Henry of Lausanne

When Bishop Hildebert returned to Le Mans after his visit to Rome (to ask the pope to let him resign from his position), he faced a situation that made him really not be the bishop anymore. Henry of Lausanne had been preaching there.

Henry was likely a Benedictine who had left the order and decided to follow his own path. In Hildebert's absence, Henry had started preaching publicly, a practice that was usually only the province of the regular clergy. Peter the Venerable wrote a pamphlet describing Henry's message: penitence was paramount, the intercession of saints was not true, second marriages were sinful. People responded, giving up the trappings of wealth. We are told that young men would marry their prostitutes in order to "make honest women" of them.

One result was that the population began to reject ecclesiastical authority as unnecessary, replacing it with a simpler lifestyle. Henry and Hildebert had a public debate in which Henry's principles were shown (one person wrote) to be less heretical than simply born out of ignorance of what the Bible and Church doctrine said. Still, Hildebert banished Henry from Le Mans.

Henry went elsewhere, winding up in Arles where the archbishop arrested him and, in 1135, brought him before Pope Innocent II at the Council of Pisa. In this case a tribunal did find him heretical. He was ordered to stop his itinerant ways and go to a monastery. Supposedly he was offered a place at Clairvaux Abbey by Bernard of Clairvaux.

Bernard was a powerful influence, and association with him would have given Henry some protection. Henry chose instead to go to the south of France where he met Peter of Bruys. Peter was an early protestant who rejected infant baptism, veneration of crosses, building churches, prayers for the dead, and transubstantiation.

Henry adopted the ideas off Peter, and continued to preach them after Peter's death. This was not a wise career move for him, as we shall see tomorrow.