Page 276 - Western Civilization A Brief History, Volume I To 1715 9th - Jackson J. Spielvogel

of the abbey’s relics by saying, “There is kept there a thing more precious than gold, . . . the right arm of St. Oswald.... This we have seen with our own eyes and have kissed, and have handled with our own hands. . . . There are kept here also part of his ribs and of the soil on which he fell.”8 The monk went on to list additional relics possessed by the abbey, which were said to include two pieces of Jesus’s swaddling clothes, pieces of Jesus’s manger, and part of the five loaves of bread with which Jesus fed five thousand people. Because the holiness of the saint was considered to be inherent in his relics, these objects were believed to be capable of healing people or producing other miracles.
Voices of Protest and Intolerance
The desire for more personal and deeper religious expe- rience, which characterized the spiritual revival of the High Middle Ages, also led people in directions hostile to the institutional church. From the twelfth century on, heresy—the holding of religious doctrines different from the orthodox teachings of the church as deter- mined by church authorities—became a serious prob- lem for the Catholic Church.
The best-known heresy of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was Catharism (KA-thuh-riz-um). The Cathars (the word Cathar means “pure”) were often called Albi- gensians (al-buh-JEN-see-unz) after the city of Albi, one of their strongholds in southern France. They believed in a dualist system in which good and evil were separate and distinct. Things of the spirit were good because they were created by God, the source of light; things of the world were evil because they were created by Satan, the prince of darkness. Humans, too, were enmeshed in du- alism. Their souls, which were good, were trapped in material bodies, which were evil. According to the Cathars, the Catholic Church, itself a materialistic insti- tution, had nothing to do with God and was essentially evil. There was no need to follow its teachings or recog- nize its authority. The Cathar movement gained valuable support from important nobles in southern France and northern Italy.
The spread of heresy in southern France alarmed the church authorities. Pope Innocent III appealed to the nobles of northern France for a crusade (a military campaign in defense of Christianity) against the here- tics. The crusade against the Albigensians, which began in the summer of 1209 and lasted for almost two de- cades, was a bloody fight. Thousands of heretics (and innocents) were slaughtered, including entire popula- tions of some towns. In Beziers, for example, seven
Expulsion of Albigensian Heretics. In 1209, Pope Innocent III authorized a crusade against the heretical Albigensians. In this medieval illustration, French knights are shown expelling Albigensian heretics from the town of Carcassonne near Albi, an Albigensian stronghold in southern France.
thousand men, women, and children were massacred when they took refuge in the local church.
Southern France was devastated, but since Cathar- ism persisted, the Catholic Church devised a regular method for discovering and dealing with heretics. The Holy Office, as the papal Inquisition was called, was a formal court whose job it was to ferret out and try her- etics. Anyone accused of heresy who refused to confess was considered guilty and was turned over to the secu- lar authorities for execution. To the Christians of the thirteenth century, who believed that there was only one path to salvation, heresy was a crime against God and against humanity, and force was justified to save souls from damnation. The fanaticism and fear unleashed in the struggle against heretics were also used against others, especially the Jews.
PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS The Jews were the only reli- gious minority in medieval Europe that was allowed to practice a non-Christian religion. But the religious en- thusiasm of the High Middle Ages produced an outburst of intolerance against the supposed enemies of Christi- anity. After crusades were launched against the Muslims starting in 1096, Christians took up the search for ene- mies at home, persecuting Jews in France and the
238 Chapter 10 The Rise of Kingdoms and the Growth of Church Power
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