§ 6. HENRY OF CLUNY
But "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church," whether that Church be true or false, and the mantle of Peter de Bruis fell strangely upon Henry, a fellow monk at Cluny of Peter Venerabilis. Henry, "haeres nequitiae ejus," with many others "doctrinam diabolicam non quidem emendavit sed immutavit," and wrote it down in a volume which Peter himself had seen, and that not under five heads, but several. "Haeres," however, must be loosely interpreted with regard to both time and teaching. For Henry had already been wonderfully successful as a revivalist elsewhere, and his teaching did not entirely coincide with that of Peter de Bruis. For instance, whereas the latter burnt the cross, Henry had one carried before him and his followers when he entered towns and villages, and made it the emblem and inspiration of a life of self-denial, to which his own monastic training would predispose him. So far from calling for the destruction of sacred buildings, he used them, when he obtained permission—as he did from Bishop Hildebert—for his mission preaching. He insisted upon the celibacy of the clergy, but regulated in minute detail the marriage of the laity. In fact, it is not easy to see how his teaching could be called heretical, unless it were his opposition to saint-worship, and doubtless he would have been allowed to move about freely had he not denounced the luxurious lives of the clergy and exposed them to the contempt and insults of the people. Arrested in A.D. 1134 he was condemned for heresy at the Council of Pisa, and imprisoned there; but he was released and returned to France, where he laboured in and around Toulouse and Albi, and met with remarkable success, not only amongst the laity, but even amongst the clergy; so much so, indeed, that the Churches were emptied of both, in order that priest and people might join the sect, which, after its leader, was called Henricians. Not until A.D. 1148 was he finally suppressed. Brought before a Council at Rheims he was sentenced to imprisonment for life, a punishment which goes to shew that he was not regarded as a heretic, but as a firebrand whose inflammatory activity must, for the peace of the Church, be extinguished. Reform of life rather than reform of doctrine was the aim of Henry's mission.