Jacques de Vitry (d. 1240) and the Religious Life of his Time

Abstract

In this article the scholar, preacher and bishop Jacques de Vitry (d. 1240) is taken as a vantage point to look at the religious life of his time. He had personal involvement with the nascent university of Paris, the earliest beguines of the Low Countries, the crusades against heretics and Muslims, and the first friars. He left varied and vivid descriptions of these movements. His writings also constantly reveal a counter-current of scepticism and derision on the part of those who dismissed these religious movements as sanctimonious or hypocritical.