Intolerance seems essential to the office of a priest; as no sooner was this character assumed by Christian pastors, than they commenced persecution against those who disputed their claims. Hence originated the Inquisition. Its operations have ever been directed against all who differed from the ruling prelates, even when making their appeal to the Holy Scriptures. And such there were from the time of the apostles. Among the earliest of those who were put to death by professing Christians were the Paulicians.
These people are thought to have been so called from Paul, a preacher, of the Armenian church, in the seventh century; but some consider Constantine of Samosata their founder, about A.D. 660. He received from a pious deacon, who had escaped from captivity among the Mohammedans, a copy of the New Testament. This he esteemed as a precious gift; and, finding the instruction of the Scriptures different from the prevailing superstitions, he formed a system of theology for himself from the sacred oracles. Constantine devoted himself to the work of the ministry, assuming the name of Sylvanus, a companion of the apostle Paul. His colleagues in preaching were called Timothy, Titus, and Tychicus; and six of their churches were named after those to whom Paul had addressed his Epistles. They rejected human traditions in religion, the worship of the Virgin Mary, of images, and of the cross. They abolished the lofty titles of the priesthood, and instituted pastors, with perfect equality, and without robes to distinguish them from the people. In Asia Minor they increased greatly, and the Greek emperors persecuted them grievously. An officer named Simeon was sent, as an inquisitor, to seek Sylvanus, and he was apprehended, with some of his followers, at Colonia. As the price of liberty, they were required to stone their pastor! One only among them, Justus, was found sufficiently base; and he murdered thus his faithful teacher, who fell a martyr for Christ, after having laboured for twenty-seven years, diffusing the doctrine of the Gospel. Justus aggravated his guilt by betraying his brethren; while Simeon, observing the grace of God in the joyful sufferers, embraced the Gospel, forsook the world, preached the faith, and died also a martyr for Jesus.
From the Paulicians arose, as it is believed, a branch of the celebrated Christian confessors, the Valdenses, or Waldenses. Dr. Haweis, therefore, says of them, “At the close of the seventh century we see the first traces of a small but precious body, afterwards named Valdenses, which some suppose a branch of the Paulicians. Retiring from the insolence and oppressions of the Romish clergy, and disgusted with their vices, they sought a hiding-place in the secluded valleys of the Pais de Vaud, embosomed by the Alps, and removed from the observation of their persecutors, where they might enjoy purer worship and communion with God.”
These Paulicians increased, and scriptural knowledge was eagerly sought by several persons, who became eminent preachers in the southern parts of France, in Savoy, in Piedmont, and in the contiguous districts of Germany. Their followers were called after their teachers, or by various contemptuous appellations, taken from their peculiar customs or principles. Some were Petrobrusians, from Peter de Bruys, who, after twenty years’ labour, became a martyr for Christ; Henricians, from Henry, a disciple and colleague of Peter; Albigenses, from the city of Albi, where they were condemned in a council; Cathari, or Puritans, from their seeking the purity of Christian doctrine; and Waldenses, from Peter Waldo, a merchant of Lyons, in France. This great man procured translations of several parts of the Scriptures, and commenced his ministry, having relinquished his trade, about A.D. 1180, especially in France and Lombardy. The converts of these zealous men became very numerous; and they soon attracted the notice of the papal court in this century.
Egbert, a German abbot, says of them, “They are increased to great multitudes throughout all countries. In Germany, we call them Cathari; in Flanders, they call them Pipples; in France, Tisserands (weavers), because many of them are of that occupation.”
Among these people many churches were formed, with intelligent and devout pastors of their own choosing. The Cathari, especially in Piedmont, formed separate societies, which were screened, in a great measure, from the popish prelates, by the retired seclusion of their habitations in the valleys, from which they were called Valdenses.
These people were regarded with jealousy by the prelates, and their enemies commonly accused them of grievous errors; but it is well known that they were slandered, and that, while they rejected the claims and idolatries of the Romish priesthood, they generally held the essentials of the Gospel, as they derived their principles from the Scriptures. Egbert, the abbot, says of them, “They are armed with all those passages of Holy Scripture, which, in any degree, seem to favour their views: with these they know how to defend themselves, and to oppose the Catholic truth, though they mistake entirely the true sense of Scripture, which cannot be discovered without great judgment.”
Evervinus, an abbot in Cologne, in a letter to Bernard, the most famous priest of the church of Rome of his time, called St. Bernard, says, A.D. 1140, “There have been lately some heretics discovered among us, near Cologne, though some of them have, with satisfaction, returned again to the church. One of their bishops and his companions openly opposed us in the assembly of the clergy and laity, in the presence of the archbishop of Cologne and of many of the nobility, defending their heresy by the words of Christ and his apostles. Finding that they made no impression, they desired that a day might be appointed for them, on which they might bring their teachers to a conference, promising to return to the church, provided they found their masters unable to answer the arguments of their opponents, but that otherwise they would rather die than depart from their judgment. Upon this declaration, having been admonished to repent for three days, they were seized by the people in the excess of zeal, and burnt to death; and what is very amazing, they came to the stake, and bore the pain, not only with patience, but even with joy! Were I with you, father, I should be glad to ask you, how these members of Satan could persist in their heresy with such courage and constancy as is scarcely to be found in the most religious believers in Christianity.”
St. Bernard himself was a violent persecutor, yet he says of them, “If you ask them of their faith, nothing can be more Christian; if you observe their conversation, nothing can be more blameless; and what they speak they prove by deeds.” Claudius, archbishop of Turin, writes, “Their heresy excepted, they generally live a purer life than other Christians.” Cassini, a Franciscan friar, says, “That ALL THE ERRORS of these Waldenses consisted in this, that they denied the church of Rome to be the HOLY MOTHER-CHURCH, AND WOULD NOT OBEY HER TRADITIONS!” Thuanus, a Catholic historian, says they are charged with holding, “That the church of Rome, because it renounced the true faith of Christ, was the whore of Babylon, and the barren tree which Christ himself cursed and commanded to be plucked up; that, consequently, no obedience was to be paid to the Pope, or to the bishops who maintain her errors; that a monastic life was the sink and dungeon of the church; that the orders of the priesthood were marks of the great beast mentioned in the Revelation; that the fire of purgatory, the solemn mass, the consecration days of churches, the worship of saints, and propitiation for the dead, were devices of Satan.”
Exemplary as were their morals, and scriptural as were their principles, thus testified by their enemies, cruel persecution was carried on against these dissenters; and the inquisitors, sent by the Pope to search for and to destroy them, brought multitudes to suffer as martyrs for Christ. Some, we have seen, fell victims at Cologne, while others escaped from the power of their enemies. They found, however, the intolerance of popery where-ever they went. This will be illustrated by one fact in English history of that period. Thirty of these persecuted Germans sought an asylum in England, and settled as a church near Oxford, A.D. 1159, but they were apprehended by order of the clergy. Their pastor, Gerard, was a man of learning; and he professed that they believed the doctrines of the apostles, though they disbelieved in purgatory, prayers for the dead, and the invocation of saints. But they were condemned in an ecclesiastical council, and delivered to the magistrates to be punished. The king, Henry II., at the instigation of the ruling clergy, ordered them to be branded on the forehead with a red-hot iron; to be whipped through the streets of Oxford; and, having their clothes cut short at their girdles, to be turned into the open country. None being allowed to afford them shelter, they perished with cold and hunger!