The Church and the Empire - D. J. Medley (first color ebook reader txt) 📗

we would understand the developments of opinion in the succeeding centuries, it is important to discriminate; and a clear distinction can be made between those opponents of the Church whose views were aimed against the development of an extreme sacerdotalism within the Church, and those who, going beyond this negative position, reproduced the Manich�an theories of an early age and threatened to raise a rival organisation to that of the Christian Church.

[Sidenote: Anti-sacerdotalists.]

The object which those who belonged to the first of these divisions set before themselves, was to get behind the elaborate organisation which the Church had built up and which, instead of being a help to lead man to God, had now become a hindrance by which the knowledge of God was actually obscured. They would therefore sweep away all this machinery and return to the Christianity of apostolic times. Their objection was primarily moral, but it soon became doctrinal; and among the heretics of this class there was revived the Donatist theory that the sacraments depend for their efficacy on the moral condition of those who administer them. The campaign of the Church reformers against clerical marriage seemed directly to support this view; but the canons which forbade any one to be present at a Mass performed by a married priest had to be explained away as a mere enforcement of discipline; and in 1230 Gregory IX definitely laid it down that the suspension of a priest living in mortal sin merely affects him as an individual and does not invalidate his office as regards others. But such declarations did nothing to meet the common feeling of the great incompatibility between the awful powers with which the Church clothed her ministers and the sinful lives led by a large proportion of the existing clerical body.

[Sidenote: Extreme examples.]

From an early period in the twelfth century sectaries of this class are found in several quarters. Two extreme instances are Tanchelm, who preached in the Netherlands between 1115 and 1124, and Eon de l’Etoile, who gathered round him a band of desperate characters in Brittany about 1148. They have been described as “two frantic enthusiasts,” and Eon was almost certainly insane. Eon was imprisoned and his band dispersed. But Tanchelm found a large following when he taught that the hierarchy was null and that tithes should not be paid.

He came to an untimely end; but the influence of his doctrines continued so strong in Antwerp that St. Norbert came to the help of the local clergy and succeeded in obliterating all traces of the heresy.

[Sidenote: Petrobrusians and Henricians.]

It was in the south of France that this and all heresy assumed a more formidable shape. The population was very mixed; the feudal tie, whether to France, England, or the Emperor, was slight; there was more culture and luxury, the clergy were more careless of their duties, while Jews had greater privileges, than anywhere else in Europe.

Moreover, the early teachers were men of education. Two such were Peter de Bruis (1106-26), a priest, and Henry of Lausanne (1116-48), an ex-monk of Cluny. Peter was burnt and Henry probably died in prison. Peter preached in the land known later as Dauphin�; and the views of the Petrobrusians, as his followers were called, so continued to spread after his death that Peter the Venerable, the Abbot of Cluny, thought it worth while to write a tract in refutation of them.

Henry was more formidable. He preached over all the south of France, was condemned as a heretic at the Council of Pisa (1134), but was released and resumed his preaching. As the bishops could not and the lay nobles would not do anything against him, the papal legate obtained the help of St. Bernard, who, although ill, preached at Albi and elsewhere with an effect which was much enhanced by the miracles which in popular belief accompanied his efforts. Henry declined a debate to which Bernard challenged him, and so became discredited, and shortly after he fell into the hands of his enemies.

The tract of Peter the Venerable is practically the sole authority for the tenets of the Petrobrusians. According to this they were frankly anti-sacerdotal. Infant baptism was held to be useless, since it was performed with vicarious promises. Churches were useless, for the Church of God consists of the congregation of the faithful; the Cross, as being the instrument of Christ’s torture, was a symbol to be destroyed rather than invoked; there was no real presence and no sacrifice in the Mass, for Christ’s body was made and given once for all at the Last Supper; all offerings and prayers for the dead were useless, since each man would be judged on his own merits. Henry with his followers practically adopted these views and added attempts at social reform on Christian lines, especially in the matter of marriage, persuading courtesans to abandon their vicious life and promoting their union to some of his adherents.

[Sidenote: Waldenses.]

By far the most important body of these anti-sacerdotal heretics were the Waldenses. Their founder was Peter Waldo, whose name takes many forms—Waldez, Waldus, Waldensis. He was a wealthy merchant of Lyons who, moved with religious feelings and himself ignorant, caused two priests to translate into the vernacular Romance the New Testament and a collection of extracts from the chief writers of the early Church known as Sentences. From a perusal of these he became convinced that the way to spiritual perfection lay through poverty. He divested himself of his wealth and, as a way of carrying out the gospel further, he began to preach (1170-80). He attracted men and women of the poorer classes, whom he used as missionaries; and the neglect of the pulpit by the clergy caused these lay preachers to find ready listeners in the streets and even in the churches of Lyons. According to the custom of the day they adopted a special dress; and the sandals (_sabol_) which they wore in imitation of the Apostles gave them the name of Insabbatati. They called themselves the Poor Men of Lyons—Pauperes de Lugduno; Li Poure de Lyod. The Archbishop of Lyons excommunicated them; but Alexander III, at the request of Peter, allowed them to preach with permission of the priests. Their disregard of this proviso caused their excommunication by the Pope in 1184 and again in 1190; and from this time they began to repudiate the Church which limited their freedom, and to set up conventicles and an organisation of their own. The date of Peter’s death is not known.

