A History of The Inquisition of The Middle Ages Volume I Part 2

The picture which I have drawn of the Church in its relations with the people is perhaps too unrelieved in its blackness. All popes were not like Innocent IV. and John XXII.; all bishops were not cruel and licentious; all priests were not intent solely on impoveris.h.i.+ng men and dishonoring women. In many sees and abbeys, and in thousands of parishes, doubtless, there were prelates and pastors earnestly seeking to do G.o.d's work, and illuminate the darkened souls of their flocks with such gospel light as the superst.i.tion of the time would permit. Yet the evil was more apparent than the good; the humble workers pa.s.sed away un.o.btrusively, while pride and cruelty and l.u.s.t and avarice were demonstrative and far-reaching in their influence. Such as I have depicted the Church it appeared to all the men of the time who had the clearest insight and the loftiest aspirations; and its repulsiveness must be understood by those who would understand the movements that agitated Christendom.

No more unexceptionable witness as to the Church of the twelfth century can be had than St. Bernard, and he is never weary of denouncing the pride, the wickedness, the ambition, and the l.u.s.t that reigned everywhere. When fornication, adultery, incest, palled upon the exhausted senses, a zest was sought in deeper depths of degradation. In vain the cities of the plain were destroyed by the avenging fire of heaven; the enemy has scattered their remains everywhere, and the Church is infected with their accursed ashes. The Church is left poor and bare and miserable, neglected and bloodless. Her children seek not to bedeck, but to spoil her; not to guard her, but to destroy her; not to defend, but to expose; not to inst.i.tute, but to prost.i.tute; not to feed the flock, but to slay and devour it. They exact the price of sins and give no thought to sinners. "Whom can you show me among the prelates who does not seek rather to empty the pockets of his flock than to subdue their vices?" St. Bernard's contemporary, Potho of Pruhm, in 1152, voices the same complaints. The Church is rus.h.i.+ng to ruin, and not a hand is raised to stay its downward progress; there is not a single priest fitted to rise up as a mediator between G.o.d and man and approach the divine throne with an appeal for mercy.[41]

The papal legate, Cardinal Henry of Albano, in his Encyclical letter of 1188 to the prelates of Germany, is equally emphatic though less eloquent. The triumph of the Prince of Darkness is to be expected in view of the depravity of the clergy--their luxury, their gluttony, their disregard of the fasts, their holding of pluralities, their hunting, hawking, and gambling, their trading and their quarrels, and, chief of all, their incontinence, whence the wrath of G.o.d is provoked to the highest degree and the worst scandals are created between the clergy and the people. Peter Cantor, about the same time, describes the Church as filled to the mouth with the filth of temporalities, of avarice, and of negligence, so that in these points it far surpa.s.ses the laity; and he points out that nothing is more damaging to the Church than to see laymen superior, as a cla.s.s, to the clergy. Gilbert of Gemblours tells the same tale. The prelates for the most part enter the Church not by election, but by the use of money and the favor of princes; they enter, not to feed, but to be fed; not to minister, but to be ministered to; not to sow, but to reap; not to labor, but to rest; not to guard the sheep from the wolves, but, fiercer than wolves, themselves to tear the sheep. St. Hildegarda, in her prophecies, espouses the cause of the people against the clergy. "The prelates are ravishers of the churches; their avarice consumes all that it can acquire. With their oppressions they make us paupers and contaminate us and themselves.... Is it fitting that wearers of the tonsure should have greater store of soldiers and arms than we? Is it becoming that a clerk should be a soldier and a soldier a clerk?... G.o.d did not command that one son should have both coat and cloak and that the other should go naked, but ordered the cloak to be given to one and the coat to the other. Let the laity then have the cloak on account of the cares of the world, and let the clergy have the coat that they may not lack that which is necessary."[42]

One of the main objects in convoking the great Council of Lateran, in 1215, was the correction of the prevailing vices of the clergy, and it adopted numerous canons looking to the suppression of the chief abuses, but in vain. Those abuses were too deeply rooted, and four years later Honorius III., in an Encyclical addressed to all the prelates of Christendom, says that he has waited to see the result. He finds the evils of the Church increasing rather than diminis.h.i.+ng. The ministers of the altar, worse than beasts wallowing in their dung, glory in their sins, as in Sodom. They are a snare and a destruction to the people.

