Alexander III, having composed his differences with Frederick Barbarossa and the Anti-pope, summoned, in A.D. 1179, the third Lateran Council. It was described as "A magnificent Diet of the Christian world." Over one thousand Bishops and Abbots (amongst them English[38], Irish[39] and Scotch), were present, besides many of the inferior clergy and representatives of Emperor and Kings. By its twenty-seventh Canon it condemned the heretics of Gascony, Albi and the parts about Toulouse, going under several names. If they died in sin no masses were to be said for their souls, nor were they to receive Christian burial.[40] One incident, however, at this Council, which received but scant notice at the time, has an important bearing upon our subject. This was a deputation of two Waldenses who begged official recognition of their movement from the Pope. We are concerned here only with their doctrines, which they professed to draw entirely from the Bible and the authoritative utterances of the Saints (auctoritates sanctorum). Had Alexander III been a Pope of statesmanlike prescience, the Preaching Orders which eventually saved the Church might have been anticipated by some thirty years. These Waldenses had no certain dwelling-place, travelled barefoot, wore woollen clothes only, had no private property, but "had all things in common," they followed naked the naked Christ. The Pope, to whom they gave a book containing the text of the Psalter with notes and several other books of "either Law," approved of their vow of voluntary poverty, but refused them permission to preach, unless the clergy (sacerdotes) asked them. Walter Mapes, an Englishman, afterwards a Franciscan, tells us ("De Nugis" i. 31) that he met the Waldenses in Rome. He calls them ignorant and unlearned, and by command of the Pope entered into conversation with them, asking them at first the easiest questions, e.g. "Did they believe in God the Father? and in the Son? and in the Holy Ghost?" To each they answered, "We believe." "And in the Mother of Christ?" But when they answered again, "We believe," they were greeted with a general shout of laughter, and retired in confusion, "et merito, quia a nullo regebantur et rectores appetebant fieri, Phaetonis instar, qui nec nomina novit equorum." The Abbot of Urspegensis, in his Chronicle (A.D. 1212), also mentions this petition of the Waldenses for Papal recognition, adding that they wore capes, like the "religious," and had long hair, unless they were "laymen." Men and women travelled together, which caused considerable scandal. Yet they asserted all these things came down from the Apostles.
§ 13. A PAPAL DECREE
Two years later Lucius III, on becoming Pope, issued a decree against the heretics under various names, including "Cathari, Patarini et ii qui se Humiliati vel Pauperes de Lugduno falso nomine mentiuntur." They were banned with a perpetual anathema, and were to be destroyed by the secular arm; but no errors are specified.
§ 14. ALAN DE INSULIS
At the third Lateran Council was present Alan, Bishop of Antissiodorensis, otherwise known as Alan de Insulis, Alan the Great, Alan the Universal Doctor. He was born A.D. 1114 at Lille in Flanders, although others, e.g. Demster, identify De Insulis with Mona (Man or Anglesea). As a boy he entered Clairvaux under Bernard, and in A.D. 1151 was made a Bishop. In A.D. 1183, by command, he wrote a work in four books, dedicated to "his most beloved lord, William, by the grace of God Count of Montpelier." The title of the work is, "De Fide Catholica contra haereticos sui temporis praesertim Albigenses." The Albigenses, however, are not mentioned by name throughout the work. The second book is entitled, "Contra Waldenses," in which he says: "The Waldenses are so called from their heresiarch, Waldus, who, of his own will (suo spiritu ductus), not sent by God, started a new sect, presuming forsooth to preach without the authority of a Bishop, without the inspiration of God, without learning. They assert that no one should be obeyed but God only (which is explained by what he states later—that it was their opinion that obedience should be given to good prelates only and to the imitators of the Apostles). Neither office nor Order avails anything for consecrating or blessing, for binding or loosing. Where a priest is not available, confession may be made to a layman. On no account must one take an oath. On no account must a man be killed." Alan charged them with holding Docetic views of our Lord, and with declaring that the Virgin Mary was created in heaven and had no father or mother.
