[Sidenote: Adoration of the Virgin.]
The great increase in the whole intercessory machinery of the Church culminated in the adoration of the Virgin Mary. The extravagant expression of this devotion was widespread. For the many it found vent in the language of popular hymns. Among the monks the Cistercians were under her special protection, and all their churches were dedicated to her. Of the learned men Peter Damiani in the eleventh century, St. Bernard and St. Bonaventura in the two succeeding centuries respectively, especially helped in various ways to crystallise her position in the Church. As a result of the efforts of her devotees Saturdays and the vigils of all feast days came to be kept in her honour; the salutation "Ave Maria gratia plena" with certain additions was prescribed to be taught to the people, together with the Lord's Prayer and the Creed. In the thirteenth century its frequent repetition resulted in the invention of the Rosary, a string of beads by which the number of repetitions could be counted. The religion of Mary soon showed signs of development as a parallel religion to that of Christ. She is styled the Queen of Heaven; her office, composed by Peter Damiani, was ordered by Urban II to be recited on Saturday; and a Marian Psalter and a Marian Bible were actually composed; while in place of the didia or reverence offered to the saints, there was claimed for the Virgin a higher step, a hyperdulia, which St. Thomas places between dulia and the latria or adoration paid to Christ.
[Sidenote: The immaculate conception.]
A final stage in possible developments was reached in the twelfth century in the institution of a feast in honour of the conception of the Blessed Virgin. Hitherto it had been supposed by Christian writers, notably by St. Anselm, that the Mother of the Lord had been conceived as others. Towards the middle of the twelfth century some Canons of Lyons evolved the theory that she was conceived already sinless in her mother's womb. St. Bernard strenuously opposed this notion of her immaculate conception, pointing out that the supposition involved in the theory could not logically stop with the Virgin herself, but must be applied to her parents and so to each of their ancestors in turn in an endless series. Nor was St. Bernard alone in his objection: indeed, nearly all the chief theologians of the thirteenth century, including Thomas Aquinas, declared that there was no warrant of Scripture for the theory. But notwithstanding this criticism, the festival won its way to recognition. Those who kept it, however, declared that it was merely the conception which they celebrated; and St. Thomas interpreting this to denote the sanctification, was of opinion that such a celebration was not to be entirely reprobated. It was Duns Scotus who first among the schoolmen defended the theory of the immaculate conception, but in moderate language; and his Franciscan followers, who at a General Council of the Order in 1263 had admitted the festival among some other new occasions to be observed, in the course of the fourteenth century adopted it as a distinctive doctrine.
CHAPTER XII
HERESIES
[Sidenote: Cause of heresy.]
It was not until the thirteenth century that the Church had to face that spirit of scepticism or anti-religious feeling which is the chief bug-bear of modern Christianity. Her elaborate organisation and the gradual development of her own dogmatic position enabled her to deal with individual writers of a speculative turn like Berengar or Abailard. Nor were these in any sense anti-Christian. But they were the inciters to heresy; and a real danger to the Church lay in the filtering down of intellectual speculations to ignorant classes, by whom they would be transformed into weapons against the fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith. Indeed, from the eleventh century onward the Church was constantly threatened by heresy of a popular kind, which tended to develop into schism. And for this she had to thank not only the growing materialisation of her doctrine, but even more the worldly life of her ministers. Unpalatable doctrines may commend themselves by the pure lives which profess to be founded on them; but evil doing carries no persuasion to others.
[Sidenote: Two kinds of heretics.]
It is a real difficulty that our sources of information of all the heretics of these centuries are chiefly the writings of their successful opponents—the defenders of the orthodox faith. But much information remains to us from the admissions of her supporters as to the depraved condition of the Church at this period; so that we need not believe the allegations or their opponents that a chief inducement to join heretical sects lay in the greater scope for the indulgence of sin. Charges of immorality against opponents were the stock-in-trade of the controversialist, while the greatest authorities in the Church allow that heresy lived upon the scandals and negligences of the Church. Moreover, based as they were upon opposition to the existing organisation, the doctrines of the various sects had much in common. The Church did not distinguish between them, but excommunicated them all alike. If, however, we would understand the developments of opinion in the succeeding centuries, it is important to discriminate; and a clear distinction can be made between those opponents of the Church whose views were aimed against the development of an extreme sacerdotalism within the Church, and those who, going beyond this negative position, reproduced the Manichæan theories of an early age and threatened to raise a rival organisation to that of the Christian Church.