CHAPTER III.

THE CATHARI.

The movements described above were the natural outcome of

antisacerdotalism seeking to renew the simplicity of the Apostolic

Church. It is a singular feature of the religious sentiment of the time

that the most formidable development of hostility to Rome was based on a

faith that can scarce be classed as Christian, and that this hybrid

doctrine spread so rapidly and resisted so stubbornly the sternest

efforts at suppression that at one time it may fairly be said to have

threatened the permanent existence of Christianity itself. The

explanation of this may perhaps be found in the fascination which the

dualistic theory--the antagonism of co-equal good and evil

principles--offers to those who regard the existence of evil as

incompatible with the supremacy of an all-wise and beneficent God. When

to Dualism is added the doctrine of transmigration as a means of reward

and retribution, the sufferings of man seem to be fully accounted for;

and in a period when those sufferings were so universal and so hopeless

as in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, it is possible to understand

that many might be predisposed to adopt so ready an explanation. Yet

this will not account for the fact that the Manichæism of the Cathari,

Patarins, or Albigenses, was not a mere speculative dogma of the

schools, but a faith which aroused fanaticism so enthusiastic that its

devotees shrank from no sacrifices in its propagation and mounted the

blazing pyre with steadfast joy. A profound conviction of the emptiness

of sacerdotal Christianity, of its failure and approaching extinction,

and of the speedy triumph of their own faith may partially explain the

unselfish fervor which it excited among the poor and illiterate.

Of all the heresies with which the early Church had to contend, none had

excited such mingled fear and loathing as Manichæism. Manes had so

skilfully compounded Mazdean Dualism with Christianity and with Gnostic

and Buddhist elements, that his doctrine found favor with high and low,

with the subtle intellects of the schools and with the toiling masses.

Instinctively recognizing it as the most dangerous of rivals, the

Church, as soon as it could command the resources of the State,

persecuted it relentlessly. Among the numerous edicts of both Pagan and

Christian emperors, repressing freedom of thought, those directed

against the Manichæans were the sharpest and most cruel. Persecution

attained its end, after prolonged struggle, in suppressing all outward

manifestations of Manichæism within the confines of the imperial power,

though it long afterwards maintained a secret existence, even in the

West. In the East it withdrew ostensibly to the boundaries of the

empire, still keeping up hidden relations with its sectaries scattered

throughout the provinces, and even in Constantinople itself. It

abandoned its reverence for Manes as the paraclete and transferred its

allegiance to two others of its leaders, Paul and John of Samosata, from

the first of whom it acquired the name of Paulicianism. Under the

Emperor Constans, in 653, a certain Constantine perfected its doctrine,

and it maintained itself under repeated and cruel persecutions, which it

endured with the unflinching willingness of martyrdom and persistent

missionary zeal that we shall see characterize its European descendants.

Sometimes driven across the border to the Saracens and then driven back,

the Paulicians at times maintained an independent existence among the

mountains of Armenia and carried on a predatory warfare with the empire.

Leo the Isaurian, Michael Curopalates, Leo the Armenian, and the Regent

Empress Theodora in vain sought their extermination in the eighth and

ninth centuries, until at length, in the latter half of the tenth

century, John Zimiskes tried the experiment of toleration, and

transplanted a large number of them to Thrace, where they multiplied

greatly, showing equal vigor in industry and in war. In 1115 we hear of

Alexis Comnenus spending a summer at Philippopolis and amusing himself

in disputation with them, resulting in the conversion of many of the

heretics.[68] It was almost immediately after their transfer to Europe

by Zimiskes that we meet with traces of them in the West, showing that

the activity of their propagandism was unabated.

In all essentials the doctrine of the Paulicians was identical with that

of the Albigenses. The simple Dualism of Mazdeism, which regards the

universe as the mingled creations of Hormazd and Ahriman, each seeking

to neutralize the labors of the other, and carrying on interminable

warfare in every detail of life and nature, explains the existence of

evil in a manner to enlist man to contribute his assistance to Hormazd

in the eternal conflict, by good thoughts, good words, and good deeds.

Enticed by Gnostic speculation, Manes modified this by identifying

spirit with the good and matter with the evil principle--perhaps a more

refined and philosophical conception, but one which led directly to

pessimistic consequences and to excesses of asceticism, since the soul

of man could only fulfil its duty by trampling on the flesh. Thus in the

Paulician faith we find two co-equal principles, God and Satan, of whom

the former created the invisible, spiritual, and eternal universe, the

latter the material and temporal, which he governs. Satan is the Jehovah

of the Old Testament; the prophets and patriarchs are robbers, and,

consequently, all Scripture anterior to the Gospels is to be rejected.

The New Testament, however, is Holy Writ, but Christ was not a man, but

a phantasm--the Son of God who appeared to be born of the Virgin Mary

and came from Heaven to overthrow the worship of Satan. Transmigration

provides for the future reward or punishment of deeds done in life. The

sacraments are rejected, and the priests and elders of the Church are

only teachers without authority over the faithful. Such are the outlines

of Paulicianism as they have reached us, and their identity with the

belief of the Cathari is too marked for us to accept the theory of

Schmidt, which assigns to the latter an origin among the dreamers of the

Bulgarian convents. A further irrefragable evidence of the derivation of

Catharism from Manichæism is furnished by the sacred thread and garment

which were worn by all the Perfect among the Cathari. This custom is too

peculiar to have had an independent origin, and is manifestly the

Mazdean _kosti_ and _saddarah_, the sacred thread and shirt, the wearing

of which was essential to all believers, and the use of which by both

Zends and Brahmans shows that its origin is to be traced to the

prehistoric period anterior to the separation of those branches of the

Aryan family. Among the Cathari the wearer of the thread and vestment

was what was known among the inquisitors as the "hæreticus indutus" or

"vestitus," initiated into all the mysteries of the heresy.[69]

Catharism thus was a thoroughly antisacerdotal form of belief. It cast

aside all the machinery of the Church. The Roman Church indeed was the

synagogue of Satan, in which salvation was impossible. Consequently the

sacraments, the sacrifices of the altar, the suffrages and interposition

of the Virgin and saints, purgatory, relics, images, crosses, holy

water, indulgences, and the other devices by which the priest procured

salvation for the faithful were rejected, as well as the tithes and

oblations which rendered the procuring of salvation so profitable. Yet

the Catharan Church, as the Church of Christ, inherited the power to

bind and to loose bestowed by Christ on his disciples; the

Consolamentum, or Baptism of the Spirit, wiped out all sin, but no

prayers were of use for the sinner who persisted in wrong-doing.

Curiously enough, though Catharism translated the Scripture, it retained

the Latin language in its prayers, which were thus unintelligible to

most of the disciples, and it had its consecrated class who conducted

its simple services. Some regular form of organization, indeed, was

necessary for the government of its rapidly increasing communities and

for the missionary work which was so zealously carried forward. Thus

there came to be four orders selected from among the "Perfected," who

were distinguished from the mass of believers, or simple

"Christians"--the Bishop, the Filius Major, the Filius Minor, and the

Deacon. Each of the three higher grades had a deacon as an assistant, or

to replace him; for the functions of all were the same, though the Filii

were mostly employed in visiting the members of the church. The Filius

Major was elected by the congregation and promotions were made to the

episcopate as vacancies occurred. Ordination was conferred by the

imposition of hands or Consolamentum, which was the equivalent of

baptism, administered to all who were admitted to the Church. The belief

that sacraments were vitiated in sinful hands gave rise to considerable

anxiety, and to guard against it the Consolamentum was generally

repeated a second and a third time. It was generally, though not

universally, held that the lower in grade could not consecrate the

higher, and therefore in many cities there were habitually two bishops,

so that in the case of death consecration should not be sought at the

hands of a filius major.[70]

