them; and what good man uses nothing by fraud or force? It would be impossible, for merely by accepting the illicit enterprise, it would no longer be any good. And the licit rarely touch the good, for however much dedication is needed, and the dedication of the good man sets out to achieve greater things, rarely does the good man devote himself enough to them.’
Dante is no less categorical about the other forms of imperfection of wealth. Its ‘dangerous accretion creates dissatisfaction, ‘and although put away, they not only do not bring peace of mind but more thirst.’ And their ‘ownership’ is harmful ‘for two reasons: one, because it is cause of wickedness; the other, because it is deprivation of goodness.’ And he adds: ‘Well do they know it the miserly merchants who go around the world, for the leaves that the wind moves make them tremble when they take riches with them, whereas when they go without them, quite assured, the road is made shorter with singing and talking.’ This terror is what Juan de Meun had in mind when he evoked the new times: ‘They erected towers, fences and walls with carved stones; they fortified towns and castles and made great sculpted palaces, for those who held these riches were extremely afraid of them being stolen by stealth or by force.’[7]
In Dante’s thinking the discrimination between nobility and wealth supposes a condemnation of the new urban aristocracies: it is the whole new social order that he condemns; and in condemning it, he also condemns the new political order – the one that fits in the communes and the kingdoms – as unjust, unstable and harmful.
Adhering to the idea of a stable and rigid universal order, Dante condemns the situation of the Italian communes where a profound revolution was being enacted. Extreme social mobility originated a very unstable situation, the consequences of which were not only the coups d’état to replace some people with others, but also the deep upheavals to modify the institutional regime in order to adjust the representativeness of the political power to new social situations. This is what Dante observed and reflected ironically in one of the most curious passages of the Commedia, which did not appeal, by the way, to the clichés of the ancient or medieval moralism: ‘My Florence, you can be happy that this sally doesn’t concern you, thanks to the care of your citizens. Many have justice at heart, tardy to take the bow up, without advice; but yours fire it off straight away. Many refuse the citizen’s burden; but your lot are only too eager to cry, uninvited, “Let me bear it!” So be happy, for all the benefits: wealthy, peaceful, sensible you! The facts show if I speak truly. Athens and Sparta, who long ago gave us the rules of civic living, they only glimpsed the good life compared to your subtle designs, so that what you spin in October hardly makes it to mid-November. How often, in living memory, has law, money, office and custom all changed, and people renewed! And if you really examine yourself you’ll see the image of a sick woman not finding rest on her feather-bed, rolling around to relieve her pain.’[8] Several times Dante reiterated his adverse opinion of the communal regimes,[9] the vivacious expression of the new socio-economic situation, as did many moralists according to the schema of the imprecation of Guibert de Nogent.[10] But Dante did not confine himself to that. He also questioned the new kingdoms, and not only because of the wickedness or weakness of their kings, but because he saw in their progressive growth a threat to the sole political order that he deemed legitimate, which was the universal order; kings and princes, he said, ‘would usurp the power to govern,’[11] which applies only to the emperor, and such usurpation was manifested in the immediate interests that absorbed them.[12]
This perception of the change of socio-economic and political situations brought about a deep anguish in those who felt committed to the traditional order. The new ills acquired these traits because the past had been better. A bitter nostalgia idealised the world of yesteryear, without much rigour, certainly, because the idealisation deliberately omitted the processes of change and gave the preterite situation a stability it had never possessed. To judge his own time, Juan de Meun appeals to the model of the Golden Age, described in topics of ancient literature, but with certain touches that reveal the design to fix a real contrast: ‘Formerly,’ he said, ‘things were different; now, everything is getting worse. Before, in the days of our first fathers and our first mothers, as attested in the writings of the ancients, one loved with fine and loyal love and not out of greed and the desire for plunder, and goodness reigned in the world. Men were not delicate in matters of dress or food. In those days the land was not tilled, but was as God had created it, and each drew their livelihood from it [. . .] No king or prince had as yet committed the crime of wresting his property from his fellow. All were equal and held nothing in ownership; they well knew the maxim that never love and authority did keep each other’s company or dwell together.’[13] Dante, on the other hand, recalled specific historical situations, which he nevertheless idealised. ‘Ah, slavish Italy, sickly tavern, pilotless ship in the most undone squall, no longer mistress of provinces but of infamous brothels!’; and placed the age of its splendour in the times Augustus or Justinian.[14] But when he thought about Florence he did not even go back so far. The happy past was closer, in the days of his grandfather, Cacciaguda, when ‘a fifth of those who now live there’ lived in Florence, and it was a pure and unmixed population, for there had as yet been no incorporation of new inhabitants or ‘the confusion of people’ which ‘was always the beginning of cities’ misfortune’;[15] it was the time when ‘Florence, within the ancient walls where he still hears tierce and nones ringing, i was at peace, sober and chaste’; and peace reigned in her and, above all, simple customs and unwavering morality: ‘There were no necklaces or crowns, no women ostentatiously shod, no sashes more comely to the eye than the person wearing them. A daughter did not fright her father at her birth, for the age of matrimony and the dowry had not yet overstepped the regular bounds. The houses were then not empty of dwellers; Sardanapalus had not yet come to teach what might be done in a chamber. Montemalo was not yet defeated by Uccellatoio, which, as it is surpassed in its fall, so it will be in its rise. I have seen Bellincion Berti girdled with leather and buckled with bone, and his wife turn away from her mirror her face unrouged. I have seen the Nerlos and the Vecchios content themselves with wearing a simple fur, and their wives dedicate themselves to distaff and spindle. Oh fortunate women! Each of them knew the place where she would be buried, and none had been abandoned in her beds because of France. One kept watch over her cradle, and to console her child used the language that is the first delight of mothers and fathers: another, drawing on white thread from her distaff, would talk to her family of the Trojans of Fiesole and Rome. In those days a Cianghella or a Lapo Salterello would have been regarded as a marvel, just as today a Cornelia or a Cincinnatus would cause amazement.’[16]
The better past was not for Dante then a heroic age, whose idealisation offered examples of superhuman virtues; they were the early days of the feudo-bourgeois cities, when the new urban ways of life were beginning to be minted, but before the growth of the population and the phenomena of class advancement enacted new and repeated changes in them. Dante regarded the city as the mirror of history and it was in them that he observed the socio-economic and political changes, perhaps because they were the sole ambit of his experience. ‘If you consider how the cities of Luni and Urbisaglia have disappeared, and how Chiusi and Sinigaglia follow in their footsteps, you will not find it hard to believe hearing how families destroy themselves, for even the cities themselves have an end.’[17] It is the old city, the patrician city, that arouses his bouts of nostalgia, without perceiving, incidentally, the profound change from which the city itself had been born. To this change troubadours like Marcabru or Aimeric de Peguilhan may have been sensitive: they bewailed the decline of the noble virtues and courtly ways of life;[18] but Dante perceived it more acutely as the origin of a new form of social reality; and although it was repugnant to his antique sensibility, he implicitly acknowledged its existence when he sought in the vernacular the effective instrument to act upon it by trying to steer back to the old moulds.
