The Inquisition. E. Vacandard
throughout the city. The civil magistrates, realizing their corrupting influence, had a stake erected in the public square with a cross in front of it; and in spite of the Archbishop's protest, they required the heretics either to reverence the cross they had blasphemed, or to enter the flaming pile. Some were converted, but the majority of them, covering their faces with their hands, threw themselves into the flames, and were soon burned to ashes.
Few details have come down to us concerning the fate of the Manicheans arrested at this time in Sardinia and in Spain; exterminati sunt, says a chronicler.[1]
[1] "Exterminati sunt," says Raoul Glaber, Hist., lib. ii, cap. xii, Hist. des Gaules, vol. x, p. 23. Exterminati may mean banished as well as put to death. The context, however, seems to refer to the death penalty.
The Cathari of Toulouse were also arrested, and executed. A few years later, in 1114, the Bishop of Soissons arrested a number of heretics and cast them into prison until he could make up his mind how to deal with them. While he was absent at Beauvais, asking the advice of his fellow-bishops assembled there in council, the populace, fearing the weakness of the clergy, attacked the prison, dragged forth the heretics, and burned them at the stake. Guibert de Nogent does not blame them in the least. He simply calls attention to "the just zeal" shown on this occasion by "the people of God," to stop the spread of heresy.
In 1144 the Bishop of Liège, Adalbero II, compelled a number of Cathari to confess their heresy; "he hoped," he said, "with the grace of God, to lead them to repent." But the populace, less kindly-hearted, rushed upon them, and proceeded to burn them at the stake; the Bishop had the greatest difficulty to save the majority of them. He then wrote to Pope Lucius II asking him what was the proper penalty for heresy.[1] We do not know what answer he received.
[1] Letter of the church of Liège to Pope Lucius II, in Martène, Amplissima collectio, vol. i, col. 776–777.
About the same time a similar dispute arose between the Archbishop and the people of Cologne regarding two or three heretics who had been arrested and condemned. The clergy asked them to return to the Church. But the people, "moved by an excess of zeal," says an historian of the time, seized them, and despite the Archbishop and his clerics led them to the stake. "And marvelous to relate," continues the chronicler, "they suffered their tortures at the stake, not only with patience, but with joy."[2]
[1] Letter of Evervin, provost of Steinfeld to St. Bernard, cap. ii, in Bernardi Opera, Migne, P.L., vol. clxxxii, col. 677.
One of the most famous heretics of the twelfth century was Peter of Bruys. His hostility toward the clergy helped his propaganda in Gascony. To show his contempt for the Catholic religion, he burned a great number of crosses one Good Friday, and roasted meat in the flames. This angered the people against him. He was seized and burned at St. Giles about the year 1126.[1]
Henry of Lausanne was his most illustrious disciple. We have told the story of his life elsewhere.[1] St. Bernard opposed him vigorously, and succeeded in driving him from the chief cities of Toulouse and the Albigeois, where he carried on his harmful propaganda. He was arrested a short time afterwards (1145 or 1146), and sentenced to life imprisonment, either in one of the prisons of the Archbishop, or in some monastery of Toulouse.
[1] Vie de Saint Bernard, 1st edit., Paris, 1895, vol. ii, pp. 218–233.
Arnold of Brescia busied himself more with questions of discipline than with dogma; the only reforms he advocated were social reforms.[1] He taught that the clergy should not hold temporal possessions, and he endeavored to drive the papacy frown Rome. In this conflict, which involved the property of ecclesiastics and the temporal power of the Church, he was, although successful for a time, finally vanquished.[2] St. Bernard invoked the aid of the secular arm to rid France of him. Later on Pope Eugenius III excommunicated him. He was executed during the pontificate of Adrian IV, in 1155. He was arrested in the city of Rome after a riot which was quelled by the Emperor Frederic, now the ally of the Pope, and condemned to be strangled by the prefect of the city. His body was then burned, and his ashes thrown into the Tiber, "for fear," says a writer of the time, "the people would gather them up, and honor them as the ashes of a martyr."[3]
[1] For details concerning Arnold of Brescia, cf. Vacandard, Vie de Saint Bernard, vol. ii, pp. 235–258, 465–469.
