78. Literature for the Entire Chapter
General Works: Flacius Illyricus: Catalogus testium veritatis qui ante nostram aetatem reclamarunt papae, Basel, 1556. — Du Plessis d’argentré: Coll. judiciorum de novis erroribus qui ab initio XII. saec. usque ad 1632 in ecclesia postscripti sunt et notati, 3 vols. Paris, 1728. — *Döllinger: Beiträge zur Sektengesch. des Mittelalters, Munich, 1890. A most valuable work. Part II., pp. 736, contains original documents, in the collection of which Döllinger spent many years and made many journeys. — Paul Fredericq: Corpus documentorum haer. pravitatis Neerlandicae, 5 vols. Ghent, 1889 sqq. — Caesar of Heisterbach: Dialogus. — Etienne De Bourbon: Anecdotes Historiques, ed. by Lecoy de la Marche, Paris, 1877. — Map: De nugis curialium, Wright’s ed. Epp. Innocentii III., Migne, 214-216. — Jacques de Vitry: Hist. orientalis, Douai, 1672, and in Martene and Durand, Thes. anecd., 5 vols. Paris, 1717. — Arnold: Unpartheiische Kirchen- und Ketzerhistorie, Frankf., 1729. — Füsslin: Kirchen- und Ketzergesch. der mittleren Zeit, 3 vols. Leipzig, 1770-1774. — Mosheim: Versuch einer unparthei. Ketzergesch., Helmstädt, 1746. — Hahn: Gesch. der Ketzer im Mittelalter, 3 vols. Stuttg., 1845-1847. — A. Jundt: Hist. du panthéisme pop. au moyen âge, Paris, 1876. — *LEA: Hist. of the Inquisition, 3 vols. N. Y., 1888. On the sects, I. 67-208. — M. F. Tocco: L’eresia net medio evo, Florence, 1884. — P. Alphandéry: Les idées morales chez les Hetérédoxes Latins au début du XIII siècle, Paris, 1903. — Hefele-Knöpfler, vol. V. — A. H. Newman: Recent Researches concerning Med. Sects in Papers of Amer. Soc. of Ch. Hist. 1892, IV. 167-221.
For The Cathari, § 80 — Bonacursus (at first a Catharan teacher): Vita haereticorum seu contra Catharos (1190?), Migne, 204. 775-792. — Ecbertus (canon of Cologne about 1150): Sermones XIII. adv. Catharorum errores, Migne, 195. — – Ermengaudus: Contra haeret., Migne, 204, 1235-1275. — Moneta Cremonensis (1240): Adv. Catharos et Valdenses, Rome, 1763. — Rainerius Sacchone (d. about 1263, was a leader among the Cathari for seventeen years, then became a Dominican and an active inquisitor): De Catharibus et Leonistis seu pauperibus de Lugduno in Martène-Durand, Thes. Anecd., V. 1759-1776. — Bernardus Guidonis: Practica inquisitionis hereticae pravitatis, ed. by Douais, Paris, 1886. — C. Douais, bp. of Beauvais: Documents pour servir à l’Hist. de l’inquis. dans le Languedoc, 2 vols. Paris, 1900. Trans. and Reprints, by Univ. of Phila., III. No. 6. — *C. Schmidt: Hist. et Doctr. de la secte des Cathares ou Albigeois, 2 vols. Paris, 1849.
For The Petrobrusians, etc., §81: Döllinger: I. 75-110. — Peter Venerabilis: Adv. Petrobrusianos, Migne, 189. 719-850; Acta Episc. Cenomannensium, in Mabillon, Veter. Analecta, p. 315, Paris, 1723. — For Henry of Lausanne, Gaufrid: Vita Bernardi, Migne, 185. 312 sqq.; Epp. Bernardi, 241, Migne, 182, 434 sqq. — Lives of St. Bernard. Hauck; art. in Herzog Ency., VII. 606 sq. — J. von Walter: Die ersten Wanderprediger Frankreichs, II. 130-141, Leipzig, 1906. — For Tanchelm, Vita Norberti, cap. 16. — Otto of Freising: De gestis Frid., cap. 54. — Hauck: IV. 88-92.
For The Beguines and Beghards, §83: Bernardus Guy: pp. 141 sqq., 264-268. — Fredericq, II. 9 sqq., 72 sqq. — Döllinger, II. 378-416, 702 sqq. — *J. L. Mosheim: De Beghardis et Beguinabus, Leipzig, 1790. — G. Uhlhorn: D. christl. Liebesthätigkeit im Mittelalter, pp. 376-394. — H. Delacroix: Le Mysticisme speculatif en Allemagne au 14e siècle, Paris, 1900, pp. 52-134. — Ullmann: Reformers before the Reformation. — LEA: II. 350 sqq. — *Haupt, art. Beguinen und Begharden in Herzog, II. 516-526, and art. Beguinen in Wetzer-Welte, II. 204 sqq.
For The Waldenses, §84, the works of Rainerius, Moneta, Bernardus Guy. — Döllinger: Beiträge. — Bernardus, Abbas Fontis Calidi (d. about 1193): Adv. Waldensium sectam, Migne, 204. 793-840. — Alanus ab Insulis (d. about 1202): Adv. haeret. Waldenses, Judaeos et Paganos, Migne, 210. 377-399; — Rescriptum haeresiarcharum Lombardiae ad Leonistas in Alemannia, by the so-called “Anonymous of Passau” (about 1315), ed. by Preger in Beiträge zur Gesch. der Waldesier im Mittelalter, Munich, 1876. Gieseler, in his De Rainerii Sacchone, Götting., 1834, recognized this as a distinct work. — Etienne de Bourbon, pp. 290-296, etc. — David of Augsburg: Tractatus de inquis. haereticorum, ed. by Preger, Munich, 1878. Döllinger gives parts of Bernard Guy’s Practica, II. 6-17, etc., the Rescriptum, II. 42-52, and David of Augsburg, II. 351-319. — Also Fredericq, vols. I., II.
