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Mankind's paramount need is for salvation from a destiny in Hell in order to enjoy a blessed eternity in Heaven. The Church offers that salvation to all that obediently recognize its authority and follow its instructions, utilize its functionaries and partake of the benefits available through its sacraments. The following discussion not only takes into account pronouncements by churchmen, but responses and behavior of believers as indicators of the understandings that prevailed.
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As sinners, men and women are naturally prone to engage in sins and not to engage in good works. Sins are human actions that not only have enduring evil consequences in the temporal world, but also render the individual guilty before God and deserving of eternal punishment. Sinful actions also make the human soul increasingly evil. Evil is understood as an acquired characteristic of the soul just as, by analogy, wealth is a characteristic attributed to an individual who has accumulated lots of money. The more sins an individual commits the more evil (unholy) his soul becomes.
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Good works are human actions that not only have enduring positive or good consequences in the temporal world, but also accumulate merit (goodness) to those that do them. Merit is the exact opposite of evil. Like evil, merit is understood as an acquired characteristic of the soul. The degree of merit is understood again in terms of the amount accumulated. Just as old age is attributed to an individual who has accumulated lots of years, the more merit an individual accumulates the holier (less evil, more saintly) his soul becomes.
However, regardless of one's holiness, unless an individual's total guilt before God (the sum total of all his acts of sin) is absolved by a sufficient accumulation of Grace the individual's soul is destined for an eternity in Hell.
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Heaven is reserved for the saints. So, unless a person whose sins and guilt are all forgiven has also lived a life of recognizable merit, that person's soul cannot yet enter into Heaven. It was vaguely but elaborately understood that a "place" existed where the many souls saved from Hell suffer purgation (i.e., sanctification) to acquire the merit (i.e., the sainthood) necessary to enter Heaven. Indeed, the name Purgatory eventually became current in the twelfth century. More on this understanding below.
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The Grace of God is dispensed only through the sacraments of the Church as performed by clergy ordained under the authority of the Papacy. The sacraments are seven visible signs instituted by Christ to both signify and confer inward grace. Grace is accumulated by means of the observance of the appropriate sacraments throughout the believer's lifetime, from Baptism as an infant until Extreme Unction. Theologically, the argument was that one must accumulate grace in an amount equal to the whole number of sinful acts performed during one's lifetime in order to escape the eternal punishments of Hell.
The sacraments were efficacious only when administered by proper authority based on obedience to the papacy. The personal character of the officiating priest, or the available lay person who fills in for the priest when circumstances require it, does not in any way impede or alter the effectiveness of the sacrament.
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Baptism is essential to heal the soul by transforming the fallen and depraved human will and thus enabling mankind to respond to all subsequent grace--said Augustine. Infant baptism was everywhere in the west the prevailing practice except for those Muslims or Jews who might be converted to Christianity as adults. Baptism was preferably performed publicly by a priest, but due to the high mortality rate among infants, midwives, family members or neighbors were allowed to officiate in a pinch. It involved anointing with holy oil and sprinkling with water. Baptism is performed only once.
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The Eucharist derived from the original Lord's Supper was now given only to adults above the age of discretion (10 to 12). For obscure reasons they had begun at some time to distribute only one element, the bread. This was justified on the basis that the bread became both the body and the blood of Christ by a miraculous transformation of its substance or essence. This transformation occurs when the officiating priest elevates the element and pronounces in the angelic tongue (Latin) the words of Christ, Hoc est corpus meum, "This is my body." No sensible change in the accidents of taste, texture, color, shape, size, weight, etc. takes place in the miraculous transubstantiation.
The Eucharist was the central event of the Mass. Modern researchers estimate that the typical individual attended mass between 3 and 6 times a year. In the thirteenth century there were some churches where mass was celebrated less often than once a quarter. On the other hand priests were prohibited after 1239 from performing more than one mass a day with the exception of Easter and Christmas when two masses could be performed. Another exception was the funeral mass.
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Confirmation was a ceremony performed only by a bishop. It involved anointing the child's head with holy oil and bandaging it with new cloths. After three days the bandages could be removed and burned and the head washed. In some areas there was a special basin at the church for the head washing. Confirmation was normally the occasion of the child's first "confession" and communion.
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Extreme unction is today sometimes called "last rites." It literally speaks of the final anointing. It was theologically understood as necessary to provide the individual whatever grace was needed to absolve those sins committed since last confession.
