Abstract

© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Sunday, 02 November 2003

Anna Comnena on the Bogomiles

Anna Comnena (1083-1145 AD), the Byzantine historian and daughter of Alexius I Comnenius, Byzantine Emperor (1081-1118 AD) wrote on the Bogomile leader Basil, about 1110 AD.

Two very evil and worthless doctrines, known in former times, coalesced in the Bogomils—the impiety of the Manichaeans, or the Paulician heresy, and the shamelessness of the Massalians. A Bogomil looks gloomy, and is covered up to the nose, and walks with a stoop, muttering, but within he is an uncontrollable wolf.

The fame of the Bogomils had spread everywhere. Bogomils brought to the palace all proclaimed Basil as the teacher and chief representative of the Bogomilian heresy. Diblatius would not confess when questioned, and was kept in prison subjected to torture, whereupon he informed against this Basil, and the disciples he had chosen. Satanael's arch-satrap, Basil, was brought to light, in monk's habit, with a withered countenance, clean shaven and tall of stature. Basil was wily, having twelve disciples whom he called apostles, and dragging about with him some wretched, thoroughly bad women of loose habits, disseminating his wickedness everywhere.

The Emperor and his brother pretended they wanted to become disciples. He pretended to value all the words he spoke as if they came from a divine voice and to defer to him in all things, provided only that the villain Basil would effect his soul's salvation. Finally, Basil spewed out the dogmas of his heresy. A hidden secretary committed his words to writing. That man, stricken of God, did not shun any abominable dogma, but even despised our theology and misrepresented all our ecclesiastical administration. He called our sacred churches the temples of devils, and our consecration of the body and blood of our one and greatest High Priest and Victim he considered and condemned as worthless.

And what followed? The execrable doctrines were read out, and proof was impossible to attack. And the defendant did not deny anything, but immediately bared his head professed himself willing to undergo fire, scourging and a thousand deaths. For these erring Bogomils believe that they can bear any suffering without feeling pain, as the angels will pluck them out of the fire. And although all reproached him for his impiety, he remained the same Basil, an inflexible and very brave Bogomil. And although he was threatened with burning and other tortures he clung fast to his demon and embraced his Satanael. After he was consigned to prison the Emperor frequently sent for him and frequently exhorted him to forswear his impiety, but all the Emperor's exhortations left him unchanged. Stones were thrown at his cell by unseen hands, probably a burst of anger of Satanael's attendant demons who were enraged and annoyed because he had betrayed their secrets to the Emperor…

Caesarius of Heisterbach on the Albigensians

Caesarius of Heisterbach, in Dialogue on Miracles, has a novice asking questions of a monk, and receiving his answers. Of the heresy of the Albigenses, he says they follow Manichaeus in believing that there are two sources of life, a good God and a wicked, the devil, and they say that the wicked God created all bodies and the good God all souls. If they received Moses and the prophets, there would be no heretics. They deny the ressurrection of the body; they mock at any benefit coming to the dead from the living; they say that there is no profit in going to church, or in praying there; and in these things they are worse than Jews or Pagans, who believe them all. They have repudiated baptism, and blaspheme the sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ.

Why do they endure such severe persecutions from the faithful, if they expect no recompense for them in the future? They look forward to the glory of the spirit, but only after enduring reveral reincarnations. He explained that the spirit went according to its merit. If it has lived a good life, and won this reward from God, it will leaves that body at death and later enter that of a king or some other illustrius person finding happiness. If it has lived ill, it will enter the body of someone poor and wretched, where it will find suffering. Albigenses believed that the soul passed through different bodies, even those of animals and reptiles.

In a short time, it had infected more than a thousand towns. If the errors of the Albigenses had not been cut back by the swords of the faithful, it would have corrupted the whole of Europe. The preacher and leader of the crusades against them in France and Germany was Arnold, abbot of Citeaux, later bishop of Narbonne. Caesarius claimed that the atrocity of Beziers was provoked by the Cathars defiling “the book of the sacred gospel”. Christ, “the author of the gospel”, avenged the insult! His followers, burning with zeal for the faith, gained possession of the city.

From the admissions of some of them, they discovered Catholics mingled with the heretics, and asked the abbot, “Sir, what shall we do, for we cannot distinguish between the faithful and the heretics”. The abbot, afraid that many, in fear of death, would pretend to be Catholics, and after their departure, would return to their heresy, is said to have replied, “Kill them all for the Lord knoweth them that are His” (2 Tim 2:19), and so countless number in that town were slain.

