Francis of Assisi was canonised; the illumined Eckhart, on the other
hand, was tortured; most of them, like the ardent Arnold of Brescia,
were burnt at the stake. This conduct of the hierarchy towards the truly
religious men is easily explained. The Church was faced by a problem; on
the one hand, the genuine and profound piety of these men was
unmistakable, but on the other, the contrast of their teaching with
Church tradition was too obvious, and by many of them too strongly
emphasised to be silently ignored.
The Provencal heretic, Peter of Bruis, seems to have been the first
reformer who preached against iconolatry and even objected to the images
of the Crucified. He ordered churches to be razed to the ground because
he acknowledged only the invisible community of the saints. He was burnt
at St. Giles' by an infuriated mob. More powerful, and far more
numerous than his followers, the Peterbrusians, were the Cathari and
the Waldenses (founded by Peter Valdez A.D. 1177) who soon spread to
Northern Italy and amalgamated with the sect of the Lombards.
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