The Catharan ritual was severe in its simplicity. The Catholic Eucharist

was replaced by the benediction of bread, which was performed daily at

table. He who was senior by profession or position took the bread and

wine, while all stood up and recited the Lord's Prayer. The senior then

saying, "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with us," broke the

bread, and distributed it to all present. This blessed bread was

regarded with special reverence by the great mass of the Cathari, who

were, as a rule, merely "crezentz," "credentes," or believers, and not

fully received or "perfected" in the Church. These would sometimes

procure a piece of this bread and keep it for years, occasionally taking

a morsel. Every act of eating or drinking was preceded by prayer; when a

"perfected" minister was at the table, the first drink and every new

dish that was tasted was accompanied by the guests with "Benedicite," to

which he responded "_Diaus vos benesiga_." There was a monthly ceremony

of confession, which, however, was general in its character and was

performed by the assembled faithful. The great ceremony was the

"Cossolament," "Consolamentum," or Baptism of the Holy Ghost, which

reunited the soul to the Holy Spirit, and which, like the Christian

baptism, worked absolution of all sin. It consisted in the imposition of

hands, it required two ministrants, and could be performed by any one of

the Perfected not in mortal sin--even by a woman. It was inefficacious,

however, when one of these was involved in sin. This was the process of

"heretication," as the inquisitors termed the admission into the Church,

and except in the case of those who proposed to become ministers was, as

a rule, postponed until the death-bed, probably for fear of persecution;

but the "credens" frequently entered into an agreement, known as "la

covenansa," binding himself to undergo it at the last moment, and this

engagement authorized its performance even though he had lost the power

of speech and was unable to make the responses. In form it was

exceedingly simple, though it was generally preceded by preparation,

including a prolonged fast. The ministrant addressed the postulant,

"Brother, dost thou wish to give thyself to our faith?" The neophyte,

after several genuflexions and blessings, said, "Ask God for this

sinner, that he may lead me to a good end and make me a good Christian,"

to which the ministrant rejoined, "Let God be asked to make thee a good

Christian and to bring thee to a good end. Dost thou give thyself to God

and to the gospel?" and after an affirmative response, "Dost thou

promise that in future thou wilt eat no meat, nor eggs, nor cheese, nor

any victual except from water and wood; that thou wilt not lie or swear

or do any lust with thy body, or go alone when thou canst have a comrade

or abandon the faith for fear of water or fire or any other form of

death?" These promises being duly made, the bystanders knelt, while the

minister placed on the head of the postulant the Gospel of St. John and

recited the text: "In the beginning was the Word," etc., and invested

him with the sacred thread. Then the kiss of peace went round, the women

receiving it by a touch of the elbow. The ceremony was held to symbolize

the abandonment of the Evil Spirit, and the return of the soul to God,

with the resolve to lead henceforth a pure and sinless life. With the

married, the assent of the spouse was of course a condition precedent.

When this heretication occurred on the death-bed, it was commonly

followed by the "Endura" or "privation." The ministrant asked the

neophyte whether he desired to be a confessor or a martyr; if the

latter, a pillow or a towel (known among the German Cathari as

Untertuch) was placed over his mouth while certain prayers were recited;

if he chose the former he remained without food or drink, except a

little water, for three days; and in either case, if he survived, he

became one of the Perfected. This Endura was also sometimes used as a

mode of suicide, which was frequent in the sect. Torture at the end of

life relieved them of torment in the next world, and suicide by

voluntary starvation, by swallowing pounded glass or poisonous potions,

or opening the veins in a bath, was not uncommon--and, failing this, it

was a kind office for the next of kin to extinguish life when death was

near. The ceremony known to the sectaries as "Melioramentum," and

described by the inquisitors as "veneration," was important as affording

to them a proof of heresy. When a "credens" approached or took leave of

a minister of the sect, he bent the knee thrice, saying "benedicite,"

to which the minister replied, "_Diaus vos benesiga_." It was a mark of

respect to the Holy Ghost assumed to dwell in the minister, and in the

records of trials we find it eagerly inquired into, as it served to

convict those who performed it.[71]

These customs, and the precepts embodied in the formula of heretication,

illustrate the strong ascetic tendency of the faith. This was the

inevitable consequence of its peculiar form of Dualism. As all matter

was the handiwork of Satan, it was in its nature evil; the spirit was

engaged in a perpetual conflict with it, and the Catharan's earnest

prayer to God was not to spare the flesh sprung from corruption, but to

have mercy on the imprisoned spirit--"_no aias merce de la carn nada de

corruptio, mais aias merce de l esperit pausat en carcer_."

Consequently, whatever tended to the reproduction of animal life was to

be shunned. To mortify the flesh the Catharan fasted on bread and water

three days in each week, except when travelling, and in addition there

were in the year three fasts of forty days each. Marriage was also

forbidden except among a few, who permitted it between virgins provided

they separated as soon as a child was born, and the mitigated Dualists

who confined the prohibition to the Perfect and permitted marriage to

the believers. Among the rigid, carnal matrimony was replaced by the

spiritual union between the soul and God effected by the rite of

Consolamentum. Sexual passion, in fact, was the original sin of Adam and

Eve, the forbidden fruit whereby Satan has continued his empire over

man. In a confession before the Inquisition of Toulouse in 1310, it is

said of one heretic teacher that he would not touch a woman for the

whole world; in another case a woman relates of her father that after he

was hereticated he told her she must never touch him again, and she

obeyed the command even when he was on the death-bed. So far was this

carried that the use of meat, of eggs, of milk, of everything, in short,

which was the result of animal propagation, was inhibited, except fish,

which by a strange inconsistency seems to have been regarded as having

some different origin. The condemnation of marriage and the rejection of

meat constituted, with the prohibition of oaths, the chief external

characteristics of Catharism, by which the sectaries were marked and

known. In 1229 two leading Tuscan Cathari, Pietro and Andrea, performed

public abjuration before Gregory IX. in Perugia, and two days later,

June 26th, they gave solemn assurance of the sincerity of their

conversion by eating flesh in the presence of a number of prelates,

which was duly recorded in an instrument drawn up for the purpose.[72]

It was inevitable that, in process of time, diversities should spring up

in a sect so widely scattered, and accordingly we find among the Italian

Cathari two minor divisions known as Concorrezenses (from Concorrezo,

near Monza, in Lombardy) and Bajolenses (from Bagnolo in Piedmont), who

held a modified form of Dualism in which Satan was inferior to God, by

whose permission he created and ruled the world, and formed man. The

Concorrezenses taught that Satan infused in Adam an angel who had sinned

a little, and they revived the old Traducian heresy in maintaining that

all human souls are derived from that spirit. The Bajolenses differed

from this in saying that all human souls were created by God before the

world was formed, and that even then they had sinned. These speculations

were expanded into a myth relating that Satan was the steward of heaven,

charged with the duty of collecting the daily amount of praise and

psalmody due by the angels to God. Desiring to become like the Highest,

he abstracted and retained for himself a portion of the praise, when

God, detecting the fraud, replaced him by Michael and ejected him and

his accomplices. Satan thereupon uncovered the earth from water and

created Adam and Eve, but labored in vain for thirty years to infuse

souls into them, until he procured from heaven two angels who favored

him, and who subsequently passed through the bodies of Enoch, Noah,

Abraham, and all the patriarchs and prophets, wandering and vainly

seeking salvation until, as Simeon and Anna, at the advent of Christ

(Luke iii. 25-38), they accomplished their redemption and were permitted

to return to heaven. Human souls are similarly all fallen spirits

passing through probation, and this was very generally the belief of all

the sects of Cathari, leading to a theory of transmigration very similar

to that of Buddhism, though modified by the belief that Christ's earthly

mission was the redemption of these fallen spirits. Until the perfected

soul could return to its Creator, as in the _moksha_ or absorption in

Brahma of the Hindu, it was forced to undergo repeated existence. As it

could be still further punished for evil deeds by transmission into the

lower animal forms, there naturally followed the Buddhistic and

Brahmanical prohibition of slaying any created thing, except reptiles

and fish. The Cathari who were hanged at Goslar in 1052 refused to kill

a pullet, even with the gallows before their eyes, and in the thirteenth

century this test was regarded as a ready means of identifying them.[73]

There were a few philosophic spirits in the sect, moreover, who emerged

from these vain speculations and curiously anticipated the theories of

modern Rationalism. With these Nature took the place of Satan; God,

after forming the universe, abandoned its conduct to Nature, which has

the power of creating all things and regulating them. Even the

production of individual species is not the act of divine Providence,

but is a process of nature--in fact, of evolution, in modern parlance.

