The struggle of the Catholic Church against heretics. The fight of the Christian church against heresies in the Middle Ages Report on the fight against heretics

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Heresy(Greek selection) is a religious movement opposed to the orthodox (correct) doctrine in matters of dogma, worship or organization of the Church.

Heresies m. different. Heresy has accompanied Catholicism throughout its history. It changes over time.

What gave rise to the Heresy ?:

1. Christianity was, in fact, heresy, because moved away from Judaism

2. In Christianity, literary sources of faith did not immediately take shape, there was disunity in literature

3. Associated with the evolution of Catholicism. There was a gap between the word of God and the practice of Catholicism

4. The dominance of the religious worldview: the creation of God or the devil - whose creation is the subject? Set the stage for heresy

5. Social conflicts in society through the prism of religion.

Dynamics of the Heresy:

1. Intellectual heresies in a secular society, laity were not interested in questions of dogmatic disagreement about the Holy Trinity, about the nature of God, etc.

Term Monophysites- it:

a). Proponents of the One Nature of Christ

b). The church elite waged disputes such as who was Christ, how God mb. equal to the son, etc.

The struggle was very moderate.

2. Patriarchal heresy is a pagan reaction to Christianity. The fact of baptism does not mean that you are a Christian yet.

The flourishing of Catholicism in the 12th - 13th centuries. and the peak of Heresy

The social basis for heresy is in the urban environment, not in the countryside. The heresies of the Middle Ages themselves were very diverse: one married the Virgin Mary, etc.

Typology (division) of Heresies:

1. Social and economic principle:

People's, peasant-plebeian, movement for the transformation of the popular and public life not supporters of violence

2. Burgess - limited ..., supporters of violence.

Not a single Heresy program contained a rational kernel.

Direction of the Heresy:

1. Pantheism- the dissolution of God in nature. Pan is nature, theism is God.

God is present in every person, he is in you, which means he can do whatever he wants, there was permissiveness.

The danger for the Church - the mediator between God and man is not needed, and the mediator was the Church, i.e. church is not needed

2. Montanist- heresies addressed to early Christianity.

In fact, they wanted to give up everything that the Church had “wound up” over the centuries, from riches, rituals, etc.

Example: Waldens- founder Pierre Waldo, his friend died by force, but he was pious. It seemed to Pierre that prayers for the dead could not change anything for a deceased friend. He said that the word of God should be. available to everyone. He became a beggar, gave his property to people, rejected the sacraments of the Church, because she pulls out money. I wanted to make poverty an ideal - this spread in Italy and France. Dreamed of a return to early Christianity

3. Dualistic heresy is a phenomenon of a different order, based on the opposition of everything: "good and evil", on duality.

Originates from Manichaeism from the 2nd century. AD

The essence of Manichaeism:

1. It was like 2 Gods. We shared good and evil; flesh and spirit. The creator of the bodily world was called Jehovah... The very act of creating the world for the Manicheans is God.

The Manicheans denied everything: the church, money, states, they denied life itself.

The ideal for the Manicheans is deliverance from the flesh.

Cathars- pure, perfect, mortification from the flesh

Albigensians- Christ was a man, the earthly world from Satan, and God created the Soul and Angels, against Catholicism and secular power, they recognized only the New Testament, denied church rites and sacraments, veneration of the cross, icons, relics. Learned religious principles Cathars and Waldensians.

Penetration of Manichaeism:

Manichaeism 7th - 8th centuries - Pavlikianism (Byzantium) (they wanted to preserve the purity of Christianity from paganism and idolatry, the name is from the Apostle Paul) - Bogomilism (Bulgaria) (they made pogroms, the world was not from God, but from Satan) - Italy - France.

Catharism is the initiator of the prohibition of pregnancy, this movement is fraught with the threat of anarchy.

The Bogomil heresy in Yugoslavia became the main one for 80 years, the Church immediately began to emerge in Croatia - it was reborn into another, but then swept away by the Catholic Church.

It was very difficult to fight the Cathars.