By Divine favour, they possessed another large town, near Toulouse, and found four hundred and fifty, doubtless Perfects, who would not renounce their Cathar faith. Of these, four hundred were burnt at the stake, and the others hanged on the gallows. The same thing took place in other cities and forts. When the people of Toulouse were brought into the same straits, they promised all satisfaction, but not honestly as was afterwards clear, for they continued to fight the Catholics even when De Montfort had taken their property for the Lateran Council by right of war.

Raynaldus on the Albigenses

Much the beliefs of the Cathars are related by Catholic opponents. Raynaldus tells us in Annales, an early thirtheenth century chronicle, that the heretics believed in two creators, one of invisible things, the benevolent God, and another of visible things, the malevolent God. The New Testament gives the message of the benevolent God, and the Old Testament that of the malevolent God. The latter is mainly rejected altogether, except those parts referred to in the New Testament. Since the malevolent god said, “In the day that ye eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil ye shall die,” but they did not die that day, he was telling lies. Moreover the malevolent god showed his malevolence to humans by homicide, killing them frequently, cruelly and in large numbers. He destroyed the world and all its people in the Flood, burned up Sodom and Gomorrah, and drowned Pharaoh and the Egyptian army in the sea. All the patriarchs were damned, and even John the Baptist, who only appears in the New Testament was one of the greater demons because he was Elijah reincarnated. The Christ born in the world in Bethlehem, and crucified in Jerusalem, was bad, and Mary Magdalene was his concubine, the woman taken in adultery. The good Christ was a pure spirit.

Almost all the Church of Rome was a den of thieves, the harlot of the Apocalypse. Sacraments were worthles so that the water of holy Baptism was no better than river water, and the Host of the Mass was common bread. Confirmation, Confession and Matrimony were frivolous, and that no one could be saved if they begat children. Denying also the Resurrection of the flesh, they said souls are those of angelic spirits who, being cast down from heaven by the apostacy of pride, left their glorified bodies in the air, and these souls, after successively inhabiting seven bodies on earth, fulfilled their penance, and returned to those deserted bodies.

Some of the heretics were called “perfect” or “good men”, others “believers”. The perfect wore a black dress, pretended to be chaste, pretended to be honest when they told lies (chiefly respecting God), abhorred flesh, eggs and cheese as food. They said also that they ought not on any account to swear. Most of this is transparent denigration.

The believers hoped to be saved in their faith, being one with the Perfects in belief and unbelief, but led a different sort of life, given to usury, rapine, homicide, lust, perjury and every vice. Here the critic says the reason for this was that they believed that they would be saved, if only, on the point of death, they said a Pater noster, and received imposition of hands from the ranks of Deacons and Bishops of the Perfects. Without this rite believers thought they could not be saved. Otherwise, any dying man, however wicked, so long as he could say a Pater noster, was saved, and immediately took wing to heaven. This is the Cathar Consolamentum which the Catholics thought such a good idea they adopted it themselves in the form of the Extreme Unction.

Traditio. Immersion in the Parfait Community

From the Lyons Ritual.

[Elder: …] you must realize that when you are before the Church of God you are before the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, as the scriptures teach. For Christ said in the Gospel according to Saint Matthew:

Wheresoever two or three are gathered together in my name there I am in the midst of them.

And in the Holy Gospel according to Saint John he said:

If a man love me he will keep my words, and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him and make our abode with him.

And Saint Paul says in the first letter to the Corinthians:

Ye are the Temple of the Living God, as God hath said by Isaiah, his prophet, I dwell in them and walk in them, and I will be their God and they shall be My people. Wherefore come out from among them and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing, and I will receive you, and will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be My sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.

And in another place he says:

Seek ye the proof of Christ Who speaketh in me.

And in the First Epistle to Timothy he says:

These things write I unto thee, hoping to come unto thee shortly, but if I tarry long, that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the House of God, which is the Church of the Living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.

And he said also to the Hebrews:

But Christ is a Son over His own house, Whose house we are.

That the Spirit of God is with the followers of Jesus Christ, Christ has shown thus in the Gospel according to Saint John:

If ye love me, keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you forever, even the Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him. But ye know Him, for He dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. I will not leave you comfortless, I will come to you.

And in the Holy Gospel according to Saint Matthew He said:

Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.

And Saint Paul said in the first epistle to the Corinthians:

Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the Temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.