Mod. Works, §84: Perrin: Hist. des Vaudois, Geneva, 1619, in three parts, — the Waldenses, the Albigenses, and the Ten Persecutions of the Vaudois. The Phila. ed. (1847) contains an introd. by Professor Samuel Miller of Princeton. — Gilles: Hist. Eccles. des églises réf. en quelques vallées de Piémont, Geneva, 1648. — Morland: Hist. of the evang. Churches of the Valleys of Piedmont, London, 1658. — – Leger: Hist. générale des églises evang. des Vallées, etc., Leyden, 1669, with large maps of the three Waldensian valleys and pictures of the martyrdoms. Leger, a leading Waldensian pastor, took refuge in Leyden from persecution. — Peyran: Hist. Defence of the Waldenses, London, 1826. — Gilly (canon of Durham): Waldensian Researches, London, 1831. — Muston: Hist. des Vaudois, Paris, 1834; L’Israel des Alpes, Paris, 1851, Engl. trans., 2 vols. London, 1857, — Blair: Hist. of the Waldenses, 2 vols. Edinb., 1833. — Monastier: Hist. de l’église vaudoise, 2 vols. Lausanne, 1847. — *A. W. Dieckhoff: Die Waldenser im Mittelalter, Götting. 1861. — *J. J. Herzog: Die romanischen Waldenser, Halle, 1853. — Maitland: Facts and Documents of the Waldenses, London, 1862. — F. Palacky: Die Beziehungen der Waldenser zu den ehemaligen Sekten in Böhmen, Prague, 1869. — *Jaroslav Goll: Quellen und Untersuchungen zur Gesch. der Böhmischen Brüder, Prague, 1878-1882. — *H. Haupt: Die relig. Sekten in Franken vor der Reformation, Würz b. 1882; Die deutsche Bibelübersetzung der mittelalterlichen Waldenser in dem Codex Teplensis, Würzb., 1885; Waldenserhtum und Inquisition im südöstlichen Deutschland, Freib., 1890; Der Waldensische Ursprung d. Codex Teplensis, Würzb., 1886. — Montet: Hist. litt. des Vaudois du Piémont, Paris, 1885. — *L. Keller: Die Waldenser und die deutschen Bibelübersetzungen, Leipzig, 1886. — *F. Jostes: Die Waldenser und die vorluth. deutsche Bibelübersetzung, Munich, 1885; Die Tepler Bibelübersetzung, Münster, 1886. — *Preger: Das Verhältniss der Taboriten zu den Waldesiern des 14ten Jahrhunderts, Munich, 1887; Die Verfassung der französ. Waldesier, etc., Munich, 1890. — *K. Muller. Die Waldenser und ihre einzelnen Gruppen bis zum Anfang des 14ten Jahrhunderts, Gotha, 1886. — *E. COMBA: Hist. des Vaudois d’Italie avant la Réforme, Paris, 1887, new ed. 1901, Engl. trans., London, 1889. — Sofia Bompiani A Short Hist. of the Ital. Waldenses, N. Y. 1897. See also Lea: Inquis., vol. II. — E. E. Hale: In his Name, Boston, 1887, a chaste tale of the early Waldenses in Lyons. — H. C. Vedder: Origin and Early Teachings of the Waldenses in “Am. Jour. of Theol.,” 1900, pp. 465-489.
For The Crusades Against The Albigenses, §85: Innocent III.’s Letters, Migne, 214-216. The Abbot Pierre de Vaux de Cernay in Rec. Hist. de France, XXI. 7 sqq. — Hurter: Inn. III. vol. II. 257-349, 379-389, 413-432. — Hefele-Knöpfler: V. 827-861, etc. — Lea: I. 114-209. — A. Luchaire: Inn. III. et la croisade des Albigeois, Paris, 1905. — Mandell Creighton: Simon de Montfort, in Hist. Biog.
For The Inquisition, §§86, 87, see Douais, Bernard Guy, and other sources and the works of Döllinger, Schmidt, Lea, Hurter (II. 257-269), Hefele, etc., as cited above. — Mirbt: Quellen zur Gesch. des Papstthums, 2d ed., pp. 126-146; — Doct. de modo proced. c. haeret., in Martene-Durand, Thes. anecd., V. 1795-1822. — Nic. Eymericus (inquis. general of Spain, d. 1399): Directorium inquisitorum, ed. F. Pegna, Rome, 1578. For MSS. of Eymericus, see Denifle: Archiv, 1886, pp. 143 sqq. — P. Fredericq: Corpus documentorum inquis. haer. prav. Neerlandicae, 5 vols. Ghent, 1889-1902. Vol. I. opens with the year 1025. — Lud. A Paramo (a Sicilian inquisitor): De orig. et progressu officii s. inguis., Madrid, 1698. — P. Limborch: Hist. inquis., Amster., 1692, includes the important liber sententiarum inquis. Tolosonae, Engl. trans., 2 vols. London, 1731. — J. A. Llorente (secretary of the Madrid Inquis. 1789-1791): Hist. critique de l’inquis. d’Espagne (to Ferdinand VII.), 4 vols. Paris, 1817. Condens. Engl. trans., Phil. 1843. — Rule: Hist. of the Inquis., 2 vols. London, 1874. — F. Hoffmann: Gesch. der Inquis. (down to the last cent.), 2 vols. Bonn, 1878. — C. Molinier: L’Inquis. dans le midi de la France au 13e et 14e siècle, Paris, 1881. — Ficker: Die gesetzl. Einführung der Todesstrafe für Ketzerei in Mittheilungen für Oester. Geschichtsforschung, 1880, pp. 188 sqq. — J. Havet: L’hérésie et le bras séculier aut moyen âge, Paris, 1881. — Tamburini: Storia generale dell’ Inquisizione, 4 vols. — L. Tanon: L’Hist. des tribunaux de l’Inquis. en France, Paris, 1893. — HENNER: Beiträge zur Organization und Kompetenz der päpstlichen Ketzergerichte, . Leipzig, 1893. — Graf von Hoensbroech: Das Papstthum, etc., Leipzig, 1900; 4th ed., 1901. Chap. on the Papacy and the Inquis., I. 1-206. — P. Flade: Das römische Inquisitionsverfahren in Deutschland bis zu den Hexenprocessen, Leipzig, 1902. — Hurter: art. Inquisition in Wetzer-Welte, VI. 765 sqq., and Herzog, IX. 152-167. — E. L. Th. Henke: Konrad von Marburg, Marb., 1861. — B. Kaltner: Konrad v. Marburg u. d. Inquis. in Deutschland, Prague, 1882. — R. Schmidt: Die Herkunft des Inquisitionsprocesses, Freib. i. Breig. 1902. — C. H. Haskins: Robert le Bougre and the Beginnings of the Inquis. in Northern France in “Amer. Hist. Rev.,” 1902, pp. 421-437, 631-653. — The works on canon law by Hinschius, Friedberg, and Ph. Hergenröther (R. C.), pp. 126, 601-610. — E. Vacandard: L’inquisition, Etude Hist. et crit. sur le pouvoir coercitif de l’église, Paris, 1907, pp. 340.
79. The Medieval Dissenters
The centralization of ecclesiastical authority in the papacy was met by a widespread counter-movement of religious individualism and dissent. It was when the theocratic programme of Gregory VII. and Innocent III. was being pressed most vigorously that an ominous spiritual revolt showed itself in communities of dissenters. While the crusading armaments were battling against the infidel abroad, heretical depravity, to use the official term, arose in the Church at home to disturb its peace.
For nearly five hundred years heresy had been unknown in Western Europe. When Gregory the Great converted the Arians of Spain and Lombardy in the latter part of the sixth century, it was supposed that the last sparks of heresy were extinguished. In the second half of the eleventh century here and there, in Milan, Orleans, Strassburg, Cologne, and Mainz, little flames of heresy shot forth; but they were quickly put out and the Church went on its way again in peace. In the twelfth century, heresy again broke out simultaneously in different parts of Europe, from Hungary to the Pyrenees and northwards to Bremen. The two burning centres of the infection were Milan in Northern Italy and Toulouse in Southern France. The Church authorities looked on with alarm, and, led by the pope, proceeded to employ vigorous measures to stamp out the threatening evil. Jacques of Vitry, after visiting Milan, called it a pit of heretics, fovea haereticorum, and declared that there was hardly a person left to resist the spiritual rebels, so numerous were they in that city. At different points in Lombardy the clergy were actually driven out and Piacenza remained three years without a priest. In Viterbo, in the very vicinity of Rome, the Patarenes were in the majority in 1205, as Innocent III. testified. But it was in Languedoc that the situation was most alarming, and there papal armies were marshalled to crush out the contagion.
