A.D. 381 heretics, pagans, and the dawn of the monotheistic state ( PDFDrive )

France in the twelfth century and gained strength because of the continued
uncertainty of the Church about how to treat them. In 1198, a vigorous young
pope, Innocent III, launched a more determined response. He equated heretics
with traitors - heresy was no less than treason against the person of Jesus Christ -
and called on secular rulers to support him in what was now as much a political
as a religious campaign. A crusade was launched against the Cathars, ending in
indiscriminate slaughter of innocent and ‘guilty’ alike. Protests against the
bloodshed were met with the bleak rejoinder that God would sort out good from
evil when those massacred reached judgement. At the Fourth Lateran Council,
held in Rome in 1215, it was decreed that there was no possibility of salvation
for anyone who remained outside the Church, and that Church and state should
collaborate in the extermination of heresy. The Council laid the foundations of
an inquisition of suspected heretics, and over the next thirty years its structure
was elaborated. Under the influence of the Dominicans, the inquisitors set about
the burning of those found guilty of heresy - to the intense anger of many cities
(such as Toulouse), which resented the intrusion of the Church into the affairs of
their citizens. 2
The heretics with which the Inquisition was concerned were often illiterate,
vulnerable and thus scarcely aware of the gravity of the charges against them.
Yet by now there was also a new educated elite attuned to the power structure of
the Church and the subtleties of its teachings. Would it be possible for the most
sophisticated minds of the age to teach freely and creatively without offending
the Church? Medieval thought is often presented as scrutinising obscure
elements of Christian belief, but if it can also be seen as a battle between
intelligent and original minds and a naturally conservative institution embedded
in the theology of Augustine, then it becomes more absorbing, not least for the
variety of strategies adopted by the protagonists on either side. While the Church
might execute heretics from the poorer classes, intellectuals who overstepped the
mark were normally ‘only’ excommunicated (although this left them under the
threat of eternal hell fire if they did not recant before their deaths).
It was the most brilliant logician of the twelfth century, Peter Abelard (1079-
1142), who laid down the challenge. The moving story of Abelard’s love affair
with Heloise, which led to her pregnancy, their marriage and then the brutal end
of their physical relationship when her uncle had Abelard castrated, tends to
overshadow his achievements as a philosopher. From an early age, Abelard had
shown enormous intellectual curiosity, and he moved from his native Brittany to
Paris, where he began to teach. In the cathedral schools - of which Notre-Dame