Bernard, the Praemonstratensian, Abbot of Fontcaud, wrote in A.D. 1190 a book "against the sect of the Waldenses," but adds nothing to our knowledge. Nor does Bonacursus, writing later in the same year, except some gross and preposterous distortion of their belief on the monthly motions of the moon, and the statement that they held that Christ was not equal to the Father.
Ten years later Ermengard wrote a tract,[41] also entitled "Against the sect of the Waldenses," but they are not named in it, and those whom he attacks are not the original or genuine Waldenses, for he charges them with (1) Dualistic opinions; (2) teaching that the law of Moses was given by the Prince of evil spirits; (3) Docetic views; (4) stating that in "Hoc est corpus meum," "hoc does not refer to the bread which He (our Lord) held in His hands and blessed and brake and distributed to His disciples, but to His Body which was performing all these things.... And there are some heretics who believe that by hearing the word of God they eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood." He gives an interesting account of the Consolamentum, but this will be described later.
§ 15. PETER DE VAUX-SARNAI
In the "Historia Albigensium" of the Cistercian Peter de Vaux-Sarnai we pass from scattered references to a work devoted specifically to their doctrines and doings. It is dedicated to Innocent III, the Pope who passed from words to deeds, working out a definite policy for their absolute extinction. The monk claims to set down "the simple truth in a simple way," and we may add "for simple readers," if the following description of Raymond, Count of Toulouse, is a sample of his claim: "A limb of the devil, a son of perdition, the first-born of Satan, an enemy of the Cross and persecutor of the Church, defender of heretics, suppressor of Catholics, servant of perdition, abjurer of the Faith, full of crime, a store-house of all sins." Several of his statements about their doctrines and practices lack confirmation from any other source, especially some too blasphemous to be repeated here. After the usual charge of the two Gods, good and evil,[42] he says that they accepted only those parts of the Old Testament which are quoted in the New. John the Baptist was one of the greater demons. There were two Christs—the bad one was born in Bethlehem and crucified in Jerusalem. The good Christ never assumed real (veram) flesh, and never was in this world, except spiritually in the body of Paul. The heretics imagined a new and invisible earth, and there, according to some, the good Christ was born and crucified. The good God had two wives, Colla and Coliba, and had sons and daughters. Others say there is one Creator who had as sons Christ and the Devil. They say, too, that all the Creators were good, but that all things were corrupted by the daughters spoken of in the Apocalypse. Almost the whole of the Roman Church is a den of thieves, and is "illa meretrix" mentioned in the Apocalypse. On the Sacraments they held views already ascribed by Eymeric to the Manichees, and mentioned by others, "instilling into the ears of the simple this blasphemy, that, had the body of Christ been as large as the Alps, it would long ago have been consumed by the partakers thereof."[43] "Some, denying the resurrection of the flesh, said that our souls were those angelic spirits which, after being thrust out of heaven through the pride of apostasy, left their glorified bodies in the air, and after a seven-times succession in certain terrestrial bodies as a sort of penance returned to their own bodies that had been left." Some are called "perfecti" or "boni homines," others "credentes." The "perfecti" wear black and profess (though they lie) chastity. The "credentes" live a secular life and do not attain to the life of the "perfecti," though one with them in faith and unfaith (fide et infidelitate). However wickedly they have lived, yet they believe that if, "in supremo mortis articulo," they say a Pater noster and receive imposition of hands from their "masters," they will be saved; no credent about to die can be saved without this imposition of hands. They call their masters deacons and bishops. If any "perfect" sin a mortal sin, e.g. by eating the very smallest portion of meat, egg or cheese, all who have been "consoled" by him lose the Holy Spirit and ought to be "consoled" again. The Waldenses also are evil, but much less so than the other heretics. "In many things they agree with us: in some disagree." They omit many of the others' infidelities. They carry sandals, and say that so long as a man carries these, if need arise, he can without episcopal ordination make (conficere) the Body of Christ.