Fighting Heresy:

At first it was of a moderate nature.

What they were doing?:

1. Anathematizing a heretic - depriving posthumous repentance

2. Overlay Interdicts- prohibition of worship in a certain area

3. Literary disputes (intellectual)

But since the 12th century, it hasn't been enough.

Other methods of fighting the Heresy have appeared:

1. Crusades (Innocent III) - Pope. The dads themselves provoked these campaigns

2. Activities of mendicant monks

3. Inquisition - created to combat the Albigensian heresies.

Episcopal courts date back to the time of Constantine the Great.

1. The Church did not shed blood

2. The bishops judged on the basis of the canons

3. In secular courts, “God's judgment” was used, ie. duel, who wins is on the other side and the truth

4. There was a lawyer in the church courts, there was more order here, there was mercy, everyone wanted to go to the church court.

The line between Heresy and Truth was very shaky.

Until the 16th century, Catholicism did not take shape dogmatically, the bishops refused to try heretics.

Creation of special tribunals to combat heresy.

Dominican order became a tribunal for heresy. They became By the Inquisition.

The arrested person was not told anything about who reported him.

In fact, the whole investigation was about torturing people. The torture was bloodless, since The Church did not shed blood. The executioners knew the human anatomy well so that the person did not die prematurely, otherwise they would also be killed.

The Albigensian Heresy was dealt with in the 13th century. the inquisition faded away, and in the 15th century. the inquisition rose again. Let the women be persecuted as witches. This was due to the celibacy and celibacy of the male churchmen.

By the 17th century. Europe coped with leprosy, they were looking for leprosy in women. Those who did not respond to the disease by piercing a needle into the skin, those are witches.

After that, the torture passed to the secular court, only to torture a person.

Reasons for torture:

1. Fought leprosy - women were declared witches

2. Envy

3. Eliminate a competitor

Inquisition, mendicant orders. Heretical ideas met with fierce opposition from catholic church... Church councils anathematized heresiarchs and their followers. To suppress mass heretical movements, the church organized Crusades(Albigensian wars, campaigns against the apostles, five crusades against the Hussites). At the end of the XII century. the Inquisition appeared (lat. inquisitio - investigation) for the trial and reprisals against heretics. At first, the Inquisition was subordinate to the bishops. In the XIII century. it became an independent institution under the sovereignty of the pope. A system of judicial investigations was established with the use of sophisticated torture, convoluted sophistic tricks and intimidation, with the help of which the victims were forced to confess guilt. Espionage and denunciations were widely used,

the transfer of a part of the property of the convicts to the informers. For punishment, the convicts were handed over to the secular authorities, since the church hypocritically refused to "shed blood." Usually convicted heretics were burned at the stake. At the same time, solemn ceremonies of proclaiming the verdict of the Inquisition over a group of heretics - auto-da-fe (Spanish "act of faith") were often arranged. Repentant sinners were imprisoned for life. Scientists suspected of free thought and disagreement with the canons established by the Catholic Church fell under the supervision of the Inquisition.

The activities of the Inquisition represented one of the darkest pages of the Middle Ages.

The Inquisition alone could not cope with massive heretical movements. The Church tried to undermine these movements from within, to prove the "errors" of heretics who had gone astray from the path of the "true faith". To this end, the church recognized some moderate sects and transformed them into mendicant orders. This was the case with the Franciscans.

The founder of this order, Francis of Assisi (1182-1226), came from a wealthy and noble Italian family. Following the example of Peter Wald, he went to begging, preaching asceticism and repentance. Francis did not deny the church and monasticism in principle, but only called on the clergy to follow the "apostolic example" - to wander and preach among the people, earning a livelihood by labor and at the expense of alms. It was this way of life that his followers, the "lesser brothers" (Minorites), led. The Pope legalized the preaching work of Francis and his followers, and in 1210 he approved the Franciscan Order. The church even declared Francis a saint. The Franciscans soon abandoned their claims of "equality" and "poverty" and developed into a very wealthy and influential monastic order. Their main goal was to combat the spread of heretical teachings. The monks penetrated the mass of heretics and, with their sermons and example, tried to distract them from the "delusions" of heresy and return them to the bosom of the Catholic Church. The order had a strict centralized organization headed by a "general" subordinate directly to the pope.

