A version of the following article was published in the 1440 Review.
Around the year 1000, a peasant called Leutard fell asleep in the fields, exhausted after working alone for many hours. According to the Benedictine chronicler Radulfus Glaber, writing in the second quarter of the eleventh century, what followed was a remarkable experience: "it seemed to him that a great swarm of bees entered his body through his privates", stinging him as they passed through him, before "they seemed to speak to him". After this dramatic conversion, Leutard returned home and "sent away his wife"; then went to his local church and "broke to bits the cross and image of the Saviour". Witnesses thought that he had gone mad, until Leutard convinced them that his actions were the result of a miraculous revelation from God. Leutard gained a following, and according to Glaber, it was "no small part of the common people". He began to preach against tithes (mandatory payments to the Church). However, the local bishop, Gebuin, had Leutard brought before him, questioned him about the Scriptures, and declared that "the lunatic had become a heretic". Leutard lost his following after he had been condemned, and subsequently committed suicide by jumping in a well.
Leutard's story is fascinating not only by itself but also as part of the grander narrative of medieval heresy. There are several characteristics that can be found in later religious dissent, including a focus on poverty, an enthusiasm for learning about scripture, a charismatic figurehead, and a rejection of marriage, tithes, the Church’s power and the veneration of the cross. For example, in 1131, Peter of Bruys publicly burned crosses near Nîmes, before being thrown onto his own fire and burned alive. As well as physically destroying crosses, both of them were charismatic figureheads who preached to ordinary people against material wealth. Leutard's actions were typical of medieval religious dissent, even if his ideas were not as fully developed as those of later heretical movements.
Interestingly, the area around Châlons-sur-Marne, including Vertus where Leutard lived, appears to have been a hotbed of heresy in this period. In 1025, a letter addressed to a Bishop "R", plausibly Roger I of Châlons, describes heretics that had come from the bishop's diocese. In the 1040s, some heretics were found in the countryside around Châlons, and asked to kill a chicken. When they refused, they were hanged. We know that Leutard did have an impact after his death because a synod (an assembly of church officials) had to be convened in 1015 to deal with its vestiges. It appears that Leutard significantly altered the mentalité of the region, making the local population more inclined to adopt dissident views in the future.
How Radulfus Glaber, the chronicler who provides the only detailed account of Leutard’s heresy, interprets the story is intriguing. By stating that Leutard was a "peasant" and that his followers were "rustics", Glaber characterises them as poor and stupid. This was an attempt to discredit them and to minimise the impact of their ideas. Glaber suggests that Leutard could not have come up with such ideas by himself and states that he must therefore have been "an emissary of Satan". This interpretation was undoubtedly influenced by fears surrounding the millennium. He himself writes: "all this accords with the prophecy of St John, who said that the Devil would be freed after a thousand years." Glaber was actively seeking portents of the Devil's release, and therefore recorded Leutard's heresy as one. If Glaber did not think that Leutard was an agent of the Devil, he most probably would not have even recorded the events. His interpretation was coloured by his own apocalyptic fears, and is not a reasonable explanation of the events.
Glaber's account of the facts of the story may have been inaccurate. He provides the only medieval account of Leutard's heresy, so it is impossible to corroborate any details, although the heresy's existence is confirmed by the synod that was convened in 1015 to deal with its vestiges. The part about the bees is improbable. Whilst Leutard himself may have invented it to attract a greater following, a similar story was recorded by Gregory of Tours in the sixth century, in which a woodcutter was surrounded by a swarm of flies "as a result of which he was considered crazy for two years". Glaber's story appears to have been inspired by this tale.
Medical interpretations of Leutard's behaviour have also been proposed. He may have had ergotism, a disease caused by ingesting grain infected with fungi, which can create a feeling of burning in the afflicted's privates. This offers a reasonable explanation of Leutard’s sensation of and reaction to the bees. He may have been mentally ill – Glaber certainly characterises him as such, and the witnesses to his destruction of the cross in the church clearly thought he was. Leutard sought the attention of others. His opposition to tithes helped to attract a large following, because they were a significant burden on the poor, although the threat of no tithes, one of the Church’s main sources of income, did force the establishment to take swift action against him. Likewise, his focus on apostolic poverty – in contrast to wealthy and often corrupt Church – made ordinary people support him. Glaber reports that Leutard’s eventual suicide was because he had been deprived of the attention of his followers.
Considering all these interpretations together, it is most likely that a combination of them is true. Leutard’s conversion by the bees was certainly fictional: either it was made up by him to seek attention or because he had ergotism, or it was made up by someone at a later date, perhaps inspired by Gregory of Tours. Leutard’s ideas are notably similar to those of later dissenters, such as Peter of Bruys, indicating that he was not as irrational as Glaber characterises him. His eventual suicide was most probably, as Glaber says, because he had lost his following. Overall, Leutard provides a unique and intriguing example of a medieval peasant, heretic and suicide.
Bibliography:
Fichtenau, Heinrich. Heretics and Scholars in the High Middle Ages: 1000-1200. Translated by Denise Kaiser. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998.
Gregory of Tours. History of the Franks. Translated by Ernest Brehaut. New York: Columbia University Press, 1916.
Holland, Tom. Millennium: The End of the World and the Forging of Christendom. London: Abacus, 2009.
Lambert, Malcolm. Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation. 3rd edition. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2002.
Stock, Brian. The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the 11th and 12th Centuries. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021.
Wakefield, Walter, and Austin Evans. Heresies of the High Middle Ages. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991.
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