[2] Otto Frising, Gesta Friderici, lib. ii. cap. xx. Cf. Historia Pontificalis, in the Mon. Germ. SS., vol. xx, p. 538.
[3] Boso, Vita Hadriani, in Watterich, Romanorum pontificum Vitæ, vol. ii. pp. 326, 330.
In 1148, the Council of Rheims judged the case of the famous Éon de l'Etoile (Eudo de Stella). This strange individual had acquired a reputation for sanctity while living a hermit's life. One day, struck by the words of the liturgy, Per Eum qui venturus est judicare vivos et mortuos, he conceived the idea that he was the Son of God. He made some converts among the lowest classes, who, not content with denying the faith, soon began to pillage the churches. Éon was arrested for causing these disturbances, and was brought before Pope Eugenius III, then presiding over the Council of Rheims. He was judged insane, and in all kindness was placed under the charge of Suger, the Abbot of St. Denis. He was confined to a monastery, where he died soon after.
Strangely enough, some of his disciples persisted in believing in him; "they preferred to die rather than renounce their belief," says an historian of the time. They were handed over to the secular arm and perished at the stake. In decreeing this penalty, the civil power was undoubtedly influenced by the example of Robert the Pious.
It is easy to determine the responsibility of the Church, i.e., her bishops and priests, in this series of executions (1020 to 1150). At Orleans, the populace and the king put the heretics to death; the historians of the time tell us plainly that the clergy merely declared the orthodox doctrine. It was the same at Goslar. At Asti, the Bishop's name appears with the names of the other nobles who had the Cathari executed, but it seems certain that he exercised no special authority in the case. At Milan, the civil magistrates themselves, against the Archbishop's protest, gave the heretics the choice between reverencing the cross, and the stake.
At Soissons, the populace, feeling certain that the clergy would not resort to extreme measures, profited by the Bishop's absence to burn the heretics they detested. At Liège, the Bishop managed to save a few heretics from the violence of the angry mob. At Cologne, the Archbishop was not so successful; the people rose in their anger and burned the heretics before they could be tried. Peter of Bruys and the Manichean at Cambrai were both put to death by the people. Arnold of Brescia, deserted by fortune, fell a victim to his political adversaries; the prefect of Rome was responsible for his execution.[1]
[1] The case of Arnold, however, is not so clear. The Annales Augustani minores (Mon. Germ. SS., vol. x, p. 8) declare that the Pope hanged the rebel. Another anonymous writer (cf. Tanon, Hist. des tribunaux de l'Inq. en France, p. 456, n. 2) says with more probability, that Adrian merely degraded him. According to Otto of Freisingen (Mon. Germ. SS., vol. xx, p. 404), Arnold principis examini reservatus est, ad ultimum a præfecto Urbis ligno adactus. Finally, Geroch de Reichersberg tells us (De investigatione Antichristi, lib. i, cap. xiii, ed. Scheibelberger, 1875, pp. 88–89) that Arnold was taken from the ecclesiastical prison and put to death by the servants of the Roman prefect. In any case, politics rather than religion was the cause of his death.
In a word, in all these executions, the Church either kept aloof, or plainly manifested her disapproval.
During this period, we know of only one bishop, Théodwin of Liège, who called upon the secular arm to punish heretics. This is all the more remarkable because his predecessor, Wazo, and his successor, Adalbero II, both protested in word and deed against the cruelty of both sovereign and people.
Wazo, his biographer tells us, strongly condemned the execution of heretics at Goslar, and, had he been there, would have acted as St. Martin of Tours in the case of Priscillian.[1] His reply to the letter of the Bishop of Châlons reveals his inmost thoughts on the subject. "To use the sword of the civil authority," he says, "against the Manicheans,[2] is contrary to the spirit of the Church, and the teaching