In The Formation of a Persecuting Society, Moore writes of medieval Europe and the emergence of what was known as a Persecuting Society. In the introduction of the book, he summarizes what he means by a Persecuting Society by saying: “Why were heretics persecuted in the thirteenth century? The question was very popular and the answer with great confidence and near unanimity, ‘because there were so many of them’. The existence of people whose religious convictions differed from those approved by the church was in itself the cause of the persecution. The diffusion of their teachings and the appearance of their organization in the Rhineland, the Low Countries, the Languedoc and the cities of Lombardy and Tuscany during the eleventh and twelfth …show more content…
Beginning in the eleventh century, leper hospitals began to come about due to the increasing number of lepers. With such a dangerous illness growing, it became evident that the best thing was to contain lepers by segregation and forbidding them to even attend church or be in cemeteries with those still healthy. According to The Formation of a Persecuting Society, “It laid down that those who were living in communities should be provided with chapels, priests and cemeteries, though this was not to be done in a way which was detrimental to the parochial rights of existing churches. Many of the donations recorded in the following decades, often by bishops and chapters, were plainly designed to implement this decree. In 1186, for example, the bishop and chapter of Arras made a church available for the use of the inhabitants of the leprosarium of Grand-Val, which had probably come into existence about twenty years earlier, and the existence of the leper hospital at Bethune is first signaled by the gift of a chapel to it by Robert d’Hinges and his wife Sarah in 1194.” With the lepers being separated and practically forced into their own community, a strain was put on the already existing …show more content…
After the accession of Philip Augustus in 1179, French Jews were arrested at worship by royal agents, their houses were searched, and their belongings were held to ransom. The Jews were allowed to sell their small goods, but larger belongings, such as land and houses they owned, were left for the king and his successors. Many communities were affected by the expulsion of the Jews. Philip Augustus made an agreement, which enabled the French kings to profit from a new, more systematic exploitation of the Jews. As explained by Moore, “It was sustained with increasing ferocity throughout the thirteenth century. When the direct profits of their financial activities were insufficient for the needs of the moment they could be charged for protection, or to have their goods returned after seizure, or they could be expelled from the kingdom and made to pay to return on still harsher terms than before. The process continued until the final expulsion in