Many prelates consume the property committed to their trust and scatter the stores of the sanctuary throughout the public places; they promote the unworthy, waste the revenues of the Church on the wicked, and convert the churches into conventicles of their kindred. Monks and nuns throw off the yoke, break their chains, and render themselves contemptible as dung. "Thus it is that heresies flourish. Let each of you gird his sword to his thigh and spare not his brother and his nearest kindred." What was accomplished by this earnest exhortation may be estimated from the description which Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, gave of the Church in the presence of Innocent IV. and his cardinals in 1250. The details can well be spared, but they are summed up in his a.s.sertion that the clergy were a source of pollution to the whole earth; they were antichrists and devils masquerading as angels of light, who made the house of prayer a den of robbers. When the earnest inquisitor of Pa.s.sau, about 1260, undertook to explain the stubbornness of the heresy which he was vainly endeavoring to suppress, he did so by drawing up a list of the crimes prevalent among the clergy, which is awful in the completeness of its details. A church such as he describes was an unmitigated curse, politically, socially, and morally.[43]

This is all ecclesiastical testimony. How the clergy were regarded by the laity is ill.u.s.trated in a remark by William of Puy-Laurens, that it was a common phrase "I had rather be a priest than do that," just as one might say "I had rather be a Jew." It is true that the priests had the same contempt for the monks, for Emeric, Abbot of Anchin, tells us that a clerk would never a.s.sociate with any one whom he had once seen wearing the black Benedictine habit. But priest and monk were both comprehended in the general detestation of the people. Walther von der Vogelweide sums up the popular appreciation of the whole ecclesiastical body, from pope downward:

"St. Peter's chair is filled to-day as well As when 'twas fouled by Gerbert's sorcery; For he consigned himself alone to h.e.l.l, While this pope thither drags all Christentie.

Why are the chastis.e.m.e.nts of Heaven delayed?

How long wilt thou in slumber lie, O Lord?

Thy work is hindered and thy word gainsaid, Thy treasurer steals the wealth that thou hast stored.

Thy ministers rob here and murder there, And o'er thy sheep a wolf has shepherd's care."[44]

Walther's echo is heard from the other end of Europe in the Troubadour Pierre Cardinal, who enlarges on the same theme in a manner to show how popular were these invectives and how completely they expressed the general feeling:

"I see the pope his sacred trust betray, For, while the rich his grace can gain alway, His favors from the poor are aye withholden.

He strives to gather wealth as best he may, Forcing Christ's people blindly to obey, So that he may repose in garments golden.

The vilest traffickers in souls are all His chapmen, and for gold a prebend's stall He'll sell them, or an abbacy or mitre.

And to us he sends clowns and tramps who crawl Vending his pardon briefs from cot to hall-- Letters and pardons worthy of the writer, Which leave our pokes, if not our souls, the lighter.

"No better is each honored cardinal.

From early morning's dawn to evening's fall, Their time is pa.s.sed in eagerly contriving To drive some bargain foul with each and all.

So, if you feel a want, or great or small, Or if for some preferment you are striving, The more you please to give the more 'twill bring, Be it a purple cap or bishop's ring.

And it need ne'er in any way alarm you That you are ignorant of everything To which a minister of Christ should cling, You will have revenue enough to warm you-- And, bear in mind, that lesser gifts won't harm you.

"Our bishops, too, are plunged in similar sin, For pitilessly they flay the very skin From all their priests who chance to have fat livings.

For gold their seal official you can win To any writ, no matter what's therein.

Sure G.o.d alone can make them stop their thievings.

'Twere hard, in full, their evil works to tell, As when, for a few pence, they greedily sell The tonsure to some mountebank or jester, Whereby the temporal courts are wronged as well, For then these tonsured rogues they cannot quell, Howe'er their scampish doings may us pester, While round the church still growing evils fester.

"Then as for all the priests and minor clerks, There are, G.o.d knows, too many of them whose works And daily life belie their daily preaching.