Christ shows it thus in the Holy Gospel according to Saint Matthew:

For it is not ye that speak but the Spirit of your Father that speaketh in you.

And Saint John says in his epistle:

By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, for He has given us His Spirit.

And Saint Paul said to the Galatians:

Because ye are sons God hath sent forth the spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying Father! Father!

Wherefore be it understood that your presentation made before the sons of Jesus Christ confirms the faith and teaching of the Church of God as the Holy Scriptures tell us. For in former times the people of God seperated themselves from the Lord their God. And they abandoned the will and guidance of their Heavenly Father through the deceptions of the wicked spirits and by submission to their will. And for these reasons, and many others, we are certain that the Heavenly Father would have pity on His people and receive them again in peace and concord by the coming of His Son, Jesus Christ, and now is the time. For you are here before the disciples of Jesus Christ in the place where Father, Son and Holy Ghost have their spiritual abode as is shown above, to receive that Holy Prayer which the Lord Jesus gave to His disciples, so that your prayers might be granted by our Heavenly Father. Therefore must you learn that if you would receive this Holy Prayer you must repent your sins and forgive all men. For Our Lord Jesus Christ says

If ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Heavenly Father, forgive your trespasses.

Hence it is meet and right that you be resolved in your heart to keep this Holy Prayer all your life according to the custom of the Church of God, in purity and truth, and in all other virtues which God would bestow upon you. Wherefore we pray the good Lord who bestowed upon the disciples of Jesus Christ the virtue to receive this Holy Prayer steadfastly that He may grant to you also the grace to receive it steadfastly, in His honour and for your salvation.

The Elder then says the Lord`s Prayer and the postulant follow him phrase by phrase after which the Elder will say:

We deliver you this Holy Prayer that you may receive it of us and of God and of the Church, that you may have the power to say it all your life, day and night, alone or in company, and that you must never eat or drink without first saying it. If you omit to do so you must do penance.

Postulant:

I receive it of you and of the Church

Then he turns and give thanks and make his melioramentum (bowing at the feet of the Elder, Moslem style). Then the Elder asks the postulant:

My brother, do you desire to give yourself to our faith?

The postulant being asked three times, and answering “yes” on all, makes a bow and advances one step between each, “Bless me”, to which the Elder replies, “God bless and keep you”. At the third time bowing thus the postulant adds:

Lord, pray to God for me ,a sinner, that He will lead me to the good end

The Elder replies:

God bless you and make you a good Christian and bring you to the good end.

Elder:

Do you give yourself to God and the Gospel?

Postulant:

Yes

Elder:

Do you promise that henceforth you will eat neither meat nor eggs, nor cheese, nor fat, and that you live only from water and wood (vegetables and fish), that you will not lie, that you will not swear, that you will not kill, that you will not abandon your body to any form of luxury, that you will never go alone when it is possible to have a companion, that you will never sleep without breeches and shirt and that you will never abandon your faith for fear of water, fire or any other manner of death?

Postulant:

Yes.

[Elder: …] you wish to receive the spritual baptism whereby the Holy Spirit is given in the Church of God with the Holy Prayer by the laying on of hands of the Good Men. Of this Baptism Our Lord Jesus Christ said in the Holy Gospel according to Saint Matthew:

Go ye and teach all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you, and lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.

And in the Gospel of Saint Mark he said:

Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned.

And in the Gospel fo Saint John He said to Nicodemus:

Verily, verily I say unto thee, except a man be born of water and the spirit he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God.

And John the Baptist spoke of this baptism when he said:

I indeed baptize you with water, but one mightier than I cometh, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to loosen, he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.

This gift of the Holy Spirit by the laying on of hands has been instituted by Jesus Christ as Saint Luke tells, and he said that his friends would confer it as Saint Mark says:

They shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover.

And Ananias conferred this Baptism on Saint Paul when he was converted. For Saint Luke says thus in the Acts of the Apostles:

Now when the Apostles which were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God they sent unto them Peter and John, who when they were come down, prayed for them that they might receive of the Holy Spirit, for as yet He was fallen upon none of them.

Then they laid their hands on them and they received the Holy Spirit. This Holy Baptism by which the Holy Spirit is given the Church of God has kept from the Apostles until now, and it has come from the Good Men to the Good Men until now and shall do till the end of the world And you must understand that power is given to the Church of God to bind and to loose, to forgive sins and to retain them, as Christ said in the Gospel of Saint John:

As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you. And when he had said this he breathed on them and saith unto them, Receive Ye the Holy Ghost, whatsoever sins ye remit they are remitted unto them, and whatsoever sins ye regain, they are regained.

