June 1980 Print

By Pastor Historicus

 

Heresies leading up to the Reformation

 The Albigensians

THIS HERESY takes its name from the Southern French town of Albi in Languedoc. It is also known as "Catharism" from "Cathari"—the "Pure Ones." As a heresy it is really a re-hash of Manichaeism. The southern provinces of France during the 12th century still contained many people of Moorish descent, dating from the time when the Moors had conquered the area. It was a cultured and prosperous region and one reason why it spread so quickly was that it had what might be termed "economic overtones." As usual, there are supposed to be two gods—one good and one bad. The material element in man is wholly evil. Man is a creation partly of the good God and partly of the Devil and needs salvation. Salvation comes from the emancipation of the soul from the body. This is achieved by receiving the consolamentum, a simply sacramental rite. However, those who took the rite were bound to perpetual continency, almost constant fasting with no meat, eggs, butter, milk, or cheese in the diet. They were not allowed either to take part in lawsuits or to take oaths and had to live a common life with the others who had taken the oath. There was no escape once you had taken the consolamentum and those who wavered were "encouraged" to enter a "complete fast" leading to death—a kind of compulsory suicide.

However, the great thing was that no one had to take the consolamentum at once. It was sufficient, to start with, to accept the doctrine but not the obligations. You then pledged yourself to receive the consolamentum at some time in the future. Meanwhile, those who had taken the oath were to be revered as leaders. Even if you died without taking the oath, any shortcomings would be expiated in a future life, for reincarnation was part of the Albigensian heresy. This meant, in effect, that as with the Manichees, you could act morally according to your own desires.

The system spread widely in Southern France and Northern Italy from the second half of the 12th century onwards. As the "Perfect Ones" had at their disposal a great deal of money, they used it to subsidize industry for the benefit of the simple "believers." In this way the "Perfect Ones" came to control the prosperity of the region. The heresy was at its height about AD 1200. Once again, however, when it seemed likely to sweep all before it, there arose a great saint ready to combat the heretics. This time it was St. Dominic, founder of the order that bears his name. He organized groups to visit affected areas and they would then preach in every village to re-convert the inhabitants back to Catholicism. We must not overlook the fact, too, that politics were involved. The Count of Toulouse, Raymond VI, favored the heretics and a holy war was waged against him for some years. The heresy was officially and solemnly condemned at the Fourth Lateran Council in AD 1215. From that time onwards the Inquisition came into being. While we may well prefer not to dwell on all the methods used to root out heresy employed by the Inquisition it must be borne in mind that religion and politics were very intertwined in those times and that the heretics were often opposed to the lawful government. Also the religious side of the Inquisition did not inflict the notorious punishments; this was left to state authorities.

Some Interesting 12th-Century Figures

The following people did not exactly start major heresies but their influence left an impression on peoples' minds and their ideas lasted long after their deaths.

Peter Abelard

He is best known in history for his tragic love for one of his pupils, Eloise. However, he was a great philosopher in his own way. When he came to apply his philosophy to Catholic theology he fell into several errors. He did, in fact, recant and died in harmony with the Church. Among the errors condemned in 1140 were the views that the Holy Ghost did not have the same power as the Father or the Son; that the Holy Ghost is the soul of the world (Pantheism); that we have not contracted any fault by our descent from Adam, merely that we are subject to certain penalties as a result of his action; that man's works do not make a man better or worse; that the power of binding and loosing was given only to the Apostles and not to their successors. Many of these errors will reappear as we progress.

Arnold of Brescia

He was a monk of great austerity who later became, for a period, the effective ruler of Rome. He claimed the Church had no right to own property and that bishops and priests who owned property were guilty of mortal sin and should no longer be obeyed. One should not go to confession to such men; it were better to confess to each other. He claimed that the Emperor should arrange for the election of a fresh Pope, according to his own pleasure.

Peter of Bruys

He was an unfrocked priest who declared that organized religion with its churches and its clergy was a complete mockery. The Mass was mere show, and good works done on behalf of the dead were a waste of time since the good cannot in any way communicate with the dead. His views did not advance very far during his lifetime as he was torn to pieces by an angry mob in the year 1137.