Scarce better are they than so many Turks, Though they, no doubt, may be well taught--it irks Me not to own the fulness of their teaching-- For, learned or ignorant, they're ever bent To make a traffic of each sacrament, The Ma.s.s's holy sacrifice included; And when they shrive an honest penitent, Who will not bribe, his penance they augment, For honesty should never be obtruded-- But this, by sinners fair, is easily eluded.

"Tis true the monks and friars make ample show Of rules austere which they all undergo, But this the vainest is of all pretences.

In sooth, they live full twice as well, we know, As e'er they did at home, despite their vow, And all their mock parade of abstinences.

No jollier life than theirs can be, indeed; And specially the begging friars exceed, Whose frock grants license as abroad they wander.

These motives 'tis which to the Orders lead So many worthless men, in sorest need Of pelf, which on their vices they may squander, And then, the frock protects them in their plunder."[45]

It was inevitable that such a religion should breed dissidence and such a priesthood provoke revolt.

CHAPTER II.

HERESY.

The Church, which we have seen so far removed from its ideal and so derelict in its duties, found itself, somewhat unexpectedly, confronted by new dangers and threatened in the very citadel of its power. Just as its triumph over king and kaiser was complete a new enemy arose in the awakened consciousness of man. The dense ignorance of the tenth century, which followed the evanescent Carlovingian civilization, had begun in the eleventh to yield to the first faint pulsations of intellectual movement. Early in the twelfth century that movement already shows in its gathering force the promise of the development which was to render Europe the home of art and science, of learning, culture, and civilization. The stagnation of the human mind could not be thus broken without leading to inquiry and to doubt. When men began to reason and to ask questions, to criticise and to speculate on forbidden topics, it was not possible for them to avoid seeing how woful was the contrast between the teaching and the practice of the Church, and how little correspondence existed between religion and ritual, between the lives of monk and priest and the profession of their vows. Even the blind reverence which for generations had been felt for the utterances of the Church began to be shaken. Such a book as Abelard's "Sic et Non," in which the contradictions of tradition and decretal were pitilessly set forth, was not only an indication of mental disquiet ripening to rebellion, but a fruitful source of future trouble in sowing the seeds of further investigation and irreverence. Vainly, at the command of the Roman curia, might Gratian seek to show, in his famous "Concordantia Discordantium Canonum," that the contradictions might be reconciled, and that the canon law was not merely a ma.s.s of clas.h.i.+ng rules called forth by special exigencies, but an harmonious body of spiritual law. The fatal word had been spoken, and the efforts of the Glossators, of Masters of Sentences, of Angelic Doctors, and of the innumerable crowd of scholastic theologians and canon lawyers, with all their skilful dialectics, could never restore to the minds of men the placid and unbroken trust in the divine inspiration of the Church Militant. Few as were the a.s.sailants as yet, and intermittent as were their attacks, the very number of the defenders and the vigor of the defence show the danger which was recognized as dwelling in the spirit of inquiry which had at last been partially aroused from its long slumber.

That spirit had received a powerful impulse from the school of Toledo, whither adventurous scholars flocked as to the fountain where they could take long draughts of Arabic and Grecian and Jewish lore. Even in the darkness of the tenth century Sylvester II., while yet plain Gerbert of Aurillac, had acquired a sinister reputation as a magician, owing to his a.s.serted studies of forbidden science at that centre of intellectual activity. Towards the middle of the twelfth century Robert de Retines, at the instance of Peter the Venerable of Cluny, laid aside for a while his studies in astronomy and geometry, in order to translate the Koran, and enable his patron to controvert the errors of Islam. The works of Aristotle and Ptolemy, of Abubekr, Avicenna, and Alfarabi, and finally those of Averrhoes, were rendered into Latin, and were copied with incredible zeal in all the lands of Christendom. The Crusaders, too, brought home with them fragmentary remains of ancient thought which met with an equally warm reception. It is true that judicial astrology was the chief subject of study and speculation among these new-found treasures, but the earnestness with which more fruitful topics were investigated and the danger which lurked in them are evidenced by the repeated prohibitions of the works of Aristotle and the denunciations of their use in the University of Paris. Even more menacing to the Church was the revival of the Civil Law. Whether or not this was caused by the discovery of the Pandects of Amalfi, the ardor with which it came, by the middle of the twelfth century, to be studied in all the great centres of learning is incontestable, and men found, to their surprise, that there was a system of jurisprudence of wonderful symmetry and subtle adjustment of right, immeasurably superior to the clumsy and confused canon law and the barbarous feudal customs, while drawing its authority from immutable justice as represented by the sovereign, and not from canon or decretal, from pope or council, or even from Holy Writ. The clearsightedness of St. Bernard was not in fault when, as early as 1149, he recognized the danger to the Church, and complained that the courts rang with the laws of Justinian rather than with those of G.o.d.[46]

