BOOK VI.
FROM THE DEPOSITION OF POPE GREGORY VI. TO THE DEATH
OF POPE CELESTINE III, A.D. 1046-1198.
CHAPTER XII.
SECTARIES—VISIONARIES
ALEXIUS COMNENUS receives from his daughter Anna the
title of “thirteenth apostle”, for his zeal against the Paulicians of Thrace,
who, in addition to then heterodoxy, had offended him by deserting him in his
wars with the Normans of Southern Italy. Under the same emperor another
remarkable party attracted for a time the attention of the Byzantine
government.
The Euchites or Massalians, who derived their name
from their practice of praying, are mentioned among the sects of the fourth
century by Epiphanius and Theodoret, and are said to have held that every man
has within him from his birth an evil spirit, who is to be kept down only by
unceasing prayer. The party had been generally supposed to have been long
extinct; but in the eleventh century it either emerged again from obscurity, or
a new sect, known by the same name and holding similar opinions, arose
independently. These later euchites, being persecuted by the Greeks, sought a
vent for their opinions among the Bulgarians and Slaves who bordered on the
empire; and they now, perhaps with opinions somewhat affected by contact with
the Paulicians, attempted, under the name of Bogomiles, to regain a footing at
Constantinople.
The new name of these sectaries has been variously
derived—from Bulgarian words which might refer to their frequent prayers for
the divine mercy; and as meaning in Slavonic “Friends of God”. In many respects
their opinions resembled those of the early Gnostics. God, they said, had two
sons, the elder of whom, Satanael, was associated with Him in the government of
the world, until for rebellion he was cast down from heaven, with a third part
of the angelic host, who had shared his crime. Satanael, like the demiurge of
gnosticism, framed the world, and created man, on whom God, at his entreaty,
bestowed a living soul. But Satanael became jealous of the privileges granted
to his creature, and in the form of a serpent he begat Cain; in consequence of
which he was stripped of the divine form which had until then been left to him,
and of his creative power. Continuing his enmity against mankind, he gave the
law by his servant Moses, and deluded the Jews into the belief that he was the
supreme God. But in the 5500th year of the world, God in compassion sent forth
his Son or Word, the archangel Michael, as to whose birth and humanity the
doctrine of the sect was docetic. Satanael, like the demiurge, instigated the
Jews to persecute and slay the Christ; and after the Son's resurrection he was
punished by being deprived of the which he had retained as part of his name,
and thus was reduced to Satan. It was held that the Son and the Spirit (who was
said to be begotten by the Son) would be reabsorbed into the Godhead when their
work in relation to man should be completed; but that in the meantime respect
should be paid to Satan and his angels, although not out of love, but lest they
should do hurt. It was said that God, although immaterial, had the form of an
old man with a flowing beard; that the Son appeared as a bearded man, the
Spirit as a smooth-faced youth; and under these forms the bogomiles professed
to see them in dreams and visions. As in older heretical systems, it was taught
that men are by nature of various classes; and it was held that at death the
body is to be shaken off as an unclean garment, and is to be annihilated for
ever.
In their worship the bogomiles were distinguished by a
simplicity which has in later times raised up champions to deny their manifest
heterodoxy. They disparaged the sacraments of the church—maintaining that its
baptism was but the baptism of John, whom they despised as a teacher of
legality; and that the Eucharist was a sacrifice of devils, whom they
supposed to dwell in all consecrated buildings. They professed to have a true
baptism of their own, which they administered to converts, with other rites of
gradual initiation into their mysteries. For the Lord’s supper they substituted
the repetition of the supplication for daily bread; and, while they objected to
prayers in churches, their own devotions consisted of repeating the Lord’s
prayer in stated numbers (as two or fifteen) and at stated times. They
denounced images and relics, and paid honour to the memory of the iconoclastic
emperors. They disparaged the saints of the church, and, although they admitted
the miracles done by the relics of saints, they supposed these to be wrought
through the power of evil spirits. They were enemies to all learning, classing
“grammarians” with the Jewish scribes. They rejected much of Holy Scripture,
and, when pressed with texts from those books which they admitted, they escaped
by allegorical explanations of them. They maintained the lawfulness of
disguising their tenets, on the ground that our Lord enjoined on us an outward
conformity to authorities which we disapprove, and that his own parables are
instances of disguise. In their appearance and manners they affected a monastic
solemnity and austerity; yet with this it need hardly be said that, as in all
similar cases, their enemies accuse them of combining not only abominable
rites, but gross licentiousness.
This sect had made great progress among the subjects
of Alexius, when his attention was called to it by public rumour. On this, he
ordered some suspected persons to be seized; and one of these, Diblatius, was
brought by torture to avow himself one of twelve apostles sent out by Basil,
the chief teacher of the bogomiles. Basil, who is described as a physician, was
a man far advanced in life; it was said that he had spent fifteen years in
learning his system, and fifty-two in teaching it. The emperor, having caused
him to be arrested, affected to treat him with great reverence, admitted him to
his own table, and professed a wish to receive instruction from him; and after
some hesitation Basil fell into the snare. In a secret chamber of the palace,
he was drawn into unfolding his doctrines to Alexius and his brother; and, when
the exposition was complete, the emperor, drawing aside a curtain, showed him a
scribe who had noted down his words. The doors of the room were then opened,
and the heresiarch found himself confronted with the patriarch, the senators,
and the clergy of the city. As it was impossible to deny the truth of the
written report, he strongly asserted the truth of his opinions, and declared
himself willing to endure innumerable deaths for them. After this scene, all
who were suspected of heresy were seized, and were brought before the emperor
in a place where two great fires had been made, one of them having a cross
beside it. Alexius told them that they were all to be burnt, but desired that
those who held the orthodox faith would range themselves under the cross, since
it would be better to die in orthodoxy than to live under suspicion of heresy.
After this not infallible test, all who had chosen the side of the cross were
set free; the others were imprisoned, and were plied from time to time with
inducements to recant. Many of them died in prison; but Basil alone, on whom
repeated conferences made no impression, was condemned to the flames, and,
after having in vain expected an angel to appear for his deliverance, suffered
in the hippodrome of Constantinople.
The opinions of the bogomiles did not die out with
Basil. In the reign of Manuel similar doctrines were taught by Constantius
Chrysomalos, and by a monk named Nephon, whose sway over the patriarch Cosmas
was such that for his sake the patriarch submitted to deprivation. Bogomilism
was secretly spread by teachers of both sexes; it found adherents among the
Greek monks in Egypt, although it does not appear to have made any progress, it
excited so much apprehension that the patriarch Eulogius of Alexandria wrote a
treatise against it and even after the middle of the thirteenth century, the
patriarch Germanus of Constantinople found it necessary to compose discourses
in refutation of this obstinate heresy.
WESTERN SECTS
In the West many circumstances concurred to favour the
growth of sectarianism. Foremost among these was the corruption of the clergy;
and the very efforts of Gregory VII and others at a reform in the interest of
Rome tended, by marking out the defects of the clergy for reprobation, to
encourage a spirit of opposition to them. Among other causes which contributed
to the same result were the fierce quarrels between the ecclesiastical and the
secular powers; the growing pretensions of the hierarchy to authority over the
things of this world; the narrowing of the limits of thought allowed within the
church; the frequent and scandalous contests of bishops for particular sees;
the interdicts and curses which inclined the minds of many to seek from some
other quarter the religious ordinances and consolations which the church denied
them. Accordingly, we now meet with sectaries in many places, and of various
characters.
