| This dissertation is the first sustained history of the Beguins of Languedoc in forty years. Based on a thorough review of the inquisitorial material found in the Collection Doat in Paris, and in Bernard Gui's Liber sententiarum , it also makes use of a hitherto unknown and unexploited Beguin martyrology, and on substantial archival research in the Archives Departementales de l'Herault and the Archives Municipales de Montpellier.;"So Great a Light, So Great a Smoke" begins with an analysis of the connection of the Beguins to the ideas and writings of the Franciscan theologian Peter Olivi (Petrus Johannis Olivi). The Beguins followed Olivi both in his formulation of the radical idea of Franciscan poverty known as the usus pauper, and in his apocalypticism, which held that history was on the cusp of a new age, ushered in by Saint Francis himself. This radicalism, which they also shared with Olivi's Franciscan followers, the Spirituals, brought them into conflict with the leadership of the Franciscan Order, and with the ecclesiastical hierarchy. This dissertation argues that overt persecution of the Spirituals and the Beguins began earlier than customarily believed, immediately following the deaths of Pope Clement V and the Franciscan Minister General in 1314.;An important focus of this entire dissertation is the resistance of the Beguins. One chapter examines in considerable detail the many different ways in which the Beguins resisted the inquisitors, and also explores a distinctive manifestation of Beguin piety, the use of heretical saints and their relics as propaganda. The urban environment of the Beguins has been illuminated by using the case of Montpellier, where the notarial archives of the city have yielded information on Beguins and their families, as well as support for their activities in hitherto unknown quarters. The final chapter analyzes the role of women in the Beguin movement, and presents a new view of the most famous and extravagant of the Beguines, Prous Boneta (Na Prous Boneta ), arguing that far from divorcing her from the movement as a whole, her visions gave her the necessary authority to assume a position of leadership. |
