Page:The history of Witchcraft and demonology.djvu/34

 private measures, no calling in of any ecclesiastical authority, far less an appeal to any punitive tribunal.

In the days of Charlemagne the aged Elipandus, Archbishop of Toledo, taught an offshoot on Nestorian heresy, Adoptionism, a crafty but deadly error, to which he won the slippery dialectician Felix of Urgel. Felix, as a Frankish prelate, was summoned to Aix-la-Chapelle. A synod condemned his doctrine and he recanted, only to retract his words and to reiterate his blasphemies. He was again condemned, and again he recanted. But he proved shifty and tricksome to the last. For after his death Agobar of Lyons found amongst his papers a scroll asserting that of this heresy he was fully persuaded, in spite of any contradictions to which he might hypocritically subscribe. Yet Felix only suffered a short detention at Rome, whilst no measures seem to have been taken against Elipandus, who died in his errors. It was presumably considered that orthodoxy could be sufficiently served and vindicated by the zeal of such great names as Beatus, Abbot of Libana; Etherius, Bishop of Osma; S. Benedict of Aniane; and the glorious Alcuin.

Some forty years later, about the middle of the ninth century, Gothescalch, a monk of Fulda, caused great scandal by obstinately and impudently maintaining that Christ had not died for all mankind, a foretaste of the Calvinistic heresy. He was condemned at the Synods of Mainz in 848, and of Kiersey-sur-Oise in 849, being sentenced to flogging and imprisonment, punishments then common in monasteries for various infractions of the rule. In this case, as particularly flagrant, it was Hinemar, Archbishop of Rheims, a prelate notorious for his severity, who sentenced the culprit to incarceration. But Gothescalch had by his pernicious doctrines been the cause of serious disturbances; and his inflammatory harangues had excited tumults, sedition, and unrest, bringing odium upon the sacred habit. The sentence of the Kiersey Synod ran: “Frater Goteschale. . . quia et ecclesiastica et ciuilia negotia contra propositum et nomen monachi conturbare iura ecclesiastica præsumpsisti, durissimis uerberibus te cagistari et secundum ecclesiasticas regulas ergastulo retrudi, auctoritate episcopali decernimus.” (Brother Gothescalch, . . . because thou hast dared—con-