Free Churches and the Inquisition

c. AD 1117–1131 · Free churches · For some twenty years Peter of Bruys preached in southern France that only those who believe should be baptized, and he rejected the mass as a sacrifice and prayers for the dead. He was burned at Saint-Gilles around 1131. We know his teaching mainly from the abbot of Cluny who wrote against him.

c. AD 1116–1155 · Free churches · Henry of Lausanne carried on the preaching of Peter of Bruys in southern France, and Arnold of Brescia denounced the wealth and worldly power of the clergy in Italy. The Second Lateran Council (1139) condemned teachings like theirs. Henry died in prison; Arnold was hanged and burned at Rome in 1155.

c. AD 1173 · Free churches · Valdes of Lyon gave away his wealth, had Scripture translated into the common tongue, and sent preachers out two by two. Excommunicated by Rome in 1184, the Waldenses spread through France, Italy, and Germany and endured centuries of persecution for preaching the Bible. In 1532 most joined the Reformed churches.

AD 1209–1229 · Catholic Church · Pope Innocent III called a crusade against the dissenters of Languedoc in southern France. Whole towns were massacred, beginning at Béziers in 1209. The Albigenses are usually identified with the dualist Cathars, though older Baptist histories list them among the free churches. Either way, Rome now made war on those who would not submit to it.

AD 1215 · Catholic Church · The Fourth Lateran Council under Innocent III defined that the bread and wine are changed into Christ's body and blood, required every Catholic to confess to a priest at least once a year, ordered rulers to purge heretics from their lands, and required Jews and Muslims to wear distinctive dress. It marked the height of papal power.

AD 1184–1834 · Catholic Church · The Council of Toulouse (1229) forbade lay people in that region to possess the Scriptures, above all in their own language, and Pope Gregory IX (1231) began entrusting the hunt for heretics to papal inquisitors. For centuries the free churches, Waldenses above all, were tracked, tried, and burned, and the Spanish and Roman Inquisitions carried the work into the modern age.

c. AD 1382 · Reformers & Protestants · Oxford theologian John Wycliffe set Scripture above popes and councils, rejected transubstantiation, and attacked the wealth and power of the clergy. His associates produced the first complete Bible in English, translated by hand from the Latin Vulgate, and his preachers, the Lollards, carried it across England. Parliament answered with the stake, the Council of Constance condemned him, and in 1428 his bones were dug up and burned.

AD 1409 · Catholic Church · Archbishop Thomas Arundel's Constitutions of Oxford, drafted in 1407 and published in 1409, forbade anyone to translate Scripture into English, or to read any translation made since Wycliffe's day, without a bishop's approval. No English Bible is known to have been licensed under them. For more than a century, an English Gospel found in a house could help send its owner to the fire.