they fled to the countries under Saracen rule. After a while, they
gradually returned to the Greek empire; but when the Empress Theodora
was regent, during her son's minority, she issued a stern decree against
them. "The decree was severe, but the cruelty with which it was put in
execution, by those who were sent into Armenia for that purpose, was
horrible beyond expression; for these ministers of wrath, after
confiscating the goods of above a hundred thousand of that miserable
people, put their possessors to death in the most barbarous manner, and
made them expire slowly in a variety of the most exquisite tortures" (p.
212).

In addition to the heresies inherited from the previous centuries, three
new ones, important in their issues, arose to divide yet more the
divided indivisible Church. A monk, named Pascasius Radbert, wrote a
treatise (A.D. 831 and 845), in which he maintained that, at the
Eucharist, the substance of the bread and wine became changed, by
consecration, into the body and blood of Christ, and that this body "was
the same body that was born of the Virgin, that suffered upon the cross,
and was raised from the dead" (p. 205). Charles the Bald bade Erigena
and Ratramn (or Bertramn) draw up the true doctrine of the Church, and
the long controversy began which is continued even in the present day.
The second great dispute arose on the question of predestination and
divine grace. Godeschalcus, an eminent Saxon monk, returning from Rome
in A.D. 847, resided for a space in Verona, where he spoke much on
predestination, affirming that God had, from all eternity, predestined
some to heaven and others to hell. He was condemned at a council held in
Mayence, A.D. 848, and in the following year, at another council, he was
again condemned, and was flogged until he burned, with his own hand, the
apology for his opinions he had presented at Mayence. The third great
controversy regarded the manner of Christ's birth, and monks furiously