§ 87. The Inquisition. Its Mode of Procedure and Penalties.
§ 87. The Inquisition. Its Mode of Procedure and Penalties.
The Inquisition was called the Holy Office—sanctum officium— from the praiseworthy work it was regarded as being engaged in. Its chief officials, the Inquisitors, were exempted by Alexander IV., 1259, and Urban IV., 1262, from all ecclesiastical jurisdiction, whether bishops, archbishops, or papal legates, except the jurisdiction of the Apostolic1138 see, and from all interference by the secular power. They also enjoyed the right to excommunicate, lay the interdict, and to absolve their agents for acts of violence.1139 The methods of procedure offend against all our modern ideas of civil justice. The testimony of wives and children was valid or required1140 and also of persons known to be criminals. Suspicion and public rumor were sufficient grounds of complaint, seizure, and formal proceedings, a principle clearly stated by the council of Toulouse, 1229, in its eighteenth canon, and recognized by the state. The Sicilian Constitutions of 1231, ordered that heretics be diligently hunted out and, when there "was only the slightest suspicion of guilt," they were to be taken before the bishop.1141 The intention, as opposed to the outward commission, was made a sufficient ground of accusation. The Inquisitor might at the same time be police, prosecutor, and judge.
It is due to Innocent III. to say that he did not invent the inquisitorial mode of procedure, but drew it from the practice already in vogue in the state.1142
A party, not answering a citation within a year, was declared a heretic even when no proofs were advanced. Likewise, one who harbored a heretic forty days after a warning was served was treated as a heretic.1143 At the trials, the utmost secrecy was observed and names of the accusers were not divulged. In commending this measure of secrecy, Paramo declared that the example was set by God himself in carrying out the first inquisition, in the garden of Eden, to defeat the subtlety of Satan who otherwise might have communicated with Adam and Eve.
Penitent heretics, if there was any doubt of their sincerity, were obliged to change their places of abode and, according to the synod of Toulouse, if they belonged to the Perfect, had to do so in all cases. The penances imposed were fines, which were allowed by papal decree as early as 1237 and 1245, pilgrimages, and wearing of two crosses on the left and right side of the body called the poena confusibilis.
The pilgrimage to Jerusalem was forbidden by a synod of Narbonne, 1243, which referred to a recent papal deliverance prohibiting it, that the sacred places might be protected against the infection of heresy. Young women were often excused from wearing the crosses, as it might interfere with their prospects of marriage. According to French law, pregnant women condemned to death, were not executed till after the birth of the child.
Local synods in Southern France ordered heretics and their defenders excommunicated every Sunday and that sentence should be pronounced amidst the ringing of bells and with candles extinguished. And as a protection against heresy, the bells were to be rung every evening.
Imprisonment for life was ordered by Gregory IX., 1229, for all induced to return to the faith through fear of punishment.1144 The prisons in France were composed of small cells. The expenditures for their erection and enlargement were shared by the bishop and the Inquisitors. French synods spoke of the number sentenced to life-imprisonment as so great that hardly stones enough could be found for the prison buildings.1145 The secular authorities destroyed the heretic’s domicile, confiscated his goods,1146 and pronounced the death penalty.
The rules for the division of confiscated property differed in different localities. In Venice, after prolonged negotiations with the pope, it was decided that they should pass to the state.1147 In the rest of Italy they became, in equal parts, the property of the state, the Inquisition, and the curia; and in Southern France, of the state, the Inquisitors, and the bishop. Provision was made for the expenses of the Inquisition out of the spoils of confiscated property. The temptation to plunder became a fruitful ground for spying out alleged heretics. Once accused, they were all but helpless. Synods encouraged arrests by offering a fixed reward to diligent spies.
Not satisfied with seeing the death penalty executed upon the living, the Inquisition made war upon the dead, and exhumed the bodies of those found to have died in heresy and burned them.1148 This relentless barbarity reminds us of the words, perhaps improperly ascribed to Charles V. who, standing at Luther’s grave, is reported to have refused to touch the Reformer’s bones, saying, "I war with the living, not with the dead." The council of Verona, 1184, ordered relapsed heretics to be turned over forthwith to the secular authorities.1149
In the period before 1480 the Inquisition claimed most of its victims in Southern France. Douais has given us a list of seventeen Inquisitors-general who served from 1229 to 1329.1150 The sentences pronounced by Bernard de Caux, called the Hammer of the Heretics, 1244–1248 give the names of hundreds who were adjudged to the loss of goods or perpetual imprisonment, or both.1151
During the administration of Bernard Guy, as inquisitor of Toulouse, 1306–1323, forty-two persons were burnt to death, sixty-nine bodies were exhumed and burnt, three hundred and seven were imprisoned, and one hundred and forty-three were condemned to wear crosses.1152 A single instance may suffice of a day’s doings by the Inquisition. On May 12, 1234, six young men, twelve men, and eleven women were burnt at Toulouse.
In the other parts of France, the Inquisition was not so vigorously prosecuted. It included, as we have seen, the order of the Templars. In 1253 the Dominican provincial of Paris was made the supreme Inquisitor. Among the more grim Inquisitors of France was the Dominican Robert le Petit, known as Le Bougre from his having been a Patarene.1153 Gregory IX. appointed him inquisitor-general, 1233, and declared God had "given him such special grace that every hunter feared his horn."1154 The French king gave him his special aid and a royal bodyguard to attend him. He had hundreds of victims in Western Burgundy and the adjoining regions. In one term of two or three months, he burnt fifty of both sexes.1155 At Cambrai he burnt twenty, at Douai ten. His last deed was to burn at Mt. Aimé in 1239, twenty-seven, or according to another account more than one hundred and eighty—"a holocaust very great and pleasing to God" as the old chronicler put it.1156 In 1239 he was himself consigned to perpetual imprisonment for his misdeeds.
In the Spanish kingdom of Aragon, the number of heretics does not seem to have been large. In 1232 the archbishop of Tarragona was ordered by Gregory IX. to proceed against heretics in conjunction with the Dominicans.1157 One of the most famous of all Inquisitors, the Spanish Dominican, Eymericus, was appointed Inquisitor-general 1357, was deposed 1360, and reappointed 1366. He died in exile. His Directorium inquisitorum, written 1376, is the most famous treatise on the mode of treating heresy. Heretics, in his judgment, were justly offered the alternative of submission or the stake. The small number of the victims under the earlier Inquisition in Spain was fully made up in the series of holocausts begun under Ferdinand in 1480.
