Note 94 — X

The ecclesiastical history of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, says Hallam, teems with sectaries and schismatics, various in their aberrations of opinion, but all concurring in detestation of the established church. The heresy which began during the twelfth century, or earlier, with the Manichees of Bulgaria, was made more and more formidable by the Albigenses of Languedoc, by the Waldenses of France and Germany, by the Vaudois of the Alps, by the Lollards of the Netherlands and England, and afterward by the disciples of John Huss of Bohemia, until the faith of the mass of the people was uprooted from its foundation. In Germany, enthusiastic but mystical priests like Eckhardt, Tauler and Suso, keeping themselves within the pale of the church, weakened its rigid discipline by preaching against the arrogant prerogatives of the clergy, and by commanding a higher worship of the heart and life.