HISTORY of the CHRISTIAN CHURCH*
CHAPTER X.
HERESY AND ITS SUPPRESSION.
§ 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._FĂĽsslin: 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.,
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 Ă©glises
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, WĂĽrz b. 1882; Die deutsche BibelĂĽbersetzung
der mittelalterlichen Waldenser in dem Codex Teplensis, WĂĽrzb., 1885; Waldenserhtum
und Inquisition im südöstlichen Deutschland, Freib., 1890; Der
Waldensische Ursprung d. Codex Teplensis, WĂĽrzb., 1886._Montet: Hist. litt. des Vaudois du
Piémont, Paris, 1885._*L. Keller:
Die Waldenser und die deutschen BibelĂĽbersetzungen, Leipzig, 1886._*F. Jostes: Die Waldenser und die
vorluth. deutsche BibelĂĽbersetzung, Munich, 1885; Die Tepler
BibelĂĽbersetzung, MĂĽnster, 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 fĂĽr Ketzerei in Mittheilungen fĂĽr 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 Mediaeval 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.941 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 mediaeval
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.942 Interesting as they are, they must be accepted with caution as the
statements of enemies. As for Catharan literature, a single piece has survived943 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.944
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.945 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, says946 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."947 The mediaeval 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.948 Peter Damiani949 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.950
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.951 Gregory IX.,952 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."953 St. Bernard likened heretics to dogs that bite and foxes that deceive.954 Free use was made of the withered branch of John 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.955
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,956 and Peter Cantor, bishop of Paris.957 Bernard went farther and admonished Eugenius III. against the use
of force in the treatment of heretics958 and in commenting upon Cant. II.
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.959 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.960 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 mediaeval 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. 1238,961 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.962 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.963 According to the statement of Neumeister, a heretical bishop who
was burnt, the number of Waldensian heretics in Austria about 1300 was eighty
thousand.964 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 mediaeval 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
mediaeval 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 mediaeval 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. he 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.965 A grotesque derivation, invented by their enemies, associated the
sect with the cat, whose form it was the pleasure of the devil to assume.966 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.967
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.968 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.969
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.970 The
Bogomili, who were of later origin, had a position of some prominence in
Constantinople in the early part of the twelfth century.971 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,972 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.973 Heretics
appeared at Liège in 1025. About the same time a group was discovered in Treves
who denied transubstantiation and rejected infant baptism.974 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.975 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
Matt. 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.976 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.977
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.978 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.979 By the end of the twelfth century they were reported to have
followers in nearly 1000 cities.980 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.981 Joachim
of Flore stated that they were sending out their emissaries like locusts.982 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.983 Chief
among them were the Albanenses and Concorrezzi, deriving their names from two
Lombard towns, Alba and Concorreggio, near Monza.984 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.985
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,986 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,987 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.988 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.989
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?"990
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.991
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,992 good men, or good Christians, or the Girded, vestiti ,993 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."994 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.995 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.996
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.997 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."998
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.999 The baptism of the established Church was the baptism of John the
Baptist, and John’s baptism was an invention of the devil.1000 Christ made a clear distinction between baptism with water and the
baptism of power, Acts 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.1001 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.1002 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, Matt. 5:27, 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,1003 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.1004
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.1005 The words of Peter on the housetop, Acts 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.1006 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."1007 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.1008
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.1009 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.1010
In addition to the
consolamentum, the Cathari practised two rites called the melioramentum and
the endura.1011 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.1012
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,1013 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.1014 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.1015 We live, said Everwin of Steinfeld,1016 _
"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."1017 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.1018 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.1019 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.1020
Of Henry of Lausanne, Peter’s
successor, we know more.1021 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.1022 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 Mark 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.1023 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.1024
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.1025 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,1026 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.1027
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.1028 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,1029 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.1030
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.1031 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.1032
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.1033 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.1034
Belonging to the same class were
the followers of Ortlieb of Strassburg, called Ortlibenses, Ortilibarii,
Oriliwenses, Ortoleni,1035 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.1036 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 Passagii1037 may be referred to.
The Luciferans1038 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.1039
§ 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.1040 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 1177.1041 In a document of that year he is said to have preached to women
and girls the value of chastity by word and example.1042 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.1043 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.1044
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.1045
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.1046
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.1047
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.1048 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.1049
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.1050
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.1051
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.1052 But to other "Beghards and Beguines, who practised voluntary
poverty"1053 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.1054
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.
