The Age of Reason - D. J. Medley (free novels .txt) 📗

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 Manichæism of those who bore at various times and in different places the names of Cathari, Patarius, or Albigenses. The attraction of the Manichæan 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 charges of evil practices against the Cathari were perhaps no truer than similar accusations against the Waldenses, and their missionary zeal was proof against even death at the stake. Nevertheless there is no doubt that the cause of progress and civilisation lay with Catholicism rather than with its opponents. The asceticism of the Cathari would have resulted, if not in the extinction of the race, at least in the destruction of the family: their identification of matter with the work of Satan would have been a bar to attempts at material improvement. Moreover, if ever theirs had become the conquering faith, they would have developed a sacerdotal class as privileged as the Catholic priesthood. The movement has been aptly described as "not a revolt against the Church, but a renunciation of man's dominion over nature."

[Sidenote: Their origin and spread.]

Whether the Catharist movement was spread westwards by the Paulicians who in the tenth century were transplanted from Armenia to Thrace, or sprang spontaneously from teachers who saw in the dualistic philosophy a condemnation, if not an explanation, of the materialisation of Christianity by the Church, may not be very certain; but there is no doubt that the Cathari of Western Europe always looked to the eastern side of the Adriatic as to the headquarters of their faith. In the eleventh century we hear of Cathari in certain places in North Italy, in France, and even in Germany; but although in Italy the name of Patarins came to be applied to the sect, we need trace no connection in the popular rising at Milan, which was stirred up by the Church reformers against the simony and clerical marriage practised by the Church of St. Ambrose. In the twelfth century the movement is heard of in an increasing number of places, in certain parts of France including Brittany, in Flanders among all classes, in the Rhine lands. Milan was supposed to be the headquarters in Italy. In England thirty persons of humble birth, probably from Flanders, were condemned in 1166, and an article was inserted in the Assize of Clarendon against them.

[Sidenote: Albigenses.]

But it was in the south of France that the Cathari, no less than the Waldenses, were chiefly to be found; with this difference, however—that, whereas the Waldenses confined themselves chiefly to Provence and the valley of the Rhone, the Cathari were scattered over a much larger area, although their chief strength lay in the valley of the Garonne. The town of Albi gave them their name of Albigenses, and Toulouse was the chief centre of their influence. In 1119 Calixtus II condemned the heresy at its centre in Toulouse. In 1139, at the second Lateran Council, Innocent II called upon the secular power for the first time to assist in expelling from the Church those who professed heretical opinions. In 1163 Alexander III, at the great Council of Tours, demanded that secular princes should imprison them. But the futility of these measures appeared from the colloquy held in 1165 at Lombers, near Albi, between representatives of the Church and of the Albigenses before mutually chosen judges, for it made plain the boldness of the heretics and their claim of equality with the Church. Indeed, in 1167 they actually held a council of their own at St. Felix de Caraman, near Toulouse, at which the chief Bishop of the Catharists was brought from Constantinople to preside, while a number of bishops were appointed, and all the business transacted was that of an equal and rival organisation to the Church of Rome.

[Sidenote: Attempts at suppression.]

During the next ten years (1167-77), while the religious allegiance of Europe was divided by the schism in the Papacy, Catharism gained a great hold over all classes in Languedoc and Gascony. Raymond V of Toulouse, the sovereign of Languedoc, finding himself powerless to check it, appealed for help; but the Kings of France and England agreed to a joint expedition only to abandon it, and the papal mission sent in 1178, composed of the papal legate, several bishops, and the Abbot of Clairvaux, only made heroes of the few heretics whom they ventured to excommunicate. In 1179, at the third Lateran Council, Alexander III proclaimed a crusade against all enemies of the Church, among whom were included, for the first time, professing Christians. The Abbot of Clairvaux, as papal legate, raised a force and reduced to submission Roger, Viscount of Béziers, who openly protected heretics; but the crusading army melted away at the end of the time of enlistment, and the only result of the expedition was the exasperation produced by the devastation of the land. After this failure no real attempt was made to stop the spread of heresy until the accession of Innocent III, while the fall of Jerusalem in 1186 turned all crusading ardour in the direction of Palestine.

[Sidenote: Raymond VI of Toulouse.]

Meanwhile, in 1194 Raymond V had been succeeded by his son, Raymond VI, who, if he was not actually a heretic, was at least indifferent to the interests of the Catholic faith. Most of his barons favoured Catharism. He himself was surrounded by a gay and cultured court, and was popular with his subjects. At the same time the local clergy neglected their duties, the barons plundered the Church, and the heretics, without persecuting the Catholics, were gradually extinguishing them in the dominions of Toulouse. Immediately on his accession in 1198 Innocent III appointed commissioners to visit the heretical district; but the local bishop, from jealousy, would not help. Some effect, however, was produced when, acting on the suggestion of a Spanish prelate, Diego de Azevedo, Bishop of Osma, they dismissed their retinues and started on a preaching tour among the people. The Bishop was accompanied by the Canon Dominic, and this mission was the germ out of which shortly grew the great Dominican Order. But the Bishop went back to Spain, and twice the papal legate excommunicated Raymond VI because he would give no help. Once Raymond made his peace with the Church, but the second pronouncement against him was shortly followed by the murder of the legate Peter of Castelnau, who had made himself peculiarly obnoxious (1208). Raymond's complicity was never proved, but Innocent was getting impatient, and his commissioners had made up their minds that it was easier and quicker to exterminate the heretics than to convert them. Raymond and all concerned in the murder were excommunicated, and a crusade was proclaimed against them. Philip Augustus of France allowed his barons to go, but excused himself on the ground of his relations with John of England. Raymond hoped to avoid the threatening storm by another abject submission; but he was obliged to surrender his chief fortresses and to join in person the army which now assembled for the extirpation of heresy in his own lands.

[Sidenote: The Crusade.]

Although Raymond was thus forced to appear in the ranks of his enemies, a leader in resistance was found in his nephew, Raymond Roger, Viscount of Béziers (1209). But his capital Béziers was stormed by the crusading army