Freaks of Fanaticism, and Other Strange Events

The tradition of Western Manicheism breaks off about the sixth century; but in the East, under the name of Paulicians, the adherents of Manichean doctrines endured savage persecutions during two whole centuries, and spread, as they fled from the sword and stake in the East, over Europe, entering it in two streams – one by Bulgaria, Servia, and Croatia, to break out in the wild fanaticism of the Taborites under Zisca of the Flail; the other, by way of the sea, inundating northern Italy and Provence. In Piedmont it obtained the name of Patarinism; in Provence, of Albigensianism.

With Oriental Manicheism, the Patarines and Albigenses of the West held that there were two co-equal conflicting principles of good and evil; that matter was eternal, and waged everlasting war against spirit. Their moral life was strict and severe. They fasted, dressed in coarse clothing, and hardly, reluctantly suffered marriage to the weaker, inferior disciples. It was absolutely forbidden to those who were, or esteemed themselves to be, perfect.

Already, in Milan, St Heribert, the married archbishop, had kindled fires, and cast these denouncers of wedlock into them. In 1031 the heretics held the castle of Montforte, in the diocese of Asti. They were questioned: they declared themselves ready to witness to their faith by their blood. They esteemed virginity, and lived in chastity with their wives, never touched meat, and prayed incessantly. They had their goods in common. Their castle stood a siege. It was at length captured by the Archbishop. In the market-place were raised a cross on one side, a blazing pyre on the other. The Patarines were brought forth, commanded to cast themselves before the cross, confess themselves to be heretics, or plunge into the flames. A few knelt to the cross; the greater number covered their faces, rushed into the fire, and were consumed.13

St. Augustine, in his book on Heresies, had already described these heretics. He, who had been involved in the fascinating wiles of Manicheism, could not be ignorant of them. He calls them Paternians, or Venustians, and says that they regarded the flesh as the work of the devil – that is, of the evil principle, because made of matter.

In the eleventh century, in Lombardy, they are called Patarines, Patrins, or Cathari. Muratori says that they derived their name from the part of the town of Milan in which they swarmed, near the Contrada di Patari; but it is more probable that the quarter was called after them.

In 1074 Gregory VII. in solemn conclave will bless them altogether, by name, as the champions of the Holy See, and of the Truth; in 1179 Alexander III. will anathematise them altogether, as heretics meet to be burned. Frederick II., when seeking reconciliation with Honorius III. and Gregory IX., will be never weary of offering hecatombs of Patarines, in token of his orthodoxy.

Ariald, a native of Cuzago, a village near Milan, of ignoble birth, in deacon's orders, was chosen for the dangerous expedient of enlisting the Patarine heretics against the orthodox but relaxed clergy of that city. Milan, said a proverb, was famous for its clergy; Ravenna for its churches. In morals, in learning, in exact observance of their religious duties, the clergy of Milan were prominent among the priests of Lombardy. But they were all married. The Popes could expect no support from the Archbishop, Guido Vavasour; none from the Emperor Henry IV., then a child. Ariald was a woman-hater from infancy, deeply tinged with Patarinism. We are told that even as a little boy the sight of his sisters was odious to him.14 He began to preach in Milan in 1057, and the populace was at once set on fire15 by his sermons. They applauded vociferously his declaration that the married clergy were no longer to be treated as priests, but as "the enemies of God, and the deceivers of souls."

Then up rose from among the mob a clerk named Landulf, a man of loud voice and vehement gesture, and offered to join Ariald in his crusade. The crowd, or, at least, a part of it, enthusiastically cheered; another part of the audience, disapproving, deeming it an explosion of long-suppressed Manicheism, which would meet with stern repression, thought it prudent to withdraw.

A layman of fortune, named Nazarius, offered his substance to advance the cause, and his house as a harbour for its apostles.