In Northern and Central Italy, the Inquisition was fully developed, the first papal commissioners being the bishops of Brescia and Modena, 1224. The cases of heresy in Southern Italy were few and isolated. In Rome, the first pyres were lighted in 1231, in front of St. Maria Maggiore. From that year on, and at the demand of Gregory IX., the Roman senator took an oath to execute heretics within eight days of their conviction by the ecclesiastical court. The houses sheltering them were to be pulled down. The sentence condemning heretics was read by the Inquisitor on the steps of the Capitol in the presence of the senator.1158 At a later period the special order of San Giovanni Decollato—John, the Beheaded—was formed in Rome, whose members accompanied the condemned to the place of death.
In Germany, the Inquisition did not take full hold till the crusade against witchcraft was started. The Dominicans were formally appointed to take charge of the business in 1248. Of sixty-three papal Inquisitors, known by name, ten were Franciscans, two Augustinians, one of the order of Coelestin, and the rest Dominicans.1159 The laws of Frederick II. were renewed or elaborated by Rudolf, 1292, and other emperors,1160 and the laws of the Church by many provincial councils.1161 The bishops of Treves, Mainz, and Cologne interfered at times with the persecution of the Beghards and Beguines, and appealed, as against the papal Inquisitors, to their rights, as recognized in the papal bulls of 1259 and 1320. After the murder of Konrad of Marburg, Gregory IX. called upon them in vain to prosecute heretics with vigor. In fact the Germans again and again showed their resentment and put Inquisitors to death.1162
The centres of heresy in Germany were Strassburg, as early as 1212, Cologne, and Erfurt. The number of victims is said to have been very large and at least five hundred can be accounted for definitely in reported burnings.1163 Banishment, hanging, and drowning were other forms of punishment practised. In 1368 the Inquisitor, Walter Kerlinger, banished two hundred families from Erfurt alone. The prisons to which the condemned were consigned were wretched places, the abode of filth, vermin, and snakes.1164
As Torquemada stands out as the incorporation of all that is inhuman in the Spanish Inquisition, so in the German does Konrad of Marburg.
This Dominican ecclesiastic, whom Gregory IX. called the "Lord’s watch-dog," first came into prominence at the court of Louis IV. of Thuringia on the Wartburg, the old castle which was the scene of the contests of the Minnesingers, and was destined to be made famous by Luther’s confinement after the diet of Worms, 1521. Konrad became confessor of Louis’ wife, the young and saintly Elizabeth. The daughter of King Andreas II. of Hungary, she was married to the Landgrave of Thuringia in 1221, at the age of fourteen. At his death at Brindisi, on his way to the Holy Land, in 1227, she came more completely under the power of Konrad. Scarcely any scene in Christian history exhibits such wanton and pitiless cruelty to a spiritual ward as he displayed to the tender woman who yielded him obedience. From the Wartburg, where she was adored for her charities and good works, she removed to Marburg. There Konrad subjected her to daily castigations and menial services, deprived her gradually of all her maids of honor, and separated her from her three children. On one occasion when she visited a convent of nuns at Oldenburg, a thing which was against their rigid rule, Konrad made Elizabeth and her attendant lie prostrate and receive a severe scourging from friar Gerhard while he himself looked on and repeated the Miserere. This, the most honored woman of mediaeval Germany, died of her castigations in 1231. Four years later she was canonized, and the St. Elizabeth church was begun which still stands to her memory in Marburg.
The year of Elizabeth’s death, Gregory IX. invested Konrad with a general inquisitorial authority and right to appoint his own assistants and call upon the secular power for aid. Luciferans, so called, and other heretics were freely burned. It was Konrad’s custom to burn the offenders the very day their sentences were pronounced.1165 A reign of terror broke out wherever he went. He was murdered in 1233, on his way back to Marburg from the diet of Mainz. After his death Gregory declared him to be a man of consummate virtue, a herald of the Christian faith. Konrad was buried at the side of Elizabeth, but the papal inquisition in Germany did not recover for many a year from the blow given to it by his merciless hardness of heart. And so, as the Annals of Worms remarked, "Germany was freed from the abominable and unheard-of tribunal of that man."1166
In the Lowlands, Antwerp, Brussels, and other cities were lively centres of heresy and afforded a fine opportunity for the Inquisitor. The lists of the accused and of those executed in the flames and by other means include Waldenses, Beguines, Beghards, Apostolicals, Lollards, and other sectaries. Their sufferings have been given a splendid memorial in the volumes of Fredericq. Holland’s baptism of blood on a grand scale was reserved for the days of Philip II. and the Duke of Alva in the sixteenth century.
In England, the methods of the Inquisition never had any foothold. When the papal agents arrived to prosecute the Templars, King Edward forbade the use of torture as contrary to the common law of the realm. The flogging of the Publicani, who are said to have made a single English convert, has already been referred to. In 1222 a deacon, who had turned Jew, was hanged.1167 The parliamentary act for burning heretics, passed in 1401, was directed against the followers of Wyclif and the Lollards. It was not till the days of Henry VIII. that the period of prosecutions and burnings in England for heresy fully began.
See the quotation at length in Alphandéry, p. 29.
Migne, 214. 537; 215. 654.
Published by Cunitz in Beiträge zu den Theol. Wissenschhaften, 1854, IV.
See Lempp’s criticism of Alphandéry’s work, Theol. Lit.-zeitung, 1905, p. 601 sq.
For quotation see Döllinger, I. 111.
So also Peter the Venerable in his c. Petrobrus, Migne, 189. 1185. Bernard Guy was born in Southem France, 1261. He entered the Dominican order and administered the office of inquisitor-general for sixteen years, prosecuting Cathari and other heretics. He was made bishop of Tuy, 1323. His Practica inquisitionis, a manual to be used by inquisitors, is a most interesting and valuable document.
Deflorationes SS. Patrum, Migne, 157. 1050.
Vulpeculae sunt heretici, quae demoliuntur vineas, Honorius of Autun, Migne, 172. 503; Etienne de Bourbon, p. 278, etc.
Migne, 145: 419.
Epp: I. 94; II. 99; IX. 208, etc., Migne, 214. 81, etc., Morbus iste qui serpit ut cancer, Ep. II. 1.
