A far more important result of the supreme position accorded to the Papacy was the gradual emergence of the doctrine of papal infallibility. "The Church of Rome," says Gregory VII, "through St. Peter, as it were by some privilege, is from the very beginnings of the faith reckoned by the Holy Fathers the Mother of all the Churches and will so be considered to the very end; for in her no heretic is discerned to have had the rule, and we believe that none such will ever be set over her according to the Lord's special promise. For the Lord Jesus says, 'I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not.'" And in accordance with this principle theDictatus Papaelays it down that "the Roman Church has never erred, nor, as Scripture testifies, will it ever err." Innocent III pertinently asks how he could confirm others in the faith, which is recognised as a special duty of his office, unless he himself were firm in the faith. But many writers, including Innocent himself, believed that it was possible for a Pope to err in some individual point, and that it was the duty of the Church to convert him. Thomas Aquinas, while holding it certain that the judgment of the Church Universal cannot err in these matters which belong to the faith, gives to the Pope alone, as the authority by whom synods are summoned, the final determination of those things which are of faith. Yet even he allows that in matters of fact, such as questions of ownership and criminal charges, false witnesses may lead the judgment of the Church astray.
[Sidenote: Kings and papal claims.]
We have seen that the Papacy did not attain its supremacy without encountering much opposition. But the protests on the part of bishops were unavailing, and they were themselves largely to blame for the height to which the papal power had grown. Such effective remonstrance as there was came from the Kings, though even they were often ready to invoke the papal aid to obtain an advantage against their own ecclesiastics or even their own subjects. Thus in England William II agreed with Urban II that no legate should be sent to the country unless the King was willing to receive him; while Henry II, in the Constitutions of Clarendon, lays it down that no one should appeal to Rome without permission of the King. But Henry's submission after Becket's murder nullified the Constitutions, and John's humiliating surrender made it difficult to object to the exercise of any papal power in England. During the minority of Henry III the papal legate was the most important member of the Council of Regency; and at a later stage, when Henry had quarrelled with his barons, he was glad to obtain the papal support against them. In Germany Hadrian IV complained that Frederick I used force in order to prevent any of his subjects from carrying their causes to Rome; and Otto IV was obliged to swear in 1209 that no hindrance should be placed to ecclesiastical appeals to Rome, a promise subsequently exacted also from Frederick II and from Rudolf.
Not dissimilar was the submission of Alfonso X of Castile, who set his seal to the papal encroachments; but his object was to obtain the support of Rome in his campaign against the local liberties in his kingdom. In his code of law known as "Siete Partidas" power was given to the Pope to deal as he liked with bishops and with benefices and to receive all appeals. On the other hand, St. Louis was not above a bargain with Rome. He refused to the Pope the tithes of the French Church for three years for the object of carrying on the war against Frederick II; but in 1267 he himself obtained the papal consent to take these tithes for the purpose of crusade.
[Sidenote: Number of the Sacraments.]
It was during the period covered by this volume that some of the most characteristic doctrines of the Roman Church were developed. In this development the whole sacramental system of the Church comes under consideration. The word "sacramentum" in the sense of a holy mark or sign (sacrum signum) was used with a very wide meaning as denoting anything "by which under the cover of corporeal things the divine wisdom secretly works salvation." Hugh of St. Victor, writing in the first half of the twelfth century, distinguishes three kinds of sacraments—those necessary for salvation, namely, baptism and the reception of the Body and Blood of Christ; those for sanctification, such as holy water, ashes, and such-like; and those instituted for the purpose of preparing the means of the necessary sacraments, that is, holy orders and the dedication of churches. Elsewhere he chooses out rather more definitely seven remedies against original or actual sin, namely, baptism, confirmation, eucharist, penance, extreme unction, marriage, and holy orders; and after the twelfth century the Church gradually restricted the use of the word Sacrament to these seven. There was much disputing among the schoolmen on the need of institution by Christ Himself. Peter Lombard, and after him Bonaventura, denied this necessity; Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas asserted it. But how account for extreme unction and confirmation? This is St. Thomas' explanation. "Some sacraments which are of greater difficulty for belief Christ himself made known; but others He reserved to be made known by the Apostles. For sacraments belong to the fundamentals of the law and so their institution belongs to the law-giver. Christ made known only such sacraments as He Himself could partake. But He could not receive either penance or extreme unction because he was sinless. The institution of a new sacrament belongs to the power of excellence which is competent for Christ alone: so that it must be said that Christ instituted such a sacrament as confirmation not by making it known, but by promising it."
[Sidenote: The Eucharist.]
Of these seven sacraments the one round which the whole doctrine and discipline of the Church increasingly centred was, of course, the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper or the Eucharist. The view generally held in the Church was that of St. Augustine, which finds a place in the homilies of Aelfric and in the controversial work of Ratramnus of Corbie (died 868). According to this view, Christ is present in the consecrated elements of the sacrament really but spiritually. "The body of Christ," says Ratramnus, "which died and rose again and has become immortal, does not now die: it is eternal and cannot suffer." But the tendency of the Middle Ages was to materialise all conceptions however spiritual; and Ratramnus had written to controvert Paschasius Radbertus, Abbot of New Corbie, who had applied these materialistic views to the Eucharist. "Although," he asserts, "the form of bread and wine may remain, yet after consecration it is nothing else but the flesh and blood of Christ, none other than the flesh which was born of Mary and suffered on the cross and rose from the sepulchre." During the two succeeding centuries this theory of the corporeal presence gained so much vogue in the Church that when Berengar of Tours taught in the cathedral school of his native city the doctrine of Ratramnus, he was condemned unheard at a Synod at Rome in 1050. But he gained the favour of Hildebrand, who was then at Tours in 1054 as papal legate, and was content with the admission "panem atque vinum altaris post consecrationem esse corpus et sanguis Christi"; and relying on his protection Berengar went to Rome (1059). Here, however, his opponents forced him to sign a confession in conformity with the materialistic view. His repudiation of this as soon as he got away from Rome began a long controversy, the champion on the materialistic side being Lanfranc, then a monk of Bee in Normandy, to whom Berengar had originally addressed himself. Lanfranc held the position that the consecrated elements are "ineffably, incomprehensibly, wonderfully by the operation of power from on high, turned into the essence of the Lord's Body." In 1075 the matter was discussed at the Synod of Poictiers, and Berengar was in danger of his life. Again Pope Gregory, as he had now become, tried to stand his friend, and at a Synod at Rome in 1078 to get from Berengar a confession of faith in general terms. But the violence of Berengar's enemies made compromise or ambiguity impossible. Again Berengar repudiated the forced confession; and Gregory only obtained peace for him until his death in 1088, by threatening with anathema any who molested him. Berengar's objections to the doctrine of Paschasius were shared by all the mystics, who held a more spiritual belief. Thus, St. Bernard distinguishes between the visible sign and the invisible grace which God attaches to the sign; and Rupert of Deutz declares that for him who has no faith there is nothing of the sacrifice, nothing except the visible form of the bread and wine.
[Sidenote: Transubstantiation.]