Following the example of the Franciscan order, the Dominican order was established in 1216, the creator of which was the fanatic Spanish monk Dominic. Members of this mendicant order led a different way of life than the Franciscans. They did not dress in rags, but in the robes of scientists. These were educated "preacher brothers" who took over the education system, and above all the theological departments in universities. From their midst emerged such famous pillars of scholasticism and theology as Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas. The main goal of the Dominicans was the fight against heresies. Calling themselves "dogs of the Lord" (domini canes-consonant with "Dominicans"), they smashed the heretics not

only from the departments of universities, but also the weapon of the Inquisition. Of these, the tribunals of the Inquisition were usually recruited.

Mendicant orders were also engaged in missionary activities, founded their monasteries in non-Catholic countries. The Dominicans penetrated as preachers and diplomats into eastern countries- China and Japan.

The decline of the papacy in the XIV century. Cathedral movement. At the beginning of the XIV century. the political situation in Western Europe has changed radically. The process of state centralization is well advanced. National states began to form. The royal power subordinated to its domination the feudal nobility - secular and ecclesiastical. The clergy were deprived of privileges - exemption from taxes and the right to special ecclesiastical jurisdiction.

The question arose about the creation of a national church, independent of the Roman curia. The end of the papal theocracy was coming.

But the papacy, in spite of these new trends, tried to defend and even strengthen its theocratic claims, denying in principle the idea of ​​secular state sovereignty. It was on this basis that a fierce struggle unfolded between the French king Philip IV and Pope Boniface VIII, which ended in the king's victory. The papal residence was transferred to the French city of Avignon, and the papacy for 70 years (1309-1378) was in "captivity", following the lead of the French kings (see p. 201).

With the return of the papal throne to Rome, a "great schism" (schism) began, when two or even three popes were on the throne at the same time. In the course of this struggle, accompanied by mutual curses and anathema, the papacy lost its former prestige, the Catholic hierarchy was plunged into a protracted crisis. At this time, a conciliar movement developed within the Catholic Church, which pursued the goal of limiting the papal autocracy and subordinating the pope to an ecumenical council. The conciliar movement found the active support of Western European monarchies, which sought to free themselves from papal intervention and establish secular state supremacy. French king Charles VII, on the basis of council decrees, issued in 1438 the Pragmatic Sanction, which proclaimed the principles of the “Gallican Church” and the supremacy of councils in matters of faith. The king was granted the right to appoint to church positions and the jurisdiction of the clergy to state courts was established. Similar measures were taken in other countries, for example in England and in some German principalities.

One of the main tasks of the conciliar movement and the reason for it was the desire of the Catholic hierarchy to overcome schism and strengthen the authority of the church. The Council of Pisa in 1409 removed both popes - Avignon and Roman - and elected a new Pope Alexander V. However, this did not eliminate the schism. Instead of two, there are now three popes.

At the next, Constance Council (1414-1418), in addition to liquidating the schism, issues of general reform of the church and the fight against the "Hussite heresy" were discussed. But the council essentially did not solve any of these tasks. Jan Hus was condemned by the cathedral and burned at the stake. However, in the Czech Republic a popular movement arose against the Catholic Church and German domination, which ultimately won. A decree was adopted on the supremacy of the cathedral over the pope. John XXIII was deposed. As it turned out, in the past, this high priest (Baltasaro Cossa) was a pirate and counterfeiter. The Council elected Martin V as Pope. But the split continued, since one of the former popes, Benedict XIII, did not renounce his dignity. In 1431, a council was convened in Basel, which lasted intermittently until 1449. Its success was the conclusion of a compromise agreement with the moderate Hussites.

