A label can color your point of view

The Addison Independent, July 28, 2011

            I consider myself incredibly lucky in that I get paid to do exactly what I love most:  study medieval heretics. I find their ideas fascinating, their ingenuity engaging and their tenacity inspiring, even if their fates are often a bummer. “How was your day at the office, dear?” “Twenty-two heretics got burned at the stake. If you don’t mind, I’d rather postpone that barbecue until tomorrow.”
            But what’s a heretic?  It’s not generally a word people call themselves, but a label attached by someone else. The 13th-century English bishop Robert Grosseteste had a nice definition for heresy: “an opinion chosen by human perception, contrary to Holy Scripture, publicly avowed and obstinately defended.” But who gets to decide what is “contrary to Holy Scripture”? It wasn’t always easy. Let me tell you the stories of two religious leaders.
            Once upon a time, there was a wealthy merchant in a southern European city who was profoundly moved when he heard a traveling jongleur recounting the life of a saint. He had someone translate the Gospels into his local dialect so he could read them, and was so struck by the advice Jesus gave to a young man who wanted to obtain eternal life that he quickly followed it to the letter:  “If thou wilt be perfect, go sell what thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come follow me” (Matthew 19:21).  Soon, he had abandoned his family and all his worldly goods and became a traveling preacher who lived by begging. He attracted followers all over Europe. When he came to the attention of the pope, he went to Rome to ask for papal approval of his mission.  His name was Waldo of Lyons, and Pope Alexander III declared him a heretic at the Third Lateran Council in 1179.
            And then there’s the other fellow. He was the dissolute son of a wealthy merchant who was inspired by the same passage in the Gospels to sell his family’s goods and also become a mendicant traveling preacher. In one of the most famous and dramatic scenes in history, he stripped off all his clothes in front of the people of his hometown in order to reject his father and embrace poverty. He attracted so many followers that he, too, sought the pope’s approval, and Pope Innocent III endorsed his group in 1209.  We know him as Saint Francis of Assisi.
            Alexander III rejected Waldo in 1179; Innocent III embraced Francis in 1209. The Franciscans are a respected order of friars, while the Waldensians were prosecuted and often executed as heretics until the time of the Protestant Reformation. Why?
            The eyes of faith see the answer as simple: Francis is a saint in Heaven enjoying the Beatific Vision because of his innate virtues recognized by the Church, and Waldo is a heretic lamenting his unorthodox ideas and practices in the fires of Hell.
            The historian’s eye might instead consider the personalities of the popes who encountered the two men: was Innocent bolder and more risk-taking than Alexander? (this might be why Innocent III is the only medieval pope I know available as an action figure) Or we could look to social history: the end of the 12th century saw the tremendous growth of towns in medieval Europe, and it may well be that the leaders of the Church recognized the increased need for new forms of piety and preaching to minister to townspeople.  It may have been strategic: the popularity and success of the Waldensians prompted Innocent to seek out a safe alternative, and Francis’s ragtag but enthusiastic group looked like they fit the bill.
            Was Francis really so very different from Waldo? Things might have gone the other way.
            But that’s not what happened. Two popes made different decisions, and thus Waldo’s label reads “heretic” and Francis’s “saint.” Those labels shape our understanding, because we respond to “heretics” in one way and “saints” in another.
            Try changing the labels: when I imagine the life of “Saint Waldo,” I learn something new about him and his movement. Nor does it just work for heretics and saints.  If you take an “enemy,” and think of him as a “friend,” you’ll see him with entirely new eyes.

Louisa A. Burnham is Associate Professor of History at Middlebury College, and author of So Great a Light, So Great a Smoke:  The Beguin Heretics of Languedoc (2008).