(1.) TANCHELM. The name of Tanchelm has already been
incidentally mentioned. This man appeared in Flanders early in the twelfth
century, and the chief scene of his activity was Antwerp, where the people had
been prepared to welcome irregular teaching by the circumstance that their
populous town was under the charge of a single priest, whose life is said to
have been scandalous. The accounts of Tanchelm, as has been truly remarked,
have much in common with those of the anabaptists of the sixteenth century. He
affected a royal state, being attended by a bodyguard of 3,000 ruffians,
wearing a crown, and having a banner and a sword borne before him when he
preached. It is said that he claimed a divine character; that hymns were sung
to him, that a church was dedicated in his honour, and that the water in which
he had bathed was drunk or treasured up by his followers. He inveighed
violently against the priesthood and the sacraments; and it is said that he
combined with his lofty pretensions not only the practice but the teaching of
the grossest licentiousness. The career of this blasphemous and sanguinary
fanatic was cut short by a blow on the head from a priest, about the year 1116;
and, although the sect did not immediately come to an end, his followers were
reclaimed by Norbert about 1124.
(2.) EON. Another fanatical teacher of this time was
Eudo or Eon de Stella, who spread his opinions chiefly in Brittany. Although
not sprung from the lowest class of society, he is said to have been almost
ignorant of the alphabet, and the accounts of him are incredible unless on the
supposition that he was insane. He lived in great splendour, ordained bishops
and priests, distinguished his chief followers by the names of apostles and of
cardinal virtues, and is said to have kept his party together by means of food
prepared by the spirits of the air, of which the effect was such that they who
had once tasted it became irrevocably attached to the sect. Eon was brought
before Eugenius III at the council of Reims, in 1148, and, on being questioned,
avowed his belief that he was He who should come to judge the quick and the
dead. At the request of the bishop who had brought him to the council, his life
and limbs were spared; and the pope committed him to the care Samson,
archbishop of Reims, in whose custody he soon after died.
(3.) PETER OF BRUIS. A sectary of a more respectable
kind was a priest named Peter of Bruis, whose followers were known by the name
of Petrobrusians. After having, for some unknown cause, been deprived of a
pastoral cure which he had held, Peter, about the beginning of the century,
appeared as an independent teacher in the Alpine dioceses of Embrun, Gap,
Digne, and Arles; and, on being driven from that region, he removed into
Gascony. There he found a population prepared by the earlier prevalence of sectarian
opinions to receive him; he is described as “no longer whispering in hamlets,
but openly preaching to multitudes in towns”; and his success, especially in
the important city of Toulouse, was such as to astonish those who had been
disposed to attribute his earlier successes to the ignorance of the
mountaineers whom he had addressed. He vehemently attacked the system of the
church in doctrine and in government; his aim was to restore a nakedly
scriptural Christianity, without any allowance for change of circumstances, or
any consideration for the historical development of ages. Yet it would seem
that, while professing to regard scripture as the only source of religious
knowledge, he was inclined to discard the Old Testament, and perhaps to retain
no part of the New except the Gospels.
The points on which Peter chiefly insisted were five
in number: (1) That infants ought not to be baptized, inasmuch as conscious
personal faith is necessary in order to receive the benefits of the sacrament.
(2) That there ought to be no churches or other places hallowed for worship,
forasmuch as the true Church consists of the congregated faithful, and God
hears prayer equally wherever it may be offered. (3) That crosses ought not to
be reverenced, but, as being the memorials of the Saviour’s sufferings, ought
to be dishonoured, broken, and burnt. (4) He not only denied the change of the
eucharistic elements into the Lord's body, but held that the sacrament, having
been celebrated by our Lord once for all, ought not to be repeated. (5) He
taught that prayers, alms, and masses were unavailing for the dead.
The preaching of these doctrines was attended with
great effect. Multitudes who had been baptized in infancy submitted to
rebaptism; churches were profaned and destroyed; altars were overthrown,
crosses were burnt, priests were beaten by excited mobs, and monks were
compelled by torture to marry. Once, on Good Friday, Peter caused all the
crosses in the town where he was to be thrown into a bonfire, at which he
roasted flesh, and then, in disregard of the solemn fast, invited the
spectators to partake of it. But the feeling which usually waited on his
preaching was not universal; for, after a career of twenty years, he was seized
by the populace of St. Gilles in Provence, and, in vengeance for his outrages
against the cross, was himself burnt to death. Peter of Bruis was still alive,
when the “venerable” Peter of Cluny, in passing through his original
haunts, found his opinions largely prevailing there, and thus was induced to
compose a treatise, which is almost our only source of information as to the
sect. In this book he defends the whole system of the church, although it need
hardly be said that his arguments are often of a questionable kind. The
preface, written after the heresiarch's death, is addressed to the four
prelates whose dioceses were infected, and in it the abbot expresses a hope
that they may find his tract useful in argument, which he declares to be the
more Christian manner of dealing with heretics, although he holds that, in case
of necessity, the secular power may lawfully be called in to coerce them.
In the meantime, as the abbot of Cluny mentions, the
heresiarch had found a successor in one Henry, whom some suppose to have been
an Italian, and others to have been a Swiss. Henry was a deacon, and had been a
member of the Cluniac order. In his habits he still affected the severity of a
monk or a hermit, wearing a long beard, walking barefooted even in the depth of
winter, living on alms, and professing to limit himself to such things as were
merely necessary. Yet Hildebert and Bernard charge him with licentiousness of
life, and especially with a fondness for gaming. His eloquence was said to be
such that nothing but a heart of stone could resist it, and it was believed
that by his mere look he could read the secrets of the heart. He also enjoyed
the reputation of learning; but his right to this is denied by his opponents,
who allow him no other accomplishments than those of preaching and dicing. The
first place at which Henry is described as having made himself conspicuous was
Lausanne; and, as we soon after find that opinions closely resembling his were
entertained by some persons at Treves and at Cologne, it is probable that he
may have visited those cities on his way from Switzerland to Le Mans, where he
appeared in 1116. Having obtained from the bishop, Hildebert, permission to
preach during Lent, he made use of it to excite the people against the clergy,
who were insulted, attacked, and plundered, and were only saved from yet worse
outrages by the interference of the civil power. He also made strange attempts
at moral reform by encouraging marriages with prostitutes and women of servile
condition; and it is said that all such unions were unfortunate in their
consequences. During these proceedings, Hildebert had been absent on an
expedition to Rome; but on his return he was able, although not without much
difficulty, to drive out Henry, who afterwards preached at Poitiers and
Bordeaux—everywhere, according to St. Bernard, leaving such an impression that
he could not venture to revisit the place. In the south of France he met with
Peter of Bruis, and after Peter's death he became the leader of the sect, to
whose errors he is said to have made some additions, although the only further
difference from the system of the church that is recorded is a denunciation of
the system of chanting.
Peter of Cluny's tract against the Petrobrusians was
not without effect. At the council of Pisa, in 1135, Henry was brought by the
archbishop of Arles before Innocent II, by whom he was condemned as a heretic,
compelled to a retractation, and given over for custody to Bernard, who
furnished him with an order that he should be received as a monk of Clairvaux.
