Immutable Kingdom – Part 20

The Immutable Kingdom – Part 20

By Scott A. Klaft

The Road to the Inquisitions (Continued)

The decree issued by Pope Alexander III in A.D. 1181 was directed, not only toward those called Catharists, but also against all who opposed Catholic rule, indiscriminate of their nicknames. He declared that no further hearings or trials would be necessary, but that they should be delivered to the secular authorities and their possessions confiscated for the use of the Catholic Church.

In spite of the persecution, the Catharists continued to grow in number. By the year A.D. 1200, Southern France was well populated with people of this persuasion. Thanks to the sympathy and protection of the princes of the region, they became so numerous around the city of Albi that they became known as Albigenses. Many French noblemen supported their work by lending the use of castles and limiting any punishment that the Catholic Monks tried to inflict. This so alarmed the Pope that he sent Papal Legates to investigate and bring it to a halt. These representatives of papal authority failed, and their frame of mind quickly changed from political manipulation to a heavy-handed, and quite literal, force. The most powerful of all the Popes, Innocent III, began a strong crusade against the Albigenses, fully intending to exterminate them. His intentions were expressed clearly by his own hand in a letter:

“We exhort you wholly to destroy this wicked heresy of the Albigenses and do it with more vigor than you would use toward the Saracens themselves. Persecute them with a strong hand; deprive them of their lands and possessions; utterly banish them, and put Roman Catholics in their room.”

Innocent attempted to stir up hatred against them by offering special rewards and something called indulgences to anyone who would leave their job for forty days to join the war against the Albigenses. Fifty thousand equipped and mounted soldiers set out to battle the unarmed and unprepared Albigenses.

Many people, in the cities they ravaged, literally begged for an opportunity to prove their loyalty to the Pope, only to receive the response that, unless the whole city surrendered, they all would die. In the city of Beziers alone, the reports totaled over twenty three thousand randomly slaughtered, and the city was reduced to ashes. Some soldiers, hesitating to kill those claiming fidelity to the Pope, looked to a Papal Legate for guidance. They received the command, “Kill them all, the Lord knoweth them that are his.”

The crusading army grew to three hundred thousand strong, and hundreds of villages saw the inhabitants massacred with a blind fury without any effort to find if there was a single heretic among them. It is conservatively estimated that nearly two thirds of the population of Southern France were killed to bring down the opposition to Catholic rule, but some escaped to valleys where their descendants continue today as Protestant groups.

The Official Inquisition

From the experience in southern France, the papacy decided that some method must be employed that could deal with the individual heretics before they became too large a group. The “Latern Council of 1215” issued a decree that gave a foundation to their answer: The Inquisition. The idea was that certain religious authorities would be appointed to discern the soundness of an individual under question. Any who were determined to be heretics would be turned over to the state officials for execution. Since anyone could be accused by anyone else, and the accused were not allowed to know his accuser, or to defend themselves, the organization designed to be a religious peacekeeping mission turned into an institution of terror. The laws governing the Inquisition were later incorporated into the Catholic canon laws, and they actually remain in force to this present day.

(To be continued next month)

Immutable Kingdom – Part 19

The Immutable Kingdom – Part 19

By Scott A. Klaft

The Road to the Inquisitions

Born near the year A.D. 1100, Arnold of Brescia became intensely interested in the study of Scripture. He eventually came to oppose the corruption within the Roman Catholic clergy, seeing it very clearly all around him. Although still incomplete, his knowledge on several issues far exceeded the understanding that the Roman hierarchy maintained. Greatly due to his emphasis on the scripture and opposition to the clergy, the Pope of that time, Innocent II made a decree which sent him fleeing for his life from Italy to France, and then to Zurich, Switzerland.

In time, Arnold became a prominent leader of opposition to the Romanist errors. There came to be a new Pope, and Arnold was able to persuade him significantly – to the point that it looked like the entire papal order might reform. When he appeared in Rome, however, publicly preaching his opposition to the hierarchy, his supporters deserted him under intense persecution. Yet another new Pope came to power in A.D. 1155, who brought Arnold in for a court trial. Labeled a heretic, and hung by the neck, his body was burned and the ashes were thrown in the Tiber River.

While opposition movements were growing in Western Europe, Peter of Bruys began in A.D. 1110 to denounce Catholicism in France, trumpeting scripture as the only authority. His goal was to correct all digressions and abuses in the clergy, but he was too radical for very many to support him. For example, in protest of the Catholic doctrines, his followers gathered wooden crucifixes on “Good Friday,” built a fire with them, and then cooked and ate meat just to show contempt for the ceremonial restriction that “Christians” should not eat meat on that day. Peter was allowed to preach for nearly twenty years before the hierarchy arrested and executed him in A.D. 1130.

