Ideas

by Peter Watson

  His view turned out to be popular, possibly because of the simplicity of its appeal–everything was turned on its head. The more zealous the popes were in whatever they did, the more cunning the deceits of the Antichrist. The ‘fact’ that the end was imminent gave the millenarians more conviction than anyone else. Joachite reasoning had it that there were three ages in the history of the world (as mentioned in the Introduction), presided over by God the Father (Creation to Incarnation), God the Son (Incarnation to 1260), and God the Holy Spirit (1260 on), when the existing organisation of the church would be swept away. The passing of the year 1260 without notable incident rather took the wind out of the Joachite sails, but their ideas remained in circulation for some time afterwards.58

  But the heresy that was by far the biggest threat to the established church was that known as the Cathari (Pure Ones, Saints), or the Albigensian religion, named after the town of Albi, near Toulouse, where the heretics were particularly well represented.59 The main ideas behind the Cathar movement had been in circulation underground for some time. These ideas recalled the Manicheans of the fourth century who, according to some historians, had been kept alive in a sect in the Balkans known as the Bogomils. Equally probable, however, Catharism developed from Neoplatonic ideas which existed in more conventional theology and philosophy. (There is good evidence that many Cathars were highly educated and became skilled in debate.) A final strand may well have come from Jewish mysticism, the Kabbalah, in particular that form of thought known as Gnosticism (see above, pages 181–182). The Manichees had believed that there are two gods, a god of good and a god of evil, a god of light and a god of darkness, who were in perpetual combat for control in the world. (There is clearly an overlap here with ideas about the Antichrist.) Associated with this set of beliefs, man is seen as a mixture of spirit (good) and matter, or body (evil). Like other heretics, the Cathars were ascetics whose aim was pure spirituality, the ‘perfect’ state. Marriage and sexual behaviour were to be avoided, for they led to the creation of more matter. The Cathars also avoided eating meat and eggs, because they came from creatures that reproduced sexually. (The limitations of their biological understanding allowed them to eat fish and vegetables.) They believed that the surest way to salvation was the endura, the belief that after receiving consolamentum on one’s deathbed one shouldn’t eat any more food as it would make one impure again. So in that sense they starved themselves to death.60 They did concede, however, that those who did not live the absolutely pure life might still attain salvation by recognising the leadership of the ‘perfects’, or Cathari. These so-called ‘auditors’ of the true Cathar faith received a sacrament on their deathbed that wiped away all previous sin and allowed the reunion of their souls with the Divine Spirit. This deathbed ‘catharsis’ was the only true way to God for those who weren’t ‘perfect’.61 All manner of lurid ideas swirled around the Cathars. It was said, for example, that they rejected the Incarnation because it involved the ‘imprisonment’ of God inside evil matter. It was said they were promiscuous, so long as conception was avoided. And they were said to expose their children to endura, death by starvation as a form of salvation and, at the same time, ridding the world of yet more matter. All of these evils were easily countenanced, it was said, because it was Cathar practice to allow catharsis on the deathbed, and so what was the point of any other type of behaviour?

  In the end the progress of the Cathars was halted first by the Albigensian crusade, 1209–1229, which removed the nobles’ support, then by the papal inquisition, which was created in 1231 to deal with the threat. As well as annexing this region for the kings of France, these campaigns helped redefine crusades as battles against heretics within Europe’s borders.62 This in turn helped sharpen Europe’s idea of itself as Christendom.

  As the year 1200 approached, it is fair to say that the papacy was under siege. The greatest or at least the most visible threat came from heresy, but there were other problems, not least the weakness of the popes themselves. Since the death of Alexander III in 1181, the throne had been held by a succession of men who seemed incapable of coping with the great changes in the nature of piety, and the aftermath of the crusades, not to mention the new learning, unleashed at the new universities in Paris and Bologna. Strictly speaking, Aristotle rediscovered in the universities could not be deemed an heretic, since he had lived before Christ, but what he had to say still provoked anxiety in Rome. The very great importance of Aristotle is underlined in the next chapter.