After a short detention he was set at liberty, on condition that he should not
return to his former haunts; but he speedily resumed his labours in the south
of France, and with such effect that, as Bernard reports, the churches were
soon without people, the people without priests, the priests without due
respect; that holy places were reckoned unholy, festivals were neglected,
sacraments were scorned, children remained unbaptized, and sinners died without
penance or the holy communion. In 1147 Eugenius II, who was then in
France, desired Alberic, cardinal-bishop of Ostia, to undertake a mission
against Henry, and Bernard, then fresh from his triumphs in preaching the
crusade, was persuaded by Alberic to accompany him. Nowhere had the abbot's
successes been more signal than on this mission. At Albi, where the people were
especially infected with error, the cardinal was received with insult; but when
Bernard arrived, five days later, his appearance was hailed with enthusiasm.
The cathedral was unable to contain the multitudes which pressed to hear him;
and when, after having discoursed on the chief points of difference, he desired
that all who preferred the catholic faith to heresy would hold up their hands,
every hand in the assembly was raised. Miracles were performed in such
abundance that the heretics slunk off in dismay, and wherever Bernard appeared,
so great was the excitement, that he was even afraid to encounter the crowds of
his admirers. On one occasion, when bread was carried to him for his blessing
(as was usual), he declared that, for the decision of the question between the
church and the heretics, every sick person who should taste of that bread would
be made whole. “If they receive with right faith they will be healed”,
interposed Geoffrey, bishop of Chartres, who feared that the abbot had been
carried too far by his enthusiasm. “That is not what I say”, cried Bernard,
“but of a truth those who taste shall be healed, that they may know us to be
the true and faithful messengers of God!”. The miracle is said to have followed
and the effect of it was decisive. Henry, driven from the city, had found a
refuge among the nobles of the neighbourhood, who, although indifferent to his
doctrines, were favourable to him as an enemy of the clergy. But at Bernard's
instance he was given up in chains to the bishop of Toulouse. His further
history appears to be unknown, and the sect, as a distinct body, seems to have
become speedily extinct, partly through the effect produced by a young girl of
Gascony, who, about the year 1151, used to lie insensible three days in each
month, and, on awaking, to testily eloquently and learnedly against the errors
of the Henricians.
(4.) CATHARI. The heretical opinions most widely
spread during this time were those of a Manichaean character, which are found
from England to the south of Italy, from the Hellespont to the Ebro.
Appearances of this kind have already come before us in the early part of the
eleventh century. But whereas those appearances, however similar to each other,
seem to have been isolated, we now find in the heretics a knowledge of their
own numbers and of the wide extent of their communion, with a formidable system
of organization. The connection with the East becomes more distinct, and the
oriental tone of their doctrine is too plain to be mistaken.
Of the names by which these sectaries were known, the
commonest was that of Cathari (in Italian, Gazzari,
and in German, Ketzer), as to which, although other derivations
have been proposed for it, there appears to be no reason for doubting that it
is of Greek origin, and relates to their profession of purity. Among their
other names were—Publicani or Poplicani, which
seems to point to a connection with the Paulicians; Patarini,
a name which, from having belonged to the opponents of clerical marriage at Milan
in the preceding century, was now transferred to parties which disparaged all
marriage, or perhaps had come to be used, in forgetfulness of its origin, as a
convenient designation for sectaries; Apostolici, from their
pretension to an apostolical manner of life; Bonshommes, a name
which was affected by themselves and bestowed on them by those who favoured
them; Bulgari or Bougres which connects them
with Bulgaria, but came to bear a meaning of the most odious kind. In Flanders
they were styled Pyphles, as belonging to the “people” or poorer
classes; in the south of France, Tisserands, because many of them were
weavers; some of them were called after the names of leaders, as the Arnoldists, who
were probably connected with an “arch-catharist” of Cologne named Arnold; while
other names were derived from places—such as that of Agenenses,
and, at a later time, the more celebrated name of Albigenses.
Sectaries who may be identified with the cathari
appear during this time in many quarters — at Cologne and Bonn, at Reims and
Toul, at Liege, Arras, and other places in Flanders; at Soissons, at Auxerre
(where a bishop named Hugh was styled the “hammer of the heretics”), and
at Vezelay; at Besançon, and perhaps at Perigueux (although the Manichaeism of
the sectaries there is somewhat doubtful). An English writer of the time
describes them as numerous in Anjou, but as swarming in Burgundy and Aquitaine.
Spain was also infested by them; and in England itself a party of about thirty
“Publicans” was discovered at Oxford about 1160. They were all Germans except a
female English convert, who afterwards recanted; and all are described as
utterly illiterate, with the exception of their leader, one Gerard. These
sectaries were examined by a council held at Oxford, in the presence of Henry
II, who was especially desirous at that time to give the exiled primate's party
no pretext for representing him as favourable to heresy. By the king’s command
they were branded in the face, severely flogged, and driven out of the town,
after which, according to some writers, they perished in the fields by cold and
hunger, as the people would hold no communication with them, while other
authorities tell us that they were sent across the sea.
In the treatment of such persons in general, the king
of England is honourably distinguished from most of his contemporaries; for we
are told that while the Publicans were burnt in many places throughout France,
king Henry would by no means allow this in his dominions, although there were
many of them there; and it would seem that even warnings and calamities, which
were represented as miraculous, were unable to change his policy in this
respect. In most places where heretics were found, they were committed to the
flames under the authority of bishops and princes, or by the violence of the
multitude, and it is generally related that they bore their fate with a
courage, and even with an appearance of exultation, which were traced to
demoniacal influence. Yet there were eminent teachers who took a truer view of
the manner in which error should be dealt with, and among these Bernard was
conspicuous. In 1146 he received from Everwin, provost of Steinfeld, an account
of some sectaries at Cologne, who were divided into two parties—the one
unquestionably Manichaean, while the other seems to have been nearly akin to
the Petrobrusians and Henricians. It was through the dissensions of these
parties among themselves that they had been discovered; some of them, after a discussion
with the clergy, had been hurried away and burnt by the mob; and Everwin
expresses his regret for this violence, and asks Bernard to furnish him with
arguments and authorities against the errors which he reports to him. In
consequence of this application, Bernard composed two sermons on the text,
“Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines”. In these sermons
he argues zealously against the sectaries, and strongly denounces their
peculiarities. But as to the right manner of dealing with them, his opinion is
decidedly against persecution and bloodshed. “They are to be taken”, he says,
“not with arms but with arguments; and, if possible, they are to be reconciled
to the Catholic church, and recalled to the true faith. And that this is the
will of Him who will have all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of
the truth, appears from its being said, not simply, ‘Take the foxes’ but ‘Take
the foxes’ He commands that they be gained for Himself and for his spouse, the
church”. The utmost that Bernard would sanction is that obstinate heretics
should be driven away or imprisoned, rather than that they should destroy the
spiritual vines. In like manner, St. Hildegard, while she everywhere expresses
a strong detestation of heretics, and exhorts the secular authorities to drive
them away by confiscation and banishment, adds that they ought not to be slain,
“forasmuch as they are God’s image”. And Peter the Chanter of Paris, in the end
of the century, condemns both capital punishment of heretics and the use of
ordeals for their trial.
