CHAPTER I - ATTITUDE OF THE CHURCH TOWARDS HERESY PRIOR TO THE INSTITUTION OF THE INQUISITION
The literal and fundamental meaning of the word Heresy is choosing. The heretic is the man who selects certain doctrines, discards others, giving rein to individual preference in the realm of religious belief. Such an attitude is essentially incompatible with the conception that the truth has once and for all been delivered to the saints, that the faith is indivisible and unalterable, to be accepted in its entirety. It is easily understood that eclecticism should be regarded as a danger in the earliest days of a new religion by its adherents. The first proselytes are anxious to define those distinctive features which mark it off from other religions: for all religions have certain elements in common. It was thus in the early stages of Christianity, which shared certain characteristics with such beliefs as Mithraism, Gnosticism, Neoplatonism. The idea of man’s need of a mediator with heaven was abroad in the Roman world before the Messiah was proclaimed to it. There thus existed a danger of confusion, that alien shoots of dogma might be grafted upon the pure and original stock of Christianity. The influence of such extraneous sources is apparent in the fourth gospel. Even in the very earliest days when the body of Christian belief consisted of little more than the disciples’ recollections of the sayings and actions of their Founder, when the simplest conception of pure and undefiled religion was being taught,[231] even then the faithful were warned to beware of ‘false prophets,’ ‘false teachers’ who ‘privily shall bring in damnable heresies.’[232] As the fabric of dogma began to be woven, the note became vehement. St. Paul denounces ‘false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ.’[233] In another place he declares, ‘But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.’[234] So far, however, even the idea of what constitutes heresy is vague, and the spirit of tolerance and of brotherliness is strong. The offender is not to be counted as an enemy, but admonished as a brother.[235] The fact is that the flock is so small and the pagan world outside so powerful that internal dissensions cannot be permitted. But the new faith surviving, doctrine becomes more stereotyped, the feeling of later generations more confident. Polycarp finds the heretic to be antichrist, who belongs to the Devil and is the oldest son of Satan,[236] and Tertullian in one passage recommends the employment of compulsion against the heretic.[237]
Such language is not common among the early Fathers. They are themselves members of a society liable to persecution, and they do not preach coercion. Lactantius urges that the only weapon for Christians to use is their reason; they must defend their faith not by violence, but persuasion.[238] The Church in those days had not the opportunity to use force, even if it had wished to: and this fact must be borne in mind in connection with Tertullian’s enunciation of the principle of tolerance, when he declares that the selection of his mode of worship is a man’s natural right, the exercise of which cannot be either harmful or profitable to his neighbour, and that it is not the part of a religion to compel men to embrace it.[239] In the (only apparent) contradiction between this ruling and the counsel given regarding the treatment of heretics, Tertullian laid down a principle of momentous consequence for the future, namely, that while force should not be applied to the unbeliever, its use is legitimate in the case of the man who has once accepted the faith and erred in it.
With the accession of Constantine, there dawned a new era for the Christian Church. Till then the Roman state had been neutral, when not actively hostile; from this time onwards, with one brief interval, it was an active supporter. The Church became possessed of all the enormous power of the imperial authority. The civil order is definitely Christian, and one of the prime duties of the Emperor, lord of the world, is the protection of the Church. Constantine speedily showed himself anxious to take a leading part in ecclesiastical matters. He had recourse to torture, confiscation of property, exile and possibly the death penalty also in harrying the Donatists.[240]
Donatism was a small thing in comparison with Arianism, which shook the Christian Church to its foundations. When the fathers of Nicaea decided the intricate metaphysical question of ‘consubstantial,’ the Emperor proclaimed exile for all who did not accept the Council’s decision. Against this determination to root out their enemies, to establish one interpretation of truth by force, the Fathers made no protest, but accepted the intervention of the secular authority on their behalf. There was no thought of the possible consequence of such a pact in the future.[241] The triumph of the orthodox was short-lived. The Arians were victorious later on and in their turn persecuted the Trinitarians. The Christians, said Julian the Apostate, treated each other like wild beasts. The punishments inflicted by one party upon the other included imprisonment, flogging, torture, death. To such a pass had doctrinal differences already brought the adherents of a religion which proclaimed peace and goodwill among men. The tradition of persecution had been thoroughly established. The laws of Theodosius II and Valentinian II enumerate as many as thirty-two different heresies, all punishable, the penalties being such as deprivation of civil rights, exile, corporal punishment and death. But the heresies are carefully differentiated, the severest penalties being reserved for Manichæism, which had been punished by the Roman state in its pagan, polytheistic and tolerant days, because of its anti-social tendencies.[242] But now orthodox emperors persecuted Arians, Arian emperors persecuted followers of Athanasius, simply because they had taken sides in a theological controversy.