The sermon was followed by a tumult. The whole city was in an uproar, and the married clergy were threatened or maltreated by the mob. Guido Vavasour de Velati, the Archbishop, was obliged to interfere. He summoned Ariald and Landulf before him, and remonstrated. "It is unseemly for a priest to denounce priests. It is impolitic for him to stir up tumult against his brethren. Let not brothers condemn brothers, for whose salvation Christ died." Then turning to Landulf, "Why do not you return to your own wife and children whom you have deserted, and live with them as heretofore, and set an example of peace and order? Cast the beam out of thine own eye, before thou pluckest motes out of the eyes of thy brethren. If they have done wrong, reprove them privately, but do not storm against them before all the people." He concluded by affirming the lawfulness of priests marrying, and insisted on the cessation of the contest.16 Ariald obstinately refused to desist. "Private expostulation is in vain. As for obstinate disorders you apply fire and steel, so for this abuse we must have recourse to desperate remedies."

He left the Archbishop to renew his appeals to the people. But dreading lest Guido should use force to restrain him, Ariald invoked the support of Anselm de Badagio, Bishop of Lucca, and received promise of his countenance and advocacy at Rome.

Guido Vavasour had succeeded the married Archbishop Heribert in 1040. His election had not satisfied the people, who had chosen, and proposed for consecration, four priests, one of whom the nobles were expected to select. But the nobles rejected the popular candidates, and set up in their place Guido Vavasour, and his nomination was ratified by the Emperor and by the Pope. He was afterwards, as we shall see, charged with having bribed Henry III. to give him the See, but was acquitted of the charge, which was denounced as unfounded by Leo IX. in 1059. The people, in token of their resentment, refused to be present at the first mass he sang. "He is a country bumpkin," said they. "Faugh! he smells of the cow-house."17 Consequently there was simmering discontent against the Archbishop for Ariald to work upon; he could unite the lower people, whose wishes had been disregarded by the nobles, with the Patarines, who had been haled before ecclesiastical courts for their heresy, in one common insurrection against the clergy and the pontiff.

According to Landulf the elder, a strong partisan of the Archbishop, another element of discontent was united to those above enumerated. The clergy of Milan had oppressed the country people. The Church had estates outside of Milan, vine and olive yards and corn-fields. The clergy had been harsh in exacting feudal rights and legal dues.

Ariald, as a native of a country village, knew the temper of the peasants, and their readiness to resent these extortions. Ariald worked upon the country-folk; Landulf, rich and noble, and eloquent in speech, on the town rabble; and the two mobs united against the common enemy.

Anselm de Badagio, priest and popular preacher at Milan, had been mixed up with Landulf and Ariald in the controversy relative to clerical marriage; but to stop his mouth the Archbishop had given him the bishopric of Lucca, in 1057, and had supplied his place as preacher at Milan by seven deacons. Landulf the elder relates that these deacons preached with such success that Anselm, in a fit of jealousy, returned to Milan to listen to their sermons, and scornfully exclaimed, "They may become preachers, but they must first put away their wives."

According to the same authority, Ariald bore a grudge against the Archbishop for having had occasion to rebuke him on account of some irregularity of which he had been guilty. But Landulf the elder is not to be trusted implicitly; he is as bigoted on one side as is Andrew of Strumi on the other.

In the meantime the priests and their wives were exposed to every sort of violence, and "a great horror fell on the Ambrosian clergy." The poor women were torn from their husbands, and driven from the city; the priests who refused to be separated from their companions were interdicted from the altar.18

Landulf was sent to Rome to report progress, and obtain confirmation of the proceedings of the party from the Pope. He reached Piacenza, but was unable to proceed farther; he was knocked down, and finding the way barred by the enemies of his party, returned to Milan. Ariald then started, and eluding his adversaries, arrived safely at Rome. He presented himself before Pope Stephen X., who was under the influence of Hildebrand, and, therefore, disposed to receive him with favour. Stephen bade him return to Milan, prosecute the holy war, and, if need be, shed his blood in the sacred cause.

The appeal to Rome was necessary, as the Archbishop and a large party of the citizens, together with all the clergy, had denounced Ariald and Landulf as Patarines. The fact was notorious that the secret and suspected Manichees in Milan were now holding up their heads and defying those who had hitherto controlled them. The Manichees suddenly found that from proscribed heretics they had been exalted into champions of orthodoxy. It was a satisfactory change for those who had been persecuted to become persecutors, and turn their former tyrants into victims. But now, to the confusion and dismay of the clergy, they found themselves betrayed by the Pope, and at the mercy of those who had old wrongs to resent. Fortified with the blessing of the Pope on his work, his orthodoxy triumphantly established by the supreme authority, Ariald rushed back to Milan, accompanied by papal legates to protect him, and proclaim his mission as divine. He was unmeasured in his denunciations. Dissension fast ripened into civil war. Ariald, at the head of a roaring mob, swept the clergy together into a church, and producing a paper which bound all of them by oath to put away their wives, endeavoured to enforce their subscription.

