Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/198

 182 POLITICAL HERESY.— THE CHURCH. ing half, and had solemnly said, " Even as this body of Christ is divided, so let him be divided from the kingdom of Christ who shall attempt to violate our compact ;" but the stigma of heresy was unendurable, and in 1112 he presided over the Council of Lateran, which pronounced void his oath and his bulls. AVhen Henry complained that he had violated his oath, he coolly replied that he had promised not to excommunicate Henry, but not that he should not be excommunicated by others. If Paschal was not forced literally to abjure his heresy he did so constructively, and the principle was established that even a pope could not abandon a claim of which the denial had been pronounced heretical. When, not long afterwards, the German prelates were required at their consecration to abjure ail heresy, and especially the Henrician, the allusion was not to the errors of Henry of Lausanne, but to those of the emperor who had sought to limit the encroachments of the Holy See on the temporal power.* As heresy, rightly so called, waxed and grew more and more threatening, and the struggle for its suppression increased in bit- terness and took an organized shape under a formidable body of legislation, and as the application of the theory of indulgences gave to the Church an armed militia ready for mobilization without cost whenever it chose to proclaim danger to the faith, the tempta- tion to invoke the fanaticism of Christendom for the defence or extension of its temporal interests inevitably increased in strength. In so far as such a resort can be justified, the Albigensian cru- sades were justified by a real antagonism of faith which fore- boded a division of Christianity, and their success irresistibly led to the application of the same means to cases in which there was not the semblance of a similar excuse. Of these one of the earli- est, as well as one of the most typical, was that of the Stedingers. The Stedingers were a mixed race who had colonized on the lower Weser the lands which their industry won from the over- flow of river and sea, their territory extending southward to the neighborhood of Bremen. A rough and semi-barbarous folk, no doubt — hardy herdsmen and fishermen, with perhaps an occasional Ampl. Coll. I. 587-94).— -Chron. Cassinens. iv. 42, 44. (Cf. Martene Ampl. Coll. I. 627.)— Hartzheim III. 258-65.— Martene Ampl. Coll. I. 659.
 * Concil. Later.m ann. 1102 (Harduin. VI. n. 1861-2).— Epist, Sigebert. (Mart.