of winter, straightly forbidding any to succour such vile criminals, so all perished from cold and exposure. Manichæism furthermore split up into an almost infinite number of sects and systems, prominent amongst which were the Cathari, the Aldonistæ and Speronistæ, the Concorrezenses of Lombardy, the Bagnolenses, the Albigenses, Pauliciani, Patarini, Bogomiles, the Waldenses, Tartarins, Beghards, Pauvres de Lyon.
It must be clearly borne in mind that these heretical bodies with their endless ramifications were not merely exponents of erroneous religious and intellectual beliefs by which they morally corrupted all who came under their influence, but they were the avowed enemies of law and order, red-hot anarchists who would stop at nothing to gain their ends. Terrorism and secret murder were their most frequent weapons. In 1199 the Patarini followers of Ermanno of Parma and Gottardo of Marsi, two firebrands of revolt, foully assassinated S. Peter Parenzo, the governor of Orvieto. On 6 April, 1252, whilst returning from Como to Milan, as he passed through a lonely wood S. Peter of Verona was struck down by the axe of a certain Carino, a Manichæan bravo, who had been hired to the deed.40 By such acts they sought to intimidate whole districts, and to compel men’s allegiance with blood and violence. The Manichæan system was in truth a simultaneous attack upon the Church and the State, a desperate but well-planned organization to destroy the whole fabric of society, to reduce civilization to chaos. In the first instance, as the Popes began to perceive the momentousness of the struggle they engaged the bishops to stem the tide. At the Council of Tours, 1163, Alexander III called upon the bishops of Gascony to take active measures for the suppression of these revolutionaries, but at the Lateran Council of 1179 it was found these disturbers of public order had sown such sedition in Languedoc that an appeal was made to the secular power to check the evil. In 1184 Lucius III issued from Verona his Bull Ad Abolendam which expressly mentions many of the heretics by name, Cathari, Patarini, Humiliati, Pauvres de Lyon, Pasagians, Josephins, Aldonistæ. The situation had fast developed and becomes serious. Heretics were to be sought out and suitably punished, by which, however, capital punishment is not