These Naturalists, as they called themselves, denied the existence of

miracles; they explained, by an exegesis not much more strained than

that of orthodoxy, all those in the Gospels; and they held that it was

useless to pray to God for good weather, for Nature alone controlled the

elements. They wrote much, and a Catholic antagonist admits the

attraction of their writings, especially the work known as

"Perpendiculum Scientiarum," or the "Plummet of Science," which he says

was well adapted to make a deep impression on the reader through its

array of philosophy and happily-chosen texts of Scripture.[74]

There was nothing in such a faith to attract the sensual and

carnal-minded. In fact, it was far more repellant than attractive, and

nothing but the discontent excited by the pervading corruption and

oppression of the Church can explain its rapid diffusion and the deep

hold which it obtained upon the veneration of its converts. Although the

asceticism which it inculcated was beyond the reach of average humanity,

its ethical teachings were admirable. As a rule they were reasonably

obeyed, and the orthodox admitted with regret and shame the contrast

between the heretics and the faithful. It is true that the exaggerated

condemnation of marriage expressed in the formula, that relations with a

wife were as sinful as incest with mother or sister, was naturally

enough perverted into the statement that such incest was permissible and

was practised. Wild stories, moreover, were told of the nightly orgies

in which the lights were extinguished and promiscuous intercourse took

place; and the stubbornness of heresy was explained by telling how, when

a child was born of these foul excesses, it was tossed from hand to hand

through a fire until it expired; and that from its body was made an

infernal eucharist of such power that whoever partook of it was

thereafter incapable of abandoning the sect. There is ample store of

such tales, but however useful they might be in exciting a wholesome

popular detestation of heresy, the candid and intelligent inquisitors

who had the best means of knowing the truth admit that they have no

foundation in fact; and in the many hundreds of examinations and

sentences which I have read there is no allusion to anything of the

kind, except in some proceedings of Frà Antonio Secco among the Alpine

valleys in 1387. As a rule, the inquisitors wasted no time in searching

for what they knew was non-existent. As St. Bernard says, "If you

interrogate them, nothing can be more Christian; as to their

conversation, nothing can be less reprehensible, and what they speak

they prove by deeds. As for the morals of the heretic, he cheats no one,

he oppresses no one, he strikes no one; his cheeks are pale with

fasting, he eats not the bread of idleness, his hands labor for his

livelihood." This last assertion is especially true, for they were

mostly simple folk, industrious peasants and mechanics, who felt the

evils around them and welcomed any change. The theologians who combated

them ridiculed them as ignorant churls, and in France they were

popularly known by the name of Texerant (Tisserands), on account of the

prevalence of the heresy among the weavers, whose monotonous occupation

doubtless gave ample opportunity for thought. Rude and ignorant they

might be for the most part, but they had skilled theologians for

teachers, and an extensive popular literature which has utterly

perished, saving a Catharan version of the New Testament in Romance and

a book of ritual. Their familiarity with Scripture is vouched for by

the warning of Lucas, Bishop of Tuy, that the Christian should dread

their conversation as he would a tempest, unless he is deeply skilled in

the law of God, so that he can overcome them in argument. Their strict

morality was never corrupted, and a hundred years after St. Bernard the

same testimony is rendered to the virtues of those who were persecuted

in Florence in the middle of the thirteenth century. In fact the formula

of confession used in their assemblies shows how strict a guard was

maintained over every idle thought and careless word.[75]

Their proselyting zeal was especially dreaded. No labor was too severe,

no risks too great, to deter them from spreading the faith which they

deemed essential to salvation. Missionaries wandered over Europe through

strange lands to carry the glad tidings to benighted populations,

regardless of hardship, and undeterred by the fate of their brethren,

whom they saw expiate at the stake the hardihood of their revolt.

Externally they professed to be Catholics, and were exemplary in the

performance of their religious duties till they had won the confidence

of their new neighbors, and could venture on the attempt of secret

conversion whenever they saw opportunity. They scattered by the wayside

writings in which the poison of their doctrine was skilfully conveyed

without being obtrusive, and sometimes they had no scruple in calling to

their aid the superstitions of orthodoxy, as when such writings would

promise indulgences to those who would read them carefully and circulate

them among their neighbors, or when they purported to come from Jesus

Christ and be conveyed by angels. It does not say much for the

intelligence of the clergy when we are told that many priests were

corrupted by such papers, picked up by shepherds and carried to them to

be deciphered. Even more reprehensible was the device of the Cathari of

Moncoul in France, who made an image of the Virgin, deformed and ugly

and one-eyed, saying that Christ, to show his humility, had selected

such a woman for a mother. Then they proceeded to work miracles with it,

feigning to be sick and to be cured by it, until it acquired such

reputation that many similar ones were made and placed in churches or

oratories, until the heretics divulged the secret, to the great

confusion of the faithful. The same device was carried out with a

crucifix having no upper arm, the feet of Christ crossed, and only three

nails--an unconventional form which was, imitated and caused great

scandal when the mockery was discovered. Even bolder frauds were

attempted in Leon, and not without success, as we shall see

hereafter.[76]

The zeal for the faith, which prompted these eccentric missionary

efforts, manifested itself in a resolute adherence to the precepts

enjoined on the neophyte when admitted into the circle of the Perfects.

As in the case of the Waldenses, while the Inquisition complained

bitterly of the difficulty of obtaining an avowal from the simple

"credens," whose rustic astuteness eluded the practised skill of the

interrogator, it was the general testimony that the perfected heretic

refused to lie, or to take an oath; and one member of the Holy Office

warns his brethren not to begin by asking "Are you truly a Catharan?"

for the answer will simply be "Yes," and then nothing more can be

extracted; but if the Perfect is exhorted by the God in whom he believes

to tell all about his life, he will faithfully detail it without

falsehood. When we consider that this frankness led inevitably to the

torture of death by burning, it is curious to observe that the

inquisitor seems utterly unconscious of the emphatic testimony which he

renders to the super-human conscientiousness of his victims.[77]

It is not easy for us to realize what there was in the faith of the

Cathari to inspire men with the enthusiastic zeal of martyrdom, but no

religion can show a more unbroken roll of those who unshrinkingly and

joyfully sought death in its most abhorrent form in preference to

apostasy. If the blood of the martyrs were really the seed of the

Church, Manichæism would now be the dominant religion of Europe. It may

be partially explained by the belief that a painful death for the faith

insured the return of the soul to God; but human weakness does not often

permit such habitual triumph of the spirit over the flesh as that which

rendered the Cathari a proverb in their thirst for martyrdom. The

hostile testimony to this effect is virtually unanimous. In the earliest

persecution on record, at Orleans, about 1017, out of fifteen, thirteen

remained steadfast in the face of the fire kindled for their

destruction; they refused to recant though pardon was offered, and their

constancy was the wonderment of the spectators. When, about 1040, the

heretics of Monforte were discovered, and Eriberto, Archbishop of Milan,

sent for Gherardo, their leader, he came at once and voluntarily set

forth his belief, rejoicing in the opportunity of sealing his faith with

torment. Those who were burned at Cologne in 1163 produced a profound

impression by the cheerful alacrity with which they endured their

fearful punishment; and while they were in their agony it is related

that their leader, Arnold, half roasted to death, placed a liberated arm

on the heads of his disciples, calmly saying, "Be ye constant in your

faith, for this day shall ye be with Lawrence!" Among this group of

heretics was a beautiful girl whose modesty moved the compassion of even

the brutal executioners. She was withdrawn from the flames and promises

were made to find her a husband or place her in a convent. Seeming to

assent, she remained quiet till the rest were dead, and then asked her

guards to show her the seducer of souls. In pointing out the body of

Arnold they loosened their hold, when she suddenly broke from them, and,

covering her face with her dress, threw herself upon the remains of her

teacher, and, burning to death, descended with him into hell for

eternity. Those who about the same time were detected at Oxford,

rejected all offers of mercy, with the words of Christ, "Blessed are

they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the

kingdom of heaven;" and when they were led forth after a sentence which

virtually consigned them to a shameful and lingering death, they went

rejoicing to the punishment, their leader Gerhard preceding them,

singing "Blessed are ye when men shall revile you." In the Albigensian

Crusade, at the capture of the Castle of Minerve, the Crusaders piously

offered their prisoners the alternative of recantation or the stake, and

a hundred and eighty preferred the stake, when, as the monkish

chronicler quietly remarks, "no doubt all these martyrs of the devil

passed from temporal to eternal flames." An experienced inquisitor of

the fourteenth century tells us that the Cathari usually were either

truly converted by the efforts of the Holy Office or else were ready to

die for their faith; while the Waldenses were apt to feign conversion in

order to escape. This obdurate zeal, we are assured by the orthodox

writers, had in it nothing of the constancy of Christian martyrdom, but

was simply hardness of heart inspired by Satan; and Frederic II.