Peter Waldo & the Waldenses

Waldo was a wealthy banker from Lyons who, after reading the story of the rich young man in the Gospel, sold all his possessions and determined to devote his life to preaching poverty, to which he vowed himself. He was rather extreme in his views even at this stage and was forbidden to preach by the local bishop. He appealed to Rome and was told that he could only preach with permission of the local bishop. However, he decided to ignore this ban. He gradually introduced into his teaching ideas picked up from Abelard and Peter of Bruys. The Waldenses allowed women to preach and criticized Masses for the Holy Souls as useless. They moved on to oppose the personal merit of the individual to the sacramental status of priests as the source of their power to bless and consecrate and forgive sins. Sacramental acts were null if the priest was in mortal sin. The one source of power in matters spiritual is to live as the Apostles—in absolute poverty. They went on to say that any layman could in case of necessity, without ordination, say Mass! Thus, they anticipated the views of Dr. Küng in this regard, but I rather doubt if Dr. Küng would say that this right to say Mass was only possible to laymen who wore sandals and lived an apostolic life of poverty!

Abbot Joachim

Joachim was a very saintly man who sought and obtained permission from the Pope to write a new commentary on Holy Scripture. He published only one work in the seventeen years he devoted to study and it is the ideas in the work rather than anything in the teachings of the man himself that give rise to trouble. His Trinitarian teaching was distorted in that he taught that the Divine Essence consisted of distinct realities making the unity of the Trinity no more than a collective unity of a group. His view of Scripture was that the Old Testament was the age of the Father, the New Testament the age of the Son, and the coming age was the age of the Holy Ghost. Joachim was to be the prophet of this age. He had the special gift of being able to give the Bible its final meaning. (In this he foreshadows the modern Biblical scholars who think they now have all the answers that were lacking to past generations.) In the new age faith gives place to charity, obedience to liberty. Joachim would evidently be very happy in the 20th-century Catholic Church where there is a concerted effort to make this come to pass. The Holy Ghost is alleged to inspire even the worst excesses of the charismatic movement. Loyal priests are told that they are ignoring the new ways in which the spirit is leading the Church and that all preaching should stress divine Love rather than Justice. Liberty, even so-called religious liberty, is to be allowed to everyone.

Joachim went on to say that all rites and sacraments are relative and will pass away with each age. The Mass itself will disappear. The Christ Who lived in Palestine is no more than a figure of a new Christ who will soon appear. The visible Church will be absorbed into the invisible and the clergy will lose their reason for existence.

 

Fourth Lateran Council

All the ideas put forward by the people who have been discussed were comprehensively condemned by this Council, AD 1215. And yet, of course, the views lingered on. One point only I need dwell on here. This Council was called on to defend the Holy Mass from those who either denied it any value or claimed that any lay person could offer Mass. The Council states that at Mass the Body and Blood of Christ are truly contained in the Sacrament of the Altar under the appearance of bread and wine, the bread being transubstantiated into the body and the wine into Blood by the power of God. No one can bring the sacrament into existence but the priests duly ordained by the power of the Church which Jesus Christ gave to the Apostles and their successors.

 

Marsiglio of Padua

We know very little of the life of Marsiglio but he was active in Italy around AD 1330. He is best known for the views of Church and State which he propounded in a work known as Defensor Pacis. The ideas contained in this book were later used by Wyclif and Hus, and later still by the Reformers of the 16th century. His views on the nature of the State are strange enough. For Marsiglio, the State is a collection of individuals whose only unity comes from the imposition on this multitude of a single will to which all must now conform. Force then is the essential constituent of law. Law is now simply the imposition of the will of the State upon the citizen. When there is no force there is no legal obligation. This is in flat contradiction of St. Thomas Aquinas who teaches that laws must conform to objective standards of justice. As for the authority of the State, this comes according to Marsiglio from the will of the people. "Consultation" of the people must make for future harmony of government and the whole body of people must assent to sanctions that accompany laws.

