The regulations which were adopted against the heretics, and the cruel manner in which their so-called conversion was pursued, could only produce exactly the contrary effect to that they had in view upon their convictions. This, however, they did accomplish, that the persecuted persons, filled with exaggerated hatred and horror of the church, spread themselves with the greatest secrecy over other countries also. Thus in the thirteenth century public feeling was roused ever more and more against Rome, against the clergy, and against the abuses of the church, and from time to time there rose a stirring sense of the necessity of a reformation to counteract them. On comparison of the morals of the clergy with those of the heretics, the advantage is decidedly in favour of the latter; so it cannot seem strange if in the thirteenth century we find the earlier parties more widely spread than before, and fresh sects springing up alongside of them. Yet the number of new names of heretics in this period is far greater than that of new parties.
Costume of a Person condemned to be burned, but who confessed before his Condemnation
(From Historia Inquisitionis, 1592)
The Cathari, or as they are now more commonly called the Albigenses or Bulgarians, did not only maintain their ground in southern France, but increased in number chiefly in upper Italy, where the political distraction of the country was advantageous to them, and where Milan continued to be their principal abode. But they spread themselves also into the rest of Italy as far as Spain, and throughout Germany; they were very numerous in Bosnia and the adjoining countries, often the prevailing party, and they maintained in all lands a close connection with each other.
When the persecutions began, the Waldenses were standing so near the Catholic church that a reconciliation seemed to be by no means difficult. But the horrors of the persecution had no further effect on the Waldenses than to confirm them more and more in their anti-hierarchical system, and to place their doctrine and ecclesiastical constitution on a more independent footing. The more plainly their departure from church teaching could vindicate itself as a purification of the church, the more easy acceptation they found with the thoughtful of their time. As early as in the thirteenth century they showed themselves in the valleys of Piedmont, in which they have maintained themselves until now. Still, not only did they spread in other countries, as for instance as far as Germany, but also put in circulation among numbers, who did not come over to their society, ideas unfavourable to the prevailing faith of the church.
Besides the old sects, new ones were engendered in the thirteenth century. The pantheistic system introduced by Amalric of Bène, after the persecution it underwent in Paris in the year 1210, only spread more widely than before. In the course of the thirteenth century its disciples might be found in different places; at the end of this century they were already so numerous among the Beghards on the Rhine that the people understood them only to be meant by the name of Beghards, although they called themselves brothers and sisters of the Free Spirit. In the beginning of the fourteenth century they made their appearance also in Italy.
Other sects pass quickly in review before us. As the universal discontent of the advancing tyranny of the hierarchy aroused isolated resistances in England and in France, so the ill usage of the Hohenstaufen family gave rise to a sect in Halle in Swabia (about 1248), which declared the hierarchy to be abolished in consequence of its moral corruption of the entire purpose of the church. After the extermination of the Hohenstaufen family the detestation caused by this deed of the hierarchy was maintained for centuries by the expectation that one time an emperor Frederick would wreak vengeance in blood on the papacy. This expectation also found place among the manifold superstitions, chiefly borrowed from the Fratricelli, with which the apostolic brothers from 1260 to 1307 disquieted the north of Italy.[d]
The statutes of the Council of Toulouse (1229), framed after the successful termination of the war against the Albigenses, in order to absolutely extirpate every lingering vestige of heresy, form the code of persecution, which not merely aimed at suppressing all public teaching but the more secluded and secret freedom of thought. It was a system which penetrated into the most intimate sanctuary of domestic life; and made delation not merely a merit and a duty, but an obligation also, enforced by tremendous penalties.
The archbishops, bishops, and exempt abbots were to appoint in every parish one priest, and three or more lay inquisitors, to search all houses and buildings, in order to detect heretics, and to denounce them to the archbishop or bishop, the lord, or his bailiff, so as to insure their apprehension. The lords were to make the same inquisition in every part of their estates. Whoever was convicted of harbouring a heretic forfeited the land to his lord, and was reduced to personal slavery. If he was guilty of such concealment from negligence, not from intention, he received proportionate punishment. Every house in which a heretic was found was to be razed to the ground, the farm confiscated. The bailiff who should not be active in detecting heretics was to lose his office, and be incapacitated from holding it in future. Heretics, however, were not to be judged but by the bishop or some ecclesiastical person.