enumerated among their evil traits the obstinacy which led the survivors

to be in no way dismayed or deterred by the ruthless example made of

those who were punished.[78]

It was, perhaps, natural that these Manichæans should be accused of

worshipping the devil. To men bred in the current orthodox practices of

purchasing by prayer, or money, or other good works whatever blessings

they desired, and expecting nothing without such payment, it seemed

inevitable that the Manichæan, regarding all matter to be the work of

Satan, should invoke him for worldly prosperity. The husbandman, for

instance, could not pray to God for a plentiful harvest, but must do so

to Satan, who was the creator of corn. It is true that there was a sect,

known as Luciferani, who were said to worship Satan, regarding him as

the brother of God, unjustly banished from heaven, and the dispenser of

worldly good, but these, as we shall see hereafter, were a branch of the

Brethren of the Free Spirit, probably descended from the Ortlibenses,

and there is absolutely no evidence that the Cathari ever wavered in

their trust in Christ or diverted their aspirations from the hope of

reunion with God.[79]

Such was the faith whose rapid spread throughout the south of Europe

filled the Church with well-grounded dismay; and, however much we may

deprecate the means used for its suppression and commiserate those who

suffered for conscience' sake, we cannot but admit that the cause of

orthodoxy was in this case the cause of progress and civilization. Had

Catharism become dominant, or even had it been allowed to exist on equal

terms, its influence could not have failed to prove disastrous. Its

asceticism with regard to commerce between the sexes, if strictly

enforced, could only have led to the extinction of the race, and as this

involves a contradiction of nature, it would have probably resulted in

lawless concubinage and the destruction of the institution of the

family, rather than in the disappearance of the human race and the

return of exiled souls to their Creator, which was the _summum bonum_ of

the true Catharan. Its condemnation of the visible universe and of

matter in general as the work of Satan rendered sinful all striving

after material improvement, and the conscientious belief in such a creed

could only lead man back, in time, to his original condition of

savagism. It was not only a revolt against the Church, but a

renunciation of man's domination over nature. As such it was doomed from

the start, and our only wonder must be that it maintained itself so long

and so stubbornly even against a Church which had earned so much of

popular detestation. Yet though the exaltation caused by persecution

might keep it alive among the enthusiastic and the discontented, had it

obtained the upper hand and maintained its purity it must surely have

perished through its fundamental errors. Had it become a dominant faith,

moreover, it would have bred a sacerdotal class as privileged as the

Catholic priesthood, for the "veneration" offered to the consecrated

ministers as the tabernacles of the Holy Ghost shows us what vantage

ground they would have had when persecution had given place to power,

and carnal human nature had asserted itself in the ambitious men who

would have sought its high places.

The soil was probably prepared for its reception by remains of the older

Manichæism which, with strange pertinacity, long maintained itself in

secret after its public manifestation had been completely suppressed.

Muratori has printed a Latin anathema of its doctrines, probably dating

about the year 800, which shows that even so late as the ninth century

it was still an object of persecution. It was about 970 that John

Zimiski transplanted the Paulicians to Thrace, whence they spread with

great rapidity through the Balkan peninsula. When the Crusaders under

Bohemond of Tarento, in 1097, arrived in Macedonia they learned that the

city of Pelagonia was inhabited wholly by heretics, whereupon they

paused in their pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre long enough to capture

the town, to raze it to the earth, and to put all the citizens to the

sword. In Dalmatia the Paulicians founded the seaport of Dugunthia

(Trau), which became the seat of one of their leading episcopates; and

in the time of Innocent III. we find them in great numbers throughout

the whole Slav territory, making extensive conversions with their

customary missionary zeal, and giving that pontiff much concern, in

unavailing efforts for their suppression. Numerous as the Cathari of

Western Europe became, they always looked to the east of the Adriatic as

to the headquarters of their sect. It was there that arose the form of

modified Dualism known as Concorrezan, under the influence of the

Bogomili, and religious questions were wont to be referred thither for

solution.[80]

Their missionary activity made itself felt in the West in a marvellously

short period after their settlement in Bulgaria. Our materials for an

intimate acquaintance with that age are very scanty, and we must content

ourselves with occasional vague indications, but when we see that

Gerbert of Aurillac, on his election to the archiepiscopate of Reims in

991, was obliged to utter a profession of faith in which he declared his

belief that Satan was wicked of free-will, that the Old and New

Testaments were of equal authority, and that marriage and the use of

meat were allowable, it shows that Paulician opinions were already well

understood and dreaded as far north as Champagne. There seems, indeed,

to have been a centre of Catharism there, for in 1000 a peasant named

Leutard, at Vertus, was convicted of teaching antisacerdotal doctrines

which were evidently of Manichæan origin, and he is discreetly said to

have drowned himself in a well when overcome in argument by Bishop

Liburnius. The Château of Mont Wimer, in the neighborhood of Vertus,

retained its evil reputation as a centre of the heresy. About the same

period we have a misty account of a Ravennatese grammarian named

Vilgardus who, inspired by demons in the shape of Virgil, Horace, and

Juvenal, erected the Latin poets into infallible guides and taught much

that was contrary to the faith. His heresy was probably Manichæan; it

could not have been simply blind worship of classic writers, for culture

was too rare in that age for such belief to become popular, and we are

told that Vilgardus had numerous disciples in all the cities in Italy,

who, after his condemnation by Peter, Archbishop of Ravenna, were put to

death by the sword or at the stake. His heresy likewise spread to

Sardinia and Spain, where it was ruthlessly exterminated.[81]

Shortly after this Cathari were discovered in Aquitaine, where they made

many converts, and their heresy spread secretly throughout southern

France in spite of the free use of the fagot. Even as far north as

Orleans it was discovered, in 1017, under circumstances which aroused

general attention. A female missionary from Italy had carried the

infection there, and a number of the most prominent clergy of the city

fell victims to it. In their proselyting zeal they sent out emissaries,

and were discovered. On hearing of it, King Robert the Pious hastened

to Orleans with Queen Constance, and summoned a council of bishops to

determine what should be done to meet the novel and threatening danger.

The heretics, on being questioned, made no secret of their faith, and

boldly declared themselves ready to die rather than to abandon it. The

popular feeling was so bitter against them that Robert stationed his

queen at the door of the church in which the assembly was held, to

preserve them from being torn to pieces by the mob when they were led

forth; but Constance shared the passions of her subjects, and as they

passed her she smote with a rod one who had been her confessor, and put

out his eye. They were taken beyond the walls, and again, in the

presence of the blazing pyre, were entreated to recant, but they

preferred death, and their unshrinking firmness was the wonder of all

spectators. Such converts as they had made elsewhere were diligently

hunted up and mercilessly despatched. In 1025 there was a further

discovery of the heresy at Liége, but the sectaries proved less

stubborn, and were pardoned on professing conversion. About the same

time we hear of others, in Lombardy, in the Castle of Monforte, near

Asti, who were the objects of active persecution by the neighboring

nobles and bishops, and who were burned whenever they could be captured.

At length, about 1040, Eriberto, Archbishop of Milan, in visiting his

province, came to Asti, and, hearing of these heretics, sent for them.

They came willingly enough, including their teacher, Gherardo, and the

Countess of Monforte who was of their sect; all boldly professed their

faith, and were carried by Eriberto back to Milan, where he hoped to

convert them. In place of this, they labored to spread their heresy

among those who crowded to see them in prison, until the enraged people,

against the will of the archbishop, forcibly dragged them out, and gave

them the choice between the cross and the stake. A few of them yielded,

but the most part, covering their faces with their hands, boldly leaped

into the flames, and sealed their faith with martyrdom. In 1045 we find

them in Chalons, when Bishop Roger applied to Bishop Wazo of Liége,

asking what he should do with them, and whether the secular arm should

be called in to prevent the leaven from corrupting the whole people, to

which the good Wazo replied that they should be left to God, "for those

whom the world now regards as tares may be garnered by him as wheat when

comes the harvest-time. Those whom we deem the adversaries of God he

may make superior to us in heaven." Wazo, indeed, had heard that

heretics were commonly detected by their pallor, and, under the delusion

that those who were pale must necessarily be heretics, many good

Catholics had been slain. By the year 1052 the heresy had extended to

Germany, where the pious emperor, Henry the Black, caused a number to be

hanged at Goslar. During the rest of the century we hear little more of

them, though traces of them occur at Toulouse in 1056 and Béziers in

1062, and about the year 1200 they are described as infecting the whole

diocese of Agen.[82]

In the twelfth century the evil continued unabated in northern France.

