sted point,[122] the remarkable spread of the
Albigenses during the latter part of the twelfth century must be
regarded as strongly marking the revolt of the French mind, especially
in the more impetuous south, against the priestly absolutism that
crushed all freedom of religious thought, and equally against a church
tolerating the most flagrant abuses. Nor can the historian who desires
to trace the more remote consequences of important moral movements fail
to notice the singular fact that the soil watered by Albigensian blood
at the beginning of the thirteenth century was precisely that in which
the seed sown by the reformers, three hundred years later, sprang up
most rapidly and bore the most abundant harvest. After so long a period
of suspended activity, the spirit of opposition once more asserted its
vital energy--soon, it is true, to meet fresh difficulties, but only
such difficulties as would tend to develop and strengthen it.

[Sidenote: The crime of vauderie.]

With the suppression of the Albigenses all open popular protest against
the errors of the church ceases until the advent of the Reformation. The
latent tendency did, indeed, manifest its continued existence in those
obscure practices known as _vauderie_, which, distorted by the
imagination of reckless informers and interested judges, and converted
into the most monstrous crimes against religion and morality, occasioned
the death of countless innocent victims.[123] But it was chiefly among
the learned, and particularly in the bosom of the University of Paris,
that the pressing need of a thorough purification of the church found
expression. Not that the remedies advocated were so definite and
radical, or based upon so full a recognition of the distinctive
character of Christianity, as to merit the name of reformatory projects.
Yet, standing somewhat in advance of their contemporaries, a few
theologians raised their voices in decided condemnation of those evils
which needed only to be held up to public notice to incur the universal
reprobation of mankind.

[Sidenote: Nicholas de Clemangis.]

[Sidenote: John Gerson.]

Nicholas de Clemangis, Rector of the University of Paris, subsequently
private secretary of Benedict the Thirteenth at Avignon, and perhaps the
most elegant writer of his age, drew a startling picture of the wretched
state of the church at the beginning of the fifteenth century. No writer
had ever described more vividly the corruption of th