A priest, maddened to resentment, struck the demagogue in the mouth. This was the signal for a general tumult. The adherents of Ariald rushed through the streets, the alarm bells pealed, the populace gathered from all quarters, and a general hunting down of the married clergy ensued.

"How can the blind lead the blind?" preached Landulf Cotta. "Let these Simoniacs, these Nicolaitans be despised. You who wish to have salvation from the Lord, drive them from their functions; esteem their sacrifices as dogs' dung (canina stercora)! Confiscate their goods, and every one of you take what he likes!19 We can imagine the results of such license given to the lowest rabble. The nobles, over-awed, dared not interfere.

Nor were the clergy of the city alone exposed to this popular persecution. The preachers roved round the country, creating riots everywhere. This led to retaliation, but retaliation of a feeble, harmless sort. A chapel built by Ariald on his paternal estate was pulled down; and the married clergy resentfully talked of barking his chestnut trees and breaking down his vines, but thought better of it, and refrained.

A more serious attempt at revenge was the act of a private individual. Landulf Cotta was praying in a church, when a priest aimed at him with a sword, but without seriously hurting him. A cripple at the church door caught the flying would-be assassin; a crowd assembled, and Landulf with difficulty extricated the priest alive from their hands.

Ariald and Cotta now began to denounce those who had bought their cures of souls, or had paid fees on their institution to them. They stimulated the people to put down simony, as they had put down concubinage. "Cursed is he that withholdeth his hand from blood!" was the fiery peroration of a sermon on this subject by Ariald.

"Landulf Cotta," says Arnulf, "being master of the lay folk, made them swear to combat both simony and concubinage. Presently he forced this oath on the clergy. From this time forward he was constantly followed by a crowd of men and women, who watched around him night and day. He despised the churches, and rejected priests as well as their functions, under pretext that they were defiled with simony. They were called Patari, that is to say, beggars, because the greater part of them belonged to the lowest orders."20

"What shall we do?" asked a large party at Milan. "This Ariald tells us that if we receive the Holy Sacrament from married or simoniacal priests, we eat our own damnation. We cannot live without sacraments, and he has driven all the priests out of Milan."

The parties were so divided, that those who held with Ariald would not receive sacraments from the priests, the heavenly gift on their altars they esteemed as "dogs' dung;" they would not even join with them, or those who adhered to them, in prayer. "One house was all faithful," says Andrew of Strumi; "the next all unfaithful. In the third, the mother and one son were believing, but the father and the other son were unbelieving; so that the whole city was a scene of confusion and contention."

In 1058 Guido assembled a synod at Fontanetum near Novara, and summoned Ariald and Landulf Cotta to attend it. The synod awaited their arrival for three days, and as they did not come, excommunicated them as contumacious.

Landulf the younger, the biographer of Ariald, says that Pope Stephen X. reversed the sentence of the synod; but this account does not agree with what is related by Arnulf. Landulf the elder confounds the dates, and places the synod in the reign of Alexander II., and says that the Pope adopted a middle course, and sent ambassadors to Milan to investigate the matter. Bonizo of Sutri says the same. All agree that Hildebrand was one of these commissioners. Hildebrand was therefore able to judge on the spot of the results of an appeal to the passions of the people. It is the severest condemnation to his conduct in 1073, to know for certain that he had seen the working of the power he afterwards called out. He then saw how great was that power; he must have been cruelly, recklessly, wickedly indifferent to the crimes which accompanied its invocation. Landulf the elder says that the second commissary was Anselm of Lucca, whilst Bonizo speaks indifferently of the "bishops a latere" as constituting the deputation. Guido was not in Milan when it arrived, he did not dare to venture his person in the midst of the people. The ambassadors were received with the utmost respect; they took on themselves to brand the Archbishop as a simoniac and a schismatic, and, according to Landulf, to do many other things which they were not authorised by the Pope to do; so that the dissension, so far from being allayed by their visit, only waxed more furious.