Marsiglio went on to apply these very same principles to the Church and to the relations between the Church and State. He claimed that the greatest evil of the day was the hold that the clergy had on the Church. The Church, said Marsiglio, was no more than the aggregation of the individuals that composed it and who invoked the name of Christ. They are all equally of the Church and the distinctions between clergy and laity are of no importance. Marsiglio would be quite at home in the 20th century Church, with many Catholics attempting to whittle away the distinction between priest and laity on the grounds that all must be equal among the "People of God"—the "in-phrase" of Vatican II.

Marsiglio was prepared to admit that the power to say Mass and forgive sins and to ordain was a Divine power given only by ordination, but he claimed that the action of the generality of the faithful determined who should be ordained and even what should be taught. General councils, bishops, and the pope himself only had their powers from the people who were the only source of fidelity to Christ's teaching. Marsiglio went on to state that the Church was, in fact, no more than the religious aspect of civil society. Not only may a civil ruler exercise authority in the Church, it is his primary duty. There should be one single authority in the State. The State, too, must control public morality, regulate the lives of the clergy, and control education.

His book appeared in 1324 and was condemned by Papal Bull in 1327. However, it made a great impression, and many of the ideas I have outlined find expression in the Church of today. It had a great influence on Wyclif and Hus, who will be considered next. At the time of the Reformation his ideas about State control of the Church came well and truly to fruition. The other ideas about democracy working through the Church have reappeared more recently in the demand that parishes should, for instance, choose their priests, and the ridiculous levels to which "consultation" is carried out in even trivial matters by bishops in the post-Vatican II Church.

 

Wyclif

Wyclif appeared for the first time in public life at the age of 40 in 1365 when the English Parliament was in dispute with Rome over the payment of certain dues. When the Holy See demanded large arrears on a tribute made by King John 100 years earlier, the whole country was up in arms and almost broke with Rome altogether. Wyclif was there to propose that the Church in England should be disendowed for the profit of the State. (Henry VIII did this later.) In 1376 he was becoming well known for his outrageous views, and he was reported to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Pope. However, a change of monarch in England led to some confusion and it was not until 1382 that his teachings were officially condemned and he was forbidden to teach.

What he taught was really nothing new. From Marsiglio he stated that the Church was subject in all matters to the State. Any ownership of goods by the Church is at the wish of the monarch only. From earlier heretics he taught that sacramental powers vanish if the person is in a state of mortal sin and that time was ripe to consider abandoning the position of Pope altogether. He could not stand religious orders and said they were hindrances to salvation. He attacked the Real Presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament and stated that Mass had no warrant in Scripture. Any man, he said, can understand Scripture because the Holy Ghost will make its meaning clear as it is read. It is the sole source of religious truth. Wyclif is, in fact, probably best known for his attempts to translate the Bible. However as we can see from this list of his teachings, they contain nothing fresh. One feature of the post-Vatican II Church is that in encouraging people to read and study scripture, there is not enough emphasis placed on the fact that certain passages are difficult and there is a need to read a sound commentary on the text and not "makeup your own mind" about what the text might mean. Hence we find today that many pundits are claiming that the Church must return to the pristine originality of Holy Writ. Tradition in certain circles of post-Vatican II Church counts for as little as it did for Wyclif.

 

John Hus

Hus was rector of the University of Prague at a time when Czech nationalism was rising to a fresh peak. He was a good speaker and commanded a wide following. He roundly condemned the evil lives led by some of the clergy. After five years of reform he became an extremist, and in 1408 he was excommunicated. He appealed in 1411 from the Pope to a General Council. When a council was called at Constance in 1414 he went there only to be imprisoned. He appeared before the Council and refused to recant his views. He was declared a heretic, handed over for execution to the town authorities and was burned at the stake.

The result was uproar in his homeland and the formation of what amounted to a Hussite army and a set of battles known as the Hussite Wars.

Hus is regarded as a martyr by the Czechs—to this day. But what did he teach? Well, it was more or less the same as Wyclif. The clergy must not own goods, that mortal sin deprived priests of their authority and right to preach, and that Holy Communion should be administered under both kinds. His supporters made more of this last point than Hus himself.

Once again the Hussites would be at home in the 20th-century Church on this last point. Many voices are now heard demanding that the "Cup" be administered at the "Eucharistic Meal."

Series to be continued.