Between Orders and Heresy: Rethinking Medieval Religious Movements ed. by Jennifer Kolpacoff Deane and Anne E. Lester (review)

Reviewed by: Between Orders and Heresy: Rethinking Medieval Religious Movements ed. by Jennifer Kolpacoff Deane and Anne E. Lester Johan Belaen Between Orders and Heresy: Rethinking Medieval Religious Movements. Edited by Jennifer Kolpacoff Deane and Anne E. Lester. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2022. Pp. xx, 430. $95. ISBN: 978-1-487-50241-6.) Nearly nine decades have passed since the publication of Herbert Grundmann's seminal study Religiöse Bewegungen im Mittelalter, but it seems as if its potential to inspire scholars in searching for new perspectives on the development of medieval religious life is far from exhausted. This collection of eleven essays, which stems from a series of sessions held at the International Medieval Congress of 2015, revisits Grundmann's work and examines its relevance for future research in the field of medieval religiosity. [End Page 781] The Grundmann thesis, which argues that religious orders and heretical movements of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries both emanated from the vita apostolica movement and should therefore be studied as a whole, has been so influential that J. Van Engen considered it to be a "foundation for the historical study of medieval religious life." Indeed, Grundmann's work has led us to move away from essentialist interpretations of orthodoxy and heterodoxy, deconstruct glorifying "order histories," and appreciate religious groups that were previously regarded as marginal. A question that is (too) rarely asked, however, is whether the binary master narrative of orders and heresies (which Grundmann in a way reinforced) is still an adequate one. As the title suggests, the aim of the present edited volume is to address this issue by exploring medieval religious interactions, experiences, and practices that took place outside the institutional boundaries of orders and heresies–the so-called space "in between." Not counting the opening essay, which examines how Grundmann related to the political currents of his time (Letha Böhringer), the focus of the essays is mainly on the thirteenth century, and more specifically on the women's religious movement. Each essay, in its own right, successfully points out various methodological shortcomings and biases within the current historiography, but there is also a more general lesson to draw, namely that we must recognize the complexity and multidimensionality of the concept of "orthodoxy." The excessive historiographical focus on religious movements adopting the order model has led us to overlook the possibility that "tolerated" forms of religious experience could exist and flourish beyond the institutional boundaries of orders and the physical confines of convents. While the transgenerational and family-centered crusader religiosity that emerged after the Fall of Jerusalem (Anne Lester) stands out as an atypical example, the same cannot be said about the many quasi-religious groups of lay people and women that popped up in high and late medieval Europe. When not being targeted by the papacy, these groups successfully claimed legitimacy on the basis of self-identification—such as lay confraternities that expressly emulated the apostolic model of communal life (Neslihan Şenocak)—or definitions of orthodoxy formulated by local (ecclesiastical) elites—such as Margherita Colonna's (d. 1280) family-supported religious community in Rome (Lezlie Knox) or the Parisian beguines who maintained close ties with the masters of the Sorbonne (Tanya Stabler Miller). Many of these movements were eventually pushed into the mold of the order anyway, but their role in shaping a proper institutional identity should not be ignored (Sean L. Field), and it should be stressed that, before that moment arrived, other criteria of orthodoxy were applied, as the case of the "Grey Sisters" illustrates (Alison More). Just as we cannot suppose that the papal view of orthodoxy was monolithic and uniform, or that it was the sole authority determining legitimacy in practice, so we cannot suppose that the path to orthodoxy was linear or that recognition was irreversible. This is shown by the example of the "orthodox" beguines of Prague, whose legitimacy was questioned because of their active role in the rise of the Hussites [End Page 782] in the early fifteenth century (Jana Grollová), or simply by the accusations of "hypocrisy" with which religious peers constantly attacked each other's authority (Sita Steckel). Of course, we must always try to look...

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