Fig. 309.—Amaury’s Disciples burnt by order of Philip Augustus (1208).—Fac-simile of a Miniature in the “Chroniques de St. Denis” (Manuscript of the Fourteenth Century).—Burgundian Library, Brussels.
Fig. 310.—Episode in the Siege of Toulouse, representing, according to tradition, the death of Simon de Montfort, who was killed on the 25th of June, 1218.—Bas-relief in stone in the Church of St. Nazaire, in Carcassonne (Thirteenth Century).
During the reign of the Empress Irene, the second Council of Nice had re-established the worship of images (787), but, until the accession of the Empress Theodora, who enforced the decisions of the Council, the Iconoclasts upon the one side, and the Manicheans upon the other, continued to disturb the East as well as the various provinces of Western and Southern Europe. In this great civil war a hundred thousand persons perished; and those who succeeded in escaping took refuge in the solitude of remote valleys and inaccessible mountains, where they entrenched themselves and incessantly made inroads upon and ravaged the territory of the empire. The separation of the Greek and the Latin Churches, prepared if not actually affected under the Emperor Bardas (854-866), served to further the spread of heresy. No new sect arose in the eleventh century, but schisms broke out in the Church, some due to individual pride and ambition, others emanating from the dialectics of Aristotle, from the strange abuse of syllogism, and the substitution of reasoning for faith. The mysteries were radically changed by the endeavours to reconcile them with ordinary ideas, to interpret and accommodate them to the vulgar understanding. Bérenger (tenth century), in endeavouring to explain the dogma of the eucharist, himself fell into heresy, and Roscelin, the chief of the Nominalists (eleventh century), in his efforts to clear up the mystery of the Trinity, was led to assert that it was but a name which did not correspond with any actual fact. The Manicheans had made their way into Europe; they affected a love of poverty and humble conduct which predisposed people in their favour and won them adherents. Many of them were burnt at the stake, but the sect was not crushed out, often reappearing in different cities of Europe under various names, now in one shape and now in another.
The civil tribunals also condemned to be burnt the disciples of a theologian named Amaury of Paris, who promulgated his dogma during the reign of Philip Augustus (Fig. 309). He taught that God is the first cause, and that the law of Jesus Christ was to terminate in the year 1200, and to make way for the law of the Holy Ghost, which would sanctify men without any external act; by his denial of the resurrection of the dead and of hell, he destroyed the essential basis of morality. This doctrine, as convenient as it was dangerous, found many warm partisans.
Abelard, the most talented dialectician of his day, gifted with wonderful learning, and armed with a rational theology which he made intelligible, assigned a different origin and a different mode of action to each of the three persons of the Trinity. The divines at once prepared to combat his views, and St. Bernard constituted himself their champion. Abelard, when condemned, repented, and, on his knees before his judges, burnt the books which contained his heretical theories; he showed himself, indeed, even a greater man by this expiatory act than he had ever done by the brilliancy of his teaching. Bishop Gilbert de la Porrée, a scholastic heresiarch like Abelard, also met a terrible antagonist in the gifted Abbot of Clairvaux, and, bowing his head, he confessed his guilt, leaving his disciples to maintain that the attributes of God ought to be considered as distinct from his essence. Arnold of Brescia attacked the temporal power, upon the ground that the Church should be stripped of her property, that the wallet of St. Peter should be given back to the pope, and the ancient Roman Republic proclaimed in the pontifical city. Valdo went still further; he advised the Christians to renounce all kinds of property, in order to render their lives more spiritual. The Albigenses (Figs. 310 and 311) and the Waldenses, who were Manicheans under another name, eventually embodied in themselves all the heresies which, towards the close of the twelfth century, had spread over Europe and chiefly throughout the south of France. In the following chapter (“The Inquisition”), the account of the crusade preached against them is related at length. From every quarter of Christendom, but chiefly from Germany, Flanders, and France, crusaders were enlisted beneath the banner of the faith.
Fig. 311.—Entry of Louis VIII., King of France, and of Cardinal St. Angelo, the Pope’s Legate, upon the 12th of September, 1226, into Avignon, which had just capitulated after a three months’ siege.—After a Miniature in the “Chroniques de Hainaut” (Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century, in the Burgundian Library, Brussels).
Fig. 312.—Heresy of the Flagellants.—The Latin inscription upon the streamer borne by the Bishop of Hippona signifies, “They sacrifice to Satan, and not to God.”—Fac-simile of a Miniature in the “Cité de Dieu,” by St. Augustine (Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century, in St. Geneviève Library, Paris).