But apart from these writers the trend of opinion and inclination told entirely in favour of the materialistic school of thought. To the ordinary folk the miraculous aspect of the doctrine was a positive recommendation to acceptance. And the word Transubstantiation, even though it did not necessarily imply a materialistic change, undoubtedly became associated in men's minds with that idea. As early as the middle of the ninth century Haimo of Halberstadt had said that the substance of the bread and wine (that is, the nature of bread and wine) is changed substantially into another substance (that is, into flesh and blood). But the word "transubstantiate" is used first by Stephen, Bishop of Autun (1113-29), who explains "This is My Body" as "The bread which I have received I have transubstantiated into My Body." Sanction was first given for the use of the word in the Lateran Council of 1215. In the confession of faith drawn up by that Council it is asserted that "there is one Universal Church of the Faithful, outside of which no one at all has salvation: in which Jesus Himself is at once priest and sacrifice, whose Body and Blood are truly received in the sacrament of the altar under the form of bread and wine, the bread being transubstantiated by the divine power into the Body and the wine into the Blood, in order that for the accomplishment of the mystery of the unity we may receive of His what He has received of ours. And this as being a sacrament no one can perform except a priest who shall have been duly ordained according to the Keys of the Church, which Jesus Christ Himself granted to the Apostles and their successors."
[Sidenote: Resulting Changes.]
This "mystery of the unity" became, on the one side, the subject of a long and intricate controversy on the method by which the change in the elements was effected, while on the other side it lent itself to much mystical meditation. Of neither of these is there space to give illustration; but the hymn of St. Thomas Aquinas, which is familiar to English readers under the form of "Now, my tongue, the mystery telling," blends the two sides with astonishing success. It is a mistake to describe the view of the sacrament thus sanctioned by the Church as either more "advanced" or "higher" than the older view. It was merely more elaborate, and as being such it led on to certain definite results or changes in custom.
Thus, in the first place, hitherto children had partaken of the sacrament. This had come partly from the teaching of the need of the sacrament for salvation, partly from the early custom of administering communion directly after baptism. The fear of profanation now caused the gradual discontinuance of children's communions, and in the middle of the thirteenth century they were definitely forbidden.
[Sidenote: Refusal of cup to laity.]
A far more important change, and for a similar reason, was the refusal of the cup to the laity. St. Anselm is responsible for the dictum (afterwards accepted by the whole Church) that "Christ is consumed entire in either element"; from this came the inference that there was no need for the administration of both. The heaviness of a single chalice made the danger of spilling its contents so great that several chalices were used. This, however, only increased the chances, and various methods were adopted with a view to minimising the difficulty. Sometimes a reed was used; later on, bread dipped in wine was administered, as was already usual in the case of sick persons or children; or even unconsecrated wine was given. Some of these methods came under papal condemnation; and the withdrawal of the cup found powerful apologists in Alexander of Hales and Thomas Aquinas. But the administration of both elements continued to be fairly common until far on into the thirteenth century.
[Sidenote: Adoration of the sacrament.]
A third result of the new views is to be seen in the extension of the doctrine and practice of adoration of the sacrament. The rite of elevation existed in the Greek Church at least as early as the seventh century, but was not adopted by the Latins until four centuries later. In either case, however, it was only regarded as an act symbolical of the exaltation of Christ. But following on the sanction of the doctrine of transubstantiation by the Lateran Council, Honorius III in 1217 decreed that "every priest should frequently instruct his people that when in the celebration of the Mass the saving Host is elevated every one should bend reverently, doing the same thing when the priest carries it to the sick." A logical outcome of this was the foundation of the festival of Corpus Christi for the special celebration of the sacramental mystery. This was first introduced in the bishopric of Liège in response to the vision of a certain nun. Urban IV, who had been a canon of Liège, adopted it for the whole Church in 1264, but it only became general after Clement V had incorporated Urban's ordinance as part of the Canon Law in the Clementines (1311).
While there was a growing elaboration of the sacramental rite, the laity in many parts of Europe came from slackness less frequently to receive communion. As early as Bede, in England, though not in Rome, communions were very infrequent. English and French Synods tried to insist on communion three times a year, but could not enforce the rule. Innocent III, in the fourth Lateran Council, with a view to compel confession, prescribes once a year. "Every one of the faithful," runs the canon of the Council, "of either sex, after he has come to years of discretion, is to confess faithfully by himself all his sins at least once a year to his own priest, and is to be careful to fulfil according to his power the penance enjoined on him, receiving with reverence the sacrament of the Eucharist at least at Easter."
Finally, the discussion of this theory of transubstantiation led to the development of a special view of the doctrine of the Eucharistic Sacrifice. Peter Lombard and Thomas Aquinas call the sacrament a representation of the sacrifice of Christ upon the cross. But to Albertus Magnus it is not merely a Representation, but a True Sacrifice, that is, "an Oblation of the thing offered by the hands of the priests," and St. Thomas elsewhere declares that the perfection of the sacrament consists not in its use by the faithful, but in the consecration of the element, that is to say, that the main point was the act of the priest. The prevalence of this view appears to have encouraged the idea in the laity that a mere attendance at the service was in itself so meritorious as almost to dispense with the need of communion, except once a year and on the death-bed. Similarly, private Masses for the dead were instituted, chantry chapels were founded for the celebration of them, and priests were appointed for the sole purpose of serving the altar of the chapel.
[Sidenote: Confession.]
Nor was the development of this sacramental system the only method by which the importance of the priesthood became enhanced. The whole penitential system of the Church was gradually perverted. Originally those convicted of open sin who submitted to penance were publicly readmitted to the Church after confessing their sin and making some form of atonement. People were encouraged to confess their sins to their bishop or priest even when their sins were not open and notorious. This was especially enjoined in the case of mortal sin. But it was for a long time a matter of discussion whether this confession to a priest was an indispensable preliminary to forgiveness. Peter Lombard marks another view. God alone remits or retains sins, but to the priests he assigns the power, not of forgiveness, but of declaring men to be bound or loosed from their sins. He adds that even though sinners have been forgiven by God, yet they must be loosed by the priest's judgment in the face of the Church. In this ambiguous position of the priest laymen were even entrusted with the power of hearing a confession if no priest was available. But in the twelfth century, as we have seen, confession was often reckoned among the sacraments; and at the Lateran Council Innocent III enjoined an annual confession to the parish priest. Before long the precatory form of absolution is replaced by the indicative form by which the priest declared the sinner absolved. Thomas Aquinas lays it down that "the grace which is given in the sacraments descends from the head to the members: and so he alone is minister of the sacraments in which grace is given who has a true ministry over Christ's body; and this belongs to the priest alone who can consecrate the Eucharist. And so when grace is conferred in the sacrament of penance, the priest alone is the minister of this sacrament; and so to him alone is to be made the sacramental confession which ought to be made to a minister of the Church." There was no room here for confession to laymen, although Thomas himself allows that in cases of necessity such confession has a kind of sacramental character which would be supplemented by Christ Himself as the high priest.
[Sidenote: Indulgences.]
The increasing stress laid upon private confession not only led to the decay of the public procedure, but also brought about some dangerous developments in the penitential system of the Church. This had already become very largely a matter of fixed pecuniary compensations for moral offences; so that the new system of compulsory confession was able to recommend itself to the people through the adaptation of the old mechanical standards by the confessors to each individual case. Far more important was the extension given to the system of indulgences. These had their origin in the remission of part of an imposed penance on condition of attendance at particular churches on certain anniversaries, it being understood that the penitent would present offerings to the Church. Abailard complains that on ceremonial occasions when large offerings are expected, bishops issue such indulgences for a third or fourth part of the penance as if they had done it out of love instead of from the utmost greed. And they boast of it, claiming that it is done by the power of St. Peter and the Apostles, when it is God who said to them "Whosesoever sins ye remit," etc. Thus all bishops took it upon themselves to issue indulgences for the furtherance of particular objects. But in its claim to subordinate the episcopal power to its own, the Papacy began to grant indulgences which were not limited to time or circumstance. Gregory VI in 1044 made promises to all who helped in the restoration of Roman churches; but Gregory VII promised absolution to all who fought for Rudolf of Suabia against Henry IV; while Urban II in the widest manner offered plenary indulgence, that is, remission of all penances imposed, in the case of any who would take part in the Crusade. This offer in whole or in part was constantly renewed in order to raise an army for the East.