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Penance is now commonly referred to as Confession or Absolution because of the long association between the three parts. In the thirteenth century Confession was taught as an annual obligation that should precede the Easter Mass and be followed by appropriate penance. During the thirteenth century the mendicant orders made the preaching of penance one of their chief preoccupations. Yet this whole issue was encumbered by the prevalence of indulgences.
Plenary indulgences in the twelfth and thirteenth century were offered with each new crusade against the Muslims as well as those against the Prussians, Lithuanians, Mongols, Albigensians, Waldenses and the political enemies of the Papacy and of the Papal States. Those who could not participate in a crusade might still receive an indulgence if they funded a substitute.
Likewise alms indulgences were widely used, and abused, to encourage individuals in desirable behavior. They were even given in the twelfth century to those who would make contributions toward the building of bridges, roads, fortifications and other building projects to enhance the local diocese (as well as the donor's private property). However, by the middle of the thirteenth century the papacy had acquired a monopoly on the authorization of new indulgences depriving the local bishops of this opportunity.
Another application of indulgences in the twelfth century was their attachment to pilgrimage shrines and the relics of prominent saints. The practice encouraged pilgrims to journey to the shrine or to view the relics at the time of the celebrations of the saint's feast. For example, in 1220, 50 years after the "martyrdom" of Thomas Becket a so-called Jubilee indulgence was made available to those who visited Becket's tomb. Such indulgences attached to alms, shrines and relics came to be evaluated by what the Brookes have called a kind of "celestial arithmetic" (Brooke and Brooke, Popular Religion in the Middle Ages, p. 153.). The remission of satisfaction in this life was typically measured in "days", "quarantines" (=40 days) and "years" of penance. Although the Church leaders insisted that idulgences were never given in advance of the confession or in place of confession, even churchmen talked about indulgences in ways that imply such notions.
During the thirteenth century plenary indulgences begin to appear in connection with pilgrimage shrines and feasts. For example, at some point in the thirteenth century a plenary indulgence became attached to the chapel of Portiuncula near Assisi where Saint Francis the founder of the Franciscans had taken his vows. In these cases it is not so clear how the martyrdom analogy applies. Martyrdom was a kind of supreme penance/sacrament which cancelled any other unfinished penance or necessary sacrament, guaranteeing the martyr direct access to Heaven. While the ordinary indulgence for alms, pilgrimage or relic veneration was theoretically supposed to be applicable only after absolution had been received, the plenary indulgence in these cases seemed, in the popular mind, to offer much more. For one thing the plenary indulgence surely had no limitation in terms of "days" or "years". This understanding may have led to another. If the plenary indulgence was guaranteed to cover the satisfactio operis however extensive in "days" or "years" of necessary penance that might be, would it not therefore make a purgatory experience altogether unnecessary? If a plenary indulgence could do that, regular indulgences might at least render purgatory less foreboding.
Ordinary indulgences did not render the entire sacrament unimportant; for they did not replace confession and absolution. Yet the widespread use of indulgences had the effect of altering the Christian lifestyle. The public appearance of people actually performing traditional acts of penance was becoming very rare in some parts of Europe by the beginning of the thirteenth century. The Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 admonished all adults to confess their sins at least once a year to a proper priest who could pronounce the sins absolved, i.e., forgiven by God's grace. A large part of the preaching mission of the mendicant friars of the thirteenth century was to encourage the traditional acts of penance among the burgeoning urban classes.
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Ordination was considered sacramental in that it provided special grace to all the clergy.
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Marriage was sacramental in that it provided special grace to those not in the clergy.
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It was in the twelfth century that the word purgatory began to be used with reference to the condition of the faithful after death. Although the theologians labored then as still today to clarify that purgatory is not a place and that the departed's experience is not to be understood as temporal, their efforts have been largely in vain. One may call any number of witnesses to the stand if you have need of proof that the Medieval mind considered purgatory a place. Church leaders continued to elaborate on this issue of the sanctification of the soul after death in terms understood by lay persons to imply a temporal duration. Surely if indulgences could take "years" off the necessary satisfactio opera in this life, might they not take similar "years" off the purgatory experience.