Count John of Soissons was noted as a protector of heretics, but, in

spite of his favor, Lisiard, the bishop, captured several, and gave the

first example of what subsequently became common enough--the use of the

ordeal to determine heretical guilt. One, at least, of the accused,

floated when thrown into exorcised water, and the bishop, not knowing

what to do with them, held them in prison while he went to the Council

of Beauvais, in 1114, to consult his episcopal brethren. The populace,

however, felt no doubts on the subject, and, fearing that they would be

deprived of their prey, broke open the jail and burned them during the

bishop's absence--a manifestation of holy zeal which greatly pleased the

pious chronicler. About the same time Flanders was the scene of another

discovery of Catharism. The heresiarch, on being summoned before the

Bishop of Cambrai, made no secret of his crime; he was stubborn, and

was shut up in a hut, which was fired, and he died in prayer. The people

must, in this case, have been rather favorably inclined to him, for they

allowed his friends to collect his remains, and he was found to have

many followers, especially among the craft of weavers. When, about the

same period, we see Paschal II. advising the Bishop of Constance that

converted heretics were to be welcomed back, we may conclude that error

had penetrated even into Switzerland.[83]

As the century wore on the manifestations of heresy became more

numerous. In 1144 at Liége again; in 1153 again in Artois; in 1157 at

Reims; in 1163 at Vezelai, where there was a significant concomitant

attempt to throw off the temporal jurisdiction of the Abbey of St.

Madelaine; about 1170 at Besançon; and in 1180 at Reims again. This

latter case has picturesque features recited for us by one of the actors

in the drama, Gervais of Tilbury, at that time a young man and a canon

of Reims. Riding out one afternoon as part of the retinue of his

archbishop, William, his fancy was caught by a pretty girl laboring

alone in a vineyard. He lost no time in pressing his suit, but was

repulsed with the assertion that if she listened to his addresses she

would be irretrievably damned. Virtue so severe as this was a manifest

sign of heresy, and the archbishop, coming up, ordered her at once into

custody, for he recognized her as necessarily belonging to the Cathari,

whom Philip of Flanders had for some time been mercilessly persecuting.

Under examination, she gave the name of her instructress, who was

forthwith arrested, and who manifested such thorough familiarity with

Scripture and such consummate dexterity in defending her faith, that no

doubt was felt of her being inspired by Satan. The defeated theologians

respited the pair till the next day, when they obstinately refused to

yield to threats or promises, and were unanimously condemned to the

stake. At this the elder woman laughed, saying, "Foolish and unjust

judges, think you to burn me in your fire? I fear not your sentence, and

dread not your stake." With that she pulled from her bosom a ball of

thread and tossed it out of the window, retaining one end, and calling

out, "Take it!" The ball arose in the air, and the old woman followed it

through the window, and was seen no more. The girl was left, and as she

was insensible alike to offers of wealth and threats of punishment, she

was duly burned, suffering her torment cheerfully and without a groan.

Even in distant Britanny Catharism appeared in 1208, at Nantes and St.

Malo.[84]

In Flanders the heresy seems to have taken deep root the industrious

craftsmen who were already making their cities centres of wealth and

progress. In 1162 Henry, Archbishop of Reims, in a visitation of

Flanders, which formed part of his province, found Manichæism prevailing

there to an alarming extent. In the existing confusion and uncertainty

of the canon law as respects the treatment of heresy, he allowed the

appeal of those whom he captured to Alexander III., then in Touraine.

The pope inclined to mercy, much to the disgust of the archbishop and of

his brother, Louis VII., who urged the adoption of rigorous measures,

and asserted that the enormous bribe of six hundred marks had been

offered for their liberation. If this were so, the heresy must have

penetrated to the upper ranks of society. In spite of Alexander's

humanity the persecution was sharp enough, however, to drive many of the

heretics away, and we shall meet with some of them at Cologne. Twenty

years later we find the evil still growing, and Philip I., Count of

Flanders, whose zeal for the faith was manifested subsequently by his

death in Palestine, busily engaged in persecuting them with the aid of

William, Archbishop of Reims. They are described as comprising all

classes, nobles and peasants, clerks, soldiers, and mechanics, maids,

wives, and widows, and numbers of them were burned without putting an

end to the pestilence.[85]

The Teutonic peoples were comparatively free from the infection,

although the propinquity of the Rhinelands to France led to occasional

visitations. About 1110 we hear of some heretics at Trèves, who seem to

have escaped without punishment, though two among them were priests, and

in 1200 eight more were found there and burned. In 1145 a number were

discovered in Cologne, some of whom were tried; but, during the

examination, the impatient populace, fearing to be balked of their

spectacle, broke in, carried off the culprits, and burned them out of

hand--a fate which they bore not only with patience, but with

joyfulness. There must have been a Catharan Church established by this

time at Cologne, since one of the sufferers was called their bishop. In

1163 fugitives from the Flemish persecution were found at Cologne--eight

men and three women, who had taken refuge in a barn. As they associated

with no one, and did not frequent the churches, the Christian neighbors

recognized them as heretics, seized them, and took them before the

bishop, when they boldly avowed their faith, and suffered burning with

the resolute gladness which distinguished the sect. We hear of others,

about the same time, burned at Bonn, but this scanty catalogue exhausts

the list of German heresies in the twelfth century. Missionaries

penetrated the country from Hungary, Italy, and Flanders; they are found

in Switzerland, Bavaria, Suabia, and even as far as Saxony, but they

made few converts.[86]

England was likewise little troubled with heresy. It was shortly after

the persecutions in Flanders that in 1166 there were discovered thirty

rustics--men and women--German in race and speech, probably Flemings,

fleeing from the pious zeal of Henry of Reims, who had come and were

endeavoring to propagate their errors. They made but one convert, a

woman, who deserted them in the hour of trial. The rest stood firm when

Henry II., then engaged in his quarrel with Becket, and anxious to prove

his fidelity to the Church, called a council of bishops at Oxford, and

presided over it, to determine their faith. They openly avowed it, and

were condemned to be scourged, branded in the face with a key, and

driven forth. The importance which Henry attached to the matter is shown

by his devoting, soon after, in the Assizes of Clarendon, an article to

the subject, forbidding any one to receive them under penalty of having

his house torn down, and requiring all sheriffs to swear to the

observance of the law, and to make all stewards of the barons and all

knights and franc-tenants swear likewise--the first secular law on the

subject in any statute-book since the fall of Rome. I have already

mentioned the steadfastness with which the unfortunates endured their

martyrdom. Stripped to the waist and soundly scourged, and branded on

the forehead, they were sent adrift shelterless in the winter-time, and

speedily, one by one, they miserably perished. England was not

hospitable to heresy, and we hear little more of it there. Towards the

close of the century some heretics were found in the province of York,

and early in the next century a few were discovered in London, and one

was burned; but practically the orthodoxy of England was unsullied until

the rise of Wickliffe.[87]

Italy, as the channel through which the Bulgarian heresy passed to the

West, was naturally deeply infected. Milan had the reputation of being

its centre, whence missionaries were despatched to other lands, whither

pilgrims resorted from the western kingdoms, and where originated the

sinister term of Patarins, by which the Cathari became generally known

to the people of Europe.[88] Yet the popes, involved in a

death-struggle with the empire, and frequently wanderers abroad, paid

little attention to them during the first half of the twelfth century,

and the indications which have reached us of their existence are but

scanty, though sufficient to show that they were numerous and aggressive

in the consciousness of growing strength. Thus at Orvieto, in 1125, they

actually obtained the mastery for a while, but after a bloody struggle

were subdued by the Catholics. In 1150 the effort was resumed by

Diotesalvi of Florence and Gherardo of Massano; but the bishop succeeded

in expelling them, when they were replaced by two women

missionaries--Milita of Monte-Meano, and Giulitta of Florence--whose

piety and charity won the esteem of the clergy and sympathy of the

people, until the heresy was discovered, in 1163, when many heretics

were burned and hanged, and the rest exiled. Yet soon afterwards Peter

the Lombard undertook to propagate it again, and formed a numerous

community, embracing many nobles, and towards the close of the century

San Pietro di Parenzo earned his canonization by his severe measures of

repression, in retaliation for which the heretics took his life in 1199.