[Sidenote: Effect on populace.]
It was of course presupposed by those in authority in the cases of these indulgences that, confession having been made, the temporal penalties to be undergone either here or in purgatory were thus remitted. But preachers in their eagerness to raise troops asserted that those guilty of the foulest crimes obtained pardon from the moment when they assumed the cross, and were assured of salvation in the event of death. Consequently the people in their ignorance overlooked the conditions attached and regarded these indulgences as promises of eternal pardon. It is not wonderful that men released from social restraints of a more or less stable society should have developed in their new abode the licence which made crusaders a byword in the West.
[Sidenote: Papal indulgences.]
So far the Popes had endeavoured to supersede the bishops in the issue of indulgences by entering into rivalry with them. But the power was used by the bishops in such detailed ways as perhaps seriously to interfere with the offerings which should reach the Papacy or be applied to important projects. Innocent III, therefore, at the great Lateran Council limited the episcopal power to the grant of an indulgence for one year at the consecration of a church and for forty days at the anniversary. Unfortunately this did not mean the suppression of trifling reasons for the multiplication of indulgence. The whole system was a convenient method of adding to the revenues of Rome, and no occasion seemed too small for the exercise of the papal power of dispensation. Urban IV granted an indulgence to all who should listen to the same sermon as the King of France. The Crusades were the great occasion and excuse for the development of this system, and it certainly reached its nadir when Gregory IX showed himself ready in return for a pecuniary penance to absolve men from the vows which they had perhaps been unwillingly forced to take by his own agents for going on crusade. Equally disgraceful was the establishment of the year of Jubilee in 1300 by Boniface VIII, when plenary indulgence of the most comprehensive kind was offered to all who within the year should in the proper spirit visit the tombs of St. Peter and St. Paul at Rome.
[Sidenote: Treasury of merits.]
But how came the Pope to be in possession of this power of remitting the penalties for sin? The schoolmen of the thirteenth century supply the answer. Alexander of Hales and Albert the Great invented the theory and Thomas Aquinas completed it. According to their teaching, the saints, by their works of penance and by their unmerited sufferings patiently borne, have done in this world more than was necessary for their own salvation. These superabundant merits, together with those of Christ, which are infinite, are far more than enough to fulfil all the penalties due for their evil deeds from the living. The idea of unity in the mystical body enables the shortcomings of one man to be atoned for by the merits of another. The superabundant merits of the saints are a treasury for use by the whole Church, and are distributed by the head of the Church, that is, the Pope. Furthermore, to St. Thomas is due the idea that the contents of this treasury were equally available for the benefit of souls in purgatory, for whom the Church was already accustomed to make intercession.
[Sidenote: Canonisation of saints.]
It was to our Lord Himself that the theologians attributed all merit; but in the popular mind the merits of the saints took an ever more important place, since the Church seemed to make the priesthood a barrier against, rather than a channel for, the flow of God's mercy to man; but popular feeling sought to find intercessors before the throne of grace in the holy men and women of the faith. For a long time it was the bishops who decided the title to saintship. But in 993 Pope John XV, in a Council at Rome and in response to a request of the Bishop of Augsburg, ordered that a former bishop of that see should be venerated as a saint. This was the process afterwards called Canonisation, which involved the insertion of a name in the Canon or list, and gave it currency not merely in a single diocese, but throughout western Christendom. In 1170 Alexander III claimed such recognition as the exclusive right of Rome. But despite this assumption of authority, popular feeling very often dictated to the Pope whom he should admit into the list. Death followed by miracles at the tomb, and sometimes the building of an elaborate shrine with an altar, forced the Pope to grant the claims of a popular favourite.
[Sidenote: Miracles and relics.]
A rapid increase in the number of applications for such official recognition would be the result of any widely popular movement. Such was the effect of the Crusades in the twelfth century, and of the foundation of the Mendicant Orders in the thirteenth. And the multiplication of saints meant an increase in the number of relics and an ever-growing belief in the miraculous. Miracles frequently took place in connection with living persons of saintly life. Abailard scornfully pointed out that some of the attempts made by Norbert or Bernard to work miraculous cures were quite unsuccessful, while in successful cases medicine as well as prayers had been employed. But such rationalism was beyond the grasp of an ignorant age, and collections of stories of miracles, such as remain to us in the "Golden Legends" of Jacob de Voragine, a Dominican of the thirteenth century, fed the popular belief. Miracles so commemorated often occurred in connection with relics; and the traffic in relics and so styled "pious" frauds, not to say the forcible means used to procure reputed relics of authentic or supposititious saints, forms a curious if a discreditable feature in mediæval history. An occasional protest was uttered against the manner in which credit was often obtained for relics of more than doubtful authenticity; but the manufacture of them was easy and profitable, and pilgrims returning from Palestine could palm off anything upon the credulity of a willing and ignorant populace. The growth of a legend in connection with relics is fitly illustrated by the history of the eleven thousand Virgins of Köln. Martyrologies of the ninth century celebrate the martyrdom of eleven virgins in the city of Köln. Perhaps these were described as XI. M. Virgines, and the letter which denoted martyrs was mistaken for the Roman numeral for one thousand, and so the number of virgins was ultimately swollen to eleven thousand. A legend, possibly working on an old one, was invented by a writer of the twelfth century that these virgins were martyred by the Huns in the fifth century. In the middle of that century, when heresy was rife at Köln, a number of bones of persons of both sexes were found near Köln, and the authenticity of the relics was put beyond dispute by the revelations vouchsafed to Saint Elizabeth, Abbess of Schönau, to whom the matter was referred. Even though she did give a date for the event which was historically impossible, the confirmatory evidence of the Premonstratensian Abbot Richard nearly thirty years later put the matter beyond the doubt of any pious Christian. But the interest of these unsavoury remains of anonymous men and women, however saintly, pales before certain relics of our Lord's life on earth which gained currency. Of these the most famous were the Veronica, a cloth on which Christ, on His way to Calvary, was supposed to have left the impress of His face, and a vessel of a green colour which was identified with the holy grail, the cup which our Lord used at the Last Supper. Of garments purporting to be the seamless coat of Christ there were a considerable number shown in different places; but the most famous to this day remains the Holy Coat of Treves, which, in Dr. Robertson's caustic words, "the Empress Helena (the mother of Constantine) was said to have presented to an imaginary archbishop of her pretended birthplace, Treves." During the First Crusade the army before Antioch was only spurred on to the efforts which resulted in the capture of the city, by the opportune discovery of the Holy Lance with which the Roman soldier had pierced Christ's side while He hung upon the cross.
[Sidenote: Adoration of the Virgin.]