§ 84. The Waldenses.
"O lady fair, I
have yet a gem which a purer lustre flings
Than the diamond
flash of the jewelled crown on the lofty brow of kings;
A wonderful pearl of
exceeding price, whose virtue shall not decay,
Whose light shall be
as a spell to thee and a blessing on thy way!"
Whittier, The Vaudois Teacher.
Distinct from the Cathari and
other sects in origin and doctrine, but sharing with them the condemnation of
the established Church, were the Waldenses. The Cathari lived completely apart
from the Catholic Church. The Waldenses, leaning upon the Scriptures, sought to
revive the simple precepts of the Apostolic age. They were the strictly
biblical sect of the Middle Ages. This fact, and the pitiless and protracted
persecutions to which they were subjected, long ago won the sympathies of the
Protestant churches. They present a rare spectacle of the survival of a body of
believers which has come up out of great tribulation.
Southern France was their first
home, but they were a small party as compared with the Albigenses in those
parts. From France they spread into Piedmont, and also into Austria and
Germany, as recent investigations have clearly brought out. In Italy, they
continue to this day in their ancestral valleys and, since 1870, endowed with
full rights of citizenship. In Austria, they kept their light burning as in a
dark place for centuries, had a close historic connection with the Hussites and
Bohemian Brethren, and prepared, in some measure, the way for the Anabaptists
in the time of the Reformation.
The Waldenses derive their
origin and name from Peter Waldus or Valdez,1055 who died before 1218, as all the
contemporary writers agree. They were also called Poor Men of Lyons, from the
city on the Rhone where they originated, and the Sandalati or Sandalled,
from the coarse shoes they wore.1056
The name by which they were known
among themselves was Brethren or the Poor of Christ,1057 based probably upon Matt. 5:3,
"Blessed are the poor in spirit." According to the Anonymous writer
of Passau, writing in the early years of the fourteenth century, some already
in his day carried the origin of the sect back to the Apostles. Until recently
all Waldensian writers have claimed for it Apostolic origin or gone at least as
far back as the seventh century. Professor Comba, of the Waldensian school in
Florence, has definitely given up this theory in deference to the
investigations of Dieckhoff, Herzog, and other German scholars.
Of Waldo’s life little is known.
A prosperous merchant of Lyons, he was aroused to religious zeal by the sudden
death of a leading citizen of the city, of which he was a witness, and by a
ballad he heard sung by a minstrel on the public square. The song was about St.
Alexis, the son of wealthy parents who no sooner returned from the marriage
altar than, impressed by the claims of celibacy, he left his bride, to start on
a pilgrimage to the East. On his return he called on his relatives and begged
them to give him shelter, but they did not recognize who he was till they found
him dead. The moral drawn from the tale was: life is short, the times are evil,
prepare for heaven.
Waldo sought counsel from a
priest, who told him there were many ways to heaven, but if he would be perfect,
he must obey Christ’s precepts, and go and sell all that he had and give to the
poor, and follow him. It was the text that had moved Anthony of Egypt to flee
from society. Waldo renounced his property, sent his two daughters to the
convent of Fontevrault, gave his wife a portion of his goods, and distributed
the remainder to the poor. This was about 1170.
His rule of life, Waldo drew
from the plain precepts of the Bible. He employed Bernard Ydros and Stephen of
Ansa to translate into the vernacular the Gospels and other parts of the
Scriptures, together with sayings of the Fathers. He preached, and his
followers, imitating his example, preached in the streets and villages, going
about two by two.1058 When the
archbishop of Lyons attempted to stop them, they replied that "they ought
to obey God, rather than men."
Very unexpectedly the Waldenses
made their appearance at the Third Lateran council, 1179, at least two of their
number being present. They besought Alexander III. to give his sanction to
their mode of life and to allow them to go on preaching. They presented him
with a copy of their Bible translation. The pope appointed a commission to
examine them. Its chairman, Walter Map, an Englishman of Welsh descent and the
representative of the English king, has left us a curious account of the
examination. He ridicules their manners and lack of learning.1059 They fell an easy prey to his questionings, like birds, as he
says, who do not see the trap or net, but think they have a safe path. He
commenced with the simplest of questions, being well aware, as he said, that a
donkey which can eat much oats does not disdain milk diet. On asking them
whether they believed in the persons of the Trinity they answered,
"Yes." And "in the Mother of Christ?" To this they also replied "Yes."
