Though heresy was by no means so universal as the papal anathemas would indicate, yet heretics were quite numerous enough to possess political importance, and to have some justification for their hopes of eventually becoming dominant. Little concealment was deemed necessary. When Otho IV. was in Rome for his coronation in 1209, under the vigilant rule of Innocent III., the ecclesiastics who accompanied him were scandalized at finding schools where Manichæan doctrines were openly taught, apparently without interference. The earlier Dominican persecutors are represented as constantly holding public disputations with heretics in the most populous cities of Italy, and the miracles related of them were mostly occasioned by the taunts and challenges of heretics. Otho, at Ferrara, in 1210, was obliged to order the magistrates to put to the ban the Cathari who refused, at the instance of the bishop, to return to the Church, and also those who publicly supported them.[212]
Although Stephen of Bourbon relates that a converted heretic informed him that in Milan there were no less than seventeen heterodox sects which bitterly disputed with each other, yet they can, as in France, be reduced to two main classes—Cathari, or Patarins, and Waldenses. The Cathari, it will be remembered, made their appearance in the first half of the eleventh century, at Monforte, in Lombardy, and they had continued to multiply since then. About the middle of the thirteenth century Rainerio Saccone gives us an enumeration of their churches. In Lombardy and the Marches there were about five hundred perfected Cathari of the Albanensian sect, more than fifteen hundred Concorrezenses, and about two hundred Bajolenses. The Church of Vicenza reckoned about a hundred; there were as many in Florence and Spoleto, and in addition about one hundred and fifty refugees from France in Lombardy. As he estimates the total number, from Constantinople to the Pyrenees, at four thousand, with a countless congregation of believers, it will be seen that nearly two thirds of the whole number were concentrated in northern Italy, chiefly in Lombardy, and that they constituted a notable portion of the population.[213]
Lombardy, in fact, was the centre whence Catharism was propagated throughout Europe. We have seen above how for more than half a century it served as a refuge to the persecuted saints of Languedoc, and as a source whence to draw missionaries and teachers. About 1240 a certain Yvo of Narbonne was falsely accused of heresy and fled to Italy, where he was received as a martyr, and had full opportunity of penetrating into the secrets of the sectaries. In a letter to Géraud, Archbishop of Bordeaux, he describes their thorough organization throughout Italy, with ramifications extending into all the neighboring lands. From all the cities of Lombardy and Tuscany their youth were sent to Paris to perfect themselves in logic and theology, so as to be able successfully to defend their errors. Catharan merchants frequented fairs and obtained entrance into houses where they lost no opportunity of scattering the seed of false doctrine. Full of zeal and courage, the Catharan believed his faith to be the religion of the future, and his ardor courted martyrdom in the effort to spread it everywhere. Milan was the headquarters whither every year delegates were sent from the churches throughout Christendom, bringing contributions for the support of the central organization, and receiving instructions as to the symbol, changed every twelvemonth, whereby the wandering Patarin could recognize the houses of his brethren and safely claim hospitality. It was in vain that, in 1212, Innocent III. warned the heretical city of the fate of Languedoc, and threatened to send a similar crusade for its extirpation. Fortunately for the Lombards he had no one to summon to their destruction, for Germany, however desirous of conquering Italy, was too distracted for such an enterprise, and the popes dreaded imperial domination quite as much as heresy. There was bitter irony in the reply of Frederic II., when, in 1236, he was subduing the rebellious Lombards, and he answered the clamor of Gregory IX., who called upon him to transfer his arms to Syria, by pointing out that the Milanese were much worse than Saracens, and their subjugation much more important.[214]
We have no means of obtaining an approximate estimate of the Waldenses, but in some districts they must have been almost as numerous as the Cathari. The remains of the Arnaldistæ and Umiliati had eagerly welcomed the missionaries of the Poor Men of Lyons, and had not only adopted their tenets, but had pushed them to a further development in antagonism to Rome. As early as 1206 we see Innocent III. alluding to Umiliati and Poor Men of Lyons as synonymous expressions, and endeavoring with little success to effect their expulsion from Faenza, where they were spreading and infecting the people. In Milan they had built a school where they publicly taught their doctrines; this was at length torn down by a zealous archbishop, and when, in 1209, Durán de Huesca sought to bring them back to the fold, a hundred or more of them consented to be reconciled if the building were restored to them. Evidently they had little to dread from active persecution, and subsequent letters of Innocent show them to be still flourishing there. The Waldenses who were burned at Strassburg in 1212 admitted that their chief resided in Milan, and that they were in the habit of collecting money and remitting it to him.[215]