In Italy the cathari were to be found even as far
south as Calabria. But they were especially numerous m Lombardy, where the
heretics of Monteforte had appeared at an earlier time, and from the days of
Ariald and Herlembald there had been a strong feeling against the clergy; and
there they are described as abounding in cities and in suburbs, in villages and
in castles, and as teaching publicly without fear or hindrance. The sectaries
of Lombardy were divided into parties—those of Concorrezzo and of Albano mutually
excommunicating each other; but with this exception it is said that their
congregations were everywhere in communion. Of these churches sixteen are
enumerated—in Italy and France, in Slavonia, at Constantinople (where there
were one of Latins and one of Greeks), and elsewhere in the east; and it is
said that all the rest were derived from those of Bulgaria and Dugunthia. The
writer who gives this information reckons the whole number of the sect,
including both sexes, at less than four thousand; but it would seem that this
estimate was meant to exclude all but the “perfect” or highest grade of them.
But the chief stronghold of these sectaries was in the
south of France, where circumstances were very favourable to the spreading of
their opinions. The population of this territory were widely different from the
northern French, to whom their dialect, the langue d'oc, was
even unintelligible. Toulouse, the capital, was the ancient seat of the Arian
Gothic monarchy, and heresy is said to have always lingered in the region. The
nobles were remarkable for their gay and luxurious manner of life, and among
them was cultivated a vernacular poetry of love and chivalry, strongly tinged
with licentiousness, and unsparing in its satire against the clergy, who had
fallen into tastes and habits too strongly resembling their own. The citizens
had been enriched by commerce, and had achieved for themselves a degree of
political freedom which was elsewhere unknown. The tone of thought and feeling
was independent; Peter of Bruis and Henry had found an eager reception among
the people, and had paved the way for other teaching hostile to the church. To
the more serious, the heresy was commended by its professions of austerity; to
those of opposite character, by its enmity to the clergy, and by the indulgence
which it allowed to such of its converts as had not yet taken on themselves the
obligations of its highest grade. We have already seen that in the beginning of
the eleventh century some Manicheans were discovered and put to death at
Toulouse. The renewed progress of heresy in the same region had been noticed
and denounced as early as the year 1119, when Calixtus II held a council at
that city; and the denunciation had been repeated by the Lateran council of
1139, by the council of Reims in 1148, and by that of Tours in 1163—all held
under the presidency of popes. In 1165 a conference took place between some
bishops and some of the "good men" (as they styled themselves) at
Lombers, a little town near Albi; where the sectaries behaved with all the
consciousness of strength, defied the sentence which was passed against their
opinions, and were allowed to depart without any attempt to extend it to their
persons. Some years later, we read of a council held by the heretics themselves
at St. Felix de Caraman, near Toulouse, under the presidency of a personage
styled “Pope Niquinta”—a name which has been identified with that of one
Nicetas, who is said by a writer of the time to have come from Constantinople
into Lombardy. A vast multitude of both sexes flocked to receive from this
chief the mystical rite which was styled consolamentum. Representatives
of several catharist churches appeared; bishops were chosen and ordained for
these communities; and, with a view to the preservation of harmony among the
sectaries, Niquinta told them that all churches were, like the seven churches of
Asia, originally independent of each other; that such was still the case with
their brethren of Bulgaria, Dalmatia, and the east; and he charged them to do
in like manner.
In 1177 Raymond V, count of Toulouse, addressed a
letter to the abbot of Citeaux and his chapter, requesting the assistance of
the order against the heretics by whom his dominions were infested. About the
same time the kings of France and England —probably at the count's instance—
concerted measures for the suppression of the heresy; and at their request
Peter, cardinal of St. Chrysogonus, Henry, abbot of Clairvaux, Guarin,
archbishop of Bourges, Reginald, bishop of Bath, John, bishop of Poitiers, and
others undertook a mission into the affected country. These commissioners
describe the heresy as triumphant, not only among the people but among the
clergy. On entering Toulouse they were hooted, and were reviled as hypocrites
and heretics. They disputed with two leaders of the cathari, who disavowed the
chief errors which were laid to their charge, and denied that they had ever
taught so. But count Raymond and others deposed that they had often heard them
vent those doctrines, and, as they refused to abjure, on the ground that oaths
were unlawful, they were solemnly excommunicated. The chief supporter of the
heresy at Toulouse, an old man of great wealth and powerful connexions, named
Peter Moran, who is said to have been styled John the Evangelist, abjured his
errors, and was punished by being repeatedly flogged, amerced in all his
property, and sent on pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Roger, viscount of Beziers,
on being summoned to expel the heretics, and to procure the release of the
bishop of Albi, who was in their hands, withdrew into an inaccessible part of
his territories. He was therefore denounced excommunicate in the name of the
pope, and was defied in feudal form on the part of the two kings. Many of the
sectaries were brought to an abjuration; but this was in some cases only
evasive and insincere, and the mission is described by a contemporary as having
had little success.
In 1179 the council of Lateran passed a canon against
the “Cathari, Patarini, or Publicani”, denouncing all who should favour them,
and promising the indulgences and privileges of crusaders to those who should
take arms against them. In 1181 Henry of Clairvaux, who at the council had been
created cardinal-bishop of Albano, again proceeded into the south of France, as
papal legate. His preaching was seconded, not only by miracles in refutation of
the heretical opinions as to the Eucharist, but by an army which caused much
devastation and bloodshed. Roger of Beziers was compelled to profess that he
would show no favour to heretics, and after his death, in 1194, an oath to the
same effect was taken by the guardians of his son, Raymond Rogers. Lucius III,
in conjunction with the emperor Frederick, sent forth from Verona in 1184 a
decree against all heretics, and prescribed measures for the suppression of
their errors. But we shall see hereafter that, notwithstanding all the measures
both of persuasion and of force which had been employed, the heresy continued
to retain its hold on the population of Languedoc.
The leading principle of these sectaries was dualism;
but, while some held this in the full Manichaean sense of supposing two gods,
independent of and opposed to each other, others held a modified opinion,
nearly resembling that of the bogomiles—that the creator of evil was himself
created by the good god, and had fallen from his first estate by rebellion. The
creation of the elements was by some ascribed to the good god, and by others to
the bad; but all agreed in referring the division of the elements, and the
formation of the world from out of them, to the bad god; and from the
imperfection of the world—from the fire which burns and the water which
drowns—it was argued that it could not be the work of Him who is all-perfect.
The Son of God was said to be the highest angel, and was held to be inferior to
the Father, as the Holy Ghost to the Son.
It was said that Adam and Eve were formed by the
devil, and had souls of light imprisoned within their fleshly bodies; that the
forbidden fruit was carnal intercourse; and that Cain was begotten by the
devil. The god of the Old Testament was declared to be cruel, false, and
changeable. The angel who foretold the birth of St. John the Baptist was said
to have been sent by the devil, as was also John himself; the baptism of John
was of the devil, and whatever was well spoken by him as to Christ, was spoken
without his will or understanding. The reality of the Saviour’s incarnation was
denied by the sectaries in general; by some the blessed Virgin was supposed to
be an angel, while some regarded her as an allegorical representative of the
church, and others supposed her to have been born of a woman alone, without any
human father.
The bodily form of the Saviour, his actions and
sufferings, were explained on the docetic principle; the gospel miracles were
said to have been wrought in no other than a spiritual sense—such as feeding
spiritual hunger, healing the diseases of the soul, or raising from the death
of sin; and in this sense the sectaries claimed for themselves a continuance of
miraculous power, by virtue of the Saviour’s promise.