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The thirteenth century theological explanation of indulgences was based on the excess merit of Christ and the saints. The thesaurus ecclesiae, (treasury of the church) was first mentioned as an explanation for indulgences in the works of the Dominican Master of Theology at Paris, Hugh of Saint-Cher, about 1230. Later Thomas Aquinas and others elaborated on the idea. One must understand that it takes only a certain amount of merit to get into heaven. The proportion of that necessary merit deriving from the purgatory experience depends in many ways on the balance sheet of good and evil actions throughout the individual's life. Some go about doing many good actions and few evil ones; others do many evil actions and few good ones. Many of the saints as well as Christ himself had acquired more merit than they personally needed by the time they died. Since "you can't take it with you," the gatekeeper of heaven, St. Peter, collected this excess merit of the saints. Of course, the papacy just happens to be the direct earthly successor of St. Peter, so this treasury of excess merit is available only to the church. It can be distributed freely by means of indulgences to the faithful whose appropriate attitudes and actions are adequately demonstrated.
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Another practice deriving from the earliest traditions of penance was excommunication. Its logic, however, is not based on matters of sin and good works but on the amount of accumulated grace. The excommunicated individual could scarcely avoid understanding the precarious situation his soul was in. Having accumulated grace through the sacraments up to this point in life he was now suddenly denied any further participation in the sacraments. If he ignored the excommunication and lived out his life he would most certainly accumulate more sins but not more grace. Coming up short on grace when you die clearly means you go to Hell! Not even good works can keep your soul out of Hell if you have insufficient grace.
Excommunication was an effective means of tyranny and coercion employed extensively by bishops to herd the recalcitrant, marginally civilized, fearful and illiterate "believers" of the dark ages in the right direction. Soon enough excommunication became a tool reserved to the hands of the reformed papacy and used to manipulate Europe's more powerful people, emperors, kings, princes, archbishops and other churchmen. Often in the eleventh and twelfth centuries the mere threat of interdict or excommunication was enough to produce the desired result.
The interdict was another form of the same device designed for and frequently used against whole groups or people, even specific guilds of merchants or craftsmen, towns and cities. These edicts were fine-tuned to the circumstances. Sometimes they allowed for the faithful older generation only to receive Extreme Unction and be buried by the Church while the younger people were cut off completely from their supply of grace. While baptism was sometimes not denied to infants, nor confirmation to the innocent youth, the Eucharist, Marriage, and Penance would almost always be denied to adult members of the community.
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Dissenters and heretics soon joined the Jews as social outcasts. During the tenth and eleventh centuries the churchmen were preoccupied with establishing and defending their place in society and the role of the church vis-à-vis the volatile development of political institutions, that the clergy neglected to teach and nurture large segments of the population. This was not just neglect within existing parishes, it was a failure to expand their ministry as the population grew and demographically shifted. The burgeoning urban population in Mediterranean Europe was allowed to develop beyond the reach of established ministry. Moreover, faced with many new, non-traditional, non-rural aspects of life and custom the traditional customs and beliefs of Christianity were not reinforced by the new customs. It is to be expected that the emerging piety among the illiterate and superstitious resulted in the development of some teachings and practices that deviated rather far from the practices and teachings of the traditional Church. The Church did little to address these developments until the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries when church leaders began to once again attempted to restore "orthodoxy". A number of movements and individual teachers who were, in reality, long dead and gone were that later time labeled as heretics by the pronouncements of the Church. Many of the eleventh and twelfth century dissenters were reformers who were provoked into some peculiar stance by the prevailing conditions of the day.
One pervasive condition was the divisive effect of what might today be considered a reasonable predictable disequality of wealth. This wealth became a badge of social status and achievement among the prosperous urban classes as well as among the seigneurial families (i.e. the nobility) in the rural population. Society in general was not prepared for such display of wealth. The comparative poverty of the great mass of the population, both urban and rural, was a separating, segregating and demeaning aspect of their existence. And the Clergy, save for some of the monks and a few unfortunate canons, numbered themselves conspicuously among the wealthy. The contrast between rich and poor was not nearly as great as it had been or would be, but it was a relatively sudden and radical innovation after several generations of necessary frugality and making do. Hence, it is not surprising that the masses were ready to cheer for and eager to follow any voice calling for some correction of this perceived injustice. This helps to explain the popular energy tapped by the concept of Apostolic Poverty.
