Heresy: Synopses of some documents 1
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Sunday, 02 November 2003
Abstract
Some heretical sources in summary.
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.
