Untitled - Shattering Denial

52
THE INQUISITION
and were pardoned, the other seven perished at the
stake. 1
Philip, Count of Flanders, was particularly cruel in
prosecuting heretics. 2 He had an able auxiliary also in
the Archbishop of Reims, Guillaume aux Blanches-Mains.
The chronicle of Anchin tells us that they sent to the stake
a great many nobles and people, clerics, knights, peasants,
young girls, married women, and widows, whose property
they
confiscated and shared between them. 3
This oc
curred in 1 183. Some years before, Archbishop Guillaume
and his council had sent two heretical women to the
stake. 4
Hugh, Bishop of Auxerre (1183-1206), prosecuted the
neo-Manicheans with equal severity; he confiscated the
1 "Adducti sunt in medium maximae multitudinis quae totum claustrum
occupabat, stante Guichardo Lugdunensi archiepiscopo et Bernardo Nivernensium
episcopo, magistro quoque Galterio Landunensi episcopo, cum
Guillelmo Vizeliacensi abbate . . . Abbas dixit omnibus qui aderant: Quid
ergo, fratres, vobis videtur faciendum de his qui adhuc in sua perseverant
obstinatione ? Responderunt omnes: Comburantur! comburantur!" etc.
Hugo Pictav., Historia Vezdiacensis monasterii, lib. iv, ad finem, Hist,
des Gaules, vol. xii, pp. 343-344.
2 "Illo in tempore ubique exquirebantur et perimebantur (haeretici), sed
maxime a Philippo comite Flandrensium, qui justa crudelitate eos immiseri-
corditer puniebat." Raoul de Coggeshall, in Rerum Britann. medii cevi
Scriptores, ed. Stevenson, p. 122.
3 "Tune decretalis sententia ab archiepiscopo et comite prefixa est ut
deprehensi incendio traderentur, substantial vero eorum sacerdoti et principi
resign are ntur." Sigeberti Continuatio Aquicinctina, ad. ann. 1183, in the
Man. Germ. SS., vol. vi, p. 421.
*"Quas, cum salutaribus monitis nulla ratione acquievissent . . . , communi
concilio decretum est ut flammis concremarentur." Raoul de Cogges-
hall, loc. cit.; Hist, des Gaules, vol. xviii, p. 92.