"Poor of Christ" Not So Poor: A Paradox of the Cathar Heresy

ZBÍRAL, David. "Poor of Christ" Not So Poor: A Paradox of the Cathar Heresy. In Past, Present, and Future in the Scientific Study of Religion. 2012.

Základní údaje

• Originální název: "Poor of Christ" Not So Poor: A Paradox of the Cathar Heresy
• Autoři: ZBÍRAL, David.
• Vydání: Past, Present, and Future in the Scientific Study of Religion, 2012.

Další údaje

• Originální jazyk: angličtina
• Typ výsledku: Prezentace na konferencích
• Obor: 60300 6.3 Philosophy, Ethics and Religion
• Stát vydavatele: Česká republika
• Utajení: není předmětem státního či obchodního tajemství
• Organizační jednotka: Filozofická fakulta
• Klíčová slova anglicky: apostolic poverty; christianity; economy; money

Anotace

This paper explores the relationship between the ideal and the practice of voluntary poverty among dissenting preachers in the 12th to 14th-century Europe who called themselves “Good Men” and were labeled as “Cathars” or simply “heretics”. I argue that the “Good Men” used the ideal of poverty and of the “apostolic life” in their self-presentation narratives but at the same time, quite paradoxically, they had very progressive attitudes to money and profit. Indeed, they practiced a specific “religious” moneymaking, sometimes in quite assertive ways. To explain this paradox, I refer to the developmental theory presented by Lester K. Little in his Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy in Medieval Europe (London: Paul Elek, 1978).