Note 84 — Chapter IX · CHRISTENDOM IN THE MIDDLE AGES

The crisis was the more acute, finally, because in the latter part of the tenth century the common expectation that the world would end with the year 1000 had inspired enormous donations to the Church,84 with a proportionally oppressive effect on the general population, moving them to economic self-defence. It is in fact clear that an anti-clerical element entered largely into the beginnings of the communal movement in France in the eleventh century. In 1024 we find the citizens of Cambrai forming a league to drive out the canons;85 and though that beginning of revolt was crushed out by massacre, the same spirit expressed itself in heresy. The result was that religious persecution ere long eclipsed political. Bishop Wazon of Lüttich (d. 1048) in vain protested against the universal practice of putting the heretics to death.86 Manicheans who were detected in 1052 at Goslar, in Germany, were hanged,87 a precedent being thus established in the day of small things.