However, he was not the only sign of the perception of situational change. There was also a certain predisposition to militancy in defence of the traditional order, which manifested first and foremost in the eagerness to recognise those responsible for change, always described as a rush towards wickedness and sometimes towards the end of the world. The criticism reached the ruling classes, the seigneurs and the clergy, because the absence of a clear image of the process of change led to the assumption that every one of the signs that were perceived was easily repressed, so that their persistence looked like nothing more than the result of negligence or inability of the most responsible sectors. This is why the greatest responsibility seemed to fall to the emperor, whom Dante, while inciting him to take back his authority, vehemently accused. ‘See how viciously wild hands this beast has grown, for not having applied any spur since you took the reins in your hands’, he berates Albert.[19] And again and again, while defending the imperial principle, he gave those who had exercised power by their impotence or idleness a tongue-lashing. Only the Pope could correct the state of the world, thought Ramon Llull in turn,[20] but he too deserted his mission; and the whole Church fell under the tirades of the moralists that Dante would finish off with the ruthless condemnation of its highest figures.[21] Perhaps only a few saw that, like the seigneurs, the Church wisely registered the situational variations and did not detach itself from the changing course of things, trying to adjust to it. Very slowly, incidentally, as William the Breton pointed out: ‘The custom of the Church to speak out with gravity and not agree anything new except with difficulty and deliberation’;[22] but doubtless avoiding removing itself from real situations so as to not become an anachronistic institution, as the Empire unequivocally was by the thirteenth century. It fell to the Church to confront the most visible and definite of the aspects of change, and by meeting the situation head on it diversified its conduct in order to preserve its institutional role in society.
II. RELIGIOUS AND IDEOLOGICAL CHANGES
As profound as the situational changes might have been, both their occasional origin and the absence of vast predetermined goals during the period feudo-bourgeois concealed the incidence they would eventually have on the Christian-feudal socio-economic and political order. Not even the most astute minds noticed that the change that was enacted was something far deeper than a simple cyclical diversion. But the emergence of clear signs of a disturbance in religious beliefs and in the overall picture of ideas on the contrary brought an immediate reaction precisely because in this field the incidence this disturbance had on the charismatic foundations of the traditional order was immediately glimpsed.
In his Affliction Ramon Llull explains how he decided to embark on the struggle in defence of the faith. ‘When later I considered the state of the world,’ he said, ‘and how few Christians there were, and how many unbelievers and infidels, my affected heart made me conceive the thought of going to the prelates, kings and religious men, demonstrating to them the means to pass to the domains of the Moors and how with sermons, arguments and weapons one could give such rage to our holy Catholic faith that the infidels should come to true conversion. About this holy business I have occupied myself for a space of thirty years and in truth nothing have I been able to achieve; which is why I am so sad and cry so often that I am reduced to great frailty.’[23] Many others before him perceived a disturbing breach of the faith in the Christianised world. Ralph Glaber noted at the beginning of the eleventh century the existence of heretics in Lombardy[24] and Romuald Guarna dated to around 1053, as a memorable event, the emergence of the pataria in Milan;[25] this specification reveals the perception of a contrast between two situations: whereas a universally accepted religiosity had until then predominated in all the Christian realm, thereafter there began to appear believers who disagreed with the orthodoxy, and unbelievers to boot.
The perception of religious change, however, did not only start with the discovery of the obduracy of infidels or the proliferation of heretics and atheists. It also started with some evidence of the weakening of faith, of the casual departure from Christian precepts that were to govern individual conduct, a serious and dangerous attitude in the simple believer, but even more serious in the religious man, in whom it was also perceived. A vast literature condemned the simony, nepotism, impiety, violence, lust or greed that predominated among the clergy, whose topics were collected in the libelli de lite of the day of the Investiture Controversies and crop up countless times in contemporary chronicles. More vehement that any of his predecessors Ramon Llull had Blanquerna say: ‘I scarcely see in the world any man doing what he must or what he can to honour, love and serve God, his Lord and Creator, or render Him thanks for the benefits he has received and those he receives every day; rather, all the world is wrapped up in deceits, traps, errors and vanities’; and he summed up his thinking: ‘These are the ten commandments, despised, disobeyed and forgotten in the world by the people.’[26]
As awareness conscious of the change grew, the danger seemed greater. The number of heretics and unbelievers seemed immense; but more serious still than the number of those who were moving away from the Church was their contempt and religious unscrupulousness, which led some of them to openly resist the orders of the Papacy and to confront it for political or simply human reasons which they deemed stronger than their duties towards the orthodoxy. Talking about the Viscount of Béziers, who defended his land to the death, accused of tolerating the Albigensian heresy, William of Tudela said:[27] ‘He was a good Catholic: he took as bondsmen many clergymen and canons who lived in his cloisters. But because of their youth he was very familiar with all his vassals on the land over which he was lord, and these men had before him no mistrust or fear; on the contrary, they played with him as if he had been their equal. Thus all his knights and even the vavasours housed heretics, either in their castles or in their towers. Such was the cause of his ruin and his miserable death.’ It was this unusual lack of concern over the fate of the established order that moved its supporters to take the counter-offensive to extremes.