Facies quidem habentes diversas sed caudas ad invicem collegatas quia de varietate conveniunt in id ipsum, Mirbt, p. 133. The same expression in De Bourbon, p. 278
Venenatorum multitudo reptilium et haeresum sanies scaturire dicitur. Gregory’s bull, 1235, bearing on the inquisitor, Robert le Bougre, in Auvray, 2736, and Fredericq, I. 100.
p. 289.
De consid. III. 1.
Coulton’s Salimbene, p. 13.
See Döllinger, Akad. Vortäge, III. 280.
Gutjahr, Petrus Cantor Paris. sein Leben u. Schriften, Graetz, 1899.
De consid. III. 1.
Serm. in Cant., 64, 65, Migne, 183. 1086, 1091, plus nocet falsus catholicus quam verus hereticus.
This was the usual expression used by the Church and in legal documents. Flade, p. 114.
Catharos, Patarenos, Speronistas, Leonistas, Arnaldistas, Circumcisos, Passaginos, Josephinos, Garatenses, Albanenses, Franziscos, Bagnarolos, Commixtos, Waldenses, Roncarolos, Communellos, Warinos et Ortolinos cum illis de Aqua Nigra et omnes haereticos utriusque sexus, quocumque nomine censeantur. Bréholles, V. 280.
Döllinger, II. 300; Coulton’s Salimbene, p. 13.
Ep. I. 94, Migne, 214. 81.
Flade, p. 17.
Schmidt. II. 276; Döllinger, I. 127. The term "Cathari" occurs in the twelfth century in Ecbertus and the acts of the Third Lateran Council, 1179, which speak of the heretics in Southern France as Cathari, Patrini, Publicani, or as known by some other name. Quos alii Catharos, alii Patrinos, alii Publicanos, etc., alii aliis nominibus vocant. Innocent III. called them Cathari and Patarenes, Epp. I. 94; II. 228; VIII. 85, 105, etc.
Alanus de Insulis, Migne, 210. 266, says, "The Cathari are so called from the cat, whose posterior parts they are said to kiss and in whose form, as they say, Lucifer appears to them." Jacob de Voragine, in his Legenda aurea, refers to the use made of the cat by Satan in connection with heresy. He relates that on one occasion some ladies, who had been heretics, were kneeling at St. Dominic’s feet and suddenly cried out: "’Servant of God, help us.’’ Tarry awhile,’Dominic said, ’and ye shall see what ye have been serving.’ Suddenly a black cat sprang up in their midst, right horrible, with long tail standing upright and emitting from the after end a terrible stench. After a while the cat climbed up the bell rope to the steeple, and the ladies were converted."
Schmidt, who discusses the names in an elaborate note (II. 275-284), says that a portion of Milan was still called Contrada de’Patari in the eighteenth century. Frederick II., in his Sicilian code, derived the name Patarenes from patior, to suffer. Patarenos se nominant velut expositos passioni, Huillard-Bréholles, IV. 6. So also Walter Map, De nugis, Wright’s ed., p. 61, who says the devil persuaded the Patarenes that they would become perfect by suffering and doing what he commanded.
M. Paris, Luard’s ed., III. 520, speaks of "Bugares" as a common appellation for the "Paterini, Jovinians, Albigenses, and those stained with other heresies," and associates with them Robert Bugre, who from being a heretic became a Dominican and noted Inquisitor. The modern word "bugger" is derived from his name.
Döllinger, I. 129 sq.
Ibid., I. 1-51, gives an elaborate description of the Paulicians and the Bogomili. He regards the Paulicians as the bridge between the Gnostics of the ancient Church and the sectaries of the Middle Ages, p. 3.
Ibid., p. 114, says that the teachings of the Cathari and the Bogomili are so much alike that the "direct descent of the former from the latter must be regarded as beyond doubt." Our knowledge of the Bogomili is derived from Euthymus, whose Narratio de Bogomilis was edited by Gieseler, Göttingen, 1842.
Hauck, Kirchengesch., III. 431.
Schmidt, I. 31; Hefele, IV. 674 sqq.
Hauck, IV. 88.
Dial., V. 19.
William of Newburgh, Hamilton’s ed., pp. 121-123. Walter Map, De Nugis, p. 62, reduces the number to sixteen. They were called Publicani by the Oxford council, 1260
Stubbs, ed. of De Hoveden, II. p. liv. sq.
Döllinger, I. 121 sq., has no hesitation in declaring him a bishop of the Paulicians
. Superabundant jam ad omnem infinitatem.
Caesar of Heisterbach, quoted by Döllinger, I. 124.
p. 1768.
Döllinger, I. 125.
Döllinger, II. 300.
Ibid., I. 117; II. 82. Schmidt derived them from Albania and from Coriza in Dalmatia.
Rainerius is our chief authority for these statements. He makes the above threefold classification (Martène, V. 1761), and then proceeds to give the doctrinal and practical errors the sects had in common, and those which separated them. He also gives a list of the Catharan centres in Lombardy and other parts. See also the important document, the Supra stella, by Salvus Burce, 1235, published by Döllinger, II. 52-84. The title was chosen to distinguish it from a Catharan treatise entitled Stella, the Star.
See also Alphandéry, p. 35. Lempp, in a criticism of Alphandéry’s work, Lit.-zeitung, 1905, p. 601, takes the view which is presented in the text.
Döllinger, II. 322, etc.; Douais, II. 105, etc.; Bonacursus, Migne, 204. 777.
Bonacursus, p. 775.
Döllinger, II. 294, etc.; Ermengaudus, 1237. Lea, I. 563-567, gives a document, apparently dating from about 1300, in which a Catharan uses Scripture to prove that the God of the Old Testament is not the God of the New. He deposed, "God says in Genesis, ’Ye shall not eat the tree of life.’ But the God of the New Testament says in the Apocalypse ’to him that overcometh I will give to eat of the tree of life. ’That one prohibits, this one promises. Therefore they are antagonistic, one to the other." Again he deposed, "Genesis says I will place enmity between thee and the woman. The God of the Old Testament is thus the sower of discord and enmity. But the God of the New Testament is the giver of peace and the reconciler of all things. Hence they are antagonistic."
Bonacursus, p. 777; Ermengaud, p. 1234 sq.; Douais, II. 93, 96</cbr>, 103, etc.
