eternal resurrection. There were the nobility, the
clergy, and the soldiers, who delighted in carnal excesses o f every sort, and the serfs who went on breeding because it was their only outlet and because the nobles
encouraged increases in the number o f tenants. T h e
last group, crucial to this period, were the heretics.
In the 12th century various groups, viewing the abominations o f Christianity with increasing horror, began to voice openly and even loudly their skepticism. These
sects played a prominent role in shaping the Church’s
idea o f the Devil.
T h e Waldenses, Manicheans, and Cathari were the
principal heretical sects. It is said that “the Waldenses
were burnt for the practices for which the Franciscans
were later canonized. ” 4 T heir crime was to expose and
to mock the clergy as frauds. For their piety they
suffered the fate o f all heretics, which was burning.
More influential and more dangerous were the Manicheans, who traced their origins to the Persian Mani who had been crucified in a . d. 276. T h e Manicheans
worshiped one God, who incorporated both good and
evil, the ancient Zoroastrian idea. T h e Cathari, who
were equally maligned by the Christians, also worshiped
the dual principle:
. . . the chief outstanding quality of the Cathari was
their piety and charity. They were divided into two
sections: the ordinary lay believers and the Perfecti,
who believed in complete abstinence and even the
logical end of all asceticism — the Endura —a passionate
disavowal of physical humanity which led them to
starvation and even apparently to mass suicide. They
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adopted most of the Christian teaching and dogma of
the New Testament, mixed with Gnostic ritual, using
asceticism as an end to visions and other-consciousness.
They were so loyal to their beliefs that a John of Toulouse was able to plead before his judges in 1230 ...
“Lords: hear me. I am no heretic; for I have a wife and
lie with her, and have children; and I eat flesh and lie
and swear, and am a faithful Christian. ” Many of them
seem, indeed, to have lived with the barren piety of
the saints. They were accordingly accused of sexual
orgies and sacrilege, and burned, and scourged, and
harried. Nevertheless the heresy flourished, and
Cathari were able to hold conferences on equal terms
with orthodox bishops. 5
The Holy Inquisition, in its infancy, exterminated the
Cathari, tried to exterminate the Jews, and then went
on to exterminate the Knights Templars, the Christian
organization of knighthood and conquest which had
become too powerful and wealthy. It had become independent of clergy and kings, and had thereby incurred the wrath of both. With these experiences under its expanding belt, the Inquisition in the 15th century