But as the persecution of heretics and unbelievers became more marked, another variant came about. The heretic who confessed his error and, worse still, he who stubbornly defended it, were outright enemies of the traditional order whose guilt was easily proved. There were others, however, who were not directly opposed, but who attributed the right to express their dissent within the faith; and in them was noted the most danger and the sign of the most profound change in the field of religiosity. Bernard Gui established this distinction in his instructions to inquisitors:[28] ‘It should be noted that if any discusses openly and manifestly against the faith, putting forth the arguments and authorities on which the heretics are in the habit of relying, he would be easily convicted of heresy by the faithful educated in the Church, for he would be considered heretical by the sole fact that he tries to defend their error. But as today’s heretics attempt and try to cover up their errors rather than confess them openly, people versed in the science of the Scriptures cannot persuade them, because they take refuge in the trick of words and the wiles of thought. Learned men themselves feel confused by them, whereupon the heretics congratulate themselves and feel stronger, seeing that they confuse the learned men to the point of slyly escaping through the nooks and crannies of their malignant, astute and tortuous replies.’
An unmistakable sign of a profound change was precisely the development of a speculative thinking launched at the rational investigation of fundamental problems previously forbidden for this kind of intellectual exercise.
Saint Bernard had gauged the significance of the rationalist irruption, observed on the occasion of Abelard’s overwhelming success. ‘[Abelardo’s] poisoned pages are read in public squares and fly from hand to hand,’ he said; ‘his writings are disseminated among the towns and passed from one country to another’, ‘seducing a large number of people’; and added in other letters: ‘Almost the entire court of Rome has [his work] in their hands’; ‘the number of addicts grows day by day and a whole world of supporters embraces his errors.’[29] But it was Dante who most vehemently denounced this new intellectual attitude, which threatened and compromised the traditional order, in that he subjected to examination what ought to be accepted without discussion: ‘Insane is he,’ he said ‘who hopes that our reason can encompass the infinite space occupied by that which is a substance in three persons; and so, content yourselves, men, with what the effects show you; for had it been possible for you to see it all, no need would there be for Mary to give birth; and you have seen such men wishing it in vain as, if possible, would have satisfied that desire, which forms part of their eternal torment: I speak of Plato, Aristotle and many others.’[30] And to those who sought to attain the truth via a different route from faith, apostrophised in the Convivio: ‘O utterly foolish and vile are you brutes who pasture as if you were men and presume to speak against our faith and, while spinning wool and tilling the soil, seek to know what God through his great foresight has ordained! Accursed be you and your presumption, and those who believe your words!’[31]
The denouncement of the changes that were perceived in the form of religiosity and in the system of ideas attained a marked dramatic quality because in that field their radicalism was patent; but the dramatic quality did not exceed the exact dimension of the event, for whilst the situational changes were enacted slowly and without being force by a clear picture of the objectives pursued, the religious and ideological changes occurred rapidly knowing the implications they entailed. In thirteenth-century Western Europe, the intellectual atmosphere was already showing signs of such a profound change compared to that prevailing two centuries before any observer was to notice it. Those promoting it undoubtedly noticed the change, for they resisted the pressure from the traditionalist groups, braved the dangers and developed their points of view amidst stormy weather; and the defenders of the traditional system of ideas that were erected in his defence noticed it. There were controversies, campaigns of enlightenment and propaganda, missions and armed crusades: such confrontations entailed a clear notion of the scope of the variations manifesting in the religious and ideological framework.
At the start of the twelfth century, the awakening of religious zeal that accompanied the predication and organisation of the crusades generated a feeling of renewal and projection toward the future. ‘The eternal Creator,’ wrote Orderic Vitalis, ‘regulates wisely and healthily the vicissitudes of history and things; He does not arrange or make human affairs vary according to the fancy of fools, but watches over them with goodness. With a mighty hand and an arm outstretched, He provides everything and dispenses all fittingly . . . Whence is born a multitude of stories about events of all kinds that occur daily in the world and supply to eloquent historians a broad matter for speeches. I meditate deeply within myself on all those things and convey in writing the fruit of my meditations. Indeed, unexpected revolutions come about in our days, and an admirable text of wonderful stories is offered, completely constructed for the activity of writers. I have here that the expedition of Jerusalem has been undertaken through the inspiration of God: a large number of peoples of the West have gathered in a single body and marches, forming a single army, eastwards there to fight the pagans . . . I do not think that there has ever been offered to philosophers, in war expeditions, a subject more glorious than this that the Lord has been offered to our poets and our writers . . . ’[32] This capacity to overcome antagonisms and coordinate all efforts in the service of God seemed to be a sign of a renewal so great that Guibert de Nogent could say almost in the same years: ‘Some men are, not always but very often, in the bad habit of denigrating the actions of modern men and exalting centuries past . . . If we carefully examine the wars of the gentiles [. . .] we would recognise that their efforts, and their successes, could not be compared in any way with those that have by the grace of God illustrated our own [. . .] I speak of the incomparable victory recently achieved in the expedition to Jerusalem, a victory so glorious in the eyes of any man who is not a fool that we never shall rejoice enough to see that our century has acquired illustrious titles that centuries past did not.’[33]
The sign of this change seemed positive, but simply as a response to the social and political instability caused by the feudal wars and the conflicts between the Papacy and the Empire. Even so, the optimism was short-lived and tailed off with the evidence of other changes that had a very different sign, both situational and religious, ideological or moral. But those who had harboured it and defined themselves as defenders of the traditional order very especially registered the impact of the changes occurring in the behaviour of the Christians who had marched eastwards for primarily religious reasons.