The great increase in the whole intercessory machinery of the Church culminated in the adoration of the Virgin Mary. The extravagant expression of this devotion was widespread. For the many it found vent in the language of popular hymns. Among the monks the Cistercians were under her special protection, and all their churches were dedicated to her. Of the learned men Peter Damiani in the eleventh century, St. Bernard and St. Bonaventura in the two succeeding centuries respectively, especially helped in various ways to crystallise her position in the Church. As a result of the efforts of her devotees Saturdays and the vigils of all feast days came to be kept in her honour; the salutation "Ave Maria gratia plena" with certain additions was prescribed to be taught to the people, together with the Lord's Prayer and the Creed. In the thirteenth century its frequent repetition resulted in the invention of the Rosary, a string of beads by which the number of repetitions could be counted. The religion of Mary soon showed signs of development as a parallel religion to that of Christ. She is styled the Queen of Heaven; her office, composed by Peter Damiani, was ordered by Urban II to be recited on Saturday; and a Marian Psalter and a Marian Bible were actually composed; while in place of thedidiaor reverence offered to the saints, there was claimed for the Virgin a higher step, ahyperdulia, which St. Thomas places betweenduliaand the latria or adoration paid to Christ.
[Sidenote: The immaculate conception.]
A final stage in possible developments was reached in the twelfth century in the institution of a feast in honour of the conception of the Blessed Virgin. Hitherto it had been supposed by Christian writers, notably by St. Anselm, that the Mother of the Lord had been conceived as others. Towards the middle of the twelfth century some Canons of Lyons evolved the theory that she was conceived already sinless in her mother's womb. St. Bernard strenuously opposed this notion of her immaculate conception, pointing out that the supposition involved in the theory could not logically stop with the Virgin herself, but must be applied to her parents and so to each of their ancestors in turn in an endless series. Nor was St. Bernard alone in his objection: indeed, nearly all the chief theologians of the thirteenth century, including Thomas Aquinas, declared that there was no warrant of Scripture for the theory. But notwithstanding this criticism, the festival won its way to recognition. Those who kept it, however, declared that it was merely the conception which they celebrated; and St. Thomas interpreting this to denote the sanctification, was of opinion that such a celebration was not to be entirely reprobated. It was Duns Scotus who first among the schoolmen defended the theory of the immaculate conception, but in moderate language; and his Franciscan followers, who at a General Council of the Order in 1263 had admitted the festival among some other new occasions to be observed, in the course of the fourteenth century adopted it as a distinctive doctrine.
[Sidenote: Cause of heresy.]
It was not until the thirteenth century that the Church had to face that spirit of scepticism or anti-religious feeling which is the chief bug-bear of modern Christianity. Her elaborate organisation and the gradual development of her own dogmatic position enabled her to deal with individual writers of a speculative turn like Berengar or Abailard. Nor were these in any sense anti-Christian. But they were the inciters to heresy; and a real danger to the Church lay in the filtering down of intellectual speculations to ignorant classes, by whom they would be transformed into weapons against the fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith. Indeed, from the eleventh century onward the Church was constantly threatened by heresy of a popular kind, which tended to develop into schism. And for this she had to thank not only the growing materialisation of her doctrine, but even more the worldly life of her ministers. Unpalatable doctrines may commend themselves by the pure lives which profess to be founded on them; but evil doing carries no persuasion to others.
[Sidenote: Two kinds of heretics.]
It is a real difficulty that our sources of information of all the heretics of these centuries are chiefly the writings of their successful opponents—the defenders of the orthodox faith. But much information remains to us from the admissions of her supporters as to the depraved condition of the Church at this period; so that we need not believe the allegations or their opponents that a chief inducement to join heretical sects lay in the greater scope for the indulgence of sin. Charges of immorality against opponents were the stock-in-trade of the controversialist, while the greatest authorities in the Church allow that heresy lived upon the scandals and negligences of the Church. Moreover, based as they were upon opposition to the existing organisation, the doctrines of the various sects had much in common. The Church did not distinguish between them, but excommunicated them all alike. If, however, we would understand the developments of opinion in the succeeding centuries, it is important to discriminate; and a clear distinction can be made between those opponents of the Church whose views were aimed against the development of an extreme sacerdotalism within the Church, and those who, going beyond this negative position, reproduced the Manichæan theories of an early age and threatened to raise a rival organisation to that of the Christian Church.
[Sidenote: Anti-sacerdotalists.]
The object which those who belonged to the first of these divisions set before themselves, was to get behind the elaborate organisation which the Church had built up and which, instead of being a help to lead man to God, had now become a hindrance by which the knowledge of God was actually obscured. They would therefore sweep away all this machinery and return to the Christianity of apostolic times. Their objection was primarily moral, but it soon became doctrinal; and among the heretics of this class there was revived the Donatist theory that the sacraments depend for their efficacy on the moral condition of those who administer them. The campaign of the Church reformers against clerical marriage seemed directly to support this view; but the canons which forbade any one to be present at a Mass performed by a married priest had to be explained away as a mere enforcement of discipline; and in 1230 Gregory IX definitely laid it down that the suspension of a priest living in mortal sin merely affects him as an individual and does not invalidate his office as regards others. But such declarations did nothing to meet the common feeling of the great incompatibility between the awful powers with which the Church clothed her ministers and the sinful lives led by a large proportion of the existing clerical body.
[Sidenote: Extreme examples.]
From an early period in the twelfth century sectaries of this class are found in several quarters. Two extreme instances are Tanchelm, who preached in the Netherlands between 1115 and 1124, and Eon de l'Etoile, who gathered round him a band of desperate characters in Brittany about 1148. They have been described as "two frantic enthusiasts," and Eon was almost certainly insane. Eon was imprisoned and his band dispersed. But Tanchelm found a large following when he taught that the hierarchy was null and that tithes should not be paid. He came to an untimely end; but the influence of his doctrines continued so strong in Antwerp that St. Norbert came to the help of the local clergy and succeeded in obliterating all traces of the heresy.
[Sidenote: Petrobrusians and Henricians.]
It was in the south of France that this and all heresy assumed a more formidable shape. The population was very mixed; the feudal tie, whether to France, England, or the Emperor, was slight; there was more culture and luxury, the clergy were more careless of their duties, while Jews had greater privileges, than anywhere else in Europe. Moreover, the early teachers were men of education. Two such were Peter de Bruis (1106-26), a priest, and Henry of Lausanne (1116-48), an ex-monk of Cluny. Peter was burnt and Henry probably died in prison. Peter preached in the land known later as Dauphiné; and the views of the Petrobrusians, as his followers were called, so continued to spread after his death that Peter the Venerable, the Abbot of Cluny, thought it worth while to write a tract in refutation of them. Henry was more formidable. He preached over all the south of France, was condemned as a heretic at the Council of Pisa (1134), but was released and resumed his preaching. As the bishops could not and the lay nobles would not do anything against him, the papal legate obtained the help of St. Bernard, who, although ill, preached at Albi and elsewhere with an effect which was much enhanced by the miracles which in popular belief accompanied his efforts. Henry declined a debate to which Bernard challenged him, and so became discredited, and shortly after he fell into the hands of his enemies.
The tract of Peter the Venerable is practically the sole authority for the tenets of the Petrobrusians. According to this they were frankly anti-sacerdotal. Infant baptism was held to be useless, since it was performed with vicarious promises. Churches were useless, for the Church of God consists of the congregation of the faithful; the Cross, as being the instrument of Christ's torture, was a symbol to be destroyed rather than invoked; there was no real presence and no sacrifice in the Mass, for Christ's body was made and given once for all at the Last Supper; all offerings and prayers for the dead were useless, since each man would be judged on his own merits. Henry with his followers practically adopted these views and added attempts at social reform on Christian lines, especially in the matter of marriage, persuading courtesans to abandon their vicious life and promoting their union to some of his adherents.
