§ 81. PETER DE BRUYS AND OTHER LEADERS. 485
St. Bernard and Peter the Venerable,1 opposing the hereti cal view about infant baptism, laid stress upon Christ's invi tation to little children and his desire to have them with him in heaven. Peter argued that for nearly five hundred years Europe had had no Christian not baptized in infancy, and hence according to the sectaries had no Christians at all. If it had no Christians, then it had no Church; if no Church, then no Christ. And if this were the case, then all our fathers perished; for, being baptized in infancy, they were not baptized at all. Peter and Henry laid chief stress upon the four Gospels, but it does not appear that they set aside any part of the Scriptures.2
The synod of Toulouse, 1119, in condemning as heretics those who rejected the Lord's Supper, infant baptism, and priestly ordination, condemned the Petrobrusians, though Peter de Bruys is not mentioned by name. Those who hung upon the preaching of Peter de Bruys and Henry of Lau sanne were soon lost among the Cathari and other sects.3 Bernard's description of the religious conditions in Southern France is no doubt rhetorical, but shows the widespread dis affection which prevailed at that time against the Church. He says that churches were without worshippers, the people without priests, and Christians without Christ. The sanctu ary of the Lord was no longer regarded as sacred or the sacraments as holy. The festival days were deprived of their solemnities. The children were debarred from life by the
1 Bernard, Migne, 182. 434 ; Peter, pp. 729, 761 sq.
2D611inger, I. 83, makes the charge that they renounced the Old Testa ment. But Peter of Cluny does not say so and, had it been so, he certainly would have emphasized that heresy.
3 Bellinger, I. 75 sqq., makes an elaborate attempt to prove that Peter and Henry were Cathari, but the differences in their teachings and practices seem to make this impossible. So Newman (Papers of Am. Soc. of Ch. Hist., IV. 184-189), Hauck, and Walter, p. 130. Peter and Henry are nowhere called Manichseans or dualists by Peter the Venerable and Bernard, who would scarcely have omitted this charge had there been just ground for it. They commended marriage; the Cathari rejected it. They insisted upon adult baptism ; the Cathari repudiated all baptism. None of the rites peculiar to the Cathari were associated with Peter and Henry.
486 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1049-1294.
denial of baptism, and souls were hurried to the last tribunal, unreconciled by penance and unfortified by the communion.
§ 82. The Amaurians and Other Isolated Sects.
Occupying a distinct place of their own were the panthe istic coteries of dissenters, the Amaurians and Ortlibenses, and perhaps other groups, like the Passagians and Speronistee, of which we know scarcely more than the names.
The Amaurians, or Amauricians,1 derived their origin from the speculations of the Paris professor, Amaury of Bena, a town in the diocese of Chartres. Innocent III. cited him to appear at Rome and condemned his views. On his return to Paris, the university obliged him to publicly confess his errors. He died about 1204. His followers were condemned by a synod, held in Paris, 1209.
From the detailed account given by Caesar of Heisterbach, we learn that a number of Amaury's followers were seized and examined by the bishops. Eight priests and William the Goldsmith, called also one of the seven apostles, were burnt. Four other priests were condemned to lifelong im prisonment. Amaury's bones were exhumed and thrown into a field.2
The Amaurians seem to have relied for their pantheistic views upon John Scotus Erigena, whose work, De divisione naturae, was also condemned at the synod of Paris, 1209. Amaury's system was also condemned by the Fourth Lateran, which represented him as holding that God was all things, deus erat omnia. To this he added the two doctrines : that every Christian must believe that he is a member of Christ's body, this faith being as necessary to salvation as the faith
1 Mansi, XXII. 801-809; Denifle, Chartul. Un. Paris, I. 70, 71, 72, 79, 107, etc. ; Csesarof Heisterbach, Strange ed., II., 304 sqq. ; Martene-Durand, Thes. anec., IV. 105 sq. ; Jundt, Hist, du pantheisme, etc., p. 20 sq. ; Preger, Gesch. der deutschen Mystik, I. 173-184 ; Delacroix, Le mysticisme speculatif, etc., 32-51 ; Alphande'ry, pp. 141-154. For other sources, see Delacroix, p. 39 sq.
2 Chartularium, p. 70. Here, also, are given the names of the priests who were burnt or imprisoned.