- The Lombard-German Branch.—In regard to the Lombards themselves, since the epistle of Bergamo we have only scanty reports, and these are found in the treatise of Monata, of 1240, Adv. Catharos et Valdenses, and in the Summa de Catharis et Leonistis of the Dominican inquisitor Rainerius Sacchoni, of 1250. We have ampler accounts, however, from their German mission-field, which had already extended so far as to stretch from the Rhine provinces into Austria. From the time of the unsuccessful endeavours at Bergamo to effect a union between the two principal groups, there was, so far as we are aware, no further intercourse between the two. On the other hand, the German Waldensians during the 13th and 14th centuries maintained a pretty regular communication with their Italian brethren.—In general, too, the Lombards continued, along with their German offspring, to hold firmly by the fundamental tenets of the primitive Waldensian faith. Their preaching brothers and sisters were also called in Germany Meister (magistri) and Meïsterinnen, the men also Apostles and Twelve-Apostles, or, since also there, next to preaching, they had as their most essential and important spiritual function the administration of the sacrament of penance, Beichtiger (bihter), confessors. The view that had been already so vigorously maintained at Bergamo, that a priest guilty of mortal sin, and such in their eyes were all Catholic priests, could not efficaciously administer any sacrament, led them naturally to assume a much freer attitude toward the Catholic church, which summed itself up in the radical principle, that everything connected with that church which cannot be shown from the New Testament to have been expressly taught and enjoined by Christ or His apostles, is to be set aside as an unevangelical human addition. This position however was insisted upon by them less in criticism and confutation of the church doctrine than in opposition to the practices of the church as a whole. In consequence of this criticism, they, transcending far the mere negations of the French, rejected not only all church festivals, beyond the simple Sunday festival, not only all processions and pilgrimages, all ceremonies, candles, incense, holy water, images, liturgical dress and cloths, all consecrations and blessing of churches, bells, burying grounds, candles, ashes, palms, robes, salt, water, etc., but also the centre and climax of all Catholic worship, the mass; not only of purgatory and everything in church practice that had sprung from it, not only ban and interdict, but also invocation of saints, image and relic worship, etc. Yet all the masters did not go equally far in this negative direction. Especially during the second half of the 13th century a remarkable reaction set in against the severity and exclusiveness of that negation, because increasing persecution obliged them to withdraw into secrecy as much as possible with their confession and their specifically Waldensian forms of worship, or to suspend their services altogether, and indeed, to save themselves from the suspicion of heresy, to allow to themselves and their lay adherents liberty to engage in the services of the Catholic church, and to submit to the indispensable demands of the church, such as the attendance at mass, making confession, and taking the communion at Easter. They held indeed firmly by the principle, Quod sacerdos in mortali peccato sacramentum non possit conficere, but they comforted themselves by the assurance already expressed at Bergamo, that the Lord Himself directly gives to the worthy communicant who, in case of need, receives the sacrament from the hand of an unworthy priest, what by him cannot be communicated, for the transubstantiation is effected not in manu indigne conficientis, but in ore digne sumentis. Thus during the times of oppression they kept their own observance of the supper quite in abeyance, the dispensation of which was not among them, as among the French, restricted to the masters; but on this account they laid all the greater weight on the necessity of confession to their own clergy as those who could alone give absolution. Also the prohibition of all oaths as well as bloodshedding, therefore also of military service, and the acceptance of magisterial and judicial offices, was strictly adhered to.—A peculiar adaptation of the Roman Catholic tradition of the baptism and donation of Constantine, which seems to have found no acceptance among the French, became a favourite legend among all the Lombard and German Waldensians. According to it the ancient church had existed for three hundred years in apostolic humility, simplicity, and poverty. But when the Roman bishop Sylvester was endowed by the emperor Constantine the Great with such superabundance of worldly might, riches, and honour, the period of general decline from the apostolic pattern set in. Only one of his fellow clergy protested, and was, when all enticements and threatenings proved of no avail, driven away along with his adherents. The latter increased and spread by-and-by over the earth. After a violent persecution, which had almost cut off all of them, Peter Waldus made his appearance with his companion, John of Lyons, as the restorer of the apostolic life and calling, etc. To this there was subsequently attached another legend. The brethren had previously based their right to discharge all priestly functions with the greatest confidence simply on their apostolic life, and so they could not conceal from themselves at a later period the fact that the want of continued apostolic succession, on which the Catholic church rested the claims of their priests, would place the Waldensian masters very much in the shade as compared with the Catholics. They began, therefore, not only to claim that their founder Waldus had been previously a Roman presbyter, but also to devise the fable of a bishop or even a cardinal of the Romish church, through whose favour that defect had been overcome.—Continuation, § [119, 9].
§ 108.16.