Pope Eugene IV disobeyed the Basel Council and convened his own special council in Ferrara. In 1439 this cathedral was transferred to Florence, where a union was concluded between the Catholic and Orthodox churches. The Byzantine Emperor and the Patriarch of Constantinople hoped to receive from the West military aid against the Turks and made great concessions to Catholicism and the Pope. But the population and a significant part of the clergy rejected the union. It was later carried out only in the western regions of Ukraine and Belarus, which were under the rule of Lithuania and Poland.

The schism continued, and only at a meeting of the Council in Lausanne (1449) was an agreement reached on the restoration of unity: the last antipope Felix V renounced his claims to the throne and Nicholas V remained the single head of the church.

The elimination of the "great schism" did not lead to the restoration of the former power of the Roman curia. The Pope increasingly lost the role of the ecumenical head of the Catholic Church and turned into one of the ordinary princes of Central Italy. But the papacy was still the organizing force of Catholic reaction. The Roman curia led the Inquisition, which brutally suppressed progressive anti-Catholic movements. The papacy played an equally reactionary role in the historical fate of Italy. Owning the center of the country, it stood in the way of its national and political unification.

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MBOU "School No. 9 of Chita"

Abstract on the topic

“The struggle of the Catholic Church against heretics. Inquisition "

Completed: student of grade 10A

Dovgopolaya Asya

Checked by: history teacher

Terez L.V

Chita 2013

Introduction

In the XI - XIII centuries. the church in Europe has reached great power. Not a single event could do without it.

The Church did not recognize any boundaries, neither state nor linguistic.

It affirmed the unity of European peoples, was, as scientists - theologians and parish priests never tired of repeating - a perfect community of people pleasing to God. The idea that it is possible to live happily and not be at the same time a faithful son of the Christian Church, the medieval European simply could not enter into the head. The world around him, attachments, everyday actions were part of the order established by God. Not to believe, not to pray, not to go to church - in the eyes of the people of the Middle Ages, it was against life itself.

The medieval church wielded tremendous power in the Christian world. The Middle Ages was a Christian civilization. The life of society and a person took place in an inextricable connection with religion, the requirements of the church.

By the beginning of the Middle Ages, Christianity had been the official religion of the Roman Empire for about two centuries.

The causes of the movement of heretics

During the early Middle Ages, at the congresses of the higher clergy - church councils, the main dogmas of the Christian faith were gradually developed and approved:

§ the doctrine of the Trinity (God is one, but exists in three persons: God the Father, God the Son, the Holy Spirit),

§ about the immaculate conception of Christ (from the Spirit of God),

§ on the role of the church as the only mediator between God and people.

The church was the largest landowner and possessed enormous wealth. The treasury of the church went to the proceeds from the payment of church tithes, the sale of church posts, sacred relics, and ceremonies.

Many people did not like the actions of the church, its money-grubbing, and the corruption of the clergy. Among the townspeople, knights, simple priests and monks from time to time there were people who openly criticized the church. The clergy called such people heretics.

The heretics argued that the church was corrupted. They called the Pope the viceroy of the devil, not God. The heretics rejected expensive church rites and lavish divine services. They demanded that the clergy give up tithes, from their land holdings and wealth. The gospel was their only source of faith. In their sermons, heretics denounced priests and monks for forgetting "apostolic poverty." They themselves set an example of a righteous life: they distributed their property to the poor, ate alms.

Some heretics demanded the abandonment of all property or dreamed of equality in property or predicted that in the near future there would come a "millennial kingdom of justice", or "the Kingdom of God on earth."

To strengthen his power and fight against heresies and heretics, the Pope created in the 13th century a special ecclesiastical court - the Inquisition.

Holy Inquisition

The Catholic Church fought against heretics: it persecuted them and brutally dealt with them. Excommunication was considered a terrible punishment.

To strengthen his power and fight against heresies and heretics, the Pope created in the 13th century a special ecclesiastical court - the Inquisition. The main task of the Inquisition was to determine whether the accused was guilty of heresy.

The ministers of the church in all countries persecuted heretics and cruelly dealt with them. Excommunication was considered a terrible punishment. The excommunicated was outlawed: believers had no right to provide him with help and shelter.