And in the Gospel of Saint Matthew he said to Simon Peter:

I say unto thee that thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

And again:

If two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in Heaven. For wheresoever two or three are gathered in my name there am I in the midst of them.

And in another place he said:

Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils.

And in the Gospel of Saint John he said:

He that believeth on me, the works that I do he shall do also.

And in the Gospel of Saint Mark he said:

These signs shall follow them that believe, in my name shall they cast out devils, they shall speak with new tongues, they shall take up serpents, and if they drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt them, they shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover.

And in the Gospel of Saint Luke he said:

Behold I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy and nothing shall by any means hurt you.

And if you wish to receive this power you must keep all the commandments of Christ and the New Testament according to your ability. And know that He has commanded that man shall not commit adultery or murder or lie, that he must not swear any oath, that he shall not seize or rob, nor do to others what he would not have done to himself, that man must forgive whoever wrongs him and love his enemies, pray for his detractors and accusers and bless them. And if anyone strike him on one cheek, turn to him the other also, and if anyone takes away his cloak, to leave him his coat also. And that he should neither judge nor condemn, and many other commandments which the Lord made for His Church. Also you must hate this world and its works and the things of the world, for Saint John says in his epistle:

O my beloved, love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world passeth away and the lust thereof, but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.

And Christ said unto the Gentiles:

The world cannot hate you, but me it hates because I bear witness of it that its works are evil.

And in the Book of Solomon, it is written:

I have seen all the works that are done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and vexation of Spirit.

And Jude the brother of James said for our instruction in his Epistle:

Hate the solid garment of flesh.

And by these witnesses and any others you must keep the commandments of God and hate the world. And if you continue well to the end, we have the hope that your soul shall have life eternal.

And the Credent shall say:

I have this will, pray to God for me that He will give me His power.

Witness:

Parcite Nobis. Good Christians, we pray you by the love of God that you grant this blessing, which God had given you, to our friend here present.

Credent, after making his melioramentum:

Parcite Nobis. For all the sins I have ver done in thought, word and deed. I ask pardon of God, of the Church, and of you all.

Assembly of Cathars and Witnesses:

By God and by us and by the Church, may your sins be forgiven and we pray God to forgive you them.

Adoremus, Patrem, et Filium et Spiritum Sanctam.
Adoremus, Patrem, et Filium et Spiritum Sanctam.
Adoremus, Patrem, et Filium et Spiritum Sanctam.

The Book of John the Evangelist

The book of John the Evangelist might be the John's gospel that the Cathars were said to have particularly revered. M R James gives a version derived from the Archives of the Inquisition at Carcassonne, having this annotation in Latin: “This is the secret book of the heretics of Concoreze, brought from Bulgaria by their bishop Nazarius, full of errors.” James notes that “in its Latin dress the book can hardly be older than the twelfth century. The original might have been of the sixth or seventh.”

The book is related in the first person by John, the so-called beloved disciple. He says he asked “our Lord Jesus Christ” while he lay on his breast at the last supper various questions which Christ answered candidly. Satan descended into the lower levels of the cosmos and decided to take them over, which he did by fiat “to be like unto the Most High”. He declared:

All these things are mine: if ye will hearken unto me, I will set my seat in the clouds and be like the Most High, and I will take the waters from this upper firmament and gather together the other places of the sea, and thereafter there shall be no water upon the face of all the earth, and I will reign with you world without end.

Satan then took the role of the Demiurgos and made the lower realms as they are now, making the angels who had followed him his ministers. He made man in his likeness, and commanded an angel of the third heaven to enter into the body of clay, and similarly made woman infused with a second level angel. The pair he placed in paradise, forbidding them to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, but the Devil in the form of a serpent seduced them.

John asked of the idea that God had made paradise, but Christ said foolish men said it in their deceitfulness. God only made things out of the Holy Spirit. John asked how a man in the flesh can attain spirituality. Christ answered that those angels that had fallen lusted after flesh and so were given a fleshly body, but were nevertheless still born of the spirit. Satan had been granted seven ages to reign, so each angel condemned to the flesh had seven lifetimes to escape from it. But he had deliberately confused men by sending Enoch with seventy books of false teaching like sacrifice, and had the sovereignty over men. He said to them:

Behold that I am your god and beside me is none other god.

