requiring all sheriffs to swear to the observance of the law, and to make all stewards of the barons and all knights and franc-tenants swear likewise — the first secular law on the subject in any statute-book since the fall of Kome. I have already mentioned the steadfastness with which the unfortunates endured their martyrdom. Stripped to the waist and soundly scourged, and branded on the forehead, they were sent adrift shelterless in the winter-time, and speedily, one by one, they miserably perished. England was not hospitable to heresy, and we hear little more of it there. Towards the close of the century some heretics were found in the province of York, and early in the next century a few were discovered in London, and one was burned ; but practically the orthodoxy of England was unsullied until the rise of Wickliffe.[1]
Italy, as the channel through which the Bulgarian heresy passed to the West, was naturally deeply infected. Milan had the reputation of being its centre, whence missionaries were despatched to other lands, whither pilgrims resorted from the western kingdoms, and where originated the sinister term of Patarins, by which the Cathari became generally known to the people of Europe,[2] Yet the popes, involved in a death-struggle
- ↑ Guillel. de Newburg Hist. Anglic. Lib. ii. c. 13. — Matt. Paris. Hist. Anglic, ann. 1166 (p. 74).— Radulf. de Diceto ann. 1166.— Radulf. Coggeshall (D. Bouquet. XVm. 92).— Assize of Clarendon, Art. 21.— Petri Blesens. Epist. 113.— Schmidt, 1.99.
- ↑ The nomenclature of the heresy is quite extensive. The sectaries called themselves Cathari, or the pure. The origin of the term Patarin has been the subject of considerable dispute, but there would seem to be no doubt that it arose in Milan about the middle of the eleventh century, during the civil wars resulting from the papal efforts to enforce celibacy on the Milanese married clergy. In the Romance dialects pates signifies old linen ; rag-pickers in Lombardy were called Patari, and the quarter inhabited by them in Milan was known, even up to the last century, as Pattaria, or Contrada de' Pattari. Even to-day there are in Italian cities quarters or streets of that name (Schmidt, II. 279). In the eleventh-century quarrels the papalists held secret meetings in the Pattaria, and were contemptuously designated by their antagonists as Patarins — a name which was finally recognized and accepted by them (Arnulf Mediolanens. Lib. in. cap. 11; Lib. IV. c. 6, 11.— Landulf Jun. c. 1. — Willelmi Clusiens. vita Benedicti Abbat. Clusiens. c. 33. — Benzon. Coram, de Reb. Henrici IV. Lib. vii. c. 2). As the papal condemnation of clerical marriage was stigmatized as Manichaean, and as the papalists were supported by the secret heretics, followers of Gherardo