Döllinger, II. 149-153.
Boni homines, Döllinger, II. 22, 27, etc.; Boni Christiani, II. 4, 17</cbr>, 25, etc. In Southern France one of the of the repeated charges was that the accused called the Cathari bons hommes, Douais, II. 9, 11, 14</cbr>, 25, etc. The Credentes are so called by French synods, by Innocent III., in letters written by papal legates, etc. See Hefele, V. 846, 850, etc.; Döllinger and Douais under Credentes in Index.
Synod of Toulouse, 1229, etc. See Schmidt, II. 127.
Haereticationi interfuit, Douais, II. 17, 19</cbr>, 22, etc.
Ante pectus, Rainerius, p. 1764. An elaborate description is given in an Appendix to Rainerius, Martène, V. 1776.
Ermengaud, Migne, 204, 1362; Rainerius, p. 1764; Döllinger, II. 41.
Among those who recanted was the rich citizen Morand of Toulouse, who did penance by standing naked to the waist at the altar of St. Saturninus and allowing himself to be scourged in the presence of the papal legate. He went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, but on his return went back to the Cathari and died as one of the Perfect. Schmidt, I. 77 sqq.
Döllinger, II. 30.
Ibid., II. 5, 322.
Ibid., II. 21, 34, 65, 90</cbr>, 283, etc.
In latrinam ventris et per turpissimum locum, quae non possunt fieri, si esset ibi deus. Döllinger, II. 5.
Douais, II. 17, 22, 27</cbr>, 45, etc.
Moneta, p. 315; jacere cum uxore sua sicut cum meretrice, Döllinger, II. 30; matrimonium est meretricium, Douais, II. 93; Döllinger, II. 18, 21, 23, 25, 28, 40, 156</cbr>, 300, etc. omnem carnalem concubitum dampnabilem dicunt, Douais, II. 93, 96, etc.
Bonacursus, p. 776 Douais, II. 93, 103, etc.
Ibid., p. 777; Rainerius, p. 1762; Döllinger, II. 294, 300.
Döllinger, II. 5, 152, 181, 248</cbr>, 294.
Salve Burce, in Döllinger, II. 71, a remarkable passage; Douais, II. 94 Rainerius, p. 1762.
Bonacursus, p. 777; Ermengaud, p. 1269. See Alphandéry, p. 83 sq.
Döllinger, under Kreuz in Index II. 730; Bonacursus, p. 777 Douais, II. 94.
Rainerius, 1762. See Alphandéry, p. 44.
See Döllinger in Index under these two words and Schmidt, II. 71-103.
Döllinger, I. 193, 210; II. 4, 25</cbr>, 30, etc.; Douais, II. 23, etc.
Alphandéry, p. 51; Döllinger, II. 205.
Rainerius, p. 1766; Döllinger, II. 82, 278, 295</cbr>, 324. At the time of Nicetas’visit, Bernard Raymund was ordained bishop of Toulouse, Guiraud Mercier, bishop of Carcassonne, and Raymund of Casalis, bishop of Val d’Aran.
Sermon, 65, Migne, 183. 1091.
Quoted by Schmidt, II. 94.
Fredericq, Corpus Inq., I. 6. For Tanchelm, see Fredericq, vols. I. and II., and Life of Norbert in Mon. Germ., ch. 16.
Introd. ad Theol., in Migne, 178. 1056, and Fredericq, I. 26.
Döllinger, I. 98-104. Otto of Freising, De gestis Frid., 54, says he called himself Eudo or Eon, from the liturgical formula, per eum qui venturus est judicare, etc. He is also mentioned by Abaelard in his Introd. ad Theol.
Adv. Petrobrusianos, Migne, 189. 719-850. Abaelard gives a few lines to him. Migne, 178. 1056. Peter speaks of Peter de Bruys and Henry of Lausanne as duo homuncios, p. 728. See Döllinger, I. 75-98.
See Peter the Venerable, Adv. Petrobrus., Bernard, Ep., 241, in Migne, 182. 435. Döllinger, I. 79 sqq.; J. von Walter, Die ersten Wanderprediger Frankreichs, II. 130-140; Hauck, in Herzog, VIII. 606 sqq.
Vita S. Bernardi, Migne, 185, 312 sqq. See the Lives of Bernard by Neander-Deutsch, II. 191-231; Vacandard, II. 200 sqq.; Morison, p. 302 sqq., 404 sq.
Nomen ecclesiae congregationem fidelium signat, etc., Pet. Ven., p. 762. Peter goes back as far as Noah’s altar to prove the sacredness of localities.
Pet. Ven., pp. 765, 847 sq.
Peter of Cluny’s meaning is not clear at this point, pp. 722, 765, 787.
Bernard, Migne, 182. 434; Peter, pp. 729, 761 sq.
Döllinger, I. 83, makes the charge that they renounced the Old Testament. But Peter of Cluny does not say so and, had it been so, he certainly would have emphasized that heresy.
Döllinger, I. 75 sqq., makes an elaborate attempt to prove that Peter and Henry were Cathari, but the differences in their teachings and practices seem to make this impossible. So Newman (Papers of Am. Soc. of Ch. Hist., IV. 184-189), Hauck, and Walter, p. 130. Peter and Henry are nowhere called Manichaeans or dualists by Peter the Venerable and Bernard, who would scarcely have omitted this charge had there been just ground for it. They commended marriage; the Cathari rejected it. They insisted upon adult baptism; the Cathari repudiated all baptism. None of the rites peculiar to the Cathari were associated with Peter and Henry.
Mansi, XXII. 801-809; Denifle, Chartul. Un. Paris, I. 70, 71, 72, 79</cbr>, 107, etc.; Caesar of Heisterbach, Strange ed., II., 304 sqq.; Martène-Durand, Thes. anec., IV. 166 sq.; Jundt, Hist. du pantheisme, etc., p. 20 sq.; Preger, Gesch. der deutschen Mystik, I. 173-184; Delacroix, Le mysticisme speculatif, etc., 32-51; Alpbandéry, pp. 141-154. For other sources, see Delacroix, p. 39 sq.
Chartularium, p. 70. Here, also, are given the names of the priests who were burnt or imprisoned.
Putridus dens in ore, synod of Paris, 1209.
