The truth about Fra Dolcino

Notes on the Fra Dolcino conference, Nov 4, 2006:

Corrado Mornese, the most important scholar of Fra Dolcino gave notice of some important developments in Dolcino studies. Most salient of these is the discovery that much of we’re told about Fra Dolcino by the medieval source texts is in fact untrue. The Anonymous Synchronous, the earliest, and, until recently most credible source for the history of fra Dolcino and the resistance against the papal armies at the dawn of the 14th century, is the writer of fictions, according to Mornese. He says in no ambiguous terms that the Anonymous Synchronous “mente, e mente sapendo di mentire.” (“He lies, and lies knowing that he’s lying”).

What are the Anonymous Synchronous’s untruths, according to Mornese? First and most importantly, the Dulcinite movement was not violent. Their eventual transfer north from Emilia in flight from Papal persecution (first to Trent in 1300, then in 1303-4 to the Valsesia area of Piedmont) was not a sudden invasion, disturbing the peaceful life of the locals, nor did they lead raids the villages lying at the foot of the mountains, as has historically been believed. Fra Dolcino was an intellectual, not a man of arms. Therefore neither was Dolcino a crazed cult leader (as inquisitor Bernard Gui would have us believe), convinced that he and his followers were privy to the only truth, and all disbelievers deserved nothing less than extermination. Instead, these Dulcinites were a small band of believers (maybe only a few dozen, Mornese states) of admittedly unorthodox religious beliefs, but hardly a menace to the local populations.

Archival records discovered by Mornese and other scholars show that the Dulcinites were not merely tolerated by the locals; they were often invited into their cities, imaginably since both Dulcinites and the Valsesian montanari (mountain people) were persecuted by external forces. For a long time the inhabitants of the mountains in Piedmont had been resisting the efforts of alien hegemons to gain control over their area. They were autonomists, proud and resilient, and unwilling to be coerced into obeisance by any outside force, especially the papacy. The Dulcinites were refugees from similar oppression, therefore they naturally formed bonds with these montanari.

It appears, therefore, that the Papal army’s ostensible religious crusade (1304-7) against the heretic Dulcinites was merely a pretext for a campaign of more practical strategic and political importance. The fiercely independent montanari of the Valsesia area had to be crushed at any cost. And the extirpation of the heresy, it seems, became a good excuse for the bloodshed necessary to subdue such an intransigent people, bent on self-rule.

For this reason, the slaughter on monte Rubello in 1307, and Dolcino’s subsequent torture and burning at the stake, should in no way be considered the consequence of a war against heresy. This was in no ambiguous terms an extermination campaign against a popular resistance in the Valsesia, against those who would who would rule themselves and who would not bend to foreign authority.

It is telling that the slaughter of the Dulcinites was not an isolated case. In the Valsesia region, religious difference and political resistance have historically gone hand in hand. The story of Dolcino is just one of the many stories of unorthodox religious belief persecuted in this region. The Waldensians and Cathars were likewise victims to such violence at other points in history. What links these different movements together is their identification with the continual struggle of the Valsesians against alien forces that would rule them. Thus it is evident that the battles were always political, although religious difference was always the explicit argument that gave the Papal armies license to run roughshod over the country.

It doesn’t take a genius or a Joachimite prophet to recognize how Dolcino’s story resonates with our own time, to see how power uses the rhetoric of religious difference to cover their motives, and to achieve ends which differ drastically from the goals they officially proclaim. Propaganda, mendacity and the baiting of people’s hysteria. like a ring through a bull’s nose, these methods are of ancient vintage yet they still function spectacularly.