princes could allow to be publicly taught in their dominions. Emperors of all religions, pagan, heretical and Christian, were, from the first, all of one mind in persecuting, banishing, and even putting to death the Manichees. Nevertheless in spite of the severity employed against them, they found means secretly to propagate their doctrines and to increase the number of their disciples in various parts of the world. Some they seduced by the bait of sensual pleasures which actually formed a part of their religion; others were imposed upon by the semblance of austerity which their abstaining from marriage and their severe fasts gave them in the eyes of the uninitiated multitude.

This heresy originally began in Persia, and was carried by the founder himself into many parts of Asia. Not long afterwards it was brought into the West, where it enshared many souls. Even the great St. Augustine was held captive by it for nine or ten years. We find it in Spain also before the end of the fourth century, and it continually re-appears here and there, in various parts both of Europe and Asia, almost in a continued succession. Very early in the eleventh century, there were some of this sect in Orleans, where by order of King Robert they were burnt; so also in Toulouse; a few years later, the Emperor of Germany discovered them in Goslar, a city of Suabia, and he immediately ordered them to be hanged. It is in the beginning of the twelfth century, however, that we are more interested in their history; and at that time they seem to have re-appeared both in the North and South of France, simultaneously and by a preconcerted arrangement.. For this sect was no mere disorderly collection of unruly fanatics, rebelling against the authority of the Church, each one by himself, and only bound to his companions by the sympathy of a common misbelief: on the contrary, they were a compact, organized body, under a pseudo-hierarchy, the very counterpart of that which Christ has established in His Church, with a chief calling himself Pope at its head, and bishops, priests and deacons, in regular subordination, to sow the baneful seed of their heresy wherever there seemed the fairest prospect of an abundant harvest. The irregular lives of the clergy, the simony, and other sius which were so rife in various parts of the Church at

this time seemed to present a most favourable opportunity for the spread of every kind of error, and the Manicheans were astute enough to make the most of such an occasion. Not to speak of Tanquelin, who seduced the people of Liege, Antwerp, and other cities of Flanders by his false teaching during a period of nine or ten years, there was an apostate monk, named Henri, who went out from the South of France, in the garb of a hermit, barefooted, and leading a life seemingly of great austerity, and preached the doctrines of Manicheanism in Mans and other cities. His preaching was everywhere followed by the most lamentable results both to public order and morality. He excited the people against the clergy, and to the commission of acts of bloodshed and violence; their dwellings were plundered and often razed to the ground; and they themselves were stoned or assassinated. Moreover, not only was the grossest libertinism practised in the public assemblies over which this man presided; but he even expressly taught that chastity was no virtue, and the want of it no vice, and he persuaded many of his followers to marry the most abandoned women of the town. The consequences were such as might have been expected; when, however, the Bishop of Mans returned and laboured diligently to instruct his people and to disabuse them of all the false doctrines which Henri had taught, the apostate monk was forced to return to the place from whence he came. There he found his master, Pierre de Bruys, diligently engaged in preaching the same horrible doctrines in Dauphiny, Provence, and Languedoc; and under his direction, he himself proceeded to sow the same seed in Toulouse, Auvergne, and Aquitaine. Pierre de Bruys not only perverted the people by false doctrine, he also, like Henri, stirred them up to acts of violence against the clergy and their churches; he cast down altars, plundered the sacred buildings of their ornaments; imprisoned monks, or obliged them to violate their vows of chastity; "nay oftentimes," says one who was eye-witness of their enormities, "they murder, without discrimination of persons, ranks, or dignities." Another eye-witness tells us that, as he passed through Toulouse, he saw "the ruins of churches which had been

torn down, the remnants of others which had been destroyed by fire, the very foundations dug up, and the wild beasts ranging freely where the dwellings of men had lately been." Pretty doings these for poor harmless Protestants who were so ruthlessly persecuted by the Church, only because "they held opinions different from those of the Romish hierarchy!"

Yet what persecution did these two heresiarchs suffer? What was their history and ultimate fate? Pierre de Bruys went up and down the country preaching for twenty-five years, until one day when he had made a bonfire of altars, crosses, and other holy things, in the public square of the town of St. Gilles, in Languedoc, the people were so indignant that they took the law into their own hands, seized him, and burnt him in another bonfire in the same place. His disciple, Henri, preached for more than forty years; and was at length taken by the people also and delivered by them to the Bishop, who threw him into prison, where he died. The heresy, however, did not die with them; they had not preached forty years for nothing. Evil weeds grow apace; and a few years afterwards we see the fruits of the seed that had been sown by these men, in the bands of armed heretics who devastated the country, pillaging it, and dragging the inhabitants into captivity, violating their wives in their presence, burning their churches, trampling under foot the Holy Eucharist and committing outrages of every kind.