Punishing for disobedience, the pope could impose on a region or even an entire country a ban on performing rituals and worship (interdict). Then the temples were closed, babies remained unbaptized, the dead could not be buried. This means that both of them were doomed to hellish torments, which all believing Christians feared.

In an area where there were many heretics, the church organized military campaigns, promising the participants for the forgiveness of sins. At the beginning of the 13th century, the feudal lords set out to punish the Albiguei heretics in the wealthy regions of southern France; their center was the city of Albi. The Albigensians believed that the entire earthly world (and therefore the church led by the pope) is a product of Satan, and a person can save his soul only if he completely breaks with the sinful world.

Northern French knights willingly took part in the campaign, counting on rich booty. During the 20 years of war, many flourishing cities in southern France were plundered and destroyed, and their population was killed. In one of the cities, according to the chronicler, the soldiers killed up to 20 thousand people. When the papal ambassador was asked how to distinguish heretics from “good Catholics,” he replied: “Kill everyone in a row. God in heaven recognizes his own! ".

The main task of the Inquisition was to determine whether the accused was guilty of heresy.

Since the end of the 15th century, when ideas about the massive presence of witches among the common population who have concluded an agreement with evil spirits begin to spread in Europe, the processes of witches begin to be included in its competence. At the same time, the overwhelming number of judgments about witches were passed by the secular courts of Catholic and Protestant countries in the 16th and 17th centuries. While the Inquisition did persecute witches, virtually every secular government did the same. Towards the end of the 16th century, Roman inquisitors began to express serious doubts in most cases of accusations of witchcraft. Also, since 1451, Pope Nicholas V transferred cases of Jewish pogroms to the competence of the Inquisition. The Inquisition was supposed not only to punish the rioters, but also to act preemptively, preventing violence.

Catholic lawyers attached great importance to frank confession. In addition to the usual interrogations, torture of a suspect was used, as in the secular courts of that time. In the event that the suspect did not die during the investigation, but confessed to his deed and repented, then the case materials were transferred to the court. The Inquisition did not allow extrajudicial reprisals.

Church papacy inquisition heretic

Victims of the Holy Inquisition

One of the servants of the devil, a sorceress and a saint was Jeanne d'Arc (1412-1431), the national heroine of France, who led the struggle of her country with England and elevated the heir to the throne Prince Charles to the French throne. In 1431, Jeanne was burned at the stake by the Inquisition in Rouen on charges of magic and heresy, and in 1456 - just 25 years after a painful death - at the request of King Charles VII, whom she elevated to the throne and who did not lift a finger to save her, Joan's trial was revised and Pope Calixtus III declared the unfortunate girl innocent.In 1928 she was canonized as a defender of France and is even considered now the patroness of telegraph and radio.In her honor, a national holiday has been established in France, which is celebrated every second Sunday in May.

Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) - Polish astronomer and thinker. Copernicus set forth his theory in the book "On the Circulation of the Celestial Spheres", which he was in no hurry to publish, because he knew that he would certainly be persecuted by the Inquisition. The Church believed that the Bible, which says that the sun moves around the earth, is irrefutable proof of the geocentric system of the world. But even more irrefutable were the calculations of Copernicus.

A supporter of his heliocentric system was Giordano Filippo Bruno (1548-1600), an Italian philosopher and thinker who spoke with the doctrine of the unity and materiality of the universe. However, Bruno went further than his teacher. He developed the heliocentric system of Nicolaus Copernicus and put forward the position of the plurality of inhabited worlds. But the Inquisition persecuted Bruno not only for his scientific views. The scientist also strongly rejected the idea of ​​an afterlife, and in Bruno's religion he saw a force that generates wars, discord and vices in society. He criticized religious views of the world and most of the Christian dogmas, denied the existence of God, the Creator of the world. Such a Catholic Church could not forgive him.

