Europe's inner demons

According to the Swiss chronicler — who bases himself on “a faithful report”—a schoolmaster in Brandenburg invited a Franciscan friend of his to come and see the Holy Trinity. Having obtained permission of his brethren, and armed himself with a consecrated wafer, the Franciscan accompanied the schoolmaster to what turned out to be an assembly of heretics. It was presided over by three strikingly handsome men, clad in shining robes, whom the schoolmaster identified as the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Unimpressed, the Franciscan produced the Eucharist and held it aloft, crying: “Then who is this?” John of Winterthur finishes his story: “The spirits which, in the guise of the Trinity, had so long fooled people and made them mad, vanished at the sight of the Eucharist; leaving behind a most evil stink. The Franciscan returned thankfully to his brethren, and reported on God’s power and its wondrous effects. But the heretics who had let themselves be mocked and deceived by the spirits were sent to the stake and burned. When they were warned to cast off the filth of superstitions and devilish deceit, to reject, and to profess the true faith, as they ought to do, they persevered in their heretical perversity, being too much ensnared and seduced. They preferred to perish in the fire, in the midst of their sins, to being saved by confession of the true faith. Indeed, they said that they saw in the flames golden chariots which would at once carry them over to the joys of heaven.”⁽¹¹⁾ In 1384 a further group of “Luciferans” was discovered in Brandenburg, and on this occasion we know what they were accused of. Like the Austrian heretics, and like Conrad of Marburg’s victims, they were supposed to believe that Lucifer had been wrongfully expelled from heaven, and would in due course return there and take over from God. Meanwhile they worshipped Lucifer as their god, and also held promiscuous orgies in underground cellars. The rest of the doctrine ascribed to these people is purely Waldensian, and everything suggests that they too were Waldensians.^{(12) *}

There is no reason to think that Waldensians were very numerous in the German lands at any time. Nor, after their earliest days, were they socially influential: by the fourteenth century they consisted almost entirely of artisans, modest tradesmen and peasants. Certainly when pitted against the massive structure and vast resources of the Catholic Church the sect was much too small, scattered and obscure to constitute any real threat. Yet in certain quarters it was felt not simply as a threat but as a destructive force of overwhelming, superhuman power. Again we may turn to the Franciscan John of Winterthur to discover not indeed how things were, but how they were imagined to be. In his view, only the most strenuous efforts of Catholic preachers — including of course Franciscan preachers — prevented the Church from being altogether overwhelmed and obliterated: “These people would overthrow the faith of Peter, if the teachers did not each day fortify it with the word of truth. So Peter’s little boat, which sails on the billows of the sea of this world, is battered by the blows of the tempest; but it does not sink, because it is sustained by the strong hands of the teachers.... ”⁽¹³⁾

The persistent efforts to defame the sect are inseparable from this fantastic over-estimation of its power. The Waldensians were imagined as Devil-worshippers, and as themselves quasi-demonic. This meant that they must be almost irresistible in their work of undermining and destroying the Christian religion, identified with the Catholic Church. It also meant that whatever was felt to be most anti-human, such as blindly promiscuous orgies and incest between parent and offspring, must be an essential part of their world. And during the fourteenth century this stereotype came to be widely accepted even by professional inquisitors. The account of the Waldensians which the inquisitor for Aragon, Nicolas Eymeric, gave in his manual, the Directorium Inquisitorum, around 1368, is on the whole well informed and objective — yet even here the following turns up, as one of the Waldensian articles of faith: “It is better to satisfy one’s lust by any kind of evil act than to be harassed by the goadings of the flesh. In the dark it is lawful for any man to mate with any woman, without distinction, whenever and as often as they are moved by carnal desires. This they both say and do.”⁽¹⁴⁾