Crusades – Garrett's Polished Diamonds

Chapter 9: Under the Control of Evil Families

Part 1: From Apostles to Apostates

With the loss of any superior Empirical power to check the aggressive aristocracy, the Papacy was totally without a protector. That exposed it to the forces and dictates of rich, corrupt and ruthless Italian, French and German families. For the next century (870 AD to 970 AD) unholy princes and princesses bought, sold and totally controlled the office of Pope.

The family of Counts of Tusculum and the Family of the Theophylact imposed the candidates of their choice upon clergy and people alike. These they elected only from the ranks of the nobility. Included are:
Pope John X, Pope John XI, Pope John XII, Benedict VIII, Benedict IX, Benedict X

Wars of conquest and retaliation were waged constantly between the rival warlords. Meanwhile Otto I had succeeded at getting himself crowned King of the German tribes. His ambition was to rebuild the Empire of Charlemagne. Pope John XII felt threatened by both the Romans and the Lombards (one of the powerful Italian families), so he called upon Otto of Germany to come to his rescue. Otto, assuming the crown of Italy, proudly marched into Rome on Feb 2, 962 AD. While he was at it, he also accepted for his pretentious services the title of “Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire”. It was definitely not holy, and it certainly was no longer Roman. Far from protecting the Church, Otto oppressed it.

Pope Leo XII realized too late that he had exchanged a terrible fate for a deadly one. After quarrelling, Otto I chose a new Pope, Leo VIII, and Pope John XII fled. Within a year John XII was dead.

The Roman Italian families elected another Pope, Benedict. Otto of Germany threatened to besiege Rome unless Benedict was delivered to him and Leo VIII reinstated. The Romans had no choice but to surrender. This showdown gave Otto total power over the Papal seat and brought a temporary end to the control and domination of the Italian families.

Otto I strengthened his Empire by strengthening his hold on the Church. He appointed Bishops and made them Princes of the Realm. They swore allegiance to him before they were invested as Bishops. The custom of conferring a ring and a crosier (ornamental staff) upon Bishops, as a sign of episcopal dignity, can be traced back to this very ceremony. This combined office of Bishop and Prince now became very lucrative to the incumbent, and the basest of practices of simony and corruption developed. The power of the offices was sold, bought, rented, given as dowries and even in some cases, included their entire parish. The clergy no longer even made an attempt to keep up the visible charade of trustworthiness or honesty.

After Otto’s death, Otto III, who was only four years old, became Emperor. Under the influence of the corrupt and ambitious Cresentius Family a number of Popes were killed while they plotted to install a grand total of three of their own family members in their place.

When Henry III, Holy Roman Emperor, visited Rome in 1048 he found three rival Popes each claiming the coveted position: The Northern Italian city-states, divided by the Guelph and Ghibe lines had each appointed their own candidate because of the unprecedented, unbecoming behaviour of Benedict IX. Henry deposed all three and installed his own preference, Pope Clement II. The history of the Popes between 1048 and 1257 is replete with soiled and gangrenous incumbents followed by their tainted and corrupt replacements. The struggle for ultimate control for power between Emperor and Pope continued unabated.

Into this cesspool of infamy, Hildebrand, a monk from Cluny, appeared in Rome with an unbridled passion for reform. Fired up by the reform movement of the monasteries who were forced to return to the rules of St. Benedict and discontented with the complete corruption of everything to do with religion in Rome, he was imbued with a spirit for change. The manner of choosing Popes by the Emperor for instance, must cease. In 1059 a new Papal decree was issued demanding that the Pope must be chosen by the College of Cardinals, which consisted of Elders and Deacons of the Italian Churches in Rome. Hildebrand, was adviser to five succeeding Popes and eventually became Pope himself in 1073, taking the name of Gregory VII. More than everything else, he was obsessed with the idea of Papal World Supremacy. His conception of the Office was expressed in his own words:

“The Roman Church was founded by God alone. The Roman Pope alone can with right be called universal; he alone may use the Imperial Insignia, his feet only shall be kissed by all the Princes. He may depose the Emperors; he himself may be judged by no one, the Roman Church has never erred, nor will it ever err in all eternity.”