At that the committee burst out laughing at their ignorance, for it was not
proper to believe in, but to believe on, Mary. "Being poor themselves,
they follow Christ who was poor,_nudi nudum Christum sequentes. Certainly
it is not possible for them to take a more humble place, for they have scarcely
learned to walk. If we admit them, we ourselves ought to be turned out."
This vivacious committee-man, who delighted so much in chit-chat, as the title
of his book indicates, further says that the Waldenses went about barefooted,
clad in sheep-skins, and had all things common like the Apostles.
Without calling the Waldenses by
name, the council forbade them to preach. The synod of Verona, 1184, designated
them as "Humiliati, or Poor Men of Lyons," and anathematized them,
putting them into the same category with the Cathari and Patarines. Their
offence was preaching without the consent of the bishops.
Although they were expelled from
Lyons and excommunicated by the highest authority of the Church, the Waldenses
ceased not to teach and preach. They were called to take part in disputations
at Narbonne (1190) and other places. They were charged with being in rebellion
against the ecclesiastical authorities and with daring to preach, though they
were only laymen. Durandus of Huesca, who had belonged to their company,
withdrew in 1207 and took up a propaganda against them. He went to Rome and
secured the pope’s sanction for a new order under the name of the
"Catholic Poor" who were bound to poverty; the name, as is probable,
being derived from the sect he had abandoned.
Spreading into Lombardy, they
met a party already organized and like-minded. This party was known as the
Humiliati. Its adherents were plain in dress and abstained from oaths and
falsehood and from lawsuits. The language, used by the Third Oecumenical
council and the synod of Verona, identified them with the Poor Men of Lyons.1060 Originally, as we know from other sources, the two groups were
closely affiliated. It is probable that Waldo and his followers on their visits
in Lombardy won so much favor with the older sect that it accepted Waldo’s
leadership. At a later date, a portion of the Humiliati associated themselves
in convents, and received the sanction of Innocent III. It seems probable that
they furnished the model for the third order of St. Francis.1061 One portion of the Humiliati early became known as the Poor Men of
Lombardy and had among their leaders, John of Roncho. A portion of them, if not
all, were treated by contemporaries as his followers and called Runcarii.1062 Contemporary writers treat the two groups as parts of the same
body and distinguish them as the Ultramontane and the Lombard Poor Men or as
the Ultramontane and Italic Brethren.1063
A dispute arose between the
Humiliati and the Poor Men of Lyons as to their relation to one another and to
Peter Waldo, which led to a conference, in 1218, at Bergamo. Each party had six
representatives.1064 The two
points of discord were the eucharist and whether Waldo was then in paradise.
The Lombards contended that the validity of the sacrament depended upon the
good character of the celebrant. The question about Waldo and a certain Vivetus
was, whether they had gone to heaven without having made satisfaction before
their deaths for all their sins.1065 The Lyonnese claimed that Waldo was in paradise and made the
recognition of this fact a condition of union with the Lombard party. The
controversy at Bergamo points to a definite rejection of Waldo’s leadership by
the Lombard Waldenses. Salve Burce, 1235, who ridiculed the Waldensians on the
ground of their recent origin, small number, and lack of learning, compared the
Poor Men of Lombardy and the Poor Men of Lyons with the two Catharan sects, the
Albanenses and the Concorrezzi, and declared the four were as hostile, one to
the other, as fire and water.1066 This is an isolated testimony and not to be accepted. But it is
the charge, so often repeated since by the Catholic Church, that Protestantism
means division and strife.
In the crusades against
heretics, in Southern France, the Waldenses were included, but their sufferings
were small compared with those endured by the Albigenses. Nor do they seem to
have furnished many victims to the Inquisition in the fourteenth century.
Although Bernard Guy opened his trials in 1308, it was not till 1316 that a
Waldensian was sentenced to perpetual imprisonment and another to death by
burning. Three years later, twenty-six were condemned to perpetual
imprisonment, and three to death in the flames.1067 In 1498, Louis XII. granted them limited toleration. During the
Reformation period, in 1545, twenty-two villages inhabited by the French
Waldenses were pillaged and burnt by order of the parliament of Provence.
