What has Paris to do with Assisi? The Theological Creation of a Saint

Abstract

From the eleventh through the thirteenth centuries, untold numbers of penitents emerged throughout Christian Europe. Enthusiastic God-seekers all, most embraced a lifestyle of evangelical poverty, imitating, in what they took to be a literal fashion, the ministry of Jesus and his disciples. The practices of these holy men and women inevitably thrust a challenge to the power, authority, and wealth of the institutional church that appeared to be compromising the purity of the gospel message by comparison. Some, such as the Humiliati, were able to implement their vision with the support and approval of the institutional church. Others, such as the Waldensians, began their penitential work of preaching with the approbation of the institutional church, but eventually their enthusiasm led some to espouse practices and teachings unacceptable to the institutional church. And finally others, notably those called the Cathars—Albigensians in France and Bogomils in Eastern Europe, adopted dualistic doctrines to nurture their evangelical lifestyle with the result that many were slaughtered as heretics by the church that originally inspired them.