In 1075 Hildebrand, now Pope Gregory VII, issued a decree prohibiting Princes from ordaining Bishops. Still, the German King would not give up his right. The Germans had the bigger army, but the Pope held the more effective weapons. The Pope Gregory VII had five weapons at his command. Each were deadly. And they all hung on an incorrect principle of doctrine.

Weapon 1: That belief was that there was no salvation outside the Roman Church and of course, the Pope held all the keys to that door.
Weapon 2: The Pope could call Kings and release them.
Weapon 3: The Pope could excommunicate anyone he pleased. By a decree of excommunication, princes and all other such people, could not be provided with food or shelter as long as they lived, and a Christian burial would be denied to them when they died. Anybody helping an excommunicated person, would suffer the same fate.
Weapon 4: Sacrament was essential to Salvation. Excommunicated persons would be deprived of the sacrament. That meant they would be cut off from all rights provided by the Church. A Mass could not even be held in their presence. If it was a king, no services would be held in his kingdom. No funeral would be held. And no one would hear a prayer or a bell ring. Church buildings would be closed. Extreme unction applied.
Weapon 5: In the case of an errant king, the Pope could release the king’s subjects from their oath of allegiance to him. The king would then be without power, purse or pity. With this power, the Pope did not hesitate to both threaten and apply his total weight on all peoples, kings, rulers and subjects, with impunity. The horrors of facing hell had been taught since Augustine’s false interpretation of the teachings of Christ. Now, it successfully silenced all who would dare challenge the Pope. While Gregory did not see the fulfillment of his goal to raise the Papacy to ultimate superiority over all the Western World in his lifetime, it did reach that epitome under his successors, Urban II (1088 – 1099) and Innocent III (1179- 1180). This is also the point at which the Eastern and Western Ecclesiastical authorities, chose to excommunicate each other.

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the Kings horses and all the Kings men,
Couldn’t put Humpty together again
-English Nursery Rhyme

Often, when we think things cannot get worse, it proves to be the very point at which they do. Pope Urban II, the consummate warlord of Europe, having obtained what other Popes could only dream of, possessed complete power to enforce anything he wanted or imagined, in the name of the God. Looking around from this most enviable position, he decided that what was most needed was something or some cause to unite his people.

There are those who think the motivation for Pope Urban II’s solution to this problem was much more sinister. Perhaps it was a diversion to involve, and even cull out, many young heirs to thrones who were thirsty to make their name known in battle. Restless for fame or notoriety, these youth left to their own devises might cause great harm to the realm. Whatever his real reason might have been, the answer he came up with for forging unity would have been absolutely brilliant if it were not for its total lack of foresight and planning. Maybe that was the appeal and beauty of it. The plan was not impeded by facts and its gross stupidity was rationalized by the equally gross ignorance of those who were called upon to participate in its fulfillment. There is almost no other explanation for what was to have faultlessly become the most mind boggling, colossal failure of the middle ages. We are referring to, of course, the Crusades.

At the Council of Clermont in 1095 AD, Pope Urban II issued his infamous first rally call. He asked for a mighty army to repossess the Holy Lands then in the hands of the infidels.

What instantly emerged from the streets, jails, asylums, convents and slums of Europe, were the desperate and the destitute, almost to a person. Over half-a-million naive, poorly informed and unprepared men, women and children, rushed headlong onto the roadways to begin walking to The Holy Land. With their wholehearted acceptance and approval, they chanted and sang as they threw what little sanity they possessed to the winds and rushed blindly into hell.