The deviations from the faith, the half-heartedness in the fight against the infidels, the slide towards a soft and sensual way of life, seemed sufficient cause to explain divine wrath. In a kind of vicious circle, the religious, ideological and moral changes were regarded as signs that God was abandoning men; but it was supposed that God abandoned them because of their deviations and sins. A sure sign of God’s sorrow seemed to be the fact that miracles had disappeared. ‘As we are in a time,’ said Orderic Vitalis, ‘when the charity of the most part of people is cooling and, in contrast, iniquity abounds, the miracles that are an index of holiness have ceased . . . If our pontiffs and the other leaders of the world enjoyed a holiness great enough for God to deign to act through them and for them the miracles that once were wont to be performed by our ancient fathers.’[34] This was the same idea expressed shortly after by Gonzalo de Berceo;[35]
In righteous times when truth was valued
when no one would tell a lie for anything,
Back then they lived happily, reached old age,
and in their last years saw their great-grandchildren.
God did daily miracles for mankind . . .
and later on Ramon Llull, who put these words on the lips of the Faith: ‘Because a time has come when they do not want to admit authorities of the Sacred Scripture and the Holy Fathers; and no miracles now are seen as one did in another time, whereby the ignorant were enlightened, by my light and by my sister Truth. And because the people ask for reasons and necessary demonstrations, I go to my brother, who has sufficient power by virtue of God to prove my fourteen articles.’[36]
Faced with the evidence of the change, an elemental feeling moved people to identify those responsible for it. From the patarini, all religious dissidents had affirmed their faith on the basis of the return to the precepts of early Christianity whereas they execrated the feudal Church, the wicked simoniac and lustful pastors. Little by little the belief prevailed that the Church itself was responsible for the crisis of faith, a feeling accentuated and strengthened by the indignation that the repression of the so-called heresies produced in certain sectors. In Provence first and later in Italy the criticism became widespread. Guilhem Figueira launched his imprecations against the papal court: ‘Deceptive Rome, for all the ills head, crest and root . . . ”;[37] and Peire Cardenal passed judgment on wicked clergymen: ‘Great felons are those who sell and undo men. Dressing their perfidy in a honest countenance, they preach to them that they have to live holily. But I will never conceal their villainies . . . Vultures and kites do not sniff out stinking carrion faster than the clergymen and friar preachers sniff out wealth.’[38] But such themes were earlier, and goliard poetry had used and disseminated them without hesitation. The Evangelium secundum marcasargenti, the Propter Sion non tacebo, the Utar contra vitia and so many other compositions stigmatised the bad examples offered by the clergy to the faithful and, explicitly or implicitly, blamed the pastors for having abandoned the care and guidance of their flock.[39] The monk Pierre de Vaulx-de-Cernay, the contemporary chronicler of the crusade against the Albigensians, said in reference to their heretical views: ‘They said that the Roman Church almost as a whole was a cave of thieves, and the prostitute spoken about in the Book of Revelation.’[40] This image is the one picked up by Dante Alighieri at the most ruthless moment of his imprecation:
Sicura, quasi ròcca in alto monte,
seder sovr’esso una puttana sciolta
m’apparve con la ciglia intorno pronto.[41]
The vices that their critics denounced were certainly not their own, nor even exclusive to the Church; they were quite simply new ways of life, new systems of norms and values that the Church gleaned from the heart of a changing society. But just the way the latter, despite not being insensitive to these changes in the tendencies and valuations emerging in the profane world, it judged religious deviations according to traditional criteria, its opponents also judged it by applying the same criteria. Little the Church did and little could it do against and the slow, surreptitious development of profanity, especially when it masqueraded behind a rigorous observance. But it did multiply preaching, stimulated orthodox formalism and organised a rigorous persecution of dissidents and unbelievers to prevent the crisis in traditional religiosity. It was, then, as sensitive to the change operating within it as to the one manifesting in society, precisely because it concerned the very foundations of the established order.
For the same reason, once the first signs of ideological change had been perceived, the Church launched a determined offensive against the new intellectual style that began to predominate, especially in the universities. ‘At that time,’ relates William the Breton referring to the time of Philip Augustus, ‘the study of letters flourished in Paris.’[42] And after explaining how Amaury ‘was forced by the University to declare by word of mouth that he thought the opposite of the views he had hitherto professed,’ he adds: ‘At that time read in Paris the works composed, it is said, by Aristotle, which teach metaphysics. They had recently been brought from Constantinople and translated to Latin from the Greek. As by means of subtle maxims, it not only provided opportunities for heresy but could even generate new ones, they were ordered to be burnt and, at the same Council, it was forbidden under penalty of excommunication to dare to transcribe, read or even possess them in any manner whatsoever.’ It was the rules laid down by Cardinal Robert of Courçon in 1215 that outlawed such books: ‘Aristotle’s books on metaphysics and natural philosophy shall not be read, nor summaries thereof, nor works concerning the doctrine of master David of Dinant or those by the heretic Amaury or Maurituis of Spain.’[43] Directly or indirectly, such prohibitions caused lively controversies which clearly demonstrated the vigour of the new intellectual trends. The reaction was emphatic because the danger appeared large. Pope Gregory IX clearly understood this when he wrote the following words to the masters of theology from the University of Paris: ‘Our heart has felt a very deep grief, and we have been filled with bitterness at being informed that some of you, made arrogant like others by the spirit of vanity, exceed, according to an impious spirit of novelty, the limits imposed by the Fathers, seeking in the direction of pagan philosophy the significance of the sacred text whose interpretation has, however, been enclosed by the work of the Fathers within defined limits: those limits it is not only foolhardy but also wicked to go beyond. Anyone who does so is thus acting to flaunt their knowledge and not for the greater good of their listeners: they are neither theodocts nor theologians, but theophants. In fact, whereas they should expound theology according to the approved traditions that come to us from the Fathers, put their trust not in carnal weapons but in God to destroy everything that rises up against the science of God and reduce to captivity all reason through submission to Christ, led astray by various strange doctrines, they subordinate the head to the tail, constraining the queen to serve the servant. In other words, relying on earthly proofs, they attribute to nature what belongs only to heavenly grace.’[44]
Express testimonies of a new dissident attitude, the religious and ideological attitudes were more swiftly captured than the imprecise signs of situational changes and combated with an energy proportional to the severity of the challenge they posed to the traditional order.
