Seduced by the Theologians: Aeneas Sylvius and the Hussite Heretics

Abstract

The subject of heresy in the later Middle Ages is both simple and complex. It seemed simple in that it appeared to be everywhere and various manifestations seemed to share common denominators. The fourth Lateran Council (1215) concluded that while heretics had different faces their tails were joined together. The definition was true and false. Heresy was more than whatever the papacy denounced and in medieval writings heresy was described on several templates: intellectual deviance, reform, as challenge to social order, as civil disorder, as madness, disease, perversion and diabolism. In his historical writings dealing with Hussites, Aeneas Sylvius refers to each explanatory model.