The dissenting movement started with the people and not with the schools or princes, much provocation as the princes had for showing their resentment at the avarice and worldliness of the clergy and their invasion of the realm of civil authority. The vast majority of those who suffered punishment as heretics were of the common people. Their ignorance was a constant subject of gibe and derision as they stood for trial before the ecclesiastical tribunals. The heresy of a later period, the fifteenth century, differs in this regard, having scholars among its advocates.
Our knowledge of the medieval sectaries and their practices is drawn almost wholly from the testimonies of those who were arrayed against them. These testimonies are found in tracts, manuals for the treatment of heresy, occasional notices of ecclesiastical writers like Salimbene, Vitry, Etienne de Bourbon, Caesar of Heisterbach, or Matthew Paris, in the decrees of synods and in the records of the heresy trials themselves. These last records, written down by Catholic hands, have come down to us in large numbers. Interesting as they are, they must be accepted with caution as the statements of enemies. As for Catharan literature, a single piece has survived and it is a painful recollection that, where so many suffered the loss of goods, imprisonments, and death for their religious convictions, only a few lines remain in their own handwriting to depict their faith and hopes.
The exciting cause of this religious revolt is to be looked for in the worldliness and arrogance of the clergy, the formalism of the Church’s ritual, and the worldly ambitions of the papal policy. In their depositions before the Church inquisitors, the accused called attention to the pride, cupidity, and immorality of the priests. Tanchelm, Henry of Lausanne, and other leaders directed their invectives against the priests and bishops who sought power and ease rather than the good of the people.
Underneath all this discontent was the spiritual hunger of the masses. The Bible was not an altogether forgotten book. The people remembered it. Popular preachers like Bernard of Thiron, Robert of Abrissel and Vitalis of Savigny quoted its precepts and relied upon its authority. There was a hankering after the Gospel which the Church did not set forth. The people wanted to get behind the clergy and the ritual of the sacraments to Christ himself, and, in doing so, a large body of the sectaries went to the extreme of abandoning the outward celebration of the sacraments, and withdrew themselves altogether from priestly offices. The aim of all the sects was moral and religious reformation. The Cathari, it is true, differed in a philosophical question and were Manichaeans, but it was not a question of philosophy they were concerned about. Their chief purpose was to get away from the worldly aims of the established church, and this explains their rapid diffusion in Lombardy and Southern France.
A prominent charge made against the dissenters was that they put their own interpretations upon the Gospels and Epistles and employed these interpretations to establish their own systems and rebuke the Catholic hierarchy. Special honor was given by the Cathari to the Gospel of John, and the Waldensian movement started with an attempt to make known the Scriptures through the vulgar tongue. The humbler classes knew enough about clerical abuses from their own observation; but the complaints of the best men of the times were in the air, and these must also have reached their ears and increased the general restlessness. St. Bernard rebuked the clergy for ambition, pride, and lust. Grosseteste called clerics antichrists and devils. Walter von der Vogelweide, among the poets, spoke of priests as those —
“Who make a traffic of each sacrament
The mass’ holy sacrifice included.”
These men did not mean to condemn the priestly office, but it should occasion no surprise that the people made no distinction between the office and the priest who abused the office.
The voices of the prophets were also heard beyond the walls of the convent, — Joachim of Flore and Hildegard. Of an independent ecclesiastical movement they had no thought. But they cried out for clerical reform, and the people, after long waiting, seeing no signs of a reform, found hope of relief only in separatistic societies and groups of believers. The prophetess on the Rhine, having in mind the Cathari, called upon all kings and Christians to put down the Sadducees and heretics who indulged in lust, and, in the face of the early command to the race to go forth and multiply, rejected marriage. But to her credit, it is to be said, that at a time when heretics were being burnt at Bonn and Cologne, she remonstrated against the death penalty for the heretic on the ground that in spite of his heresy he bore the image of God. She would have limited the punishment to the sequestration of goods.
It is also most probable that the elements of heresy were introduced into Central and Western Europe from the East. In the Byzantine empire the germs of early heresies continued to sprout, and from there they seem to have been carried to the West, where they were adopted by the Manichaean Cathari and Albigenses. Travelling merchants and mercenaries from Germany, Denmark, France, and Flanders, who had travelled in the East or served in the Byzantine armies, may have brought them with them on their return to their homes.
The matters in which the heretical sects differed from the Catholic Church concerned doctrine, ritual, and the organization of the Church. Among the dogmas repudiated were transubstantiation and the sacerdotal theory of the priesthood. The validity of infant baptism was also quite widely denied, and the Cathari abandoned water baptism altogether. The worship of the cross and other images was regarded as idolatry. Oaths and even military service were renounced. Bernard Guy, inquisitor-general of Toulouse and our chief authority for the heretical beliefs current in Southern France in the fourteenth century, says that the doctrine of transubstantiation was denied on the ground that, if Christ’s body had been as large as the largest mountain, it would have been consumed long before that time. As for adoring the cross, thorns and spears might with equal propriety be worshipped, for Christ’s body was wounded by a crown of thorns and a lance. The depositions of the victims of the Inquisition are the simple statements of unlettered men. In the thousands of reports of judicial cases, which are preserved, charges of immoral conduct are rare.
A heretic, that is, one who dissented from the dogmatic belief of the Catholic Church, was regarded as worse than a Saracen and worse than a person of depraved morals. In a sermon, issued by Werner of St. Blasius about 1125, the statement is made that the “holy Catholic Church patiently tolerates those who live ill, male viventes, but casts out from itself those who believe erroneously, male credentes.” The medieval Church, following the Fathers, did not hesitate to apply the most opprobrious epithets to heretics. The synod of Toulouse, 1163, refering to the heretics in Gascony, compared them to serpents which, just for the very reason that they conceal themselves, are all the more destructive to the simpleminded in the Lord’s vineyard. Perhaps the most frequent comparison was that which likened them to Solomon’s little foxes which destroy the vines. Peter Damiani and others liken them to the foxes whose tails Samson bound together and drove forth on their destructive mission. Innocent III. showed a preference for the comparison to foxes, but also called heretics scorpions, wounding with the sting of damnation, locusts like the locusts of Joel hid in the dust with vermin and countless in numbers, demons who offer the poison of serpents in the golden chalice of Babylon, and he called heresy the black horse of the Apocalypse on which the devil rides, holding the balances. Heresy is a cancer which moves like a serpent.
