Untitled - Shattering Denial

THE INQUISITION 37
Few details have come down to us concerning the fate
of the Manicheans arrested at this time in Sardinia and
1
in Spain ; exterminati sunt, says a chronicler.
The Cathari of Toulouse were also arrested, and exe
cuted: et ipsi destructi. 2 A few years later, in 1114, the
Bishop of Soissons arrested a number of heretics, and cast
them into prison until he could make up his mind how to
deal with them. While he was absent at Beauvais,
asking the advice of his fellow-bishops
assembled there
in council, the populace, fearing the weakness of the clergy,
attacked the prison, dragged forth the heretics, and
burned them at the stake. 3
Guibert de Nogent does not
blame them in the least. He simply calls attention to
"the just zeal" shown on this occasion by "the people
of God," to stop the spread of heresy.
In 1144 the Bishop of Liege, Adalbero II, compelled a
number of Cathari to confess their heresy; "he hoped,"
he said, "with the grace of God to lead them to repent."
But the populace, less kindly-hearted, rushed upon them,
1 "
Exterminati sunt," says Raoul Glaber, Hist., lib. ii, cap. xii, Hist,
des Gaules, vol. x, p. 23.
Exterminati may mean banished as well as put to death. The context,
however, seems to refer to the death penalty.
2 Adh&nar de Chabannes, Chron., lib. iii, cap. lix, in the Mon. Germ. SS.,
vol. iv, p. 143.
3
"Interea perreximus ad Belvacense concilium consulturi episcopos quid
facto opus esset. Sed fidelis interim populus, clericalem verens mollitiem
(notice these words on "the weakness of the clergy") concurrit ad ergastulum,
rapit, et subjecto eis extra urbem igne pariter concremavit." Guibert de
Nogent, De vita sua, lib. i, cap. xv, Hist, des Gaules, vol. xii, p. 366.