It was, however, in the valleys of the Cottian Alps, to which they spread from Dauphiné, that they settled themselves most firmly. In those inhospitable regions, till then almost uninhabited, their marvellous and self-denying industry occupied every spot where incessant labor could support life. There they rapidly increased and filled the valleys of Luserna, Angrogna, San Martino, and Perosa. In 1210 Giacomo di Carisio, Bishop of Turin, alarmed at the constant growth of this heresy in his diocese, applied to Otho IV. for aid in its suppression, but the emperor in reply merely ordered him to use severity in their punishment and expulsion. Authority for this he already had in abundance under the canons, but he lacked the physical force to render it effective, and the imperial rescript went for naught. This shows that the local suzerains took no measures to enforce persecution, and the heretics continued to increase. The immediate sovereign of the district most deeply infected was the Abbey of Ripaille, which found itself unable to control them, and made over its temporal rights to Tommaso I., Count of Savoy. He issued an edict, to which I have already referred, imposing a fine of ten sols for giving refuge to heretics, which proved altogether ineffective. Thus, in the absence of efficient repression, were established those Alpine communities whose tenacity of belief supplied through centuries an unfailing succession of humble martyrs, and who ennobled human nature by their marvellous example of constancy and endurance.[216]
Although the Lombard Waldenses admitted their descent from the Poor Men of Lyons, their more rapid development gave rise to differences, and in 1218 a conference was held at Bergamo between delegates of both parties. This did not succeed in removing the points of dissidence, and about 1230 the Lombards sent to the brethren in Germany a statement of the discussion and of their views. It is not our province to enter into these minute details of faith and Church government, but the affair is worth alluding to as illustrating the flourishing condition of the Church, the practical toleration which it enjoyed, and the active communication which existed between its organizations throughout Europe.[217]
The aggressiveness of the heretics, the favor shown them by the people, and the impossibility of any systematic suppression by the Church under existing political conditions are well exhibited in the troubles which commenced at Piacenza in 1204. There the heretics were strong enough to provoke a quarrel between the authorities and Bishop Grimerio, which resulted in either the withdrawal or the expulsion of the prelate and all the clergy. The exiles transferred themselves to Cremona, but in 1205 that city likewise quarrelled with its pastors, and the wanderers were again driven forth, to find a refuge in Castell’’ Arquato. For three years and a half Piacenza remained without an orthodox priest, and deprived of all the observances and consolations of religion. So weak was the hold of the Church upon the people that this deprivation was acquiesced in with the utmost indifference. In October, 1206, Innocent III. sent three Apostolic Visitors to effect a reconciliation, with a threat of dividing the diocese and apportioning it among the neighboring sees, but the citizens cared nothing for this, and refused the terms demanded, which required them to compensate their bishop for the damage inflicted on him. After some six months wasted in fruitless negotiations the Visitors departed, and it was not till July, 1207, that another commission, offering more favorable conditions, succeeded in effecting a reconciliation which enabled the clergy to return from exile. About the same period Innocent found himself obliged to use persuasion and argument in the endeavor to urge the people of Treviso to expel their heretics. So far from threatening them, he begged them to have faith that their bishop would reform the excesses of the clergy whose evil example had disturbed them. It is easy thus to understand the exulting confidence with which the heretics anticipated the eventual triumph of their creeds, and the despair which led Abbot Joachim of Flora, in expounding the Apocalypse, to see in them the locusts with the power of scorpions who issue from the bottomless pit at the sounding of the fifth trumpet (Rev. IX. 3, 4). These heretics are the Antichrist; they are to grow in power and their king is already chosen, that king of the locusts “whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon” (Rev. IX. 11). Resistance to them will be in vain; they are to unite with the Saracens, with whom, in 1195, he says they are already entering into negotiations.[218]