III. GENERATIONAL CHANGES IN SENSIBILITY
Less revealing at first glance of the deeply ingrained assumptions that unleashed them, certain changes that operated in ways of life were, however, extremely striking and produced consternation and bitterness in those who felt attached to the traditional order. They identified in them the signs of a process of decadence, almost a warning of the coming of the end of days. The spectacle manifested first and foremost as a change in the sensibility of the new generations of aristocracies, reflected in the adoption of unusual forms of co-existence, of certain conventional mores and customs, of aggressive innovations in personal attire, and those who felt attached to the traditional order perceived it and attributed deep significance to it. However, they did not relate it to the situational changes that certainly created favourable conditions for them to come about. The modification of social stimuli, the new economic possibilities of various groups or simply the greater availability of certain goods for use did not appear to be important factors in the abandonment of the sober customs of the former warriors and their replacement with habits very similar to those prevailing in some outlying areas which by then were coming into close contact with the Romano-Germanic core. The latter was the one that best represented the system of the old virtues, whereas Eastern influences brought reminiscences of moral relaxation and softening of character. Those who remained attached to the traditional order were able, on perceiving these phenomena of change, to see the presence of an overwhelming stream of profanity or naturalism in whose current these changes in sensibility found an explanation and, above all, the modules of a moral assessment.
All the more or less representative testimonies of the moral critique, despite the gravity of the conventional subject matter, reveal a degree of surprise at the predominance of certain ways of life that went against the customs of traditional society. The moralist judged them according to the framework of the deadly sins and found reasons to think that the world was rushing toward its end. But some, in the midst of their pessimism and even without having to notice the scope of their observation, discovered and noted the presence of an irrepressible profane sentiment, an overwhelming desire for enjoyment, a vigorous mundanity alien to the coercion of religious precepts. Jacques de Vitry devoted a book of his history of the crusades to describing the corruption of customs. The catalogue is long and revealing,[45] for he listed almost all the normal forms of activity belonging to the new type of society that was taking shape, judging it in the light of a traditional criterion. The expression with which he defines the collective mood is significant: ‘Forgetting the things of the past, men gave themselves only to those of the future.’ And later on, in condemnation of physicians, he remarked that ‘they claim that the body is well when it satisfies the desires of the flesh, and therefore they excited many people to fornication,’ whereas the dying ‘made [them] delay and sometimes scorn confession and the other spiritual remedies, inspiring in them a false and misleading security’. The same surprising irruption of profanity and love of life was highlighted by Orderic Vitalis in a passage in which, by way of confession, he expresses that ‘I would have preferred to write of marvels and, in the name of Christ, launch myself into the midst of wonders. I like to praise He who governs the universe and can easily heal us of our ills. But we are forced to speak of the terrible things we see or have to suffer. We narrate, without stability, inconstant events. In effect, a mundane attraction drags the flock of men far from reasonableness and does not defend them from the filthiness of the rust of sin. Inclined to evil, they dream of nothing but earthly things, show contempt for the heavenly and are too bent over the earth to be able to contemplate the heavens.’[46]
In this profane sentiment, in the love of life and sensual enjoyment, the moralists saw the new customs that seemed to undermine the most dear traditions take root. The adoption of new manners and dress was a visible and striking change worthy of being recorded in the chronicles, and not only because it began to introduce variants into what had remained stable from several generations but because the variation seemed to entail a change in sensibility.