What view did the Church take of the activities of the lay power? Was it actively approving or disapproving, or passively acquiescent? We find some of the Fathers still preaching the old doctrines of tolerance. Athanasius, himself at the time persecuted, declared that persecution was an invention of the Devil. To Chrysostom heretics are as persons diseased, nearly blind, assuredly to be led, not forced. He comments on the parable of the tares, and urges the necessity of being very careful, lest the godly be destroyed together with heretics.[243] Jerome remembers that the Church was founded upon persecutions and martyrdoms and on the whole seems to inculcate lenience in treatment of heretics, though a remark to the effect that Arius, at first only a single spark, not being immediately extinguished, set the whole world on fire, and that corrupted flesh must be cut off, points to a different opinion.[244]
The most significant of the later Fathers is St. Augustine. In his case there is a notable change of front with regard to the treatment of heretics. By temperament he was an advocate of toleration, and at first, like Chrysostom, he appeals to the parable of the tares in justification of tolerance. Heretics should be allowed the opportunity to correct themselves and to repent. They are to be regarded as lost sheep. He is afraid that persecution might lead to those who were in reality heretics becoming hypocritical Catholics.[245] But later on he altered his opinions. He had found that the weapons of persuasion and eloquence were not strong enough to break down the obduracy of his enemies the Donatists. He had been too optimistic. The methods of force employed by the secular power were after all salutary and necessary. ‘He therefore, who refuses to obey the imperial laws, when made against the truth of God, acquires a great reward; he who refuses to obey, when they are made for support of the divine truth, exposes himself to most grievous punishment.’[246] He rejoices, therefore, in a Christianized state. The death penalty he indeed strongly reprobates as contrary to Christian charity, but he approves both banishment and confiscation of property.[247] These later opinions of St. Augustine were largely accepted after him.
An important episode in the history of the Church’s attitude to heresy is the execution of the Spanish heretic, Priscillian, by the Emperor Maximus. Priscillian’s teachings, akin to Manichæism, were denounced by several bishops, and it was upon their complaint that the Spaniard was brought before the imperial tyrant. The action of the bishops, who had thus involved themselves in the guilt of blood, wittingly or unwittingly, was severely condemned by St. Ambrose and still more by Martin of Tours, who refused to have any communion with them. This happened in 385.[248] In 447 it seemed that heresy was reviving in Spain, and Pope Leo I expressly commended the act of Maximus. He feared lest, if such damnable error was not crushed, there should be an end to all human and divine law; and if he did not ask for the death sentence, he was quite willing that the Church should acquiesce in the state’s severity and reap the advantages resulting from it.[249] Thus to welcome the results of the shedding of blood in cases of heresy, while refusing to accept the responsibility for it, constituted a most dangerous attitude.