So Preger, I. 212, on the basis of the "Anonymous of Passau." For the ninety-seven errors ascribed to the Brethren of the Free Spirit, see Preger, I. 461-469, and Hauck, in Herzog, I. 431.
Chartul., pp. 70, 79.
Preger, I. 184-191.
This name, given in the code of Frederick II., would seem to refer to the same sect. The "Anonymous of Passau," writing about 1316, is our chief authority. See Müller, Die Waldenser, pp. 147 sqq.; Döllinger, Beiträge, II. 301, 703, etc.; Preger, II. 191-196; Delacroix, 52-76; Alphandéry, 154-167; Deutsch, art. Ortlieb, in Herzog, XIV. 499-501. Alphandéry urges the affiliation of the Ortlibenses with the Vaudois, chiefly because of their frequent juxtaposition in mediaeval writings.
Delacroix, p. 73, insists upon the identity of the Amaurians and Ortlibenses in all essential matters.
See Döllinger, II. 327; Alphandéry, 168 sqq.
The notices are scattered. See under diabolus and Lucifer in Döllinger and Alphandéry, pp. 174 sqq. M. Paris, writing of 1226 and Frederick’s march through Northern Italy, speaks of Milan being a refuge and receptacle of all sorts of heretics, Patarines, Luciferi, Publicani, Albigenses, and usurers.
The Josephini are mentioned by the synod of Verona, 1184, and the bull of Gregory IX., June 25, 1231, and the Speronistae by Salve Burce, Döllinger, II. 62, and in the bulls of Gregory IX., Aug. 20, 1229, June 25, 1231. See Fredericq, I. 75 sq.
Hase, Karl Müller, Kirchengesch. I. 570, Alphandéry, p. 2 sqq., and others treat the subject under the head of lay-activity.
The Beguines are called a sect, secta Beguinarum, in Guy’s Practica, p.264, etc. The term Beguines, or Bequini, is also derived from beggan, to beg, by Jundt, or from bègue, to stammer. See Haupt, in Herzog, II. 517. Lea, p. 351, seems inclined to advocate the old opinion which derived the name from St. Begga, d. 694, the mother of Pepin of Heristal and the reputed founder of a convent.
Premium castitatis verbo et exemplo predicavit, Fredericq, II. 33.
Multitudo innumerabilis, Luard’s ed., V. 194. In another place, IV. 278, he gives the number as 2,000. He also states that they were governed by no Church Rule, nullius sancti regula coarctatae.
Uhlhorn, p. 380.
The brief of Boniface IX. mentions "gray and other colors," Döllinger, Beiträge, II. 383.
A synod of Béziers, p. 299, forbade both male and female societies on the ground that there was no papal sanction. Wetzer-Welte, II. 204, calls them ordensähnliche Gesellschaften, and Alphandéry, p. 2, extra-ecclésiastiques.
Hefele, VI. 490, 600.
Hefele, VI. 543, 544.
The actus carnis is no sin, for it is an impulse of nature. Döllinger, II. 384-407, 702 sqq. They were also accused with denying a hell.
Haupt, in Herzog, II. 519.
Bernard Guy, 264 sqq. See also the letter of the bishop of Utrecht, Oct. 6, 1318, in Fredericq, II. 74.
"Sisters," a popular name for the Beguines.
Willige Armen, see Döllinger, II. 381-383. Gregory XII., Eugene IV., and Sixtus IV. also commended the orthodox societies.
There are still religious houses in Belgium and Holland called beguinages. In 1896 there were fifteen in Belgium and in Holland, one in Breda, and one in Amsterdam. For the Brethren of the Free Spirit, who are often associated with the Beghards but had a different origin, see part II. of this volume.
Valdesius, Valdensius, or Waldunus. The name is given in these and other forms by writers of the thirteenth century. De Bourbon, p. 290; Guy, p. 244; Döllinger, II. 6, 300, etc. Bernard, abbot of Fontis Calidi, Migne, 204. 793, allegorizes when he says they were called "Valdenses, as though they came from a dense valley and are involved in its deep thick darkness of errors." Alanus de insulis, Migne, 210, p. 377 sqq., says the "Waldenses are so called from their heresiarch Waldus, the founder of the new sect who presumed to preach without authority of prelate, without divine inspiration, knowledge, or letters. A philosopher without head, a prophet without vision, an apostle without mission, a teacher without instructor, whose disciples, or rather musciples (discipuli imo muscipuli), seduce the unwary in different parts of the world."
Pauperes de Lugduno, Leonistae, etc. Zabatati, or Insobbalati, because the shoe was cut in the shape of a shield. Guy, 245; Döllinger, II. 92, 233, etc.
Inter se vocant Fratres seu Pauperes Christi. Guy, p. 256.
Per vicos et plateas evangelium praedicare et Valdesius multos homines utriusque sexus viros et mulieres complices sibi fecit ad similem praesumptionem, etc. Guy, p. 244.
de nugis, Wright’s ed., p. 64 sq. Map, who felt highly honored by his appointment, called them simple and illiterate, idiotae et illiterati, terms used also by de Bourbon, p. 292, and Guy, p. 244.
The exact relation of the Poor Men of Lyons to the Humiliati is still a matter of discussion. Müller, in his Anfänge des Minoritenordens, etc., has done much to change our knowledge of the Humiliati. The view taken above may account for the language of the Verona council, Humiliati vel Pauperes de Lugduno, which was probably chosen for the very purpose of indicating that the resemblance between the two parties was so close as to make it uncertain whether there were two sects or only one. This view seems to be borne out by the two statements of Salve Burce. Döllinger, II. 64, 74.
See p. 411. Sabatier, Regula Antiqua, p. 15, expresses the opinion that Francis may have been more indebted to them than we have supposed.
Salve Burce, who was acquainted with Roncho, called him "a simple man, without education,"idiota absque literis. Döllinger, II. 64.
Rainerius, Martène, p. 1775, Rescriptum, p. 57; Guy, p. 247; Döllinger, II. 320, etc. Rainerius is in substantial agreement with Burce who says that the Poor Men of Lombardy derived their existence from the Ultramontane Poor.
The account is given in the Rescriptum. See Preger, Döllinger, II. 42-52, and Müller, Die Waldenser, p. 22. The separation between the Lombard and the Lyonnese parties is referred to in the list of inquisitorial questions to be put to them. Döllinger, II. 320 sq.
Rescriptum, Döllinger, II. 46.
