From its very origins lollardy had been associated with the subversion of the natural order of the commonwealth. This chapter evaluates the successes and failures of this rehabilitation effort and its legacy in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. To put the drive towards the rehabilitation of the lollards’ reputation in context, the first section of this chapter briefly explains how Anabaptism threatened to undermine the relationship between the emerging evangelical movement and the government. Two subversive theological beliefs ascribed to the lollards, communitarianism and pacifism, came dangerously close to Anabaptist ideas, forcing evangelicals to mollify their tenor in print. The chapter next details the sixteenth-century project of evangelical historians to correct what they saw as a smear job by corrupt medieval chroniclers, and also explains that this effort was only effective to an extent in the seventeenth century, as confessional allegiances drove interpretation. The last section in the chapter sees the evangelicals move from a defensive position to go on the offensive. Through their connections to the lollards, the Protestants claimed a direct association with Christ, blamed the Roman church for disorder within the realm, and critiqued ungodly monarchs.

This chapter evaluates lollard views on preaching and conventicling preserved in Foxe’s Acts and Monuments. It begins by surveying the variety of lollard views regarding preaching, which was, for the majority of Foxe’s lollards, inextricably linked to the role of the priest. It also investigates the role of conventicles in lollard ecclesiology, as presented in Foxe’s text. The chapter pays close attention to the martyrologist’s editorial choices, moving from radical material he allowed to remain intact or even strengthened by a marginal comment, to beliefs he attempted to mitigate, moving finally to an opinion he cut out altogether. From there, it discusses the late-sixteenth- and seventeenth-century readings of these lollard practices, and closes by arguing that lollard views on preaching and conventicling provide a good litmus test for evaluating the way Foxe selectively edited Acts and Monuments.

A fifth book, partly the work of a continuator, begins with the continued efforts of the monks to rebuild after the fire. After a brief description of Frederick Barbarossa and the Alexandrian Schism, most of the rest of the book focuses on Abbot Conrad (r. 1127–1164) and his exploits, including some pointed critiques of his many missteps.

Book Two describes the subsequent growth of the monastery and the various challenges it faced along the way. At many points, the monks come into conflict with the bishops of Constance or their own lay patrons, often with God or St. Gebhard intervening or exacting vengeance on their behalf. The book also includes an account of the early Investiture Controversy, which is heavily biased against the emperor and intriguingly problematic in its reconstruction of specific events. The book closes by introducing the Hirsau Reform.

The brief sixth book opens with the election of Abbot Gebhard I (1164–1171) and continues with sporadic entries in various hands, ending in 1203. Donations by and conflicts with lay patrons are discussed in brief. A short entry informs us that Abbot Gebhard, who was possibly the original chronicler, was deposed.

This chapter details who the lollards were and, more importantly for this study, who they were according to early evangelicals and later Protestants. It looks at the figure of John Foxe himself, introducing his most acclaimed work, Acts and Monuments. It then untangles the winding and often problematic study of the relationship between lollards and evangelicals in modern times, and the second part goes on to elucidate how medieval dissenters were understood by sixteenth-century evangelical historians. These two parts are separate but intimately related: the modern study of the relationship between lollards and later evangelicals has been highly influenced by the words of those evangelicals who saw a relationship with the lollards.

Book One tells of the origins of the monastery, beginning with a hagiographical account of the monastery’s founder Bishop Gebhard II of Constance (r. 979–995). After an imaginative retelling of Gebhard’s illustrious ancestry and early life, the author describes his founding of the monastery, including information about the provisions of land and laborers, the original art and architecture of the church, the procurement of a papal privilege, and the acquisition of saints’ relics. The first book concludes with stories from Gebhard’s later years and an account of his death and burial at Petershausen.

The Chronicle opens with a prologue that is stylistically and thematically distinct from the rest of the text, and which may originally have been written as an independent treatise by the same author. In it, the chronicler uses biblical exegesis to trace the apostolic origins of the various aspects of monastic practice. The author then recounts the origins of other monastic and ecclesiastical professions – regular canons, bishops, clerics, holy virgins, solitaries, inclusi, pilgrims, and beggars – concluding that each agrees on one faith.

An ad hoc extension, comprising sporadic annual entries, begins with the author’s first-hand experience of being cured from a spiritual malady by a drink from a chalice holding the tooth of the monastery’s founder. The author also discusses the monastery’s involvement in and experience of larger events in the mid-twelfth century, including the Second Lateran Council, the Second Crusade (and St. Bernard’s journey through Germany), and an extended period of famine and scarcity that compelled the monks to sell many prized works of art and other goods. A brief hagiography on St. Ratpero, whose oratory was located on land owned by Petershausen, is included. Several chapters that describe the death of religious women and men and other later entries offer a rare acknowledgement in the CP of religious women and men of various sorts at Petershausen, including those the chronicler identifies as hermits and inclusi. This section closes with a dramatic description of the fire that destroyed the monastery in 1159. In offering an eyewitness account of the extent of the devastation and the efforts of the monks to rebuild, the chronicler spins a narrative of trauma that lays the blame with the monks for their many moral failings.

An account of the Translation of the relics of St. Gebhard describes in detail the festivities surrounding the canonization of the monastery’s founder and the consecration of the newly renovated church and chapels.

This chapter lays out the case for re-evaluating the role of the lollards in the English Reformation. In particular, it argues that a fresh look at John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments (1563) will show that a wealth of non-mainstream material is present in the text, despite general historiographical agreement that Foxe elided radical material in order to make the lollards appear more like proto-Elizabethan-era Protestants. The chapter also elucidates the monograph’s scope, methodology, and aims. It offers a historiographical foundation for the book. It also shows how this study might produce fruitful observations within the studies of puritanism and early modern tolerance.

Three fictionalized saints’ lives composed in Constantinople in the tenth century warn readers against the dangers of andromania, a male desire to have sex with other men, and paidophthoria, the corruption, or rape, of boys. The Life of Basil the Younger and the Life of Andrew the Fool condemn “andromaniacs” even while they linger over the beauty of angels and of young men. Young men risk encounters on the streets of the city, while all people should expect to have problems paying off demons for their earthly sins as their souls progress past tollhouses after death. The Life of Gregentios imagines a homophobic utopia where the death penalty renders a Christian society entirely free of “sodomites.” These texts offer some our richest narrative accounts of queer life in the Byzantine capital even as they condemn men attracted to men.