[Sidenote: Their Views.]

The strong missionary spirit of these sectaries spread their doctrines with extraordinary rapidity. They consisted almost entirely of poor folk scattered over an area extending from Aragon to Bohemia; and from place to place differences of organisation and doctrine are to be observed. But they were not Protestants in the modern sense, and, despite persecution, many continued to consider themselves members of the Church. Thus on such doctrinal points as the Real Presence, purgatory, the invocation of saints, in many places they long continued to believe in them with their own explanations, and their repudiation of the teaching of the Church was a matter of gradual accomplishment. It is true that in places they strove to set up their own organisation. But the tendency of the Waldenses was much rather towards a simplification of the existing organisation. The power of binding and loosing was entirely rejected: an apostolic life and not ordination was the entrance to the priesthood. In fact, a layman was qualified to perform all the priestly functions, not merely to baptise and to preach, but even to hear confession and to consecrate the Eucharist. Thus the whole penitential machinery of the Church was set aside. Their specially religious teaching was largely ethical, and by the testimony of their enemies their life and conduct were singularly pure and simple. The stories of abominable practices among them perhaps arose from the extreme asceticism of a sect which professed voluntary poverty; but they were no more true than the similar tales told of the early Christians. Nor shall we regard from the same point of view as the Churchmen of the day the charge brought against them on the ground of their intimate knowledge of the Scriptures. Of these they had their own vernacular translations, and large portions of them were committed to memory. But such translations spread broadcast views unfettered by the traditional interpretation of the Church, and the missionary zeal of the Waldenses was proof against the horrors of the Inquisition with its prison, torture-chamber, and stake.

[Sidenote: Cathari.]

The most formidable development of hostility to the Church came from the Manich�ism of those who bore at various times and in different places the names of Cathari, Patarius, or Albigenses. The attraction of the Manich�an theory lay in its apparent explanation of the problem of evil. There exist side by side in the world a good principle and an evil principle. The latter is identifiable with matter and is the work of Satan. Hence sin consists in care for the material creation. It follows that all action tending to the reproduction of animal life is to be avoided, so that marriage was strongly discouraged. To the earlier views was added the doctrine of metempsychosis, or the transmigration of souls, which, acting as a means of reward and retribution, seemed fully to account for man’s sufferings. These views together explain the avoidance as food by the Cathari of everything which was the result of animal propagation, and also the severity of the ascetic practices which were charged against them.

[Sidenote: Their doctrines.]

In the sphere of doctrine the division between the Cathari and the Catholic Church was absolute. According to these sectaries Satan is the Jehovah of the Old Testament: hence all Scriptures before the Gospels are rejected. They accepted the New Testament, but regarded Christ as a phantasm and not a man. Thus the doctrine of the Real Presence had no meaning for them, indeed, they rejected the sacraments and all external and material manifestations of religion. Here, of course, they had much in common with the Waldenses, whom the Church confounded with them; and there seems little doubt that the way for the preaching of Catharism in the south of France was paved by the previous work of Peter de Bruis and, even more, of Henry of Lausanne.

But the reasons for opposition to the Church were not the same among the Waldenses and the Cathari; and the latter soon parted company with the seekers after primitive Christianity by developing an organisation of their own. Thus as the Cathari grew in numbers and carried on a vigorous missionary work, their devotees tended to form themselves into a Church. At least two distinct Orders were recognised. The Perfected were a kind of spiritual aristocracy who renounced all property and were sworn to celibacy, while they submitted themselves to penances of such rigour that their lives were often endangered, if not shortened. Below them were the mass of believers who were allowed to marry and to live in the world, assimilating themselves so far as possible to the ideal set before them by the higher caste. From the Perfected were chosen officers with the names of bishop and deacon, the latter acting as assistants to the chief officers. The ritual was simple but definite, and the most characteristic ceremony was the Consolamentum, the baptism of the Holy Ghost, by which the believers were placed in communion with the Perfected and so became absolved from all sin. It was performed by the imposition of hands together with the blessing and kiss of peace given by any two of the Perfected.

This was the process of “heretication,” the name given by the Inquisitors to admission into the Catharist Church; and, except in the case of the ministers, it was postponed until the believer lay upon his death-bed.

[Sidenote: Their effect.]

The