At the end of the year 1058, or the beginning of 1059, the Pope sent Peter Damiani, the harsh Bishop of Ostia, and Anselm, Bishop of Lucca, on a new embassy to Milan.21 They were received with respect by the Archbishop and clergy; but the pride of the Milanese of all ranks was wounded by seeing the Bishop of Ostia enthroned in the middle, with Anselm of Lucca, the suffragan of Milan, upon his right, and their Archbishop degraded to the left of the Legate, and seated on a stool at his feet. Milan assembled at the ringing of the bells in all the churches, and the summons of an enormous brazen trumpet which shrieked through the streets. The fickle people asked if the Church of St. Ambrose was to be trodden under the foot of the Roman Pontiff. "I was threatened with death," wrote Peter Damiani to Hildebrand, "and many assured me that there were persons panting for my blood. It is not necessary for me to repeat all the remarks the people made on this occasion."

But Peter Damiani was not the man to be daunted at a popular outbreak. He placidly mounted the ambone, and asserted boldly the supreme jurisdiction of the chair of St. Peter. "The Roman Church is the mother, that of Ambrose is the daughter. St. Ambrose always recognised that mistress. Study the sacred books, and hold us as liars, if you do not find that it is as I have said."

Then the charges against the clergy were investigated by the legates, and not a single clerk in Milan was found who had not paid a fee on his ordination; "for that was the custom, and the charge was fixed," says the Bishop of Ostia. Here was a difficulty. He could not deprive every priest and deacon in Milan, and leave the great city without pastors. He was therefore obliged to content his zeal with exacting from the bishops a promise that ordination in future should be made gratuitously; and the Archbishop was constrained to deposit on the altar a paper in which he pronounced his own excommunication, in the event of his relaxing his rigour in suppressing the heresy of the Simoniacs and Nicolaitans, by which latter name those who insisted on the lawfulness of clerical marriage were described.

To make atonement for the past, the Archbishop was required to do penance for one hundred years, but to pay money into the papal treasury in acquittal of each year; which, to our simple understanding, looks almost as scandalous a traffic as imposing a fee on all clergy ordained. But then, in the one case the money went into the pocket of the bishops, and in the other into that of the Pope.

The clergy who had paid a certain sum were to be put to penance for five years; those who had paid more, for ten (also to be compensated by a payment to Rome!), and to make pilgrimages to Rome or Tours. After having accomplished this penance they were to receive again the insignia of their offices.

Then Peter Damiani re-imposed on the clergy the oaths forced on them by Ariald, and departed.

The Milanese contemporary historian, Arnulf, exclaims, "Who has bewitched you, ye foolish Milanese? Yesterday you made loud outcries for the priority of a see, and now you trouble the whole organisation of the Church. You are gnats swallowing camels. You say, perhaps, Rome must be honoured because of the Apostle. Well, but the memory of St. Ambrose should deliver Milan from such an affront as has been inflicted on her. In future it will be said that Milan is subject to Rome."22

Guido attended a council held in Rome (April 1059), shortly after this visitation. Ariald also was present, to accuse the Archbishop of favouring simony and concubinage. The legates had dealt too leniently with the scandal. Guido was defended by his suffragans of Asti, Novara, Turin, Vercelli, Alba, Lodi, and Brescia. "Mad bulls, they," says Bonizo; and Ariald was forced to retire, covered with confusion. The Council pronounced a decree that no mercy should be shown to the simoniacal and married clergy.23 An encyclical was addressed by Nicholas II. to all Christendom, informing it that the Council had passed thirteen canons, one of which prevented a layman from assisting at a mass said by a priest who had a concubine or a subintroducta mulier. Priests, deacons, and sub-deacons who should take "publicly" a concubine, or not send away those with whom they lived, were to be inhibited from exercising all ministerial acts and receiving ecclesiastical dues.

