"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.

Basic information

Original name

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

Authors

ZBÍRAL, David

Edition

Past, Present, and Future in the Scientific Study of Religion, 2012

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Other information

Language

English

Type of outcome

Prezentace na konferencích

Field of Study

60300 6.3 Philosophy, Ethics and Religion

Country of publisher

Czech Republic

Confidentiality degree

není předmětem státního či obchodního tajemství

Organization unit

Faculty of Arts

Keywords in English

apostolic poverty; christianity; economy; money

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Abstract

V originále

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).