- Relations between the Waldensians and Older and Contemporary Sects.—Owing to the extraordinarily lively and zealous propagandist activity of the sects at the time of the origin and early development of the Waldensian movement, there can scarcely be a doubt that the latter, after it had freed itself from all obligation of obedience to the pope and bishops, and had been driven out by them, must at various points have come into close relations with the other sects which, like it, had risen in rebellion against the papacy and the hierarchy, and like it had been persecuted by these. The numerous sect of the Cathari holds a conspicuous position in this connection. That Waldus and his companions must have decidedly repudiated the dualistic principles which all these otherwise greatly diverging Catharist sects had in common is indeed quite self-evident; but this by no means prevented them from recognising and appropriating such particular institutions, forms of organization or modes of worship, peculiar moral requirements, etc., practised by them as might seem fitted to further their own ends. And that this actually was done, many noticeable points of agreement between the two plainly indicate. Thus on both sides we find a similar division of members, the Perfecti and Credentes corresponding to the Fratres and Amici, and the kind of spiritual care which the former took of the latter, the grace at table said by the itinerant preachers, the importance attached to the possession and use of bread that had been blessed by the brethren, the frequent use by both of the Lord’s Prayer, the rejection of purgatory and everything connected therewith, also the prohibition of swearing and of military service, the refusal of the magisterial jus gladii, etc. On the other hand, however, it is more than probable that at last the remnants of the Cathari which escaped the Inquisition in great part had found refuge among the Waldensians in the valleys of the Cottian Alps, and there became assimilated and amalgamated with them (§ [119, 9A]).—Further, the assumption that the Lombard Waldensians had first reached the principle by which they are distinguished from their French brethren, about the incapacity of unworthy priests for dispensing the sacraments, from outside influences, perhaps from the Arnoldists, is raised almost to a certainty by the statement made by their deputies at Bergamo in A.D. 1218, that they had even themselves in earlier times held the opposite view.—Even the pantheistic tendency of an Amalrich and the Brethren of the New Spirit may have found entrance among the German Waldensians, and have there given origin to the sect of the Ortlibarians.
§ 109. The Church against the Protesters.
The church was by no means indifferent to the spread of those heresies of the 11th and 12th centuries, which called in question its own very existence. Even in the 11th century she called in the aid of the stake as a type of the fire of hell that would consume the heretics, and against this only one voice, that of Bishop Wazo of Liège († A.D. 1048), was raised. In the 12th century protesting voices were more numerous: Peter the Venerable (§ [98, 1]), Rupert of Deutz, St. Hildegard, St. Bernard, declared sword and fire no fit weapons for conversion. St. Bernard showed by his own example how by loving entreaty and friendly instruction more might be done than by awakening a fanatical enthusiasm for martyrdom. But hangmen and stakes were more easily produced than St. Bernards, of whom the 12th and 13th centuries had by no means a superabundance. By-and-by Dominic sent out his disciples to teach and convert heretics by preaching and disputation; as long as they confined themselves to these methods they were not without success. But even they soon found it more congenial or more effective to fight the heretics with tortures and the stake rather than with discussion and discourse. The Albigensian crusade and the tribunal of the Inquisition erected in connection therewith at last overpowered the protesters and drove the remnants of their sects into hiding. In the administration of punishment the church made no distinction between the various sects; all were alike who were at war with the church.
§ 109.1. The Albigensian Crusade, A.D. 1209-1229.—Toward the end of the 12th century sects abounded in the south of France. Innocent III. regarded them as worse than the Saracens, and in A.D. 1203 sent a legate, Peter of Castelnau, with full powers to secure their extermination. But Peter was murdered in A.D. 1208, and suspicion fell on Raymond IV., Count of Toulouse. A crusade under Simon de Montfort was now summoned against the sectaries, who as mainly inhabiting the district of Albigeois were now called Albigensians. A twenty years’ war was carried on with mad fanaticism and cruelty on both sides, in which guilty and innocent, men, women, and children were ruthlessly slain.At the sack of Beziers with 20,000 inhabitants the papal legate cried, “Slay all, the Lord will know how to seek out and save His own.”[321]
§ 109.2. The Inquisition.—Every one screening a heretic forfeited lands, goods, and office; a house in which such a one was discovered was levelled to the ground; all citizens had to communicate thrice a year, and every second year to renew their oath of attachment to the church, and to refuse all help in sickness to those suspected of heresy, etc. The bishops not showing themselves zealous enough in enforcing these laws, Gregory IX. in A.D. 1232 founded the Tribunal of the Inquisition, and placed it in the hands of the Dominicans.These as Domini canes subjected to the most cruel tortures all on whom the suspicion of heresy fell, and all the resolute were handed over to the civil authorities, who readily undertook their execution.[322]—Continuation § [117, 2].
§ 109.3. Conrad of Marburg and the Stedingers.—The first Inquisitor of Germany, the Dominican Conrad of Marburg, also known as the severe confessor of St. Elizabeth (§ [105, 3]), after a three years’ career of cruelty was put to death by certain of the nobles in A.D. 1233. Et sic, say the Annals of Worms, divino auxilio liberata est Teutonia ab isto judicio enormi et inaudito. He was enrolled by Gregory IX. among the martyrs. Perhaps wrongly he has been blamed for Gregory’s crusade of A.D. 1234 against the Stedingers. These were Frisians of Oldenburg who revolted against the oppression of nobles and priests, refused socage and tithes, and screened Albigensian heretics. The first crusade failed; the second succeeded and plundered, murdered, and burned on every hand. Thousands of the unhappy peasants were slain, neither women nor children were spared, and all prisoners were sent to the stake as heretics.