  It was in these circumstances that the cardinals in 1198 elected a very young pope, an extremely able lawyer, in the hope that he would have a long reign and transform the fortunes of the papacy. Though he didn’t live as long as he might have done, Innocent III did not disappoint.

  Lothario Conti, who took the title Innocent III (11981216), came from an aristocratic Roman family. He had studied law at Bologna and theology in Paris, making him as educated a man as any then alive in Europe, and he had been elevated to the College of Cardinals at the very early age of twenty-six, under his uncle, Lucius III. But this was not only nepotism at work, for Innocent’s colleagues recognised his exceptional ability and his determination. On his coronation day, he made plain what was to come. He said: ‘I am he to whom Jesus said, “I will give to you the keys to the kingdom of heaven, and everything that you shall bind up on earth shall be bound up in heaven. See then this servant who rules over the entire family; he is the vicar of Jesus Christ and the successor of Saint Peter. He stands half-way between God and man, smaller than God, greater than man”.’63

  Greater than man. Perhaps no pope had more self-confidence than Innocent, but in his defence it was as much conviction as bravado. Innocent believed that ‘everything in the world is the province of the pope’, that St Peter had been ordained by Jesus ‘to govern not only the universal church but all the secular world’, and he, Innocent, was intent on establishing, or re-establishing, a new equilibrium on Earth, one that would bring a new political, intellectual and religious order to Europe.64 By the time he died, the church was back in the ascendant, combating heresy, attacking secular power, improving the quality of the clergy, fighting intellectual unorthodoxy. It was Innocent who raised the first papal tithes, to fund the crusades, an exercise so successful that in 1199 he levied the first income tax on churchmen to fund the papacy itself. And it was Innocent who, effectively, installed an inquisition to combat the Albigensian heretics. In 1208 a papal legate was murdered in France and the count of Toulouse was believed to have been involved. This gave Innocent the idea of launching a crusade against the heretics.65 This wasn’t the Inquisition (with a capital I) that was to achieve such notoriety in Spain (and was a royal institution rather than a papal one) but it was a similar idea. Innocent instituted a new legal process, a new practice, the systematic searching out of heresy, using investigation and interrogation, rather than waiting for someone to make an accusation. It too was a new expression of papal power and ambition (and of theological weakness).

  This inquisition was not always the ‘unholy Reich’ it has been pictured but it was quite bad enough. There was also a bitter irony behind everything that occurred–because one reason heresy took root so quickly at that time, and so firmly, was the moral laxity and corruption of the clergy itself, the very people who would enforce the Vatican’s new law. For example, the Council of Avignon (1209) referred to a case of a priest gambling for penances with dice, and taverns whose inn signs showed a clerical collar. The Council of Paris (1210) exposed masses held by priests who had wives or concubines and parties organised by nuns.66 Innocent III’s opening speech to the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 confirmed that ‘the corruption of the people derived from that of the clergy’.67

  It is important to say that heresy had little to do with the magical practices and deep-rooted superstitions that were found everywhere in the twelfth century, not least in the church itself. Keith Thomas has described the extent of these magical practices the fact that the working of
miracles was held by some to be ‘the most efficacious means of demonstrating [the church’s] monopoly of the truth’.68 For example, people’s belief that the host was turned into flesh and blood was at times literal. One historian cites the case of a Jewish banker in Segovia who accepted a host as security for a loan, another gives the example of a woman who kissed her husband while holding a host in her mouth ‘so as to gain his love’.69 Keith Thomas also mentions the case of a Norfolk woman who had herself confirmed seven times ‘because she found that it helped her rheumatism’.70 The church made clear the difference between heresy (stubbornly-held opinions, contrary to doctrine) and superstition (which included use of the Eucharist for non-devotional practices, as mentioned above). In any case, the heretics themselves had little interest in magic as it involved the abuse/misuse of the very sacraments they had themselves rejected.