While Peter was tearing down alters and images in church buildings, preaching that priests should be able to marry, and insisting that worship practices should return to the simple biblical pattern, another man named Henry came to very similar conclusions in Switzerland. When the Catholic Bishop of the city drove him out, Henry went to southern France where he met up with Peter of Bruys. At Peter’s death, Henry took over the leadership of the movement. In A.D. 1148, he too was caught, tried, and sentenced to life in prison; soon after which, he died.

Only a short time after, in A.D. 1160, a wealthy merchant of Lyons named Peter Waldo convinced some monks to translate the New Testament into his own language. He was so impacted by what he found there, he gave away all of his possessions, and then organized a group to study and preach the Gospel. These would also give away their possessions, following Waldo’s lead. Soon they were widely known as “the poor men of Lyons.” At first, they had no desire to leave Catholicism, but from their study of Scripture, they concluded that priestly ordination was not necessary, and that the doctrine of purgatory was not taught by divine inspiration. They stood firmly against worshiping the dead Saints as well as the idea that only the priests could absolve sins or that salvation was dependant upon the clergy.

Aggressively driven from the city of Lyons by the Archbishop, Waldo spent his last days in the mountains of Bohemia, eventually dying in A.D. 1179. He had edified and emboldened so many groups of “Catharists” that a revolt seemed certain. Decrees of condemnation issued by the Pope (and the succeeding Popes), however, brought on severe persecution, and many executions, temporarily slowing the inevitable.

There is a record of a group of thirty men and women who fled the persecution, leaving Germany for England, but continued to preach their opposition. When they were caught, they were branded on the forehead with a red-hot iron, and then whipped in the streets of Oxford. The city was forbidden to give any of them shelter, food, or any type of relief. Their conviction was such that it cost them their lives.

Immutable Kingdom – Part 18

The Immutable Kingdom – Part 18

By Scott A. Klaft

From Crusades to the Inquisition

The time period of the crusades was replete with tragedy and the loss of misled lives. One of the worst among them is what came to be known as the Children’s Crusade of A.D. 1212. Convinced that the purity and innocence of youth could accomplish what the adults could not due to sin, two youths named Stephen and Nicholas assembled the children of Germany and France to begin a march from Europe to Italy. From there, Stephen led a host of inadequately clothed and poorly fed children on a trudge toward Palestine. When they reached the seacoast, conniving men pretended to be friendly to their cause, placed them in boats, and eventually sold them all into Egyptian slavery.

It is doubtful that there was any benefit from any of the crusades. Admittedly, people did start to feel a greater loyalty toward the nations in which they lived; and, as a result of establishing trade with the near East, some of the “Christianized” nations began to prosper economically. It is said, however, that this would have likely developed and materialized without the bloody cost of the crusades.

It is significantly noteworthy that the crusades were a political tool used to promote the interests of the papacy. As the crusades developed, it is a substantial point when considering the development of the mindset of the people. Only the Pope could authorize an official crusade. Originally, the promoted idea was to reinforce Christianity against the infidel, but the result was that the interests of Christianity came to be viewed as equivalent to the interests of the papacy.

The military efforts into Palestine may have ceased, but that did not mean the Pope would stop using this powerful means of persuasion. In the centuries that followed, the crusade was not only used against infidels, but also against any who would question the Pope’s authority; not only against heretics, but also those secular rulers whose agendas conflicted with the papacy. Followers of the now solidly established Catholic hierarchy were eager to receive pardon from sin, and as long as they believed forgiveness could only be doled out by the Pope, it was simple for him to manipulate them to do his bidding. This, of course, led to the practice of the Inquisition.

