Heresiarch

“ It is not necessary to heresy that the person shall, as a heresiarch, found a new sect, or that, by free choice, he shall go over to a sect condemned by the Church; but heresy is already present whenever any one in the bosom of the Catholic Church departs from only one single point of the faith, or understands one single passage of Holy Scripture otherwise than as the Church, with the assistance of the Holy Ghost, expounds them. ”

“ Then they formulated twelve articles of accusation against him to the pope, and obtained, in January, 1374, from Gregory XI., bulls denouncing him as a persistent heresiarch who had filled all Bohemia, Poland, Silesia, and the neighboring lands with his errors. According to them, he taught not only that Antichrist had come, that the Church was extinct, that pope, cardinals, bishops and prelates showed no light of truth, but he permitted to his followers the unlimited gratification of their passions. ”

“ History records that most of the great heresiarchs were men of inordinate ambition and vanity, who, because they could not attain the honors they considered their due within the Church, left her and sought them among her enemies. Ah! these proud, vain souls acquire a grand villa, it may be, and they must needs go out to see it, but the price they pay is excessive, for in exchange they give their priceless faith and their hope of one of the many mansions in their Father's house. ”

“ The coronation-edict, which formed the basis of all subsequent legislation against heresy, was drawn up by the papal curia, and sent, a fortnight before the ceremony, to the Legate Bishop of Tusculum, with orders to procure the imperial signature and return it, so that it could be published under the emperor’s name in the church of St. Peter (Raynald. ann. 1220, No. 19.—Hist. Dipl. I. II. 880) . Nothing could seem a plainer duty to an ecclesiastic of the time than that the Church should stimulate the temporal ruler to the sharpest persecution of heresy. ”

“ Can there be anything reasonable in the turpitude of heresy?
Then he hurried to find the Bishop:
—I have emptied our young man's bag, he said to him. Do you know,
Monseigneur, what there was at the bottom?
—Oh, oh. Has he been inclined to debauchery? He is so young.
—Would to heaven it were only that, Monseigneur. But it is a hundred times worse.
—What do you tell me? Must I fear then for all my little sheep? We must look after him then.
—I repeat, Monseigneur, that that would be nothing.... It is the abomination of abomination, a whole world of turpitude, heresies in embryo. ”

“ The hegemony of Europe was vested in the Holy Roman Empire, and its coronation was a strangely solemn religious ceremony in which the emperor was admitted to the lower orders of the priesthood, and was made to anathemize all heresy raising itself against the holy Catholic Church. In handing him the ring, the pope told him that it was a symbol that he was to destroy heresy; and in girding him with the sword, that with it he was to strike down the enemies of the Church. Frederic II. declared that he had received the imperial dignity for the maintenance and propagation of the faith. ”

“ From the emperor to the meanest peasant the duty of persecution was enforced with all the sanctions, spiritual and temporal, which the Church could command. Not only must the ruler enact rigorous laws to punish heretics, but he and his subjects must see them strenuously executed, for any slackness of persectution was, in the canon law, construed as fautorship of heresy, putting a man on his purgation. ”

“ Yet as soon as heresy began to be formidable we find their destruction commanded by secular rulers with singular unanimity. The earliest provision I have met with occurs in the assizes of Clarendon in 1166, which order the razing of all houses in which heretics were received. The example was followed by the Emperor Henry VI. in the edict of Prato, in 1194, by Otho IV. in 1210, and by Frederic II. in the edict of Ravenna, in 1232, as an addition to his coronation-edict of 1220, from which it had been omitted. ”

“ The prelates of the infected provinces were bitterly reproached for the negligence and timidity which had permitted heresy to assume its alarming proportions. They were ordered to obey humbly whatever the legates might see fit to command, and the vengeance of the Holy See was threatened for slackness or contumacy. Wherever heresy existed, the legates were armed with authority “to destroy, throw down, or pluck up whatever is to be destroyed, thrown down, or plucked up, and to plant and build whatever is to be built or planted.” ”

“ The larger struggles of city against city and of pope against emperor afforded a still wider field for the exercise of this diplomatic ability, of which full advantage was taken. When the formulas of persecution became defined under Honorius III., Gregory IX., and Frederic II., and fautorship was made equivalent to heresy, the factions and the nobles who tolerated or protected heretics became involved in the common anathema, and whole communities were stigmatized as given over to false idols. ”

“ He is held responsible for the audacious acts of the consuls; he is significantly reminded of the unperformed vow of the crusade; not only has he failed to extirpate heresy according to his pledges, but he is a manifest fautor and protector of heretics; his favorites and officers are suspect of heresy; he protects those who have been condemned; his lands are a place of refuge for those flying from persecution elsewhere, so that heresy is daily spreading and conversions from Catholicism are frequent, while zealous churchmen seeking to restrain them are slain and abused with impunity. ”

“ And if one of the practisers of the heresy [116] should arrive from a strange country, they hold all things in common for him, and those whom they knew not before they receive as guests and intimates. And they travel about their native land, and when they go on a journey they carry nothing with them except arms. And they have in every city a ruler who spends what is collected for the purpose of providing clothes and food for them. And their dress and its fashion are modest. They do not possess two tunics or a double set of footgear; but when those in use become old, they take others. ”

“ It admits that an emperor rendering himself suspect in the faith can be put under ban by the pope. It provides death by fire for the heretic. It directs that when heretics are known to exist, the ecclesiastical courts shall inquire about them and proceed against them. If convicted, the secular judge shall seize them and doom them according to law. If he neglects or refuses he is to be excommunicated by the bishop, and his suzerain shall inflict on him the penalty of heresy. If a secular prince does not punish heresy he is to be excommunicated by the episcopal court ”