The true God had sent Christ into the world to make known unto men the evil device of the devil. God sent an angel before Christ, by name Mary, to receive him. He entered by the ear and came forth by the ear. Elijah was sent by Satan as John the Baptist to destroy the Christ, who baptized by the Holy Ghost, and told he would recognize him by a dove. Here Christ explains to John the difference between baptism by water and baptism “unto forgiveness of sins”.

By the baptism of water can no man see the kingdom of heaven: for I am the bread of life that came down from the seventh heaven and they that eat my flesh and drink my blood, they shall be called the sons of God.

John asked the Lord what “to eat my flesh and drink my blood” meant, but the answer is missing and so is the next question. Cathars had no Eucharist it seems and so the answer must have been mystical. The answer to the missing question is the Lord's prayer which was the way to get a hearing from God, but did not work for fallen angels. John asked the Lord: How do all men receive the baptism of John, but thine not at all? And the Lord answered: Because their deeds are evil and they come not unto the light.

The disciples of John marry and are given in marriage; but my disciples neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven. But I said: If, then, it be sin to have to do with a woman, it is not good to marry. And the Lord said unto me: Not every one can receive this saying (cf Mt 29:11-12).

The last question and answer was about the final judgement, and the reply was fairly standard belief, except that those who sought gain in the wicked world needed to be judged, while the righteous were commended for their patience. In reward for their“ good works” they enjoyed glory in a kingdom for which there shall be no end for ever and ever, while the unrighteous suffered anguish in the everlasting fire.

M R James thinks the account of the Last Judgement is too orthodox and conventional to square with the rest of the book. He thinks it has been inserted from another source. It does not tie in with the Cathar idea, featured by contemporary critics, that there is no punishment outside the world we live in, which is Hell itself. Unfortunately, this is the longest answer in the book, and such a serious adulteration has to cast doubt on much of the rest. It looks like a hybrid.

The Apparelamentum. General Confession Liturgy

From the Lyons Ritual. This is scarcely Cathar at all.

We have come before God and before you and before the ordinances of the Holy Church that we may receive pardon and penance for all our sins in thought, word and deed from our birth until now, and we ask of God mercy, and of you that you pray for us to the Holy Father of Mercy that He forgive us.

Let us worship God and declare all our sins and numerous offences in the sight of the Father, the Son and the honoured Holy Spirit, of the honoured Holy Gospels and the honoured Holy Apostles, by prayer and faith and by the salvation of all the upright and glorious Christians and blessed ancestors asleep and here present. For their sake, we ask you, Holy Lord, to pardon all our sins.
Benedicte. Parcite Nobis. Amen.

For numerous are the sins by which we daily offend God, night and day, in thought, in word and deed, wittingly and unwittingly, and especially by the desires the evil spirits bring to us in the flesh which clothes us.
Benedicte. Parcite Nobis. Amen.

Whereas, we are thought by God's Holy Word as well as by the Holy Apostles and the preaching of our spiritual brothers to reject all fleshly desire, and all uncleanness, and to do the will of God by doing good, we, unworthy servants that we are, not only do not do the will of God as we should, but more often give way to desires of the flesh and the cares of the world, to such an extent that we wound our spirits.
Benedicte. Parcite Nobis. Amen.

We go with those who are of the world, mixing with them, talking and eating with them, and sinning in many things so that we wound our brothers and our sisters.
Benedicte. Parcite Nobis. Amen.

By our tongues, we fall into idle words, vain talk, mockery and malice, detraction of our brothers and sisters whom we are not worthy to judge nor to condemn their faults. Among Christians we are sinners.
Benedicte. Parcite Nobis. Amen.

The penance which we received we have not observed as we ought to have done, neither the fasting nor the prayer. We have wasted our days and hours. While we are saying the Holy Prayer our senses are diverted to carnal desires and worldly cares, so that, at this moment, we hardly know what we can offer to the Father of the Just.
Benedicte. Parcite Nobis. Amen.

