Europe in the Middle Ages

by Ierne L. Plunket

‘Arnold of Brescia,’ he wrote to the legate, ‘whose speech is honey ... whose doctrine poison, the man whom Brescia has vomited forth, whom Rome abhors, whom France drives into exile, whom Germany curses, whom Italy refuses to receive, obtains thy support. To be his friend is to be the foe of the Pope and God.’

The legate contrived by mediation to reconcile the heretic temporarily with the Church; but Arnold was by nature a firebrand, and, having settled in Rome, soon became leader in one of the many plots to make that city a ‘Free Town’, owing allegiance only to the Emperor. Largely through his efforts the Pope was compelled to go into exile; but later the Romans, under the fear of an interdict that would deprive them of the visits of pilgrims out of whom they usually made their living, deserted him; and the republican leader was forced to fly. Captured amongst the Italian hills, he was taken to Rome and burned, his ashes being thrown into the Tiber lest they should be claimed as relics by those of the populace who still loved him. His judges need not have taken this precaution, for neither Arnold’s religious nor political views could claim any large measure of public approval in his own day. Elsewhere, indeed, heresy and rebellion were seething, but it was not till the beginning of the thirteenth century that the outbreak became a vital problem for the Papacy.

The widest area of heresy was in the provinces of Languedoc and Provence, to whose precocious mental development we have already referred.[23] The Counts of Toulouse no longer ruled in the thirteenth century over any of modern Spain, but north of the Pyrenees they were tenants-in-chief to the French king for one of the most fertile provinces of southern France, while as Marquesses of Provence they were vassals of the Emperor for the country beyond the Rhone.

Semi-independent of the control of either of these overlords, Count Raymond VI presided over a court famed for its luxury and gaiety of heart, its light morals, and unorthodox religious views. When he received complaints from Rome that his people were deriding the Catholic Faith and stoning his bishops and priests, he scarcely pretended regret, for his sceptical nature was quite unshocked by heresy, and both he and his nobles fully approved of popular insistence on ‘apostolic poverty’, a doctrine that enabled them to appropriate ecclesiastical lands and revenues for their own purposes.

Heresy in Languedoc

The heretical sects in Languedoc were many: perhaps the most important those of the Albigenses and Waldensians. The former practically denied Christianity, maintaining that good and evil were co-equal powers, and that Christ’s death was of no avail to save mankind. The Waldensians, or ‘Poor men of Lyons’, on the other hand, had at first tried to find acceptance for their beliefs within the Church. Peter Waldo, their founder, a rich merchant of Lyons, had translated some of the Gospels from Latin into the language of the countryside, and, having given away all his goods, he travelled from village to village, preaching, and trying with his followers to imitate the lives of the Apostles in simplicity and poverty.

In spite of condemnation from the Pope, who was suspicious of their teaching, the Waldensians increased in number. They declared that the authority of the Bible was superior to that of the Church, appointed ministers of their own, and denied many of the principal articles of Faith that the Church insisted were necessary to salvation.

The mediaeval Church taught that only through belief in these articles of Faith, that is, in the Creeds and Sacraments (sacramentum = something sacred), as administered by the clergy, could man hope to be saved. The most important of the Sacraments, of which there were seven, was the miracle of the Mass, sometimes called ‘transubstantiation’. Its origin was the Last Supper, when Christ before His crucifixion gave His disciples bread and wine, saying ‘Take, eat, this is my body....’ ‘Take, drink, this is my blood which was shed for you.’ The mediaeval Church declared that every time at the service of Mass the priest offered up ‘the Host’, or consecrated bread, Christ was sacrificed anew for the sins of the world, and that the bread became in truth converted into the substance of His body.

The Waldensians, and many sects that later broke away from the tenets of the mediaeval Church, denied this miracle and also the sacred character of the priests who could perform it. According to the Church, her clergy at ordination received through the laying on of the bishop’s hands some of the mysterious power that Christ had given to St. Peter, conferring on them the power also to forgive sins. No matter if the priest became idle or vicious, he still by virtue of his ordination retained his sacred character, and to lay hands upon him was to incur the wrath of God.

Even in the twelfth century, when St. Bernard travelled in Languedoc, he had been horrified to find ‘the sacraments no longer sacred and priests without respect’. His attempts at remonstrance were met with stones and threats, while the establishment of an ‘episcopal inquisition’ to inquire into and stamp out this hostility only increased Provençal bitterness and determination.