The Catharists

Beginning from the ninth century, there are glimpses of thousands who stood in opposition to the Catholic regime. They were from many different nations, were in many different times, and were called by many different names, but the Catholic hierarchy generally labeled them “Paulicans” or Catharists. The groups were not necessarily linked in any way except, perhaps, in these similarities: 1. they opposed the Roman Catholic hierarchy; 2. they accepted only the Scriptures as their authority; 3. they claimed to be the only true Christians in their generation; 4. they lived morally ridged lives. The historian, F. W. Maddox reports the following characteristics:

“In their services they read the Scripture aloud and had the Lord’s Supper at every service. They refused infant baptism, baptizing only believers. They rejected all human authority, had no formal creed or confession, denounced the ignorance and vice of the clergy. Their chief mistake was in accepting some of the ideas of the early Gnostics and later the Manicheans… One wonders, however, from the emphasis they placed on the study of Scripture, that if among these widely scattered groups who differed greatly from each other, there were not the saints of God, following the New Testament pattern and constituting the Eternal Kingdom. One cannot put his finger on evidence of such, but we believe it to be the case.”[1]

Among these Catharist groups, there were a few leading men who truly stood out when they stood up against the Roman Catholic hierarchy. Their effectiveness in gathering the attention of the people is what eventually led to the use of the Inquisition. An introduction to the Inquisition would be empty without at least a brief mention of these men and what affects they had upon the Catholic influence.

(Continued next month)

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[1] Much of the information in this series addressing the time periods before the 1700’s is based upon the history written by F. W. Maddox called The Eternal Kingdom published by the Gospel Light Publishing Company, Copyright 1961. While efforts were made to avoid any plagiarism, there may indeed be the occasional similarity in expression. It was deemed more important to express clearly the information, and in the course of studying the material, there may have been inadvertent oversights.

Immutable Kingdom – Part 17

The Immutable Kingdom – Part 17

By Scott A. Klaft

The Second Crusade

With persistent aggression from the Muslims in Palestine, the “Christianized” kingdoms determined that another crusade would have to be made. For three years, the Muslims went unchecked, overrunning cities and lands, but in A.D. 1147, a new champion arose. Bernard of Clairvaux stirred up the King of France and the Emperor of (what is now referred to as) the Holy Roman Empire. He urged them to take up arms against “the infidels.”

Having the confidence of those two powerful leaders, Bernard initiated the second crusade with the high aspirations of regaining the lands taken by the marauding Muslims. Under the oversight and backing of Louis VII of France and Conrad III of Germany, favorable results were enjoyed at first. It ended, conversely, in a miserable failure with thousands slaughtered in Asia Minor. When the crusaders reached Damascus and laid siege on the city, they became disheartened. In only a few days, they returned home. Encouraged by this victory, the Muslim leader, Saladin, united his people and retook Jerusalem in A.D. 1187.

The Third Crusade – “The Kings Crusade”

When news of the loss of Jerusalem reached Europe, several kings allied themselves together to present a concerted effort for a third crusade. For this reason, it is known as the Kings Crusade. King Philip Augustus of France, King Richard of England, and Emperor Fredrick Barbarossa of Germany united, organized, and set out for Palestine. Nearly seventy years old when he started, Fredrick had an accident by which he drowned soon after reaching Asia Minor. With the loss of their Emperor’s leadership, the German soldiers were downhearted, deciding to return home.

Philip and Richard traveled by sea, reaching Palestine together, and they successfully captured the city Acre. As people with large and gregarious personalities often do when glory and prestige is involved, the two quarreled over who would control the captured territory. Evidently, Richard had won the argument because the French King returned home, crestfallen.

For fourteen months, Richard pushed, prodded, and pressed on, making very little advancement. Seeing little to be gained by further loss of life in battle, Richard negotiated a treaty with Saladin that permitted the “Christian” peoples to visit Jerusalem on pilgrimages to fulfill the sacrament of “penance.” It was his tenacity in battle that forever attached the title “Lion-Hearted” to King Richard. He returned home having completed all he could do, and he received not just a little adoration from the English people.

The Fourth Crusade

A sly manipulator, Innocent III was eager to rebuild the honor and fame of the crusaders. For a short time under his own tenure as Pope, Innocent was able to bring the Greek Church and the Eastern Empire together under his rule. The long-term outcome was an even more intense loathing from the Greek Church for the papacy. In the fourth crusade, no nation’s leader aided Innocent, but many of the Knights of that time period fought for him. No lasting accomplishments were achieved in this effort.

The Fifth Crusade

Fredrick II led the fifth crusade; and, he was successful in formulating a treaty in A.D. 1229 that gave Jerusalem, and a small portion of Palestine, to “Christian” control, but the Muslims were permitted to keep the Mosque of Omar in Jerusalem. After that, many attempts were made to bring Jerusalem under a more permanent and lasting control, but all efforts remained fruitless. The Saracens overpowered the Seljuk Turks, shifting the power to those who had made no treaty with the West, and soon Palestine returned to a unified Muslim domination once more.

(Continued Next Week)