Like practically all keen and vivid times, the twelfth century was full of religious debate. Among the learned the discussion turned largely upon philosophy. The speculative and transcendental doctrines of the Church might be called in question. In this way heresy, that is religious error among those who claimed to be Christians, might arise from intellectual speculation upon intellectual and philosophic themes. Thus the early Church, in the high Imperial time before the Dark Ages, thought of heresy first of all as erroneous speculation. But theology and morals are not and can never be really separate. The very idea of their possible separation could not have arisen except in an age so bent upon “observing” as to be contemptuous of reason. Theology and morals being merely mutually indispensable different sides of religion, it therefore follows that speculative heretics tended to become moral heretics. Now, in the Middle Ages, as we have seen, the scholars were always in minor orders. At least outside of Italy, learned heretics were rare. Therefore a good deal of speculative heresy and near-heresy could, and did, exist without doing much harm to the Church as an institution. A scholar who fell foul of authority with regard to some article of faith was punished of course, but his punishment was merely a matter of internal Church discipline about which the “general public” usually knew or cared very little. It was very different when a dissenter, instead of confining himself to philosophy, went further and took the logical next step of “stirring up the people” by attacking not only the doctrine of the Church but also the moral conduct of her officials. To-day when a man attacks the idea of property as such, we smile. But when he attacks the excessive inequality of its distribution, that is more serious, because, however false some of his conclusions may be, a part of his major premise is undeniably true. Just so, in the twelfth century, the Church realized that her wealth laid her open to envy, and the evil conduct of many of her ministers was a scandal. Her own true leaders, those who were the most zealous for her honour, spent much of their energy in trying to bring about a wider distribution of morals within the ranks of her own clergy, just as to-day those who believe in the idea of private property would do well to work for a wider distribution of that. Accordingly heresy in the Middle Ages, although necessarily arising, like all heresy, in speculation, based its propaganda upon moral protest.