For centuries after the days of Leo I heresy almost ceased to be a problem for the Church at all. Western Christendom entered into the gloom of the Dark Ages, its history the arid record of barbarian invasions and the rivalries of Childerichs and Chilperichs. The human intelligence was dormant: consequently heresy ceased to be a force. When there is no mental activity, no education, no discussion, there may be faith, there can never be heresy. When the darkness lifted a little, heresy once more became a problem. In 1022 thirteen Cathari were burnt by order of, and in the presence of, King Robert II of France. The punishment of heresy by fire was an entire innovation. There was no existing law to sanction it. The stake had been used by Roman emperors to punish parricides, slaves who attempted their masters’ lives, and incendiaries, and it still existed as a punishment for sorcerers and witches. The stake may have been used on this occasion because it was an impressive and theatrical death and, a choice being demanded between abjuration and death, it was considered the latter should be specially terrifying.[250] Another execution of Cathari, this time by hanging, took place in 1051 at Goslar in Saxony in the presence of the Emperor Henry III. As in France, so in Germany, the law knew neither the offence nor the punishment. The Emperor was acting simply in the public defence.[251]
It is important to note the part played in the treatment of heretics at this period by the populace. In both the cases just cited the secular prince had in his action the full approval of the people. It is particularly noticed by the chronicles of the first incident that the deed was ‘regis jussu et universae plebis consensu.’[252] And Henry strengthened his position in the absence of any written law by securing the agreement of his subjects.[253] Nothing could be better attested than the crowd’s hatred of the heretic in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, as far as northern Europe was concerned.[254] In the south it was different. There are several instances of the feeling in the north in the late decades of the eleventh and early decades of the twelfth century. For example, in 1076 at Cambrai a Catharan who had been condemned by the bishop as a heretic (no sentence pronounced) was seized upon by the bishop’s officers and the mob, who placed him in some sort of cabin, which they burned with the prisoner inside it. It is said that the recantation of Roscellinus was due to the threat of death at the hands of the populace.[255] In 1114 certain heretics having been placed provisionally in prison by the Bishop of Strassburg were in the bishop’s absence forcibly seized upon by the crowd, who, the chronicler states, feared clerical lenience. They were led out of the town and there burnt alive.[256] A similar event happened in Cologne in 1143; whilst two years later at Liège the clergy only just succeeded in rescuing the crowd’s victims from its clutches. Lawless violence against heretics continued to evince itself in France into the following century, there being instances of it in Troyes, Nevers, Besançon, Paris, even at a time when the secular power, under Philip Augustus, was active in bringing heretics to the stake.
What was the attitude of the clergy in this period, during which it seems evident that in northern Europe secular princes and public opinion were united in thinking heresy deserving of death, even by burning? There is the evidence of the mob fearing clerical lenience in one case cited, of the clergy actually intervening against the crowd in another. When the heretics were burnt at Cambrai in 1076 Gregory VII protested and ordered the excommunication of the inhabitants.[257] And there is a very notable protest against the use of force by Wazon, Bishop of Liège (1042-8), who in answer to a query of the Bishop of Châlons as to whether he should yield up heretics to the secular arm or not, referred to the parable of the tares in support of lenience.[258] His successor, Theoduin, on the other hand, is found counselling Henry I of France to mete out punishment to the followers of Berengar of Tours,[259] and about the same time we find the Archbishop of Milan giving some supposed Manichæans the choice between abjuration and the stake.[260]
The fact that most clearly emerges from the consideration of rather conflicting evidence in this period is the absence of any law regarding heretics. The mob, secular princes and clergy are all acting irregularly, taking measures in self-defence in the absence of written rulings. Generally speaking, it would appear that there is a prevailing idea that heresy merits the extreme penalty. At the same time some attempt was made at various ecclesiastical councils to standardize procedure against heresy.
