The Papacy was threatened in the era into which Francis was born. by a torrent of people inspired by a air of romantic freedom represented by the troubadours, who believed that following Christ meant driving money changers from the temples, sharing property, celebrating life with simplicity.

There was no place in their vision for a corrupt rich Papacy. But a Pope, Innocent III, met in 1209 with the charismatic 26 years old Francis who spoke to animals, hoping to use him to help stem the tide of change, a hope based on the knowledge that Francis believed Papal authority came from God. The plan was to appear to adopt the non-materialistic vision of the people for the church while manipulating the populace to ensure the future of its powerful rich elite. This strategy was in great part successful. Many of Francis' mendicant followers within decades of his death deserted his simplicity - but others continued to follow his more radical ideas.

Early in the 14th Century the Inquisitor Bernardo Gui was sent to investigate the lay followers of Francis in his Third Order in France and Catatonia. In north France they were known as the Waldensians. Gui reported in his "Inquisitor's Manual': "Many of both sexes were judged heretical and burnt from the year 1317" - and that those that died did so "saying they defend the gospel truth, the life of Christ and evangelical and apostolic poverty". He was outraged by how they put their vows to God before their duty to obey the Church. He particularly noted that they said they would refuse an order from the Pope to relax their poverty by giving themselves a wine cellar! He reported their commitment was to an inner voice, called sometimes the Holy Spirit, rather than to the Pope. He said they deserved to die for this. He recommended testing if a suspect were obedient to the Pope by asking: "If there were only one woman left in the world and she did not wish to marry, should she, to preserve the human race, obey an order from the Pope to marry?"

I was proud that my parents belonged to the same Third Order. As a youth I had been found the example of Francis inspiring - and learnt that similar ideas had stimulated throughout the medieval period and into the Renaissance a spirit of radical social reform. These ideas excited me - thus my reading of Thomas More's 16th Century "Utopia" when I was sixteen. A statue of Francis has an honoured place in my parent's home as did a copy of his Canticle to all Creatures. My father was to be buried in the robe of this order. But my parents did not question Papal authority - - nor would my parents have been aware of this history.

Gui said the Waldensians were also members of the Beguine movement - which had started as an all woman movement -and of which I will write more later. A Pope had forbidden the Beguines to "beg" on pain of excommunication - and a Pope took exception to the poverty of the Waldensians, seeing this as an implicit (and sometimes explicit) challenge to the Church's possession of great riches.

Gui reported that both a Beguine or Waldensian could be recognised in the street .by their habit of greeting each other with the words: "Blessed be Jesus Christ". He instructed that anyone who greeted thus should be arrested. He noted they also could be found by their habit of not joining hands while praying. They were to be arrested because they dared to deny his authority over them came from God. Even more seriously, he claimed they said the church persecuting them was not the true church but the "Great Whore of Babylon". He noted darkly: "They say they are laity and simple folk, but in reality they are astute, cunning and crafty." He noted that they would not betray each other to him. Finally, most shockingly, he noted they even collected in the name of Christ the ashes of those that he burnt and venerated them as martyrs!

The Cathars of southern France (also known as Albignsians), a hundred years before Gui tackled the Waldensians, were crushed by a "Crusade" launched against them in 1209 by Pope Innocent III partly because they were strict pacifists and would not take part in the crusades against Islam. When the Cathar city of Beziers was sacked, the soldiers were told to kill everyone as "God will know his own." It still took some 20 years of horrific warfare to eliminate them. They were a rather puritanical version of Christianity that did not believe in the authority of the Pope, perhaps one that was also influenced by the mysticism of the Sufi Islamic teachers then influential in Spain and the Balkans. Some modern historian of religion, such as Norman Cohen have called the Cathars non-Christian pXii but this seems scarcely to have been so looking at their rituals.

Their adult baptism ritual is described in their "Lyons Ritual". "An Elder said to the Postulant,

""God bless you and make you a good Christian and bring you to the good end."

"Do you give yourself to God and the Gospel?" Postulant: "Yes"

Elder:

"Do you promise that henceforth you will eat neither meat nor eggs, nor cheese, nor fat, and that you live only from water and wood (i.e. vegetables and fish) ,that you will not lie, that you will not swear, that you will not kill, that you will not abandon your body to any form of luxury, that you will never go alone when it is possible to have a companion, that you will never sleep without breeches and shirt and that you will never abandon your faith for fear of water, fire or any other manner of death?"

The Church never completely succeeded in suppressing a similar challenge to its authority in Central Europe. Cosmas of Prague (c. 1045-1125), Bohemia's first historian wrote of the local religious customs that perhaps went back to pre-Christian days: "marriages were held in common. In the manner of beasts they mated for a single night. No one knew the meaning of saying "mine," but as those who live in the monastic life they referred to all goods as "ours" in word, heart and in deed. None of their quarters were bolted and the doors were not closed in the face of the poor. Among them exists none who are ... destitute."[w file 8]

In the 1400s the Taborites and Adamites of Bohemia continued the same tradition. They instituted their own form of communism, distributing goods according to needs but keeping the means of production in private hands. In 1420 they declared: "Henceforth, at Hradiste and Tabor there is nothing which is mine or thine. Rather, all things in the community shall be held in common for all time and no one is permitted to hold private property. The one who does commits sins mortally ... No longer shall there be a reigning king or a ruling lord; for there shall be servitude no longer. All taxes shall cease and no one shall compel another to subjection. All shall be equal as brothers and sisters."

The Adamites also believed in communal marriages and were lead by a man and a woman. The practice of communal marriage apparently died out - but their communal ownership of goods was continued by the Hussites and by the Unitas Fratum of the Czechs. Goods were said to be "neither mine nor thine" but for the common good. They based their practice on that of the very early Christians who also held their goods in common. Their communistic practices spread into the neighbouring states particularly into Poland and Switzerland in the 16th Century - when they too were labelled as "witches" It seems that any type of unauthorised Christianity was likely to have its adherents labelled witches.

The bloody suppression of the Waldensians, who were often accused of being witches, and the earlier equally bloody suppression of the Cathars, were the actions of a Church that had moved far from the non-materialism of Jesus. It was now trying to dissuade people by threats of torture and of death from sharing goods in common. The Waldensians, as the Cathars before them, and the Hussites after them, were in the spirit of the more ascetic and communal of the early Gnostic groups. This similarity was not too surprising as Gnosticism had been strong in Southern France. They resisted the Roman church's imposition of its rule as had the Gnostics. They were Christians who sought wisdom within themselves rather than in the rulings of authorities. Many among them believed in the equality of the sexes with women sometimes taking on the role of prophetesses or preachers.

The Inquisition was created to suppress them. Their suppression would lead directly into another still bloodier and more wide-spread persecution of men and women labelled as heretics and witches throughout the later Middle Ages which continues into modern times in Africa and in other continents.