Peter Bruis, Burned at Saint Giles

P. J. Twisck gives the following account in his Chronijck, for the year 1145: "About this time Peter Bruis, formerly a priest, and his disciple, Henry of Toulouse, were famous in France; both had been monks, were learned men, and strongly condemned the papal errors, sparing neither great nor small. They called the Pope the prince of Sodom, and the city of Rome the mother of all unrighteousness, abomination, and cursing. They spoke against the mass, images, pilgrimages, and other institutions of the Roman church. They rejected infant baptism, saying that no one but believers had any right to baptism.

When Peter had preached about twenty years, namely, from before the year 1126 until 1145, while the people flocked to him in great numbers, he was at last publicly burned in the city of Saint Giles, also called Saint Aegidius.

His disciple Henry, who followed him in this doctrine, was some time afterward intercepted and arrested by the legate of the pope, and put out of the way, so that his fate is not known. This is held to have happened two years after the death of Peter Bruis, namely, in the year 1147.

After their death a cruel persecution arose against all those who had followed their doctrine, and many of them went joyfully to meet death. In short, however diligently the popes with all their shaven heads, aided by princes and secular magistrates, exerted themselves to exterminate them, first, by disputations, then by banishment and papal excommunications and anathemas, the proclamation of crusades, indulgences, and pardons to all who would do violence* to these people, and, finally, by every kind of torment, fire, gallows, and cruel bloodshedding, indeed, so that the whole world was in commotion because of it; yet they could not prevent this persuasion from spreading everywhere, and going out into every country and kingdom, while they held their worship secretly as well as openly, in great or small numbers, according to the tyranny, cruelty or persuasion of the times, and continuing until the year 1304; of whom over a hundred persons were put to death, or burned, at Paris; and so their descendants, as history states, continued, though under much tribulation, until this time. [n401-1] P. J. Twisck, Chron., page 450, from Philip Marnix Tafer, 3rd part, chapter 12, folio 141, 142. Merula, folio 748, 853. Hist. Mart. Doopsg., folio 15. Also, Introduction, page 49.