At one time during this titanic struggle, Frederick thought of founding a new religion, in which he was to be the Messiah, and his
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minister Pietro della Vigna was to take the place of Saint Peter. * He did not get so far as to make this project public, but wrote about it to della Vigna. Suddenly, however, he became convinced, rightly or wrongly, that Pietro was plotting against him; he blinded him, and exhibited him publicly in a cage; Pietro, however, avoided further suffering by suicide.
Frederick, in spite of his abilities, could not have succeeded, because the antipapal forces that existed in his time were pious and democratic, whereas his aim was something like a restoration of the pagan Roman Empire. In culture he was enlightened, but politically he was retrograde. His court was oriental; he had a harem with eunuchs. But it was in this court that Italian poetry began; he himself had some merit as a poet. In his conflict with the papacy, he published controversial statements as to the dangers of ecclesiastical absolutism, which would have been applauded in the sixteenth century, but fell flat in his own day. The heretics, who should have been his allies, appeared to him simply rebels, and to please the Pope he persecuted them. The free cities, but for the Emperor, might have opposed the Pope; but so long as Frederick demanded their submission they welcomed the Pope as an ally. Thus, although he was free from the superstitions of his age, and in culture far above other contemporary rulers, his position as Emperor compelled him to oppose all that was politically liberal. He failed inevitably, but of all the failures in history he remains one of the most interesting.
The heretics, against whom Innocent III crusaded, and whom all rulers (including Frederick) persecuted, deserve study, both in themselves and as giving a glimpse of popular feeling, of which, otherwise, hardly a hint appears in the writings of the time.
The most interesting, and also the largest, of the heretical sects were the Cathari, who, in the South of France, are better known as Albigenses. Their doctrines came from Asia by way of the Balkans; they were widely held in Northern Italy, and in the South of France they were held by the great majority, including nobles, who liked the excuse to seize Church lands. The cause of this wide diffusion of heresy was partly disappointment at the failure of the Crusades, but mainly moral disgust at the wealth and wickedness of the clergy.
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* See the life of Frederick II, by Hermann Kantorowicz.
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There was a wide-spread feeling, analogous to later puritanism, in favour of personal holiness; this was associated with a cult of poverty. The Church was rich and largely worldly; very many priests were grossly immoral. The friars brought accusations against the older orders and the parish priests, asserting abuse of the confessional for purposes of seduction; and the enemies of the friars retorted the accusation. There can be no doubt that such charges were largely justified. The more the Church claimed supremacy on religious grounds, the more plain people were shocked by the contrast between profession and performance. The same motives which ultimately led to the Reformation were operative in the thirteenth century. The main difference was that secular rulers were not ready to throw in their lot with the heretics; and this was largely because no existing philosophy could reconcile heresy with the claims of kings to dominion.
The tenets of the Cathari cannot be known with certainty, as we are entirely dependent on the testimony of their enemies. Moreover ecclesiastics, being well versed in the history of heresy, tended to apply some familiar label, and to attribute to existing sects all the tenets of former ones, often on the basis of some not very close resemblance. Nevertheless, there is a good deal that is almost beyond question. It seems that the Cathari were dualists, and that, like the Gnostics, they considered the Old Testament Jehovah a wicked demiurge, the true God being only revealed in the New Testament. They regarded matter as essentially evil, and believed that for the virtuous there is no resurrection of the body. The wicked, however, will suffer transmigration into the bodies of animals. On this ground they were vegetarians, abstaining even from eggs, cheese, and milk. They ate fish, however, because they believed that fishes are not sexually generated. All sex was abhorrent to them; marriage, some said, is even worse than adultery, because it is continuous and complacent. On the other hand, they saw no objection to suicide. They accepted the New Testament more literally than did the orthodox; they abstained from oaths, and turned the other cheek. The persecutors record a case of a man accused of heresy, who defended himself by saying that he ate meat, lied, swore, and was a good Catholic.
The stricter precepts of the sect were only to be observed by certain exceptionally holy people called the “perfected”; the others might eat meat and even marry.
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It is interesting to trace the genealogy of these doctrines. They came to Italy and France, by way of the Crusaders, from a sect called the Bogomiles in Bulgaria; in 1167, when the Cathari held a council near Toulouse, Bulgarian delegates attended. The Bogomiles, in turn, were the result of a fusion of Manichæans and Paulicians. The Paulicians were an Armenian sect who rejected infant baptism, purgatory, the invocation of saints, and the Trinity; they spread gradually into Thrace, and thence into Bulgaria. The Paulicians were followers of Marcion (ca. A.D. 150), who considered himself to be following Saint Paul in rejecting the Jewish elements in Christianity, and who had some affinity with the Gnostics without being one of them.
The only other popular heresy that I shall consider is that of the Waldenses. These were the followers of Peter Waldo, an enthusiast who, in 1170, started a “crusade” for observance of the law of Christ. He gave all his goods to the poor, and founded a society called the “Poor Men of Lyons,” who practised poverty and a strictly virtuous life. At first they had papal approval, but they inveighed somewhat too forcibly against the immorality of the clergy, and were condemned by the Council of Verona in 1184. Thereupon they decided that every good man is competent to preach and expound the Scriptures; they appointed their own ministers, and dispensed with the services of the Catholic priesthood. They spread to Lombardy, and to Bohemia, where they paved the way for the Hussites. In the Albigensian persecution, which affected them also, many fled to Piedmont; it was their persecution in Piedmont in Milton’s time that occasioned his sonnet “Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints.” They survive to this day in remote Alpine valleys and in the United States.
All this heresy alarmed the Church, and vigorous measures were taken to suppress it. Innocent III considered that heretics deserved death, being guilty of treason to Christ. He called upon the King of France to embark upon a Crusade against the Albigenses, which was done in 1209. It was conducted with incredible ferocity; after the taking of Carcassonne, especially, there was an appalling massacre. The ferreting out of heresy had been the business of the bishops, but it became too onerous to be performed by men who had other duties, and in 1233 Gregory IX founded the Inquisition, to take over this part of the work of the episcopate. After 1254, those accused by the Inquisition were not allowed counsel. If condemned, their property
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was confiscated–in France, to the crown. When an accused person was found guilty, he was handed over to the secular arm with a prayer that his life might be spared; but if the secular authorities failed to burn him, they were liable to be themselves brought before the Inquisition. It dealt not only with heresy in the ordinary sense, but with sorcery and witchcraft. In Spain, it was mainly directed against crypto-Jews. Its work was performed mainly by Dominicans and Franciscans. It never penetrated to Scandinavia or England, but the English were quite ready to make use of it against Joan of Arc. On the whole, it was very successful; at the outset, it completely stamped out the Albigensian heresy.
The Church, in the early thirteenth century, was in danger of a revolt scarcely less formidable than that of the sixteenth. From this it was saved, very largely, by the rise of the mendicant orders; Saint Francis and Saint Dominic did much more for orthodoxy than was done by even the most vigorous popes.
Saint Francis of Assisi ( 1181 or 1182-1226) was one of the most lovable men known to history. He was of a well-to-do family, and in his youth was not averse to ordinary gaieties. But one day, as he was riding by a leper, a sudden impulse of pity led him to dismount and kiss the man. Soon afterwards, he decided to forgo all worldly goods, and devote his life to preaching and good works. His father, a respectable business man, was furious, but could not deter him. He soon gathered a band of followers, all vowed to complete poverty. At first, the Church viewed the movement with some suspicion; it seemed too like the “Poor Men