A Council at Rheims in 1049 spoke only of excommunication as a punishment; one at Toulouse in 1119 did the same, but also called upon the secular arm to render aid.[261] The middle of the twelfth century saw a great revival of both Roman and Canon law and the publication of the Decree of Gratian. The Decree did not put all uncertainty at an end. It certainly laid down a clear ruling regarding the confiscation of property. The heretic, being outside both human and divine law, could not hold property. But regarding the death penalty there could be no plain direction, because on this subject Gratian’s authorities were contradictory and remained so despite his efforts to reconcile them.[262] Further efforts at definition were made by ecclesiastical councils during the century. One sitting at Rheims in 1157 demanded banishment and branding for those who simply professed Catharism, for proselytizers perpetual imprisonment; but it seems to hint at the death penalty in the veiled phrase: ‘carcere perpetuo, nisi gravius aliquid fieri debet visum, recludentur.’[263] Another Council at Tours in 1163, presided over by Alexander III, reiterated the demand for incarceration and also ordered the confiscation of goods.[264] The second Council of the Lateran of 1179, lamenting the marked spread of heresy, commended the use of force by the secular arm and proclaimed a two years’ indulgence to all who should take up arms against heretics.[265]
The first secular law in the Middle Ages dealing with heresy is English. In 1166 two Cathari were brought before Henry II at Oxford, whipped and branded with a red key and banished.[266] Shortly afterwards in the same year appeared the clause in the Assize of Clarendon, forbidding the sheltering of heretics on the pain of having one’s house destroyed.[267] Other severe secular legislation soon appeared in other countries. In 1194 the Emperor Henry VI ordered the confiscation of the property, and the destruction of the houses, of heretics and inforced fines on communities and individuals who neglected to assist, when they had the opportunity, in the arrest of heretics.[268] The same year Alfonso II of Aragon, aiming at expelling all Manichæans and Waldenses from his dominions, issued an edict declaring all heretics public enemies and banishing them.[269] The ineffectiveness of this edict is demonstrated by the appearance of a severer one three years later issued by Alfonso’s successor, Pedro II, famous as the victor over the Moors at Las Navas de Tolosa, equally notorious for his warlike prowess, his religious zeal, his prodigality and licentiousness. Once again banishment is decreed, but it is added that if any heretics remain in defiance of the edict after a specified date they shall perish at the stake and their effects be confiscated.[270]
Whatever may have been the case earlier, there seems good evidence of the zeal of the clergy against heretics in the latter part of the twelfth century, which saw so much more precision in the declarations of ecclesiastical councils and secular laws on the subject. In 1167 we find the Abbot of Vézelai, when several heretics were before him, appealing to the people to give sentence, and accepting their demand for a death of torture. Some years later at Rheims we find the Archbishop and clergy in agreement with the nobles that two Catharan women should be burnt.[271] Hugh, Bishop of Auxerre (1183-1206), is a busy prosecutor of heretics, causing many to be burnt or exiled. More notable than such isolated instances of clerical activity is the co-operation between Pope and Emperor which led to the important bull entitled Ad abolendam.[272] In 1184, Lucius III and Frederick Barbarossa met at Verona, and as the result of their conference this bull was promulgated, which (among other provisions) fixed rules for the prosecution of suspected heretics, the visitation of infected areas and the assistance of all civil authorities. The Emperor for his part placed heretics under the ban of the empire.[273] The decree of Henry VI, already referred to, was plainly based on this action of his predecessor’s.
Towards the end of the twelfth century, then, we have clear evidence of secular and ecclesiastical authorities working hand in hand for the suppression of heresy. To the former, heresy seemed equivalent to rebellion; to the latter, equivalent to murder, being the murder of the soul. When Pedro II issued his harsh edict against the Cathari of Aragon, he claimed that he was actuated by zeal for the public welfare and a desire to obey the canons of the Church.[274] There was no order in the canons that heretics should be burnt to death; but otherwise, Pedro’s appeal to Canon law was justified: and besides the canons, there were the various edicts of ecclesiastical councils during the century, all of them calling upon the secular authority to use its utmost efforts towards the eradication of heresy.