The later miracles of the church were denied, and
members of the sect sometimes threw ridicule on them by applying to some famous
worker of miracles for the cure of a pretended ailment, and afterwards exposing
the imposture.
The cathari professed an especial knowledge of
Scripture, and a reverence for it which excluded all deference to tradition,
and to the authority of the doctors of the church. Yet, like many other
sectaries whom we have met with, they regarded Moses as an organ of the devil,
and disparaged the Old Testament in general, although they made exceptions in
favour of such parts of it as are quoted in the New Testament, and some of them
seem to have admitted the poetical and prophetical books. They had vernacular versions
of the Scriptures, and it is a significant fact as to the origin of the sect
that these were based on the Greek. With these, they received some apocryphal
books, which were also of eastern origin—among them, an apocryphal Gospel of
St. John.
The cathari are said to have held the doctrine of
absolute predestination, and to have been traducianists in their opinion as to
the soul. By their Manichaean view as to the origin of all visible things they
were led to deny the efficacy of Baptism administered with water, and the
possibility of any change in the Eucharist. Christ, they said, did not baptize
with water, but with the word and the Holy Spirit. They also derided the rite
of confirmation, and the whole ecclesiastical system of confession, penance,
and excommunication. Yet they had sacraments of their own, which, with a rigour
far exceeding the most rigid system of the church, they declared to be
absolutely necessary to salvation; so that, from their manner of insisting on
rites and works, their adversaries took occasion to charge them with denying
the power of faith. Of these sacraments, the chief was the consolamentum,
which they supposed to be the true baptism of fire—the rite which at once
restored to each man for his guide the original heavenly soul which had been
lost by the fall, and conveyed the gift of the consoling Spirit or Paraclete.
The form of administering this began with the novice's publicly confessing his
sins, and professing a desire to give himself to God and the gospel; after
which the minister, holding the Gospel of St. John (or, according to some
authorities, the whole New Testament) before his breast, pronounced absolution,
laid the book on the novice’s head, repeating the Lord’s prayer seven times,
and welcomed him by taking his right hand and kissing him. The administration
of this rite was not limited to the clergy of the sect, but might, in case of
need, be performed by any one who had received it—even by women. But if it were
given by a sinner, it was null; and, in order to guard in some degree against
the danger of its invalidity, it was commonly received twice, or oftener. For
any grievous sin committed afterwards—such as eating flesh, cheese, or eggs—it
was necessary to do penance and to be reconsoled but as to the more venial
sins, a sincere confession was regarded as sufficient, and for this purpose
there was a solemn monthly confession, styled apparcilamentum.
The other sacraments of the sect were—Blessing of
Bread (which was performed over their daily food, and by which they supposed
themselves to receive the spiritual nourishment of the Saviour’s body),
Penance, and Ordination. The whole ritual system of the church was condemned;
churches were said to be dens of thieves, church bells to be trumpets of
devils, the cross to be the mark of the beast, the abomination of desolation
standing in the holy place. Images were denounced, and it is said that, by way
of bringing them into contempt, the sectaries painted the saints under an
uncomely form, and departed from the traditional type in representing the
Saviour’s cross. Lights and incense, vestments, altars, chanting, the
ceremonies of the mass and of ordination, holy water, relics, pilgrimages,
unction of the sick, the doctrine of purgatory, the intercession of saints, the
use of aims, prayers and masses for the dead, the festivals of the saints and
all other holy days of the church, were utterly disallowed. But the cathari are
said to have kept in honour of their founder a festival called Malilosa,
which is identified by Eckbert of Schonau with the Manichaean Bema,
although that was celebrated in March, and the Melilosa in
autumn.
Their opinion as to the origin of matter involved the
denial of the resurrection of the body; and they are said—(although this seems
irreconcilable with other opinions imputed to them)—to have held that all sins
are equal, and will be equally punished—that “the traitor Judas will fare
no worse than the child of one day old”. They denied that the true priesthood
was in the Roman church, which they supposed to have been apostate from the
time of pope Sylvester, whom they regarded as the Antichrist. The church was
the harlot of the Apocalypse; all its ministrations were vain, and the true
priesthood was confined to their own communion. But, unless many ancient
writers are mistaken, they had a pope of their own in Bulgaria, with whom the
western sectaries kept up an intercourse. They had also an order of bishops,
under each of whom were two chief assistants, known as his elder and his
younger son, and an order of deacons.
The members of the sect were divided into two classes
—the imperfect or foederati (who, according
to some writers, were subdivided into hearers and believers)
and the elect or perfect. The perfect were those
who had received the and by the form of admission to it were pledged to great
severity of life. They no longer belonged to themselves, but were bound to
travel and to labour for the service of the sect; they were to avoid and to renounce
marriage, which was declared to be so fatal that no married persons could hope
for salvation unless they separated before death; and, as a consequence of the
opinion as to the unlawfulness of all sexual intercourse, they were to abstain
from eating animals or their productions—fish alone, as coming out of the
water, being excepted. And as it was held that penance for sins would be
wrought out in this world by means of a transmigration of the soul, it was
forbidden to kill all animals, except creeping things, in which it was believed
that souls capable of salvation could not be contained.
The cathari reproached the church for assuming that
there were various states of life in which men might be saved, and taught that
their own sect and state only were lawful. As, in order to salvation, it was
absolutely necessary to die in the sect, the foederati were
required to receive the consolamentum on their sick-beds, if not
before; many entered into an agreement known as “la Convenenza”, that it should
be administered to them in their last moments; and some, after having received
it, starved themselves to death lest they should be again defiled by a relapse
into sin. Besides this, which was styled endura, suicide was
allowed in various cases, such as that of extreme persecution; and it is said
that, in order to obtain for the receivers of clinical consolation a higher
place in glory, it was usual for their friends to starve or to strangle them.
Reinerius Sacchoni tells us that many of those who had
been admitted into the perfect grade, regretted that they had not taken
advantage of their former immunity to indulge more fully in sin; that, in
consequence of the belief in the all-purifying virtue of the consolamentum,
the lives of the foederati were very lax; and that he himself,
during a connection of seventeen years with the sect, had never seen any member
of it pray by himself, or show any token of sorrow for sin. Other writers bring
against the cathari accusations of magic, incest, and other abominations such
as are usually laid to the charge of heretical parties. Oaths, and even
affirmations, such as “truly” and “certainly”, were strictly forbidden; it is
said that the “perfect” would rather die than swear, although the “believers”
swore as freely as they lied. The use of equivocation was sanctioned,
especially in answer to questions as to the sect, so that the opponents of the
cathari compare them to eels, “which, the more tightly they are squeezed, the
more easily they slip away”. They considered all war and all capital punishment
to be murder, and declared the pope and his bishops to be murderers for
countenancing wars; and they denounced with especial severity all wars and
persecutions for the sake of religion. The “perfect” renounced all property,
professing to follow the Saviour and his apostles in poverty, and they were
constant in declaiming against the wealth and secularity of the clergy. It is,
however, said that they themselves were fond of money, that they practised
usury and other unscrupulous means of getting it, and that—partly from avarice,
and partly from a disbelief in the efficacy of alms towards salvation—they were
uncharitable to the poor. The graver invectives against the clergy were
relieved by the performance of ludicrous parodies on the services of the
church.