[Sidenote: Waldenses.]
By far the most important body of these anti-sacerdotal heretics were the Waldenses. Their founder was Peter Waldo, whose name takes many forms—Waldez, Waldus, Waldensis. He was a wealthy merchant of Lyons who, moved with religious feelings and himself ignorant, caused two priests to translate into the vernacular Romance the New Testament and a collection of extracts from the chief writers of the early Church known as Sentences. From a perusal of these he became convinced that the way to spiritual perfection lay through poverty. He divested himself of his wealth and, as a way of carrying out the gospel further, he began to preach (1170-80). He attracted men and women of the poorer classes, whom he used as missionaries; and the neglect of the pulpit by the clergy caused these lay preachers to find ready listeners in the streets and even in the churches of Lyons. According to the custom of the day they adopted a special dress; and the sandals (sabol) which they wore in imitation of the Apostles gave them the name of Insabbatati. They called themselves the Poor Men of Lyons—Pauperes de Lugduno; Li Poure de Lyod. The Archbishop of Lyons excommunicated them; but Alexander III, at the request of Peter, allowed them to preach with permission of the priests. Their disregard of this proviso caused their excommunication by the Pope in 1184 and again in 1190; and from this time they began to repudiate the Church which limited their freedom, and to set up conventicles and an organisation of their own. The date of Peter's death is not known.
[Sidenote: Their Views.]
The strong missionary spirit of these sectaries spread their doctrines with extraordinary rapidity. They consisted almost entirely of poor folk scattered over an area extending from Aragon to Bohemia; and from place to place differences of organisation and doctrine are to be observed. But they were not Protestants in the modern sense, and, despite persecution, many continued to consider themselves members of the Church. Thus on such doctrinal points as the Real Presence, purgatory, the invocation of saints, in many places they long continued to believe in them with their own explanations, and their repudiation of the teaching of the Church was a matter of gradual accomplishment. It is true that in places they strove to set up their own organisation. But the tendency of the Waldenses was much rather towards a simplification of the existing organisation. The power of binding and loosing was entirely rejected: an apostolic life and not ordination was the entrance to the priesthood. In fact, a layman was qualified to perform all the priestly functions, not merely to baptise and to preach, but even to hear confession and to consecrate the Eucharist. Thus the whole penitential machinery of the Church was set aside. Their specially religious teaching was largely ethical, and by the testimony of their enemies their life and conduct were singularly pure and simple. The stories of abominable practices among them perhaps arose from the extreme asceticism of a sect which professed voluntary poverty; but they were no more true than the similar tales told of the early Christians. Nor shall we regard from the same point of view as the Churchmen of the day the charge brought against them on the ground of their intimate knowledge of the Scriptures. Of these they had their own vernacular translations, and large portions of them were committed to memory. But such translations spread broadcast views unfettered by the traditional interpretation of the Church, and the missionary zeal of the Waldenses was proof against the horrors of the Inquisition with its prison, torture-chamber, and stake.
[Sidenote: Cathari.]
The most formidable development of hostility to the Church came from the Manichæism of those who bore at various times and in different places the names of Cathari, Patarius, or Albigenses. The attraction of the Manichæan theory lay in its apparent explanation of the problem of evil. There exist side by side in the world a good principle and an evil principle. The latter is identifiable with matter and is the work of Satan. Hence sin consists in care for the material creation. It follows that all action tending to the reproduction of animal life is to be avoided, so that marriage was strongly discouraged. To the earlier views was added the doctrine of metempsychosis, or the transmigration of souls, which, acting as a means of reward and retribution, seemed fully to account for man's sufferings. These views together explain the avoidance as food by the Cathari of everything which was the result of animal propagation, and also the severity of the ascetic practices which were charged against them.
[Sidenote: Their doctrines.]
In the sphere of doctrine the division between the Cathari and the Catholic Church was absolute. According to these sectaries Satan is the Jehovah of the Old Testament: hence all Scriptures before the Gospels are rejected. They accepted the New Testament, but regarded Christ as a phantasm and not a man. Thus the doctrine of the Real Presence had no meaning for them, indeed, they rejected the sacraments and all external and material manifestations of religion. Here, of course, they had much in common with the Waldenses, whom the Church confounded with them; and there seems little doubt that the way for the preaching of Catharism in the south of France was paved by the previous work of Peter de Bruis and, even more, of Henry of Lausanne. But the reasons for opposition to the Church were not the same among the Waldenses and the Cathari; and the latter soon parted company with the seekers after primitive Christianity by developing an organisation of their own. Thus as the Cathari grew in numbers and carried on a vigorous missionary work, their devotees tended to form themselves into a Church. At least two distinct Orders were recognised. The Perfected were a kind of spiritual aristocracy who renounced all property and were sworn to celibacy, while they submitted themselves to penances of such rigour that their lives were often endangered, if not shortened. Below them were the mass of believers who were allowed to marry and to live in the world, assimilating themselves so far as possible to the ideal set before them by the higher caste. From the Perfected were chosen officers with the names of bishop and deacon, the latter acting as assistants to the chief officers. The ritual was simple but definite, and the most characteristic ceremony was the Consolamentum, the baptism of the Holy Ghost, by which the believers were placed in communion with the Perfected and so became absolved from all sin. It was performed by the imposition of hands together with the blessing and kiss of peace given by any two of the Perfected. This was the process of "heretication," the name given by the Inquisitors to admission into the Catharist Church; and, except in the case of the ministers, it was postponed until the believer lay upon his death-bed.
[Sidenote: Their effect.]
The charges of evil practices against the Cathari were perhaps no truer than similar accusations against the Waldenses, and their missionary zeal was proof against even death at the stake. Nevertheless there is no doubt that the cause of progress and civilisation lay with Catholicism rather than with its opponents. The asceticism of the Cathari would have resulted, if not in the extinction of the race, at least in the destruction of the family: their identification of matter with the work of Satan would have been a bar to attempts at material improvement. Moreover, if ever theirs had become the conquering faith, they would have developed a sacerdotal class as privileged as the Catholic priesthood. The movement has been aptly described as "not a revolt against the Church, but a renunciation of man's dominion over nature."
[Sidenote: Their origin and spread.]
Whether the Catharist movement was spread westwards by the Paulicians who in the tenth century were transplanted from Armenia to Thrace, or sprang spontaneously from teachers who saw in the dualistic philosophy a condemnation, if not an explanation, of the materialisation of Christianity by the Church, may not be very certain; but there is no doubt that the Cathari of Western Europe always looked to the eastern side of the Adriatic as to the headquarters of their faith. In the eleventh century we hear of Cathari in certain places in North Italy, in France, and even in Germany; but although in Italy the name of Patarins came to be applied to the sect, we need trace no connection in the popular rising at Milan, which was stirred up by the Church reformers against the simony and clerical marriage practised by the Church of St. Ambrose. In the twelfth century the movement is heard of in an increasing number of places, in certain parts of France including Brittany, in Flanders among all classes, in the Rhine lands. Milan was supposed to be the headquarters in Italy. In England thirty persons of humble birth, probably from Flanders, were condemned in 1166, and an article was inserted in the Assize of Clarendon against them.
[Sidenote: Albigenses.]