To understand fully the effect of this intellectual movement upon the popular mind and heart, we must picture to ourselves a state of society in many respects wholly unlike our own. It is not only that in civilized lands settled inst.i.tutions have rendered men more submissive to law and custom, but the diffusion of intelligence and the training of generations have brought them more under the control of reason and rendered them less susceptible to impulse and emotion. Even in modern times we have seen, in outbursts like the Revolution of '89, the possibilities of popular frenzy when reason is dethroned by pa.s.sion. Yet the madness of the Reign of Terror is no unapt ill.u.s.tration of the violent emotions to which mediaeval populations were subject, for good or for evil, giving occasion to the startling contrasts which render the period so picturesque, and relieve the sordidness of its daily life with splendid exhibitions of the loftiest enthusiasm or with hideous deeds of brutality. Unaccustomed to restraint, vigorous manhood a.s.serted itself in all its greatness and its littleness, whether in wreaking cruel vengeance upon the defenceless or in offering itself joyfully as a sacrifice to humanity. Thrills of delirious emotion spread from land to land, arousing the populations from their lethargy in blind attempts to achieve they scarcely knew what--in crusades which bleached the sands of Palestine with Christian bones, in wild excesses of flagellation, in purposeless wanderings of the Pastoureaux. In the deep and hopeless misery which oppressed the ma.s.s of the people there was an ever-present feeling of unrest which constantly saw in the near future the coming of Antichrist, the end of the world, and the Day of Judgment. In the deplorable condition of society, torn with unceasing and savage neighborhood-war and ground under the iron heel of feudalism, the common man might indeed well imagine that the reign of Antichrist was ever imminent, or might welcome any change which possibly might benefit, and scarce could injure, his condition. The invisible world, moreover, with its mysterious attraction and horrible fascination, was ever present and real to every one. Demons were always around him, to smite him with sickness, to ruin his pitiful little cornfield or vineyard, or to lure his soul to perdition; while angels and saints were similarly ready to help him, to listen to his invocations, and to intercede for him at the throne of mercy, which he dared not to address directly. It was among a population thus impressionable, emotional, and superst.i.tious, slowly awakening in the intellectual dawn, that orthodoxy and heterodoxy--the forces of conservatism and progress--were to fight the battle in which neither could win permanent victory.

It is a noteworthy fact, presaging the new form which modern civilization and enlightenment were to a.s.sume, that the heresies which were to shake the Church to its foundations were no longer, as of old, mere speculative subtleties propounded by learned theologians and prelates in the gradual evolution of Christian doctrine. We have not to deal with men like Arius or Priscillian, or Nestorius or Eutyches, scholars and prelates who filled the Church with the disputatious wrangles of their learning. Hierarchical organization was too perfect, and theological dogma too thoroughly petrified, to admit of this; and the occasional deviations, real or a.s.sumed, of the schoolmen from orthodoxy, as in the case of Berenger of Tours, of Abelard, of Gilbert de la Poree, of Peter Lombard, of Folkmar von Trieffenstein, were readily suppressed by the machinery of the establishment. Nor have we, for the most part, to deal with the governing cla.s.ses, for the alliance between Church and State to keep the people in subjection had been handed down from the Roman Empire, and however much monarchs like John of England or Frederic II. had to complain of ecclesiastical pretensions, they never dared to loosen the foundations on which rested their own prerogatives. As a rule, heresy had to be thoroughly disseminated among the people before those of gentle blood would meddle with it, as we shall see in Languedoc and Lombardy. The blows which brought real danger to the hierarchy came from obscure men, laboring among the poor and oppressed, who, in their misery and degradation, felt that the Church had failed in its mission, whether through the worldliness of its ministers or through defects in its doctrine. Among these lost sheep of Israel, like the Goim, whom, neglected and despised by the rabbis, it was Christ's mission to bring into the fold, they found ready and eager listeners, and the heresies which they taught divide themselves naturally into two cla.s.ses. On the one hand we have sectaries holding fast to all the essentials of Christianity, with antisacerdotalism as their mainspring, and on the other hand we have Manichaeans.

