Page:The history of Witchcraft and demonology.djvu/56

 was originally a native of Zealand, journeyed throughout Flanders preaching his monstrous doctrines everywhere he could find listeners and especially concentrating upon the city of Antwerp. In 1108 and 1109 he appeared at Arras and Cambrai, persuading many evil and ignorant persons to accept his abominable tenets. The tares were thickly sown, and it is terribly significant that some three centuries later, about 1469, there was a fearful epidemic of sorcery throughout the whole district of the Artois, in reference to which the anonymous author—probably an Inquisitor—of a contemporary work entitled Erreurs des Gazariens ou de ceux que l’on prouve chevaucher sur un balai ou un bâton expressly identified such heretics as the Gazariens, who are Cathari, and the Vaudois (Poor Lombards) with warlocks and sorcerers. In 1112 Tanchelin, who had actually visited Rome itself, was upon his return arrested and thrown into prison at Cologne, whence, however, he managed to escape, and accompanied by an apostate priest Everwacher and a Jew Manasses, who had formerly been a blacksmith, at the head of a formidable band of three thousand ruffians, outlaws, cast gamesters, brigands, murderers, beggars and thieves, the parbreak of every slum and stew, he terrorized the whole countryside, the people being afraid, the bishops and secular princes seemingly unable to resist him.

The teaching of Tanchelin was, as might be expected, largely incoherent and illogical, the ravings of a frantic brain, but none the less dangerous and wholly abominable. The Church was, of course, directly attacked and blasphemed. With abuse and foul language, extraordinarily like the language of the so-called Reformers in the sixteenth century, the hierarchy and all ecclesiastical order were repudiated and contemned, priests and religious in particular were to be persecuted and exterminated since the priesthood was a fiction and a snare; the Sacrifice of Holy Mass was a mockery, all Sacraments were void and empty forms, useless for salvation; the churches themselves were to be accounted as brothels and markets of shame. “This very spawn of Satan and black angel of woe declared that the churches, dedicated to God’s worship, were bawdy-houses. That, at Holy Mass there was no Sacrifice at the hands of the priest; the Service of the Altar was filth, not a Sacrament.”