which involved not only the condemnation of all backsliding on the part of the clergy from the strictest and most rigid interpretation of the Christ-like life, but also—as the result of this—the rejection of the doctrinal basis of the peculiar privileges of the clergy, namely the conception of the mediatorial character of the priesthood. The Arnoldist ‘Poor Men’; the Petrobrusians, insisting on the sole efficacy of the individual’s own faith, unaided by churches and sacraments; the Henricians in their ascetic denunciation of clerical worldliness and rejection of the sacraments; the Poor Men of Lyons, adopting the rule of absolute poverty, preaching in streets and countryside because, although illiterate, they were conscious of an inward vocation, and so being led on to undertake other priestly functions though unordained; the Cathari asserting that the Catholic Church was lost in materialism and worldliness and that _they_ were the true church of Christ—all these were inherently the aggressive enemies of the priesthood. There was a similar note in much of the popular poetry in those southern lands in which these heresies took firmest root. It is a note scornful, defiant, often ribald and profane, that comes into the songs of the goliards and troubadours. With a robust and crude Rabelaisianism they burlesque, not only clerical manners, but the holiest ceremonies and the most sacred doctrines. Even in miracles and mystery plays the note is sometimes heard; in the poems of Rutebeuf, the ‘Roman de la Rose’ and ‘Reynard the Fox,’ it is most resonant. In the popular poetry there is undoubtedly something of the unconsecrated paganism of the average man—his innate secularism rebelling against clerical privilege, when it is not fortified by personal worthiness. Yet between the Provençal troubadour and the Paulician heretic there was something akin; and with the nobleman of Languedoc, only too willing to take the excuse for despoiling the clergy, they were alike popular. We may regret the total extinction of the exotic, semi-Moorish culture of southern France, which the Albigensian crusades involved; we need not regret the virtual extinction, with it, of the heresies.[477] If there was something worthy of esteem in their demand for spiritual reality and personal holiness, this was confused with other elements, which were perverted and absurd, sometimes even repulsive and abominable. On their constructive side the heresies of Waldenses and Albigenses had nothing of genuine value to offer. In so far as they have significance, it is because of their anti-clerical elements, which are in part a cause, but more a symptom, of a trend of popular sentiment.