It has been urged that the attitude adopted by the Church was a most unwilling attitude, forced upon it by influences too powerful to resist, that the main motive power of persecution came not from the Church, but from the lay authority and from public opinion. The theory is advanced that during the period, roughly from 1000 to 1150, when the position of the heretic was a matter of legal uncertainty, the clergy opposed the violence evinced against heretics, and in eventually yielding they submitted to the strength of a custom which constituted a sort of jus non scriptum.[275] But there is not much force in this plea. To acquiesce in a jus non scriptum argues either indifference or impotence: and the Church in the eleventh and twelfth centuries was neither indifferent nor impotent. Nor is the opposition of the clergy to mob violence an argument to the point. A dislike for mob law and lynching does not necessarily betoken disapproval of capital punishment.[276] It is true—and this is very important—that spontaneously, without any direct incitement from the clergy, the people regarded the heretic with intense abhorrence. We ought probably to add that in the absence of written law on the subject there was a rather vague idea, shared by the mob and their rulers, that not only death, but a particularly terrible kind of death, was an appropriate punishment for the heretic—this idea being perhaps derived from the fact that Roman law had at different times meted out this doom for certain kinds of heretics, particularly Manichæans, and other offenders, such as sorcerers and witches. It is true also that the heretics upon whom the mob turned were generally Manichæan. Yet no one who has any knowledge of the position of the mediæval Church can honestly maintain on these grounds that the Church had no responsibility for the rigour displayed towards the heretic. The heretic was regarded as an offender against society, because it was a Christian society. Heresy, being error in the faith, was investigated and recognized by the Church. The clergy, not the mob, discovered the heresy and the heretic; for such discovery could not be made without theological knowledge, of which the mob were ignorant. And such knowledge as they possessed, were it reasoned understanding or merely half-assimilated fragments of doctrine, was derived solely from clerical instruction. It was difficult for any sort of knowledge to come from any other source. Heresy was regarded as dangerous to the community, because, to begin with, the Church had found it dangerous to itself. The intellectual and spiritual atmosphere with which Christendom was permeated was of the Church’s making. The attempt, therefore, to absolve the Church from responsibility for the measures taken against heresy in these centuries—by whomsoever they were taken—involves a wholly erroneous, indeed an absurd, under-estimate of the authority of the Church.
In 1198 there came to the papal throne perhaps the greatest of the whole pontifical line, Lothario Conti, Innocent III. High in resolve to strengthen Church and Papacy, he at once gave his attention to the problem of heresy. But though zealous, in some respects he showed a commendable moderation. He was anxious that the innocent should not be confounded with the guilty in the impetuosity of the perfervid clerk or the impatience of the mob; and for the first ten years of his pontificate he made trial of a pacific programme.[277] But in one part of Christendom the problem of heresy had by this time become acute. In the lands of the Count of Toulouse, Catharism was as rampant as were clerical abuses. The pleasure-loving, prosperous inhabitants of Provence, of Narbonne, of Albi felt the authority of the Church to be an obnoxious incubus upon their worldliness, their careless independence. The clergy were hated and despised. The troubadour made pleasant ridicule of the sacraments and every doctrine of the Church, however sacred. The death-bed repentance scheme of the Catharan system, its denial of a purgatory and a hell, were popular. Still more so was the pretext afforded by its anti-sacerdotal precepts for despoiling the Church.[278] So the nobles and the rich bourgeoisie and merchants received heretics into their houses, clothed them and fed them, while they were exempted from taxes. So great was the hold of heresy in his lands, that Count Raymond V of Toulouse declared himself to be wholly unable to resist it.[279] His successor, Raymond VI, had no wish to resist it, being of the same stuff as his people and seeing no call to disturb them at the bidding of priests. Thus when a Council at Montpellier in 1195 anathematized all princes failing to enforce the Church’s decrees against heretics, he paid no heed.