Döllinger, II. 73.
Summing up all the cases under Guy, Lea, II. 149, says that there was no very active persecution against the Lyonnese Waldenses.
Comba, p. 103 sq.; Lea, II. 259 sqq.
In 1530 the mediaeval period of their history closes. At that date two of their number, Morel and Peter Masson, were sent to consult with Bucer, Oecolampadius, and other Reformers. Morel was beheaded on his return journey. His letter to Oecolampadius and the Reformer’s reply are given by Dieckhoff, pp. 364-373. The Waldenses adopted the Reformation, 1532.
See Comba, 74 sqq. A number of the documents given by Döllinger are interrogatories for use against the Waldenses of Germany and Austria, or accounts of their trials. One of them, in German, belongs as late as the sixteenth century, Döllinger, II. 701 sq. Haupt, Keller, Preger, and Goll have extended our knowledge of the Austrian Waldenses.
Haupt, Waldenserthum, p. 21.
Comba, in the French trans. of his work, and Müller, Die Waldenser, p. 103, print a consolatory letter from them to their suffering Bohemian friends.
The earliest writers, as the abbot Bernard and Alanus, make no distinctions. Rainerius, 1260, does, as do also the Rescriptum which has an eye to the Waldenses of Passau and Salve Burce in his Supra Stella, 1235, who refers more particularly to the Poor Men of Lombardy. David of Augsburg, 1256, an inquisitor of high repute, has in mind the Waldensians, as a body. Bernard Guy, 1320, treats of the Lyonnese Waldensians. The documents given by Döllinger extend to the sixteenth century, many of them bearing upon the Waldenses of Austria.
At the time of the Reformation, according to Morel, dancing and all sports were forbidden, except the practice of the bow and other arms. Comba, p. 263, recognizes this opposite tendency, the Waldenses approaching closer to the established Church in their practice of the sacraments.
De Bourbon, p. 297.
The abbot Bernard, Migne, 204. 796, sqq., 817 sqq.; Alanus, Migne, 210. 380 sqq.; de Bourbon, p. 292; Döllinger, II. 6, 51.
Comba, pp. 47-52, gives a translation of the disputation at Narbonne. The abbot Bernard, Migne, 204. 805, also quotes James 4 as a passage upon which the Waldenses relied.
De Bourbon, p. 291; Guy, p. 292, etc.
Migne, 204. 806 sq., 825;II. 300, etc.
Döllinger, II. 340.
Magis operatur meritum ad consecrandum vel benedictionem, ligandum vel solvendum, quam ordo vel officium, Alanus, Migne, 204, 385. Alphandéry, p. 129, justly lays stress upon this charge.
Consecratio corporis et sanguinis Christi potest fieri a quolibet justo, quamvis sit laycus, Guy, p. 246. Also Rainerius, p. 1775, David of Augsburg, and Döllinger, II. 7.
Alanus, Migne, 210, 386.
Rainerius declares without qualification that the Poor Men of Lombardy hold to the salvation of infants not baptized, but the Rescriptum declares that baptism was regarded as necessary for all. So also David of Augsburg. See Döllinger, II. 45.
Alanus, 210, 392; de Bourbon, pp. 292, 296; Guy, p. 246; Döllinger, II. 85 (Salve Burce), 107, 126, etc.
Alanus, 210, 394; Guy, p. 246; Döllinger, II. 76, 107, 143, etc.
The abbot Bemard, Migne, 204, 828, 833; De Bourbon, p. 295; Döllinger, II. 93, 107, 143, etc. The story of creation ascribed to the négro, according to which God, in making man, made an image of clay and set it up against the fence to dry, is as old as Etienne de Bourbon (d. 1261) and the earliest Waldenses. Bourbon says, p. 294, that he had heard of a Waldensian who, in his testimony, had stated that God made a form of soft clay as boys do in their play, and set it up under the sun to dry, and that the cracks made by the sun were veins through which the blood began to run, and then God breathed His spirit upon the face of the image.
The Waldensian teaching of the two ways has been regarded by Harnack and Keller as a reminiscence of the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles. Comba, p. 341, with more probability refers it to the Sermon on the Mount. The reference was, not so-much to the two ways in this life, but to the denial of purgatory, Döllinger, II. 252, 287, 300, etc.
Rainerius, p. 1775; Guy, p. 247. Also, the abbot Bernard, Migne, 204, 795 sqq., and Alanus, Migne, 210, 379 sqq.
Döllinger, II. 92. At a later date the minister among the Italian Waldenses was called barba, uncle. Comba, p. 147. Morel, in his letter to Oecolampadius, declared that these distinctions were not maintained by the Waldenses. See Dieckhoff, p. 259 sq.
Berger, La Bible française au moyen âge, Paris, 1884. There are marked differences in the MSS. of the Romaunt version, in language, etc. Comba, pp. 182-185, gives paragraphs from different MSS.
So Haupt and Keller, Die Reform. und die aelteren Reformparteien, Leipzig, 1886, pp. 257-260. Jostes ascribed the Version to Catholic sources, an opinion Dr. Philip Schaff was inclined to adopt. Independent, Oct. 8, 1885. Nestle, art."German Versions," in Herzog, III. 66, pronounces the question an open one.
The title is from lectio, reading. The text is given by Herzog, pp. 445-457, and an English translation by Perrin, pp. 263-271.
Felder, the Roman Catholic author of the able Gesch. der wissenschaftlichen Studien im Franziskanerorden, 1904, approaches this view very closely, recognizes the effort of the Waldenses to realize the ideal of Apostolic poverty, and says, p. 1 sq., that Francis of Assisi in his work was moved by "the idea deeply rooted in his age, eine tief gewurzelte Zeitidee."
The Fourth Lateran spoke of the city as quae magis haeretica labes corrupta.
Ep. II. 99; Migne, 214, 647.
Epp., VII. 186, 212; Migne, 215, pp. 503, 527. In the second letter Innocent compares heretics to Samson’s foxes and to beasts, belluas.
Ep., X. 69; Migne, 215. 1165 sqq.
For another version of the murder, see Lea, I. 146. It has been compared to Becket’s taking-off.
Ep., XI. 26, 32; Migne, 215. 1354, 1361.
Ep., XI. 230; Migne, 215. 1546. Innocent wrote repeatedly and at length, encouraging the enterprise. Epp., XI. 33, 229, etc.; Migne, 215. 1361, etc.