  To begin with, the church showed a reluctant tolerance of heresy. As late as 1162, Pope Alexander refused to condemn some Cathars consigned to him by the bishop of Rheims on the grounds that ‘it was better to pardon the guilty than to take the lives of the innocent’.71 But the crusade against the Cathars had the advantage for many that it would bring material and spiritual benefits without the risk and expenditure of an arduous and dangerous journey to the Middle East. In practice, its effects were mixed. At the beginning, at Béziers, seven thousand people were massacred, an event so terrible that it gave the crusaders a psychological edge for ever after.72 At the same time, the Cathars were rapidly dispersed meaning that their insidious appeal was spread further, faster, than might otherwise have been the case. The Fourth Lateran Council was called in response: it issued a ‘detailed formulation of orthodox belief’ containing the first outline of the new legal procedure.

  This inquisition came into existence formally under the pontificate of Gregory IX, between 1227 and 1233, though the episcopal courts had hitherto used three distinct forms of action throughout the Middle Ages in criminal cases: accusatio, denunciatio and inquisitio. In the past, accusatio had depended on an accuser bringing a case, the accuser being liable to punishment if his or her allegations were not proven. Under the new system, inquisitio haereticae pravitatis (inquisition into heretical depravity), investigation was allowed, without accuser, but with ‘investigatory methods’. What these were was revealed in February 1231, when Gregory IX issued Excommunicamus, which produced detailed legislation for the punishment of heretics, including the denial of the right of appeal, the denial of a right to be defended by a lawyer, and the exhumation of unpunished heretics.73 The first man to bear the title inquisitor haereticae pravitatis, ‘inquisitor into heretical depravity’, was Conrad of Marburg who, believing that salvation could only be gained through pain, turned out to be one of the most bloodthirsty practitioners this ignoble trade ever saw. But the most terrible of all bulls in the history of the inquisition was issued in May 1252 by Innocent IV. This was luridly entitled Ad extirpanda, ‘to extirpate’, which allowed for torture to obtain confessions, for burning at the stake, and for a police force at the service of the Office of the Faith (the Roman euphemism for the inquisition).74

  The main task of the inquisition, however, was not punishment as such, not in theory at any rate. It was to bring heretics back to the Catholic faith. The inquisitor generalis usually found its way to towns where there were known to be large numbers of heretics (many small villages never saw an inquisitor at any point). All men over fourteen, and women over twelve, were required to appear if they themselves imagined they were guilty of an infraction. When the people were gathered, the inquisitor would deliver a sermon, known at first as the sermo generalis and later as an autodefe.75 Sometimes indulgences were promised to those who attended. After the sermo any heretic who confessed was absolved from excommunication and avoided the more serious forms of punishment. However, part of the process of confession and absolution was ‘delation’, the identification of other heretics who had not come forward. Delation was invariably used as a sign of the validity of the original heretic’s confession. The heretics so identified would be interrogated and it was here that the terror began. Total secrecy surrounded the procedure, the accused was not allowed to know who had informed against him (otherwise no one would ever inform, or delate) and only if the accused could make a good guess, and be able to show that his accuser had a personal enmity against him, did he stand a chance of acquittal. The auto de fe carried out by Bernard Gui in April 1310 in the area of Toulouse shows the sort of thing that might happen. There, between Sunday, 5 April and Thursday, 9 April he tried and sentenced 103 people: twenty were ordered to wear the badge of infamy and go on pilgrimages; sixty-five were sentenced to perpetual imprisonment; and eighteen were consigned to the civil authorities to be burned at the stake. Not even the dead could escape. There were scores of cases of people being sentenced up to sixty years after their death. Their bodies were exhumed and the remains burned, the ash very often being thrown into rivers. In an age that believed in the afterlife and which worshipped relics, this was a terrible fate.76

