A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern, Volume 1 of 2: Third edition, Revised and Expanded, in two volumesRobertson, J. M. (John Mackinnon)
Religion
A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern, Volume 1 of 2: Third edition, Revised and Expanded, in two volumes
Robertson, J. M. (John Mackinnon)
Free thought -- History
The first Western traces of the imported Paulician heresy are about the
year 1000, [1263] when a rustic of Châlons is heard of as destroying a
cross and a religious picture, and asserting that the prophets are not
wholly to be believed. [1264] From this time forward, the world having
begun to breathe again after the passing of the year 1000 without any
sign of the Day of Judgment, heresy begins to multiply, the chief
movers being "distinguished by a tendency to rationalism." [1265]
In 1010 there is a trace of it in Aquitaine. [1266] In the year
1022 (or, as the date is sometimes put, in 1017) we hear of the
unveiling of a secret society of rationalizing mystics at Orleans,
ten canons of one church being members. [1267] An Italian woman
was said to be the founder, and thirteen were burned alive on their
refusal to recant. According to the records, they denied all miracles,
including the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection; rejected baptism and
the miracle of the Eucharist; took the old "Docetic" view of Jesus,
denying his actual humanity; and affirmed the eternity of matter and
the non-creation of the world. They were also accused, like the first
Christians, of promiscuous nocturnal orgies and of eating sacrificed
infants; but unless such charges are to be held valid in the other
case, they cannot be here. [1268] The stories told of the Manichean
community who lived in the castle of Monforte, near Asti in Lombardy,
in the years 1025-1040, and who at length were likewise burned alive,
are similarly mixed with fable. [1269] On this case it is recorded
that, while the Archbishop of Milan investigated the heresy, the
burning of the victims was the work of the fanatical populace of Milan,
and was done against his will.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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