ABSTRACT
During the pontificate of Innocent HI, several new religious groups acquired some form of approval for their way of life. This extended from the oral acceptance of a proposal to the formal recognition of a new order. Those approved in turn ranged from the strictly enclosed monks of the community at Val des Choux in the diocese of Langres to the more outward-looking followers of John of Matha or Francis of Assisi. They also, famously, included groups which had previously been condemned as heretics, notably the Humiliati and the followers of Durandus of Huesca and Bernard Prim, but also Bosnian 'Christians' who had mistakenly been called Patarines. There are substantial differences between these groups and some are better known than others, either because of the extent of contemporary documentation or, more often, because the scale of the organization which developed after approval generated great interest in their origins. Yet they are worth considering as a group because, at the time of their first encounters with Innocent ffl's curia, they were all in the same predicament: people experimenting with new forms of religious life who sought ecclesiastical confirmation of the legitimacy of their actions.
