Untitled - Shattering Denial

THE INQUISITION 73
Catharism was chiefly a negative heresy; it denied the
doctrines, hierarchy and worship of the Catholic Church,
as well as the essential rights of the State.
These neo-Manicheans denied that the Roman Church
represented the Church of Christ. The Popes were not
the successors of St. Peter, but rather the successors of
Constantine. 1
St. Peter never came to Rome. The
relics which were venerated in the Constantinian basil
ica, were the bones of some one who died in the third
century; they
Apostles. 2
were not relics of the Prince of the
Constantine unfortunately sanctioned this
fraud, by conferring upon the Roman pontiff an immense
domain, together with the prestige that accompanies
temporal authority. 3 How could anyone recognize under
the insignia, the purple mantle, and the crown of the
successors of St. Sylvester, a disciple of Jesus Christ?
Christ had no place where to lay his head, whereas the
Popes lived in a palace ! Christ rebuked worldly dominion,
while the Popes claimed it ! What
had the Roman curia
with its thirst for riches and honors in common with the
gospel of Christ? What were these archbishops, primates,
1 Moneta (a Dominican Inquisitor about 1250), Adversus Catharos et
Valdenses, ed. Ricchini, 1743, p. 409. St. Dominic died in Moneta s bed at
Bologna, Aug. 6, 1231. Cf. Tanon, op. cit., p. 42.
2 Moneta, ibid., p. 410.
3 The Middle Ages believed firmly in the donation of Constantine. It
was, however, questioned by Wetzel, a disciple of Arnold of Brescia in 1152,
in a letter to Frederic Barbarossa, Martene and Durand, Veterum scriptorum
. . . amplissima collectio, Paris, 1724, vol. ii, col. 554-557.