(2) Temples and Churches ought not to be built, and those already built ought to be pulled down, and sacred places for praying were not necessary to Christians, since equally in tavern or church, in market or temple, before altar or stall, God, when called upon, hears and hearkens to those who deserve.
(3) All holy crosses should be broken up and burnt, since that instrument by which Christ was so fearfully tortured and so cruelly put to death was not worthy of adoration, veneration or any other worship, but in revenge for His torments and death should be dishonoured with every kind of infamy, struck with swords and burnt.
(4) Not only do they deny the truth of the Body and Blood of the Lord in the Sacrament daily and continually offered up in the Church, but declare that it is absolutely nothing and ought not to be offered to God.
(5) They deride sacrifices, prayers, alms and other good things done by the faithful living for the faithful departed, and affirm that these things cannot help any of the dead in the smallest degree.[31] Also "they say God is mocked by Church hymns, because He delights in pious desires, and cannot be summoned by loud voices or appeased by musical notes."[32]
In the letter itself Peter Venerabilis points out to the prelates that in their parts the people were re-baptized, churches profaned, altars thrown down, crosses burnt. Meat was publicly eaten on the very day of the Lord's Passion, priests were scourged, monks imprisoned and compelled by terrors and tortures to marry. "The heads, indeed, of these pests by God's help as well as by the aid of Catholic princes you have driven out of your territories. But the slippery serpent, gliding out of your territories, or rather driven out by your prosecution, has betaken itself to the Province of Narbonne, and whereas with you it used to whisper in deserts and hamlets in fear, it now preaches boldly in great meetings and crowded cities. But let the most distant shores of the swift Rhone and the champaign adjacent to Toulouse, and the city itself, more populous than its neighbours, drive out this opinion; for the better informed the city is, the more cautious it ought to be against false dogma." Peter de Bruis was burnt by the faithful in revenge for the crosses which he had burnt.
§ 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.
§ 7. RALPH ARDENS
But although that mission was successful, it did not absorb all the anti-church movements. The Dualistic creed still obtained in many parts of Southern France, as Radulf Ardens[33] ("Sermons," p. 325) declared: "Such to-day, my brethren, are the Manichean heretics, for they have defiled our fatherland of Agen. They falsely assert that they keep to the Apostolic life, saying that they do not lie or swear at all; on the pretence of abstinence and continence they condemn flesh-food and marriage. They say that it is as great a sin to approach a wife as it is a mother or daughter. They condemn the Old Testament, and receive only some parts of the New. But what is more serious is they preach that there are two authors of Nature (rerum), God the author of things invisible, and the Devil the author of things visible. Hence, they secretly worship the Devil, because they believe him to be the creator of their body. They say that the Sacrament of the Altar is plain (purum) bread. They deny Baptism. They preach that no one can be saved except by their hands. They deny also the resurrection of the body."