Jan Hus (1371-1415) - preacher and thinker, prominent scientist. Hus denounced the venality of the Catholic clergy, their trade in indulgences - special letters of absolution, according to which one could even receive the forgiveness of such a grave sin as murder. He also spoke out against the luxury and wealth of the clergy, called for depriving the Church of property and was against the German dominance in Bohemia. In 1409-1412 Jan Hus completely breaks with Catholicism, puts the authority of Holy Scripture above the authority of the Pope. Subsequently, Huss was indeed declared a saint.

Martin Luther (1483-1546), German religious leader. Luther was the main "creator" of the new faith - Protestantism, which recognized the absolute authority of the Bible, the one-saving "personal faith" and abolished the church cult. Luther believed that everyone can turn to God on their own without the help of priests, and the basis of a person's faith should not be the instructions of the pope, but the Bible.

Conclusion

The human mind will hardly ever come up with something more cruel and painful than what the inquisitorial tribunals used to "save" the souls of heretics. Hundreds of thousands burned at the stake, millions languishing in prisons, crippled, outcast, deprived of property and good name - this is the general result of the activities of the Inquisition. Among its victims are participants in heretical movements and opponents of the papacy, leaders of uprisings, philosophers and naturalists, humanists and educators.

The entire horror of the Inquisition with its countless victims has become for Western Christianity the history of church terror and crimes against humanity.

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The role of heretical movements in Western Europe during the developed Middle Ages in the preparation of the religious Reformation. Dogmatics of the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church. The essence of the Heresy, the prerequisites for its origin, the features of the movement in the developed Middle Ages.

Heresies, i.e. deviations from church dogmas, arose during the formation of the Christian church. However, from the XII-XIII centuries. they especially intensified. Heretics pointed out that many priests, including the pope himself, do not observe what they preach, live in luxury, lead a dissolute life, and interfere in the affairs of states. The heretics called for a return to the foundations of the early Christian church, when its ministers were poor and persecuted, but they showed everyone an example of righteousness.

Some heretics taught that the world is ruled by two equal forces - God and the devil. They called themselves people of God, and all opponents, including the clergy led by the Pope, - servants of the devil. The heretics called for the destruction of temples and icons, for the extermination of all the ministers of the church. There were heretics who advocated the equality of all people, not only before God, but also in earthly life. They offered to divide all property equally. In the communities of such heretics, property was considered common: sometimes even wives were common.

Heretics refused to pray in "spoiled" churches, to pay church tithes. In some places even feudal lords became heretics, including the rulers of large regions, dissatisfied with the claims of the popes to secular power. At the beginning of the 13th century, in some areas in northern Italy and southern France Heretics constituted the majority of the population, exterminated the clergy and created their own church organization.

The ministers of the church condemned heresies and sermons, and cursed heretics. However, persecution and punishment became the main way to combat heresies. The suspects and heresies were subject to arrest, interrogation with the use of torture, and then execution. Not relying on the zeal of secular rulers who pitied their subjects, the popes created an ecclesiastical court - the Holy Inquisition (investigation) - A person who fell into the hands of the Inquisition was subjected to the most sophisticated tortures. The usual punishment for heretics was their public burning alive at the stake. Sometimes they burned up to 100 or more people at once. In addition to heretics, the Inquisition also persecuted people suspected of having ties with the devil, witches and sorcerers. Many hundreds of thousands of women have died at the stake in Western Europe over these ridiculous accusations. The property of the convicts was divided between the church and local confederates. Therefore, the wealthy townspeople especially suffered from the Inquisition.

In the area where there were a lot of heretics, crusades were organized. The largest were the campaigns in the south of France against the heretics-Albigens under Pope Innocent III. At the entrance of the war, the inhabitants of entire regions and cities were exterminated without exception.