As mentioned, the Pope had become the highest-ranking position of power in the Western World. The Pope, not the Emperor was the great warlord of Europe. Now he had opened a new front in his campaign. The First Crusade’s initial goal was simply to move in a mass against the infidels in the Holy Land. To ensure sufficient manpower, he issued indulgences to all who would go, the most enticing being the forgiveness of sins past and sins not as yet committed. Next he opened the doors of the prisons in Europe for the worst of criminals to join under the same generous conditions. A monstrous hoard of hundreds of thousands of people, of all ages and stages, lacking health, wealth or wisdom, obliviously worked their way like a vast lava flow directly aimed to the most inhospitable and hostile place in the world.

Exempted from any spiritual consequence regarding their immoral actions, they were instructed to find their own food and lodgings along the way. Can you imagine what those in the path of this hoard must have thought as they learned of its impending arrival in their community? It would be a worse fear than of a descending plague of the entire forces of Atilla the Hun. Pestilence, famine, destruction of crops and loss of property would have followed every footstep of the way. There would be nothing left to eat, drink or sleep under for those who survived after the “Pilgrims” had passed through. By the time they arrived to liberate Jerusalem, there were only 40,000 pilgrims left. The Islam forces, of course, attacked and killed most of those that were still alive. It was a total and complete annihilation, serving only to embolden the infidels.

There were ten crusades in all, each ending in failure like the first.

The second crusade had over a million, two hundred thousand soldiers. Sickness, heat, contaminated water and lack of food constantly reduced their force to impotency.

The third crusade involved Richard the Lion-Hearted of England. He fought, lost and left ignobly.

The fourth crusade of roughly the same proportions and objectives were terribly massacred.

The fifth crusade was aimed at Constantinople but achieved no military advantage. It only served to create a further alienation between the Eastern and Western Churches.

The six, seventh, eighth and ninth crusade were repeats.

The Children’s Crusade was led by a boy who vanished. Thousands were captured and sold into slavery.

All failed miserably. Most of the pilgrims carried no weapons of defense against Arab armies or other hostile forces, such as the many robbers, pirates, thieves and scoundrels who lay waiting in great anticipation of their arrival. All they brought was enthusiasm, and that, as everyone discovered, was woefully inadequate.

Hoping to reverse their failures, the next Pope, Innocent II started a crusade against heretics and Jews in France instead. But the Bishops of France did not participate with enough enthusiasm against their own people. The Crusade began to falter. Sensing another fiasco, Innocent II turned the episcopal inquiry over to the Mendicant orders and the Dominican and Franciscan Monks who had sworn allegiance to only the Pope himself. This action was called the Papal Inquisition. The efficiency and barbarity of the methods used against even the innocent, who were tortured to obtain confessions, and the despotic actions of the Pope, eventually led to a call for reform.

Pope Boniface VIII, an arrogant, delusional man, attempted to enforce his edicts by quelling the rebellious German King Phillip who had initiated the reform. But the time when those bullying tactics worked had passed. Phillip cut off vast resources which were generating tremendous revenue to the Pope by disallowing their removal to Italy. Included in King Phillip’s reforms were a call to cease:

1/ The shedding of blood.
2/ The widespread simony (or money charged for ecclesiastical services).
3/ Nepotism (or favouring relatives).
4/ Unethical means of securing money, such as the selling of priesthood offices to the highest bidder.
5/ Selling indulgences.
6/ The immoral and luxurious lifestyles of Pope and Papal staff.
7/ The uncontrolled tyranny of the Popes.

The Pope issued a Bull or edict which made extravagant claims regarding the authority of the Pope.

“The gospel informs us that there are in the Church and in the power of the Church, two swords, the spiritual and the temporal. Both swords, therefore the spiritual and the temporal are in the power of the Church, but the latter must be drawn for the Church and the former by the Church.
The first by the hand of the Priest and the second by the hand of Kings and Soldiers, but always with the consent and the will of the Priest.
As a consequence, we state, declare and define that all creatures must be subject to the sovereign Pontiff in order to be saved.”

