§ 79. THE MEDIAEVAL DISSENTERS. 465
to sprout, and from there they seem to have been carried to the West, where they were adopted by the Manichsean Cathari and Albigenses. Travelling merchants and mercenaries from Germany, Denmark, France, and Flanders, who had travelled in the East or served in the Byzantine armies, may have brought them with them on their return to their homes.
The matters in which the heretical sects differed from the Catholic Church concerned doctrine, ritual, and the organi zation of the Church. Among the dogmas repudiated were transubstantiation and the sacerdotal theory of the priesthood. The validity of infant baptism was also quite widely de nied, and the Cathari abandoned water baptism altogether. The worship of the cross and other images was regarded as idolatry. Oaths and even military service were renounced. Bernard Guy, inquisitor-general of Toulouse and our chief authority for the heretical beliefs current in Southern France in the fourteenth century, says l that the doctrine of transub stantiation was denied on the ground that, if Christ's body had been as large as the largest mountain, it would have been con sumed long before that time. As for adoring the cross, thorns and spears might with equal propriety be worshipped, for Christ's body was wounded by a crown of thorns and a lance. The depositions of the victims of the Inquisition are the simple statements of unlettered men. In the thousands of reports of judicial cases, which are preserved, charges of im moral conduct are rare.
A heretic, that is, one who dissented from the dogmatic belief of the Catholic Church, was regarded as worse than a Saracen and worse than a person of depraved morals. In a sermon, issued by Werner of St. Blasius about 1125, the statement is made that the " holy Catholic Church patiently tolerates those who live ill, male viventes, but casts out from
1 So also Peter the Venerable in his c. Petrobrus, Migne, 189. 1185. Bernard Guy was born in Southern France, 1261. He entered the Domin ican order and administered the office of inquisitor-general for sixteen years, prosecuting Cathari and other heretics. He was made bishop of Tuy, 1323. His Practica inquisitionis, a manual to be used by inquisitors, is a most interesting and valuable document. 2H
466 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1049-1294.
itself those who believe erroneously, male credentes." l The mediaeval Church, following the Fathers, did not hesitate to apply the most opprobrious epithets to heretics. The synod of Toulouse, 1163, refering to the heretics in Gascony, compared them to serpents which, just for the very reason that they conceal themselves, are all the more destructive to the simpleminded in the Lord's vineyard. Perhaps the most frequent comparison was that which likened them to Solomon's little foxes which destroy the vines.2 Peter Damiani3 and others liken them to the foxes whose tails Samson bound together and drove forth on their destructive mission. Innocent III. showed a preference for the comparison to foxes, but also called here tics scorpions, wounding with the sting of damnation, locusts like the locusts of Joel hid in the dust with vermin and count less in numbers, demons who offer the poison of serpents in the golden chalice of Babylon, and he called heresy the black horse of the Apocalypse on which the devil rides, holding the balances. Heresy is a cancer which moves like a serpent.4 The Fourth Lateran also used the figure of Samson's foxes, whose faces had different aspects, but whose tails were bound together for one and the same fell purpose.5 Gregory IX.,6 speaking of France, declared that it was filled with a multi tude of venomous reptiles and the poison of the heresies. Etienne de Bourbon, writing in the last years of the twelfth century, said that " heretics are dregs and depravity, and for that reason cannot return to their former faith except by a divine miracle, even as cinders, which cannot be made into silver, or dregs into wine."7 St. Bernard likened heretics to
1 Deflorationes SS. Patrum, Migne, 157. 1050.
2 Vulpeculce sunt heretici, quce demoliuntur vineas, Honorius of Autun, Migne, 172. 503 ; Etienne de Bourbon, p. 278, etc.
8 Migne, 145: 419.
*Epp. L 94 ; //. 99; IX. 208, etc., Migne, 214. 81, etc., Morbus iste qui serpit ut cancer, Ep. II. L
5 Fades quidem habentes diversas sed caudas ad invicem collegatas quia de varietate conveniunt in id ipsum, Mirbt, p. 133. The same expression in De Bourbon, p. 278.
6 Venenatorum multitudo reptilium et hceresum sanies scaturire dicitur. Gregory's bull, 1235, bearing on the inquisitor, Robert le Bougre, in Auvray, 2736, and Fredericq, I. 100, " p. 289.