that time offered a noble spectacle
of moral grandeur. We must learn to lift our eyes from the wretched
state of things which has just been pointed out and fix them on the
pontifical throne and recognize the beauty of the struggle there going
on: a power wholly spiritual undertaking to command the rulers of the
world, as the soul masters the body, and triumphing in the end. It is
true that both soldiers and generals of this army were often little
better than ruffians, but here again, in order to be just, we must
understand the end they aimed at.

In that iron age, when brute force was the only force, the Church,
notwithstanding its wounds, offered to the world the spectacle of
peasants and laboring men receiving the humble homage of the highest
potentates of earth, simply because, seated on the throne of Saint
Peter, they represented the moral law. This is why Alighieri and many
others before and after him, though they might heap curses on wicked
ministers, yet in the depths of their heart were never without an
immense compassion and an ardent love for the Church which they never
ceased to call their mother.

Still, everybody was not like them, and the vices of the clergy explain
the innumerable heresies of that day. All of them had a certain success,
from those which were simply the outcry of an outraged conscience, like
that of the Waldenses, to the most absurd of them all, like that of Eon
de l'Etoile. Some of these movements were for great and sacred causes;
but we must not let our sympathies be so moved by the persecutions
suffered by heretics as to cloud our judgment. It would have been better
had Rome triumphed by gentleness, by education and holiness, but
unhappily a soldier may not always choose his weapons, and when life is
at stake he seizes the first he finds within his reach. The papacy has
not always been reactionary and obscurantist; when it overthrew the
Cathari, for example, its victory was that of reason and good sense.

The list of the heresies of the thirteenth century is already long, but
it is increasing every day, to the great joy of those erudite ones who
are making strenuous efforts to classify everything in that tohu-bohu of
mysticism and folly. In that day heresy was very much alive; it was
consequently very complex and its powers of transformation infinite. One
may indicate its currents, mark its direction, but to go farther is to
condemn oneself to utter confusion in this medley of impulsi