This may be regarded as an example of the struggle which was going on in

many Italian cities, showing the stubborn vitality of the heresy. In the

political condition of Italy, subdivided into innumerable virtually

self-governing communities, torn by mutual quarrels and civic strife,

general measures of repression were almost impossible. Heresy,

suppressed by spasmodic exertion in one city, was always flourishing

elsewhere, and ready to furnish new missionaries and new martyrs as soon

as the storm had passed. Through all these vicissitudes its growth was

constant. All the northern half of the peninsula, from the Alps to the

Patrimony of St. Peter, was honeycombed with it, and even as far south

as Calabria it was to be found. When Innocent III., in 1198, ascended

the papal throne he at once commenced active proceedings for its

extermination, and the obstinacy of the heretics may be estimated by the

struggle in Viterbo, a city subject to the temporal as well as spiritual

jurisdiction of the papacy. In March, 1199, Innocent, stimulated by the

increase of heresy and the audacity of its public display, wrote to the

Viterbians, renewing and sharpening the penalties against all who

received or favored heretics. Yet, in spite of this, in 1205, the

heretics carried the municipal election and elected as chamberlain a

heretic under excommunication. Innocent's indignation was boundless. If

the elements, he told the citizens, should conspire to destroy them,

without sparing age or sex, leaving their memory an eternal shame, the

punishment would be inadequate. He ordered obedience to be refused to

the newly-elected municipality, which was to be deposed; that the

bishop, who had been ejected, should be received back, that the laws

against heresy should be enforced, and that if all this was not done

within fifteen days the people of the surrounding towns and castles were

commanded to take up arms and make active war upon the rebellious city.

Even this was insufficient. Two years later, in February, 1207, there

were fresh troubles, and it was not until June of that year, when

Innocent himself came to Viterbo, and all the Patarins fled at his

approach, that he was able to purify the town by tearing down all the

houses of the heretics and confiscating all their property. This he

followed up in September with a decree addressed to all the faithful in

the Patrimony of St. Peter, ordering measures of increasing severity to

be inscribed in the local laws of every community, and all podestà, and

other officials to be sworn to their enforcement under heavy penalties.

Proceedings of more or less rigor commanded in Milan, Ferrara, Verona,

Rimini, Florence, Prato, Faenza, Piacenza, and Treviso show the extent

of the evil, the difficulty of restraining it, and the encouragement

given to heresy by the scandals of the clergy.[89]

It was in southern France, however, that the struggle was deadliest and

the battle was fought to its bitter end. There the soil, as we have

seen, was the most favorable, and the growth of heresy the rankest.

Early in the century we find open resistance at Albi, when the bishop,

Sicard, aided by the Abbot of Castres, endeavored to imprison obstinate

heretics and was baffled by the people, leading to a dangerous quarrel

between the civil and ecclesiastical jurisdictions. About the same time,

Amelius of Toulouse tried milder methods by calling in the aid of the

celebrated Robert d'Arbrissel, whose preaching, we are told, was

rewarded with many conversions. In 1119 Calixtus II. presided over a

council at Toulouse which condemned the Manichæan heresy, but was forced

to content itself with sentencing the heretics to expulsion from the

Church. It is perhaps remarkable that when Innocent II., driven from

Rome by the antipope Pier-Leone, was wandering through France and held a

great council at Reims in 1131, no measures were taken for the

repression of heresy; but when restored to Rome he seems to have

awakened to the necessity of action, and in the Second General Lateran

Council, in 1139, he issued a decisive decree which is interesting as

the earliest example of the interpellation of the secular arm. Not only

were the Cathari condemned and expelled from the Church, but the

temporal authorities were ordered to coerce them and all those who

favored or defended them. This policy was followed up in 1148 by the

Council of Reims, which forbade any one to receive or maintain on his

lands the heretics dwelling in Gascony, Provence, and elsewhere, and not

to afford them shelter in passing or give them a refuge, under pain of

excommunication and interdict.[90]

When Alexander III. was exiled from Rome by Frederic Barbarossa and his

antipope Victor, and came to France, he called, in 1163, a great council

at Tours. It was an imposing assemblage, comprising seventeen cardinals,

one hundred and twenty-four bishops (including Thomas Becket) and

hundreds of abbots, besides hosts of other ecclesiastics and a vast

number of laymen. This august body, after performing its first duty of

anathematizing the rival pope, proceeded to deplore the heresy which,

arising in the Toulousain, had spread like a cancer throughout Gascony,

deeply infecting the faithful everywhere. The prelates of those regions

were ordered to be vigilant in suppressing it by anathematizing all who

should permit heretics to dwell on their lands or should hold

intercourse with them, in buying or selling, so that, being cut off from

human society, they might be compelled to abandon their errors. All

secular princes moreover were commanded to imprison them and to

confiscate their property. By this time, it is evident that heresy was

no longer concealed, but displayed itself openly and defiantly; and the

futility of the papal commands at Tours to cut heretics off from human

intercourse was shown two years later at the council, or rather

colloquy, of Lombers near Albi. This was a public disputation between

representatives of orthodoxy and the _bos homes, bos Crestias_, or "good

men," as they styled themselves, before judges agreed upon by both

sides, in the presence of Pons, Archbishop of Narbonne, and sundry

bishops, besides the most powerful nobles of the region--Constance,

sister of King Louis VII. and wife of Raymond of Toulouse, Trencavel of

Béziers, Sicard of Lautrec, and others. Nearly all of the population of

Lombers and Albi assembled, and the proceedings were evidently regarded

as of the greatest public interest and importance. A full report of the

discussion, including the decision against the Cathari, has reached us

from several orthodox sources, but the only interest which the affair

has is its marked significance in showing that heresy had fairly

outgrown all the means of repression at command of the local churches,

that reason had to be appealed to in place of force, that heretics had

no scruple in manifesting and declaring themselves, and that the

Catholic disputants had to submit to their demands in citing only the

New Testament as an authority. The powerlessness of the Church was still

further exhibited in the fact that the council, after its argumentative

triumph, was obliged to content itself with simply ordering the nobles

of Lombers no longer to protect the heretics. What satisfaction Pons of

Narbonne found the next year in confirming the conclusions of the

Council of Lombers, in a council held at Cabestaing, it would be

difficult to define. So great was the prevailing demoralization that

when some monks of the strict Cistercian order left their monastery of

Villemagne near Agde, and publicly took wives, he was unable to punish

this gross infraction of their vows, and the interposition of Alexander

III. was invoked--probably without result.[91]

Evidently the Church was powerless. When it could condemn the doctrines

and not the persons of heretics it confessed to the world that it

possessed no machinery capable of dealing with opposition on a scale of

such magnitude. The nobles and the people were indisposed to do its

bidding, and without their aid the fulmination of its anathema was an

empty ceremony. The Cathari saw this plainly, and within two years of

the Council of Lombers they dared, in 1167, to hold a council of their

own at St. Felix de Caraman near Toulouse. Their highest dignitary,

Bishop Nicetas, came from Constantinople to preside, with deputies from

Lombardy; the French Church was strengthened against the modified

Dualism of the Concorrezan school; bishops were elected for the vacant

sees of Toulouse, Val d'Aran, Carcassonne, Albi, and France north of the

Loire, the latter being Robert de Sperone, subsequently a refugee in

Lombardy, where he gave his name to the sect of the Speronistæ;

commissioners were named to settle a disputed boundary between the sees

of Toulouse and Carcassonne; in short, the business was that of an

established and independent Church, which looked upon itself as destined

to supersede the Church of Rome. Based upon the affection and reverence

of the people, which Rome had forfeited, it might well look forward to

ultimate supremacy.[92]