In briefly reviewing these and their vicissitudes, it must be borne in mind that, with scarce an exception, the authorities are exclusively their antagonists and persecutors. Saving a few Waldensian tracts and a single Catharan ritual, their literature has wholly perished. We are left, for the most part, to gather their doctrines from those who wrote to confute them or to excite popular odium against them, and we can only learn their struggles and their fate from their ruthless exterminators.

I shall say no word in their praise that is not based upon the admissions or accusations of their enemies; and if I reject some of the abuse lavished upon them, it is because that abuse is so manifestly conscious or unconscious exaggeration that it is deprived of all historical value. In general, the _prima facie_ case may be a.s.sumed to be in favor of those who were ready to endure persecution and face death for the sake of what they believed to be truth; nor, in the existing corruption of the Church, can it be imagined, as the orthodox controversialists a.s.sumed, that any one would place himself outside of the pale for the purpose of more freely indulging disorderly appet.i.tes.

The fact is, as we have seen, that the highest authorities in the Church admitted that its scandals were the cause, if not the justification, of heresy. An inquisitor who was actively engaged in its suppression enumerates among the efficient agents in its dissemination the depraved lives of the clergy, their ignorance, leading to the preaching of false and frivolous things, their irreverence for the sacraments, and the hatred commonly entertained for them. Another informs us that the leading arguments of the heretics were drawn from the pride, the avarice, and the unclean lives of clerks and prelates. All this, according to Lucas, Bishop of Tuy, who laboriously confuted heterodoxy, was exaggerated by false stories of miracles skilfully directed against the observances of the Church and the weaknesses of its ministers; but if so this was a work of surplusage, for nothing that the heretics could invent was likely to be more appalling than the reality as stated by the most resolute champions of the Church. Not many controversialists, indeed, were capable of the frank a.s.surance of the learned author of the tract which pa.s.ses under the name of Peter of Pilichdorf, in answering the arguments of the heretics, that the Catholic priests were fornicators and usurers and drunkards and dicers and forgers, by boldly saying, "What then? They are none the less priests, and the worst of men who is a priest is worthier than the most holy layman. Was not Judas Iscariot, on account of his apostles.h.i.+p, worthier than Nathaniel, though less holy?" The Troubadour Inquisitor Isarn only uttered a truth generally recognized when he said that no believer would be misled into Catharism or Waldensianism if he had a good pastor:

"Ja no fara crezens heretje ni baudes Si agues bon pastor que lur contradisses."[47]

The antisacerdotal heresies were directed against the abuses in doctrine and practice which priestcraft had invented to enslave the souls of men.

One feature common to them all was a revival of the Donatist tenet that the sacraments are polluted in polluted hands, so that a priest living in mortal sin is incapable of administering them. In the existing condition of ecclesiastical morals this was destructive to the functions of nearly the whole body of the priesthood, and its readiness as a means of attack had been facilitated by the policy of the Holy See in its efforts to suppress clerical marriage and concubinage. In 1059 the Synod of Rome, under the impulsion of Nicholas II., had adopted a canon forbidding any one to be present at the ma.s.s of a priest known to keep a concubine or wife. This was inviting the flock to sit in judgment on the pastor; and though it remained virtually a dead letter for fifteen years, when it was revived and effectually put in force by Gregory VII., in 1074, it produced immense confusion, for continent priests were rare exceptions. So violent was the contest excited that, in 1077, at Cambrai, the married or concubinary priesthood actually burned at the stake an unfortunate who resolutely maintained the orthodoxy of the papal rescripts. The orders of Gregory were reiterated by Innocent II.