Phillip reacted by calling together the heads of states of the realm, including the ecclesiastical leaders, and accused Boniface of crimes. Phillip’s accusations were brought before the General Council.

Following Phillip’s lead, Germany, England and Bohemia revolted from Papal authority. These countries were followed by the Italian Provinces under Austrian control. In 1849, an assembly elected by the people, striped the Pope of his temporal power and confiscated all his Ecclesiastical property. Under the leadership of Victor Emmanuel and military support from Garibaldi, all Italy was brought under one single government. Rome was made its capital. Thus, the career of Pius IX saw the grasp of temporal world power ripped from him. Since 1866, all that was left was the Vatican, which the Pope was allowed to occupy, as a virtual prisoner, until the end of his life.

We see through a review of historical evidence that the office of Pope never did have a continual link from Peter to itself. Peter was never a Bishop anywhere, let alone in Rome, where he died. The office was foreign and in complete contrast to the nature of the Bishops in the first and second centuries. If there is a continual link of any description that binds the Pope of the Roman church to its past, it has to be the link of continual fighting and quarreling about doctrine (with its bloody enforcement by torture and excommunications) and the continual destructive warring between Church and State for control over people, subjects, dominions and principalities.

Rome, as a center for the church, came to prominence through intrigue, fraud, manipulation, self-assertion and the process of elimination.

After the fall of the Eastern Church in Alexandria, Jerusalem and Antioch, Rome in the West was the only Patriarch left standing. There was no one else left to challenge what the Roman Patriarch did or said, so he ruled by default. The original church doctrines and scriptural messages were so completely missing and misunderstood by the Greek philosophers and apologists that all understanding of the nature of God and our relationship to him was completely skewed and lost by the fourth Century.

The long slow evolution of the church from apostles to apostates was complete by the end of the first millennium, transforming the Church of Jesus Christ into a politically powerful Empire, with absolute control over the spiritual and temporal affairs of all its subjects. It was enforced with blood, sweat and tears upon the entire Western civilized world until the middle of the nineteenth century, when its power was finally wrestled to the ground.

The “Times of the Gentiles” was coming to its inevitable end.

CHAPTER 1: THE REFORMERS: Protestants and Martyrs

Part 2: From Apostates to Apostles

Prior to Constantine, the various fractions of the church rarely agreed with each other. After Constantine became Emperor, he was determined to wipe out this dangerous practice and unite the factions under a single banner.

The faction that Constantine favoured to carry the banner wanted assurance that the deal that would allow it to banish all of its opposition from the Empire. This included the rights to the other factions’ properties as well. This favoured Church was thereby able to gain complete control over the masses by the support of the Empire, and also by its unique claim to be able to act as the intermediary power between mankind and God. By this power they could forgive sins or condemn to “the fires of hell” any and all who dared to oppose them.

But power has its price. Like Dante’s Inferno, a deal with the Devil always means, in the end, you lose your soul, even if you think you won. In this case, the Popes and Bishops sold their souls and they were now owned by the devil who owned the Empire. This became even more obvious as time went on.

After the separation of Rome in the West and Constantinople in the East, even when the Bishops and Popes were grossly immoral and owned by powerful Italian families, the masses clung to the idea that somehow the Church Leaders were still the representatives of God. All this common folk had left was their lives and to not accept the current belief of what God was, would rob them of even that. No faith, no hope, no life.

The Emperor Constantine forced unity through his military power. When he needed help to ensure his orthodoxy and to stamp out opposition, Constantine first called upon the Frankish Kings, then the French Kings, followed by the Kings of Spain. Terrible abuses followed in the wake of this overwhelming military might and power. Bribes to obtain offices, torture to force compliance, cronyism to gain revenue, selling of indulgences to sweeten obedience, Mafia like tyranny from powerful Italian families who bought the office of the Pope, the redirecting of two of the crusades to capture the Christian City of Constantinople and the crushing of the Albigensians in Southern France, all led to the growing conviction that the Church was as black as bile and had to be gutted – starting with its head and reaching into all vile extremities.