On the return of the bishops to their sees, one only of them, Adelmann of Brescia, ventured to publish these decrees. He was nearly torn to pieces by his clergy; an act of violence which greatly furthered the cause of the Patarines.24

In the same year Pope Nicholas sent legates into different countries to execute, or attempt to execute, the decrees passed against simony and concubinage – as clerical marriage was called. Peter Damiani travelled through several cities of Italy to exhort the clergy to celibacy, and especially to press this matter on the bishops. Peter Damiani was not satisfied with the conduct of the Pope in assuming a stern attitude towards the priests, but overlooking the fact that the bishops were themselves guilty of the same offence. A letter from him to the Pope exists, in which he exhorts him to be a second Phinehas (Numb. xxv. 7), and deal severely with the bishops, without which no real reform could be affected.25

Anselm de Badagio, Bishop of Lucca, the instigator of Landulf and Ariald, or at least their staunch supporter, was summoned on the death of Nicholas to occupy the throne of St. Peter, under the title of Alexander II. But his election was contested, and Cadalus, an anti-Pope, was chosen by a Council of German and Lombard prelates assembled at Basle. The contests which ensued between the rival Pontiffs and their adherents distracted attention from the question of clerical marriage, and the clergy recalled their wives.

In 1063, in Florence, similar troubles occurred. The instigator of these was St. John Gualberto, founder of the Vallombrosian Order. The offence there was rather simony than concubinage.

The custom of giving fees to those who appointed to benefices had become inveterate, and in many cases had degenerated into the purchase of them. A Pope could not assume the tiara without a lavish largess to the Roman populace. A bishop could not grasp his pastoral staff without paying heavy sums to the Emperor and to the Pope. The former payment was denounced as simony, the latter was exacted as an obligation. But under some of the Emperors the bishoprics were sold to the highest bidder. What was customary on promotion to a bishopric became customary on acceptance of lesser benefices, and no priest could assume a spiritual charge without paying a bounty to the episcopal treasury. When a bishop had bought his throne, he was rarely indisposed to sell the benefices in his gift, and to recoup a scandalous outlay by an equally scandalous traffic. The Bishop of Florence was thought by St. John Gualberto to have bought the see. He was a Pavian, Peter Mediabardi. His father came to Florence to visit his son. The Florentines took advantage of the unguarded simplicity of the old man to extract the desired secret from him.26

"Master Teulo," said they, "had you a large sum to pay to the King for your son's elevation?"

"By the body of St. Syrus," answered the father, "you cannot get a millstone out of the King's house without paying for it."

"Then what did you pay?" asked the Florentines greedily.27

"By the body of St. Syrus!" replied the old man, "not less than three thousand pounds."

No sooner was the unguarded avowal made, than it was spread through the city by the enemies of the bishop.28

St. John Gualberto took up the quarrel. He appeared in Florence, where he had a monastery dedicated to St. Salvius, and began vehemently to denounce the prelate as a simoniac, and therefore a heretic. His monks, fired by his zeal, spread through the city, and exhorted the people to refuse to accept the sacramental acts of their bishop and resist his authority.

The people broke out into tumult. The bishop appealed to the secular arm to arrest the disorder, and officers were sent to coerce the monks of St. Salvius. They broke into the monastery at night, sought Gualberto, but, unable to find him, maltreated the monks. One received a blow on his forehead which laid bare the bone, and another had his nose and lips gashed with a sword. The monks were stripped, and the monastery fired. The abbot rolled himself in an old cloak extracted from under a bed, where it had been cast as ragged, and awaited day, when the wounds and tears of the fraternity might be exhibited to a sympathising and excitable people. Nor were they disappointed. At daybreak all the town was gathered around the dilapidated monastery, and people were eagerly mopping up the sacred blood that had been shed, with their napkins, thinking that they secured valuable relics. Sympathy with the injured was fanned into frenzied abhorrence of the persecutor.

St. John Gualberto appeared on the scene, blazing with the desire of martyrdom,29 and congratulated the sufferers on having become confessors of Christ. "Now are ye true monks! But why did ye suffer without me?"

The secular clergy of Florence were, it is asserted, deeply tainted with the same vice as their bishop. They had all paid fees at their institution, or had bought their benefices. They lived in private houses, and were for the most part married. Some were even suspected to be of immoral life.30

But the preaching of the Saint, the wounds of the monks, converted some of the clergy. Those who were convinced by their appeals, and those who were wearied of their wives, threw themselves into the party of Gualberto, and clubbed together in common life.31