Medieval Heresy & the Inquisition

Was it a pure religious passion or a depraved sensual passion that, when the Albigensian Crusade was being preached in Germany, drove women who could not take the cross to run naked through the streets in ecstasy? What was truly evidenced by the practices of the FlagellantsReligious zealots who whipped themselves in public to atone for sin., who for a time gained considerable influence in different parts of Europe? They were simply doing in public what the monk did in seclusion and in the perfect odor of sanctity. The idea of bringing the soul nearer to God by wounding the sinful flesh had the Church’s full sanction. Yet, the Flagellants were eventually declared heretics. Why? First, because it became plain after a time that the motive of some who joined the sect was unholy—not a desire for salvation, but a perverted lust. Second, because both the genuine and false devotees were moved in their strange enthusiasm to build a theory around the efficacy of flagellation, claiming it was the only means to salvation—a sacrament, indeed the essential sacrament.

In yet another way, the unregenerate part of man’s nature might breed heresy. The lust—perhaps not of the flesh so much as of the eye and the "pride of life"—led men to take a delight in pleasure and in the sensuous pagan world that was not entirely holy. Such super-abundant joy in life was apt to produce over-confidence in an individual’s powers, unaided by religion, leading to presumption and disobedience. The phenomenon of such rebelliousness in the later Middle Ages is sometimes forgotten. Yet, the legends of the blossoming pastoral staff and the Holy Grail also pictured the VenusbergA mythical mountain where Venus, the goddess of love, was said to reside. and the garden of Kundry’s flower-maidens. In remembering the figures of the anchorite and the knight-errant, one must not lose sight of the troubadour and the courtesan. Eloquent of the movement of revolt is the famous passage in Aucassin et Nicolette in which Aucassin, threatened with the pains of hell if he persists in his love for the mysterious southern maid, exclaims that in that case, to hell he will go.