Henricians and Arnoldists

A Preacher of Repentance

In the spring of 1116 a preacher arrived at Le Mans in northwestern France. He was a monk, or had been one, and his origins are obscure; later writers call him Henry of Lausanne, perhaps because he had preached there before. Bishop Hildebert of Lavardin, a respected scholar, allowed him to preach during Lent while the bishop himself traveled to Rome. By the time Hildebert returned, the city had turned against its clergy.

Our account comes from the chronicle of the bishops of Le Mans, written from the clergy's side. It describes an ascetic with a rare gift for preaching who called the people to repentance. At his word women burned their finery and their hair in public, prostitutes left their trade, and young men married them. He denounced the wealth and immorality of the clergy so fiercely that the people turned on their priests, mocking and beating them in the streets. When Hildebert came home, the people would not receive his blessing. The bishop eventually forced Henry to leave, and the preacher went south.

At Le Mans, as far as the chronicle shows, Henry was a moral reformer more than a theologian. In the south his teaching hardened. Arrested by the archbishop of Arles, he was brought before a council at Pisa in 1135, made to renounce his errors, and sent to enter the monastery of Clairvaux. He did not stay. By the late 1130s he was preaching again around Toulouse, and Peter the Venerable warned that he had become the heir of Peter of Bruys.