The Fourth Lateran also used the figure of Samson’s foxes, whose faces had different aspects, but whose tails were bound together for one and the same fell purpose. Gregory IX., speaking of France, declared that it was filled with a multitude of venomous reptiles and the poison of the heresies. Etienne de Bourbon, writing in the last years of the twelfth century, said that “heretics are dregs and depravity, and for that reason cannot return to their former faith except by a divine miracle, even as cinders, which cannot be made into silver, or dregs into wine.” St. Bernard likened heretics to dogs that bite and foxes that deceive. Free use was made of the withered branch of Joh_15:6, which was to be cast out and burnt, and of the historical examples of the destruction of the Canaanites and of Korah, Dothan, and Abiram. Thomas Aquinas put heretics in the same category with coin clippers who were felons before the civil tribunal. Earthquakes, like the great earthquake in Lombardy of 1222, and other natural calamities were ascribed by the orthodox to God’s anger against heresy.
The principle of toleration was unknown, or at best only here and there a voice was raised against the death penalty, as in the case of Hildegard, Rupert of Deutz, and Peter Cantor, bishop of Paris. Bernard went farther and admonished Eugenius III. against the use of force in the treatment of heretics and in commenting upon Son_2:15, “take me the foxes that spoil the vines,” he said, that they should be caught not by arms but by arguments, and be reconciled to the Church in accordance with the purpose of Him who wills all men to be saved. He added that a false Catholic does more harm than an open heretic. The opinion came to prevail, that what disease is to the body that heresy is to the Church, and the most merciful procedure was to cut off the heretic. No distinction was made between the man and the error. The popes were chiefly responsible for the policy which acted upon this view. The civil codes adopted and pronounced death as the heretic’s “merited reward,” poena debita. Thomas Aquinas and the theologians established it by arguments. Bernard Guy expressed the opinion of his age when he declared that heresy can be destroyed only when its advocates are converted or burnt. To extirpate religious dissent, the fierce tribunal of the Inquisition was established. The last measure to be resorted to was an organized crusade, waged under the banner of the pope, which shed the blood of the medieval dissenters without pity and with as little compunction as the blood of Saracens in the East.
The confusion, which reigned among the Church authorities concerning the sectaries, and also the differences which existed among the sectaries themselves, appear from the many names by which they were known. The most elaborate list is given in the code of Frederick II. 1238, and enumerates nineteen different sects, among which the most familiar are Cathari, Patarenes, Beguines, Arnoldists, and Waldenses. But the code did not regard this enumeration as exhaustive, and adds to the names “all heretics of both sexes, whatever be the term used to designate them.” And in fact the list is not exhaustive, for it does not include the respectable group of Northern Italy known as the Humiliati, or the Ortlibenses of Strassburg, or the Apostolicals of Belgium. One document speaks of no less than seventy-two, and Salimbene of one hundred and thirty different sects. The council of Verona, 1183, condemned, “first of all the Cathari and Patarenes and those who falsely called themselves Humiliati or Poor Men of Lyons, also the Passagini, Josephini, and Arnoldists, whom we put under perpetual Anathema.” The lack of compact organization explains in part the number of these names, some of which were taken from localities or towns and did not indicate any differences of belief or practice from other sectaries. The numbers of the heretics must be largely a matter of conjecture. A panic took hold of the Church authorities, and some of the statements, like those of Innocent III., must be regarded as exaggerations, as are often the rumors about a hostile army in a panic-stricken country, awaiting its arrival. Innocent pronounced the number of heretics in Southern France innumerable. According to the statement of Neumeister, a heretical bishop who was burnt, the number of Waldensian heretics in Austria about 1300 was eighty thousand. The writer, usually designated “the Passau Anonymous,” writing about 1315, said there was scarcely a land in which the Waldenses had not spread. The Cathari in Southern France mustered large armies and were massacred by the thousands. Of all these sects, the only one which has survived is the very honorable body, still known as the Waldenses.
The medieval dissenters have sometimes been classed with the Protestants. The classification is true only on the broad ground of their common refusal to be bound by the yoke of the Catholic hierarchy. Some of the tenets of the dissenters and some of their practices the Protestant Reformation repudiated, fully as much as did the established Church of the Middle Ages. Interesting as they are in themselves and by reason of the terrible ordeals they were forced to undergo, the sects were side currents compared with the great stream of the Catholic Church, to which, with all its abuses and persecuting enormities, the credit belongs of Christianizing the barbarians, developing learning, building cathedrals, cultivating art, furnishing hymns, constructing theological systems, and in other ways contributing to the progress of mankind. That which makes them most interesting to us is their revolt against the priesthood, in which they all agreed, and the emphasis they laid upon purity of speech and purity of life. Their history shows many good men, but no great personality. Peter Waldo is the most notable among their leaders.
A clear classification of the medieval heretics is made difficult if not impossible by the uncertainty concerning the opinions held by some of them and also by the apparent confusion of one sect with another by medieval writers.
The Cathari, or Manichaean heretics, form a class by themselves. The Waldenses, Humiliati, and probably the Arnoldists, represent the group of evangelical dissenters. The Amauricians and probably the Ortlibenses were pantheistic. The isolated leaders, Peter de Bruys, Henry of Lausanne, Eudo, and Tanchelm, were preachers and iconoclasts — using the term in a good sense — rather than founders of sects. The Beguines and Beghards represented a reform movement within the Church, one wing going off into paths of doctrinal heresy and lawlessness, and incurring thereby the anathemas of the ecclesiastical authorities.
80. The Cathari
The most widely distributed of the heretical sects were the Cathari. The term comes from the Greek katharos, meaning pure, and has given to the German its word for heretic, Ketzer. It was first used by the Cathari themselves. A grotesque derivation, invented by their enemies, associated the sect with the cat, whose form it was the pleasure of the devil to assume. From their dualistic tenets they were called New Manichaeans. From the quarter they inhabited in Milan, called Pataria, or the abode of the junk dealers, they received the name Patarenes.
In Southern France they were called Albigenses, from the town of Albi, one of the centres of their strength. From the territory in Eastern Europe, whence their theological tenets were drawn, they were known as Bulgari, Bugares, or Bugres. Other titles were given to them in France, such as Tessarants, Textores, from their strength among the weavers and industrial classes, or Publicani and Poplicani, a corruption of Paulicians.
It was the general belief of the age that the Cathari derived their doctrinal views from heretical sects of Eastern Europe and the Orient, such as the Paulicians and Bogomili. This was brought out in the testimony of members of the sect at their trials, and it has in its favor the official recognition which leaders from Eastern Europe, Bosnia, and Constantinople gave to the Western heretics. The Paulicians had existed since the fifth century in Asia Minor, and had pushed their way to Constantinople. The Bogomili, who were of later origin, had a position of some prominence in Constantinople in the early part of the twelfth century. It is also possible that seeds of Manichaean and Arian heresy were left in Italy and Southern France after these systems were supposed to be stamped out in those regions.
The Paulicians rejected the Old Testament and taught a strict dualism. The Bogomili held to the Sabellian Trinity, rejected the eucharist, and substituted for baptism with water a ritual of prayer and the imposition of hands. Marriage they pronounced an unclean relationship. The worship of images and the use of the cross were discarded.