2. The Church's Struggle Against Heresies

In the second half of the XIV century. in Novgorod, an anti-feudal movement arose, which had a religious shell, known as the heresy of the strigolniki. The strigolniks opposed the bishops, their extortions and money-grubbing; they denied some dogmas and rituals associated with the death of a person, the need for confession and communion, said that their prayers were displeasing to God and that it was in vain to donate lands to them "for the sake of the soul." The heresy of the strigolniki reflected the struggle against the dominant feudal church; it was a protest, albeit passive, of the social lower classes against feudal oppression, against the established feudal ideology. There were elements of rationalism in the criticism of church dogmas and rituals. At the head of the heresy were ordinary people, as well as clergy, i.e. the lowest layer of the clergy.

The mainstream church severely condemned the new heresy as directed against the church and feudal oppression. The heresy was called "the direct venture of Satan," and its participants were called "malicious detractors of the church," "corrupts of the Christian faith." The Novgorod bishops insisted that the leaders of the heresy - deacon Nikita, artisan Karp and others - be thrown into the Volkhov River in 1375. Then they began to catch and execute the rest of the participants in the movement in Novgorod and Pskov. The physical destruction of heretics was also approved by the Moscow Metropolitan Photius. In the letters of 1416-1425. he thanked the Pskovites for the massacre of the heretics.

In the XV century. a new anti-feudal movement, which also had a religious shell, was widely developed - the Novgorod-Moscow heresy, also known as the heresy of the Judaizers. Supporters of this antifeudal movement demanded the abolition of church land ownership, the abolition of confession, did not believe in the resurrection of the dead. They denied external ritualism and the basic dogmas of the Orthodox Church, for example, the doctrine of the Trinity, did not recognize icons.

They also spoke out against the church nobility, condemning their acquisitiveness. The heresy reflected the social protest of urban people against feudal oppression. She, however, was not supported by the peasant movement, and this is her weakness. To combat heresy, a church council was convened in 1490, which was attended by the most militant representatives of the church. The council excommunicated and cursed the participants in this movement and demanded their death from the royal power. Preaching the need for the cruel execution of heretics, the spiritual authorities were guided in their practice by the Book of Pilots, which was a translation of the Byzantine Nomokanon (a set of rules of the Byzantine emperors concerning church and church affairs).

With the demand for the death of the heretics, the Novgorod Archbishop Gennady also appealed to Tsar Ivan III. But heretics, by their agitation against church landownership and church nobility, made it easier for Ivan III to fight for the elimination of large church landownership, which he waged in the interests of secular feudal lords and service people. Therefore, he limited himself only to punishing the heretics. They were beaten with a whip, and then sent to the Novgorod bishop for condemnation by the church council. Condemning the heretics and giving them a curse, Gennady, following the example of the Catholic inquisitors that he loved, arranged for the heretics a shameful entry into Novgorod. They were put in clown's clothes on horses "with the ridge to the eyes of the horses", that is. backwards, birch bark helmets were put on their heads with the inscription "Behold, Satan's army" and in this form they were taken around the city. City dwellers were obliged to spit on heretics and say: "These are the enemies of God and Christian blasphemers." In conclusion, birch bark helmets were burned on their heads. Some heretics, according to the chronicle, were burned at the request of Gennady on the Duhovskoye field, and he sent others into captivity.

After the defeat of the Novgorod anti-church movement, its center moved to Moscow. Fedor and Ivan Kuritsyn became the leaders of this movement. Moscow heretics also fought to weaken the power of large church feudal lords and were opponents of church land tenure. They opposed monasticism, criticized the works of the church fathers, but did not encroach on the foundations of Christianity. The abbot of the Volokolamsk monastery Joseph Sanin (Volotskiy) was a harsh and implacable persecutor of this movement. He was a representative of the militant church, a supporter of strong secular power, the creator of the theory of the divine origin of royal power.

Moscow heretics were tried by a church council in 1504. At the insistence of the council, the most active heretics - Ivan Volk, Mikhail Konoplev and Ivan Maksimov, were burned in a cage in Moscow, and Nekras Rukavov - in Novgorod, after cutting off his tongue.

After the massacre of the heretics at the council of 1504, Joseph became the banner of the militant church - the "despicable Josephites" who fought against the participants in the anti-church movement by means of a spiritual and secular sword. For services to the secular authorities and the church, Joseph in 1591 was declared an all-Russian saint.

