The Humiliati

In twelfth-century Lombardy, groups of lay wool-workers and weavers began living out a simple, demanding vision of penitence — plain dress, manual labor, and a rejection of the oath-taking and violence expected of feudal society. And called themselves the Humiliati, 'the humbled ones.' In 1184 they were condemned alongside the Waldensians for preaching without official permission, but where the Waldensians' story became one of lasting separation, theirs took the opposite turn. Pope Innocent III reconciled them in 1201, organizing them into three recognized orders. Two religious, one for married lay people who stayed in ordinary working life under a shared rule. For roughly two centuries afterward they remained a real presence in northern Italian towns, their rule and community records still surviving, until the movement was formally suppressed by papal bull in 1571.