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Peter of Bruys was a radical critic of these prevailing conditions. He frequented southern France in the early twelfth century condemning the Church's wealth and power and calling for a return not only to Apostolic poverty but to the faith of the Apostles. He is reported to have denounced infant baptism, the Eucharist, any and all religious symbols, ceremonies and even church buildings. He urged monks to abandon monastic life and marry. He was engaged in burning crosses at St. Gilles sometime between 1130 and 1135 when an angry mob of laymen swept him up and burned him at the stake. No movement of followers seems to have survived him.
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One time Benedictine monk, Henry of Lausanne preached in western and southern France between 1116 and 1145/48. His main emphasis was that clergy with unworthy lives could not validly administer the sacraments. He was also accused of favoring adult baptism and denying the notion that the bread and wine actually became the body and blood of Christ afresh for every celebration of the Eucharist. There is no evidence that Henry's considerable following maintained an existence after Henry's death.
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Arnold, Bishop of Brescia, became obsessed with the idea of reforming the Church in accordance with the ideal of apostolic poverty. He energetically and in good faith proposed that the Church divest itself of all temporal power and property. He was excommunicated and deposed from his bishopric. Forced to flee for his life he made his way first to France where he came to the defense of Abelard in his struggle with Bernard of Clairvaux. Bernard energetically stirred the ecclesiastical cauldron and got both Arnold and Abelard condemned and excommunicated by the synod of Sens in 1140. Next Arnold moved to Switzerland where he found a sympathetic ear in the Bishop of Constance. Bernard soon tracked him down and wrote to warn the Bishop of Constance of the "roaring lion" in the midst of his flock. Next Arnold gained the support of the future Pope who, once established as Eugene III (1145-1153), lifted Arnold's excommunication. Earlier in 1143 the city of Rome had rebelled and became self-governing under their Senate. Arnold's preaching in Rome inspired the Senate to expel Pope Eugene III from the city by 1147.
Pope Hadrian IV (1154-1159) now put Rome under an interdict forcing the Romans to expel Arnold. Hadrian swallowed his pride and negotiated with Frederick Barbarossa even though the German king would not carry out the customary ceremonial service of holding the stirrup while the Pope mounted his horse. Before Hadrian would crown Frederick Emperor, he had to take military action against the Normans in behalf of the Papacy and to eliminate Arnold. Meanwhile in anxiety and fear the Roman populace persuaded the Senate to charge Arnold with heresy, but the charges were unclear. Nevertheless, Frederick arrested Arnold. He was executed by hanging, his body was burned, and his ashes were scattered on the Tiber River. The latter action has been interpreted as an attempt to deprive his organized followers, if such a group existed, of sacred relics. Scholars are divided on whether Arnold had any connection with the later Arnoldists or other dissenting movements in northern Italy. There is also controversy around whether he was indeed heretical in any of his doctrines.
The Arnoldists who appear at the end of the twelfth century arguably had no documented connection with Arnold of Brescia. Yet, this group whose origin is unclear opposed the secularization and corruption of the Church, opposed baptizing infants and required adults to be baptized in connection with a ceremony of the laying on of hands. They also taught that the efficacy of the sacraments depended on the purity of the priest.
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Peter Waldo and the Waldenses are far more important during the late twelfth century, however. Waldo (Valdez), a rich merchant of Lyons, seems to have been persuaded by the New Testament account of the Rich Young Ruler. Waldo took Jesus' response to the Young Rich man's inquiry about attaining perfection (Matthew 19:16-21) in a personal and literal way. He wanted to follow Jesus' instructions for his own life. He made arrangements for his wife and daughters and then divested himself of his remaining possessions, giving them to the poor. He determined to wear only the garments mentioned in the New Testament (Matthew 10) and live on the hospitality of others. Formerly a successful merchant Waldo was not illiterate but he could not read Latin. He was able to secure a copy of the New Testament translated into langue d'oc, the vernacular French dialect of Mediterranean Europe. By 1177 a group inspired by Waldo's example at Lyons had taken the name pauperes spiritu, "Spiritual Paupers" (Cf. Matthew 5:3) Moreover, they requested the local Bishop to allow them to preach, but he delayed his answer. The bishop sought guidance from the Papacy at the Third Lateran Council in 1179. The Council authorized the poverty vows for their order, but stipulated that the right to preach depended on the judgment of the local bishop. When the bishop denied their request to preach because they were untrained, Waldo and his group began preaching anyway. In 1184 Pope Lucius III presiding at the Council of Verona excommunicated them. They were consequently no longer welcome anywhere an informed churchman recognized them. Suppressed from Lyons they dispersed in several directions relying on the laziness and relative isolation of the Bishops from the urban populations. Waldo and the Poor now found the most support in the cities and towns of Lombardy, while other groups in Spain, northern France, The Rhineland, Bohemia, and Hungary fared less well.
