Manichæan heresy, and taught much of the old asceticism. The Cathari
were hunted down and put to death throughout Italy. Arnold of Brescia,
who loudly protested against the possessions of the Church, and
maintained that church revenues should be handed over to the State,
proved himself so extremely distasteful to the clergy that they arrested
him, crucified him and burned his dead body (A.D. 1155). Peter de Bruys,
who objected to infant baptism, and may be called the ancestor of the
Baptists, was burnt A.D. 1130. Many other reformers shared the same
fate, and one large sect must here be noted. Peter Waldus, its founder,
was a merchant of Lyons, who (A.D. 1160) employed a priest to translate
the Gospels for him, together with other portions of the Bible. Studying
these, he resolved to abandon his business and distribute his wealth
among the poor, and, in A.D. 1180, he became a public preacher, and
formed an association to teach the doctrines of the Gospel, as he
conceived them, against the doctrines of the Church. The sect first
assumed only the simple name of "the poor men of Lyons," but soon became
known as the Waldenses, one of the most powerful and most widely spread
sects of the Middle Ages. They were, in fact, the precursors of the
Reformation, and are notable as heretics protesting against the authorty
of Rome because that authority did not commend itself to their reason;
thus they asserted the right of private judgment, and for that assertion
they deserve a niche in the great temple of heretic thought.


CENTURY XIII.


In the far west of Europe paganism still struggled against Christianity,
and from A.D. 1230 to 1280 a long, fierce war was waged against the
Prussians, to confirm them in the Christian faith; the Teutonic knights