  Torture techniques included the ordeal of water, when a funnel or a soaking length of silk would be forced down someone’s throat. Five litres was considered ‘ordinary’ and that amount of water could burst blood vessels. In the ordeal of fire the prisoners were manacled before a fire, fat or grease was spread over their feet, and that part of them cooked until a confession was obtained. The strappado consisted of a pulley in the ceiling by means of which the prisoners were hung six feet off the ground, with weights attached to their feet. If they didn’t confess, they were pulled higher, then dropped, then pulled up short before they hit the ground. The weights on their feet were enough to dislocate their joints, causing unbearable pain.77 Torture captures the eye but in a feudal society the signs of infamy, and the ostracism they brought could be just as bad (for example, the marriage prospects of someone’s offspring were blighted).78

  The new piety was recognised and formalised by the Fourth Lateran Council, held at the Lateran Palace in Rome in 1215. This was one of the three most important ecumenical councils of the Catholic church, the other two being the Council of Nicaea in 325 and the Council of Trent in the sixteenth century, which considered the Catholic church’s response to Protestantism. Four hundred bishops and eight hundred other prelates and notables attended Lateran IV, which set the agenda for many aspects of Christianity and clarified and codified many areas of worship and belief. It was Lateran IV that nullified Magna Carta and fixed the number of the sacraments as seven (the early church had never defined the number of sacraments and, previously, some theologians like Damian had preferred nine, or even eleven). These seven were: baptism, confirmation, marriage, and extreme unction, marking the stages in life, plus mass, confession and the ordination of priests. Lateran IV also decreed that every member of the church must confess his or her sins to a priest and receive the Eucharist at least once a year, and as often as possible. This, of course, was a reassertion of the authority of the priesthood and a direct challenge to heretics. But it did reflect the needs of the new piety. In the same vein the council also decreed that no new saints or relics were to be recognised without papal canonisation.79

  The sacrament of marriage was a significant move by the church. At the millennium it would be true to say that most people in Europe were not married in a church. Normally, couples would just live together, though very often rings were exchanged. Even as late as 1500 many peasants were still married by the age-old rite of cohabitation. Nonetheless, by 1200, say, the majority of the wealthier and more literate classes were married by priests. This had the side-effect of curtailing marriage among priests and bishops, but more generally the sacrament gave the church control over divorce. Until Lateran IV, people needed church approval to marry anyone within the seventh degree of consanguinity (first cousins which marriages are now allowed are four degrees removed). In practice, people ignored this. Only later, when a divorce was in the offing, was this illegal degree of consanguinity
‘discovered’, and used as grounds for annulment. Lateran IV replaced this with the third degree of consanguinity, the chief effect of which, says Norman Cantor, was ‘to increase the church’s capacity to interfere in individual lives’. This was Innocent’s aim.

  His tenacity of purpose was remarkable. Innocent has been described as the greatest of popes and as the ‘leader of Europe’. David Knowles and Dimitri Obolensky put it this way: ‘His pontificate is the brief summer of papal world-government. Before him the greatest of his predecessors were fighting to attain a position of control; after him, successors used the weapons of power with an increasing lack of spiritual wisdom and political insight. Innocent alone was able to make himself obeyed when acting in the interests of those he commanded.’80

  During the thirteenth century, however, the moral authority of the papacy was largely dissipated. The Curia continued as an impressive administrative force but the growth of national monarchies, in France, England and Spain, proved to be more than a match for the Vatican bureaucracy. In particular the growing power of the French king posed a threat to Rome. In the early Middle Ages, the monarch with whom the pope had most come into conflict was the German emperor. But, owing to those very conflicts, the Germans had not been so well represented among the crusaders as had the French. That had given the French more power with Rome and, on top of that, the French king had obtained a fair proportion of southern France as a result of the Albigensian crusade, so that in this sense the papacy had helped bring about its own demise. These evolving trends climaxed during the reign of the French king, Philip IV the Fair (12851314).