It was in Italy and Austria that
the Waldenses furnished their glorious spectacle of unyielding martyrdom. From
France they overflowed into Piedmont, partly to find a refuge in its high
valleys, seamed by the mountain streams of the Perouse, the Luserne, and the
Angrogne. There, in the Cottian Alps, they dwelt for some time without
molestation. They had colonies as far south as Calabria, and the emigration
continued in that direction till the fifteenth century.1068 But the time of persecution came. In 1209, Otto IV. issued an
edict of banishment and in 1220 Thomas, count of Savoy, threatened with fines
all showing them hospitality. But their hardy industry made them valuable
subjects and for a hundred years there was no persecution in the valleys unto
death. The first victim at the stake perished, 1312.
Innocent VIII., notorious for
his official recognition of witchcraft, was the first papal persecutor to
resort to rigorous measures. In 1487, he announced a crusade, and called upon
Charles VIII. of France and the duke of Savoy to execute the decree. Everything
the Waldenses had endured before, as Leger says, was as "roses and
flowers" compared with what they were now called upon to suffer. Innocent
furnished an army of eighteen-thousand. The Piedmontese Waldenses were forced
to crouch up higher into the valleys, and were subject to almost incredible
hardship. The most bitter sufferings of this Israel of the Alps were reserved
for the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, after they had accepted the
Reformation.1069 It was of
the atrocious massacres perpetrated at that time that Milton exclaimed,
"Avenge, O
Lord, thy slaughtered saints,
Whose bones he
scattered on the Alpine mountains cold."
The history of the Waldensian
movement in different parts of Germany and Austria has scarcely less interest
than the Franco-Italian movement. It had a more extensive influence by
preparing the way for other separatist and evangelical movements. It is
supposed that a translation of parts of the Scriptures belonging to the
Waldenses was in circulation in Metz at the end of the twelfth century. Copies
were committed to the flames. It is also supposed that Waldenses were among the
heretics ferreted out in Strassburg in 1212, eighty of whom were burnt, twelve
priests and twenty-three women being of the number. The Waldenses spread as far
north as Königsberg and Stettin and were found in Swabia, Poland, Bavaria, and
especially in Bohemia and the Austrian diocese of Passau.1070
They were subjected to
persecution as early as in 1260. Fifty years later there were at least
forty-two Waldensian communities in Austria and a number of Waldensian schools.
Neumeister, a bishop of the Austrian heretics, who suffered death with many
others in 1315, testified that in the diocese of Passau alone the sect had over
eighty thousand adherents.1071 In 1318
Dominican and Franciscan inquisitors were despatched to Bohemia and Poland to
help the authorities in putting the heresy down. Bohemia had become the most
important centre of Waldensianism. With these Austrian heretics the Poor Men of
Lombardy kept up a correspondence1072 and they received from them
contributions.
In spite of persecutions, the
German Waldenses continued to maintain themselves to the fifteenth century.
The Austrian dissenters were
active in the distribution of the Scriptures. And Whittier has based his poem
of the Vaudois Teacher upon the account of the so-called Anonymous writer of
Passau of the fourteenth century. He speaks of the Waldenses as going about as
peddlers to the houses of the noble families and offering first gems and other
goods and then the richest gem of all, the Word of God. This writer praised
their honesty, industry, and sobriety. Their speech, he said, was free from
oaths and falsehoods.
We have thus three types of
Waldenses: the Poor Men of Lyons, the Poor Men of Lombardy, and the Austrian
Waldensians.1073 As for
their dissent from the established Church, it underwent in some particulars, in
their later periods, a development, and on the other hand there was developed a
tendency to again approach closer to the Church.1074
In their earliest period the
Waldenses were not heretics, although the charge was made against them that
they claimed to be "the only imitators of Christ." Closely as they
and the Cathari were associated geographically and by the acts of councils,
papal decrees, and in literary refutations of heresy, the Waldenses differ
radically from the Cathari. They never adopted Manichaean elements. Nor did
they repudiate the sacramental system of the established Church and invent
strange rites of their own. They were also far removed from mysticism and have
no connection with the German mystics as some of the other sectaries had. They
were likewise not Protestants, for we seek in vain among them for a statement
of the doctrine of justification by faith. It is possible, they held to the
universal priesthood of believers. According to de Bourbon and others, they
declared all good men to be priests. They placed the stress upon following the
practice of the Apostles and obeying the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount,
and they did not know the definition which Luther put on the word
"justification." They approached more closely to an opinion now
current among Protestants when they said, righteousness is found only in good
men and good women.1075
The first distinguishing
principle of the Waldenses bore on daily conduct and was summed up in the words
of the Apostles, "we ought to obey God rather than men." This the
Catholics interpreted to mean a refusal to submit to the authority of the pope
and prelates. All the early attacks against them contain this charge.1076 Alanus sought to refute the principle by adducing Christ’s
submission to the authority of Pilate, John 19:11, and by arguing that the
powers that be are ordained of God. This was, perhaps, the first positive
affirmation of a Scriptural ground for religious independence made by the dissenting
sects of the Middle Ages. It contains in it, as in a germ, the principle of
full liberty of conscience as it was avowed by Luther at Worms.