It was in the early years of the eleventh century, that the first reports of the appearance of heresy were bruited about here and there in Italy and Southern France. About the year 1000 a certain Leuthard, claiming to be inspired, appeared in the diocese of Châlons, destroying crosses and denouncing tithes. In 1012 Manichaean separatists appeared for the first time in Germany, at Mainz, and in 1022 at Orleans, where King Robert and his consort Constance were present at their trial. Fifteen were tried, and thirteen remained steadfast and perished in the flames. Constance is said to have struck one of them, her former confessor, with a staff and to have put out one of his eyes. Heretics appeared at Liège in 1025. About the same time a group was discovered in Treves who denied transubstantiation and rejected infant baptism. The castle of Monteforte near Turin became a stronghold for them, and in 1034 Heribert, archbishop of Milan, seized some of their number, including their leader Gerard. They all accepted death in the flames rather than adore a cross. In 1052 they appeared at Goslar, where the guilty were discerned by their refusal to kill a chicken. With these notices, and a few more like them, the rumor of heresy is exhausted for nearly a century.
About the middle of the twelfth century, heresy suddenly appeared again at Liége, and prosecutions were begun. In 1145 eight men and three women were burnt at Cologne. The firmness of the victims was exemplified in the case of a young woman, who was held back for a time with the promise of marriage, but, on seeing her coreligionists burnt, broke from her keepers and, hiding her face in her dress, threw herself into the flames. And so, Caesar of Heisterbach goes on to say, she descended with her fellow-heretics to hell. At Rheims, 1157, and again at Cologne in 1163 we hear of trials and burnings, but thereafter the Cathari are no more heard of in Germany.
Their only appearance in England was at Oxford, 1161, when more than thirty illiterate Germans, men and women, strove to propagate their errors. They were reported as “detesting” marriage, the eucharist, baptism, and the Catholic Church, and as having quoted Mat_5:10, “Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” A council of bishops ordered them branded on the forehead and flogged. Henry II. would not allow heretics to be burnt to death, though offences in his reign against the forest laws were punished with blinding and castration.
In France the Cathari were strong enough in 1167 to hold a council at St. Felix de Caraman near Toulouse. It was attended by Nicetas of Constantinople, to whom the title of pope was given. He was accompanied by a Catharan bishop, Marcus of Lombardy. Contemporary reports represent the number of heretics as very large. They were compared by William of Newburgh to the sand of the sea, and were said by Walter Map to be infinite in number in Aquitaine and Burgundy. By the end of the twelfth century they were reported to have followers in nearly 1000 cities. The Dominican Rainerius gave 4,000,000 as a safe estimate of their number and declared this was according to a census made by the Cathari themselves. Joachim of Flore stated that they were sending out their emissaries like locusts. Such statements are not to be taken too seriously, but they indicate a widespread religious unrest. Men did not know whereunto heresy might grow. In Southern France the priests were the objects of ridicule. In that region, as well as in many of the cities of Lombardy, the Cathari had schools for girls and boys.
Agreed as the Cathari were in opposing many customs and doctrines of the established Church, they were divided among themselves and broken up into sects, — seventy-two, according to one document. Chief among them were the Albanenses and Concorrezzi, deriving their names from two Lombard towns, Alba and Concorreggio, near Monza. A position intermediate between them was occupied by the Bagnolenses, so called from the Italian town of Bagnolo, near Lodi. This third party had a bishop whose authority was acknowledged by the Cathari in Mantua, Brescia, and Bergamo.
The differences between the Albanenses and Concorrezzi were of a theological character and concerned the nature of God and the origin of matter. The Albanenses were strict dualists. Matter is eternal and the product of the evil god. Paul speaks of the things, which are seen, as dung. The Concorrezzi seem to have rejected dualism and to have regarded evil as the creation of Lucifer, the highest of the angels.
In matters of ritual and practical conduct, and in antagonism to the Church establishment, all groups of the Cathari were agreed. Since Schmidt wrote his History of the Cathari, it has been common to represent Catharism as a philosophical system, but it is difficult to understand the movement from this standpoint. How could an unlettered folk, as they were, be concerned primarily or chiefly with a metaphysical construction? Theirs was not a philosophy, but a daily faith and practice. This view alone makes it possible to understand how the movement gained such rapid and widespread acceptance in the well-ordered and prosperous territory of Southern France, a territory in which Cluny had exercised its influence and was located.
The Cathari agreed — to use the expression of their opponents — in vituperating the established Church and in calling its adherents Romanists. There are two Churches, they held, — one of the wicked and one of the righteous. They themselves constituted the Church of the righteous, outside of which there is no salvation, having received the imposition of hands and done penance according to the teaching of Christ and the Apostles. Its fruits proved that the established Church was not the true Church. The true Church endures persecution, does not prescribe it. The Roman Church sits in the place of rule and is clothed in purple and fine linen. The true Church teaches first. The Roman Church baptizes first. The true Church has no dignitaries, prelates, cardinals, archdeacons, or monks. The Roman Church is the woman of the Apocalypse, a harlot, and the pope anti-Christ.
The depositions at their trials indicate that the Cathari made much use of the Scriptures. The treatises of Bonacursus, Ermengaudus, and other writers in refutation of Catharan teachings abound in quotations of Scripture, a fact indicating the regard the heretics had for them. They put spiritual interpretations upon the miracles and freely allegorized parables. In the parable of the Good Samaritan, the man who fell among the thieves was Adam, whose spirit, at God’s command, descended from heaven to earth and fell among thieves in this lower world. The priest and the Levite were Melchizedek and Aaron, who went the “same way,” that is, could not help him. The Old Testament they discredited, pronouncing it the work of the devil. Its God is an evil god.
The Catharan doctrine seems to have highly exalted Christ, though it denied the full reality of his human nature. He was created in heaven and was not born on the earth, but passed through Mary as through a pipe. He neither ate material food nor drank material drink. As for John the Baptist, he was one of the major demons and was damned for doubting when he sent to Christ the question, “Art thou he that should come or do we look for another?”
A strange account of the fall of the angels was current in Southern France. Satan ascended to heaven and waited in vain thirty-two years for admittance. He was then noticed and admitted by the porter. Hidden from the Father, he remained among the angels a year before he began to use his art to deceive. He asked them whether they had no other glory or pleasure besides what he saw. When they replied they had not, he asked whether they would not like to descend to his world and kingdom, promising to give them gifts, fields, vineyards, springs, meadows, fruits, gold, silver, and women. Then he began to praise woman and the pleasures of the flesh. When they inquired more particularly about the women, the devil said he would descend and bring one back with him. This he did. The woman was decked in jewels and gold and beautiful of form. The angels were inflamed with passion, and Satan seeing this, took her and left heaven. The angels followed. The exodus continued for nine days and nights, when God closed up the fissure which had been made.
The Cathari divided themselves into two classes, the Perfecti and the Credentes, or Believers. The Perfect were those who had received the rite of the consolamentum, and were also called bons hommes, good men, or good Christians, or the Girded, vestiti, from the fact that after receiving the consolamentum they bound themselves with a cord. The number of the Good Men, Rainerius, about 1250, gave as four thousand. The Credentes corresponded, in a general way, to the catechumens of the early Church, and placed all their hope in the consolamentum, which they looked forward to receiving. By a contract, called the convenenza, the Catharan officials pledged themselves to administer the consolamentum to the Credentes in their last hours.