In fact, its progress during the next ten years was such as to justify

the most enthusiastic hopes. Raymond of Toulouse, whose power was

virtually that of an independent sovereign, adhered to Frederic

Barbarossa, acknowledged the antipope Victor and his successors, and

cared nothing for Alexander III., who was received by the rest of

France; and the Church, distracted by the schism, could offer little

opposition to the development of heresy. In 1177, however, Alexander

triumphed and received the submission of Frederic. Raymond necessarily

followed his suzerain (a large portion of his territories was subject to

the empire) and suddenly awoke to the necessity of arresting the

progress of heresy. Powerful as he was, he felt himself unequal to the

task. The burgesses of his cities, independent and intractable, were for

the most part Cathari. A large portion of his knights and gentlemen were

secretly or avowedly protectors of heresy; the common people throughout

his dominions despised the clergy and honored the heretics. When a

heretic preached they crowded to listen and applaud; when a Catholic

assumed the rare function of religious instruction they jeered at him

and asked him what he had to do with proclaiming the Word of God. In a

state of chronic war with powerful vassals and more powerful neighbors,

like the kings of Aragon and England, it was manifestly impossible for

Raymond to undertake the extermination of a half or more than half of

his subjects. Whether he was sincere in his desire to suppress heresy is

doubtful, but in any case his situation is interesting, as an

illustration of the difficulties which surrounded his son and grandson,

and led to the Crusades and the extinction of his house. Whatever his

motives, however, Raymond V. craftily placed himself on the right side.

He called upon the king, Louis VII., to come to his assistance, and,

remembering how St. Bernard had, in the previous generation, aided to

suppress the Henricians, he applied to Bernard's successor, Henry of

Clairvaux, head of the great Cistercian order, to support his appeal.

He described the condition of religion in his dominions as desperate.

The priesthood had allowed itself to be seduced; the churches were

abandoned and falling into ruin; the sacraments were despised and no

longer in use; Dualism had prevailed over Trinitarianism. Anxious as he

was to be the minister of the vengeance of God, he was powerless, for

his principal subjects had embraced the false faith, together with the

better part of his people. Spiritual punishment no longer had any

terror, and force alone would be of service. If the king would come,

Raymond promised personally to conduct him through the land and point

out the heretics to be chastised, and with their united efforts success

could hardly fail to crown the good work.[93]

Henry II. of England, who as Duke of Aquitaine was nearly concerned in

the matter, had just concluded a peace with Louis of France, and, free

from the preoccupation of mutual war, the monarchs conferred together

with the intention of proceeding in person with a heavy force in

response to Raymond's appeal. The Abbot of Clairvaux also wrote to

Alexander III., with more earnestness than courtesy, stimulating him to

do his duty and put down heresy as he had quelled schism; the two kings,

he said, were debating as to the measures to be taken, and no remissness

of the spiritual power must serve as excuse for lack of energy on the

part of the temporal: in Languedoc, priest and people were alike

infected, or rather the contagion proceeded from the shepherds to the

flock; the least the pope could do was to instruct his legate, Cardinal

Peter of St. Chrysogono, to remain longer in France and to attack the

heretics. During these preliminaries the zeal of the monarchs had

cooled, and in place of marching at the head of armies they contented

themselves with sending a mission consisting of the cardinal legate, the

archbishops of Narbonne and Bourges, Henry of Clairvaux and other

prelates, at the same time urging the Count of Toulouse, the Viscount of

Turenne, and other nobles to aid them.[94]

If Raymond was sincere, this was not the assistance he required. The

kings had resolved to depend upon the spiritual sword, and he was too

shrewd to exhaust his strength in an unaided struggle with his subjects,

especially as a menacing league was then forming against him by Alonso

II. of Aragon with the nobles of Narbonne, Nimes, Montpellier, and

Carcassonne. While, therefore, he protected the missionary prelates, he

made no pretence of drawing the carnal sword. When they entered Toulouse

the heretics crowded around them jeering and calling them hypocrites,

apostates, and other opprobrious names; and Henry of Clairvaux consoles

himself for the insignificant positive results of the mission with the

reflection that if it had been postponed until three years later, they

would not have found a single Catholic in the city. Lists of heretics,

interminable in length, were made out for them, at the head of which

stood Pierre Mauran, an old man of great wealth and influence, and so

universally respected by his co-religionists that he was popularly known

as John the Evangelist. He was selected to be made an example. After

many tergiversations he was convicted of heresy, when, to save his

confiscated property, he agreed to recant and undergo such penance as

might be assigned to him. Stripped to the waist, with the Bishop of

Toulouse and the Abbot of St. Sernin busily scourging him on either

side, he was led through an immense crowd to the high altar of the

Cathedral of St. Stephen, where, for the good of his soul, he was

ordered to undertake a three years' pilgrimage to the Holy Land, to be

daily scourged through the streets of Toulouse until his departure, to

make restitution of all Church lands occupied by him and of all moneys

acquired by usury, and to pay to the count five hundred pounds of silver

in redemption of his forfeited property. This resolute beginning

produced the desired effect, and multitudes of Cathari hastened to make

their peace with the Church; but how little real result it had is shown

by the fact that when Mauran returned from Palestine his fellow-citizens

thrice honored him with election to the office of capitoul, and his

family remained bitterly anti-Catholic. In 1234 an old man named Mauran

was condemned as a "perfected" heretic, and in 1235 another Mauran, one

of the capitouls, was excommunicated for impeding the introduction of

the Inquisition. The enormous fine for the benefit of the Count of

Toulouse was well calculated to excite the religious fervor of that

potentate, but even that stimulus failed to arouse him to the decisive

action which he doubtless felt to be impracticable. When the legate

desired to confute two heresiarchs, Raymond de Baimiac and Bernard

Raymond, the Catharan bishops of Val d'Aran and Toulouse, he was obliged

to give them a safe-conduct before they would present themselves before

him, and to content himself afterwards with excommunicating them; and

when proceedings were had against the powerful Roger Trencavel, Viscount

of Béziers, for keeping the Bishop of Albi in prison, excommunication

was likewise the only penalty, nor do we read that the captured prelate

was liberated. The mission so pompously heralded returned to France, and

we can readily believe the statement of contemporary chroniclers that it

had accomplished little or nothing. It is true that Raymond of Toulouse

and his nobles had been induced to issue an edict banishing all

heretics, but this remained a dead letter.[95]

It was in September of the same year, 1178, that Alexander III.

published the call for the assembling of the Third Council of Lateran,

and an ominous allusion in it to the tares which choke the wheat and

must be pulled up by the roots shows that he recognized the futility of

all measures heretofore adopted to check the daily growing power of

heresy. Accordingly, when the council met, in 1179, it bemoaned the

damnable perversity of the Patarins, who publicly seduced the faithful

throughout Gascony, the Albigeois, and the Toulousain; it commended the

employment of force by the secular power to compel men to their own

salvation; it anathematized, as usual, the heretics and those who

sheltered and protected them, and it included among heretics the

Cotereaux, Brabançons, Aragonese, Navarrese, Basques, and Triaverdins,

of whom more anon. It then proceeded to take a step of much significance

in proclaiming a crusade against all these enemies of the Church--the

first experiment of a resort to this weapon against Christians, which

afterwards became so common, and gave the Church in its private quarrels

the services of a warlike militia in every land, ever ready to be

mobilized. Two years' indulgence was promised to all who should take up

arms in the holy cause; they were received under the protection of the

Church, and those who should fall were assured of eternal salvation.