The second distinguishing
principle was the authority and popular use of the Scriptures. Here again the
Waldenses anticipated the Protestant Reformation without realizing, as is
probable, the full meaning of their demand. The reading of the Bible, it is
true, had not yet been forbidden, but Waldo made it a living book and the
vernacular translation was diligently taught. The Anonymous writer of Passau
said he had seen laymen who knew almost the entire Gospels of Matthew and Luke
by heart, so that it was hardly possible to quote a word without their being
able to continue the text from memory.
The third principle was the
importance of preaching and the right of laymen to exercise that function.
Peter Waldo and his associates were lay evangelists. All the early documents
refer to their practice of preaching as one of the worst heresies of the
Waldenses and an evident proof of their arrogance and insubordination. Alanus
calls them false preachers, pseudo-praedicatores. Innocent III.,
writing, in 1199, of the heretics of Metz, declared their desire to understand
the Scriptures a laudable one but their meeting in secret and usurping the
function of the priesthood in preaching as only evil. Alanus, in a long
passage, brought against the Waldenses that Christ was sent by the Father and
that Jonah, Jeremiah, and others received authority from above before they
undertook to preach, for "how shall they preach unless they be sent."
The Waldenses were without commission. To this charge, the Waldenses, as at the
disputation of Narbonne, answered that all Christians are in duty bound to
spread the Gospel in obedience to Christ’s last command and to James 4:17,
"to him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin."1077 The denial of their request by Alexander III., 1179, did not
discourage them from continuing to preach in the highway and house and, as they
had opportunity, in the churches.1078
The Waldenses went still further
in shocking old-time custom and claimed the right to preach for women as well
as for men, and when Paul’s words enjoining silence upon the women were quoted,
they replied that it was with them more a question of teaching than of formal
preaching and quoted back Titus 2:3, "the aged women should be teachers of
good things." The abbot Bernard of Fontis Calidi, in contesting the right
of laics of both sexes to preach, quoted the Lord’s words commanding the evil
spirit to hold his peace who had said, "Thou art the Holy One of
God," Mark 1:25. If Christ did not allow the devil to use his mouth, how
could he intend to preach through a Waldensian?1079 In one of the lists of errors, ascribed to the Waldenses, is their
rejection of the universities of Paris, Prague, and Vienna and of all
university study as a waste of time.1080
It was an equally far-reaching
principle when the Waldenses declared that it was spiritual endowment, or
merit, and not the Church’s ordination which gave the right to bind and loose,
to consecrate and bless.1081 This was
recognized by their opponents as striking at the very root of the sacerdotal
system. They charged against them the definite affirmation of the right of
laymen to baptize and to administer the Lord’s Supper. No priest, continuing in
sin, could administer the eucharist, but any good layman might.1082 The charge was likewise made that women were allowed the function
also, and Rainerius says that no one rose up to deny the charge. It was also
charged that the Waldenses allowed laymen to receive confessions and absolve.1083 Differences on this point among the Waldenses were brought out at
the conference at Bergamo.
As for the administration of
baptism, there were also differences of view between the Waldenses of Italy and
those of France. There was a disposition, in some quarters at least, to deny
infant baptism and to some extent the opinion seems to have prevailed that
infants were saved without baptism.1084 Whatever the views of the early Waldenses were at the time of the
Reformation, according to the statement of Morel, they left the administration
of the sacraments to the priests. The early documents speak of the secrecy
observed by the Waldenses, and it is possible more was charged against them
than they would have openly acknowledged.
To the affirmation of these
fundamental principles the Waldenses, on the basis of the Sermon on the Mount,
added the rejection of oaths,1085 the condemnation of the death
penalty,1086 and some of them purgatory and prayers for the
dead.1087 There are
but two ways after death, the Waldenses declared, the way to heaven and the way
to hell.1088
