PETER BRUIS, BURNT AT ST. GILES; HENRY OF TOULOUSE APPREHENDED AND PUT OUT OF THE WAY, BY THE POPE’S LEGATE; AND MANY OTHER PERSONS PUT TO DEATH AT PARIS, FOR THE TRUE EVANGELICAL DOCTRINE; ABOUT THE YEARS 1145, 1147.

P. J. Twisck gives the following account in his Chronijck, for the year 1145: “About this time there were famous in France, Peter Bruis, formerly a priest, and his disciple, Henry of Toulouse; both had been monks, were learned men, and greatly censured 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 execration. They spoke against the mass, images, pilgrimages, and other institutions of the Roman church. They renounced infant baptism, saying that none but the believing were entitled to baptism.

When Peter had preached about twenty years, namely, from before the year 1126 until 1145, the people flocking to him in great numbers, he was finally publicly burnt in the city of St. Giles, also called St. Aegidius.

His disciple Henry, who followed him in the doctrine, was intercepted and apprehended some time after by the legate of the Pope, and put out of the way, so that his fate is not known. This is held to have occurred two years after the death of Peter Bruis, namely A. D. 1147.

After their death a cruel persecution arose against all those who had followed their doctrine, many of whom went joyfully to meet death. In short, however assiduously 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, proclamation of crusades, indulgences, and pardons to all those who should do violence157 to said people, and, finally, by all manner of torment, fire, gallows, and cruel bloodshedding, yea, so that the whole world was in commotion on account of it; yet, could they not prevent this persuasion from spreading everywhere, and going forth into every country and kingdom, holding their worship secretly as well as openly, with 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 burnt, at Paris; and thus their descendants, as history states, continued, though under much tribulation, until this time. P. J. Twisck, Chron., page 450, from Philip Marnix Tafer, 3d part, cap. 12, fol. 141, 142. Merula, fol. 748, 853. Hist. Mart. Doopsg., fol. 15. Also, Introduction, page 49.