The zeal of the cathari in attempting to gain
proselytes was indefatigable. They distributed little tracts in favour of their
opinions—sometimes leaving them on the mountains, in the hope that shepherds
might find them and might carry them to the clergy to read. The missionaries of
the sect disguised themselves, changed their names, and assumed the character
of catholics, that they might enter into disputation with avowed catharists,
and might allow these to gain the appearance of victory. In order that they
might have the arts of disputation at their command, young men of promising
abilities were commonly sent from Lombardy and Tuscany to acquire dialectical
and theological knowledge in the schools of Paris. The members of the sect were
made known to their brethren by letters of recommendation and by secret signs;
even their houses were distinguished by marks which enabled the initiated
to recognize them. Their hospitality to members of their own community was
unbounded, as we learn especially from a letter written by a person who,
affecting the character of a brother, had lived on them for some years—being
recommended by one congregation to another, from Lombardy to the Danube, and
partaking of the luxuries which they enjoyed in secret. The rigid lives (in
appearance, at least) of the perfect produced a strong impression on those who
saw them, so that many of them even gained a high reputation for sanctity.
Thus, after the death of one Armanno Pungilupo, at Ferrara, in 1269, the
Ferrarese demanded canonization for him on the strength of his holy life and of
miracles which he was said to have done, and the claim was supported not only
by the canons of the cathedral, but apparently by the bishop. The investigation
of the case lasted for no less than thirty years; but at length it was clearly
proved that Pungilupo, while professing to forswear the patarine errors with
which he had at one time been charged, had continued to be in reality an active
official of the sect; and, although the canons had almost to the last adhered
to his cause, Boniface VIII, decreed in 1301 that his body should be taken up
and burnt as that of a heretic, and that an altar which had been erected to
him, with all pictures and sculptures in honour of him, should be destroyed.
(5.) PASAGINI. Among the minor sects of the time, the
Pasagini, of northern Italy, may be mentioned on account of the opposite nature
of their errors in some respects to those of the cathari. By some, the name of
these sectaries has been deduced from their unsettled manner of life; by
others, from pasagium, a common term for the crusades, by means of which
expeditions it is supposed that their opinions were brought into the west. Like
the Manichaean heretics, the pasagini denied the unity and the
equality of the Divine Persons, and condemned the Roman church; but, in marked
opposition to the catharist doctrines as to the Old Testament, they maintained
the abiding obligation of the Mosaic law —of circumcision, the sabbath, and the
distinction of clean and unclean meats.
(6.) WALDENSES. The early history of the Waldenses has
been obscured by two opposite parties who identify them with the Albigenses—the
one party with a view of involving Waldenses as well as Albigenses in a common
charge of Manichaeism, while the other party regards the Albigenses, no less
than the Waldenses properly so called, as free from Manichaean error, and as
the inheritors and maintainers of a pure and scriptural Christianity. By the
supporters of this latter view, the name of the sect is derived from the valleys of
Piedmont, where its faith is supposed to have been preserved and transmitted
from the time of the apostles by a chain of witnesses, among whom Vigilantius,
in the fourth century, and Claudius of Turin, in the ninth, are conspicuous.
The Waldenses themselves, in the thirteenth century, professed to have existed
as a distinct body from the time of pope Sylvester I—when they supposed that
the poison of secularity had been poured into the church by the imaginary
donation of Constantine—or even from the days of the apostles. But such
pretensions are contradicted by the unanimous testimony of writers who lived
soon after the origin of the sect—that it was founded by one Waldo or
Waldensis, about the year 1170. And the only connection of their name with
valleys in the early writers is of a figurative kind; as where one tells us
that they styled themselves Vallenses from sojourning in the vale of
tears, or where another derives the name of Valdenses from
their dwelling in the deep and dense valleys of darkness and
error.
Peter Waldo, a rich merchant of Lyons, is said to have
been deeply impressed by the death of one of his fellow-citizens, which took
place at a meeting of the chief inhabitants of the place. His mind being thus
turned to spiritual things, he became desirous to understand the Gospels which
he had been accustomed to hear in church; and he employed two ecclesiastics,
Stephen of Evisa (or Ansa), and Bernard Ydros, to translate them into the
vernacular tongue, with other portions of scripture and some passages of the
fathers, which were regularly arranged under heads. Struck with the idea of
imitating our Lord and His apostles in voluntary poverty, Peter threw all his
wealth to the poor, and, in company with some associates of both sexes whom he
had gained, he began to preach in the streets of the city, and in the
neighbouring villages. But the archbishop of Lyons, on hearing of these
proceedings, forbade Peter and his friends to teach; and on receiving the
answer that they must “obey God rather than man”—that the Saviour had
commanded them to “preach the gospel to every creature”—he excommunicated them,
and expelled them from his diocese. On this, Peter, who had no intention of
separating from the church, but aimed at the revival of what he supposed to be
apostolical purity within it, sent two of his party to Rome, with orders to
exhibit to Alexander III some specimens of their translations from the
Scriptures, and to request his sanction for their labours. The subject was
referred by the pope to a commission, and Walter Map, archdeacon of Oxford, who
has left an account of the proceedings, was appointed to examine the Waldenses.
Their simplicity and their ignorance of theological language excited the
laughter of the examiners, and their application to the pope was ineffectual,
although the Lateran council, which was sitting at the time, did not include
them in its condemnation of heretical parties. In 1184, however, those who
falsely style themselves humilliati, or “poor men of Lyons”,
were, with other sectaries, put under perpetual anathema by Lucius III; and it
would seem that to them the pope intended especially to point in his
denunciation of some who, under an appearance of piety, presume to preach
without being duly sent, so that the condemnation was not for heterodoxy, but
for irregularity.
From this time the “poor men of Lyons” (as they
were called from their claim to evangelical poverty of spirit) became more
decidedly separate from the church, and their opinions were more distinctly
developed in opposition to it. They spread into the south of France, into
Lombardy, and into Aragon, wherein 1194 Alfonso II issued a decree for their
expulsion as enemies of the cross and of the kingdom. The earliest real
evidence which connects them with Piedmont is of the year 1198, when James,
bishop of Turin, obtained from the emperor Otho IV authority to use forcible
measures against them. The progress of the sect was rapid. In Lombardy and
Provence the Waldenses had more schools than the Catholics; their preachers
disputed and taught publicly, while the number and importance of the patrons
whom they had gained rendered it dangerous to interfere with them. In Germany
we are told that they had forty-one schools in the diocese of Passau, and they
were numerous in the dioceses of Metz and Toul. In most of these quarters the
ground had been prepared for them by the labours of earlier sectaries, and by
the faults and unpopularity of the clergy; and their zeal in endeavouring to
gain converts was unremitting. Female agency was largely employed, and through
it the men were won “as the serpent deceived Adam by means of Eve”. The
missionaries of the sect are said to have used underhand arts for the purpose
of spreading their doctrines; thus they would disguise themselves as pedlars,
and having in that character obtained access to the houses of nobles, they took
occasion from the nature of their wares to exhort to the purchase of heavenly
jewels. With the simpler people, they began by promising to disclose great
things to them; and, after having tried their secrecy by imparting to them some
plain lessons of morality with a confidential and mysterious air, they went on
to teach the more peculiar doctrines of the sect. Their eagerness to study and
to learn, and their remarkable acquaintance with the vernacular Scriptures, are
acknowledged by their adversaries. Labourers and artisans, after the work of
the day, devoted their evening hours to study; and it is stated, in reproof of
the indolence of the clergy, that a poor Waldensian used to swim across a river
in wintry nights to reach a catholic whom he wished to convert. They taught and
learned everywhere—even in lazar-houses. If any ignorant person met their
exhortations to learn by pleading inability, they told him that, by learning a
single word daily, he would in a year master more than three hundred. But the
knowledge of the sectaries was not of any wide or scholarly kind, so that they
are often derided for their illiteracy, through which it is said that they fell
into ludicrous misinterpretations of Scripture and as they were themselves
illiterate, they made their ignorance a ground for condemning all “privileged”
or liberal studies. It is said, too, that in consequence of their occupation in
the study of Scripture, they allowed but little time for devotion, and that they
admitted no other form of prayer but the Paternoster.