A change in sensibility, denoted by the introduction of new fashions, was precisely what Rodulfus Glaber observed and recorded in his chronicle as early as the mid-eleventh century. ‘About the year One Thousand of the Incarnation,’ he wrote, ‘when King Robert took as his wife Constance, princess of Aquitaine, the queen’s favour crossed over into France and Burgundy to the natives of Auvergne and Aquitaine. Those fatuous and flippant fellows were as affected in their customs as they were in their dress. Their weapons and the harnesses of their horses were equally dishevelled. Their hair reached only half-way down their heads; they shaved their beards like travelling players, they wore indecent boots and hose, and in short one could expect no loyalty or security in alliances from them. Alas! this nation of the Franks, once the most honest of nations, and the very towns of Burgundy, would enthusiastically follow those criminal examples and very soon faithfully reproduced all the perversity and infamy of their models. If any religious or God-fearing man ventured to reproach this conduct, his zeal was deemed madness. Yet Abbot William, of whom we have spoken, a man of incorruptible faith and rare steadfastness, putting aside all human regard and abandoning himself to the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, bitterly reproached the king and queen for tolerating all those indignities of their realm, so long renowned amongst all others for its devotion to honour and religion. He also addressed to the seigneurs of lower station exhortations so severe and threatening that most of them, submitting to his advice, renounced their frivolous manners and reverted to the old ways. The holy abbot believed he recognised in all those innovations the hand of Satan and claimed that any man who left this world without having divested himself of this demoniacal habit could hardly escape his clutches. However, those new ways prevailed in certain others, and against them I addressed the heroic verses which I here transcribe: A thousand years after the Virgin delivered our Lord to the world, men rush into to the most fatal of errors. Yielding to the attraction of variety, we claim to regulate our customs in accordance with the new fashion, And this imprudent love of novelty drags us into the teeth of danger. The centuries past are but the object of mockery for our own. A mixture of frivolity and infamy comes to corrupt our customs; spirits have now lost all taste for anything serious and even the horror of vice. Honour and justice, the guides of just men, now have no price, The fashion of the day serves to form counterfeit tyrants, with short vestments and a mistaken faith in treaties. The degenerate republic contemplates those effeminate customs groaning. Fraud and violence and every type of crime vie for the world. The saints are no longer honoured nor religion revered. Here sackings by the sword, there those of famine and plague, cannot right the wrongs of men nor diminish their impiety; and if the goodness of the Almighty were not to suspend His just wrath, Hell would have engulfed them in its bottomless abysses. Such is the power of this wretched custom of sinning: the more faults are committed, the less one fears to commit them again; and the less guilty one is, the more one fears coming to be so.’[47]
This picture of society matches the one that Guibert de Nogent painted shortly after, at the end of the eleventh century, describing the condition of the women of his day, so different, he claimed, from those of his mother’s. ‘Alas, how wretchedly, from that time to our own day, modesty and decency in the conduct of the young has declined. In appearance and also in fact, they have shaken the watchfulness of married women, and in all their manners is to be seen nothing more than a wild glee; nothing but jokes and banter is heard, nothing is seen but batting eyes. Their passing is reckless, and there is nothing in their customs that is not reprehensible. Their dress is a very long way from the old simplicity: billowing sleeves, tight tunics, shoes whose toes curl up in the fashion of Cordoba; everything in fact shows us a complete neglect of decorum. Every woman believes she has reached the height of misfortune should she lack a lover, and for each of these women it is a title of nobility and glory to have the greatest number of such courtiers.’[48]
Effeminate men and dissolute women formed a moral framework that seemed inseparable from a simple disturbance in manners and clothing, a consequence in its turn of profound changes in the forms of sensibility. These occurred no doubt within the aristocratic sectors perhaps as a result of exotic influences and thanks to the stimulus of a traffic that disseminated certain raw materials and certain assets of use; and they were the ones who contributed to shaping the typical ways of courtly life. Not as bold, the early bourgeois groups adopted moderate ways of life, in which the habits of work and modesty typical of their former condition. But with the increase in fortunes and due to the influence of the courtly customs the rich patrician groups of some cities began to slide down that slope described by Cacciaguda in reference to Florence and which coincides with the observations of Compagni and Villani.[49]
The change in the forms of sensibility, with conflict between generations, seems to have offered the traits of an instant change. This was how Ralph Glaber perceived it, who dated it quite accurately not only by means of a date, but also based on a social event like the appearance of certain social groups within the court of King Robert. Similarly, Orderic Vitalis notes with some accuracy the adoption of French clothing in England toward 1070: ‘At that time,’ he wrote, ‘with the help and grace of God peace reigned in England [. . .] The Angles were living peacefully with the Normans in the boroughs, strongholds and cities; their families themselves were united by the ties of matrimony. You would have seen some places and some urban fairs fill with merchants and French goods and the Angles, who, dressed in the costumes of their country, looked ridiculous to the French, change their habits to adopt the foreign fashions.’[50]
In another very accurate passage Orderic Vitalis dated the irruption of these changes in sensibility. ‘In this way,’ he says, ‘after the death of Pope Gregory, William the Bastard and other religious princes, the honest customs of our ancestors in the western marches were entirely abolished. They used to wear these modest clothes completely adapted to the shape of their bodies; they were skilled at riding and racing, as well as in all things that reason prescribed; but in our days the uses of the old have been changed almost everywhere by new inventions. Wanton youth adopts feminine softness; the men of court apply themselves to pleasing women with all sorts of lewdness. They place on the joints of the feet, where the body ends, the image of the tail of snakes, which present themselves to their eyes like scorpions. With the superfluous train of their robes and mantles sweep the dust on the ground. For whatever they do, they cover their hands with long, broad sleeves, and laden with those superfluous things they can neither walk briskly nor do any useful thing. They shave their foreheads like thieves but wear their hair long at the back of their heads like courtesans. In other times penitents, prisoners and pilgrims were in the habit of keeping all their hair and wearing their beards long: it was the sign, in the public’s eyes, of penance, captivity or pilgrimage. Now almost all the townsmen have curly hair and short beards, thus expressing to the eyes of the world that, like stinking billy-goats, they indulge in the filth of licentiousness. They curl their hair with the hairdresser’s iron and instead of a bonnet they cover their heads with fillets. One scarcely sees some knights go out in public with their heads uncovered and shaven as it should be according to the precept of the apostle. Thus each man shows outwardly, in his clothes and in his customs, what the inner state of his conscience is and what the worship is that they offer up to God.’[51] Shortly before he had explained in detail the origin of the appearance of an eye-catching fashion in footwear that he attributed to the initiative of the Count of Anjou. ‘That Count, reprehensible for many things and yet infamous, was a slave to all kinds of vices. As he had deformed feet, he had made long shoes pointed at the toe to cover his feet and conceal the callouses that are ordinarily called onions. This is from there that this extraordinary fashion which greatly pleased superficial people and admirers of novelties spread through the West. This is why cobblers make footwear like a scorpion’s tail, a type of shoe that almost all men, rich and poor alike, desperately seek. Until then shoes had always been made rounded following the shape of the foot, and both high-born and lowly, religious and lay men alike, wore them at their convenience; but very soon in their pride secular men sought out ornaments that were in relation to the perversity of their customs; and what in other times more honourable men had looked upon as the epitome of shame and infamy, modern men finds sweet as honey and flaunt it as a very particular mark of distinction. A certain Robert, a wicked man linked to the court of William Rufus, was the first to begin to fill his long shoes with burlap and shape them into ram’s horns. Most of the nobles were not slow to follow this frivolous invention, as if it had been a mark of merit or a proof of virtue. In those days effeminate men held sway in all parts of the globe; they gave themselves to all kinds of immoral excesses and like dirty libertines worthy of the bonfire they abandoned themselves to the filth of Sodom. They rejected the customs of soldiers, laughed at the exhortations of priests and, both in their dress and in their lives, they followed foreign customs. In fact, they parted her hair from the tops of their heads to their brows, kept them long in the manner of women, very carefully; and loved to don excessively long, tight shirts and tunics. Their nights were spent in debauched feasting and drunkenness, in unnecessary entertainments, at dice or other games of chance; their days on the other hand they spent in sleeping.’
