ABSTRACT
One of the central points of the discussion has been Professor R. I. Moore's The Formation of a Persecuting Society. The dualist doctrine was a gloomy one; nonetheless, it evidently had great appeal in Western Europe at a time when the gloomier aspects of Christianity were definitely to the fore, at least in popular religion. An essential element in his argument is the attempt to put together the evidence of contemporary sources and modern sociological and anthropological theory. Moore never discusses the evidence for religious toleration in this period. For the record of a man at once deeply devout and fervent in his belief in tolerance, we have to wait for the great German poet, Wolfram von Eschenbach in the early thirteenth century. One of the most flourishing centres of craftsmanship in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries was in north-western Germany.
