Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/493

 THE CHURCH UNDER INNOCENT III 443 Instead of following them, one should turn for salvation to the " Perfected " of the Cathari, who have been ordained by jor eat meat, cheese, and eggs. Instead of the elaborate imass, the Cathari had the simple blessing of bread per- I formed daily at table. The Perfected were looked upon as very holy men by the common people, who did not usually
 * laying-on of hands and have promised never to lie or swear,
 * receive the consolamentum, or laying-on of hands, until just

before death. The Cathari were not afraid to die for their , faith, — the orthodox whispered that suicide was frequent i among the heretics, — and it has been said that "if the i blood of the martyrs were really the seed of the Church, j Manichseism would now be the dominant religion of Europe." Another prominent heretical sect in southern France ' were the Waldensians, some of whom still survive. They 1 were followers of Peter Waldo, a rich merchant The Wal- j of Lyons who abandoned his business to lead a densians I life ofapostolic poverty and who went about preaching to the people. At first sight there may seem to be nothing i heretical in this, but Waldo was not an ordained priest. When his disciples began to criticize the lives of the bishops and priests who did not adopt a life of poverty, and to say that laymen and women could preach, and that a prayer to God made in a barn was as likely to be heard as one made in a cathedral, and that the masses said for the dead did them no good, and when they began to refuse to pay tithes, the Church began to condemn them as heretics. Such per- secution only led them to oppose the clergy the more, and some of them were well on the road to the views of the later Protestants, while others adopted some of the teachings of the Cathari. In most parts of Europe the people themselves would hound down a heretic as readily as mobs in some parts of this country will lynch a negro who assaults a Medieval white woman. The people were afraid that their toward 6 crops would fail, or that a pestilence would be heresy sent upon them by divine wrath, if they tolerated heretics