We have valuable evidence as to the comparative frequency of the various penances prescribed by the Inquisition. The practice of different inquisitors varied, as was inevitable, when so much was left to the arbitrary decision of the individual judge. But a general computation is possible. Imprisonment, confiscation of property, the wearing of crosses are the sentences that occur most frequently. No inquisitor in the Middle Ages was more vigorous and efficient than Bernard Gui. In a collection of sentences extending over a period of seventeen years, 1308-23, there are 307 of imprisonment, 143 of wearing crosses, 69 of exhumation, 9 of pilgrimages without the wearing of crosses, 40 of condemnation of fugitives as contumacious, 45 of relaxation to the secular arm; i.e. only 45 sentences of relaxation out of 613.[474] Another veritable ‘hammer of heretics,’ Bernard de Caux, has left voluminous records of his cases between the years 1246 and 1248. There are a large number of sentences of life imprisonment; not a single mention of relaxation.[475] This is very remarkable, as it seems highly unlikely that Bernard de Caux never came across an impenitent in the course of his duties, and the suggestion is at least plausible that the records are incomplete, being only entries of sentences of imprisonment.[476] But the clear indication of the evidence is that the number of cases of relaxation must have been comparatively small in the aggregate and very small in comparison with other sentences.
This may appear strange to those whose sole idea of the Inquisition is that of a court mainly concerned with the burning of heretics. Such a conception rests upon a misunderstanding of the object and function of the tribunal. It did not aim at making great holocausts of victims; it desired only to make a few examples. Except in Languedoc, where the heretics were in a majority and powerful, a few examples always sufficed. It sought not vengeance, which was a synonym for failure, but reconciliation, which meant success. More characteristic of the Inquisition than its sentences of relaxation, with their attendant horrible consequence, in reality more effective and perhaps more terrible, was its whole method of procedure, its use of torture, moral as well as physical, the agony of the rack and the nervous strain of prolonged and tortuous examination, its utilization of the humiliation of the cross-wearing, of the dull and hopeless misery of harsh and lengthy imprisonment, by which the spirit of the victim was broken and the purity of the faith preserved.
CHAPTER VI - CONCLUSION
The story of mediæval heresy is but a chapter in a much larger subject, that of the slow and painful development of religious tolerance and freedom of thought. Heresy—essentially free choice in the sphere of religious belief in contradistinction to implicit obedience to doctrinal authority—was a serious problem to the Church in the early centuries of the Christian era. During the long, distracted and desolate epoch of the barbarian invasions it ceased to be a potent factor in history. But when Europe recovered from the malady, the lethargy of the Dark Ages, and the human mind was again awake, it became once more a problem. The rationalistic speculations of Eriugena, Roscellinus and Berengar; the disordered ravings of Tanchelm; the aggressive anti-sacerdotalism of the Cathari or Paulicians, and of the vagrant Waldenses, present us with the three outstanding types of mediæval heresy. By far the most influential, those which the Church recognized as the most hurtful and dangerous, were the last. In the case of the Cathari there was a clear and a very remarkable revival of a heresy that had much afflicted the early Church, Manichæism. Their dualist theology was hopelessly pessimistic; their practical teachings a mere gospel of despair. The crude dualism and perverted antinomianism of the sect contained little indeed that either merited respect or promised lasting influence. Only in the hint of a genuine hatred of the gross and the cruel was there aught to respect; only in its Donatist doctrine and its denunciation of the Catholic clergy was there the likelihood of lasting influence. In their hostility to the claims, and their diatribes against the abuses, of the clergy, Paulicianism and Waldensianism stood united. These two heresies gave a popular currency in the lands where they secured a foothold to anti-sacerdotalism, which involved not only the condemnation of all backsliding on the part of the clergy from the strictest and most rigid interpretation of the Christ-like life, but also—as the result of this—the rejection of the doctrinal basis of the peculiar privileges of the clergy, namely the conception of the mediatorial character of the priesthood. The Arnoldist ‘Poor Men’; the Petrobrusians, insisting on the sole efficacy of the individual’s own faith, unaided by churches and sacraments; the Henricians in their ascetic denunciation of clerical worldliness and rejection of the sacraments; the Poor Men of Lyons, adopting the rule of absolute poverty, preaching in streets and countryside because, although illiterate, they were conscious of an inward vocation, and so being led on to undertake other priestly functions though unordained; the Cathari asserting that the Catholic Church was lost in materialism and worldliness and that they were the true church of Christ—all these were inherently the aggressive enemies of the priesthood. There was a similar note in much of the popular poetry in those southern lands in which these heresies took firmest root. It is a note scornful, defiant, often ribald and profane, that comes into the songs of the goliards and troubadours. With a robust and crude Rabelaisianism they burlesque, not only clerical manners, but the holiest ceremonies and the most sacred doctrines. Even in miracles and mystery plays the note is sometimes heard; in the poems of Rutebeuf, the ‘Roman de la Rose’ and ‘Reynard the Fox,’ it is most resonant. In the popular poetry there is undoubtedly something of the unconsecrated paganism of the average man—his innate secularism rebelling against clerical privilege, when it is not fortified by personal worthiness. Yet between the Provençal troubadour and the Paulician heretic there was something akin; and with the nobleman of Languedoc, only too willing to take the excuse for despoiling the clergy, they were alike popular. We may regret the total extinction of the exotic, semi-Moorish culture of southern France, which the Albigensian crusades involved; we need not regret the virtual extinction, with it, of the heresies.[477] If there was something worthy of esteem in their demand for spiritual reality and personal holiness, this was confused with other elements, which were perverted and absurd, sometimes even repulsive and abominable. On their constructive side the heresies of Waldenses and Albigenses had nothing of genuine value to offer. In so far as they have significance, it is because of their anti-clerical elements, which are in part a cause, but more a symptom, of a trend of popular sentiment.
