Colloque

Spirituality and Popular Religion: Jacques de Vitry

Monica Sandor

Membre a labase

Monica Sandor

Résumé du colloque

The study of religious history during the past few decades has undergone considerable influence from the methodologies used by sociocultural, and literary historians as well as by anthropologists and folklorists. André Vauchez, Jacques Le Goff, Caroline Walker Bynum, Lester K. Little, and others have shown that the study of religious life, experience, and mentalities of the entire mediaeval population differs from studies of the Church as an institution, as well as from the analysis of spiritual and theological writings. The discipline is gradually disengaging itself from, on the one hand, a narrow legal/institutional approach and, on the other from an exclusively doctrinal focus. An interdisciplinary method has allowed scholars to discover in the cult of the saints, the ritual use of relics, and funeral practices and rites, for example, the implicit beliefs and practices shared by a broad segment of both "learned" and "popular" society. In this paper I would like to examine the methodological presuppositions underlying current discussion on mediaeval "spirituality" and "popular religion," using as a basis the preacher Jacques de Vitry. The author of a large number of sermons to diverse classes of society, and of two histories that provide keen insights into the beginnings of popular religious movements such as the beguines and the Franciscans, Jacques de Vitry played a key role in his later career as prelate in defending and promoting these groups and the apostolic life. I will thus try to show how our understanding of the complexity of religious experience in the mediaeval period can be enhanced by studying figures such as Jacques de Vitry who provide a link between the clerical élites and the population as a whole.