Only a person of sufficient bold, cold courage, willing to risk torture worse than death, would attempt to raise a voice of opposition against that sort of deeply established regime. One such was Peter of Bruys, a priest in a parish in the High Alps. He began preaching vehemently against the Church basing his outbursts on the Gospels in the New Testament. He had gathered a stack of wooden crosses to burn when a furious mob tied him to one of the crosses and burned him with them.

Henry of Blois, Dean and Monk of Cluny in France, was next. He began preaching against the immorality and vice of the clergy. His license to preach was revoked and he was imprisoned by the Archbishop.

Then Arnoldo of Brescia began to preach of the separation of Church and State. He accused the Pope of living a life unlike the apostles and preaching nothing they taught. He said the Pope should be given no obedience or respect. Pope Adrian III had Arnaldo strangled, then burned and threw his ashes into the Tiber River.

Peter Waldo, a converted rich Merchant, paid two of his friends who were Priests, to translate the Latin Bible into the French provincial language and set out to preach from it. Quickly, the Archbishop demanded he stop. Waldo appealed to Pope Alexander III. Unfortunately, the Pope was dealing with many dissenters and in a desperate move, had them all banned, including Waldo and his followers. They were expelled, persecuted and banished from Lyon, their stronghold. The dissenters moved into other parts of France, Italy and the valleys of Piedmont where they are still found today.

During the inquisition, many were sought out and slaughtered. Later, during the crusades, an army headed for Jerusalem was redirected to Beziers in the South of France where they slaughtered men women and children. More were slaughtered at Carcasonne. At a later day, Pope Innocent III offered feudal Lords a remission of their sins if they would take part in the extermination of the Waldenese. As a result, over 100,000 heretics were reported killed.

Another group of dissenters called the Albigensians, who were considered the most numerous of the groups of heretics, was totally annihilated.

In England, the country was exhausted from a long and bitter war. King John had indebted England to pay tribute to the Pope, but they had been unable to do so for 35 years.

John Wycliffe (Wyclif), a leader of a strong reform movement, saw the difference of what was taught in the Bible and what was being taught by the Roman Church. He contended that no foreign power, especially if it was religious, should have authority over governments and States. Parliament declared than neither King nor citizen had the right to subject England to any foreign power without its consent. Wycliffe was invited to give his opinion as to whether King John’s action was null and void from the civil and cannon laws. He confirmed it was and assailed the practice of the confession, the doctrine of transubstantiation and the self-seeking clergy for their subservience to the Pope. He supported the literal interpretation of the Bible and of Priests teaching in the language of the people. He was equally critical of the selling of indulgences, the squandering of charities by unfit priests, the misuse of properties, and the evils of the papal courts. In his judgment, the King had authority over the Pope in temporal matters.

In Jan 1377, Pope Gregory XI sent copies of a Bull against Wycliffe to the Bishop of London, Edward III, the Chancellor and the University of Oxford. Wyciffe was supported by the Mendicant Order, many of the Nobility and John of Gaunt. While most of his writings had formerly been written in Latin, he now began to write in English. Wycliffe was the first responsible for having the Bible printed in English.

The Roman Church retaliated and brought a charge that Wycliffe allowed even laymen to have the Bible.

Despite his reform measures and differences with it, Wycliffe remained a member of the Church until after the Great Schism. The Great Schism occurred when two Popes were elected by the same College of Cardinals. It strengthened Wycliffe’s position and intensified his protests. In 1384 Wycliffe suffered a stroke while hearing New Year’s Eve mass and died. At the council of Constance in 1414, Wycliffe was declared a heretic and the Church and State united to suppress Wyclifism. His remains were dug up, burned and thrown into the River Swift.

While his works were spurned in England, they found fertile soil in Bohemia and that is where it bore fruit. That fruit was John Huss.

