Peter of Bruys Preaches Believer's Baptism

A Priest of the Alps

Early in the twelfth century a priest named Peter began preaching in the Alpine dioceses of Embrun, Gap, and Die, in what is now southeastern France. He is usually called Peter of Bruys, after a village in the Hautes-Alpes that may have been his home. For about twenty years he carried his message down into Provence and across the Rhône into Languedoc, gathering followers whom his opponents named Petrobrusians.

Peter wrote nothing that survives, and no follower left an account of him. Everything we know comes from his enemies, above all from Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny, the greatest monastery in Europe. Some years after Peter of Bruys's death the abbot wrote a long treatise against his teaching, addressed to the archbishops of Embrun and Arles and the bishops of Die and Gap, whose dioceses the preacher had stirred. It is a learned, careful, and hostile book, and it is almost our only window.

Peter preached in an age of ferment. The reforming popes of the late eleventh century had taught ordinary Christians to demand holier priests, and wandering preachers across France called people to repentance and simplicity. Some, like Peter, went further and began to question the sacramental system itself.