But it was in the south of France that the Cathari, no less than the Waldenses, were chiefly to be found; with this difference, however—that, whereas the Waldenses confined themselves chiefly to Provence and the valley of the Rhone, the Cathari were scattered over a much larger area, although their chief strength lay in the valley of the Garonne. The town of Albi gave them their name of Albigenses, and Toulouse was the chief centre of their influence. In 1119 Calixtus II condemned the heresy at its centre in Toulouse. In 1139, at the second Lateran Council, Innocent II called upon the secular power for the first time to assist in expelling from the Church those who professed heretical opinions. In 1163 Alexander III, at the great Council of Tours, demanded that secular princes should imprison them. But the futility of these measures appeared from the colloquy held in 1165 at Lombers, near Albi, between representatives of the Church and of the Albigenses before mutually chosen judges, for it made plain the boldness of the heretics and their claim of equality with the Church. Indeed, in 1167 they actually held a council of their own at St. Felix de Caraman, near Toulouse, at which the chief Bishop of the Catharists was brought from Constantinople to preside, while a number of bishops were appointed, and all the business transacted was that of an equal and rival organisation to the Church of Rome.
[Sidenote: Attempts at suppression.]
During the next ten years (1167-77), while the religious allegiance of Europe was divided by the schism in the Papacy, Catharism gained a great hold over all classes in Languedoc and Gascony. Raymond V of Toulouse, the sovereign of Languedoc, finding himself powerless to check it, appealed for help; but the Kings of France and England agreed to a joint expedition only to abandon it, and the papal mission sent in 1178, composed of the papal legate, several bishops, and the Abbot of Clairvaux, only made heroes of the few heretics whom they ventured to excommunicate. In 1179, at the third Lateran Council, Alexander III proclaimed a crusade against all enemies of the Church, among whom were included, for the first time, professing Christians. The Abbot of Clairvaux, as papal legate, raised a force and reduced to submission Roger, Viscount of Béziers, who openly protected heretics; but the crusading army melted away at the end of the time of enlistment, and the only result of the expedition was the exasperation produced by the devastation of the land. After this failure no real attempt was made to stop the spread of heresy until the accession of Innocent III, while the fall of Jerusalem in 1186 turned all crusading ardour in the direction of Palestine.
[Sidenote: Raymond VI of Toulouse.]
Meanwhile, in 1194 Raymond V had been succeeded by his son, Raymond VI, who, if he was not actually a heretic, was at least indifferent to the interests of the Catholic faith. Most of his barons favoured Catharism. He himself was surrounded by a gay and cultured court, and was popular with his subjects. At the same time the local clergy neglected their duties, the barons plundered the Church, and the heretics, without persecuting the Catholics, were gradually extinguishing them in the dominions of Toulouse. Immediately on his accession in 1198 Innocent III appointed commissioners to visit the heretical district; but the local bishop, from jealousy, would not help. Some effect, however, was produced when, acting on the suggestion of a Spanish prelate, Diego de Azevedo, Bishop of Osma, they dismissed their retinues and started on a preaching tour among the people. The Bishop was accompanied by the Canon Dominic, and this mission was the germ out of which shortly grew the great Dominican Order. But the Bishop went back to Spain, and twice the papal legate excommunicated Raymond VI because he would give no help. Once Raymond made his peace with the Church, but the second pronouncement against him was shortly followed by the murder of the legate Peter of Castelnau, who had made himself peculiarly obnoxious (1208). Raymond's complicity was never proved, but Innocent was getting impatient, and his commissioners had made up their minds that it was easier and quicker to exterminate the heretics than to convert them. Raymond and all concerned in the murder were excommunicated, and a crusade was proclaimed against them. Philip Augustus of France allowed his barons to go, but excused himself on the ground of his relations with John of England. Raymond hoped to avoid the threatening storm by another abject submission; but he was obliged to surrender his chief fortresses and to join in person the army which now assembled for the extirpation of heresy in his own lands.
[Sidenote: The Crusade.]
Although Raymond was thus forced to appear in the ranks of his enemies, a leader in resistance was found in his nephew, Raymond Roger, Viscount of Béziers (1209). But his capital Béziers was stormed by the crusading army under the legate, who, when asked how the soldiers could distinguish Catholics from heretics, is said to have replied, "Slay them all: God will know His own." Then Carcassonne, deemed impregnable, was besieged, and the young Viscount, decoyed into the enemies' camp under pretence of negotiation, was kept a prisoner. He died, and the city was surrendered. The conquered territory was practically forced by the legate on Simon de Montfort, younger son of the Count of Evreux, who, through his mother, was also Earl of Leicester.
[Sidenote: Simon de Montfort.]
In 1211 the crusaders attacked Count Raymond's territories. He had never yet been tried for the murder of the legate, of which he was accused; and already Philip of France had warned the Pope that in any question of Raymond's forfeiture, it was for the French King as suzerain and not for the Pope to proclaim it. By a visit to Rome Raymond hoped that he had gained permission to purge himself from the impending charges; but at the last moment this was pronounced impossible, because in having failed to clear his lands of heresy, as he had promised to do, he was forsworn. In a war of sieges De Montfort's skill took from Raymond everything except Toulouse and Montauban. Raymond's brother-in-law, Pedro II of Aragon, now intervened; but when Innocent III, misled by his legates, refused a further offer of purgation on the part of Raymond, Pedro formally declared war against De Montfort. He invaded and laid siege to Muret; but his forces were defeated and he was killed (1213). So far Innocent III had avoided the recognition of De Montfort's conquests in Toulouse. But early in 1215 he ratified the act of the Council of Montpellier which had elected Simon de Montfort as lord of the whole conquered land. Raymond, although he had never yet been tried, was declared deposed for heresy; and the fourth Lateran Council, while confirming this decision, left a small portion of the territory still unconquered, for his son. It seems likely that Innocent would have been willing to deal fairly with the Count of Toulouse; but by this time there were too many interested in the ruin of the House of Toulouse, and the Pope was deliberately misled by his legates. Hence it came that a judgment which might, as it was expected that it would, have righted a great wrong, proved only a signal for revolt. Raymond and his son were welcomed back by an united people, and finally in 1218 Simon de Montfort was killed while besieging Toulouse.
[Sidenote: A war of aggression.]
De Montfort's son could make no headway against a people in arms. But in 1222 Raymond VI and Philip of France vainly tried to promote a peaceful settlement between Amaury de Montfort and Raymond VII. Amaury, despairing of success, offered his claims to the French King, and in 1223 Philip's successor, Louis VIII, overpersuaded by the Pope, accepted them. The young Count Raymond vainly endeavoured to ward off the threatened invasion and showed every desire to be reconciled with the Church. There was scarcely any longer a pretence of religious war. From the first it had been largely a war of races, promoted by northern jealousy at the wealth and civilisation of the south and by a desire for the completion of the Frank conquest of Gaul. Thus from the beginning of hostilities the whole population of the south, Catholic as well as heretic, had stood together in resistance to the crusading army, and despite his tergiversations Raymond VI had never lost their affection and support. The war lasted for three years (1226-9); Louis VIII led an expedition southwards, which for some inexplicable reason turned back before it had achieved complete success; and after his death the Queen-Regent, Blanche of Castile, with the encouragement of Pope Gregory IX, came to terms with Raymond VII. By the Treaty of Meaux (1229) Count Raymond agreed to hunt down all heretics, to assume the cross as a penance, to give up at once about two-thirds of his lands, while the remainder was to go to his daughter, who was to be married to a French prince, with the ultimate reversion to the French Crown. In 1237 Jeanne of Toulouse was married to Alfonso, brother of Louis IX; in 1249, on the death of Raymond VII, they succeeded to his dominions, and on their death in 1271 without children Philip III annexed all their possessions to the dominions of the French Crown.
