the window, and was seen no more. The girl was left, and as she was insensible alike to offers of wealth and threats of punishment, she was duly burned, suffering her torment cheerfully and without a groan. Even in distant Britanny Catharism appeared in 1208, at Nantes and St. Malo.[1]
In Flanders the heresy seems to have taken deep root among the industrious craftsmen who were already making their cities centres of wealth and progress. In 1162 Henry, Archbishop of Reims, m a visitation of Flanders, which formed part of his province, found Manichaeism prevailing there to an alarming extent. In the existing confusion and uncertainty of the canon law as respects the treatment of heresy, he allowed the appeal of those whom he captured to Alexander III., then in Touraine. The pope inclined to mercy, much to the disgust of the archbishop and of his brother, Louis VII., who urged the adoption of rigorous measures, and asserted that the enormous bribe of six hundred marks had been offered for their liberation. If this were so, the heresy must have penetrated to the upper ranks of society. In spite of Alexander's humanity the persecution was sharp enough, however, to drive many of the heretics away, and we shall meet with some of them at Cologne. Twenty years later we find the evil still growing, and Philip I., Count of Flanders, whose zeal for the faith was manifested subsequently by his death in Palestine, busily engaged in persecuting them with the aid of William, Archbishop of Reims. They are described as comprising all classes, nobles and peasants, clerks, soldiers,- and mechanics, maids, wives, and widows, and numbers of them were burned without putting an end to the pestilence.[2]
The Teutonic peoples were comparatively free from the infection, although the propinquity of the Rhinelands to France led to occasional visitations. About 1110 we hear of some heretics at Treves, who seem to have escaped without punishment, though two among them were priests, and in 1200 eight more were found
- ↑ Epist. Leodiens. ad Lucium PP. II. (Martene Ampl. Coll. I. 776-778).— Alex. PP. III. Epist. 2 (ibid. II. 628).— Concil. Remens. ann. 1157.— Hist. Monast. Vezeliacens. Lib. rv. ann. 1167.— Csesar. Heisterbac. Dial. Mirac. Dist. v. c. 18.— Radulf. Coggeshall ubi sup.— Innocent. PP. III. Regest. ix. 208.
- ↑ Alex. PP. III. Epist. 118, 122.— Varior. ad Alex. PP. III. Epist. No. 16.— Annal. Aquicinctens. Monast. ann. 1182, 1183.— Guillel. Nangiac. ann. 1183.