The consolamentum took the place of baptism and meant more. Its administration was treated by the Catholic authorities as equivalent to an initiation into heresy — haereticatio, as it was called. The usual form in which the court stated the charge of heresy was, “He has submitted to heretication.” The rite, which women also were allowed to administer, was performed with the laying on of hands and the use of the Gospel of John, which was imposed upon the head or placed at the candidate’s breast. The candidate made a confession of all his sins of thought, word, work, and vision, and placed his faith and hope in God and the consolamentum which he was about to receive. The kiss of peace followed.
The Perfect had a monopoly of salvation. Those not receiving the consolamentum were considered lost or passed at death into another body and returned to the earth. The rite involved not only the absolution of all previous sins but of sins that might be committed thereafter. However, relapse was possible and sometimes occurred. At death, the spirit was reunited with the soul, which had been left behind in heaven. There is no resurrection of the body. The administration of the consolamentum seems to have been confined to adults until the fourteenth century, when it was administered to sick children. Those who submitted to it were said to have, made a good ending.”
The consolamentum involved the renunciation of the seven sacraments. Baptism with water was pronounced a material and corruptible thing, the work of the evil god. Even little children were not saved who received absolution and imposition of bands. The baptism of the established Church was the baptism of John the Baptist, and John’s baptism was an invention of the devil. Christ made a clear distinction between baptism with water and the baptism of power, Act_1:5. The latter he promised to the Church.
As for the eucharist, the Cathari held that God would not appoint the consecrated host as a medium of grace, nor can God be in the host, for it passes through the belly, and the vilest part of the body. For the mass was substituted consecrated bread before the common meal. This bread was often kept for months. There was also, in some quarters, a more solemn celebration twelve times a year, called the apparellamentum, and the charge was very frequently made that the accused had attended this feast. Some deposed that they were eating Christ’s body and drinking his blood while they were listening to the words of Scripture. Among the requirements made of those who received the consolamentum were that they should not touch women, eat animal food, kill animals, take oaths, or favor war and capital punishment.
The marriage bed was renounced as contrary to God’s law, and some went so far as to say openly that the human body was made by the devil. The love of husband and wife should be like the love of Christ for the Church, without carnal desire. The command to avoid looking on a woman, Mat_5:27, Mat_5:28, was taken literally, and the command to leave husband and wife was interpreted to mean the renunciation of sexual cohabitation. Witnesses condemned marriage absolutely, and no man or woman living in sexual relations could be saved. The opinion prevailed, at least among some Catharan groups, that the eating of the forbidden fruit in Eden meant carnal cohabitation.
As for animal nourishment, not only were all meats forbidden, but also eggs and cheese. The reason given was that these were the product of carnal intercourse. The words of Peter on the housetop, Act_10:14, were also quoted. The Cathari, however, allowed themselves fish, in view of Christ’s example in feeding the multitude and his example after his resurrection, when he gave fish to his disciples. The killing of animals, birds, and insects, except frogs and serpents, was also forbidden. The ultimate ground for this refusal to kill animal life was stated by one of the Inquisitorial manuals to be a belief in metempsychosis, the return of the souls of the dead in the bodies of animals.
The condemnation of capital punishment was based on such passages as: “Give place unto wrath, vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord,” Rom_12:19; and the judicial execution of heretics and criminals was pronounced homicide, a survival from the Old Testament and the influence of its evil god. The Cathari quoted Christ’s words, “Ye have heard how it hath been said an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” One of the charges made against the established Church was that it countenanced war and marshalled armies.
The interdiction of oaths was in obedience to the words of Christ, and was in the interest of strict integrity of speech.
The Cathari also renounced priestly vestments, altars, and crosses as idolatrous. They called the cross the mark of the beast, and declared it had no more virtue than a ribbon for binding the hair. It was the instrument of Christ’s shame and death, and therefore not to be used. Thorns or a spear would be as appropriate for religious symbols as the cross.
They also rejected, as might have been expected, the doctrines of purgatory and indulgences.
In addition to the consolamentum, the Cathari practised two rites called the melioramentum and the endura. The melioramentum, which is adduced again and again in the judicial sentences, was a veneration of the officials administering the consolamentum, and consisted of a threefold salutation. The Catholics regarded it as a travesty of the adoration of the host.
The endura, which has been called the most cruel practice the history of asceticism has to show, was a voluntary starvation unto death by those who had received the consolamentum. Sometimes these rigorous religionists waited for thirteen days for the end to come, and parents are said even to have left their sick children without food, and mothers to have withdrawn the breast from nursing infants in executing the rite. The reports of such voluntary suicide are quite numerous.
Our knowledge of the form of Church government practised by the Cathari is scant. Some of the groups of Italy and Languedoc had bishops. The bishop had as assistants a “major” and a “minor” son and a deacon, the two former taking the bishop’s place in his absence. Assemblies were held, as in 1241, on the banks of the Larneta, under the presidency of the heretical bishop of Albi, Aymeri de Collet. A more compact organization would probably have been adopted but for the measures of repression everywhere put in force against the sect.
The steadfast endurance of the Catharan dissenters before hostile tribunals and in the face of death belong to the annals of heroism and must call forth our admiration as it called forth the wonder of contemporaries like Bernard. We live, said Everwin of Steinfeld, —
“A hard and wandering life. We flee from city to city like sheep in the midst of wolves. We suffer persecution like the Apostles and the martyrs because our life to holy and austere. It is passed amidst prayers, abstinence, and labors, but everything is easy for us because we are not of this world.”
Dr. Lea, the eminent authority on the Inquisition, has said (I. 104) that no religion can show a more unbroken roll of victims who unshrinkingly and joyfully sought death in its most abhorrent form in preference to apostasy than the Cathari. Serious as some of the errors were which they held, nevertheless their effort to cultivate piety by other methods than the Church was offering calls for sympathy. Their rupture with the established organization can be to a Protestant no reason for condemnation; and their dependence upon the Scriptures and their moral tendencies must awaken within him a feeling of kinship. He cannot follow them in their rejection of baptism and the eucharist. In the repudiation of judicial oaths and war, they anticipated some of the later Christian bodies, such as the Quakers and Mennonites.
81. Peter de Bruys and Other Independent Leaders
Independent of the Cathari and yet sharing some of their views and uniting with them in protest against the abuses of the established Church, were Peter de Bruys, Henry of Lausanne, and other leaders. Peter and Henry exercised their influence in Southern France. Tanchelm and Eudo preached in Flanders and Brittany. At least three of them died in prison or otherwise suffered death by violence. Bernard of Clairvaux, Peter the Venerable, Otto of Freising, and other contemporary Catholic writers are very severe upon them and speak contemptuously of their followers as drawn from the ignorant classes.
Tanchelm, a layman, preached in the diocese of Cologne and westwards to Antwerp and Utrecht. There was at the time only a single priest in Antwerp, and he living in concubinage. Tanchelm pronounced the sacraments of no avail when performed by a priest of immoral life and is said to have turned “very many from the faith and the sacraments.” He surrounded himself with an armed retinue and went through the country carrying a sword and preceded by a flag. Success turned his head. According to his contemporary, Abaelard, he gave himself out to be the Son of God. He went through the public ceremony of marrying the Virgin Mary, with her portrait before him. The people are said by Norbert’s biographer to have drunk the water Tanchelm washed in. He was imprisoned by the archbishop of Cologne, made his escape, and was killed by a priest, 1115. His preaching provoked the settlement of twelve Premonstrants in Antwerp, and Norbert himself preached in the Netherlands, 1124.