as late as the Council of Reims, in 1131, and in that of Lateran, in 1139, and Gratian embodied the whole series in the canon law, where they still remain. Although Urban II. had endeavored to point out that it was merely a matter of discipline, and that the virtue of the sacraments remained unaltered in the hands of the worst of men, still it was difficult for the popular mind to recognize so subtle a distinction. A learned theologian like Geroch of Reichersperg might safely declare that he paid no more attention to the ma.s.ses of concubinary priests than if they were those of so many pagans, and yet be unimpeached in his orthodoxy, but to minds less robust in faith the question presented insoluble difficulties. Albero, a priest of Mercke, near Cologne, shortly afterwards, when he taught that the consecration of the host was imperfect in sinful hands, was forced, by the unanimous testimony of the Fathers, to recant; but he adopted the theory that such sacraments were profitable to those who took them in ignorance of the wickedness of the celebrant, while they were useless to the dead and to those who were cognizant of the sin. This was likewise heretical, and Albero's offer to prove its orthodoxy by undergoing the ordeal of fire was rejected on the logical ground that sorcery might thus enable false doctrine to triumph.

The question continued to plague the Church until, about 1230, Gregory IX. abandoned the position of his predecessors, and undertook to settle it by an authoritative decision that every priest in mortal sin is suspended, as far as concerns himself, until he repents and is absolved, yet his offices are not to be avoided, because he is not suspended as regards others, unless the sin is notorious by judicial confession or sentence, or by evidence so clear that no tergiversation is possible. To the Church it was, of course, impossible to admit that the virtue of the sacrament depended upon the virtue of the ministrant, but these fine-drawn distinctions show how the question troubled the minds of the faithful, and how readily the heresy could suggest itself that transubstantiation might fail in the hands of the wicked. In fact, even without the suggestive commands of Gregory and Innocent, to a thoughtful and pious mind there was a grievous incompatibility between the awful powers vested by the Church in her ministers and the flagitious lives which disgraced so many of them. That the error should be stubborn was unavoidable. As late as 1396 it was taught by Jean de Varennes, a priest of the Remois, who was forced to recant, and in 1458 we find Alonso de Spina declaring it to be common to the Waldenses, the Wickliffites, and the Hussites.[48]

One or two of the earlier antisacerdotal heresies may be mentioned which were local and temporary in their character, but which yet have interest as showing how ready were the lower ranks of the people to rise in revolt against the Church, and how contagious was the enthusiasm excited by any leader bold enough to voice the general feeling of unrest and discontent. About 1108, in the Zeeland Isles, there appeared a preacher named Tanchelm, who seems to have been an apostate monk, subtle and skilled in disputation. He taught the nullity of all hierarchical dignities, from pope to simple clerk, that the Eucharist was polluted in unworthy hands, and that t.i.thes were not to be paid. The people listened eagerly, and after filling all Flanders with his heresy, he found in Antwerp an appropriate centre of influence. Although that city was already populous and wealthy through commerce, it had but a single priest, and he, involved in an incestuous union with a near relative, had neither leisure nor inclination for his duties. A people thus dest.i.tute of orthodox instruction fell an easy prey to the tempter and eagerly followed him, reverencing him to that degree that the water in which he bathed was distributed and preserved as a relic. He readily raised a force of three thousand fighting men, with which he dominated the land, nor was there duke or bishop who dared withstand him. The stories that he pretended to be G.o.d and the equal of Jesus Christ, and that he celebrated his marriage with the Virgin Mary, may safely be rejected as the embroideries of frightened clerks; nor could Tanchelm have really considered himself as a heretic, for we find him visiting Rome with a few followers for the purpose of obtaining a division of the extensive see of Utrecht and the allotment of a portion of it to the episcopate of Terouane. On his return from Rome, in 1112, while pa.s.sing through Cologne, he and his retinue were thrown in prison by the archbishop, who the next year summoned a synod to sit in judgment on them. Several of them purged themselves by the water-ordeal, while others succeeded in escaping by flight. Of these, three were burned at Bonn, preferring a frightful death to abandoning their faith, while Tanchelm himself reached Bruges in safety. The anathema which had been p.r.o.nounced against him, however, had impaired his credit, and the clergy of Bruges had little difficulty in procuring his ejectment. Yet Antwerp remained faithful, and he continued his missionary career until 1115, when, being in a boat with but few followers, a zealous priest piously knocked him on the head, and his soul went to rejoin its master, Satan.

