Note 109 — Chapter IX · CHRISTENDOM IN THE MIDDLE AGES

The first crusade against heresy having failed, it was left by the papacy for a number of years to itself; though anti-pope Lucius III in 1184 sought to set up an Inquisition; and in 1195 a papal legate held a council at Montpellier, seeking to create another crusade. The zeal of the faithful was mainly absorbed in Palestine; while the nobles at home were generally at war with each other. Heresy accordingly continued to flourish, though there was never any suspension of local persecution outside of Provence, where the heretics were now in a majority, having more theological schools and scholars than the Church.109 In France in particular, in the early years of the reign of Philip Augustus (suc. 1180), many paterini were put to death by burning;110 and the clergy at length persuaded the king to expel the Jews, the work being done almost as cruelly as it was two centuries later in Spain. In England, where there was thus far little heresy, it was repressed by Henry II. Some thirty rustics came from Flanders in 1166, fleeing persecution, and vainly sought to propagate their creed. Zealous to prove his orthodoxy in the period of his quarrel with Becket, Henry presided over a council of bishops called by him at Oxford to discuss the case; and the heretics were condemned to be scourged, branded in the face, and driven forth—to perish in the winter wilds. “England was not hospitable to heresy;” and practically her orthodoxy was “unsullied until the rise of Wiclif.”111