am inclined to attribute a very extensive effect to
the preaching of these heretics. They appear in various countries nearly
during the same period, in Spain, Lombardy, Germany, Flanders, and
England, as well as France. Thirty unhappy persons, convicted of denying
the sacraments, are said to have perished at Oxford by cold and famine
in the reign of Henry II. In every country the new sects appear to have
spread chiefly among the lower people, which, while it accounts for the
imperfect notice of historians, indicates a more substantial influence
upon the moral condition of society than the conversion of a few nobles
or ecclesiastics.[749]

But even where men did not absolutely enlist under the banners of any
new sect, they were stimulated by the temper of their age to a more
zealous and independent discussion of their religious system. A curious
illustration of this is furnished by one of the letters of Innocent III.
He had been informed by the bishop of Metz, as he states to the clergy
of the diocese, that no small multitude of laymen and women, having
procured a translation of the gospels, epistles of St. Paul, the
psalter, Job, and other books of Scripture, to be made for them into
French, meet in secret conventicles to hear them read, and preach to
each other, avoiding the company of those who do not join in their
devotion, and having been reprimanded for this by some of their parish
priests, have withstood them, alleging reasons from the Scriptures, why
they should not be so forbidden. Some of them too deride the ignorance
of their ministers, and maintain that their own books teach them more
than they can learn from the pulpit, and that they can express it
better. Although the desire of reading the Scriptures, Innocent
proceeds, is rather praiseworthy than reprehensible, yet they are to be
blamed for frequenting secret assemblies, for usurping the office of
preaching, deriding their own ministers, and scorning the company of
such as do not concur in their novelties. He presses the bishop and
chapter to discover the author of this translation, which could not have
been made without a knowledge of letters, and what were his intentions,
and what degree of orthodoxy and respect for the Holy See those who used
it possessed. This letter of Innocent III., however, considering the
nature of the man, is sufficiently temperate and conciliatory. It seems
not to have answered its end; for in another letter he complains that
so