When Honorius III., in 1220, obtained from Frederic II. the ferocious coronation-edict against heresy, he may well have imagined that the way was open for its immediate suppression. If so, he was not long in discovering his mistake. Whatever professions Frederic might make, or whatever rigor he might exercise in his Sicilian dominions, it was no part of his policy to estrange the Ghibelline leaders, or to strengthen the Guelfic factions in the turbulent little republics which he sought to reduce to subjection. His whole reign was an internecine conflict, open or concealed, with Rome, and he was too much of a free-thinker to have any scruples as to the sources whence he could draw strength for himself or annoyance for his enemy. In central and upper Italy, therefore, his laws were for the most part virtually a dead letter. Already, in 1221, Ezzelin da Romano, the most powerful Ghibelline in the March of Treviso, was complained of for the protection which he afforded to heretics, and his continuing to do so to the end shows that he found it to be good policy. When, in 1227, Ingheramo da Macerata, the late podestà of Rimini, was persecuted by the citizens because he had delivered for burning as heretics some of their daughters and sisters, and because he had wished to inscribe on their statute-books the constitutions of Frederic, it was not to the emperor that he applied for protection, but to Honorius III.[219]
Something more than imperial edicts was plainly necessary, and Honorius, in casting around for methods to check the spread of heresy, appointed, in 1224, the Bishops of Brescia and Modena as commissioners with special powers to exterminate the heretics of Lombardy—as inquisitors, in fact, this being one of the steps which gradually led to the establishment of the Inquisition, the usefulness of the Dominicans in this respect not having yet been divined. The Bishop of Modena, however, undertook a mission to convert the pagans of Prussia, and the Bishop of Rimini was substituted in his place. The prelates commenced with Brescia itself, whose prelate doubtless knew where to strike. They ordered the tearing down of certain houses where heretical preachers had been accustomed to hold forth. At once an armed insurrection broke out. The perennial factions of the city took sides. Several churches were burned, and the heretics parodied from them the anathema by casting lighted torches from the windows, and solemnly excommunicating all members of the Church of Rome. It was not until after a severe and prolonged conflict that the Catholics obtained the upper hand, and then the terms prescribed by Honorius were so mild as to indicate that it was not deemed politic to drive the defeated party to despair. All excommunicates were required to apply personally for absolution to the Holy See. The fortified houses of the lords of Gambara, of Ugona, of the Oriani, of the sons of Botatio, who had been the leader in the troubles, were ordered to be razed to the ground, never to be rebuilt, while other strongholds, which had been defended against the Catholics, were to be cut down one-third or one-half. Benificed clerks who were children of heretics or of fautors were to be suspended for three years or more as their individual participation in the troubles might indicate. A levy of three hundred and thirty lire was ordered on the clergy of Lombardy and the Trivigiana to recompense the Catholics for the losses endured in contending with the heretics. So unaccustomed as yet were the Lombards to persecution that even these conditions were deemed too harsh. The city of Milan interceded, and finally even the authorities of Brescia itself urged that moderation would be conducive to peace; and, May 1, 1226, Honorius authorized the bishops to use their discretion in diminishing the penalties. When, however, the Dominican Guala was elected Bishop of Brescia in 1230, he speedily succeeded in introducing in the local statutes the law of Frederic, of March, 1224, which decreed for heretics the stake or loss of the tongue, and he forced the podestà to swear to its execution.[220]
Gregory IX. was a man of sterner temper than Honorius, and, despite his octogenary age, his advent to the pontificate, in 1227, was the signal for unrelenting war on heresy. Within three weeks of his accession peace was signed, under the auspices of the papacy, between Frederic II. and the Lombard League, with provisions for the suppression of heresy. Gregory immediately, in the most imperious fashion, summoned the Lombards to perform their duty. Hitherto, he told them, all their pretended efforts had been fraudulent. No enforcement of the imperial constitutions had been attempted. If the heretics had at any time been driven away, it was with a secret understanding that they would be allowed to return and dwell in peace. If fines had been inflicted, the money had been covertly refunded. If statutes had been enacted, there was always a reservation by which they were rendered ineffective. Thus heresy had grown and strengthened while the liberties of the Church had been subverted. Heretics had been permitted to preach their doctrines publicly, while ecclesiastics had been outlawed and imprisoned. All this must cease, the provisions of the treaty of peace must be enforced, and, if they continued in their evil courses, the Holy See would find means to coerce them in their perversity.[221]