The Second Generation of the 'Sambin Revolution': New Writings on the Humiliati

Abstract

Until recently, the Humiliati of northern Italy have not been fortunate in their historiography. If they are known to Anglophone medievalists, it is usually in walk-on parts, either as the heretics condemned in the bull Ad abolendam at the Council of Verona in 1184, or as the pious enthusiasts, precursors of the mendicants, who were recognised and approved by Innocent III in 1201. Although they went on to play a prominent role in many north Italian regions, the later history of the Humiliati has frequently been treated with indifference, except perhaps by those interested in the development of the north Italian wool industry. This is partly because, unlike their contemporaries the Waldensians, the Humiliati did not have to keep defending themselves: their orthodoxy was not long questioned and they became part of the backbone of the religious communities of north Italian cities, taken for granted and largely untrumpeted. Their lack of ‘history’ also reflects the failure of the order to survive the Counter-Reformation. When one of the brethren, objecting strongly to attempts by Carlo Borromeo to reform their much decayed houses, tried quite literally to shoot the messenger, the male order was abruptly disbanded and most of the sources for their communities were dispersed. They thus lack either the later brethren interested in the origins of their own congregation who have so often driven the history industry of other religious orders, or a convenient body of sources on which to base such work.