S34 CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS ORATORY. 



fanatical minds. Thus Pierre de Bruys ventured to deny the Eeal Presence, 

 and condemned the custom of praying for the dead ; and Eon issued from the 

 heart of Armorica, declaring that he had come to judge the quick and the 

 dead. In other places we had the pitblicains of Flanders and Burgundy, who 

 endeavoured to revive the monstrous doctrines of Manicheism, the Valdenses, 

 and the Albigenses, dissenters half religious, half political, who, after having 

 preached humility and renunciation of worldly goods, found more response 

 among the lower classes by preaching the cessation of manual labour, the 

 overthrow of ecclesiastical authority, and the community of goods. As each 

 schismatic orator arose, he was at once opposed by an orthodox orator, who 

 became the eloquent champion of the Church (Figs. 399 and 400). St. Bernard 

 fought in the first rank, taking for his motto the maxim of Christian charity, 

 "Let us persuade, but not constrain." He was supported by Pierre de 

 Castelnau ; Cardinal d'Albano ; Jacques de Vitry ; Arnauld, Abbot of Clair- 

 vaux; and William, Archdeacon of Paris. But the most eloquent of the 

 Catholic orators was the Spaniard St. Dominic, founder of the order of 

 Dominican Friars (Fig. 399). Dominic, who preached for ten years in the 

 southern provinces of France, and who never showed any mercy to heresy, 

 was one of the most heroic soldiers of the Church militant. His irresistible 

 eloquence produced such a prodigious effect upon his contemporaries that 

 the people believed that he was the direct exponent of the heavenly will. 

 According to some, flames issued from his mouth when he spoke ; according 

 to others, the church bells rang of themselves when he was about to preach ; 

 and it was also affirmed that during one of his sermons a statue of the Virgin 

 had been seen to lift out its arm, as if to threaten the hearers who did not 

 hearken to his words. 



Nothing remains to us of these celebrated denunciations of heresy, nor of 

 the sermons preached in favour of the Crusades ; they were all delivered 

 extempore, and were never committed to writing. But we have a somewhat 

 large number of those belonging to the theological and mystical school, and 

 which were, therefore, carefully prepared beforehand. Here, again, we have 

 St. Bernard, surrounded this time by Hugues and Richard de St. Victor, 

 Abelard, and Maurice de Sully, Bishop of Paris (Fig. 400). With Abelard, 

 notably in his Latin discourses to the " Virgins of the Paraclete," we have 

 the dialectician always ready to call in the authority of philosophy in support 

 of the authority of the Church. With St. Bernard, upon the other hand, we 