The especial peculiarity of the Waldenses was that,
while they avoided the Manichaeism by which the sectaries of their time were
for the most part infected, they endeavoured more thoroughly than the
Petrobrusians or the Henricians to form a system of belief and practice derived
from the Scriptures only. At first their distinctive tenet had been the right
of the laity to preach; and this they gradually carried out to the extent of
maintaining, not only that lay persons might teach in subordination to the authorities
of the church, but that they might preach and might administer all Christian
rites in opposition to the clergy; that the right to minister was not conferred
by ordination, but depended on personal piety. In the early days of the sect
this claim was not limited to the male sex; but it would seem that the
ministrations of women were afterwards forbidden. From this principle the
Waldenses proceeded to a general enmity against the clergy, whom they charged
with having cast them out of the church from envy of their virtue and
popularity, and decried in all possible ways. After their excommunication, they
declared the pope to be the source of all error, the church to be the
apocalyptic beast and the whore of Babylon; that it had been apostate, and had
lost its spiritual power, from the time of Sylvester, whom they identified with
the “little horn” of Daniel’s prophecy, although they held that in all
ages there had been some who maintained the true faith, and were inheritors of
salvation. They limited salvation to their own sect, as being the only body
which lived like the Saviour and his apostles. They declared monks and clergy
to be the scribes and pharisees, children of the devil, disallowed all
distinctions of order and rank among them, and wished to confiscate all their
endowments and privileges, so as to reduce them to the condition of diggers,
earning their bread by the labour of their hands. Yet, while they themselves
professed rigid evangelical poverty, and avoided the pursuits by which wealth
might be gained, it was held that the teachers were entitled to be maintained
by the “imperfect” members of the sect and some of their opponents represent
them as notorious for idleness, and for a love of basking lazily in the
sunshine.
Like the cathari, the Waldenses opposed the whole
ritual system of the church, with everything that pretended to a symbolical
character, and denied the claims of the clergy to the powers of
excommunication, absolution, and exorcism. They also disallowed the right of
the church to make laws or constitutions, alleging that the Saviour’s teaching
was enough. They attended the public services, confessed and communicated, but
it is said that in their hearts they mocked at such observances. They denied
the efficacy of baptism, especially in the case of infants, whom they believed
to be saved without it. As to the Eucharist, some represent them as supposing
it to be merely figurative; but according to other authorities they held that
the elements really underwent a change—not, however, in the hands of the
priest, but in the mouth of the faithful receiver. In the consecration, as in
the rest of their services, they made use of the vernacular tongue. They
denounced the penitential system of the church, as alike burdensome and
unavailing, and contrasted with it the full and free forgiveness which their
own sect offered, after the example of the Saviour’s words, “Go, and sin no
more”. They denied the doctrine of purgatory, and the lawfulness of the
practices connected with it—some of them believing in an intermediate state of
rest or of punishment, while others held that souls on leaving the body go at
once to their final abode. They denied the miracles of the church, and
pretended to none of their own, although in later times some of them professed
to see visions.
The Waldenses are described as quiet, modest, and
formal in their manners. They regarded a lie as a mortal sin, which no
circumstances could excuse; but it is said that they avoided answering
directly, and had “feigned consciences” which suggested ingenious evasions
to them. They eschewed commerce on account of the falsehoods which were
supposed to be involved in the practice of it, and restricted themselves to
manual labour. As to oaths, war, and capital punishment, their views agreed
with those of the cathari. At the outset they affected poverty of dress, and
one of their names —or —was derived from the sandals which they wore in
imitation of the apostles but such peculiarities were afterwards abandoned, and
they are described as grave but not sordid in their attire. They avoided and
sternly denounced the ordinary amusements of the world; “every step that one
takes at a dance”, it was said, “is a leap towards hell”. They were scrupulous
in the use of blessings before and after meals. Unlike the cathari, they held
it lawful to eat meat, even on days when it was forbidden by the church and
they held marriage to be lawful, although they regarded celibacy as higher.
Much as the Waldenses differed from the church, it is
admitted by their ecclesiastical opponents that they were “far less
perverse than other heretic”, that they were sound in their faith as to the
doctrines which relate to God, and received all the articles of the creed so
that, in the south of France, they were sometimes allied with the clergy in
defence of these truths against Manichaean and other sectaries. While they
highly exalted the gospel above the law, it was in no spirit of Manichaean disparagement
of the older scriptures. And, although they did not escape the popular charges
of secret and abominable rites, or the imputation of hypocrisy, the general
purity of their morals is allowed by their opponents.
From the sectaries of this age the transition is easy
to the visionaries who were among its remarkable features; for, however devoted
to the papacy these might be, they agreed with the sectaries in denouncing the
secularity of the clergy, in crying out for a reform, and often in prophesying
their downfall. Among the most noted of these visionaries were two German
abbesses—Hildegard, of St. Rupert’s near Bingen, whose name as already come
before us, and Elizabeth of Schonau. Elizabeth appears to have been of a very
nervous temperament, and was frequently visited with illness. It is said that,
from the age of twenty-three, she was in the habit of falling into trances on
Sundays and holidays, at the hours when the church was engaged in its most
fervent devotions. In these trances she uttered oracles in Latin, although
unacquainted with that language; and, after having long refrained from telling
the visions with which she was favoured, she was at last constrained by the
threats of an angel, and by the authority of her ecclesiastical superior, to
dictate a report of them to her brother Eckbert—the same who has already been
mentioned as a controversialist against the cathari. In her visions she was
admitted to behold the saints, the angelic hierarchy, and the blessed
Virgin—whom she speaks of by the title of “Queen of Heaven”—and from them she
received revelations on difficult and doubtful points. Among other things, she
is said to have learned, after much inquiry, that the mother of our Lord was
"assumed" both in body and in soul; she contributed to the legend of
St. Ursula, by giving names to many of the newly-found relics of the 11,000
virgins; and in connection with that fabulous company were revealed to her the
existence and the history of a fabulous pope Cyriac, who was said to have
resigned his dignity that he might share in their travels and their martyrdom.
In a letter to Hildegard, Elizabeth complains that forged prophecies were
circulated under her name; among them, that she was reported to have foretold
the day of judgments. Both Hildegard and Elizabeth, although they were devoted
to the Roman church, and have, without any formal canonization, attained the
honour of saintship, were strong in their denunciations of the faults of the
clergy and Hildegard foretold that these would be punished by heavy
chastisements, of which the heretics were to be the instrument. Such
prophetesses as these nervous and enthusiastic women had a powerful influence
on their age but it is probable that the writings which bear their names have
been largely tampered with, or in great part composed, by those through whose
hands they have passed.
