In this concise and balanced survey of heresy and inquisition in the Middle Ages, Jennifer Kolpacoff Deane explores the increasingly bitter encounters between piety, reform, dissent, and the institutional Church between 1100 and 1500. Although the loadedterms of "heresy" and "orthodoxy" employed by ecclesiastical officials suggest a clear division between right and wrong, that division was in fact vigorously contested by medieval people at all levels of society. Deane investigates key issues that sparkedconfrontations between Christians, including access to scripture, apostolic models of pover.

Good Christians, heresy, and the apostolic model --Poverty, preaching, and the poor of Lyon -- Lawyer popes, mendicant preachers, and new inquisitorial procedures -- Spiritual Franciscans, the poverty controversy, and the apocalypse -- Mysticism, lay religious women, and the problem of spiritual authority -- Medieval magic, demonology, and witchcraft -- Wyclif, the word of God, and inquisition in England -- Reform, revolution, and the lay chalice in Bohemia.