Even this did not suppress the effect of his teaching and his heresy continued to flourish. In vain the bishop gave twelve a.s.sistants to the lonely priest of St. Michael's in Antwerp; it was not until 1126, when St. Norbert, the ardent ascetic who founded the Premonstratensian order, was placed in charge of the city with his followers, and undertook to evangelize it with his burning eloquence, that the people could be brought back to the faith. St. Norbert built other churches and filled them with disciples zealous as himself, and the stubborn heretics were docile enough to pastors who taught by example as well as by words their sympathy for those who had so long been neglected. Consecrated hosts which had lain hidden for fifteen years in c.h.i.n.ks and corners were brought forth by pious souls, and the heresy vanished without leaving a trace.[49]

Somewhat similar was the heresy propagated not long afterwards in Brittany by eon de l'etoile, except that in this case the heresiarch was unquestionably insane. Sprung from a n.o.ble family, he had gained a reputation for sanct.i.ty by the life of a hermit in the wilderness, when, from the words of the collect, "per _eum_ qui venturus est judicare vivos et mortuos," he conceived the idea that he was the Son of G.o.d. It was not difficult to find sharers in this belief who adored him as the Deity incarnate, and he soon had a numerous band of followers, with whose aid he pillaged the churches of their ill-used treasures, and distributed them to the poor. The heresy became sufficiently formidable to induce the legate, Cardinal Alberic of Ostia, to preach against it at Nantes in 1145, and Ilugues, Archbishop of Rouen, to combat it with dreary polemics; but the most convincing argument used was the soldiery despatched against the heretics, many of whom were captured and burned at Alet, refusing obstinately to recant. eon retired to Aquitaine for a season, but in 1148 he ventured to appear in Champagne, where he was seized with his followers by Samson, Archbishop of Reims, and brought before Eugenius III. at the Council of Rouen. Here his insanity was so manifest that he was charitably consigned to the care of Suger, Abbot of St. Denis, where he soon after died, but many of his disciples were stubborn, and preferred the stake to recantation.[50]

More durable and more formidable were the heresies which about the same time took stubborn root in the south of France, where the condition of society was especially favorable for their propagation. There the population and civilization were wholly different from those of the north. The first wave of the Aryan invasion of Europe had driven to the Mediterranean littoral the ancient Ligurian inhabitants, who had left abundant traces of their race in the swarthy skins and black hair of their descendants. Greek and Phnician colonies had still further crossed the blood. Gothic domination had been long continued, and the Merovingian conquest had scarce given to the Frank a foothold in the soil. Even Saracenic elements were not wanting to make up the strange admixture of races which rendered the citizen of Narbonne or Ma.r.s.eilles so different a being from the inhabitant of Paris--quite as different as the Langue d'Oc from the Langue d'Oyl. The feudal tie which bound the Count of Toulouse, or the Marquis of Provence, or the Duke of Aquitaine to the King of Paris or the Emperor was but feeble, and when the last named fief was carried by Eleanor to Henry II., the rival pretensions of England and France preserved the virtual independence of the great feudatories of the South, leading to antagonisms of which we shall see the full fruits in the Albigensian crusades.

The contrast of civilization was as marked as that of race. Nowhere in Europe had culture and luxury made such progress as in the south of France. Chivalry and poetry were a.s.siduously cultivated by the n.o.bles; and, even in the cities, which had acquired for themselves a large measure of freedom, and which were enriched by trade and commerce, the citizens boasted a degree of education and enlightenment unknown elsewhere. Nowhere in Europe, moreover, were the clergy more negligent of their duties or more despised by the people. There was little earnestness of religious conviction among either prelates or n.o.bles to stimulate persecution, so that there was considerable freedom of belief.

In no other Christian land did the despised Jew enjoy such privileges.