The most famous and the most remarkable of all the
visionaries was Joachim, a Calabrian, who was born in 1145 (or, according to
some, as early as 1130) and died in 1202. In his youth he was introduced by his
father to the court of Roger II of Sicily; but in disgust at the courtly life
he broke away, and went on a pilgrimage to Egypt and the Holy Land, where he
distinguished himself by the severest ascetic exercises. On his return he
became an inmate, and afterwards abbot, of Corace, a Cistercian monastery near
Squillace; and, after a time of solitary retirement and study, he founded the
abbey of Fiore, near the confluence of the Albula and the Neto, which became
the head of a new and very rigid order. Although Joachim's opinions did not
pass without question among his contemporaries, he exercised a powerful
influence over important persons both ecclesiastical and secular. His labours
on the obscurer parts of Scripture were encouraged and approved by three
successive popes—Lucius, Urban, and Clement. Richard of England and Philip of
France, on their way to the Holy Land, held conferences with him at Messina,
when it is said that Richard was greatly impressed by the prophecies which he
professed to have derived from the Apocalypse, and in 1191 he threw himself in
the way of Henry VI with such effect that the emperor was persuaded to desist
from his ravages and cruelties, and requested him to expound the prophecy of
Jeremiah.
Joachim is described as remarkable not only for piety,
but for modesty. The gift which he claimed was not that of prophecy, but of
understanding. This gift, however, was supposed to have rendered him
independent of the ordinary means of learning, for it is said that, until
supernaturally enlightened, he was wholly illiterate, and hence it was natural
that he should denounce the method of the schoolmen, whose attempts to attain
to spiritual knowledge by means of their own reason he likened to the efforts
of the men of Sodom to break in the door of Lot's house—the house of
contemplation. Thus he was led to make a violent attack on Peter Lombard's
doctrine as to the Trinity, and to draw on himself in consequence the censure
of the fourth Lateran council, as having vented a heresy which savoured of
tritheism. With his doctrine of the Trinity, however, was connected one of the
chief parts of his prophetical system—the doctrine of the Three States, in
which the government of the world was conducted by the three Persons of the
Godhead respectively. These states were not wholly distinct in time; for one
was said to begin when another was at its height, and as the earlier state
ended, the next attained to its height of “fructification” or “clarity”.
Thus, the first state, in which men lived according to the flesh, began with
Adam, reached its clarity in Abraham, and ended with Zacharias, the father of
St. John the Baptist. The second state, which is divided between the flesh and
the Spirit, began with Elijah, and reached clarity in Zacharias; the third
began with St Benedict, and its clarity—the outpouring of the Spirit upon
flesh—was to be at the end of the forty-second generation from the Nativity—in
the year 1260. The character and mutual relation of these states were
illustrated by a variety of comparisons. In the first, the mystery of the
kingdom of God was shown as by stars in the darkness of night; the second was
as the dawn, and the third as the perfect day. The three answered to the
respective attributes of the Divine Persons—power, wisdom, and love. The letter
of the Old Testament was of the Father; the letter of the New Testament, of the
Son; and, as the Holy Ghost proceedeth from both the Father and the Son, so
under His dispensation the spirit of both Testaments would be manifested. The
first was the state of slavery; the second, of filial service; the third, of
friendship and freedom. There was first the state of married persons; next,
that of clerks; lastly, that of monks, hermits, and contemplatives. The three
were respectively typified in St. Peter, who represents the power of faith; in
St. Paul, the representative of knowledge; and in St. John, the representative
of love and contemplation, who was to tarry till his Lord should come.
According to this system, the world was on the eve of a great change; the first
sixty years of the thirteenth century—the last years of the forty-two
generations between the Incarnation and the consummation of all things—were to
be a middle period; and in the last three years and a half of this time
Antichrist would come. It is said that Joachim told Richard of England that
Antichrist was already born at Rome; and that the king replied that in that
case he must be no other than the reigning pope, Clement. But Joachim looked
for Antichrist to arise from among the patarines, and expected him to be
supported by an antipope, who would stir him up against the faithful, as Simon
Magus stirred up Nero.
Against the existing clergy Joachim inveighed in the
strongest terms; and he especially denounced the corruptions of the Roman
cardinals, legates, and court, while he spoke with peculiar reverence of the
papacy itself. He regarded Rome as being at once Jerusalem and
Babylon—Jerusalem, as the seat of the papacy; Babylon, as the seat of the
empire, committing fornication with the kings of the earth. For he regarded the
German empire with especial abhorrence, and denounced all reliance of the
church on secular help; the bondage of the church under the empire was the
Babylonian captivity; the popes, in relying on the king of France, were leaning
on a broken reed which would surely pierce their hands.
On account of the connexion with the Byzantine empire,
as well as of its errors as to the Holy Ghost, he very strongly censures the
Greek church, which he compares to Israel, while the Roman church is typified
by Judah; yet, in accordance with that comparison, he supposes the eastern
church to contain a remnant of faithful ones, like those seven thousand who had
not bowed the knee to Baal. The only merit which he acknowledges in the Greeks
is, that among them the order of monks and hermits originated. These he
considers to be figured in Jacob, while the secular clergy are as Esau. The
seculars were to perish as martyrs in the final contest with Antichrist; and
after his fall the monks would shine forth in glory. Thus the papacy was to
triumph, but its triumph was to be shared by the monks only; and Joachim’s view
of the final state of liberty and enlightenment, through the immediate agency
of the Holy Spirit, excluded the need of any human teachers.
That Joachim’s works have been largely tampered with
appears to be unquestioned; and this was the case with a passage in which he
was supposed to have foretold the rise of the Dominican and the Franciscan
orders. In its original shape the prophecy contained nothing beyond what might
have been conjectured by his natural sagacity; he speaks of two men who are to
begin the contest with Antichrist, and he seems to expect that these will arise
from among the Cistercians. But in its later form the two individuals become
two new orders, which are to preach the “everlasting gospel”, to convert Jews
and Mahometans, and to gather out the faithful remnant of the Greek church,
that it may be united to the Roman; and the characteristics of the Dominicans
and Franciscans are marked with a precision which proves the spuriousness of
the passage. And as, of the two new orders, the Franciscans are preferred, it
would seem that the forgery is rather to be traced to them than to the
Dominicans.
That there was much danger in Joachim's speculations
is evident, although he protested that his belief was entirely in accordance
with that of the church; yet it would be a mistake (however natural) to suppose
that he meant to represent Christianity itself as something temporary and
transitory. For he speaks only of two Testaments, which, according to him, were
to be followed, not by a third, but by an enlightenment as to the meaning of
the two. And his reputation, supported on one side by papal approbation of his
works and of his order, while on the other side it was disparaged by the
general council's condemnation of his doctrine as to the Trinity—continued to
be of a mixed and doubtful kind. Notwithstanding that the gift of miracles, as
well as that of prophecy, was claimed for him, an attempt to procure his
canonization at Rome in 1346 was unsuccessful but he has obtained at the hands
of the great Florentine poet a place among the beatified spirits in Paradise.