I think I have now said enough to show that the heresy of the Albigenses was no subtle attack upon particular Catholic dogmas, but an open assault on the foundations of all religion and morality; and that their blasphemous errors were only equalled by their cruel and licentious practices. We come now to the main point of our enquiry, namely,What was the actual course of conduct pursued by the Church, that is, by the Popes, towards these "unoffending" heretics? We have seen that they had nothing at all to do with the punishment of the ringleaders in the middle of the twelfth century; that this was simply the act of the people, executing vengeance with their own hands. Let us look now at the official acts of the Popes, in reference to the whole body. It was in the year 1148, that Pope Eugenius III

having been obliged to fly from Rome in consequence of the riots occasioned by the preaching of Arnold of Brescia, came into France, and there learned a more accurate account of the state of the Church in that country than had reached him whilst he was in Italy; and it was in a council held at Rheims at which he was present, that the first Papal decree was published against the Albigenses. Nothing can exceed its moderation. It simply calls upon the feudal lords of Gascony, Provence, and the neighbourhood, which were the parts principally infected with heresy, to fulfil some of the conditions on which they held their lordships, viz:-that they should not shelter or protect heretics; and threatens them with an interdict in case of disobedience. The Count of Toulouse was at this very moment entertaining in his castle the apostate Henri, of whose licentious doctrines we have already spoken; and the Pope by this decree did but remind him, as it were, of what we may call his coronation-oath, and threatened him with a heavy spiritual punishment if he were not more diligent to keep that oath. At the same time, he sent also a number of bishops and other distinguished ecclesiastics to see what could be done towards remedying the evil by continual preaching of the truth. One of these missionaries was St. Bernard, who enjoyed a great reputation not only for eloquence but also for sanctity; he is said, moreover, to have wrought miracles in confirmation of the truth; and it is certain that he succeeded in converting great numbers of the heretics, both in Toulouse, and in the city of Albi, which was their special head-quarters, and from whence they have received their name. Henri, on this occasion, took to flight, and it would seem that even Alfonse, the Count of Toulouse, must have renounced the heresy, for we find him now setting out with the other Catholic princes and nobles for the crusades in the Holy Land, where he died in the next year.

Unfortunately, the death of Alphonse involved the country in long and obstinate quarrels with various princes who claimed the right of succession; at the same time also, the Papacy was engaged, first, in ridding itself of the adherents of Arnold of Brescia, and then in a contest with

a still more formidable enemy, Frederick Barbarossa; so that when St. Bernard, worn out with fatigue, was forced to return to his convent in order to recruit his strength, and two bishops, the most distinguished of those who had been sent to reclaim the heretics, died in the discharge of their most laborious duties, there was no one to reorganize the mission, and it came to an end. Meanwhile, the Albigenses were not idle; they laboured both to recover the ground they had lost and to spread their heresy yet further. Accordingly the next act of the church with reference to these heretics was a decree of a council held by Pope Alexander III. at Montpellier, in 1162, in which, having declared that their numbers and boldness have now reached such a height that the authority of the church is not sufficient to restrain them, he calls upon the civil authorities of the country to support the ecclesiastical, and declares them to be excommunicated if they refuse to do So. This decree was repeated at greater length by the council of Tours, in 1163; it set forth that a dreadful heresy, begun at Toulouse, was spreading like a cancer through all the neighbouring cities, hiding itself like a serpent and seeking to beguile the simple people unawares; it then enjoins all priests and bishops to watch diligently the growth of this evil; it prohibits any person from giving shelter and assistance to those whom they know to belong to this sect; and it recommends also, that people should keep aloof from all such infected persons even in the ordinary relations of life (in buying and selling, for example), "to the end that being deprived of all human consolation, they may the more readily abandon their evil way." Finally, it threatens the disobedient with excommunication; it requires Christian princes to imprison the heretics, to confiscate their goods, to find out their places of meeting, and to prevent such meetings for the future. These measures will probably seem very severe to some of our readers, accustomed as we are in these days to unrestricted intercourse with men of all religious professions, or of no religious profession at all; but no one who has studied the institutions of the age to which they belong, will accuse them of harshness or of injustice. As Protestants at the