“ All rulers and magistrates, present or future, were required to swear to exterminate with their utmost ability all whom the Church might designate as heretics, under pain of forfeiture of office. The lands of any temporal lord who neglected, for a year after summons by the Church, to clear them of heresy, were exposed to the occupancy of any Catholics who, after extirpating the heretics, were to possess them in peace without prejudice to the rights of{322} the suzerain, provided he had offered no opposition. ”

“ IN France we have seen the stubbornness of heresy in alliance with feudalism resisting the encroachments of monarchy. In Italy we meet with different and more complicated conditions, which gave additional stimulus to antagonism against the established Church, and rendered its suppression a work of much greater detail. Here heresy and politics are so inextricably intermingled that at times differentiation becomes virtually impossible, and the fate of heretics depends more on political vicissitudes than even on the zeal of men like St. Peter Martyr, or Rainerio Saccone. ”

“ The seeds of inquiry sown in the sixteenth century resulted in a fruitful display of advanced opinions during the next age. In the page of seventeenth century history, more names of men, either avowedly heretics, or charged by the orthodox with heresy, or whose labours can be shown to have tended to the growth of heresy, may probably be recorded than can be found during the whole of the previously long period during which the Christian Church assumed to dominate and control European thought. The seventeenth century muster-roll of heresy is indeed a grand one, and gloriously filled. ”

“ The offspring of vague discontent, twelfth century heresy took as a rule such vague and fantastic shapes that it almost condemned itself. After all, the spirit of Henry of Cluny or Peter Valdez was not very different from that of Norbert or Robert of Arbrissel. But however ill-regulated, it was another sign that the human mind had awakened from the sleep of the Dark Ages. If the popular heretics could not reason, they could at least feel. ”

“ Recognizing, moreover, of how little worth were ecclesiastical censures, Innocent proceeded to appeal to force, which was evidently the only possible cure for the trouble. Not only were the legates directed to deliver all impenitent heretics to the secular arm for perpetual proscription and confiscation of property, but they were empowered to offer complete remission of sins, the same as for a crusade to the Holy Land, to Philip Augustus and his son, Louis Cœur-de-Lion, and to all nobles who should aid in the suppression of heresy. ”

“ Accordingly, either after abjuring he will hold heresy or error—or before doing so, he will be proved to have held what he abjures. Therefore, understand that in their letters they judge you to be heretics and demand that you abjure the heresy which they suppose you to hold. From this it is evident that a son or friend of yours, if he abjure, can be disgraced for having consorted with a heretical father or friend. Further, it is evident that any other person can rightly say to any one who abjures, “You abjured the heresy which you held and you are not worthy of me.” ”

“ Even the king himself did not dare to omit the customary “adoration” of the Perfects, for which he was duly excommunicated by the inquisitor, but the pope recognized the difficulty of his position, and wisely gave him a dispensation for associating with heretics. [346]
Although many Catholic churches were built, the legate reported, on a visit to Rome, that the land was too full of heresy for other cure than the sword. The king’s position was too insecure for him to venture on persecution, which would infallibly have led to a revolt. ”

“ Though heretics naturally grew scarcer with the unintermitting pursuit of so many years, there was still the exhaustless catalogue of the dead, whose exhumation furnished an impressive spectacle for the mob, while their confiscations were welcome to the pious princes, and contributed largely to the change of ownership of land which was a political consummation so desirable. Yet heresy with incredible stubbornness maintained itself, though its concealment grew ever more difficult, and Italy grew less safe as a refuge and less prolific as a source of inspiration. ”

“ In the Greek empire different teachers of heresy have arisen at different times. Arius under Constantine, Aetius under Constantius, Nestorius under Theodosius. But even against these arch-heretics and their disciples such cruel measures were never resorted to as are thought necessary against our unfortunate country—and yet where are all those sects now which once a whole world, I had almost said, could not contain? This is the natural course of heresy. If it is treated with contempt it crumbles into insignificance. It is as iron, which, if it lies idle, corrodes, and only becomes sharp by use. ”

“ To the end that the pest of heresy may be uprooted, all lay rulers are to swear to carry out the laws against heresy on pain of fine and of being held an infamous perjuror and fautor of heretics.327 Every civil magistrate within three days of his entrance into office is to appoint twelve [Pg 156] good Catholics, two notaries, two senators, two friars from the Prædicants, two from the Brothers Minor, whose duties are to search out heretics, seize their goods and hand them on to the bishop. These officials are to enjoy a variety of privileges and to be free from all interference in their work. ”

“ Before the end of the twelfth century the secular rulers began to take notice of heresy. Henry II of England, in 1166, ordered that no one should harbor heretics in England, and that any house in which they were received should be burned. The king of Aragon decreed (1194) that any one who listened to the preaching of the Waldensians, or even gave them food, should suffer the penalties for treason and should have his property confiscated by the state. ”

“ The other bull is addressed “to the Priors and Friars of the Order of Preachers, Inquisitors,” and after alluding to the sons of perdition who defend heresy, it proceeds: “Therefore you, or any of you, wherever you may happen to preach, are empowered, unless they desist from such defence (of heretics) on monition, to deprive clerks of their benefices forever, and to proceed against them and all others, without appeal, calling in the aid of the secular arm, if necessary, and coercing opposition, if requisite, with the censures of the Church, without appeal.” ”

“ From Ravenna, in March, 1232, he issued a constitution addressed to all the prelates and potentates of the empire, ordering their efficient co-operation in the extirpation of heresy, and taking under the special imperial protection all the Mendicants deputed by the pope for that purpose. The secular authorities were commanded to arrest all who should be designated to them by the inquisitors, to hold them safely until condemnation, and to put to a dreadful death those convicted of heresy or fautorship, or to imprison for life such as should recant and abjure. ”