John Huss was a lecturer at the University of Prague and was born to poor parents in the Bohemian town of Husinec in 1369. In 1401 Huss was chosen to be preacher over a Church called Bethlehem, or House of Bread. It had been founded by John of Milhiem, a member of the Royal Council of Bohemia.

Very early the writings of Wycliffe had found their way to Huss’s region through the sister of the King Wenceslaus. Coincidentally, she was also the wife of Richard II of England. Huss was attracted to the teachings of Wycliffe and as early as 1402 began to defend them. It was only a matter of time before this came to the attention of the Church authorities.

Sure enough, an order came to the Archbishop of Prague to seize all copies of Wycliffe’s writings and burn them. Two days later, Huss was excommunicated. When the edict prohibited any of Wycliffe’s teachings to be preached, Huss continued in spite of it. He was ordered to appear before the tribunal in Constance.

Huss wrote to Pope John XXIII citing he was in agreement with the Church and not a heretic. But in that same year the Pope proclaimed a crusade against Ladislaus of Naples and promised indulgences to all who made gifts or enlisted in the war. Huss fired off a denouncement against the right of the Pope to do this. The Pope’s bulls offering the indulgences were publicly dishonoured and burned. The King, aroused by the anger and contempt of the masses against the Pope, took three men who had been involved with publicly dishonoring the Pope and had them burned. Their bodies were taken to Huss’s Church of Bethlehem.

The King persuaded Huss to leave the city. While the Church turned against Huss, the populous supported him and prevented the Pope’s sentence from being carried out.

While exiled, Huss wrote “It is better to die well than to live badly. We dare not sin in order to avoid the punishment of death.”He denounced the Pope’s bulls as unchristian in spirit and not to be obeyed. He denounced the Pope’s right to declare war on a people and grant indulgences to another people to fight them. In fact, any Pope who did so was himself in mortal sin.

This was a dangerous proposition. If the Church was to admit to this, then they would have to admit that the authority of the Church had been in doubt many times.

Emperor Sigmund urged his brother King Wenceslaus of Bohemia to make certain Huss went to Constance. Promising Huss protection, safe passage there and back, and provision to be heard before the council, Huss complied with the Emperor. When Huss arrived, the council of course declared the Emperor had no such authority to give him protection.

The Chancellor, the presiding authority of the council, was in a difficult position. He, as well as many others, were in flavor of reformation. However, they could not allow Huss to assert his private authority over Church authority. This man, a heretic, living in sin and destined to damnation, surely could not have power over others of a Christian nature. Also, to admit that Huss was right in charging the Pope guilty and in mortal sin by his granting indulgences to members who donated or enlisted in an unjust war, was more perilous than he could handle. In other words, if you are saying it is inconceivable to have a man, a sinful man, even a priest, rule and have jurisdiction over others of the Christian faith, then how can any sinful man, even a Pope have rule and jurisdiction over other people of the Christian faith? To find Huss guilty would be to find the Pope guilty. To find the Pope guilty would find other Popes just as guilty.

There had been indeed many Popes much more guilty of living in sin than the current Pope. To find all these Popes guilty as well would be to admit the entire Church was apostate. While Huss made his point, he did not make any friends.

Other charges of heresy were brought against Huss. He was denied the right to defence, denied the right to reply and found guilty as charged. He was condemned to be burned at the stake.

Huss was chained by the neck to a stake and straw and wood piled up to his neck. As the flames arose, he sang. His voice was stilled by the fire and his ashes were thrown into the Rhine River. Pagans had disposed of the ashes of Polycarp, another Christian martyr, in the same fashion, in the 2nd century. Now it was the Christians who were behaving worse than the Pagans.

Bohemia was torn by civil war for 30 years because of the death of Huss. The hatred of Rome, and the disgust, dissatisfaction and disrespect for the Church by its members was building fuel throughout all of Europe. All that was needed now was something to ignite it.