The emergence of a generation of young people who abandoned the traditional customs and opened up the way to new forms of sensibility was seen a little later in the East. There too it drew the attention of the defenders of the traditional order, who saw in the conduct of the new promotions of Christian nobility the explanation for the world’s ills. Just as the old customs had secured victory, the new had brought disaster. William of Tyre, who wrote at the end of the twelfth century, highlighted this contrast between the attitude of the first generation of crusaders and the second: ‘It is frequently asked, and rightly so, why our fathers, though small in number, have frequently resisted with advantage the attack of more numerous enemy forces and, even more frequently, have destroyed with a small army corps the better equipped battalions and most numerous armies of their adversaries [. . .] whereas, on the contrary, the men of our day have generally been conquered by inferior forces, and even when they have attempted some exploit with superior numbers against their adversaries, they have been unable to triumph and have succumbed in the struggle. Reflecting on this question and examining our current situation, the first cause that it seems to us should be assigned to this change leads us to God, the author of all things. Our fathers, who were religious and God-fearing men, have been replaced by wicked and criminal sons, perverters of the faith of Christ who abandon themselves, haphazardly and indiscriminatingly to all manner of unlawful things. [. . .] Such, indeed, are the men of the present century, and especially those from the regions of the East. He who would try with careful pen to portray their customs, or rather their monstrous vices, would succumb under the immensity of his work and would seem to have invented a satire rather than compiled a true history.’[52]
More indignation still is contained in the picture painted by Jacques de Vitry, who wrote almost half a century later. The first crusaders, he said, were ‘pilgrims, still poor, worn out and exhausted by long toiling’; but the following generation abandoned their faith and customs: ‘A race full of depravity and crookedness, wicked and degenerate sons, corrupted and corrupting men against the divine law, descendants of those pilgrims of which I have already spoken –religious men, pleasing to God and full of grace – as the lees comes from wine, the pomace from oil, the tares from wheat or the rust from silver, they succeeded their parents in the possessions but not in virtues, and they abused the temporal goods which their parents had conquered at the cost of their own blood fighting bravely in honour of God against the ungodly. Their children, who now are called ‘colts’, nourished on delights, soft and effeminate, more accustomed to baths than battles, given to impurity and lust, arrayed in light gowns like women, they are adorned and arranged as a temple [. . .] By entering into treaties with the Saracens, they rejoice when they reach peace with the enemies of Christ [. . .] One could not believe how Syrian and Saracen women teach them spells, curses and all kinds of abominations [. . .] Having enriched themselves immeasurably by making pilgrims pay unreasonable prices for their accommodation, deceiving and ruining them by the sale of their goods, their traffic and their negotiations of all kinds, scorning, in a word, and delivering to mockery those champions of Christ who have exile themselves for his love, they swamp them with insults and affronts as if they were fools or idiots.’[53]
In addition to a nostalgic idealisation of the past, the perception of the generational changes in sensibility also prompted a desire to identify those responsible. The Church, or rather, the bad shepherds, were elected by many as culprits; but it was above all the nobility, or rather, the new promotions of the nobility, who elicited to the highest degree the outrage of those who noticed the changes in sensibility, which they placed on the moral plane.
Anyway, the testimonies that provide evidence of the perception of change reveal a tendency to attribute its causes to the pernicious influences of groups outside the closed environment of the Romano-Germanic Christian tradition. The Provençals had been identified as a distinct cultural group. Ralph Glaber described them pejoratively in the mid-eleventh century;[54] Guibert de Nogent identified them at the end of the century by ‘their excessive loquacity’;[55] and Ralph of Caen characterised them at the start of the twelfth with singular harshness: ‘As the hen is just the opposite of the duck,’ he writes, ‘the Provençals are as different from the French in their customs, their spirit, all their habits and their manner of living [. . .] Hence that saying oft repeated by children: the French for combat, the Provençals for victuals.’[56] The refined courts, the tone of their poetry and the development of heterodox beliefs emphasised the uniqueness of that ambit, in which alongside Christian traditions there survived not only Roman but also Islamic traditions. And while it was seen as different, it was judged as the source of the influences that had disturbed the traditional ways of life of the Romano-Germanic ambit. Others, however, attributed the changes in the new generations’ sensibility to the eastern influences received on the occasion of the crusades. Those who were educated in Palestine revealed a whole-hearted adaptation with the medium which many moralists warned and railed against: William of Tyre, Robert the Monk, Jacques de Vitry; but was Fulcher of Chartres who stated it most explicitly: ‘Westerners we were and here we have been transformed into Easterners. The Italian or the Frenchman yesterday, transplanted, has been transformed into a Galilean or a Palestinian. The man from Reims or Chartres has been changed into a Syrian or a citizen of Antioch. We have already forgotten our places of origin.’ And he concluded by saying: ‘Why, then, return, since the East so fills our desires.’[57]
The location of the influences that had managed to upset vernacular customs led to a sharp contrast between the closed world, in which the Christian-feudal order had developed, and the open world after the movement of expansion towards the periphery and the bourgeois revolution. More than the almost imperceptible situational changes or the resounding religious confrontations, those taking place in the field of sensibility, as they bloomed in successive generations, fuelled the feeling of profound transformation. The profanity lodged in the minds of the aristocracies who perceived the impact of the new society and both the new ways of economic life and the ways of life adopted by their most independent and carefree sectors were later accepted by successive generations of bourgeois as they were liberated from the inhibitions they carried with them.
