“A man that is a heretic, after the first and second admonition, reject.” -Titus 3:10
In Orléans, France, 998 years ago, heresy became punishable by death for the first time in Europe for more than half a millennium. For centuries after 1022, people accused of heresy would continue to be persecuted and subjected to capital punishment. But just because heretics had not be executed for hundreds of years before 1022 does not mean authorities, both religious and secular, had not thought of heresy in that time. This was especially the case within apocalyptic and eschatological literature.
I suspect most people have heard of the so-called Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse mentioned in the 6th chapter of Revelation. While they are usually seen as destroyers today, they have been interpreted in many ways for the last 2,000 years, including eras of history. In fact, the first who rides a white horse was seen in many commentaries from the early Middle Ages as Jesus Christ himself. The other three – one a red, black, and pale green horse, respectively – were seen as perennial threats to Christianity: bloody red persecutors, false brethren whose black actions harm their fellow Christians, and heretics who abide with death, often portrayed as sickly, pale green. These early medieval commentaries, however, did not think Revelation applied only to the End Times but to all Christian times. Nevertheless, heresy, like violence and hypocrisy, was a tool of Satan that would be used by both antichrists throughout history and the Antichrist at the End of Time.
As such, the search for and condemnation of heretics often went hand in hand with apocalyptic excitement. When writing about the heretics executed in 1022 at Orléans, the chronicler Rudolphus Glaber saw the event as one of many that presaged the apocalypse. Heretics were the primary servants of the Satan, a sign that he had been released after a thousand years of captivity (due to Christ’s earthly mission), and important allies for the Antichrist when he revealed himself to the world. As such, when some were burned in Orléans, Glaber was glad to see that “the follow of these wicked madmen had been rooted out” (Glaber, Histories, 3:31, Blum trans.).
Not all those who looked on the fires in Orléans with approval expected to see the Antichrist in their lifetimes, but they certainly thought they saw the power of Satan and a foretaste of hell for the damned. To them, what burned were not humans exactly. Not anymore. They were carriers of a malignant disease who were unwilling to accept a cure that could only be administered to a willing patient. If the disease of heresy spread, which could damn those who contracted it, it could bring eternal harm to an entire region. This is precisely the kind of language used in the Middle Ages when speaking of heretics. But as scholars have shown, language of disease was and has since been used to dehumanize victims of oppression and violence. Humans deserve support and sympathy, even if they have sinned. But vectors for disease are a public health threat. A sinner may atone for their sins over time and emerge a paragon for others to follow, but an unrepentant heretic who infects the minds of Christians with damnable beliefs will do nothing but harm. It was for the common good, therefore, that heretics be burned, or so it was thought.
Such dehumanizing and apocalyptic fears surrounding “heretics” are not limited (nor were they universal) to the Middle Ages. Disease-language continues to be used for minority and at-risk populations whose very existence is seen by the majority and powerful to destructive of society as they conceive it. The implicit (and sometimes explicit) suggestion that society will tumble to ruin in an apocalyptic cataclysm “sooner or later” because of them reinforces the same idea that calling them vectors of social diseases does. It makes it easier to justify the unjustifiable, to undertake violence against a few for the supposed good of all.
Heresy accusations, however, are different than other attacks aimed at minorities in this regard: the heretic is someone who might under different circumstances be seen as an insider rather than an outsider. Immigrants, different ethnic groups, followers of another religion: all of these are seen by oppressive groups as outsiders who might disrupt “our” society. Heretics, on the other hand, were part of “our” society until their voiced an opinion in a manner that was perceived as threatening to the overriding authorities. In more just societies, they would simply be said to have differing opinions. But to more oppressive powers, these “traitors” should not voice dissent but instead support those who rule and their neighbors who do the same. This dissent, more than any other perceived threat from without, can be the cause of intense fear and recriminations. A shared enemy is one thing, but for the paranoid powers, an ally voicing opposition is the stuff of apocalyptic doom. Or at least, presenting such dissent as apocalyptic is useful.
Yet for those who voice dissent, for the “heretic,” overturning society is seldom a founding goal. As Malcolm Lambert showed years ago, “Reform and heresy are twins” (Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation, p. 390). What he means by this is that both heretical and reform movements spring from a common desire to see something wrong in society be changed for the better. Movements that express themselves and act in a way that find approval come to be called reforms, but those that receive disapproval are condemned as heresies. Sometimes the only things that differ between a reform and a heresy are its relationship to power – not its means, not its goals, and not its rhetoric.
Heresy, therefore, can be another word for an attempted reform that has drawn the ire of those in power. And as history shows, that ire, when combined with language that dehumanizes and implies societal collapse, leads to violence.
“In reality, bias against ‘heretics’ is felt today just as it used to be. Many give way to it as much as their forefathers used to do. Only, they have turned it against political adversaries. Those are the only ones with whom they refuse to mix. Sectarianism has only changed its object and taken other forms, because the vital interest has shifted. Should we dare to say that this shifting is progress?” -Henri de Lubac, Paradoxes of Faith (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987), pp. 226-227
Stables of the Apocalypse 