[Sidenote: Punishment for heresy.]
The question of the acquisition of territory was thus shown to be far more important than the suppression of heresy. But a university was established at Toulouse for the teaching of true philosophy, and the Inquisition was set up under the Dominicans for the suppression of false doctrine. The time had definitely gone by when the Church would rely upon methods of persuasion in dealing with heretics. And yet for a long time there was much hesitation among Churchmen. Even as late as 1145 St. Bernard pleads for reasoning rather than coercion. And the application of methods of coercion was equally tentative. At first the obstinate heretic was imprisoned or exiled and his property was confiscated. But the practice of burning a heretic alive was long the custom before it was adopted anywhere as positive law. Pedro II of Aragon, the champion of Raymond VI, first definitely legalised it (1197). In 1238 by the Edict of Cremona this became the recognised law of the Empire, and was afterwards embodied in the Sachsenspiegel and Schwabenspiegel, the municipal codes of Northern and Southern Germany respectively. The Etablissements of Louis IX (1270) recognised the practice for France. It is a tribute to English orthodoxy that the Act "de haeretico comburendo" was not passed until 1401.
[Sidenote: The secular arm.]
Early usage forbade the clergy to be concerned in judgments involving death or mutilation. This finds expression in the Constitutions of Clarendon (1164); and the fourth Lateran Council (1215) definitely forbade clerks to utter a judgment of blood or to be present at an execution. Thus the Church merely found a man a heretic and called upon the secular authority to punish him. It was impressed upon all secular potentates from highest to lowest that it was their business to obey the behests of the Church in the extirpation of heresy. Indeed, it may almost be said that the validity of this command of the Church was the principal point at issue in the Albigensian crusade; for Raymond's lands were declared forfeit merely because he would not take an active part in the punishment of his heretical subjects. Thus by the thirteenth century all hesitation as to the attitude of the Church towards heretics had entirely disappeared. As Innocent III lays it down, "faith is not to be kept with him who keeps not faith with God," and Councils of this century declared that any temporal ruler who did not persecute heresy must be regarded as an accomplice and so as himself a heretic.
We cannot apply modern standards to the mediaeval feelings about heresy. The noblest and most saintly among clergy and laity alike were often the fiercest persecutors. Church and State were closely intermingled; heresy was a crime as well as a sin; the heretic was a rebel; mild measures only made him bolder; and in fear of the overthrow of the whole social system the rulers of State and Church combined to crush him.
[Sidenote: Need for new kinds of Orders.]
At the Lateran Council in 1215 Innocent III issued a decree which practically forbade the foundation of new monastic Orders. The increase of such Orders in the name of religious reform had not always tended to the promotion of orthodoxy. Moreover, the monastic ideal was the spiritual perfection of the individual, to be gained by separation from the world; but the growth of large urban populations with the accompanying disease and misery called for a new kind of dedication to religion. There was strength in membership of an Order, and during the twelfth century there were founded alongside of the newer monastic Orders organisations devoted to social work of various kinds. Such was the origin of the Hospitallers and perhaps of the Templars also, and of a number of small Orders, most of them merely local in their work and following, which were founded all over Western Europe for care of the sick and pilgrims and for other charitable work.
A point that demanded even more immediate attention was the almost total neglect of preaching by the parochial clergy and the consequent success of the Waldensian and other heretical preachers. There were isolated examples of missionary devotion among the clergy. Fulk of Neuilly, a priest, obtained a licence from Innocent III to preach, and met with marvellous success among the Cathari until he was turned aside by Innocent's exhortation to preach a new crusade. But he died before it set out (1202). Duran de Huesca, a Catalan, conceived the idea of fighting the heretics with their own weapons, and founded the Pauperes Catholici as an Order professing poverty and engaged in missionary work. But the outbreak of the Albigensian War superseded the work of the Order by more summary methods of dealing with heretics.
[Sidenote: Dominicans.]
But these Poor Catholics were the precursors, if not the actual model of the Preaching Friars of St. Dominic. The founder was a Spaniard, who had studied long in the University of Palencia, and had become sub-prior of the cathedral of Osma. He accompanied his bishop to Rome, and thence on a mission among the Albigenses. He wandered as a mendicant through the most heretical districts of Languedoc for three years (1205-8) before the outbreak of war, holding religious discussions with leading heretics. But amid the clash of arms his activity took a different shape. Communities had been founded among the Albigenses for the reception of the daughters of dead or ruined nobles. For the protection of such and of any others of the gentle sex who returned to Catholicism, Dominic founded the monastery of Prouille (1206). This was established on the lines of houses in other Orders; and although he led a life of extreme asceticism, he did not at first contemplate imposing a rule of collective poverty upon his Order. Indeed, he received for the use of Prouille gifts of all kinds in land and movables, and even increased the possessions by purchase. Towards the end of the war Dominic established a brotherhood which should devote itself to preaching with a view to refuting heretics. In 1215 he appeared at the Lateran Council, in order to obtain the papal approbation of this new Order. Innocent III, while taking under his protection the monastery of Prouille, desired Dominic to choose an already existing rule for his new community. The Dominican legend depicts Innocent as converted to the recognition of the Order by a dream, in which he saw the Lateran Church tottering and upheld by the support of the Spanish saint. But Innocent died before Dominic had decided with his followers that they would place themselves under the rule of the Augustinian Canons; and it was from Honorius III that the Friars Preachers obtained the confirmation of their Order. A parallel story is told of the papal approval of the Franciscans; but there is no proof that St. Francis was present at the Council, nor is it likely that in the face of the decree against the foundation of new Orders the sanction of the Pope should have been given to his rule. But the meeting of the two great founders at Rome in 1216 is an historical event of great importance; for the example of the Franciscans caused the adoption of the life of poverty by the Dominicans also.
[Sidenote: Their spread.]
Immediately after the papal confirmation the Order began its work. The first followers of Dominic included natives of Spain, England, Normandy, and Lorraine, and the Friars Preachers are soon found in every country of Western and Central Europe. The nature of the work to which they set themselves made them from the beginning a congregation of intellectual men. Honorius III conferred on Dominic himself the Mastership of the Sacred Palace, which gave to him, and even more to those who succeeded him in the headship of the Order, not merely the religious instruction of the households of popes and cardinals, but also the censorship of books. Paris, the headquarters of the scholastic theology, and Bologna, the great law school of the Middle Ages, became at once the chief seats of training. The Dominicans spread so rapidly that at the death of their founder in 1221 they possessed sixty houses, which had just been divided into eight provinces. To these four were subsequently added. The death of Dominic, like his life, has been almost overwhelmed in the miraculous; but for whatever reason, it was not until thirteen years after his death that he was enrolled among the recognised saints of the Church, although the honour of canonisation had been paid to St. Francis eight years earlier and within two years of his death.
[Sidenote: Popularity of the friars.]