The movement in Brittany was led by Eudo de l’Etoile, who also pretended to be the Son of God. He was one of the sect of the Apostolicals, a name given to heretical groups in France and Belgium whose members refused flesh and repudiated marriage and other sacraments. Eudo died in prison about 1148.
The movement led by Peter de Bruys and Henry of Lausanne was far more substantial. Both leaders were men of sound sense and ability. Of the personal fortunes of Peter, nothing more is known than that he was a priest, appeared as a reformer about 1105 in Southern France, and was burnt to death, 1126. Peter the Venerable has given us a tolerably satisfactory account of his teachings and their effect.
Of Henry of Lausanne, Peter’s successor, we know more. He was a Benedictine monk, endowed with an unusual gift of eloquence. His name is associated with Lausanne because, as Bernard tells us, he at one time lived there. The place of his birth is not known. Abandoning the convent, he preached in the diocese of Le Mans during the absence of its bishop, Hildebert, in Rome, and by his permission. Henry won the people, but drew upon himself the hostility of the clergy whose vices he denounced. The bishop, on his return, expelled Henry from his diocese. The evangelist then went to Lausanne and from there to Southern France, joining in the spiritual crusade opened by Peter de Bruys. He practised poverty and preached it to the laity. One of the results of his preaching was that women of loose morals repented and young men were persuaded to marry them. Cardinal Alberic, sent to stamp out the Henrician heresy, called to his aid St. Bernard, the bishop of Chartres and other prelates. According to Bernard’s biographer, miracles attended Bernard’s activity. Henry was seized and imprisoned. What his end was, is not known.
Peter the Venerable, at the outset of his treatise, laid down five errors of the Petrobrusians which he proposed to show the falseness and wickedness of. (1) The baptism of persons before they have reached the years of discretion is invalid. Believers’ baptism was based upon Mar_16:16, and children, growing up, were rebaptized. (2) Church edifices and consecrated altars are useless. (3) Crosses should be broken up and burnt. (4) The mass is nothing in the world. (5) Prayers, alms, and other good works are unavailing for the dead. These heresies the good abbot of Cluny called the five poisonous bushes, quinque vigulta venenata, which Peter de Bruys had planted. He gives half of his space to the refutation of the heresy about baptism.
Peter and Henry revived the Donatistic view that piety is essential to a legitimate priesthood. The word “Church” signifies the congregation of the faithful and consists in the unity of the assembled believers and not in the stones of the building. God may be worshipped as acceptably in the marketplace or a stable as in a consecrated edifice. They preached on the streets and in the open places. As for the cross, as well might a halter or a sword be adored. Peter is said to have cooked meat in the fire made by the crosses he piled up and burnt at St. Gilles, near the mouth of the Rhone. Song, they said, was fit for the tavern, but not for the worship of God. God is to be worshipped with the affections of the heart and cannot be moved by vocal notes or wood by musical modulations.
The doctrine of transubstantiation was distinctly renounced, and perhaps the Lord’s Supper, on the ground that Christ gave up his body on the night of the betrayal once for all. Peter not only called upon the priests to marry, but according to Peter the Venerable, he forced unwilling monks to take wives.
St. Bernard and Peter the Venerable, opposing the heretical view about infant baptism, laid stress upon Christ’s invitation to little children and his desire to have them with him in heaven. Peter argued that for nearly five hundred years Europe had had no Christian not baptized in infancy, and hence according to the sectaries had no Christians at all. If it had no Christians, then it had no Church; if no Church, then no Christ. And if this were the case, then all our fathers perished; for, being baptized in infancy, they were not baptized at all. Peter and Henry laid chief stress upon the four Gospels, but it does not appear that they set aside any part of the Scriptures.
The synod of Toulouse, 1119, in condemning as heretics those who rejected the Lord’s Supper, infant baptism, and priestly ordination, condemned the Petrobrusians, though Peter de Bruys is not mentioned by name. Those who hung upon the preaching of Peter de Bruys and Henry of Lausanne were soon lost among the Cathari and other sects. Bernard’s description of the religious conditions in Southern France is no doubt rhetorical, but shows the widespread disaffection which prevailed at that time against the Church. He says that churches were without worshippers, the people without priests, and Christians without Christ. The sanctuary of the Lord was no longer regarded as sacred or the sacraments as holy. The festival days were deprived of their solemnities. The children were debarred from life by the denial of baptism, and souls were hurried to the last tribunal, unreconciled by penance and unfortified by the communion.
82. The Amaurians and Other Isolated Sects
Occupying a distinct place of their own were the pantheistic coteries of dissenters, the Amaurians and Ortlibenses, and perhaps other groups, like the Passagians and Speronistae, of which we know scarcely more than the names.
The Amaurians, or Amauricians, derived their origin from the speculations of the Paris professor, Amaury of Bena, a town in the diocese of Chartres. Innocent III. cited him to appear at Rome and condemned his views. On his return to Paris, the university obliged him to publicly confess his errors. He died about 1204. His followers were condemned by a synod, held in Paris, 1209.
From the detailed account given by Caesar of Heisterbach, we learn that a number of Amaury’s followers were seized and examined by the bishops. Eight priests and William the Goldsmith, called also one of the seven apostles, were burnt. Four other priests were condemned to lifelong imprisonment. Amaury’s bones were exhumed and thrown into a field.
The Amaurians seem to have relied for their pantheistic views upon John Scotus Erigena, whose work, De divisione naturae, was also condemned at the synod of Paris, 1209. Amaury’s system was also condemned by the Fourth Lateran, which represented him as holding that God was all things, deus erat omnia. To this he added the two doctrines that every Christian must believe that he is a member of Christ’s body, this faith being as necessary to salvation as the faith in Christ’s birth and death; and that to him who abides in love, sin is not reckoned. God becomes incarnate in believers who are members of Christ’s body, as He became incarnate in the body of Jesus. God was as much in the body of Ovid as He was in the body of Augustine. Christ is no more in the consecrated bread than in any other bread or object. The Amaurians denied the resurrection of the body, and said that heaven and hell are states of the soul. The sinner carries hell in himself, even as a mouth holds a bad tooth. The believer can no more sin than can the Holy Spirit who dwells in him. The pope is antichrist and the Roman Church, Babylon. The relics of the martyrs are nothing but dust.
From these statements the conclusion is to be drawn that Amaury and his followers insisted upon the liberty of the Spirit working independently of outer rites and dwelling in the heart. The Fourth Lateran, in its second canon, declared that the father of lies had so blinded Amaury’s mind that his doctrine was the raving of an insane man rather than a heresy. Amaury absorbed Joachism, for he speaks of three ages, the ages of the Father and the Son, and the age of the Spirit, which was the last age, had begun in Amaury’s time, and would continue to the consummation of all things. Amaury’s followers seem to have become merged with the Brethren of the Free Spirit.
