Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/197

CHAPTER IY. POLITICAL HERESY UTILIZED BY THE CHURCH. The identification of the cause of the Church with that of God was no new thing. Long before the formulation of laws against heresy and the organization of the Inquisition for its sup- pression, the advantage had been recognized of denouncing as her- etics all who refused obedience to the demands of prelate and pope. In the quarrel between the empire and papacy over the question of the investitures, the Council of Lateran, in 1102, required all the bishops in attendance to subscribe a declaration anathematizing the new heresy of disregarding the papal anathema, and though the Church as yet was by no means determined on the death-pen- alty for ordinary heresy, it had no hesitation as to the punishment due to the imperialists who maintained the traditional rights of the empire against its new pretensions. In that same year the monk Sigebert, who was by no means a follower of the antipope Alberto, was scandalized at the savage cruelty of Paschal II. in exhorting his adherents to the slaughter of all the subjects of Henry IY. Robert the Hierosolymitan of Flanders, on his re- turn from the first crusade, had taken up arms against Henry IY. and had signalized his devotion by depopulating the Cambresis, whereupon Paschal wrote to him with enthusiastic praises of this good work, urging him to continue it as quite as pious as his labors to recover the Holy Sepulchre, and promising remission of sins to him and to all his ruthless soldiery. Paschal himself became a heretic when, in 1111, yielding to the violence of Henry Y., he con- ceded the imperial right of investiture of bishops and abbots, al- though when Bruno, Bishop of Segni and Abbot of Monte Casino, boldly proved his heresy to his face, he deprived the audacious reasoner of the abbacy and sent him back to his see. In his set- tlement with Henry, he had broken a consecrated host, each tak-