§ 79. THE MEDIAEVAL DISSENTERS. 461
nandVIL), 4 vols. Paris, 1817. Condens. Engl. trans., Phil. 1843.— RULE: Hist, of the Inquis., 2 vols. London, 1874. — F. HOFFMANN: Gesch. der Inquis. (down to the last cent.), 2 vols. Bonn, 1878. — C. MOLINIER : L' Inquis. dans le midi de la France an 13" et 14* siecle, Paris, 1881. — FICKER : Die gesetzl. Einfiihrung der Todesstrafe fur Ketzerei in Mittheilungen fur Oester. Qeschichtsforschung, 1880, pp. 188 sqq. — J. HAVET : Uheresie et le bras seculier au moyen age, Paris, 1881. — TAMBURINI : Storia generale delV Inquisizione, 4 vols. — L. TANON : Vhist. des tribunaux deVinquis. en France, Paris, 1893. — HENNER : Beitrdge zur Organization und Kompetenz der papstlichen Ketzergerwhte, Leipzig, 1893. — GRAF VON HOENSBROECH : Das Papstthum, etc., Leipzig, 1900 ; 4th ed., 1901. Chap, on the Papacy and the Inquis., I. 1-206. — P. FLAKE: Das romische Inquisitionsverfahren in Deutschland bis zu den Hexenprocessen, Leipzig, 1902. — HURTER: art. Inquisition in Wetzer-Welte, VI. 765 sqq., and Herzog, IX. 152-167.— E. L. TH. HENKE : Konrad von Marburg, Mark, 1861.— B. KALTNER : Konrad v. Marburg u. d. Inquis. in Deutschland, Prague, 1882. — R. SCHMIDT : Die Herkunft des Inquisitionsprocesses, Freib. i. Breis. 1902. — C. H. HASKIXS : Robert le Bougre and the Beginnings of the Inquis. in Northern France in "Amer. Hist, Rev.," 1902, pp. 421-437,631-653. — The works on canon law by HINSCHIUS, FRIEDBERG, and PH. HERGEN- ROTHER (R.C.), pp. 120,601-610. — E.VACANDARD: L1 inquisition, Etude hist, et crit. sur le pouvoir coercitifde Veglise, Paris, 1907, pp. 340.
§ 79. The Mediaeval Dissenters.
THE centralization of ecclesiastical authority in the papacy was met by a widespread counter-movement of religious in dividualism and dissent. It was when the theocratic pro gramme of Gregory VII. and Innocent III. was being pressed most vigorously that an ominous spiritual revolt showed itself in communities of dissenters. While the cru sading armaments were battling against the infidel abroad, heretical depravity, to use the official term, arose in the Church at home to disturb its peace.
For nearly five hundred years heresy had been unknown in Western Europe. When Gregory the Great converted the Arians of Spain and Lombardy in the latter part of the sixth century, it was supposed that the last sparks of heresy were extinguished. In the second half of the eleventh cen tury here and there, in Milan, Orleans, Strassburg, Cologne, and Mainz, little flames of heresy shot forth ; but they were quickly put out and the Church went on its way again in
462 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1049-1294.
peace. In the twelfth century, heresy again broke out simul taneously in different parts of Europe, from Hungary to the Pyrenees and northwards to Bremen. The two burning centres of the infection were Milan in Northern Italy and Toulouse in Southern France. The Church authorities looked on with alarm, and, led by the pope, proceeded to employ vigorous measures to stamp out the threatening evil. Jacques of Vitry, after visiting Milan, called it a pit of heretics, fovea hcereticorum, and declared that there was hardly a person left to resist the spiritual rebels, so numerous were they in that city.1 At different points in Lombardy the clergy were actually driven out and Piacenza remained three years without a priest. In Viterbo, in the very vicinity of Rome, the Patarenes were in the majority in 1205, as Innocent III. testified. But it was in Languedoc that the situation was most alarming, and there papal armies were marshalled to crush out the contagion.
The dissenting movement started with the people and not with the schools or princes, much provocation as the princes had for showing their resentment at the avarice and worldliness of the clergy and their invasion of the realm of civil authority. The vast majority of those who suffered punishment as heretics were of the common people. Their ignorance was a constant subject of gibe and derision as they stood for trial before the ecclesiastical tribunals. The heresy of a later period, the fifteenth century, differs in this regard, having scholars among its advocates.
Our knowledge of the mediaeval sectaries and their prac tices is drawn almost wholly from the testimonies of those who were arrayed against them. These testimonies are found in tracts, manuals for the treatment of heresy, occasional notices of ecclesiastical writers like Salimbene, Vitry, Etienne de Bourbon, Cuesar of Heisterbach, or Matthew Paris, in the decrees of synods and in the records of the heresy trials them selves. These last records, written down by Catholic hands, have come down to us in large numbers. Interesting as they
1 See the quotation at length in Alphaude'ry, p. 29. «Migne, 214. 537; 215. 654.