The Gregorian era ignited new movements of reformation giving raise to new heretical ideas. Madigan explains that while for centuries there was no evidence of popular heresy, things changed between the 11th and the 12th century. The reformation’s goal was to eradicate simony and unchastely corrupted priests.
Two clergy critics moved from permissible denunciation, to radical anticlericalism, to heretical preaching (175): Henry of Lausanne and Peter of Bruys.
Henry left his monastery to preach against the sins of the clergy, he was rejecting central aspects of the Catholic Church, like the original sin, and therefore baptism, and—prayers for the deaths. He had neo-donatism ideas since he wanted to remove corrupted priests from administering the sacraments. Moreover, he was rejecting auricular confession and the “Gospel based” power of priests to bind or loose on Earth. Hence, the Eucharist had no meaning. His radical view was wiping off the apostolic tradition and refusing anything that was not authorized by the New Testament. In 1120, Henry was condemned by papal decree.
Peter was preaching about the same ideas but went as far as denying the authority of the Hebrew Bible.
It is important to go at the roots of heresy to understand why all this was making the Abbot of Cluny and the Abbot of Clairvaux so anxious about radical Gregorian reformers. Their preaching was igniting the formation of other groups some of which held theological and cosmological opinions diametrically opposite to the established Church, others can be defined Neo-Donatists.
They were mainly ascetic movements preaching austerity and the ascetic life of the Apostles; the distinction between orthodoxy and heresy was not easy.
These movements were in a region of Europe north of the Alps that was politically fragmented and they were preaching to make proselytes. They could not penetrate England because King Henry II mandated that any helper of heretics would be burned outside the village. In the mean time on the continent, when Cistercian Monks and Catholic bishops failed in eradicating heretic groups, Pope Innocent III started an internal crusade to wipe out the nobles of today southern France that were protecting the heretics. The established church could not tolerate heresy; it could spread, make proselytes and create eternal damnation for souls. In the church’s thoughts heretics were predicted by the scriptures (Matthew 16:6), they were false prophets and had to be eliminated since the population was not literate and enlighten enough to distinguish them.
The Cathars were a sect that professed a form of Manichaean dualism and sought to achieve great spiritual purity. Combining a tradition of itinerant preachers in the forests of France with a very ascetic life, they were a major challenge to the Roman Catholic Church. The Cathars rejected the Roman Catholic church structure. They said they were the only true Christians. They were rejecting the church as part of the material world. A form of Manichaeism, a radical disjunction between heaven and the material world. They developed an alternative religion, an alternative hierarchy, an alternative priesthood that attracted many adherents in that period, which is why the Cathar heresy above all occasioned the founding of the inquisition. Why? Because in a period of tremendous controversy over the nature of papal authority their preaching was also politically dangerous and therefore had to be persecuted.
The other big movement started with Peter Waldo a merchant renouncing wealth for absolute poverty. The Waldensian movement is persisting in our times.
Waldensians, while choosing to retain their status as lay people, were spreading a message of poverty and of living as the early apostles. The relationship between the Waldensians and the Catholic Church was one of gradual deterioration, as the Waldensians continued to disobey Church authority and began to move away from the traditions and beliefs of the established church. The main problem, at the beginning, was represented by the preaching; indeed the Catholic Church was giving them laude for their way of life but prohibiting them to preach. Why was preaching representing such a powerful threat to the point of calling for excommunication and the label of heretics? They were preaching the same beliefs at the beginning, based on poverty and chastity! I believe we need to reason on the historical context. In the middle ages there were no mass media, therefore preaching was representing the “fifth power” the power of information and persuasion.
The prohibition to the poor of Lyon to preach was issued in contemporary with the Third Lateran Council summoned by Pope Alexander III that was an effort to resist the Albigensian heresy, a new Manichaean sect, associated with the Catharism (Puritan) movement, that flourished in southern France in the 12th and 13th centuries. They believed the spiritual was created by a good spirit, the material world by the evil. The good spirit created the soul but the evil one imprisoned it in the body. To deliver souls from this evil and punishment, the good spirit, God, sent Jesus Christ who is only a creature. Since the body is evil He could assume only a celestial one. They were preaching abstention from marriage, preferring concubinage as less evil. The sect disappeared in the 14th century defeated by a Crusade. In the council the English cleric Walter Map representing the king of England declares referring to biblical verses, that the Cathars had to be eradicated. Map’s accusations are important, because convey the way in which the Church would have viewed the Waldensians at the time. At the beginning of the council the poor of Lyons professed the desire to help the Pope preaching against heresy, ironically at the end of it they had to choose between obedience or leaving the orthodoxy (Madigan 192). Within a year Waldes subscribed to a Profession of Faith setting his distance from the Cathars and accepting the orthodox belief in the Trinity. He also rejected the neo-donatist notion of Sacraments. Ultimately, Waldesians attempted to live the apostolic life, but this implied preaching which did cost them the label of heretics and therefore the excomunication. The Catholic Church responded with strong persecution. In 1488 a crusade was launched against the Waldensians but it failed to destroy them. The persecution/repression was using inquisition and most of the history we know comes from inquisitor written documents. The modern Protestants derived from the Waldensians.
The fourth Lateran Council was summoned in 1215 by pope Innocent III to call for a crusade against heresies and was meant to purify Christendom (Rosenwein p. 363). It started with the apostolic creed
I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.
The Cathars were dualists. They believed in two gods, one good and one evil.
I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit
and born of the virgin Mary.
Cathars believed that Jesus was a spirit without a human body. They believed his human body was merely an illusion.
He suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried;
he descended to hell.
The third day he rose again from the dead.
He ascended to heaven
and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty.
From there he will come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
Cathars believed the consolamentum (laying hands) gave the Holy Spirit to the recipient and when he died the recipient could leave this evil world of matter and enter the good spiritual world. Cathars claimed this spiritual baptism was started by Jesus and had been handed down through the generations by good men.
the holy catholic church,
Church had been enslaved by the evil god and its members had perverted Jesus’ teachings.
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
They believed in reincarnation in human or animal
and the life everlasting. Amen.
The council outlined the procedures for addressing heresy:
Excommunication, anathematization, condemnation. Accused people had to be handed over to secular authorities and Clerics degradated from their order. The suspects had to prove their innocence by an appropriate purgation and to be avoided, in practice it was a social, political, economic and religion isolation; if after one year of excommunication they would persist, they would be condemned as heretics. They could not receive the Sacraments nor a Christian burial. I believe a modern example of this kind of profound isolation to which the subjects were incurring, could be represented by a total cut off from social environment, job, online networking, political life and religious practices. It was like an imposed annihilation beyond death to suspected and with no trial.
All this was also incentivized by a, back then, hunted reward: a complete absolution from life time sins, indeed, Catholics fighting heretics would receive indulgences like in the Crusades.