A couple of months after his accession Innocent III sent two commissioners into Languedoc, one of them being subsequently entrusted with legatine powers, to tackle a situation so serious that the whole of that country seemed on the point of slipping away from its allegiance to the Catholic faith and communion. They were instructed that obdurate heretics were to be banished, their property confiscated; and the secular authority was to see to it that their measures were carried out under pain of interdict. The efforts of these two commissioners were entirely fruitless. In 1204 their successors were entrusted with increased authority, which gave them a complete dictatorship over the ecclesiastical dignitaries of Languedoc, who were bitterly reviled for their incapacity. Yet neither these measures nor lavish bribes to secular rulers proved efficacious, and even the iron resolution of the commissioners, Pierre de Castelnau and Arnaud of Citeaux, was breaking down beneath the weight of persistent failure, when a certain Spaniard, Diego de Arzevedo, Bishop of Osma, suggested to the legates the scheme of an evangelistic enterprise. This was adopted, and bare-footed missionaries were sent forth to re-convert the erring by simple preaching and exhortation. Among the preachers was St. Dominic himself. This laudable scheme also failed. There is a legend that Dominic, stung by his ill-success, predicted what the upshot of such deplorable obduracy must eventually be. There was a saying in Spain, he quoted, that a beating may work where a blessing won’t. The towers of the cities of the fair land would have to be laid low, its people reduced to servitude.[280] The actual signal for a complete reversal of policy was the murder of Pierre de Castelnau in circumstances which recall the murder of Becket. The legate had exasperated the Count of Toulouse; one of the latter’s knights slew the priest. Innocent called for vengeance upon the blood-guilty Count; and the Albigensian Crusade, which Innocent had ere this been preaching in vain to Philip Augustus of France, was the immediate consequence. The first crusading army, an international force, assembled at Lyons in June 1209.[281] The ensuing wars are memorable for the men who took part in them—Pedro of Aragon, the zealous Catholic, now intervening on behalf of Count Raymond and perishing on the field of Muret, Simon de Montfort, the ‘athlete of Christ’! Never was there Christian warrior purer in his motives than Simon, more whole-hearted in his enthusiasm, or more utterly inhuman in his fanaticism. These wars are also memorable for their political issues and consequences. From the outset purely political interests were intermixed with the religious. The great nobles who led the forces of the Cross united with their pious zeal an at least equally genuine and powerful hatred and jealousy of the rich and bountiful southern land which harboured a culture so different from their own, more Saracen than European. The wars were wars of the north against the south, of one civilization against another. The astute and calculating Philip Augustus seized with avidity the opportunity of bringing under his direct control a province of France, which had been practically an independent kingdom; and the crusade is, therefore, of first-rate importance as a big contribution to the unification of the French kingdom.
If to many who took part in them the original purpose of these religious wars was altogether subsidiary, that purpose was none the less most horribly accomplished. The peculiar civilization of Languedoc was blotted out, its beauty and fragrance being utterly extinguished by the onslaught of the crusaders. With the civilization went the heresy that it had harboured. Catharism indeed continued to exist in the devastated region, but all its vital power of expansion had been destroyed when the conditions that fostered it vanished. The Albigensian wars were the most successful attempt to extirpate heresy known in history. They were successful because they were utterly ruthless and included wholesale massacres. When the town of Béziers fell, it is said that twenty thousand of its inhabitants were slaughtered. There were good Catholics as well as Cathari among the populace of the place; but the story goes that when Arnaud of Citeaux was asked whether the Catholics were to be spared, in his anxiety lest a single heretic should escape by pretending orthodoxy, he replied, ‘Kill them all, for God knows His own.’[282]
When the crusaders appeared in Languedoc, toleration vanished out of western Christendom. There was no asylum left where the heretic could feel assured of safety from the persecutor. The power of the Church against the disobedient had been mightily asserted. The ruler who had dared to disregard her order to purify his land of its contaminators had been brought low. From every country the papacy had been able to bring together doughty warriors to uphold the unity of the faith by spilling the blood of the perverse wanderers from the fold. The policy of force had been triumphantly vindicated by the amplitude of its success.