ABSTRACT
A lthough the majority of the population in medieval Europe followed the tenets of the Roman Church, heresy flourished at different times in the later Middle Ages in particular regions, implicating families and communities as well as the individual believer. The Church displayed a lively fear of heresy. From the twelfth century, with its upsurge of popular religious movements, it was faced with a number of fringe and heretical groups aspiring to follow the apostolic life. Some, like the Humiliati and the Franciscans, were incorporated into the Church by Innocent III. Others, such as the Waldensians and the Cathars, were judged heretical and the papacy and local ecclesiastical authorities did their best to suppress them. Heresy remained a problem for the Church in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, with the rise of the Hussites in Bohemia and the Lollards in England.