The second type of mediæval heresy is that represented by Tanchelm, Eon de l’Etoile, Segarelli, Dolcino, the Flagellants. It belongs to the province, not of the theologian but of the psychologist, specially interested in the study of depraved emotion and diseased imagination. Its foundation is that perverted sexuality which is so strangely connected, as a matter of psychological fact, with intensity of religious enthusiasm. The cases of Tanchelm and Eon are no doubt cases of simple religious mania. None of the heresies of this type had, or from their character was at all likely to have, any but the most fleeting results. They have, nevertheless, their interest, as symptoms of the powerful emotionalism which seemed equally liable to produce a fierce animalism or an intense religious asceticism. The same raw material of unregenerate sense and passion gave to the Church saints and heresiarchs. Ever in the Middle Ages there was a tendency to excess, excess of self-abnegation, excess of self-indulgence, a tendency to push ideas both of doctrine and conduct to extremes. Thus did the Spiritual Franciscans tend to see in their founder a superman, to make the cult of poverty an obsession, to believe themselves a new order destined to inaugurate the era of the Holy Ghost.
The third type of mediæval heresy is of an altogether different nature. It is intellectual, philosophic. In all the other heresies there is a taint of rottenness, disease. Here, on the other hand, there is the health and sanity of honest thinking—and though the thought be crude, obscure or exaggerated, there is at least the possibility of lasting results. In the re-discovery and re-absorption of the intellectual heritage of classical and patristic times there was always the danger of heresy. The process of adapting knowledge, pagan in source, coming sometimes through infidel channels, was certainly perilous. It has to be remembered that it was the Church that initiated and carried through this process; that to the Church the world is indebted for the Renaissance of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. But the process inevitably presented serious problems. In the first place, it yielded a copious mass of new comment and interpretation upon the original body of Christian dogma, viewed from a philosophic standpoint. Apply the logical methods of scholasticism and envisage dogma in the light of the metaphysical problem of the relations between the universal and the particular, and you have to decide whether the realist, the nominalist or the conceptualist is the true interpreter of the creeds. The difficulty was increased with the advent of Aristotelianism in the thirteenth century. One exposition of Aristotle was definitely declared to be heresy—that of the Averrhoïsts. But the Augustinian opponents of St. Thomas Aquinas endeavoured to confound him in the charge of heresy: and it was for a time doubtful whether Aristotelianism in any shape or form could be accepted as orthodox. Not only Alberto-Thomists in their attack upon the Averrhoïsts, but secular clergy warring with regulars, Franciscans inveighing against Dominicans, all glibly brought the convenient accusation of heresy against their opponents. It was for lawful authority to determine categorically what was orthodox, what heretical. But no authority was, as a matter of fact, impartial or certain to be final. Authority, whether papal, conciliar or academic, was itself wedded to one school of thought or another, swayed by the predominant philosophy of its own passing day.
It was not only a question of new ways of regarding, new interpretations of, existing dogma. There was also the problem presented by new dogmas, such as those of the Beatific Vision and the Immaculate Conception. Such tenets were not in themselves either inherently orthodox or heretical. When a creed is stabilized, completely rigid, it is easy to be exactly faithful to it; but when it is fluid, even for the most orthodox of intent, safety can only be found in caution.