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A group of Lombard merchants from Milan who may have been originally inspired by Waldo had organized themselves into something of a lay chapter or college. They called themselves humiliati, the humble or poor, and had associated themselves in what they called a "common life", under a rule that did not require them to leave their homes. The Humiliati had been denied a request to hold separate meetings apart from the Church and in consequence of their disobedience had also been excommunicated in 1184. The Humiliati and Paupers of Lyons joined forces under Waldo's leadership for a number of years until 1210 when the Lombard group seceded although they continued to call themselves Waldenses. The Waldenses attracted large numbers of people. These amici, "friends" or credentes, "believers", supported them but only a few actually joined the inner circle. These "friends" generally remained in communion with the Catholics.
After being excommunicated, the Waldenses gradually developed a schismatic stance at odds with the practices of the Catholic Church. They not only encouraged lay preaching, they now ordained their own priests who heard confessions and assigned penance. While they heard confessions they denounced prayers for the dead and indulgences because such things were not found in the New Testament. While they observed the Lord's Supper among themselves they completely rejected the Mass when dispensed by unworthy priests. In this they reflect the position of the ancient Donatist Schism (pp. 165f). They considered the New Testament as the law book for everyday life and church practice. Although many of them were marginally illiterate they nevertheless managed to memorize sizeable passages.
They gave Waldo the title rector in recognition of his overall leadership role. After Waldo's death rectors continued to be elected. Members of the inner circle occupied themselves with itinerant preaching moving about in pairs, clad in simple woolen robes and living wholly on the gifts and hospitality they received from their hearers. They observed fasts on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and used no public liturgy or prayers other than the Lord's Prayer and thanksgiving before meals.
Eventually the Church attempted to accommodate them by forming a movement known as pauperes catholici in 1208. Many of the Waldenses rejected the offer in spirit if not in body. While many came into fellowship with the Church and abandoned their open opposition to it, other parts of the Waldenses movement remained a vital kind of popular underground movement. Later efforts of the church to suppress them were not completely successful. Some isolated groups survived in tact into the Reformation period.
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The Cathari, "Purified", appeared in southern France, northern Italy and northern Spain in the tenth century and converted ever-larger groups of people to their views and practices through the eleventh and twelfth centuries. This very tenacious group resembles any number of movements we have encountered: the Gnostics, the Manichaeans, the Massalians, the Paulicians, and the Bogomils of the East. Some scholars believe these ideas had been preserved in the traditions since ancient times and surfaced in the tenth and eleventh centuries. It was the same upsurge of enthusiasm and piety that produced the crusades and the new Monastic orders that also produced this popular development. Other scholars believe there may have been commercial contacts with the Balkan Bogomils that helped disseminate these ideas. Whereas some of their practices were almost identical with the Waldenses, the Waldenses were never cited for being theological heretics.
The Cathari were dualists who rejected the created world as evil and emphasized the goodness of the Spiritual realm. The Italian Cathari taught that God had two sons, Satanel and Christ. Satanel rebelled and became the evil Prince of this World. The French Cathari generally held that there were two eternal gods, one good and the other evil. Human souls were taken prisoner from the realm of goodness and incarcerated in created physical bodies. Baptism and the other sacraments of the Catholic Church are useless. The perfecti or bons hommes, "good men" were individuals who were attaining salvation by means of repentance, asceticism and the rite of "consolation". This latter rite, in their view, works forgiveness of sins and restores the soul to the Spiritual realm. The rite is performed by a perfectus who solemnly lays his hands on the prepared candidate while the candidate has a Gospel of John placed on his head. This rite is described as "a baptism by the imposition of hands" (quoted by A. H. Newman, A Manual of Church History, I. 549) Once the consolamentum, "consolation", is administered, the individual must henceforth practice a rigorous asceticism, studiously avoiding all further sins and evil. This entailed refraining from violence of all sorts, and from oaths (normally necessary in owning property or recognizing personal obligations). Furthermore, he, or she, must not consume any meat, milk or eggs for their are all the products of the sin of reproduction. The original sin of Adam and Eve was the reproduction of additional physical bodies. In certain cases the repudiation of fleshly needs reached the point of refusing nourishment. The endura, as this practice was called, typically ended in death. The ascetic heroes, the Perfecti, constituted the clergy of the Cathari, although there are reports of bishops and a hierarchy among them.