The synod of Paris, which condemned the Amaurians, also condemned David of Dinant, and ordered one of his works, the Quarternuli, burnt. His writings were also forbidden by the statutes of the University of Paris of 1215, which forbade the reading of some of the works of Aristotle, Amaury the heretic, and Maurice of Spain. David seems to have been a professor at Paris and died after 1215. He shared the pantheism of Amaury, was quoted by Albertus Magnus, and his speculations have been compared with the system of Spinoza.
Belonging to the same class were the followers of Ortlieb of Strassburg, called Ortlibenses, Ortilibarii, Oriliwenses, Ortoleni, and by other similar names. Some of their number were probably among the many heretics burnt in Strassburg, 1212. They were charged with holding that the world is eternal and God is immanent in all things. He did not have a Son, till Jesus was born of Joseph and Mary. They denied the resurrection of the body. The death and resurrection of Christ had only a symbolic import. The body of Christ is no more in the eucharistic bread than in any other bread. The established Church was the courtesan of the Apocalypse. The four Gospels are the chief parts of the Scriptures. They allowed marriage but condemned carnal cohabitation. The Ortlibenses were, like the Amaurians, spiritualists, and said that a man must follow the guidance of the Spirit who dwells in him. They were a part of that extensive group designated by the general name of the Brethren of the Free Spirit, who fill so large a place as late as the fifteenth century.
The Passagii, or Passageni, a sect whose name is first mentioned in the acts of the synod of Verona, seem to have been unique in that they required the literal observance of the Mosaic law, including the Jewish Sabbath and circumcision. It is possible they are identical with the Circumcisi spoken of in the code of Frederick II. As late as 1267 and 1274 papal bulls call for the punishment of heretics who had gone back to Jewish rites, and the Passagii may be referred to.
The Luciferans were so called on account of the prominence they gave Lucifer as the prince of the lost angels and the maker of the material world and the body, and not because they worshipped Lucifer. It is doubtful whether they were a distinct sect. The name was applied without precision to Cathari and others who held that Lucifer was unjustly cast out of heaven. Heretics of this name were burnt in Passau and Saltzburg, 1312-1315 and 1338, and as late as 1395 in other parts of Austria.
As for the Warini, Speronistae, and Josephini, who are also mentioned in the Frederican code, we know nothing more than the names.
83. The Beguines and Beghards
While the Cathari and Waldenses were engaging the attention of the Church authorities in Southern Europe, communities, called Beguines and Beghards, were being formed along the lower Rhine and in the territories adjacent to it. They were lay associations intended at first to foster a warmer type of piety than they found in the Church. Their aims were closely allied to the aims of the Tertiaries of St. Francis, and at a later period they were merged with them. Long before the close of the thirteenth century, some of these communities developed immoral practices and heretical tenets, which called forth the condemnation of pope and synods.
The Beguines, who were chiefly women, seem to have derived their origin and their name from Lambert le Bègue, a priest of Liége, who died about 1177. In a document of that year he is said to have preached to women and girls the value of chastity by word and example. It was a time when priestly concubinage in Holland was general. Like Peter Valdez, Lambert gave up his goods, sought to make known the Scriptures to the people, and founded in Liége the hospital of St. Christopher and a house for women which in derision was called the beguinage. The women renounced their goods and lived a semi-conventual life, but took no vows and followed none of the approved monastic Rules. Houses were established in Flanders, France, and especially in Germany, as for example at Valenciennes, 1212, Douai, 1219, Antwerp, 1230, Ghent, 1233, Frankfurt, 1242. In 1264 St. Louis built a beguinage in Paris which he remembered in his will. The beguinage of Ghent was a small town in itself, with walls, infirmary, church, cemetery, and conventual dwellings. According to Matthew Paris, writing of the year 1250, their number in Germany, especially in the vicinity of Cologne, was countless. Their houses were often named after their founders, as the Schelenhaus in Cologne, after Herman Schele, the Burgenhaus in Strassburg (1292), after a widow by the name of Burga. Other secular names were given, such as the Golden Frog, zum goldenen Frosch, the Wolf, zum Wolf, the Eagle, zum Adler.
The communities supported themselves by spinning, weaving, caring for the sick, and other occupations. Some of the houses forbade begging. Some of them, as those in Cologne, were afterwards turned into hospitals. As a rule they practised mendicancy and went about in the streets crying Brod durch Gott, “Bread for the sake of God.” They wore a distinctive dress.
The earliest community of Beghards known to us is the community of Löwen, 1220. The Beghards practised mendicancy and they spread as far as Poland and Switzerland. It was not long till they were charged with loose tendencies, a disregard of the hierarchy, and heresy. Neither the Beguines as a body nor the Beghards ever received distinct papal sanction.
Both associations were the objects of synodal enactment as early as the middle of the thirteenth century. The synod of Mainz, 1259, warned the Beghards against going through the streets, crying, “Bread for God’s sake,” and admonished them to put aside offensive peculiarities and not to mingle with Beguines. Another synod of Mainz, 1261, referred to scandals among the Beguines. A synod of Cologne, a year later, condemned their unchurchly independence and bade them confess to priests on pain of excommunication. In 1310 synods, held at Treves and Mainz, forbade clerics entering beguinages on any pretext whatever and forbade Beghards explaining the Bible to the ignorant.
The communities became more and more the objects of suspicion, and a sharp blow was struck at them in 1312 by Clement V. and the council of Vienne. The council forbade their communal mode of life, and accused them of heresies. They were accused of refusing to adore the host and of holding that it is possible to reach a state of perfection in this world. A person reaching this state is under no obligation to fast and pray, but may yield himself without sin to all the appetites of the body.
Clement’s bull erred by its failure to discriminate between heretical and orthodox communities, a defect which was corrected by John XXII. This pope expressly gave protection to the orthodox communities. In the fourteenth century, the number of houses increased very rapidly in Germany and by 1400 there was scarcely a German town which had not its beguinage. Up to that date, fifty-seven had been organized in Frankfurt, and in the middle of the fifteenth century there were one hundred and six such houses in Cologne and sixty in Strassburg. In 1368 Erfurt had four hundred Beguines and Beghards.
In the earlier part of the fourteenth century, the Beguines appeared in Southern France, where the Inquisition associated them closely with the Tertiaries of St. Francis and accused them of adopting the views of John Peter Olivi.
In the latter part of the fourteenth century, the Inquisition broke up many of the houses in Germany, their effects being equally divided between itself, the poor, and the municipality. Gregory XI., 1377, recognized that many of the Beghards were leading good lives. Boniface IX., 1394, made a sharp distinction between the communities and classed the heterodox Beghards with Lollards and Swestriones. But to other “Beghards and Beguines, who practised voluntary poverty” and devoted themselves to the good of the people, he gave papal recognition. To avoid persecution, many of them took refuge with the Franciscans and enrolled themselves as Tertiaries of the Franciscan order. With the Reformation the Beghards and Beguines for the most part disappear as separate communities.
These sectaries were in part forerunners and contemporaries of other communities with a pious and benevolent design developed in Holland in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and with which German mysticism is closely associated.