credentes, or believers, and the perfecti, or pure ones—a division characteristic of Manichæan sects generally, as well as corresponding to the "novices" and "adepts" of many orders and societies. Before admission among the perfecti one must have passed a period of probation and received the consolamentum, or rite of initiation, by the laying on of hands. The perfecti were celibates— women were admitted to this rank-and lived an ascetic life, devoting themselves to the preaching of the gospel and charitable works. It does not appear that marriage was forbdden to the credentes. The perfecti received the title of "elders," and were preachers to and pastors of the congregations, as well as missionaries and evangelists. There was a total absence of a hierarchy among them. It is charged against them that they held the perfecti to be above the law and incapable of sinthe same error of antinomianism into which some Calvinists, Baptists among them, fell later.

The most prominent man among the Bogomils toward the close of the eleventh century was a venerable physician named Basil. He is sometimes described as their "bishop"; he was really one of the "elders" or perfecti, and his preeminence was due to his learning and character, not to his official rank. The emperor Alexander Comnenus I., was a bitter persecutor. He did not hesitate to lay a trap for Basil by inviting him to the imperial table and cabinet, and by pretending a deep interest in the Bogomil's views drew from his victim a full exposition of them. A scribe hidden behind tapestries took it all down, and then the perfidious emperor arrested his venerable guest and put him in prison. Basil was condemned and burned at the stake, to the last steadfast in his faith and meeting his cruel death with unfaltering trust in Christ. No charge was or could be brought against him, but his "heresy." To the elevation of his

character and his life of good works even the daughter of the emperor, who recorded her father's shame, bore unwilling witness. We learn from her also that many families of the highest rank had embraced the Bogomil doctrines. At the height of their prosperity the credentes are said to have numbered two millions, and the perfecti perhaps four thousand.

Through the early medieval times, therefore, down to the eleventh century, we find evangelical Christianity suppressed with virtual completeness throughout Europe. Even those forms of Christianity that may, in comparison with Rome, be called evangelical are far from bearing a close resemblance to the doctrine and practice of the apostles. No other conclusion can be drawn from a careful and impartial survey of all the evidence.

CHAPTER VII

FOREGLEAMS OF THE DAWN

HEN Hildebrand became Pope Gregory VII., in

the eleventh century, the papacy reached a height of pretensions and power of which the earlier pontiffs had scarcely dreamed. His predecessors had claimed supremacy in the church; it remained for him to claim universal supremacy, not merely the guidance of all believers in spiritual affairs, but a moral superintendence of the nations. Temporal interests are confessedly inferior to spiritual; in claiming spiritual supremacy, therefore, Hildebrand held that supremacy in temporal affairs was included. Adopting the principles of feudalism, the papacy henceforth declared that all princes and monarchs held their dominions as feofs of the church. This theory the papacy has never since disclaimed. It is a right in abeyance, and it will be revived and reasserted whenever in the future a pope judges himself to be able to enforce the claim. Claims so extravagant produced revolts, both political and religious; some of these revolts partook of both characters to such an extent that it is difficult to class them. They failed, it is true, for the times were not yet ripe for thorough reformation of the Church or State, but they were foregleams of the dawn that was to break over Europe in the sixteenth century.

About the year 1130 a young priest began to attract much attention by his preaching in Brescia, one of the free cities of Northern Italy, and soon all Lombardy was stirred. He was a native of that city, and we first hear