The Errors of the Waldenses

Reinerius Saccho, Of the Sects of Modern Heretics, listed the errors of the Waldenses. The enumerated list of the errors, given by Sacchoni, is:

1. They say that the Romish Church, is not the Church of Jesus Christ. It apostatized under Sylvester, when the holy was poisoned,
2. they say they are the church of Christ, because they observe both in word, and deed, the doctrine of Christ, of the gospel, and of the apostles,
3. they are the Church of Jesus Christ,
4. all vices and sins are in the church, and that they alone live righteously,
5. scarcely anyone in the church, but themselves, preserves the evangelical doctrine,
6. they are the true poor in spirit, and suffer persecution for righteousness and faith,
7. the Church of Rome is the Harlot in the Apocalypse, on account of its superfluous decoration which the Eastern Church does not regard,
8. they despise all the statutes of the Church, because they are heavy and numerous,
9. the Pope is the head of all errors,
10. the Pope and all bishops, are homicides on account of wars,
11. the prelates are scribes, and the monks, Pharisees,
12. we are not to obey prelates, but only God,
13. no one is greater than another in the church:

    All ye are brethren (Mt 23:8),

14. no one ought to bow the knee before a priest.

    See thou do it not. (Rev 19:10; 22:9, the Angel says to John)

15. tithes are not to be given, because first fruits were not given to the church,
16. the clergy ought not to have possessions,

    The priests and all the tribe of Levi, shall not have part and inheritance with the people of Israel, because they eat the sacrifices, and they shall receive nothing else. (Dt 18:1-2)

17. the clergy, and monks, ought not to have prebends,
18. the bishops and abbots ought not to have royal rights,
19. the land, and the people, are not to be divided into parts,
20. it is a bad thing to found and endow churches and monasteries,
21. wills are not to be made in favour of churches,
22. no one ought to be a tenant of the church,
23. no one is to be forced into belief.
24. They condemn all the clergy for idleness, saying that they ought to work with their hands as the apostles did,
25. they reprobate titles of dignity such as Pope, bishops,
26. they make no account of all ecclesiastical offices,
27. they care nothing for ecclesiastical privileges,
28. they despise the immunity of the Church and of ecclesiastical persons and things,
29. they condemn councils, synods, and assemblies,
30. they say that all parochial rights are invention,
31. they say that monastic rules are the traditions of the Pharisees.
32. They condemn all the sacraments of the Church. As to baptism, they say that the catechism is nothing,
33. and that the ablution which is given to infants profits nothing…
34. they condemn the sacrament of marriage, saying that married persons sin mortally if they come together without the hope of offspring,
35. they disregard compaternity,
36. they despise the degrees of affinity, carnal and spiritual, and the impediments of orders, and of public decency, and of ecclesiastical prohibition,
37. they say that a woman after child-bearing does not require benediction, or introduction,
38. they say that the church has erred in prohibiting the marriage of the clergy, while even those of the east marry,
39. they say that the continent do not sin in kisses and embraces.
40. The sacrament of unction, they reprobate, because it is only given to the rich, and because several priests are required for it,
41. they say that the sacrament of orders is nothing,
42. they say that every good layman is a priest, as the apostles were laymen,
43. that the prayer of an evil priest does not profit,
44. they deride the clerical tonsure,
45. that Latin prayer does not profit the vulgar,
46. they make it a matter of ridicule that illegitimate persons and wicked sinners are raised to eminence in the church,
47. they say that every layman, and even woman ought to preach:

    I would that ye spake in tongues, that the church might receive edification (1 Cor 14:5),

48. and, whatever is preached which cannot be proved by the text of scripture they consider as fabulous…
49. they say that the doctrine of Christ and the apostles is sufficient for salvation without the statutes of the church,
50. that the tradition of the church is the tradition of the Pharisees,
51. that there is more made of the transgression of a human tradition than of a divine law.

    Why do ye transgress the commands of God by reason of your traditions? (Mt 15:3)

52. they reject the mystical sense in the holy Scriptures, principally as it regards the sayings and doings delivered in the Church by tradition; as that the cock upon the steeple signifies a doctor.

Further Reading

• More on the Millennium, when Christ failed to return, and notions of heresy began to take hold in the West
• More on heretical beliefs
• More on the persecution of heretics
• More on the Inquisition

Skeptical Resources—Internet infidels | Jesus Never Existed | Steven Carr’s Website | Christianism | Early Christian Writings | God is Imaginary | “Religion Detoxification” | Our Judaio-Christian Heritage | Archaeoastronomy | No Deity | No Beliefs | Evil Bible | Bible God | ex-Christians | Jesus Police | Islamic Faith Freedom | Atheist Experience | American Atheists | Jovial Atheist | Askwhy! books
Other Resources—Early Christian Docs | Resources for Study | Traditional Bible-History | Traditional Bible World History | Traditional Bible History | about.com biblical history | Apologetics web sites | Advent Ch Fathers | Orion center links | Wikipedia | Traditional Jewish History