So, in tune with the new situations, there developed this feudo-bourgeois sensibility, whose irruption constituted in many people’s eyes the most unequivocal and troubling testimony of change.
Notes
^ 1. Le Roman de Renart, Première branche,ll. 525 ff.
^ 2. Guillaume de Lorris, Roman de la Rose, ll. 458 ff; Jean de Meun, Roman de la Rose, ll. 9535 ff.
^ 3. Jean de Meun, Roman de la Rose, ll. 9493 ff.
^ 4. Jean de Meun, Roman de la Rose, ll. 9587 ff.
^ 5. Dante Alighieri, Convivio, IV, iii.
^ 6. Dante Alighieri, Convivio, IV, xi–xiii.
^ 7. Jean de Meun, Roman de la Rose, ll. 9647 ff.
^ 8. Dante Alighieri, Commedia, ‘Purgatorio’,VI, ll. 127 ff.
^ 9. Dante Alighieri, Commedia, ‘Inferno’ XXIV, ll. 126 ff.; XXVII, ll. 31 ff.; XXXIII, ll. 13; Convivio, IV, xxvii.
^ 10. Guibert de Nogent, De vita sua, III, viii.
^ 11. Dante Alighieri, De Monarchia, II, i.
^ 12. Dante Alighieri, Commedia, ‘Purgatorio’,XX, ll. 40 ff.; ‘Paradiso’, VIII, ll. 49 ff.
^ 13. Jean de Meun, Roman de la Rose, ll. 8353 ff.
^ 14. Dante Alighieri, Commedia, ‘Purgatorio’, VI, ll. 76 ff.
^ 15. Dante Alighieri, Commedia, ‘Paradiso’, XVI, ll. 46 ff.
^ 16. Dante Alighieri, Commedia,‘Paradiso’, XV, ll. 97 ff.
^ 17. Dante Alighieri, Commedia, ‘Paradiso’, XVI, ll. 73 ff.
^ 18. Marcabru, ‘Dirai vos en mon lati’; Aimeric de Péguillan, cf. Joseph Anglade, Les Troubadours, 177.
^ 19. Dante Alighieri, Commedia, ‘Purgatorio’, VI, ll. 94 ff.
^ 20. Ramon Llull, Blanquerna, LXXIX, 10; LXXX, 1.
^ 21. Dante Alighieri, Commedia, ‘Paradiso’, XXVII, ll. 22 ff.
^ 22. Guillaume le Breton, Philippide, yr. 1211.
^ 23. Ramon Llull, Desconhort, III.
^ 24. Raoul Glaber, Histoires, IV, ii.
^ 25. Romualdo Salernitano, Cronicon, yrs. 1053–57.
^ 26. Ramon Llull, Blanquerna, VII, 5; XLII, 2.
^ 27. La Chanson de la Croisade Albigeoise, 15.
^ 28. Bernard Gui, Manuel de l’inquisiteur : Méthode, art et procédés à employer pour la recherche et l’interrogation des hérétiques, des croyants et de leurs complices.
^ 29. Saint Bernard, Epistolae, CLXXXIX; CLXXXVIII; CXCI.
^ 30. Dante Alighieri, Commedia, ‘Purgatorio’, III, ll. 34 ff.
^ 31. Dante Alighieri, Convivio,IV, v.
^ 32. Ordericus Vitalis, Historia Ecclesiastica, IX.
^ 33. Guibert de Nogent, Gesta Dei per Francos, I.
^ 34. Ordericus Vitalis, Historia Ecclesiastica, V.
^ 35. Gonzalo de Berceo, Milagros de Nuestra Señora, xxi, ll. 502 ff.
^ 36. Ramon Llull, Blanquerna, XLIII, 3.
^ 37. Guilhem Figueira, ‘Pour faire un sirventes, ce chant qui me convient’.
^ 38. Peire Cardenal, cf. Robert Briffault, Les troubadours, 119.
^ 39. Cf. Olga Dobiache-Rojdestvensky, Les poésies des goliards, chap. V.
^ 40. Pierre des Vaulx-de-Cernay, Historia Albigensis, II.
^ 41. Dante Alighieri, Commedia, ‘Purgatorio’, XXXII, ll. 148 ff.
^ 42. Guillaume le Breton, La Philippide, yr. 1209.
^ 43. ChartulartumuniversitatisParisiensis,I, 78–79.
^ 44. Cf. Étienne Gilson, La philosophie au Moyen Âge : Des origines patristiques à la fin du XIVe siècle, 395.
^ 45. Jacques de Vitry, Historia Orientalis, II, iii.
^ 46. Ordericus Vitalis, Historia Ecclesiastica, XI.
^ 47. Raoul Glaber, Histoires, III, ix.
^ 48. Guibert de Nogent, De vita sua, I, xii.
^ 49. Dante Alighieri, Commedia, ‘Paradiso’, XV and XVI.
^ 50. Ordericus Vitalis, Historia Ecclesiastica, IV.
^ 51. Ordericus Vitalis, Historia Ecclesiastica, VIII.
^ 52. Guillaume de Tyr, Historia rerum in partibus transmarinisgestarum, XXI.
^ 53. Jacques de Vitry, Historia Orientalis, I.
^ 54. Raoul Glaber, Histoires, III, ix.
^ 55. Guibert de Nogent, Gesta Dei per Francos, II.
^ 56. Raoul de Caen, Gesta Tancredi, LX–LXI.
^ 57. Foulcher de Chartres, Gesta FrancorumHierusalemperegrinantium,XXXVII.