See full description in Hurter, II. 317 sq., and Lea, I. 150 sq.
Hurter, II. 322, always careful, speaks of the army as a zahllose Menge, and then of 50,000. Lea, I. 152, is inclined to accept a much larger number, 20,000 knights and 200,000 footmen.
Hurter, II. 325 sqq., dwells upon his virtues, including the virtues of humanity and fidelity. Hefele, also a Roman Catholic, V. 843, calls him cruel, grausam. The council of Lavaur pronounced him the "brave soldier of Christ and the invincible warrior of the Lord’s battles,"intrepidum, Christi athletam et invictum dominici praelii bellatorem, Mansi, xxii. 887. The Fourth Lateran honored his services as having exceeded those of all others in fidelity and courage. By his mother, Alice, he inherited the earldom of Leicester which passed to his son Simon. See Stephen, Dict. Nat. Biogr.
Caedite eos, novit enim dominus qui sunt ejus, Caesar of Heisterbach, V. 21; Strange ed., I. 302. And so Caesar adds, "an innumerable multitude were killed in that city." Hurter speaks of the "unbridled frenzy" of the troops, zügellose Wuth, II. 331. Describing other scenes of carnage during the crusade he uses such expressions as "horrible butchery,"furchtbarer Gemetzel, "heartrending barbarities,"empoerende Graeuel, pp. 420, 423, 427, etc. He expresses the charitable hope that the abbot of Citeaux did not say what was ascribed to him by so good and churchly a witness as Caesarof Heisterbach. Brischar, in Wetzer-Welte, I. 434, speaks with horror of the barbarities of Simon’s troops.
Epp. Inn., XII. 108, 109; Migne, 216. 137-142. Ultione divina in eam mirabiliter saeviente
Hefele, V. 846 sqq.
Hurter, II. 383, 416.
Pedro’s son, Jayme, ascribed his father’s defeat to his moral laxity. The Albigensian nobles had placed their wives and daughters at his disposal and, it is reported, he was so weakened the morning of the engagement that he could not stand at the celebration of the mass. Lea, I. 177.
Hurter, II. 567.
As an illustration of how the best of friends may fall out, Montfort’s right to the title, duke of Narbonne, was vehemently contested by Arnold of Citeaux, who claimed it as archbishop of Narbonne, an office to which he had been appointed.
Harter, II. 567 sqq.; Hefele, V. 881 sq., 902 sq.; Potthast, Regesta, I. 439.
In a passage recapitulating Innocent’s relations to the war, Hurter, II. 709-711, says that, although it was in part carried on without regard to the principles of humanity and right, and beginning as a religious war, it was turned into a war of aggrandizement, yet Innocent was guiltless, his sole purpose being to purify the land of heresy.
Potthast, 9173.
Such a calm Church historian as Karl Müller, an expert in mediaeval history, pronounces a similar judgment, "Die Thätigkeit der Inquisition ist vielleicht das entsetzlichste was die Geschichte der Menschheit kennt."Kirchengesch., I. 590.
The usual expression for turning heretics over to the civil tribunal was saeculari judiciore relinquere, and for perpetual imprisonment, in perpetuum carcerem retrudi orperpetuo commorari.
Martène, Thes., V. 1741.
Inquis. haereticae pravitatis. The first case, so far as I know, of the use of the expression "inquisition of heretics,"inquis. haereticorum, was by the synod of Toulouse, 1229. Heretical depravity was the usual expression for heresy, Inn. Ep., II., 142, etc.; Migne, 214. 698. The term "inquirare" was a judicial term in use before. See Schmidt.
This is the date given by Lea, Span. Inq., I. 161. Sixtus IV. authorized the Spanish Inquisition, Nov. 1, 1478.
De-Joinville, Bohn’s ed., p. 362.
Practica, p. 176, habet excellentiamaltitudinis ex sua origine, quia immediate a sede apostolica dirivatur, committitur et noscitur institutum.
Cogite intrare. Ep., 93, ad Vincent, contra Gaudent., I. 1. On the other hand he expressed himself against putting upon them the sufferings they deserved. Ep., 100, ad Donat., etc.; Migne, 33. 360.
Ep., II. 1. Hurter, II. 264, thus describes Innocent’s attitude to incorrigible heretics. They are fallen under the power of Satan, should be deprived of all their possessions, and the bodies of the dead dug up from consecrated ground. Secular princes were to draw the sword against them, for the Lord has confided it to the mighty for the protection of the pious and the dismay of evil-doers and nowhere could it be put to better use than upon those who were seeking to lure others away from the true faith and rob them of eternal life.
Meruerunt non solum ab ecclesia per excommunicationem separari sed etiam per mortem a mundo excludi. Summa, II. Pt. II. 11; Migne’s ed., III. 109.
This is the interpretation Hefele puts upon the passage, V. 716.
Pagani jure sunt sub papae obedientia, 23, art. I.
Credentes, praeterea receptores, defensores et fautores haereticorum. Frederick II., in his Constitution of 1220, uses these terms, and they became the accepted, legal form of statement. See Bernard Guy, pp. 176, 194, etc. The term "fautor" became the usual term, in the subsequent history of the Inquisition, for the abettors of heresy. The term "believers" is the technical term used for the Cathari, etc.
Between 1255-1258, Alexander IV., according to Flade, p. 1, issued no less than thirty-eight bulls against heretics.
Vipereos perfidiae filios. Frederick’s oath ran Catharos, Patarenos, Speronistas, Leonistias, Arnaldistas, Circumcisos et omnes haereticos utriusque sexus quocumque nomine censeantur perpetua damnamus infamia, diffidamus atque bannimus. See Bréholles, II. 6, 7, and Mirbt, p. 137. Hefele says Torquemada himself could not have used more vigorous language than Frederick used on this occasion. V. 993.
Ignis judicio concremandus, ut vel ultricibus flammis pereat aut cum linguae plectro deprivent. Bréholles, II. 422; Mirbt, 138. Flade, p. 9, is wrong in saying that the first express mention of burning as the punishment for heretics in Frederick’s laws was in 1238.
The terms Frederick used at this time drew heavily upon the dictionary. He calls heretics fierce wolves, most wicked angels, children of depravity, serpents deceiving the doves, serpents vomiting out poison. Bréholles, IV. 5. Gregorovius, V. 162, says Frederick issued decrees against heretics every time he made peace with the pope. "His laws against heresy form the harshest contrast to his otherwise enlightened legislation."
