Read for discussion in class: excerpts from the Decrees of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215); Oldridge chapters 1, 2 & 3. For all the canons and decrees of the Fourth Lateran Council, click here. Image: Innocent III (r. 1198-1216), Contemporary Fresco in the Church of the Sacro Speco, Subiaco. Source: Jacques Maritain Center, Notre Dame University.

I. Discussion: The Decrees of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215)

II. The Formation of a Persecuting Society?
A) Fragmentation of Authority and the Absense of "Heresy" (ca. 500-1100)
B) Discovering Outcasts: Heretics, Jews, Lepers
C) The "Common Enemy"

Excursus: Canon Law on Marriage

III. Change and Its Discontents
A) Internal Reform of the Church
B) The Transformation of Europe
1. The Revival of Commerce 
2. Social Transformation 
3. Political Change 

Map: Trade in Medieval Europe
Map: Southern France, ca. 1200
Image: Innocent III excommunicating Cathars (14th C)
Map: The Albigensian Crusade

The Formation of a Learned Stereotype

Read for discussion in class: Ralph of Coggeshall, The Heretics of Rheims (1176-1180) [Canvas], Pope Gregory IX, Vox in Rama (1233) [Canvas], and Johannes Nider, The Formicarius (1435-1438) [Canvas]. Image: A depiction of demonic intervention: in 1587, the Count of Sultz executed three witches, one of whom had, with the Devil's aid, destroyed two valuable horses (lower right). As the witches were burning, the "Evil Spirit" destroyed books and letters in the comital chancery and gave off a horrible stink as it escaped. Zentralbibliothek Zürich. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

I. The Narrative Structure of the Learned Stereotype
A) Narrative Phases
1. Seduction
2. Apostasy and Demonic Pact
3. Nocturnal Flight
4. Ritual Inversion
5. Malefice
B) Civil Alienation, Religious Alienation

Text: The Witches' Sabbath according to Francesco Maria Guazzo, 1626
Chart: The Cumulative Stereotype of the Witch—A Schematic Overview
Chart: Kieckhefer's Chronology of Early Trials (1300-1500)

II. Cumulative Origins of the Learned Stereotype
A) Why the Early Renaissance? Why the Western Alps?
1. Famine, Plague, and the Search for Explanations (1317-1349)
2. Lepers to Jews to Heretics
B) Waldensian Persecutions in the Western Alps

Map: The Spread of Plague (1347-1349)
Chart: Effects of Plague in a Single Town (Prato)

III.Shifting Intellectual Environments
A) The Revival of Roman Law
B) The Revival of Aristotelian Philosophy