The revolutionary opposition to feudalism was alive throughout all the Middle Ages.According to conditions of the time, it appeared either in the form of mysticism, as open heresy, or of armed insurrection.As mysticism, it is well known how indispensable it was for the reformers of the Sixteenth Century.Muenzer himself was largely indebted to it.The heresies were partly an expression of the reaction of the patriarchal Alpine shepherds against the encroachments of feudalism in their realm (Waldenses), partly an opposition to feudalism of the cities that had out-grown it (The Albigenses, Arnold of Brescia, etc.), and partly direct insurrections of peasants (John Ball, the master from Hungary in Picardy, etc.).We can omit, in this connection, the patriarchal heresy of the Waldenses, as well as the insurrection of the Swiss, which by form and contents, was a reactionary attempt at stemming the tide of historic development, and of a purely local importance.In the other two forms of mediaeval heresy, we find as early as the Twelfth Century the precursors of the great division between the middle-class and the peasant-plebeian opposition which caused the collapse of the peasant war.This division is manifest throughout the later Middle Ages.
The heresy of the cities, which is the actual official heresy of the Middle Ages, directed itself primarily against the clergy, whose riches and political importance it attacked.In the very same manner as the bourgeoisie at present demands a "gouvernement à bon marché" (cheap government), so the middle-class of mediaeval times demanded first of all an "église à bon marché (cheap church).
Reactionary in form, as is every heresy which sees in the further development of church and dogma, only a degeneration, the middle-class heresy demanded the restoration of the ancient simple church constitution and the abolition of an exclusive class of priests.This cheap arrangement would eliminate the monks, the prelates, the Roman court, in brief, everything which was expensive for the church.In their attack against papacy, the cities, themselves republics although under the protection of monarchs, expressed for the first time in a general form the idea that the normal form of government for the bourgeoisie was the republic.Their hostility towards many a dogma and church law is partly explained by the foregoing and partly by their conditions.Why they were so bitter against celibacy, no one has given a better explanation than Boccaccio.Arnold of Brescia in Italy and Germany, the Albigenses in south France, John Wycliffe in England, Huss and the Calixtines in Bohemia, were the chief representatives of this opposition.
That the opposition against feudalism should appear here only as an opposition against religious feudalism, is easily understood when one remembers that, at that time, the cities were already a recognised estate sufficiently capable of fighting lay feudalism with its privileges either by force of arms or in the city assemblies.
Here, as in south France, in England and Bohemia, we find the lower nobility joining hands with the cities in their struggle against the clergy and in their heresies, a phenomenon due to the dependence of the lower nobility upon the cities and to the community of interests of both groups as against the princes and the prelates.The same phenomenon is found in the peasant war.
A totally different character was assumed by that heresy which was a direct expression of the peasant and plebeian demands, and which was almost always connected with an insurrection.This heresy, sharing all the demands of middle-class heresy relative to the clergy, the papacy, and the restoration of the ancient Christian church organisation, went far beyond them.It demanded the restoration of ancient Christian equality among the members of the community, this to be recognised as a rule for the middle-class world as well.From the equality of the children of God it made the implication as to civil equality, and partly also as to equality of property.To make the nobility equal to the peasant, the patricians and the privileged middle-class equal to the plebeians, to abolish serfdom, ground rents, taxes, privileges, and at least the most flagrant differences of property -- these were demands put forth with more or less definiteness and regarded as naturally emanating from the ancient Christian doctrine.
This peasant-plebeian heresy, in the fullness of feudalism, e.g., among the Albigenses, hardly distinguishable from the middle-class opposition, grew in the course of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries to be a strongly defined party opinion appearing independently alongside the heresy of the middle-class.This is the case with John Ball, preacher of the Wat Tyler insurrection in England alongside the Wycliffe movement.This is also the case with the Taborites" alongside the Calixtines in Bohemia.The Taborites showed even a republican tendency under theocratic colouring, a view later developed by the representatives of the plebeians in Germany in the Fifteenth and at the beginning of the Sixteenth Century.
This form of heresy was joined in by the dream visions of the mystic sects, such as the Scourging Friars, the Lollards, etc., which in times of suppression continued revolutionary tradition.
