Raquel Aguirre Cantera Spiritual Reform and the Ascetic Challenge Throughout the Christian community, new questions

began to be asked about how believers could best serve God and ensure their own salvation. It is remarkable how similar spiritual developments in the Mediterranean seem to be and there are strong grounds for suggesting a considerble flow os spiritual currents between east and west. There was a growing enthusiasm for all forms os the monastic life. Two main styles prevailed: - The coenobitic or communal style: Emphasized the virtues of the sublimation of the individual will to taht of the community and the emphasized the necessity os obedience to the abbot. - The lavriote style: Concentrated rather on the individuals spiritual development and lonely fight against the temptations of the Devil. In the tenh-century Byzantium, monasteries which combined the two styles began to emperge and this change is epitomized by the new monastic foundations on Mount Athos. A similar enthusiasm for the ascetic life coupled with a certain discontent with existing forms of monasticism is evident in the west and there has been much debate about possible influences from the Byzantine world. The possible area of contact must surely have been southern Italy, where Greek monastic leaders were also widely know in Latin circles. A number of Latin houses in Italy all emphasized the concentration on the ascetic life. In the other parts of Italy, southern France, and Spain, monastic reform was led by the Cluniacs. In the eleventh century, great houses like those of Subiaco and Farfa accepted the observances of Cluny. Cluniac success depended on the support of local lay rulers placed a number of houses under Cluniac control. Other reforming houses with influence in the south similarly relied upon both the patronage and more practical assistance os the local nobility. There was never any doubt about aristocratic concern for the Church. At the end of the eleventh century, the patriach of Constantinople condemned the charistikariori. He may have been asserting the principle of the inviolability of church property, but he was also challenging a traditional expression of lay piety. In the eleventh century, heresy had often taken the form of a fight from the world and a concern to live the life of poverty taught by Christ. The Patarenes were initially supported by such major figures in the reform movement as Gregory VII and Peter Damian and indeed their concerns, though perhaps overenthusiastically proclaimed, were very much those of the Reform papacy. The papacy, intent on gaining influence amongst the Milanese clergy, abandoned them in favour of the new reformist clerics who had begun to emerge.

The aggression of the Patarenes set the tone for heretical developments in the twelfth century. The centres of these movements were in northem Italy and Languedoc. But two somewhat different figures, Peter of Bruins and Henry the Monk, were active in the mid-twelfth century and, in their teaching, revealed much more extreme views than those voiced by the advocates of apostolic simplicity. Wherever it emerged, heresy stood as testimony to inadequancies of the orthodox Church. In the east, the insistence on Greek as a liturgical language may have alienated the Slavonic-speaking peoples of the Balkans; in Languedoc opposition was more personally directed al absentee prelates and thrived in a region where secular lerning flourished but education of the clergy was woefully inadequate. But heresy was also a sign of social change. Heretics, like traders and the new urban leaders, were those who ready to break with tradition and to question the bases of existing authority. The response of the western Church authorities to heresy was, at first, to mobilize the forces of persuasion. By the 1180s, the authorities of Languedoc were formally condemning heretical groups. Its continued existence was to call for more severe methods in the years after 1200.