num_pages: 232
description: Inquisitors in the Middle Ages believed they could easily tell the difference between orthodox believers and heretics. They wrote manuals that described the beliefs and practices of heretical groups, devising questions designed to ferret out the fifth columnists hiding dangerously and threateningly in their midst. Heretics were the enemy within, the rotten apples in the religious barrel. It was essential to sort the sheep from the goats, in order to sustain the social and ecclesiastical order. But were heretics and faithful Christians really so very unlike? Louisa Burnham argues that historians have been too anxious to make simplistic distinctions between heresy and canonical orthodoxy. She contends that heretics were part of a complex movement that was as deeply spiritual as that of their enemies.Far from existing at the margins of popular religious life, heresy was central to the medieval Church's attempt to define itself.
language: English
title: Medieval Heresy: The Church's Struggle for Orthodoxy and Survival
titlecomplete: Medieval Heresy: The Church's Struggle for Orthodoxy and Survival
ratings_count: 1
publisher: Tauris Academic Studies