His right to hold land in _franc-alleu_ was similar to that of the Christian; he was admitted to public office, and his administrative ability rendered him a favorite in such capacity with both prelate and n.o.ble; his synagogues were undisturbed; and the Hebrew school of Narbonne was renowned in Israel as the home of the Kimchis. Under such influences, those who really possessed religious convictions were but little deterred by prejudice or the fear of persecution from criticising the shortcomings of the Church, or from seeking what might more nearly respond to their aspirations.[51]

It was in such a population as this that the first antisacerdotal heresy was preached in Vallonise about 1106, by Pierre de Bruys, a native of the diocese of Embrun. The prelates of Embrun, Gap, and Die endeavored in vain to stay his progress until they procured a.s.sistance from the king, when he was driven out and took refuge in Gascony. For twenty years he continued his mission, and the openness and success with which he taught is shown by the story that in one place, to show his contempt for the objects of sacerdotal veneration, he caused a great pile of consecrated crosses to be acc.u.mulated, and then, setting fire to them, deliberately roasted meat at the flames. Persecution at length became more active, and about the year 1126 he was seized and burned at St.

Gilles.

His teaching was simply antisacerdotal--to some extent a revival of the errors of Claudius of Turin. Paedo-baptism was useless, for the faith of another cannot help him who cannot use his own--a far-reaching proposition, fraught with immeasurable consequences. For the same reason offerings, alms, ma.s.ses, prayers and other good works for the dead are useless and each will be judged on his own merits. Churches are unnecessary and should be destroyed, for holy places are not wanted for Christian prayer, since G.o.d listens to those who deserve it, whether invoked in church or tavern, in temple or market-place, before the altar or before the stable; and the Church of G.o.d does not consist of a mult.i.tude of stones piled together, but in the united congregation of the faithful. As for the cross, as a senseless thing it is not to be invoked with foolish prayers, but is rather to be destroyed as the instrument on which Christ was cruelly tortured to death. His most serious error, however, was his rejection of the Eucharist.

Transubstantiation had not yet had time to become immovably fixed in the perceptions of all men, and Pierre de Bruys went even further than Berenger of Tours. His only recorded utterance is his vigorous rejection of the sacrament: "O people, believe not the bishops, the priests, and the clerks, who, as in much else, seek to deceive you as to the office of the altar, where they lyingly pretend to make the body of Christ and give it to you for the salvation of your souls. They plainly lie, for the body of Christ was but once made by Christ in the supper before the Pa.s.sion, and but once given to the disciples. Since then it has been never made and never given."[52]

There was evidently nothing to do with such a man but to burn him, but even this did not suffice to suppress his heresy. The Petrobrusians continued to diffuse his doctrines, secretly or openly, and, some five or six years after his death, Peter the Venerable of Cluny considered them still so formidable as to require his controversial tract, to which we are indebted for almost all we know about the sect. This is dedicated to the bishops of Embrun, Arles, Die, and Gap, and urges them to renewed efforts for the suppression of the heresy by preaching and by the arms of the laity.

All their efforts might well be needed, for Peter was succeeded by a yet more formidable heresiarch. Little is known of the earlier life of Henry, the Monk of Lausanne, except that he left his convent there under circ.u.mstances for which St. Bernard afterwards reproached him, but which may well have been but the first ebullition of the reformatory spirit to which he finally fell a victim. We next hear of him at Le Mans, perhaps as early as 1116, but the dates are uncertain. Here his austerities gained him the veneration of the people, which he turned with disastrous effect upon the clergy. We know little of his doctrines at this time, except that he rejected the invocation of saints, but we are told that his eloquence was so persuasive that under its influence women abandoned their jewels and sumptuous apparel, and young men married courtesans to reclaim them. While thus teaching asceticism and charity, he so lashed the vices of the Church that the clergy throughout the diocese would have been destroyed but for the active protection of the n.o.bles. Henry had taken advantage of the absence in Rome of the bishop, the celebrated Hildebert of Le Mans, who, on his return, overcame the heretic in disputation and forced him to abandon the field, but could not punish him. We have glimpses of his activity in Poitiers and Bordeaux, and then lose sight of him till we find him a prisoner of the Archbishop of Arles, who took him to the presence of Innocent II. at the Council of Pisa, in 1134. Here he was convicted of heresy and condemned to imprisonment, but was subsequently released and sent back to his convent, whence he departed with the intention of entering the strict Cistercian order at Clairvaux. What led to his resuming his heretical mission we do not know, but we meet him again, bolder than before, adopting substantially the Petrobrusian tenets, rejecting the Eucharist, refusing all reverence for the priesthood, all t.i.thes, oblations, and other sources of ecclesiastical revenue, and all attendance at church.