The rank of file Cathari were called credentes, "believers". They understood (?) that it was alright for them to marry, make contracts, have children, own property, and enjoy the good things of this physical world until they were prepared to receive the consolation. If they never reached that point of readiness before they died their soul would have other chances in subsequent reincarnations. Nonetheless, in some Cathar communities it was customary to administer the consolamentum to any believer who thought he was going to die. Meanwhile they could conform outwardly to the practices of the Church. There were two reasons the Cathari attracted such large numbers. Firstly to the lower classes Catharism represented a repudiation of the Catholic Church, its wealth and tyrannical authority, its corrupt and immoral clergy and its gratuitous but self-serving teachings. Secondly, because of the first reason, the Cathari received considerable support from the upper classes who found the Cathari convenient allies and tenacious supporters against the increasingly intrusive Papal policies.
The Cathari made extensive use of the New Testament translated into the vernacular languages; for they reportedly found support for their beliefs therein. Yet, Christ only appeared to have a physical body and could not possibly die a real death. Miracles of healing the body and the resurrection found in the New Testament were obviously a deception of the evil god since the good god is concerned only with things spiritual. The cross and the sacraments, obviously physical substances, were rejected as evil. The ostentatious ornamentation of church buildings was a dishonor to the good God. Cathari services took place in unadorned surroundings. Scriptures, especially the Gospel of John, were read. A sermon was preached. The believers knelt and adored the perfectus who embodied the divine spirit. The perfectus in turn pronounced a blessing over the assembly and all recited the Lord's Prayer.
The burning of ten canons accused of dualistic heresy at Orleans in 1022 further alerted the Church. The Third Lateran Council in 1139 had condemned the Cathari and dispatched St. Bernard of Clairvaux to preach against them, but with only a measure of success. The papacy attempted unsuccessfully to launch a crusade against the Cathari and other dissenters in that region in 1181. In 1184 it was decided that the Bishops of the regions must identify the heretics in their flocks and turn them over the civil authorities for punishment if they could not be persuaded to repent.
By the opening of the thirteenth century the Cathari were so numerous in northern Spain, southern France and northern Italy that the viability of the Church in that region was dubious. When the dissenters murdered a papal legate, Peter of Castelnau, in 1208, Pope Innocent III again proclaimed a crusade against the region. The Capetian king of France took the lead in the crusade because he wished to subdue his vassals in southern France. Between 1209 and 1229 the south of France was devastated. Since the Cathari were strong in the city of Albi, this is called the Albigensian Crusade. The political and military power of the Cathari was crushed, but the heresy continued.
Meanwhile the Order of Preachers (Dominican Friars) was created with the immediate goal of winning the Cathari back into the Church through a preaching and teaching ministry beginning in 1216. The Synod of Toulouse in 1229 lamented how little progress had been accomplished against the heresy. First they forbade any access to the Bible to laymen; for both the Cathari and the Waldenses utilized the Bible against the Church. The Synod proceeded to identify the Cathari as Manichaeans, who by ancient Roman law were all to be killed. Hence the remaining unconverted Cathari were proscribed.
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It only remained to identify heretics and give them opportunity to recant their heresy. This could be accomplished, it was at first assumed, through the bishop's judicial and visitation powers delegated to experienced canons and friars acting as inquisitors or investigators. The role of the inquisitores was to track down heretics and bring them to the bishops' court. Pope Gregory IX approved these actions; however, the Cathars proved unamenable to gentle persuasion. In 1252 the papacy allowed civil authorities to assist the inquisitors by using torture to secure recantations. After 1254 if torture failed to produce the desired confession of the true faith, inquisitors were authorized to pronounce the individual guilty of heresy and surrender him to civil authorities. Condemned heretics had no right to live, so the inquisitor's pronouncement was, in effect, the death penalty. Despite this suppression the practices of the Cathari survived in isolated villages in the Pyrenees Mountains until the end of the Middle Ages.
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