3 - The Sisters

Summary

The previous chapter dealt with the accusations that Catholic polemicists levelled against The Poor of Lyons. Some writers accused them only of allowing women to preach, while others charged that some of their women also heard confessions and consecrated the eucharist. Until the end of the second decade of the thirteenth century the reference was simply to ‘women’ (mulieres), but later, with the rise of the distinction between Brothers and Sisters from Believers, even when the Catholic writers used the term ‘women’ rather than ‘Sisters’ (sorores), or ‘Waldensian women’ (mulieres Valdenses) by which they also denoted the Sisters, the reference was to Sisters. The accusations appeared regularly until about the fourteenth century, and thereafter, while they did not altogether cease, they became less and less frequent. And just as in the earlier period, some writers such as Moneta of Cremona (who completed his work a little before 1241), accused them only of allowing women to preach, while others also charged that the women heard confessions and consecrated the eucharist. But not all the writers, either early or late, were equally firm in making these accusations.

The chronicler Pierre of Vaux-de-Cernay, who probably completed his work in 1213, and was informed on the subject of the Cathars as well as The Poor of Lyons, noted inter alia that the latter believe that any one of them, so long as he is ‘shod in sandals’ may consecrate the body of Christ in the sacrament. This suggests that early in the second decade of the thirteenth century, even if the hierarchy that would later be described by Raymond de la Côte and after him the Inquisitor Bernard Gui was not yet established, there was already a division between the ‘sandalled ones’, who alone were authorized to administer the sacrament, and the rest of the sect. Were there any ‘sandalled’ women in the second decade of the century? The Inquisitor Anselm of Alessandria wrote in the late 1260s that the women (by which he certainly meant the Sisters) were living in poverty like the men, surviving on alms and preaching, but were not ordained to serve as priests, could not impose penance following confession, were not authorized to consecrate the body of Christ in the sacrament and did not wear sandals.