For the Sachsenspiegel, see Mirbt, 139. The act of the Schwabenspiegel runs "where persons are believed to be heretics, they shall be accused before the spiritual court. When convicted, they shall be taken in hand by the secular court, which shall sentence them as is right, that is, they shall be burnt at the stake." Wackernagel’s ed., p. 241, sqq.
Thus the Archbishop of Milan reënforced it at a provincial council, 1287. Hefele, VI. 253, and Lea, I. 322 sq. The synod of Mainz, 1233, instructed bishops to scrupulously observe the imperial and papal edicts. Hefele, V. 1027.
Frederick II. united in appointing the Dominicans inquisitors of Germany. Bréholles, IV. 298-301.
Potthast, 8932, 9126, 9143, 9152, 9153, 9235. From the appointment of the Dominicans grew up the false notion that Dominic was the founder of the Inquisition. So Limborch (I. ch. X.) who calls him a "cruel and bloody man." Lacordaire, I. 197 sqq. shows Limborch’s authorities to be unreliable. But the eloquent French Dominican, in his zeal, goes too far when he declares Philip II. the author of the Inquisition. Philip II. had enough sins to bear without this one being added to the heap.
See Lea, I. 348 sq.
Coulton, p. 203.
1138 See the presentation of Bernard Guy, pp. 209-211.
1139 Ad exstirpanda, 1252, two bulls of Alexander IV., 1257, 1260, council of Vienne, 1312, etc.
1140 Eymericus II., 110, 199, etc., as quoted by Flade, p. 54.
1141 Bréholles, IV. 5 sqq.
1142 Schmidt, in his Herkunft d. Inquisitionsprocesses, finds the beginnings of the inquisitorial mode of procedure in the legislation of Charlemagne. The element of inquisitio came to dominate in the legal procedure of all Western Europe, except England. Its leading feature was that public fame or suspicion—publica fama, mala fama, clamor publicus, infamia, etc.,—justifies magistrates in seizing the suspect and instituting trial. The Normans attempted in vain to introduce it into England, where the Magna Charta established a different principle. The Normans, however, carried the inquisition with them to Southern Italy, where Frederick II. found it in vogue. Innocent, a student of canon law, found it exactly to his purpose to adopt the inquisitorial mode of procedure.
1143 Physicians were forbidden to practise medicine on persons suspected of heresy and were forced to take oath not to defend it. Synods of Toulouse, 1229; Béziers, 1246; Albi, 1254.
1144 Potthast, 8445. The council of Toulouse, Canon XI., prescribed that the expense of incarceration be met by the bishop, provided the culprit had no goods of his own.
1145 Synod of Narbonne, 1243, etc.; Hefele, V. 1104. There were two forms of imprisonment, the murus largus, giving the freedom of the prison and the murus strictus, or solitary imprisonment.
1146 Synods of Toulouse, 1229; Albi, 1254.
1147 Lea, I. 512.
1148 This was often done. The most famous case was that of Wyclif whose bones were exhumed and burnt by the order of the council of Constance. One of the notable instances of prosecution after death was that of Roger, count of Foix, surnamed the Good. His wife and a sister were Waldenses, and another sister a Catharan. In 1263, years after the count’s death, proceedings were begun against him. See Lea, II. 53 sqq.
1149 Lea, I. 533, in closing a long treatment says, "We are perfectly safe in asserting that but for the gains to be made out of fines and confiscations, the work of the Inquisition would have been much less thorough, and it would have sunk into comparative insignificance as soon as the first frantic zeal of bigotry had exhausted itself." The synods of Béziers, 1233; Albi, 1254, etc., made a silver mark the reward of ferreting heretics out. Hefele, V. 1035; VI. 50.
1150 Documents, etc., I. CXXIX-CCVI.
1151 Douais, II. 1-89. Molinier, as quoted by Lea, II. 46, estimates the number of persons tried under this Inquisitor in two years at 8000 to 10,000.
1152 Douais, I. CCV, where a table is given of the sentences passed under Guy.
1153 Lea, II. 115 sqq., and especially Haskins.
1154 Bull, Aug. 22, 1235, Portland, 9994.
1155 According to M. Paris he also buried victims alive. Luard’s ed., iii. 361.
1156 Haskins, p. 635, adopts the larger number. "And so," said Albericus, as the story runs, that dogs once came from all directions and tore themselves to pieces in battle at this same place, as a sort of prophecy of what was to be, so these Bugres, worse than dogs, were exterminated in one day to the triumph of Holy Church." Quoted by Haskins.
1157 Potthast, 8932.
1158 Gregorovius, V. 156-161. The assertion has often been made, by the Spaniard Balmes in 1842, the Abbé Coeur, 1846, a writer in the Dublin Review, 1850, and others, that Rome never witnessed an execution for heresy. Döllinger and Reusch in their edition of Bellarmin, Bonn, 1887, p. 233, have paid their respects to this mistake and give a list of more than twenty persons, Waldenses, Lutherans, and Jews, burnt in the papal city as late as1553-1635.
1159 Flade, p. 37 sq.
1160 Henry VII., 1312 and Charles IV., 1369, 1871, 1373, etc.; Flade, p. 10. According to Charles’law the confiscated property of heretics was divided into three parts which went respectively for alms, to the Inquisitors, and to municipalities for the repair of streets and walls.
1161 Flade, p. 24, gives a list of seventy-one between 1227-1452.
1162 For names see Flade, pp. 6, 7.
1163 Flade, p. 116. The pages of this author must be read to gain any adequate idea of the horrors of the Inquisition in Germany. He pronounces it even more bloody than the Inquisition in Southern France.
1164 Flade, p. 87.
1165 Roman Catholic writers have recently tried to remove the impression that Konrad’s victims were numerous. See Benrath’s reply, art. Konrad of Marburg, Herzog, X. 749 sqq.
1166 Quoted by Wagenmann, Herzog, 2d, VIII. 192.
1167 See Stubbs, Const. Hist., II. 353 (note) sqq., who says that if there was any persecution for heresy before 1382, it must have taken the ordinary form of prosecution in the spiritual court. See Prof. Maitland, Can. Law in the Church of England, p. 158 sq.