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
slaying thousands in one battle, hanging fifteen hundred after another,
and blinding eighty more. But freebooting also continued. [1301]
The first crusade against heresy having failed, it was left by the
papacy for a number of years to itself; though anti-pope Lucius III in
1184 sought to set up an Inquisition; and in 1195 a papal legate held a
council at Montpellier, seeking to create another crusade. The zeal of
the faithful was mainly absorbed in Palestine; while the nobles at home
were generally at war with each other. Heresy accordingly continued to
flourish, though there was never any suspension of local persecution
outside of Provence, where the heretics were now in a majority,
having more theological schools and scholars than the Church. [1302]
In France in particular, in the early years of the reign of Philip
Augustus (suc. 1180), many paterini were put to death by burning;
[1303] and the clergy at length persuaded the king to expel the Jews,
the work being done almost as cruelly as it was two centuries later
in Spain. In England, where there was thus far little heresy, it
was repressed by Henry II. Some thirty rustics came from Flanders
in 1166, fleeing persecution, and vainly sought to propagate their
creed. Zealous to prove his orthodoxy in the period of his quarrel
with Becket, Henry presided over a council of bishops called by him
at Oxford to discuss the case; and the heretics were condemned to
be scourged, branded in the face, and driven forth--to perish in the
winter wilds. "England was not hospitable to heresy;" and practically
her orthodoxy was "unsullied until the rise of Wiclif." [1304]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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