the bishop of Lodève. Asked about the Eucharist, for example, “they answered that
whoever consumed it worthily was saved, but the unworthy gained damnation for
themselves; and they said that it could be consecrated [that is, transformed into
Christ’s body and blood] by a good man, whether clerical or lay.” When questioned
about whether “each person should confess his sins to priests and ministers of the
church—or to any layman,” they responded that it “would suffice if they confessed
to whom they wanted.” On this and other questions, then, the good men of Lombers
had notions at variance with the doctrines that the post-Gregorian church was
proclaiming. Above all, their responses downgraded the authority and prerogatives of
the clergy. When the bishop at Lombers declared the good men heretics, “the heretics
answered that the bishop who gave the sentence was the heretic and not they, that he
was their enemy and a rapacious wolf and a hypocrite... .”^21
By the time that Dominic confronted the southern French heretics, the hostility of
these dissidents toward church leaders had created the sense of a major threat. The
church termed them all “dualists” who believed that the world was torn between two
great forces, one good and the other evil. Dualism was well known to well-educated
churchmen; Saint Augustine (see p. 9) had briefly flirted with the dualists of his own
day before decisively breaking with them. Moreover, some dualist groups flourished
in the Byzantine Empire, which was increasingly being vilified in the West.
Classifying heretics as such created a powerful new tool of persecution and coercion
that came to be used by both ecclesiastical and secular rulers.
There is no doubt that some of the good men were dualists. But there were many
shades of dualism—many “catharisms”—ranging from the innocuous notion that
spiritual things were pure and eternal, while materials things were not, to the radical
claim that the devil had created the world and all that was in it, including man. The
Christianity espoused by the church hierarchy itself had many dualist elements. In
some ways, therefore, the issue of the good men’s dualism overlooked the most
important point for them: that their doctrine was largely a by-product of their
determination to pursue poverty and simplicity—to live like the apostles—and to
adhere literally to the teachings of Christ as contained in the Gospels.
Other heretical groups were condemned not on doctrinal grounds but because
they allowed their lay members to preach, assuming for themselves the privilege of
bishops. At Lyon (in southeastern France) in the 1170s, for example, a rich merchant
named Waldo decided to take literally the Gospel message, “If you wish to be
perfect, then go and sell everything you have, and give to the poor” (Matt. 19:21).
The same message had inspired countless monks and would worry the church far
