We are now in a position to study more closely the documents from which an estimate may be formed of the beliefs and practices of those whom the Church exerted its full strength to destroy. Our task is not a simple one, because, as already stated, there was not one heresy, but many, and we are dependent for our knowledge of their tenets almost entirely upon their enemies whose odium theologicum discounts their trustworthiness.
§ 1. EYMERIC
It may simplify our task if we set down the fourteen heads under which the Inquisitor Eymeric in his "Directorium Inquisitorum"[22] classifies what he calls "recentiorum Manicheorum errores."
(1) They assert and confess that there are two Gods or two Lords, viz. a good God, and an evil Creator of all things visible and material; declaring that these things were not made by God our heavenly Father ... but by a wicked devil, even Satan ... and so they assume two Creators, viz. God and the Devil; and two Creations, viz. one of immaterial and invisible things, the other of visible and material.
(2) They imagine that there are two Churches, one good, which they say is their own sect, and declare to be the Church of Jesus Christ; the other, however, they call an evil Church, which they say is the Church of Rome.
(3) All grades, orders, ordinances and statutes of the Church they despise and ignore, and all who hold the Faith they call heretics and deluded, and positively assert (dogmatizant) that nobody can be saved by the faith (in fide) of the Roman Church.
(4) All the Sacraments of the Roman Church of our Lord Jesus Christ, viz. the Eucharist, and Baptism performed with material water, also Confirmation and Orders and Extreme Unction and Penance (poenitentia) and Matrimony, all and singular, they assert to be vain and useless.
(5) They invent, instead of holy Baptism in water, another spiritual Baptism, which they call the Consolation (consolamentum)[23] of the Holy Spirit.
(6) They invent, instead of the consecrated bread of the Eucharist of the Body of Christ, a certain bread, which they call "blessed bread," or "bread of holy prayer," which, holding in their hands, they bless according to their rite, and break and distribute to their fellow-believers seated.
(7) Instead of the Sacrament of Penance they say that their sect receives and holds a true Penance (poenitentia), and to those holding the said sect and order, whether they be in health or sickness, all sins are forgiven (dimissa), and that such persons are absolved from all their sins without any other satisfaction, asserting that they themselves have over these the same and as great power as had Peter and Paul and the other Apostles ... saying that the confession of sins which is made to the priests of the Roman Church is of no avail whatever for salvation, and that neither the Pope nor any other person of the Roman Church has power to absolve anyone from his sins.