HERESY IN THE MIDDLE AGES.
The Church Has No Excuse to Offer for Suppressing It to Save Society.
[From the Catholic Mirror of Oct. 14, 1899; translated from La Quinzaine, for the Catholic Mirror.] FOREMOST among the objections raised against the Catholic Church is her attitude toward heresy in the Middle Ages. Her apologists have seized upon excuses and theories somewhat confusing by the fact of their contradicting one another. Some deny altogether that she ever was severe. Some go to the other extreme of attributing to her a right over life and death in defense of her dogmas, while others adopt a middle course, by throwing most, if not all, of the blame upon the State, which suppressed heresy as a crime against itself, often without the approval of the church. A safer position would seem to be the following: The church claims, and has always claimed, the right of punishing heresy, as is evident from the teaching of the greatest of theologians, St. Thomas, and from her canonical legislation, such as the decrees of popes and the acts of councils, all of which prove that the church believed in her duty to repress heresy, and impressed the civil authorities with the same duty, boldly holding herself responsible for whatever wrong or right there was in such repression. Allowing, of course, for occasional excesses, in general, the church took this stand against heresy, because the chief heresies of the Middle Ages were subversive of society, and, therefore, the church in destroying them saved society from anarchy and even destruction. In proof of this, it may be pertinent to consider the fundamental characteristics of those great heresies, such as those of Bogomil, Albigensian, Cathari, Vaudois, the Fraticelli, Wycliffe, and John Huss. Most of them were impregnated more or less with the old Manicheanism, whose fundamental principle was the eternal co-existence of two sovereign powers, one good, the other evil, the latter being the creator of matter, which is in consequence hopelessly evil and corrupt, especially in woman, its chief representative. The social consequences of such a false principle were immediate and terrifying. The Bogomils condemned marriage and child-bearing, because by them matter or evil was perpetuated, and hence they considered lawful the most hideous immoralities. In a word, suppression of life in this world, extinction of society, was the means of attaining to glory in the next. The extinction of the family, the very basis of society, was their cardinal doctrine, a doctrine all the more dangerous because its devotees actually formed themselves into convents, like those of Catholics, the better thereby to escape detection. Another characteristic was the denial of the right of individual property; of the binding force of an oath; of the right of any power, civil or ecclesiastic, to punish disturbers of the peace; of the right of the State to enlist soldiers, the latter in consequence being justified in deserting and otherwise betraying their country. Especially dangerous were the anti-social teachings of Wycliffe and of his disciple, John Huss. The former's anti-social teachings sprang from his peculiar theory of the connection between grace and power. He argued that since all power is from God, he who is in the state of mortal sin is by that fact incapable of exercising any power whatsoever. But, since no one except God Himself can say when a ruler is or is not in such a state, it necessarily follows that the legitimacy of the power actually exercised by any ruler is doubtful, thus leaving a constant excuse for rebellion. From such a thesis equally follow the communistic theories so common to all these sects, as well as those involving betrayal of one's country. In answer to these charges, the historians hostile to the Catholic Church have urged the exaggerations of Catholic writers; the theoretical characters of the heresies named, and the favor accorded to the heretics by reigning princes, who would not be likely to protect heresies if they fomented anarchy or threatened the State. That Catholic authors did not exaggerate the answer is furnished in the writings of these sects, and that the character of the heresies was not theoretical is seen in the sanguinary commotions excited by the teachings of the Albigensians, the Fraticellis, the Lollards, and the Hussites, which forced the church, as the guardian of society, to suppress them with severity. If sometimes these heretics were favored by reigning princes it may be answered that princes like the Counts of Toulouse, Louis of Bavaria, Edward III., and Richard II., did actually protect them for a time for no other reason than because the anti-social teachings of the heretics were at first directed only against the goods of the church, which thus fell an easy prey to the State, and blinded the State to its own danger. The church in the Middle Ages did persecute heresy often with extreme severity. It did so legitimately, because these heresies meant social anarchy, the ruin of the family, and the commission of crimes which to-day are repressed by civil punishments, often death itself, in every civilized country. The church saved society by repressing heresy in the Middle Ages, and she has, therefore, no excuse to offer for her action beyond an occasionally misdirected zeal of her officers.