Among the restless and sinful warriors of the time it was not difficult

to raise an army, serving without pay, on terms like these.[96]

Immediately on his return from the council Pons, Archbishop of Narbonne,

made haste to publish this decree, with all its anathemas and

interdicts, and he included in its terms those who exacted new and

unaccustomed tolls from travellers--a rapidly growing extortion of the

feudal nobles which we shall constantly see reappear, like the

Cotereaux, in the Albigensian quarrels. Henry of Clairvaux had refused

the troublesome see of Toulouse, which had become vacant shortly after

his mission thither in 1178, but had accepted the cardinalate of Albano,

and he was forthwith sent as papal legate to preach and lead the

crusade. His eloquence enabled him to raise a considerable force of

horse and foot, with which, in 1181, he fell upon the territories of the

Viscount of Béziers and laid siege to the stronghold of Lavaur where the

Viscountess Adelaide, daughter of Raymond of Toulouse, and the leading

Patarins had taken refuge. We are told that Lavaur was captured through

a miracle, and that in various parts of France consecrated wafers

dropping blood announced the success of the Christian arms. Roger of

Béziers hastened to make his submission and swear no longer to protect

heresy. Raymond de Baimiac and Bernard Raymond, the Catharan bishops,

who were taken prisoners, renounced their heresy and were rewarded with

prebends in two churches of Toulouse. Many other heretics gave in their

submission, but returned to the false faith as soon as the danger was

past. The short term for which the Crusaders had enlisted expired; the

army disbanded itself, and the next year the cardinal-legate went back

to Rome, having accomplished, virtually, nothing except to increase the

mutual exasperation by the devastation of the country through which his

troops had passed. Raymond of Toulouse, involved in desperate war with

the King of Aragon, seems to have preserved complete indifference as to

this expedition, taking no part in it on either side.[97]

The Cotereaux and Brabançons, whom we have seen included with the

Patarins in the denunciations of the Council of Lateran, are a feature

of the period whose significance deserves a passing notice. We shall

find them constantly reappearing, and their maintenance was one of the

sins which gained for Raymond VI. of Toulouse almost as much hostility

from the Church as the support of heresy which was imputed to him. They

were freebooters, the precursors of the dreaded Free Companies which,

especially during the fourteenth century, were the terror of all

peaceable men, inflicting incalculable damage to the advancement of

civilization. Their various names of Brabançons, Hainaulters, Catalans,

Aragonese, Navarrese, Basques, etc., show how wide-spread was the evil

and how every province ascribed the hated bands to its neighbors; while

the more familiar terms of Brigandi, Pilardi, Ruptarii, Mainatae

(mesnie), etc., express their function and occupation; and the names of

Cotarelli, Palearii, Triaverdins, Asperes, Vales, have afforded ample

field for fanciful etymology. They consisted of the idle and dissipated,

peasants who had been hopelessly ruined in the increasing desolation of

war, fugitives from serfdom, outlaws, escaped criminals, worthless

ecclesiastics, outcast monks, and in general the scum which society

threw upon the surface in its constant turmoil. They preyed upon the

community in bands of varying size, and their swords were ever at the

service of the nobles who would grant them pay or plunder when a

military force was needed for a longer term than the short campaign

prescribed as due from the vassal to his feudal lord. The chronicles of

the time are full of lamentations over their incessant devastations; and

it is significant of the relations between the Church and the community

that the ecclesiastical annalists insist that their blows ever fell

heavier on church and monastery than on the castle of the seigneur or

the cottage of the peasant. They ridiculed the priests as singers, and

it was one of their savage sports to beat them to death while mockingly

begging their intercession--"Sing for us, you singer, sing for us;" and

the culmination of their irreverent sacrilege was seen in their casting

out and trampling on the holy wafers whose precious pyxes they eagerly

seized. They were popularly classed as heretics, and were accused of

openly denying the existence of God. In 1181 Bishop Stephen of Tournay

feelingly describes his terror while traversing, on a mission from the

king, through the Toulousain, then recently the seat of war between the

Count of Toulouse and the King of Aragon, where deserted solitudes

revealed nothing but ruined churches and desolated villages, and where

he was ever in expectation of attack, from robbers or from the more

dreaded bands of Cotereaux. It was probably a result of the crusade

decreed against them, in common with the Patarins, that a concerted

attack was soon after made upon the bandits in central France. They were

driven together, and in July, 1183, at Châteaudun, a signal victory over

them was won, the number of the slain brigands being variously estimated

at from six thousand to ten thousand five hundred and twenty-five. An

immense booty was obtained, among which may perhaps be reckoned fifteen

hundred strumpets, who accompanied the robber host. The victors, who had

assumed the name of Paciferi in token of their peaceful object, were not

merciful. Fifteen days later we hear of the capture of one of the

routier captains with fifteen hundred men, who were all summarily

hanged; and about the same time of eighty more, who were caught and

blinded. In spite of these ruthless measures, the evil continued

unabated. The causes which produced it remained as active as ever, and

the services of the reckless and Godless mercenaries continued useful to

the great feudatories involved in endless war with their neighbors.[98]

* * * * *

The admitted failure of the crusade of 1181 seems to have rendered the

Church hopeless, for the time, of making headway against heresy. For a

quarter of a century it was allowed to develop in comparative toleration

throughout the territories of Gascony, Languedoc, and Provence. It is

true that the decree of Lucius III., issued at Verona in 1184, is

important as attempting the foundation of an organized Inquisition, but

it worked no immediate effect. It is true that in 1195 another papal

legate, Michael, held a provincial council at Montpellier, where he

commanded the enforcement of the Lateran canons on all heretics and

Mainatæ, or brigands, whose property was to be confiscated and whose

persons reduced to slavery;[99] but all this fell dead upon the

indifference of the nobles, who, involved in perpetual war with each

other, preferred to risk the anathemas of the Church rather than to

complicate their troubles by attempting the extermination of a majority

of their subjects at the behest of a hierarchy which no longer inspired

respect or reverence. Perhaps, also, the fall of Jerusalem, in 1186, in

arousing an unprecedented fervor of fanaticism, directed it towards

Palestine, and left little for the vindication of the faith nearer home.

Be this as it may, no effective persecution was undertaken until the

vigorous ability of Innocent III., after vainly trying milder measures,

organized overwhelming war against heresy. During this interval the Poor

Men of Lyons arose, and were forced to make common cause with the

Cathari; the proselyting zeal which had been so successful in secrecy

and tribulation had free scope for its development, and had no effective

antagonism to dread from a negligent and disheartened clergy. The

heretics preached and made converts, while the priests were glad if they

could save a fraction of their tithes and revenues from rapacious nobles

and rebellious or indifferent parishioners. Heresy throve accordingly.

Innocent III. admitted the humiliating fact that the heretics were

allowed to preach and teach and make converts in public, and that unless

speedy measures were taken for their suppression there was danger that

the infection would spread to the whole Church. William of Tudela says

that the heretics possessed the Albigeois, the Carcasses, and the

Lauragais, and that to describe them as numerous throughout the whole

district from Béziers to Bordeaux is not saying enough. Walter Mapes

asserts that there were none of them in Britanny, but that they abounded

in Anjou, while in Aquitaine and Burgundy their number was infinite.

William of Puy-Laurens assures us that Satan possessed in peace the

greater part of southern France; the clergy were so despised that they

were accustomed to conceal the tonsure through very shame, and the

bishops were obliged to admit to holy orders whoever was willing to

assume them; the whole land, under a curse, produced nothing but thorns

and thistles, ravishers and bandits, robbers, murderers, adulterers, and

usurers. Cæsarius of Heisterbach declares that the Albigensian errors

increased so rapidly that they soon infected a thousand cities, and he

believes that if they had not been repressed by the sword of the

faithful the whole of Europe would have been corrupted. A German

inquisitor informs us that in Lombardy, Provence, and other regions

there were more schools of heresy than of orthodox theology, with more

scholars; that they disputed publicly, and summoned the people to public

debates; that they preached in the market-places, the fields, the

houses; and that there were none who dared to interfere with them, owing

to the multitude and power of their protectors. As we have seen, they

were regularly organized in dioceses; they had their educational

establishments for the training of women as well as men; and, at least

in one instance, all the nuns of a convent embraced Catharism without

quitting the house or the habit of their order.[100] Such was the

position to which corruption had reduced the Church. Intent upon the

acquisition of temporal power, it had well-nigh abandoned its spiritual

duties; and its empire, which rested on spiritual foundations, was

crumbling with their decay, and threatening to pass away like an

unsubstantial vision. There have been few crises in the history of the

Church more dangerous than that which Lothario Conti, when he assumed

the triple crown at the early age of thirty-eight, was called upon to

meet. In his consecration sermon he announced that one of his principal

duties would be the destruction of heresy, and of this he never lost

sight to the end, amid his endless conflicts with emperors and

princes.[101] It is fortunate for civilization that he possessed the

qualifications which enabled him to guide the shattered bark of St.

Peter through the tempest and among the rocks--if not always wisely, yet

with a resolute spirit, an unswerving purpose, and an unfailing trust

that accomplished his mission in the end.