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1100-1300 - Smaller Sects of the West

Among the less important leaders of the sects that arose at this epoch may be numbered Arnold of Brescia, the demagogue, whom we have already mentioned, - he fell into several errors of faith; - the two fanatics, Tanchelm (1115-1124), who carried on his disorders first in Utrecht and subsequently in Antwerp, where he was successfully opposed by St. Norbert; and Eudo da Stella (Eon), who travelled through Brittany and Gascony, until he was at last imprisoned, in 1148, at the command of the Council of Rheims.

Peter of Bruys (1104-1124), the impetuous zealot for the restoration of Church discipline, founder of the Petrobrusians, fell into the error of rejecting infant baptism and the holy sacrifice of the Mass; he ordered churches and altars to be destroyed, crucifixes and the like to be burnt; and at St. Gilles he publicly ridiculed the commandment of the Church to abstain and fast on Good Friday. The infuriated people threw him into the flames of the funeral pile he had himself erected.

After this, Henry of Lausanne placed himself at the head of a party called Henricians. He came upon the scene as a preacher of penance, and was at first receiveil in a friendly manner by Bishop Hildebert of Le Mans, but in a short time was expelled because he enticed his hearers to the performance of senseless acts. On this he joined the Petrobrusians, to whose errors he added others. This "'induced the Bishop of Aries to bring the matter before the Council of Pisa, in 1135, as heresy. Henry promised to amend, but did not perform his promise, on which account he was arrested by order of the Archbishop of Toulouse, and kept in prison until his death in 1149. His errors were controverted by St. Bernard and by the cardinal legate Alberich.

The Apostolic Brethren, founded in 1260 by the enthusiast Gerard Segarelli of Parma, was professedly intended to restore apostolical simplicity to the Church. It was suppressed by Honorius IV. on account of the heretical doctrines put forth by the members of this association; and again by Nicholas IV., in 1200, it was denounced as heretical. Gerard refused submission to the papal decision, on which account he was punished as an obstinate heretic (1300). Then Fra Dolcino of Milan took the lead among these fanatics, and excited them to so great a degree that they barricaded themselves at Novarn aud then at Vercelli in such a way as to render it necessary to proceed against them by an armed force (1307). Dolcino and his spiritual sister Margareta were put to death.

The doctrine of the Brethren and Sisters of the Free Spirit (Suestriones), who committed acts of the coarsest licentiousness, was practically pantheistic; under different names this sect sustained itself to the fourteenth century.

Amaleric of Chartres (Bena), professor at Paris, also disseminated pantheistic views; his disciples, William of Paris (the goldsmith) and David of Dinanto, even maintained (1204) that God was the essential matter (" esse materiale") of all things, and they denied that any difference existed between virtue and vice.

The followers of Wilhelmina of Bohemia, who is said to have given herself out as an incarnation of the Holy Ghost, and who died in Milan in 1282, also committed great excesses, which called forth the energetic opposition of the superiors of the Church. The Stedingers of Friesland revolted against the Archbishop of Bremen (1187), refused to pay tithes, despised the doctrine of the Church, and murdered the priests. In the year 1234 a crusade was inaugurated against them. A number of them became reconciled to the Church. The Passagians (from " passagium," pilgrimage ?), who were inclined to Judaism, also belonged to the heretical antiecclesiastical party of this time.