The main beliefs of the Good Christians, as described by Eberwin that the group of people practiced were, to follow in Christ’s footsteps, to imitate the apostolic lifestyle, forget earthly things, have no ties (to wander in a sense), not drink milk (which is very interesting to me; I wonder why they had a think against milk), abstain from sex, disregard marriage, lay hands on someone as a rite of baptism and allow people who have been baptized by hand allow others to also be baptized. They also follow selected men and women (which was probably something that was NEVER heard of during this time.) This reminds me of different teachings from my religion classes in high school (I attended Catholic school from elementary school up until graduation from high school); we were taught that, in order to be a good catholic, we were expected to pray, go to church and “do God’s work” or “following Christ’s example” by means of volunteer work, helping those less fortunate and so on.
The lifestyle that Eberwin was disgusted against sounded, to me like the lifestyle (with some twists of course) that Christ and the Apostles led. This is just my opinion here, but I think Eberwin was disgusted only because, for the time period, it was unheard of to travel around, laying hands on people, let alone for people to flow the instructions of a woman who was looked at as an “Elect.”
I got the vibe that the atmosphere in the 11th century was a bit tense, with “wicked people out to destroy the church.” (26)
As Deane states, “all documents are arguably influenced by the agenda or bias of their author, whether explicitly or implicitly and Eberwin’s sole purpose in writing the letter was to inform a learned authority about what he regarded as a group of terrible deviants” (27) So in other words, he was tattling to the higher-ups about a group that went against the norm, a group that stuck out from the crowd that followed their own doctrine (if you want to call it that.) I would be willing to bet that Eberwin blew what he saw way out of proportion to prove that what he was saying was right and that the people who were different were evil and wrong and out to corrupt the innocent.
To address the heretical movements, Bernard writes a treatise that calls for higher-ups to, as he so delicately calls “wake up!” in other words, he calls for others to pay attention to those that stick out. He also launched a campaign to bring people back and convert them; this conversion campaign met with some opposition from people in Toulouse, and, as he left, he said, “the land was in need of a great deal of preaching.” I will admit, I couldn’t help but giggle at the fact that people were more than happy to not convert when Bernard tried all his might to convert them and failed miserably. It’s kind of nice to hear that not everyone bowed to forcible conversion.
I think the part that caused Eberwin the most anxiety was actually the fact that the Good Christians shared a lot in common with the pious Christians. He develops this topic by stating that these people were wicked and they were out to destroy the church (27.) I think (and again this is my personal opinion here) that he was just bitter because his religion shared something with this group that he didn’t agree with and was out to paint them to look bad when in actuality they were just trying to be good people.
To me, it really shows that people are willing to argue until they are blue in the face that certain events happened in certain places, that people are establishing authority and, in a sense, are willing to stamp others out when they say their location is right and the original location is wrong.