Preachers, Partisans, and Rebellious Religion. Marcela K. Perett
than suppressing them. Not surprisingly, this massive catechetical effort, aimed as it was at faction formation rather than pure catechesis, undermined doctrinal and devotional unity rather than fostering it. The vernacular increased factionalism and, ironically, made it more difficult to come to an agreement.
Indeed we must be careful not to idealize the vernacular medium, as contemporary scholarship is wont to do.24 This observation flies in the face of current wisdom about vernacular texts and literatures, and many may be surprised by the implication that using the vernacular to discuss matters of theology introduced serious—and sometimes fatal—new limitations. This is a crucial point, so much so that it encapsulates the argument of the whole book. Taking theological debates outside of the university widened access and the number of laypeople who were at least rudimentarily conversant with fundamental theological questions. But because the laity was uneducated, they were asked to accept arguments on grounds other than intrinsic theological merit, which they could not evaluate. This changed the way in which theological debates were conducted and decided: arguments about theology were resolved by political leverage and popular (often populist) appeals, rather than exclusively by sophisticated theological disputation in Latin. The switch to the vernacular as the language in which theological debates were conducted did not only contribute to the spread of heresy; it also transformed the rules by which such debates were adjudicated.25
This contention contradicts much of what has been written by scholars of late medieval vernacular texts, be they historians, theologians, or literature scholars. Many of them have used the phrase “vernacular theology,” brought into vogue by Nicholas Watson after Bernard McGinn used it to describe the third strand of literary tradition, besides scholastic and monastic, beginning in the thirteenth century.26 McGinn saw this third literary tradition as particularly influenced by women, as did many after him. In recent decades, much scholarship has been done to deepen our understanding of vernacular theology, especially investigations of the capacity of the vernacular, the subversive potential of the vernacular, as well as its various uses. The subversive potential of the vernacular has been explored by Nicholas Watson and his interlocutors, most of them writing about the particularly English phenomenon of Lollardy in England. They use the phrase “vernacular theology” with a specific set of assumptions, implying that the vernacular was always subversive of the Latin discourse, always battling against it, but always marking a positive development. This view has gained some influence, but the examples here will show that this was not always the case. In order to put some distance between Watson’s view of vernacular theology and its function, the longer, slightly clumsy phrase “theology in the vernacular” is used here instead.
If anything, there is even less clarity now than there was before about what vernacular theology is and what its implications are. Beginning in the 1300s, the vernacular was used for all sorts of different purposes: to educate, to share (mystical) experiences, to retell and shape (previously inaccessible) narratives, to escape in various ways the limitations of Latin (and its audiences) and to control. Vernacular theology is now taken to describe a vast number of different kinds of writing, written for different purposes for different audiences and united by the fact that they were all written in the vernacular. It is a vast and analytically unwieldy category of texts that obstructs more than it explains. Curiously, there is comparatively little interest in the authors of vernacular theology, except when they happen to be women or heretics, or in the purpose for which they were written. But most were written by clerics, regular or secular, for a lay audience with a specific purpose in mind. Although a few of these works enjoyed many translations and circulated widely across linguistic boundaries, most did not, rather serving smaller audiences and communities, which began to emerge around specific textual traditions. The role of vernacular texts in the formation of the Hussite movement illustrates the full potential of vernacular learning, which—rather than fostering submissive piety—gave rise to distinct religious communities and their identities.
The fact that the laity responded to these catechetical writings points to a larger desire to participate more actively in the daily practices of Christianity.27 Another way of putting that is that in the course of the late medieval period, laity increasingly wished to tailor and control the devotional experience of the religion into which they were born. Increased endowments of chantries and altars, new religious fraternities, and growing popularity of vernacular writings (both catechetical and moralizing) all belong to this same desire for participation and were evident in Prague at the turn of the fifteenth century.28
This increased participation came with a gradual encroachment of the laity on practices previously deemed to have been the preserve of the ordained religious. In the Early and High Middle Ages, monasticism was seen as the highest form of Christian spirituality. Anyone wishing to attain spiritual perfection could only have considered the monastic route, the right and proper place for professional and spiritual athletes.29 Moreover, living out in the world meant that one could, at best, attain a second-rate spiritual life. However, this entire ideal, resting as it did on a strict separation between the professional religious and the nonreligious, was crumbling. In the course of the fifteenth century, religion ceased to be “the preserve of the professed religious,”30 with the rest confined by these implicit limitations. A new kind of spiritual ideal began to take shape as various new groups were founded in order to appropriate monastic practices and disciplines for everyone. The Devotio Moderna, or the Sisters and Brothers of the Common Life, is perhaps the most famous of these attempts to eliminate the division between monastic and lay religious practice.31 Beginning with houses in Deventer and later in nearby Zwolle and Kampen, communities soon formed across the Netherlands, in Flanders, and in Germany. Their spirituality was urban, literate, disciplined, meditative, and immersed in the book culture, with brothers copying and composing texts as part of their spiritual exercises.32 Theological learning was not seen to be in competition with spiritual devotion; they were seen as two sides of the same coin. Thomas à Kempis, a member of the Brothers of the Common Life, wrote of the attitude toward theological study in his spiritual best seller The Imitation of Christ. The attitude was not one of rejection: “No reason why we should quarrel with learning or any straightforward pursuit of knowledge,” Thomas wrote, “it is all good as far as it goes, and part of God’s plan.”33
These authors of vernacular theological works had little intention to weaken the laity’s dependence on clerical ministrations. Quite the opposite. The concerted efforts at education sought to strengthen the integrity of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, perceived as having its credibility damaged by numerous late medieval scandals. The learned authors’ focus on everyday piety was, in effect, a reminder to the laity about what was most important, a gesture in favor of reforming lay life and morals at times when any other form of church reform remained a deeply controversial topic. However, the controversy about reform in the church did, at times, trickle into the vernacular writings with catastrophic results for the clerical establishment. Bohemia in the early decades of the fifteenth century is a case in point. When Jan Hus began denouncing clerical corruption and immorality in sermons to the laity, he found himself facing charges of heresy almost overnight. The charges were later dropped, but Hus continued to labor under suspicions of scandalous preaching and of inciting the laity against clerics. In his vernacular writings, the message of lay piety was inextricably linked to an exhortation to disobey immoral and corrupt clerics. This is how the Bethlehem Chapel, where Hus delivered most of his sermons, became both a source of vernacular catechesis and complaints against clerical colleagues. Hus was not the only charismatic preacher who criticized his fellow clerics; this practice was endemic to sermons of numerous reformers, such as Johann Geiler, and it may have contributed to the church’s loss of authority in lay circles.34 In Bohemia, Hus’s followers continued this trend and their public complaints against other clerics produced a laity watchful of clerical immorality and escalated into a kind of civil war between clerical factions, which would be repeated with the sixteenth-century Reformation. The Hussite writings for the laity fit well in the burgeoning genre of vernacular theological writings, but by combining catechesis with an invitation to dissent they became dangerous. They also became antithetical to the original goals of vernacular writings, which were to strengthen, and not undermine, the church’s unity.
The ease with which vernacular theological writings were repurposed reflects their