Jealousy between the conventual and the parochial clergy had been of long standing: it had been based upon the exemption of monks from the jurisdiction of the local Church. The monks had, however, been definitely warned off themselves taking part in parochial work. But the friars began with a missionary purpose; and in 1227 Gregory IX, who as Cardinal Ugolino had been Protector of the Franciscans, conferred on both Orders the right not only of preaching, but also of hearing confessions and granting absolution everywhere. The rules of the Orders forbade them to preach in a church without the leave of the parish priest; but they ignored this prohibition, set up their own altars, at which a papal privilege allowed them to celebrate Mass, and not only superseded the lazy secular clergy in all the work of the cure of souls, but deprived them of the fees which were a chief source of their income. The secular clergy bitterly resented the presence of the intruders; but the Pope favoured the friars and heaped privileges upon them, since they formed an international body easy to mobilise for use against the hierarchy, and able to be used for transmitting and executing papal orders. The people also welcomed them, because, at first at any rate, they worked for their daily bread, and were prevented by their vow of poverty from seeking endowments: while the peripatetic character of his life made the friar popular as a confessor who could know nothing about his penitents.
[Sidenote: Dominicans and University of Paris.]
The characteristic work of the Dominicans as preachers and teachers rather determined the particular form which the struggle should assume between them and the seculars. The University of Paris welcomed the Dominicans on their first arrival; the new-comers soon fixed themselves in the Hospital of St. Jacques (the site of the Jacobin Club of 1789), on University ground, and many members of the University became affiliated to their Order. In 1229 the privileges of the University were violated by the municipality, and, since the Crown would give no redress, the whole body of masters and students dispersed themselves among different provincial towns. In 1231 a bull of Gregory IX confirmed their privileges and brought them back to Paris. But during their absence the Dominicans, with the approval of the Bishop, admitted scholars to their house of St. Jacques and appointed their own teachers; while several of the most famous secular teachers took the Dominican habit. Thus after 1231 there were in the University several theological chairs occupied by Mendicants. The prosperity and aggressiveness of the friars, and political and doctrinal differences between them and the seculars, caused great tension. Not without reason the seculars complained that they were likely to be deprived of all the theological teaching. Matters came to an issue in 1253, when, on the murder of a scholar by the municipal officers, the University in accordance with its privileges proclaimed a cessation or suspension of the classes. In this act the Mendicants refused to join without the papal sanction. The University attempted to expel them from the teaching body, and under the leadership of William of St. Amour it so far prevailed at Rome that Innocent IV, for whatever reason, issued the "terrible" bullEtsi Animarum, by which the Mendicants were deprived at one blow of all the privileges which had given them the power of interfering in parochial life. But in the legend of the Order Innocent was prayed to death by the revengeful friars. Anyhow, his death (1254) saved the situation, since his successor, Alexander IV, declared unreservedly for them. The University was forced to receive them, and to acknowledge their rights of preaching and hearing confessions. On the other hand, it was arranged under Urban IV that the number of theological chairs to be held by Mendicant teachers, whose representatives at the moment were Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventura, should be limited to three. But the war against the Mendicants continued, and the bullying to which the University was subjected, especially by Benedict Gaetani, the papal legate, in 1290, accounts perhaps for the support given by the University to Philip IV in his quarrel with Boniface VIII, and for the political action of the University at a later date.
[Sidenote: Friars and Inquisition.]
The spread of heresy and the feeble attempts of the bishops to use the machinery at their disposal for dealing with it, caused the gradual growth of the system known as the Papal Inquisition. This was feasible, partly because the civil government, led by Frederick II, were enacting severe laws against heresy, but chiefly because in the new Mendicant Orders there were now to be found men of sufficient knowledge and training to cope with the difficulty of unmasking heresy. But it is a mistake to suppose that the inquisitorial work was a perquisite of the Dominicans. Both Orders alike were employed by the Papacy in the unsavoury duty, although ultimately the Dominicans took the larger share. For the service of the wretched, to which the Franciscans primarily devoted themselves, soon necessitated a study of medicine in order to cope with disease and a study of theology in order to deal with heresy. If as a body they never came to represent learning like the Dominicans, the names of Bonaventura, Roger Bacon, and Duns Scotus sufficiently prove that there was no necessary antagonism between learning and the Franciscan ideal.
[Sidenote: St. Francis.]
The modern and the Protestant world apparently finds the life of St. Francis as interesting and wonderful as his contemporaries found it. It seems no exaggeration to say that "no human creature since Christ has more fully incarnated the ideal of Christianity" than he. Even the extravagances of himself and some of his followers, scarcely exaggerated by the mass of legends which has grown up around him and the Order, cannot conceal the real beauty of his life; while they bear eloquent witness not only to the impression which he made on his own and succeeding generations, but also to the fact of his attempt to realise the standard set up by Christ for human imitation. His devotion to the wretched and the outcast, especially the lepers; his deep humility; his childlike faith and absolute obedience, were the outcome of a desire to attain to the simplicity of Christ and the Apostles. But the essence of his system lay in the idealisation of poverty as good in itself and the best of all good things. Poverty was, indeed, the "corner-stone on which he founded the Order." But this did not imply sadness, which St. Francis considered one of the most potent weapons of the devil. Sociability, cheerfulness, hopefulness were characteristics of himself and of the Order in its early days. Here it is impossible to tell the fascinating story of his own life, to describe his own graphic preaching, or to illustrate his instinctive sympathy with animal life. But it must be noted that his passionate love for Christ the Sufferer caused him to desire to reproduce in detail the last hours of the Saviour's life on earth, until the ecstasies may have ended in producing those physical marks of the crucifixion upon the body known as the Stigmata. The evidence is conflicting and not above suspicion, and the Dominicans always treated the claim with ridicule. Certainly the Franciscan Order exalted their founder with an extravagance which ultimately (1385) ended in the production of a Book of Conformities, some forty in number, in which, by implication, the simple friar becomes a second if not a rival Christ.
It was in 1210 that Francis and the Brotherhood of Penitents which he had founded at Assisi appeared in Rome, and obtained from Innocent III a verbal confirmation of their rule and authority to preach. This rule seems to have comprised nothing more than certain passages of Scripture enjoining a life of poverty. The first disciples of Francis were drawn from a variety of social classes, and a revelation from God is said to have decided him and his little company to abandon their first notion of a contemplative life in favour of one of active service along evangelical lines. The missionary work began at once, and they wandered in couples through Italy, finding their way quickly into France, England, Germany, and all other European lands.
[Sidenote: Franciscan Rule.]
The future organisation of the Order was determined by a definitive Rule sanctioned by Honorius III in 1223. Francis refused to alter any of the clauses at the Pope's request, asserting that the Rule was not his, but Christ's; whence it became a tradition of the Order that the Rule had been divinely inspired. It was strictly enjoined that the brethren should possess no property, should receive no money even through a third person, and that all who were able to labour should do so in return not for money, but for necessaries for themselves and their brethren. And as if these plain directions were not enough, St. Francis in his will enjoins that the words of the Rule are to be understood "simply and absolutely, without gloss," and to be observed to the end.
[Sidenote: Organization]
The organisation aimed at being non-monastic; the houses, which should be mere headquarters of the simplest kind, were placed under guardians who had neither the title nor the powers of the monastic abbot, and were grouped into provinces; while the provincial ministers were responsible to the General Minister stationed at Assisi, who was himself chosen by the General Chapter of the provincials and guardians called every three years, and could also be deposed by them. A Cardinal watched the interests of the Order at Rome. The rapid spread of the Franciscans is shown from the fact that the first General Chapter in 1221 is said to have been attended by several thousand members, while in 1260, when Bonaventura as General reorganised the arrangements, a division was made into 33 provinces and 3 vicariates which included in all 182 guardianships. England, for example, comprised 7 guardianships with 49 houses and 1242 friars.