After Joseph, the Moscow Metropolitan Daniel became the head of the churchmen who insisted on the execution of opponents of the church. The church brought down its sword on the so-called non-possessors Maxim the Greek and Vassian Patrikeev. Maxim the Greek himself used to advocate the death penalty for heretics. But he was opposed to church land tenure and the merciless exploitation of the peasants who worked on the church-monastery lands. Vassian Patrikeev, who stood at the head of the boyar opposition, also denounced the money-grubbing of monasteries, for the possession of land, according to him, corrupts the monks, infects them with "an insatiable love of money." In his writings, Vassian wrote about the exploitation of monastic peasants, who, according to him, lived in extreme poverty.

Vassian and Maxim the Greek criticized the feudal serf life of church estates and sought to persuade the Grand Duke to alienate the church and monastic lands, which caused the hatred of the church hierarchs towards them. Maxim the Greek appeared in front of the church council in 1525. He was recognized as a "abusive heretic" and was imprisoned in the Volokolamsk monastery. Maxim the Greek was forbidden to write, he was tormented by hunger, frost and, as one source notes, "from the smoke and grief of the prison he was as if dead." Maxim stayed in such conditions for six years. In 1531 he was brought in chains to Moscow and brought before the court of a new church council. Here in his writings they found “blasphemy against the Lord God and the Mother of God” and accused him of compiling “blasphemous and heretical scriptures”, criticized church statutes and laws, that he was a heretic and a warlock. The Church Council condemned Maxim as a "blasphemer and Scripture smolder "and sent him in chains to the Tverskoy Otroch monastery, where he was imprisoned in a stone sack.

Maxim's assistants in correcting books, Mikhail Medovartsev and Sylvanas, were also accused of heresy. Medovartsev was exiled to Kolomna, and Silvan to the Volokolamsk monastery, where he was "killed with smoke." At the same council, the "prince-monk" Vassian, an opponent of church land tenure, was declared a heretic. He also fell into a stone bag of the Volokolamsk monastery and died of hunger and smoke in the "most bitter dungeon". This was done by order of Metropolitan Daniel.

Soon the hegumen of the Trinity Monastery Artemy, an opponent of the church nobility and church landownership, fell into the hands of the inquisitors. He wrote to the king about this and implored him in the interests of the church itself to take away her estates. Artemy judged the church council in 1553. He was accused of heresy and was exiled to the Solovetsky monastery with the order "to stay inside the monastery with a great fortress, in a silent cell."

At a church council in 1554, Matvey Bashkin was condemned as a "godless heretic and apostate of the Orthodox faith". He believed that slavery is incompatible with the principles of true Christianity, and spoke of the need to eliminate slavery. Bashkin criticized church canons and dogmas: he denied the divine origin of Jesus, did not recognize the "saints" and the worship of icons. In Bashkin's speech against the church and its dogmas, under a religious shell, there was a protest of the masses against enslavement and feudal exploitation. Defending the foundations of the feudal-serf state, church hierarchs could not forgive Bashkin for his views. Bashkin was tortured and forced to confess to heresy. According to some sources, according to the verdict of the church cathedral, Bashkin was imprisoned in wooden cage and burned.

Less than a year later, the church hierarchs gathered again. This time they tried Theodosius the Kosy, an outstanding ideologist of the lower social classes of the middle of the 16th century. Theodosius the Kosoy taught that one should not obey the priests and the authorities, he called on the oppressed masses to fight for the destruction of church and secular oppression and a radical reorganization of society. The church council sentenced Theodosius to a heavy punishment, but he managed to escape from the tenacious clutches of the inquisitors and flee to Lithuania.

But, despite this, in comparison with the activities of the Inquisition in the Catholic and Protestant states of Europe, the scope of the persecution and execution of heretics by the Orthodox Church was relatively small. If in Spain alone during the time of Torquemada, about 40,000 witches were burned, then for the entire period from the 15th to the 17th centuries. in Russia, only about 100 executions were carried out by burning.