Heretics and Jews in the Early Eleventh Century

The twelfth century has long ¹ been recognized as a time of momentous change in European society, a period in which the essential institutions of high medieval civilization emerged. ² A period of renaissance and dramatic institutional growth, the twelfth century has also been recognized as the period in which the medieval church redefined its relations with heretics and Jews. Indeed, it was at this point that the church developed both a negative stereotype of the Jews that laid the foundation for medieval antisemitism and an aggressive stance toward religious dissent that was based on the diabolical image of the heretic. ³ Although these attitudes were fully formalized in the twelfth century, they were foreshadowed in the works of ecclesiastics writing in the early eleventh century. Faced with religious dissidents for the first time in some 500 years, church leaders responded quickly and forcefully to the appearance of heretics. ⁴ They saw them not as advocates of simpler or more ascetic religious belief and practice but as part of a widespread conspiracy intended to undermine the very foundations of the church. Moreover, for some contemporaries the heretics were not alone in their assault on Christian society but were aided by the Jews, the age-old religious rivals of all Christians. At the very moment that churchmen were forced to respond to heretics, whom they identified as tools of the devil, they developed a diabolical image of the Jews that would form the core of later medieval and modern antisemitism. This chapter examines the treatment of Jews and heretics in the writings of the early eleventh century and suggests that response of orthodox clergy to the reappearance of heresy contributed to the creation of an increasingly negative stereotype of the Jews.